PART II.

When it was known in the country that M. le Marquis had joined the army as a common soldier, the consternation was great; but when it was known why he had done so, surprise gave way to bitter indignation and regret. The Marquis de Gondriac gone to risk his life for the son of a low plebeian, generally supposed to have been a pirate! The marvel was how the world stood still while such a scandal was enacted in its face. As to the widow, nobody thought of congratulating her. If Marcel had gone out and been shot, they would have pitied her, within reasonable bounds; but now every man’s hand was against her and her son—even the women felt the sweet font of pity dried up within them when they thought of what might come of this. But the people, despite their wrath, were loath to take so gloomy a view of the future.

“The bullets have a sense of their own,” said Peltran; “they know who to hit first and who last, and who never to hit. Look at M. le Comte, how they respect him! He has seen more fighting than ever the Caboffs did, and yet the bullets have never touched a hair of his head. It’s my belief the things are alive and know what they are about.”

No one contradicted this sapient remark; for Peltran was not a pleasant person to contradict.

Marcel Caboff had never been popular, but from this time forth he was branded as a sort of potential malefactor; if M. le Marquis died, Marcel would be his murderer, and Marcel’s life would not be worth an old song in Gondriac. The only people who did the young man justice and had the courage to take his part were Virginie and Alba. Since the night of the storm a friendship had sprung up between Marcel and Alba which had grown to more than friendship on his side. Alba was a lovely maiden now; impulsive, untutored as the waves that her nature seemed attuned to, wild as the sea-birds whose lot she sometimes envied when they beat their wings, rose up from the rocks, and took flight across the sea.

“I wonder you can stay here and live this idle, humdrum life when you might be away seeing the great world,” Alba said to him one day, as they met upon the cliff and walked on together.

“You wish I were away, do you?”

“Oh! no; only I wonder you don’t go. I should, if I were a man.”

“It is harder on me than you think,” said Marcel bitterly. “I did my best to get away; but mother went on her knees and said I would kill her if I went. It was hard to resist that; but it makes me feel angry with her when I think of what has come of it. I know the people hate me and call me a coward. Alba,” he said, turning suddenly round, “you don’t think me a coward, do you?”

“No, Marcel; if you had not been braver than any man in Gondriac, except your father, you would not have come out in the boat that night. How dare they call you a coward when they remember it!”

“They don’t remember it. Everybody has forgotten it but you.”

“M. le Marquis has not forgotten it.”

“I wish he had. That is what has brought all this misery about. If he had not remembered, I should be away with the _grande armée_ now, and should either die a glorious death like my brothers, or come home by and by with the cross, and perhaps a wound or two. Then everybody would know I was a brave man, and mother would have had something to be proud of.”

“Yes,” said Alba dreamily; she was watching a ship that flecked the horizon far away like a great swan, its white sails flapping against the sky, the sea-gulls following in its wake, as it cleaved the wave.

“Would _you_ have been proud of me?” asked Marcel.

“Yes,... perhaps.”

“You would not have cared a straw, I believe,” he said, angry and hurt at her indifferent tone.

“If you had been killed? Indeed I should, Marcel. I should have been very sorry; but what is the good of being sorry now, when it is never going to happen? Look at that ship out there! With what a dip she shears the water! How fast she goes! Her sails are like wings. I wish I had wings!”

“You are always wishing for impossible things,” said Marcel, huffed at this summary dismissal; “you were wishing you were a man a little while ago, and now you want to be a bird. Why don’t you wish for something I could give you?”

“_You_ give me! You could not give me any one of the things I wish for!” Alba flung back the waves of swart hair from her low, broad brow and laughed derisively.

“How do you know that? I have plenty of money, and money can buy everything—everything reasonable, that is. Suppose a fairy were to come and say she would give you whatever you wished; what would you ask for?”

“I would ask her first to make me perfectly beautiful, perfectly good, and perfectly happy,” began Alba.

“Why, you are all that already, you foolish girl!”

“You think so; but you know nothing about it. I would ask her to make me as rich and powerful as a queen, and to make everybody pay me homage—not because I was rich and powerful, but because they loved me! Oh! I should like to be loved more than anybody ever was in this world before. And I should like to live in a beautiful castle, like the castle yonder, and I should fill it with beautiful things, and make it a real fairy palace to live in.”

“And who would you like to live in it with you? You would not care to live in it all alone?” inquired Marcel, bewildered by these ambitious aspirations that left himself and his money-bags altogether out of the reckoning.

“Well, first, I should like to have petite mère, of course; then ... then I should ask the fairy for a brave and handsome prince, who would come and woo me as they do in the story-books; he should be handsome and clever and good, or I should not care for him; but if he was all that, I should love him with all my heart and soul, and we should be as happy as the days are long!”

Marcel heard her to the end, and then began to consider if there was not some one item in the capacious list that came within his possibilities.

“If another castle would do instead of this one—you know you never _could_ have this one—I would go and buy it for you, Alba, and you might have as many pretty gauds to fill it as you liked. We have lots of gold and silver things and pictures up there”—nodding towards the Fortress—“and if I asked mother she would give them to us—to you, I mean.” Alba’s laugh rang like a silver echo all along the cliff.

“And the prince—where would you get him?”

“Must he be a prince? Would not a brave man who loved you and was ready to do your bidding in everything, who would spend his whole life in trying to make you happy—would not that do instead? Must he be a prince, Alba?”

He took her hand and held it, and she did not struggle to release it. They were standing at the foot of a rock that cast a long, black shadow far out upon the sea; the west wind blew into their faces; Alba’s scarlet hood had fallen back, and her hair drifted in a heavy stream behind her, as Marcel bent over her, waiting to hear his fate. He might have read it in her blank, scared looks, in her startled, reluctant attitude. If there had been hope for him, would she have shrunk away and drawn closer to the rock, as if asking it to protect her?

“I have been too hasty,” said the young man penitently; “I should have spoken to Mère Virginie first. Forgive me, Alba, and say only if I may go to her now and ask you for my wife?” He still held her hand, and, mistaking her silence, made an effort to slip his arm around her. The movement acted on Alba like the sting of a snake; she escaped from him with a cry, and sped along the cliff like a deer flying from the hunters.

“My child, you have been foolish, and so has Marcel; but there is no need to cry or be unhappy about it,” said Mère Virginie when Alba had sobbed out the terrible story on her breast. But Alba was not to be comforted. She had been living in dreamland, and now awoke to find the hard ground under her feet instead of golden clouds. Of course she had dreamt of love and lovers, and her heart, or that vague yearning which as yet took its place, had become enamored of the dreams, visions that lay safe beyond the disenchanting present, wrapped in the golden haze of distance; and now this rude awakening had dispelled them, and brought home to the dreamer that she had reached that border-land that lies between the mystery of morning and the revelation of noon; the pearly mists had rolled away in an instant, and the blaze of the mid-day sun was upon her, chasing the fairy phantoms and making sober realities pitilessly clear. She had been dreaming of a lover in some remote time and place, and, lo! he was at her side; he had been close to her all along—an ugly, common man, who seemed made on purpose to mock the visions of her fancy. And yet this incident, which threw Alba into such despair, had been for many a day the fond anticipation of her mother’s heart.

“Why need it frighten you to find that Marcel loves you and wants to have you for his little wife, my child?” said Virginie. “Don’t shudder and cling to me as if he were going to drag you away this very moment! You shall never leave me, unless you do it of your own free will. But remember, darling, that I may have to leave you; and then what will become of you?”

“You leave me, petite mère?” And Alba looked up at her in dismay.

“It must come to that some day. I am old and you are young. I have a trouble here that reminds me of this often, and then I lie awake of nights, thinking of my little one, and praying God to give her a friend, the best and truest friend a woman can have in this world, to take care of her before I am called away.”

“Mother, if you go I will go too. I could never live without you! What should I do here if you were gone? Nobody wants me, nobody loves me in the whole world but you.”

“Marcel loves you, my child, and he will be that good friend, if you will let him.”

“Marcel! Marcel! As if he could replace you! I don’t love him; I don’t care if he went to the wars and never came back again.”

“If you married him you would soon learn to love him; his goodness would soon win your love. And then remember, Alba, how happy he could make you. You often long to have beautiful things—pearls and jewels and splendid dresses—and you sigh to go away in the ships that we see setting sail for distant lands, and to see fair cities, and the great mountains, and the countries where it is always summer and the flowers never die. Marcel would give you all these wishes; and then he would let you be so good and generous to the poor!”

“I should not care for pearls and pretty things, if I had to marry Marcel,” said Alba. “I should not like to go to distant cities with him; and if he loved me like a real lover, he would let me be good to the poor without making me his wife.”

How was the anxious woman to argue with this sweet, foolish innocence? If she could but teach the child to believe in the happiness that was at her feet, and persuade her to become Marcel’s wife, how easy it would be to die! How terrible it was to have to leave her unprotected and alone! Virginie’s heart overflowed in tears as she thought of it, and the hot drops trickled down her face and fell on Alba’s.

Alba looked up quickly. “Petite mère!” she said.

Throwing her arms round Virginie and kissing the wet cheeks again and again, “I will marry him! I will do anything, only don’t be unhappy, don’t cry! O mother, mother! what is it?” she cried, starting up in terror; for Virginie had fallen back and was gasping for breath. She pressed the child’s arm, and with her eyes bade her be still. The spasm of pain passed away after a while; but when she tried to speak the words came faintly in broken sentences.

“Petite mère! what is it?” entreated Alba, scarcely reassured. “May I call Jeanne? Shall we send for the doctor?”

“No, my darling, it is nothing; I am well now,” said Virginie, with a sickly smile that belied her words. The sharp pang had, it is true, subsided, but she was still ashy pale and could only speak under her breath. Alba watched her intently for some minutes, and then, twining her arms round Virginie’s neck, she laid her head upon her breast, nestling to her like a bird.

“Mother,” she whispered, “would it really make you happy if I were to marry Marcel?”

“My darling, it would make me happier than anything else in this world.”

“Then I will marry him, petite mère.”

“My child!” Virginie’s face lighted up with a beaming joy.

“I will marry him to please you. There, now, promise me not to be unhappy, not to lie awake at night fretting, and never to have any more pains at your heart!”

“But, my darling, I would not have you do it to make me happy. It is your happiness I am thinking of, not my own. Don’t you think you could learn to love Marcel after a while?”

“Petite mère! how can you ask me? Foolish, ugly Marcel, whom everybody laughs at and calls a coward! But never mind. I will marry him, since he wants me and you wish it; I promise you I will.”

“You are a foolish child to speak of Marcel so,” said Virginie; “those who laugh at him are the fools, and you know he is not a coward. As to his ugliness, what does that matter, if he is faithful, and fond, and good?”

Alba pondered this philosophy for some minutes; then she said: “When will he want to marry me, petite mère?”

“Not for a long while yet, my darling. You are both very young; there’s time to wait.”

“How old am I?”

“You were sixteen in September.”

“And how long will you let me wait?”

“Till your seventeenth birthday is passed, at least.”

“Nearly a whole year! Then I have all that time to be free and happy!”

“And if at the end of that time you have not learned to care for Marcel, I shall not ask you to marry him at all,” said Virginie. The ecstasy which the reprieve had called forth sent a pang through her heart, and made her ask herself whether, after all, she was doing wisely and well in forcing upon the child a lot from which her sympathies recoiled so violently.

“Not marry him at all!” repeated Alba in amazement; but she added quickly, with one of those sudden changes of manner that were familiar to her sensitive and mobile nature: “I think, petite mère, I had better not wait for the year. Instead of growing easier, it might grow harder by thinking over it all that time. You know you always tell me that when one has a disagreeable thing to do, it is better to do it at once and be done with it; one only makes it worse by looking at it. I think it would be better if I were to marry Marcel at once and get it over.”

Virginie was aghast at the combination of strength and utter childish ignorance of the true nature and bearings of the sacrifice in contemplation which Alba’s reasoning revealed. In the bottom of her heart the mother believed this repugnance would pass away, and there was no cruelty in coercing the child’s will at the outset, in order to bend it to her real happiness; but unless it could be so bent, Virginie would rather die trusting her treasure to God’s guardianship than force it into any man’s keeping.

“We will say no more about it for the present, my child,” she said; “we will leave it in the hands of God for another year.”

“And you will be happy now, petite mère?”

“Yes. I feel more tranquil about my darling’s future.”

“And Marcel—must I tell him?”

“No, you must not mention to him or to any one what we have been saying. I will speak to him myself.”

So there was no engagement, no promise exchanged; not a word of thanks or of rejoicing passed between him and Alba; but Marcel knew how docile she was to the power of love, and she loved her mother with a strength and depth of feeling that knew no limits and measured no sacrifices. He did not mean to be accepted as a sacrifice. He had faith enough in his love to believe that before the year was out it would have conquered the coy heart of his lady-love and brought her a willing captive to his side. Meantime, he would leave none of the stratagems and tactics of honorable warfare untried.

Alba was fond of books; he sent for all those he could hear of that were likely to interest her, and she and Virginie read them together in the long evenings, and talked over them, until their days were brightened by the scenes of travel and story which the books described. He knew she loved jewels and shining silks, and he went to Paris himself and selected pretty trinkets of every kind—a necklace of pearls, and rings of emeralds and rubies, and silks of soft and brilliant colors—and he would carry them to the cottage, and shyly lay them down without saying a word. Alba seldom noticed them till he was gone, when she would open the parcel and examine its contents; but Mère Virginie seemed to take more pleasure in the gauds than she did. This went on for three months. Then, one morning, Alba, who had been out since sunrise, sitting on the rocks and watching the tide come in and the creamy surf break upon the shore, entered the cottage and said abruptly:

“Mother, I won’t take any more presents from Marcel, and I want to give him back all those we have. I can’t keep them; I can’t indeed.”

“You have made up your mind never to marry him?”

“I will marry him whenever you wish it. It is not that, only I can’t take his gifts; they make me miserable. I hate them!”

“My darling, I will send them back to him, if you wish; but it will hurt him very much, poor fellow!—he took so much trouble to get them for you, and you used to love pretty things. How often have I not heard you long for the rings and flowers and shining silks we have seen in the fine shops at X——? Many a time you have wished a fairy or a lover would come and give them to you! Do you forget?”

“Ah! that is just it,” said Alba, with a light laugh that was full of pain; “if a lover gave them to me, I dare say I should like them well enough.”

“But Marcel is your lover?”

“Poor Marcel! It is so funny trying to think of him like that. He is so awkward and stupid and ugly; a real lover would be quite different. But I don’t want one now; I don’t indeed, petite mère. Only please send Marcel back his gifts. They make me feel as if he were bribing me to be fond of him, and I should not care a bit more for him if he gave me the loveliest jewels in France. I don’t care any more for jewels. I used to long to be happy myself, but now I only care to make you happy. You promised me to be very happy when I married Marcel?”

This was dreadful. This was not what the mother meant when she prayed for the marriage that Alba contemplated with such pathetic resignation, as if it were a sacrifice or a torture that every day brought nearer to her. There were still eight months between her and the dreaded fate, and Virginie was strongly moved to tell her at once that she was released. It seemed cruel to poison the child’s life all that time on the chance, which apparently grew less as the months went on, of her getting to love Marcel at the end of the year. But, again, this marriage was the one prospect of security and happiness which the future opened out—quiet, substantial happiness such as the mother longed to see her in possession of. If Alba flung it away, there was nothing before her but a lonely, loveless life of unprotected poverty. It was best to be patient, to keep silence a little longer. Virginie, meantime, had faith in the power of her own love, and she would never cease imploring heaven to take the destiny of her darling into its safe-keeping.

* * * * *

Hermann de Gondriac had now been five years absent, and those years had been an uninterrupted series of triumphs for him; he had borne a charmed life on every battle-field, and come off unharmed where all around him were stricken. But the chances of war prevailed at last, and the news came to Gondriac that M. le Comte had been seriously wounded and was coming home. His left arm had been shattered, and, though the skill of the emperor’s surgeon had saved him from amputation, he was in great suffering and condemned to the severest precautions. A few bonfires were lighted on the cliffs to bid the home-comer welcome, but this was all the people ventured on. M. le Marquis, it was said, had been in the same engagement with his son, but had come out of it unhurt.

That winter was a fierce one all through France, and Gondriac suffered terribly; the bleak gray sea in a perpetual roar, and the winds beating on its wild, open coast. Food and fuel were scanty, and but for the presence of the young lord at the castle many amongst the fishermen’s families must have perished and starved. No one had yet seen him; the great physician, who came from Paris at intervals, forbade his going beyond the southern side of the park until spring came with sunshine and blossoms. But Hermann could not have been more actively present amongst his people had he been walking daily in the midst of them. He seemed to know by inspiration what they wanted, and food and clothing were dealt out from the castle in unlimited supplies. There were toys for the children, and medicine and strengthening wine for the sick, and books for those who could enjoy them, until the people came to think that the bird of the fairy-tale must be true, and that their young master had the tell-tale messenger at his orders.

Alba busied her poetic fancy in making pictures of what Hermann was like. She had not seen him since she was a child and he a tall, slim lad. Now that he was a man and a hero, she longed to behold him again. Even to look at a hero from a distance would be something—life was so tame, and all the people she knew were so commonplace. Was he proud and stern and abrupt in speech, as they said the emperor was? Or was he gentle and honey-tongued like the knights of old?

One morning a man rode in from X—— to the castle bearing important news to M. le Comte. Important news indeed: the emperor was coming the next day to inspect the fortifications of a neighboring seaport. It was settled at once in Gondriac that M. le Comte would go to meet his majesty. No physician could hinder him in that, come what might of it.

Alba had heard nothing of this great event which was stirring the country for fifty miles round. She and Virginie lived a life apart up in their sea-nest, and old Jeanne was not given to gossip, but did her marketing without waste of words, and brought home little news in her basket.

It was a lovely morning; the sun shone brightly on the sea; the breakers were scampering in, not loud and angry, but tossing over one another in masses of creamy foam. Alba loved these laughing seas, and would sit for hours on the rocks, watching the tide ride in on the silver horses. To-day the salt breath of the ocean and the mellow west wind excited her like wine, and carried her off to the old dreamland where she seldom ventured now. She was away on the dancing billows, sailing to the land of the sun with a noble knight by her side. Virginie sat there with maidens serving her; there was music on shore, and crowds waving glad farewells. Alba began to sing as she walked briskly along the cliff, building her castle in fairy-land. But the Fortress standing out like a spectral prison, with the ivy blown inside out on its grimy walls, sent a sudden chill through her and put out the sunlight. There was a figure at the window watching her. She turned hastily back, walking quickly until she got down the slope, when she almost flew across the moor, on and on till she was safe in the shelter of the park. O that figure, how it pursued her! How the Fortress threatened her! If she could but fly from them for ever, and never hear of Marcel Caboff any more! She had fancied latterly that the prospect of being his wife and living with old Mme. Caboff in the gloomy, rat-haunted place was less odious to her than it used to be; but to-day the thought nearly drove her mad. She had sped along as if some evil fate were behind her, and she was tired; there was a moss-grown oak close by, and she sat down on the trunk to rest. The wind rustled the dead leaves at her feet and swept the topmost branches of the pines; then the anthem died softly away and all was silent. The place was very still; nothing stirred but the insects in the grass, and the zephyr high up above her head, as it rose and fell in swift, Æolian breathings. In the distance, with a forest of trees between, lay the castle, its battlements and towers and flying buttresses rising majestically against the sky—a high romance of chivalry and war chronicled in stone; to Alba the door of an enchanted realm whose portals she might never pass. No wonder men were heroes who lived in homes like this; how easy it must be to lead grand lives where the very walls are heralds and witnesses urging to noble and knightly deeds! The present owner of this splendid house was worthy in all this of his proud ancestors. What a royal act of heroism it was of the old Marquis to enlist as a common soldier out of gratitude to a dead man and pity for his widow! Then Alba thought of Marcel, of the poor, tame creature he showed beside this race of knightly nobles, and she despised him, and fell to wondering how it would be when she was his wife. Gradually the castle melted away, and in its place rose the Fortress, dark and frowning, and it lowered on her like a doom, and Marcel and his grim old mother stood at the window beckoning her to advance. Alba flung herself down upon the trunk and buried her face in the moss, and began to cry passionately. She cried a long time, being full of pity for herself, and there was no one within reach that she need check her sobs.

“What has happened? What is the matter with you, child?” said a voice close to her.

She started up in terror. Yet the speaker was not at all terrible to look at—a gentleman in the brilliant uniform of the Imperial Guard, young and handsome, with a most commanding air, and carrying his left arm in a sling. When Alba rose it was his turn to start. Lying there in an attitude of child-like _abandon_, shaken with sobs, her scarlet hood thrown back and her masses of black hair falling in loose coils over her neck and face, he had taken her for a little girl; he had called her child, and, lo! she was a full-grown maiden, and lovely beyond words, despite her tears and her dishevelled mien. He bowed to her as he might have done to a queen.

“You are M. le Comte!” said Alba, pretty much as she might have said to a celestial apparition, “You are the Archangel Gabriel!”

“Hermann de Gondriac, your humble servant, mademoiselle.”

She stared at him through the big tears that hung like dew-drops from her lashes, her soft, large glance modest, yet unabashed as if it were gazing on a picture. The knighthood in Hermann recognized the maidenhood of that fearless gaze and did it reverence, but he could not quench the glowing admiration of his own. How liquid and pure they were, those black stars with which she stared at him, those soul-lit eyes that met his without dismay, too innocent to quail beneath their burning light! Why should they quail? Were they not looking at a vision, a dream transmuted into substance? This was the young chief whom she had pictured to herself so often, whose lineage and prowess were the pride of all the people. Only how much grander the reality was than anything she had fancied! What a martial air he wore in his gold-embroidered uniform, with his spurs and clanging sword and plumed helmet, the stars upon his breast—every inch a warrior and a knight!

“You have hurt yourself, mademoiselle; you are in pain,” said Hermann. “Can I send to the castle for assistance for you?”

“Thank you, monseigneur; I have not hurt myself.”

“Yet you were crying?”

“It was not with pain.” This time Alba dropped her lids and blushed.

“Forgive me; I did not mean to intrude upon you.” Alba stood looking down like a guilty child, her cheeks aflame, her lips quivering with the sudden conflict between fear and shame, and a strange emotion that thrilled her like sweet music. “Who is she?” thought Hermann. He remembered, years ago, a child whom his father raved about, wondering how a plebeian stem could have put forth so fair a flower. Could this be she? The _curé_ had told him of the girl’s rare beauty as a sad and anxious burden on his mind, and of the mother’s being ill and in need of generous wine, and he had ordered the best in his cellar to be sent to her. Half unconsciously, as when we try to catch some forgotten air by humming it under our breath, he murmured, “Alba....”

She looked up with a start, and then they both smiled.

“How did you guess I was Alba?” she said, her shyness gone in an instant.

“I did not guess, I remembered.”

“How wonderful! I should never have remembered you, monseigneur.”

“That is not surprising. I am changed since you saw me.”

“And so am I, am I not?”

“Yes, more changed than I could have believed.”

“Ah?” Did he mean for the better or the worse? The man read the question in her eyes and answered it:

“You are far more beautiful than I expected.”

“Beautiful!” she repeated, and her face lighted up.

“I was frightened when I saw you; I took you for a fairy princess,” said Hermann, yielding to the irresistible temptation of pleasing her.

Alba’s face clouded over. “Now I know you are laughing at me, monseigneur; you don’t believe in fairies, and you know very well I’m not a bit like a princess.”

“I have seen many a one who would have given a great deal to be like you,” said Hermann.

“Like me! I thought princesses were all so happy!”

Hermann smiled. “Sometimes they have hearts,” he said.

“Sometimes! And does that make them unhappy?”

He turned to walk under the trees, tacitly inviting her to do the same.

“It endows them with the power of loving,” he answered absently.

“But I thought....” She hesitated; it was difficult to put the thought into the right words.

“You thought that love always led to happiness?” said Hermann, finishing the sentence for her, while he looked at her with a curious glance. Why had she come to cry in this lonely place?

“I don’t know what it leads to. I shall never know,” said Alba very gravely.

M. le Comte smiled. “Tell me, Alba, why were you crying so bitterly just now?”

She turned away her head and made no answer.

“Tell me, sweet Alba,” persisted the young man; “perhaps I can help you if you are in trouble. Trust me with your secret. As I am a soldier and a gentleman, I will defend you if I can. Tell me, is there some one you care for who does not know it?”

She shook her head. “It is not I who care.... I wish I could, but I have tried my best and I _cannot_ love him!” The tears welled up again and were flowing freely.

“Who is forcing you to love him? Tell me his name and I will protect you from him. I swear to you I will!” And Hermann, with a soldier’s instinctive gesture, put his hand to his sword, while his eye kindled with chivalrous anger. Alba thought him the ideal of a noble knight, as she looked at him, terrified and enchanted.

“He is not forcing me, monseigneur,” she said, “and you can do nothing to help me. I have promised to marry, and I must keep my word.”

“You shall not, by heaven, if it makes you wretched! He is a cowardly dog who would hold you to your word against your will,” protested the count hotly.

“He is not forcing me; but I have promised,” repeated Alba.

“And you cannot love him?”

“No! and I have tried so hard.... But mother says that when I am his wife it will be different....”

“Yes, it will be worse, a thousand times worse! Alba, tell me this man’s name; trust me with your secret,” said Hermann, changing his angry tone to one of soft persuasion.

“I dare not,” said Alba in a frightened whisper; “you would go and kill him.” The great, swart eyes were looking up at him, full of trust and admiration.

“Kill him, child! Do you think me so terribly wicked? Do I look like a murderer?”

“It would not be murder in you. You are a warrior; you don’t think it wrong to kill men. That is what warriors are for; but I should not like you to kill poor Marcel.”

“Marcel!... Marcel! I seem to know that name,” said the count, musing. “Has he no other?”

“Yes, Marcel Caboff,” replied Alba in a confidential tone; “but you must not hurt him, monseigneur. Oh! I wish I had not told you.”

Hermann started and muttered something between his teeth which she did not hear, but his look frightened her.

“Marcel Caboff! the fellow whom my father ransomed at the risk of his own life!” said the count. “And he would force you into marrying him! By heaven! he shan’t. I will foil him there.”

“O monseigneur, monseigneur! you will not kill him,” pleaded Alba, clasping her hands and appealing to the murderer with a scared face. “It is not his fault—it is not indeed, monseigneur!”

“I don’t mean to kill him; I would not touch a hair of his head,” said Hermann. “But why do you say it is not his fault? Does he not love you? Does he not want you to marry him?”

“He does, oh! so dreadfully. But I should not mind that. It is mother whom I have promised. It is to please her that I must marry him,” said Alba, and her breast heaved with big sobs, and all the floods were let loose again.

Hermann longed to draw her to his breast and kiss away the tears—she was such a child in spite of her sixteen summers and their full-blossomed beauty! But he checked the impulse. There is no majesty so imposing as the majesty of childhood. “Alba,” he said, “I will save you from Marcel Caboff without hurting him or any one. You shall not marry him, unless you come to wish it yourself. Are you sure that if he gave you up you would not change your mind and wish him back again?” This was Hermann’s estimate of woman’s nature; true, his experience had been gathered among types as different from the one before him as the flowers of a hot-house are from the primrose of the woods.

“I should never wish him to come back; I could never love him,” said Alba—“never, never, never.”

“Then I swear to you on my sword you shall not marry him!” said the count impetuously. “Now tell me, Alba,” he resumed, seeing that she did not speak, “is there not some one you would like to marry better than this fellow Caboff? Tell me the truth. If you had a brother, you would not mind telling him. Try and fancy I am your brother.”

Fancy him her brother! Alba’s fancy had taken many an aerial flight, but never such a one as this.

“Who is he? What is his name?” said Hermann in a whisper, bending closer to her.

But she shook her head. “There is no one, monseigneur.”

“Oh! I don’t believe that; you are afraid to trust me. There is surely some one else who wants to marry you?”

“No one, monseigneur, but Marcel.”

“Alba, look at me!” She turned and looked at him like a docile child. “Have you never seen any one whom you could love or whose heart you would care to win?” He was gazing deep down into the two dark pools of light, as if he thought to see into her soul through them. She did not shrink from the searching glance, but dwelt in it for one long moment; then, as if the flame in Hermann’s eyes leaped out and flashed upon her with too intense a radiance, revealing the spring of some sweet mystery in her heart and his, the white lids quivered and dropped, and a deep blush rose to Alba’s face. They were alone. The voices of the wood were hushed; the dead leaves ceased to rustle at their feet; the zephyrs paused in the branches overhead; the silence grew and deepened, filling the solitude with an overpowering presence, till each seemed to hear the beating of the other’s heart. Suddenly the sound of a horn, followed by a noise of wheels crushing the gravel in the distance, broke the spell and admonished Hermann that he must be gone. He lifted Alba’s hand to his lips, and without a word of farewell turned from her and struck across the park towards the castle.

Alba watched him out of sight, and then turned and wended homewards. Her heart beat with wild throbs of joy; the spirit that had been dead within her all these miserable months woke up, quickened to a new birth, and overflowed in song. The flute-like voice trilled out over the lonesome moor like the carol of a bird let loose; but as she drew near the confines of the heath the Fortress came in sight and checked her song. Was it so certain that Hermann could set her free? and how? What would her mother think of it? how of this wonderful meeting and monseigneur’s promise? Alba slackened her steps and took to pondering. A moment ago she was impatient to pour into Virginie’s ear the story of the interview, to repeat every word Hermann had said, to convey, as far as it was possible, the impression he had made upon her, to describe his manly beauty, his warlike aspect, his gentle courtesy, the incomparable sweetness of his voice, the chivalrous kindness of his manner, never doubting but that Virginie would sympathize in this new delight, as she had done in every little joy that had gladdened her child’s young life. But suddenly a change came over Alba—something vague, and undefined; a sense of doubt, of warning, of intangible fear. She had done nothing wrong, and yet the still, small voice was whispering inaudible reproach as if she had. Could Virginie be angry with her for speaking to monseigneur? How could she have avoided it, how refuse to answer his persistent questions, so kindly and so courteously put? He had entreated her to trust him! Alba stood amidst the breezy waves of heather, and recalled him as he bent near her and lowered his voice and bade her look at him. How he had seemed to read her through and through! “Have you never seen any one whose heart you would care to win?” She murmured the words softly to herself, and the sound of them was like the echo of his voice, and called up the hot blush to her cheeks again. There was nothing wrong in monseigneur’s asking her the question. Why, then, did she feel afraid to tell her mother of it? Musing for a moment on this mystery, Alba remembered how he had said: “Try and fancy I am your brother.” Virginie could not be angry at that, surely. “I will tell her that, and say nothing about the other,” muttered Alba to herself; and, satisfied that this was a safe way out of the difficulty, she walked on briskly till she was close upon the confines of the moor. Then the sound of a carriage coming down the road made her stop till it should pass. It was an open calêche preceded by outriders. Alba recognized the occupant at once, even before his hand was raised in courtly salutation as he flashed by. Her heart beat fast, and sent the blood to her cheeks and brow, dying them crimson.

“Perhaps I had better say nothing at all to petite mère,” was her reflection as she crossed the road and began to climb the cliff. “He told me to trust him; perhaps he would be angry if I spoke until he bade me.” And so it was decreed. The tyrant had stepped in, and at his first whispered prompting the discipline of a life gave way.

It was not many days after this wonderful morning when an event occurred which threw all the sweet romance of life into the shade, and made Alba forget her own cares and hopes in concern for the great sorrow of another. M. le Marquis was dead. He had died, not actually on the field, but of a wound received in battle. The young lord’s grief was like a madness, they said. Those about him said that in the first frenzy of despair he had called on Marcel Caboff and cursed him as the murderer of his father. Whether this was true or not, Gondriac believed it, and bitter words were spoken against the widow’s son in all the country round. Bitter words are like the wind; they fly, and have a faculty for reaching those whose aching nerves most dread their sting. The widow heard what was said of her son and felt it keenly; it was cruel, yet it was just; it was a hard price to pay for Marcel’s safety, but she could not reckon it too high. If only she might pay it alone! They are all alike, these mothers. Mme. Caboff was a vain, hard woman, but the mother in her was all soft and generous and beautiful. She came to Virginie for sympathy—not for herself, but for Marcel. It was her doing, M. le Marquis’ death, not his. Why would not people visit her sin upon herself, and not upon her boy? But Virginie and Alba would be kind; they had always said that Marcel was no coward. Virginie gave the poor woman what comfort she could; but Alba was not there. She could not bear the sight of Marcel’s mother; for the thought of Marcel was now unendurable to her. It might be unjust, and yet it was true to say that he was the murderer of M. le Marquis, of Hermann’s father. The news had thrown her into such a paroxysm of distress that Virginie was terrified, not holding the key to it. It was right that she should be sorry, and natural that she should be shocked, but this agony of grief was unaccountable. Virginie took her in her arms, and soothed her with caresses and endearing words, and then bade her go and rest awhile. But Alba, as if instinct warned her of the coming visit, hastened out of the house, and fled across the moor until she was safe in the shelter of the park, and then she flung herself down on the moss-grown trunk that had a memory of its own, and buried her face in the primroses and cried her heart out in pity for Hermann.

After this it was impossible to mention Marcel Caboff’s name in her presence. “I loathe the very thought of him, mother! I would rather die than marry him!” she said; and Virginie felt that Providence was against her, and surrendered. Marcel took back his gifts, and quarrelled with his mother, and went away from Gondriac. People said it was shame and remorse that drove him forth; but Alba knew this was not true, and, now that he had set her free, she pitied him.

* * * * *

M. le Marquis was borne to the grave amidst such honors as the proudest Crusader of his name might have envied. It was with the jubilant pomp of a coronation rather than the mournful pageant of a burial that they laid him to rest. For his people would have it that he was a martyr; he had gone out to die of his own free will, sacrificing himself out of gratitude to the dead and charity to the living. The population flocked in from thirty miles round to attend the funeral. Five hundred men followed the crimson-draped car with palms and laurel branches; children clad in white bore crimson banners that fluttered in the breeze, while their voices rose in hymns of victory, giving glory to God and the Christian soldier; the voices of the multitude made response in chorus, and the waves, breaking in low thunder against the rocks, sounded their everlasting _amens_ as the procession wound its way by the sea-shore to the cemetery.

And now Hermann de Gondriac was alone, the head of an ancient house, wealthy and young, but as poor in that which makes life rich as the poorest of his peasantry. If he could but have girded on his sword, and, escaping from solitude, have drowned his grief in the excitement of the camp! Spring came, and the fields were carpeted with wild flowers, and the woods were full of music. But Hermann was seldom seen abroad; he lived indoors, amidst his books, the people said; but, in truth, the young lord’s chief companions were his thoughts, angry, rebellious thoughts, that made him chafe most bitterly against his forced inaction. The park was vast as a forest, and he never went beyond it. Often, in his moody walks, he strayed to that spot close upon the moor where he had first seen Alba lying upon the mossy trunk. The charm of her beauty and her daisy-like simplicity had wrought upon his heart more deeply than he was aware. For days after that meeting she had been ever in his thoughts. He said that he was thinking only of how he might rescue her from a cruel fate; no doubt it was to help him to this issue that he returned to the spot where she had stood, and conjured up her image, till the nymph-like figure with the dark eyes and witching smile seemed to float visibly before him, and listened for her voice until he thought he heard it in the sighing of the wind.

Then came the thunderbolt of his father’s death, and Alba and all the world were forgotten. But grief cannot hold its sway in human souls beyond a given time. As the days go by they bear away its sting upon their wings, that touch the bleeding places with a balm. Hermann was young, and as the weeks passed youth vindicated itself, and rebelled against the stagnant, lonely life, and longed for action and for the sweet companionship of kindred youth. If he could not fight, he could at least love; but who was there at Gondriac to love? The merry comrades of the bivouac were out of call, and when he returned to the midst of them he would find his place filled up; others would have come and gone again, and risen in command and won place and distinction, while he was out of sight, a prisoner to a stiff arm, as good as a dead man. He hated himself with bitter vexation. One morning he betook himself in one of these savage moods to wander in the park, and, not heeding which way he went, strayed to that lonely walk under the shadow of the old trees near the moor. Some one, meanwhile, was watching him, crouched timidly behind a furze-bush, admiring his quick, military stride, thinking how grand and lion-like was that angry toss of the head which every now and then relieved his bitter thoughts.

The air was fresh, and yet warm with that delicious warmth of some spring days that come like heralds of the summer, gathering up all the sweets of earth into one fragrant breath, wooing us with soft, furry zephyrs, and the scent of opening blossoms, and the melody of young birds learning to sing. Alba had been tempted across the heath to the park, where the trees had put out their bright green foliage that looked so lovely sparkling in the sunlight. Perhaps, too, though she did not own it, there was a lurking hope in her heart that she might catch a glimpse of Hermann in the distance. If so, she was not disappointed. There he was, walking under the pine-trees, but, happily, with his back to the heath, so that he did not see her! She dipped quickly behind a furze-bush, and disappeared from view just as he turned, and, coming through the trees at an angle, stepped out on the pathway. A nightingale began to sing in the distant copse; but Alba, as she cowered behind her bush, thought the crystal trills and the loud call-note less musical than the sound of Hermann’s foot-fall crushing the gravel close to her hiding-place—so close she almost feared he would note the shadow of her pink skirt upon the grass, or mayhap overhear the palpitation of her heart. But presently the foot-falls died away, and the nightingale and the zephyrs had it all to themselves again. She waited some minutes—an hour it seemed to her—before she ventured to look up; but at last she did, and there, within a few paces, straight before her, stood Hermann. He had left the pathway and taken to the noiseless grass under the trees.

“Alba!”

There was a ring of joy in the greeting, as the young lord came forward, holding out his hand.

“Why have you never come? I have been here again and again in hopes of seeing you!”

He was a true knight and meant no harm; but in his joy at seeing the sunbeam on his path he forgot that he had no right to be so glad or to let Alba see it.

“I did not forget my promise,” he said, leading her into the park and turning to walk by her side; “but I learned soon after that there was no need for me to interfere. Caboff left the place, they told me.”

“Yes, monseigneur, people said” ... she hesitated. “They were all so sorry for you, and Marcel could not bear it, because they hated him—poor Marcel! It was not his fault; he never was a coward.”

“You are sorry now that he is gone! Perhaps he will come back? No doubt he will, if you ask him.”

“I will never ask him; but I am sorry for him,” she replied, and then, looking up at Hermann with those soul-lit eyes that had a language of their own like music, she added timidly: “But I was more sorry for you, monseigneur.”

“Alba!” He took her hand and kissed it. It was very sweet to be so near him, Alba thought. They walked on together, hand in hand, without speaking for a while. The grass was soft beneath their feet, and the trembling sunbeams stole through the trees and touched their faces with golden shadows, thrilling and pure and full of gladness, as the touch of nature is when it stirs the chords of young vibrating hearts. “If I could but comfort him!” she was thinking, till the thought grew so loud within her she feared he would overhear it. But we are deaf to those voices that lie “upon the other side of silence.” Hermann, as he held the warm, soft hand within his own, was wondering how it came to pass that yonder on the barren cliffs a flower so rare and delicate had grown, and been trained to so much grace and ease by a woman who was called Mère Virginie. Then he remembered his father’s words about the royal flower on the plebeian stem, and, thinking of him, he sighed. Alba looked up quickly, offering all her soul’s wealth of sympathy through her eyes, and Hermann bethought to himself how delightful it would be to have this sympathetic creature always at his side. But he thought also of the emperor and the world, and wondered what these potentates would say were he to pick up the jewel from the dust and set it in his coronet. Bonaparte had a way of choosing mates for his officers as he chose sites for his battles, and ordering them to marry as he ordered them to charge; but Hermann felt he was not one to be cowed by the imperial match-maker, and there was something rather inspiriting in the idea of defying the despot if he attempted to meddle with his life outside the camp. Why should he not gather this wild flower, if he chose? Had his father lived, it would have been different; but now he was free, there was no one to whom he need sacrifice the promptings of his heart, be they wise or foolish. The world and the court might laugh; it was not from amongst them he cared to take a wife; he wanted to be loved, to be wed for his own sake, and not for the good things he had to offer. But did Alba love him?

“Alba,” he said, “now that Marcel is gone, who is to be the favored suitor?”

“No one, monseigneur; I told you so before.”

“But I did not believe you. I don’t believe you now.”

“Why should I tell you a lie? I never told one in my life.”

She spoke without anger or offended pride; but Hermann saw that he had pained her, and there was a purity of truth about her that rebuked his denial, though it was spoken in jest.

“Forgive me, dearest! I wanted to hear you say it again. I wanted to be certain there was no one else you cared for.”

He bent toward her caressingly, and, looking under her hood, saw two big tears slowly trickling down her cheeks.

“Alba....”

What an idle boast seems this about the freedom of the human will! Our most pregnant words, our weightiest actions, spring far oftener from impulse than from deliberate resolve; a touch, light as the feather floating on the summer breeze, will stir the fountain and make its waters overflow; a word spoken when we had meant to be silent will change the current of our life, and push us to a step that can never be retraced. An hour ago Hermann de Gondriac no more dreamed of offering his hand to Alba than he did of burying himself in the Grande Chartreuse; but those two tears were the drops that made the fountain overflow, and, in the sudden flood of tenderness, pride, prudence, everything but love was swept away.

“Alba,” he whispered, clasping her in his arms and gathering her to his breast—“Alba, I love you. Will you come to me and be my wife?”

Was she awake, with the solid earth under her feet, or were those whispered words the music that our fancy makes in dreams? But the music did not die away, nor did the clasping arm melt from her, as do the embraces of those loved ones who visit us in sleep.

“You love me!” she said, looking up into his face with her large, warm glance, pure and trusting as a child’s—“you love me!” And the sunbeams went on singing it in shadow music on the grass, and the cuckoo called it through the woods, and the trees in their murmurous song repeated it, and the clouds, as they sailed over the zenith, traced it in silver lines upon the sky—“You love me!”

TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.

MAGDALEN AT THE TOMB.

Deep sombre clouds roll up to shroud the night, For in the silence of a guarded tomb Rests the rich promise of a Virgin’s womb; And hearts that hoped are shrunk as buds by blight, Till, like a soul which gains from Heaven delight, The radiant morn dispels the woeful gloom, And casts o’er hungry Earth a new perfume. A white-robed Angel, pinion-fring’d with light, Beside the empty grave bade one rejoice, Who, coming from the cross, outran the morn, In loving haste the body to adorn; But found it gone—and wept. Oh! hasty choice Of tears, for one who was the first to turn Her eyes upon her Lord, and hear his voice.

FROM THE MEDEA OF EURIPIDES. _'A free translation._ BY AUBREY DE VERE.

[_The Chorus dissuades Medea from slaying her children._]

STROPHE I.

O race renowned in ancient story, Race from the blest Immortals sprung, Athenians, ye who all day long, Feeding on wisdom and on glory, Walk lightly through that climate fine, Where, as the fabling poets say, The yellow-tressed Harmonia Brought forth the Muses nine; That sage and virgin choir whose shell You hear so often, love so well:—

ANTISTROPHE I.

To you white Aphrodite sends Her Loves, to make you wise and kind; For they are Wisdom’s choicest friends; And here they say the goddess wreathed Her fragrant locks with rosy twine; And here they sing that, passion-fraught And o’er Cephisus’ stream reclined, Along the flowery vale she breathed Sweet airs from that cold current caught Upon her balmy lips divine.

STROPHE II.

Medea, dream not that the city Of sacred founts and streams can e’er Give harbor to a wretch like thee: Pity them, ruthless mother, pity! See but thy guilt as others see; By all things great and good, forbear! We clasp thy knees, and bid thee spare The babes that laughed upon thy knee!

ANTISTROPHE II.

They are thy children! They will call Aloud, aloud upon their mother! How can’st thou hear that pleading cry? In vain thou striv’st:—thou can’st not smother A mother’s love. Thy hand will shake; Thy heart will bend; thy heart will break, Thy frenzy melt away and die, When twining round thy feet they fall In that despairing agony.

THE STORY OF THE GOTHIC REVIVAL.

When, centuries hence, historians endeavor to delineate the characteristics of the present century, it is more than probable that the features that will most strike them will be those of innovation and change. Progress in every science, rapid advance in material prosperity, sweeping reforms in laws and governments, political and social changes not a few, will appear to have pretty well filled up the records of the busy century that is fast drawing to its close. To those, however, who look more closely into the minor though oftentimes important details that contribute in a great measure to influence the character of an age, it will be evident that, if change and revolution have to a large extent reigned paramount in this century, neither has it been altogether wanting in a just recognition of the past, and in a serious revival of some of the best features of that past.

These thoughts have been suggested by the perusal of Sir Charles Eastlake’s _History of the Gothic Revival in England_—a work in which is displayed a thorough knowledge of the subject combined with an agreeable style and a high artistic taste, which cannot fail to interest even those whose predilections are for other styles of architecture.

The revival which it describes has not been confined to England; in both France and Germany progress in Gothic art has made rapid strides during the last thirty years. In the production, indeed, on the history and theory of the pointed style France is perhaps in advance of England; but nowhere else has the revival been so universal and so practical as in the latter country, nowhere else has it reached a point which could justify an author in attempting its history. So many Catholic associations are linked with Gothic architecture, so many fond recollections of a glorious past are called up by the mere name, that it is only natural that Catholics should take a special interest in its revival, should feel justly proud of the large part that some of their co-religionists have had in that revival, and should refer with feelings of pleasure to the influence brought to bear upon it by the adoption of many Catholic doctrines and practices by their Protestant brethren.

American readers cannot be indifferent to the history and fortunes of edifices where their ancestors prayed in those happy days when unity of faith prevailed; nor can they fail to take an interest in the history, which we propose to sketch, of those years during which a handful of earnest men struggled, and struggled successfully, to revive the glories of a style that had been rendered for ever illustrious by such names as Cologne and Chartres, Amiens and Salisbury, Notre Dame and York Minster.

Many were the fair buildings that graced the broad lands of merry England at the commencement of the reign of Henry VIII.; stately churches and splendid monasteries adorned her towns and nestled among her wooded hills and valleys; the one same principle of art had presided over their structure—happy symbol of the one faith to whose service they ministered. Before the end of that reign what a transformation had come over the face of the land! One of the first acts of the Reformation had been the suppression of the monasteries and confiscation of their property. Cromwell and his band of impious followers but too faithfully carried out the orders of their royal master; the venerable and beauteous piles on which the pious munificence of ages had lavished their skill and their treasures were soon reduced to bare and crumbling ruins. Nor did the spoliation end here; the zealous reformers of God’s church were not slow in condemning as idolatrous the rich and brilliant decorations and ornaments that filled the cathedrals and churches, and thus these sacred edifices were shorn of all the costly treasures that devotion had accumulated to honor the abiding presence of a heavenly King, in order to fill the coffers of a licentious monarch.

It was not, however, the material ruin and desecration of its finest buildings that struck the severest blow at Gothic art; it was rather the loss of that faith which had witnessed its earliest efforts and had inspired its grandest works. When the cold blast of Protestantism swept away one after another each Catholic dogma and each Christian belief, the sources of Gothic inspiration were dried up, its very _raison d’être_ ceased to exist. Not that the Catholic Church has in any way adopted one style of architecture as the _only_ fitting one for her use; she has equally sanctified by her solemn ritual and her sacred ceremonies the colonnades of the Greek temple, the dome of the Italian basilica, and the pointed arch of the Gothic cathedral. But this last, if we may use a comparison, seems somehow more especially her own child; the others are but children of adoption—wayward children that she has rescued from pagan parents. She has not watched over them from their birth, nor seen them grow up under her fostering care to the vigor and strength of manhood.

It naturally took some time before the spirit of a form of art which was then the only form could completely disappear from the country; for we must recollect that in England at the time of the Reformation not only ecclesiastical but civil and domestic architecture was entirely Gothic. As there were for several centuries no new churches built—for the usurped edifices of Catholic days more than sufficed for the needs of Protestant piety—it was in domestic structures that the spirit of the style lingered longest in a practical form.

“Even down to the reign of James I. the domestic architecture of England, as exemplified in the country-houses of the nobility, was Gothic in spirit, and frequently contained more real elements of a mediæval character than many which have been built in modern times by the light of archæological orthodoxy. Inigo Jones himself required a second visit to Italy before he could thoroughly abandon the use of the pointed arch. But its days were numbered when in 1633 the first stone was laid for a Roman portico to one of the finest cathedrals of the middle ages, and Gothic architecture as a practical art received what was then no doubt supposed to be its death-blow.”[101]

Footnote 101:

Eastlake, p. 5.

From this period the practice of Gothic art gradually died out. Classic and Italian architecture, which had received a fresh impulse from the French Renaissance, rapidly came into fashion. Architects studied no other style, for the very good reason that the public admired no other. It was henceforth considered the criterion of good taste to abuse as barbarous all the productions of mediæval art, and the test of good Protestantism to look upon them as superstitious and popish. It is indeed surprising that so many of the wonderful productions of a period no longer understood or appreciated should have been allowed to come down to us unaltered by “classical” remodelling. What saved them and at the same time preserved the spirit of the old art from total extinction is thus told by Sir C. Eastlake:

“By a strange and fortunate coincidence of events, however, it happened at this very time, when architects of the period had learned to despise the buildings of their ancestors, a spirit of veneration for the past was springing up among a class of men who may be said to have founded our modern school of antiquaries. Sometimes, indeed, their researches were not those of a character from which much advantage can be expected.... But, luckily for posterity, the attention of others was drawn in a more serviceable direction. Up to this time no work of any importance had been published on the architectural antiquities of England. A period had arrived when it was thought necessary, if only on historical grounds, that some record of ecclesiastical establishments should be compiled. The promoters of the scheme were probably little influenced by the love of Gothic as a style. But an old building was necessarily a Gothic building, and thus it happened that, in spite of the prejudices of the age, and probably their own æsthetic predilections, the antiquaries of the day became the means of keeping alive some interest in a school of architecture which had ceased to be practically employed.”[102]

Footnote 102:

_History of the Gothic Revival_, p. 6.

Amongst the earliest names that attained to a certain celebrity by their researches and writings may be mentioned those of Mr. R. Dodsworth and Mr. W. Dugdale, joint authors of the _Monasticon Anglicanum_, a work first published in 1655, and which still retains much interest for the modern student, as it includes many records and views of buildings which have long since perished. Another writer whose name deserves mention was Antony à Wood, born 1611, whose _History of the Antiquities of Oxford_ was a book of considerable importance, connected as it was with a university where Gothic architecture was so nobly illustrated and where the traditions of the style lingered long after its true principles were forgotten.

During the next two hundred years the annals of Gothic art are indeed meagre; from time to time we have the record of some antiquarian research, and at rare intervals we hear of some uncouth attempts at Gothic building remarkable only for the egregious mistakes they display.

Early in the eighteenth century we find the name of a remarkable man connected with one of these crude attempts at mediæval art—that of the celebrated Horace Walpole, Earl of Oxford, the author of the first work of modern fiction whose scene is laid in the middle ages. His labors in the fields of literature and art were not profound. Eccentricity seemed the most marked feature of his taste; and, as may be well imagined, his famous Gothic house, Strawberry Hill, which has remained almost unaltered to the present day, is a strange monument of what debased art can achieve. The fact, however, that a man of his position, and enjoying the reputation he did, could patronize a form of architecture which had fallen into almost universal contempt could not have been without a powerful effect on the public mind—an effect which may be traced in the erection during the next fifty years of a certain number of mansions throughout the country in that style which Pugin loved so much to call “Brummagem Gothic.”

Towards the end of the century some useful books on architectural archæology appeared, such as Carter’s _Specimens of Ancient Sculpture and Painting_, Hearne’s _Antiquities of Great Britain_, Gough’s _Sepulchral Monuments_, Halfpenny’s _Gothic Ornaments of the Cathedral of York_, B. Willis’ _History of Gothic Architecture in England_.

“It was something at least to draw attention to the noble works of our ancestors, which had long been neglected and despised; to record with the pencil or with the pen some testimony, however inadequate, of their goodly form and worthy purpose; to invest with artistic and historical interest the perishing monuments of an age when art was pure and genuine.”[103]

Footnote 103:

_History of the Gothic Revival_, p. 71.

When the nineteenth century opens, we find these works already producing practical fruits; for we see several architects of note, such as Wyat, Nash, and Smirke, attempting, and not without some success, the erection of edifices of Gothic design. Nearly always, however, their efforts were confined to domestic structures for private individuals—a proof how completely the taste was confined to the upper classes and was still unappreciated by the general public. If they did not often attempt to _build_ new churches, unfortunately they did not hesitate to restore and _improve_ the venerable cathedrals and churches of the past. Wyat in particular has a heavy burden of responsibility to bear on this score; for many were the noble buildings that long bore the traces of acts of vandalism and ignorance associated with his name.

How, indeed, could we expect better things in ecclesiastical architecture at a time when religion was at so low an ebb in England? As each generation had passed away the lingering memories of the old faith and the old ritual had vanished one by one; the last remnants of Catholic feelings and practices had disappeared under the influence of the cold formalism of the Puritans and the colder indifferentism of those who succeeded them. When we read the following description, given by Sir C. Eastlake, of a Protestant church and Protestant worship as he recollected them during the early years of the present century, we cannot feel surprised that there was a lack of inspiration among church architects:

“Who does not remember the air of grim respectability which pervaded, and in some cases even still pervades, the modern town church of a certain type, with its big bleak portico and muffin-capped charity-boys? Enter and notice the tall, neatly-grained witness-boxes in which the faithful are empanelled; the 'three-decker’ pulpit placed in the centre of the building; the lumbering gallery which is carried round the three sides of the interior on iron columns; the wizen-faced pew-opener eager for stray shillings; the earnest penitent who is inspecting the inside of his hat; the hassock which no one kneels on; the poor-box which is always empty. Hear how the clerk drones out the responses for a congregation too genteel to respond for themselves. Listen to the complicated discord in which the words of the Psalmist strike the ear after copious revision by Tate and Brady. Mark the prompt, if misdirected, zeal with which old ladies insist on testing the accuracy of the preacher’s memory by turning out the text. Observe the length and unimpeachable propriety, the overwhelming dulness, of his sermon.”

Alas! as far as exterior worship was concerned, the Catholic chapels of this period were in an equally sad condition; but from how different a cause! Centuries of persecution had not been able to stamp out the Catholic faith, but penal laws still in force, though not rigorously carried out, forced it to hide away in back streets and lanes, always avoiding whatever might attract public notice, lest it might awaken again the dormant flames of bigotry. Add to this the state of poverty to which, in many places, the Catholic body was reduced, and we need not wonder at the desolate aspect of the chapels, if the miserable structures that oftentimes were used for divine service deserved the name. _They_ possessed, however, the presence of that God who had not disdained the poverty of a stable nor the humble offerings of poor shepherds; in like manner he looked with indulgence on the mean and scanty ornaments that in these sad times decorated his altars, and on the cold and desolate walls within which persecution had forced him to make his dwelling. He was pleased to await the time when happier days and gentler laws should once again permit his worship to be freely celebrated with all the glory and pomp of by-gone years. Such days were rapidly advancing, and Catholics were not slow in availing themselves of each relaxation of penal statutes, each favorable turn of Protestant bigotry, to improve their churches and to carry out more fully their sacred ceremonies—a task of no small difficulty on the part of a community so ill supplied with the riches of this world, and so long, from cruel necessity, forced to content themselves with a simplicity almost akin to that of the early Christians.

The dawn of the revival, which was now at hand, was marked by some writers of eminence whose theoretical works contributed much to prepare the way for it. Their writings were distinguished from those of the earlier antiquarians by a more practical knowledge of building and a more exact delineation of the details of the edifices they describe. Mr. J. Britton may be looked upon as a link between the two schools, as he had some of the characteristics of both. He was the author of numerous works on the English cathedral and other Gothic edifices, all illustrated with really artistic drawings. They were, however, more designed to create a taste for ancient art among the reading public than to assist the professional architect.

“While Britton was thus enlisting the sympathy of the amateur world two architects were engaged in preparing a practical and valuable work for the use of professional students.

“The examples of Gothic architecture which had hitherto been selected for publication were chiefly those which either served to illustrate a principle in the history of the style, or possessed some picturesque attraction in the way of general effect. But neither of these were of real service to the practical architect, who required geometrical and carefully-measured drawings of ancient roofs, doors, and windows to guide him in his designs and to help him in reviving a style the details of which had been as yet most imperfectly studied. Pugin’s (father to the celebrated Welby Pugin) and Wilson’s specimens of Gothic architecture supplied this want. It was a happy accident which brought these men together, the one eminently qualified as a draughtsman for the task, the other equally fitted to undertake its literary labor.”[104]

Footnote 104:

Eastlake, page 88.

The writer whose name next appears on the roll of champions of Gothic art is one whose memory is enshrined in the hearts of all English Catholics—Dr. Milner, Vicar-Apostolic of the Midland district, better known to most people for his holy life, his ardent zeal, and his controversial power than as a writer on architecture. In this latter capacity, however, he deserves a foremost place among those who prepared the way for the great revival which unfortunately he did not live to see accomplished.

His _Survey of the Antiquities of Winchester_ revealed much erudition and a thorough appreciation of ancient art; but by far the most important part of it was the short but now famous essay it contained, “On the Rise and Progress of the Pointed Arch.” In it the author uses for the first time the appellation now become so general as applied to the architecture of the middle ages—viz., _the pointed style_. His next work was an important _Treatise on the Ecclesiastical Architecture of England during the Middle Ages_. In this work the author not only proves himself an antiquary but a man of taste. A work more important still, and one productive of the most serious results, was a short pamphlet entitled _A Dissertation on the Modern Style of Altering Ancient Cathedrals, as Exemplified in the Cathedral of Salisbury_. In it he protests in vigorous language against the miserable degradation of the old churches accomplished under the name of restoration; nor does he spare Wyat, the leading spirit in these unfortunate _improvements_. No one before the days of Welby Pugin had so enthusiastically entered into the spirit of the old art, so thoroughly appreciated its beauties, and so ably defended its principles, not only against its avowed enemies, but against the ignorance of many of its would-be admirers. So outspoken, indeed, was Dr. Milner’s language in this pamphlet that it shocked the staid members of the Society of Antiquaries, before whom it was to have been read, and was in consequence withdrawn—not, however, to lie mouldering in its author’s desk, but soon to appear in print, and to work even more important effects on the future than its author ever contemplated.

Dr. Milner died in 1826, the very year that W. Pugin, then a youth of fourteen, was displaying one of the earliest proofs of his taste for mediæval art in devoting long hours to the studying and sketching of the old castle of Rochester.

How little did the gray-haired bishop dream of the wonderful revolution this youth, as yet unknown to fame, was to accomplish within a few years. Little did he think, when he saw arising the humble walls of his Gothic chapel at Winchester, that the day was not far distant when a Catholic architect would revive throughout the land the glories of that style which Dr. Milner had so well defended in days when it was neglected and abused.

One more name of importance must be mentioned before we attempt to trace the outline of Pugin’s career; we again quote from Sir C. Eastlake:

“Midway in point of time between Milner and Pugin, and possessing, though in a minor degree, the talents of both, Thomas Rickman, as an architect and author, plays no unimportant part in the history of the revival. His churches are perhaps the first of that period in which the details of old work were reproduced with accuracy of form. Up to this time antiquaries had studied the principles of mediæval architecture, and to some extent classified the phases through which it had passed, while architects had indirectly profited by their labors when endeavoring to imitate in practice the work of the middle ages. Rickman united both functions in one man.... In the science of his art he will not, of course, bear comparison with Willis. In the analyzing of its general principles he must yield to Whewell. In capability of invention he ranks, even for his time, far below Pugin; but it may be fairly questioned whether, if we consider him in the twofold capacity of a theorist and a practitioner, he did not do greater service than either his learned contemporaries or his enthusiastic disciple.”[105]

Footnote 105:

Page 122.

Had Rickman done no more than write his _Attempt to discriminate the Styles of English Architecture_, he would have been worthy of a high place among those who contributed to revive Gothic art. He supplied by this book a want long felt by architects and by those interested in architecture. Of learned, or rather unlearned, dissertations on the origin of the pointed style there were plenty, but of those short and useful volumes to which have been aptly given the name of _hand-books_ there was a complete absence. Rickman’s book gave in a small compass a very complete history of the various phases of Gothic architecture in England; the main divisions into periods which he adopted being so good that they have remained unaltered to the present day. The work was illustrated with very fair engravings, and no architect who had perused it could any longer plead ignorance as an excuse for the monstrosities that were so often produced in those days under the name of Gothic.

His work on French Gothic, the fruits of a journey through the North of France with his friend Whewell, afterwards the famous Master of Trinity, is full of interest and contains an elaborate and carefully-drawn comparison between the mediæval remains in France and England.

With Rickman ends that gloomy night which had so long, with faint flashes of light now and again, enveloped the science and art of Gothic architecture; a dawn as sudden as it is bright foretells a day of more than ordinary brilliancy.

Ignorance and prejudice, which had so long reigned supreme in England in all matters concerning true religion and true art, were fast giving way before the researches of conscientious science, and as a result we see two great movements marking the first quarter of the present century—the Tractarian movement and the Gothic revival; the one religious, the other artistic. Of the first it does not enter into our plan to speak here, though it would no doubt afford a highly interesting study to trace out the mutual influence these two movements have exercised on one another; for it is impossible not to perceive that, on the one hand, the inquiry into the principles and form of ancient art led naturally on to an inquiry into the ancient formularies and practices of the faith which had inspired that art; and that, on the other hand, the revival of the long-forgotten ritual of the old faith led directly to the restoration and refurnishing of those temples that were so intimately connected with it. Before entering on the life of Pugin, which constitutes the culminating point in the great artistic revival we are attempting to sketch, we cannot do better than quote the opening words of the chapter in which Sir C. Eastlake traces his career, as it clearly proves the importance he attaches to the labors of this great man:

“However much we may be indebted to those ancient supporters of pointed architecture who, faithfully adhering to its traditions at a period when the style fell into general disuse, strove earnestly, in some instances ably, to preserve its character; whatever value in the cause we may attach to the crude and isolated examples of Gothic work which belong to the eighteenth century, or to the efforts of such men as Nash and Wyat, there can be but little doubt that the revival of mediæval design received its chief impulse from the energy and talents of one architect whose name marks an epoch in the history of British art, which while art exists at all can never be forgotten.”[106]

Footnote 106:

P. 145.

Augustus Welby Pugin, the architect to whom these words apply, was born in London on March 1, 1812. We have already spoken of his father, and of the important place his illustrated works occupy in the history we are tracing; he was a French refugee and a Protestant, and his son was brought up a Protestant. Although the elder Pugin had little professional practice, he seems to have attained to a position of ease by the sale of his works and the instruction of pupils. His son was educated at Christ’s Hospital, on leaving which he entered his father’s office, having from his earliest years shown a great taste for drawing. He soon mastered the first elements of his profession and became of much use to his father, already showing that earnestness in all he undertook that was so characteristic of him in later years. His taste for mediæval art received a fresh impulse from a professional tour he made in 1827 with his father through Normandy, which gave him the opportunity of studying the beauty of Gothic ornament in some of its most splendid productions.

While still a mere youth his cleverness in designing attracted attention, and he received a commission from the royal upholsterers to prepare designs for the new furniture for Windsor Castle, which it was determined should partake of the character of the building. The drawings he gave were probably better than what most architects of the day could have produced, yet in the writings of his after-years he always frankly pointed out their faults.

A love of variety and a strong taste for roving interrupted for a short period his architectural studies. He devoted for a time his energies to scene-painting, and with much success when the subjects were of a mediæval character. Next we find him carried away by an extraordinary passion for the sea, and he actually for a certain period commanded a merchant schooner trading between England and Holland. Having been wrecked, however, on the Scotch coast, his seafaring ardor was somewhat cooled, and he returned to the labors of his original profession.

His talents were soon rewarded by increasing practice, many architects being glad to avail themselves of his wonderful, one might almost say innate, knowledge of Gothic ornament.

A most serious and important event in Pugin’s life, and one having much influence on his future career, occurred about this time—his conversion to the Catholic religion. There can be no doubt that his intense love of the past and his enthusiastic admiration of the glorious monuments of the ages of faith strongly biassed his mind towards this determination, though of course it was not these considerations alone that led him to take so important a step. His after-life proved how thorough was his faith and how sincere his piety.

This change of religion affected, in more ways than one, the professional career of Welby Pugin. From a pecuniary point of view it probably made little difference to him—as his talents were such as to insure for him constant work, and he already possessed independent means. But by this step he sacrificed what was far dearer to him, his future fame as an architect.

Never was there a more splendid opening for architectural talent than that very time when Pugin, in the first dawn of his genius, embraced the Catholic faith. Everything had combined to prepare a revival of Gothic art. The materials were already collected and awaited but the hand of a man of genius to make a practical use of them. The ritualistic movement had awakened the desire to restore the old and to build new churches. Rich men were ready to give unbounded wealth to further the enterprise. Had Pugin remained a Protestant, had he preferred fame to conscience, he might have found an easy road to it by availing himself of an opportunity so worthy the gifts of one eminently fitted to be a leader in a movement that combined religion and art. He preferred to return to the faith that had inspired those mediæval times he so fondly loved, and to risk his future reputation by offending that feeling which is so strong in Protestant England against converts. The Catholic who for centuries has kept his faith they can tolerate, nay, admire; but one who was their own and deserts them they find it hard to forgive.

Not only did Pugin, in thus affronting public opinion, bias the judgment of his contemporaries and of future critics, but he actually, by attaching himself to the poorest religious body in England, deprived himself of the means of adequately displaying his power.

During the next years that composed the short career of Pugin we find him working with an activity and enthusiasm that showed how all labor connected with his art was to him a labor of love. His pen and his pencil were alike devoted to its service. In 1836 he published his celebrated _Contrasts_—a work in which he compares with keen irony and scathing satire the buildings and institutions of the past with those of the present; in the sketches which illustrate it he delineates with wonderful humor all the weak points of modern architecture. His style of writing was flowing and easy, always highly picturesque and enthusiastic, but sometimes slightly inclined to exaggeration and eccentricity. It was this that made it so difficult for him to write without giving offence sometimes even to his own friends and co-religionists.

His next work was his _True Principles of Pointed Architecture_. It is but a short volume, consisting of two lectures delivered at St. Mary’s College, Oscott, but it forms a most complete elementary treatise on Gothic art, founded on the two great principles enunciated in its first page: “1. That there should be no features about a building that are not necessary for convenience, construction, or propriety; 2. That all ornament should consist of enrichment of the essential construction of the building.”

It is clearly shown that in these principles lies the true secret of all correct pointed construction and ornament, and that any analysis of Gothic work undertaken without taking them into consideration must inevitably lead to erroneous conclusions.

The truth of these principles is now universally admitted in works that treat of pointed architecture, but to Pugin belongs the honor of having first laid them down and having shown how important they were to the right understanding of the lessons handed down to us in the wondrous structures of the past.

His next work was _An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture in England_. It is a brilliant defence of Gothic art, intended specially to prove that it is still “the only correct expression of the faith, the wants, and climate of our country.”

As a specimen of Pugin’s amusing style when describing the incongruous productions of modern architecture, we cannot do better than quote the description of a nineteenth-century cemetery contained in this book; we only wish we could reproduce the delightful picture that accompanies the text:

“There are a superabundance of inverted torches, cinerary urns, and pagan emblems, tastefully disposed by the side of neat gravel walks, among cypress-trees and weeping willows.

“The central chapel is generally built on such a comprehensive plan as to be adapted (in the modern sense) for each sect and denomination in turn as they may require its temporary use; but the entrance gate-way is usually selected for the grand display of the company’s enterprise and taste, as being well calculated from its position to induce persons to patronize the undertaking by the purchase of shares or graves. This is generally Egyptian, probably from some associations between the word catacombs, which occurs in the prospectus of the company, and the discoveries of Belzoni on the banks of the Nile; and nearly opposite the Green Man and Dog public-house, in the centre of a dead-wall (which serves as a cheap medium of advertisement for blacking and shaving-strop manufacturers), a cement caricature of the entrance to an Egyptian temple, two and a half inches to the foot, is erected, with convenient lodges for the policeman and his wife, and a neat pair of cast-iron hieroglyphical gates which would puzzle the most learned to decipher; while, to prevent any mistake, some such words as 'New Economical Compressed Grave Company’s Cemetery’ are inscribed in _Grecian_ capitals along the frieze, interspersed with hawk-headed divinities, and surmounted by a huge representation of the winged Osiris bearing a gas-lamp.”[107]

Footnote 107:

_An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture_, p. 12.

In 1844 he published his next important work, _The Glossary of Ecclesiastical Ornament and Costume_. It is a thoroughly practical book, designed to supply correct descriptions and patterns for the use of those who manufacture the various ornaments employed in the ritual of the church, which were at that time of the most incorrect forms and in the worst taste.

His other literary productions were numerous but of less importance, being for the most part of a controversial character, and we pass on to examine, as far as our limited space permits, Pugin’s career and influence as a practical architect. Catholic emancipation, in freeing the church from the galling restraints to which she had been so long subjected in England and Ireland, opened for her a new era of liberty and prosperity in those countries. True, she did not regain that wealth which had been sacrilegiously torn from her at the Reformation; still, she was enabled, through the generosity of her children, to expend large sums in the construction of churches somewhat more worthy of the august mysteries she celebrates than those poor edifices she had been so long forced to use.

As a Catholic of undoubted talents, Pugin soon found that his architectural capacity was appreciated by his co-religionists, who entrusted to him the construction of all their principal churches. Few among them, indeed, were, by their size or importance, calculated to give full scope to Pugin’s genius; nevertheless, to the smallest building he always devoted long study and attention and a scrupulous fidelity to the principles he had laid down in his writings, although in many cases it was extremely difficult to do so, owing to the small amount of money that could be expended on the work. Among the many churches he designed we may mention, as the best specimens of his skill, the cathedrals of Birmingham, Southwark, Nottingham, Killarney, and Enniscorthy; the churches of St. Wilfrid’s, Manchester; St. Marie’s, Liverpool; St. Giles’, Cheadle; St. Bernard’s Abbey, Leicestershire; St. Augustine’s, Ramsgate.

In all these churches the exterior beauty has been more or less sacrificed to interior ornament and decoration, Pugin preferring to devote all the money possible to beautifying those parts which were most closely connected with the presence of his God, when the funds did not permit him to adorn fully both exterior and interior. This has often led his critics to misjudge his capacity as an architect; even Sir C. Eastlake falls into this error, and, though a sincere admirer of Pugin, does not hesitate to assert that “of constructive science he probably knew but little.” That his greatest power lay in ornament and detail may no doubt be true; still, we are fully convinced that had he found the same opportunities of displaying his knowledge as a scientific architect, and had he not been trammelled by the constant necessity to keep down expense, he would have amply proved to the world how unfounded were these accusations.

In comparing Pugin with the architects who have succeeded him people often forget the difficulties _he_ had to contend against. He had to revive and educate the whole series of artisans whose combined labors are required to construct the smallest Gothic edifice—sculptors, carvers, iron-workers, painters, and decorators. When he began his career as a practical architect he had to design every smallest item required for his buildings, and, what is more, often personally to superintend their manufacture; a lock, a screw, a nail of correct pointed design were then things that had no existence.

If we take up now a book of that period, we can scarcely believe that ignorance and absurdity could go so far as to call Gothic the designs we see there depicted under that appellation. It is solely to Pugin’s untiring energy, to his conscientious love of his art, and to his wonderful fertility of invention—gifts which even his adversaries cannot deny him—that we owe the change that has been wrought in a few years.

The important progress in metal work, which now places at the disposal of the architect and builder material and designs almost equalling the best products of the middle ages, is completely due to him; in this, as in another long-lost branch of art—glass-staining—he found in Mr. J. Hardman, of Birmingham, one thoroughly competent by his practical knowledge and refined taste to assist him in carrying out his reforms.

How many other branches of industry, connected directly or indirectly with mediæval art, could be mentioned in which the influence of Pugin’s labors can be traced!—the production of encaustic tiles, silk embroidery, wood-carving, the manufacture of church plate and furniture of all kinds, even household articles and jewelry. Sir C. Eastlake truly remarks: “Those establishments which are known in London as ecclesiastical warehouses owe their existence and their source of profit to Pugin’s exertions in the cause of rubrical propriety.”[108] He might have added with equal truth that the many beautiful objects we admire in them owe their existence to the principles he established by his writings and to the endless models which his unrivalled facility of invention placed at the disposal of the public.

Footnote 108:

_History of the Gothic Revival_, p. 153.

If a proof were wanting of the hold that the revival of which Pugin was the leading spirit was taking on public opinion, it is the fact that a Parliamentary committee, in drawing up the terms of the competition for the plans of the new Houses of Parliament, stipulated that the designs should be Gothic or Elizabethan. It has often been regretted that Pugin did not take part in this competition, and his reasons for not doing so have never been quite satisfactorily explained.

Barry, the architect selected for the new buildings, showed his appreciation of Pugin’s capabilities and his esteem for his talents by applying to him for designs for all the important interior decorations and furniture. The beauty of these parts shows how well suited he was for the task; many consider them the most perfect parts of the edifice, the exterior, notwithstanding its real merits, having numerous faults—some of them, it is true, inherent to the style adopted—Tudor or perpendicular.

Besides the many churches and other religious edifices which Pugin designed, he devoted considerable attention to domestic architecture; and among the best specimens he left may be mentioned Bilton Grange, Adare Manor, and Scarisbrick Hall, Chirk Castle and Alton Towers; the last two he only restored and altered. But perhaps his happiest effort in this style was his own house at Ramsgate, which is, in every detail, a perfect specimen of a mediæval residence, strongly illustrating how deeply imbued Pugin was with the spirit and traditions of the past. So thoroughly Gothic were all his feelings and tastes that we firmly believe it would have been impossible for him to design a building in any other style.

With Pugin’s death, which occurred in 1854, we shall terminate this short sketch of one of the most wonderful revivals of the present age. We have told how Gothic architecture became extinct as a practical art, how its theory was forgotten and misunderstood for centuries, its very name kept in remembrance only by a few rare lovers of antiquity. We have traced the first dawn of a change in public taste, originated by the serious works of men versed in the history of ancient art, and inspired by a love of its grand productions.

In what a different position we leave it now! The master spirit that had breathed a new life into its almost inanimate form has passed away; his mortal remains are sleeping in the hallowed transept of that beautiful church at Ramsgate, the designing and decorating of which had been to him such a labor of love; but, unlike many reformers, he had lived to see his cherished dreams realized; he had lived to see the mystic steeple and the high pitched roof once more ascend to heaven from the crowded cities and the wooded fields of his country; he had lived to see a long array of distinguished names consecrate their gifts to that one style he had loved and for which he had labored.

ALONG THE FOOT OF THE PYRENEES.

We followed the old Roman way along the foot of the Pyrenees—a delightful route, picturesque on one side and fair on the other, and everywhere abounding in historic and legendary memories. Every age has left its impress here, as every geological period has left its strata in the mountains. Many of the cultivated hills are crowned with the ruins of feudal times. The plains are blooming with a thousand traditions and marvellous events that have sprung up from the contests with the Moors in the eighth century. Numerous remains of ancient art are constantly coming to light from the soil to prove that, during the Roman occupancy of the land, many wealthy patricians established themselves in this region, at once attractive to the eye and favorable to health. The Visigoths also, who once held possession of the country, have left behind them memorials of their barbarity in the martyrs who are still honored; and the Huguenots and Revolutionists ruined churches and cloisters that are still deplored.

At length we came to Martres-Tolosanes—the ancient Callagorris—an industrious place on the left bank of the Garonne containing about two thousand inhabitants. Clouds of smoke hover over it by day, and flames and sparks stream up at night, from the numerous potteries which supply all the neighboring region with dishes and tiles, and pave all the by-roads with broken crockery. The streets are narrow, and the begrimed houses seem inclined to stray off on the road to Spain, as if to breathe the pure mountain air. There is an interesting old church here that was consecrated in the year 1309. The baptismal font is an ancient sarcophagus, set up on four pillars, its sides divided by colonnettes, between which are holy emblems and other carvings. In one chapel there is a sculptured retable over the altar, with the shrine of St. Vidian supported by chained Moors—not covered with precious stones, or a work of art, like so many of the shrines of Italy, but a mere urn of gilded wood. On great festivals this is taken down and placed before the grating of the sanctuary, surrounded by lights and flowers. The bust of the saint is placed above it, the head shaded by nodding white plumes to give it a martial character, in view of St. Vidian’s achievements, the face painted more or less after nature, the shoulders covered with a gilded mantle of imperial fashion, and the neck adorned with a collar, or necklace, of blue and white crystal—probably the offering of some devout peasant. In another chapel, on such days likewise full of flowers and tapers, is St. Vidian’s ivory comb exposed in a kind of monstrance, as if the object of particular veneration. It is rudely carved, and the teeth which used to disentangle the long blond locks of the warrior after battle are of portentous size and length, and jagged from the conflict. But those were not days of gentle measures. This comb is of considerable celebrity in the country, not merely on account of its original use, but also because of the curious tale that hangs around it.

In the golden ages, when kind Heaven directly intervened in human affairs more frequently than is thought to be the case now, and did not suffer sacrilegious deeds to go unpunished, a peasant woman of the neighboring canton of Cazères, who had come to Martres to attend St. Vidian’s fair, went into the church to pay her devotions at the shrine, and, finding it empty, was induced by some diabolical inspiration to steal the wondrous comb, which was not then kept under glass as now. She hid it under her scarlet _capulet_, and, rejoining her husband at the market-place, set out for home. The afternoon was drawing to a close. Some rays of the declining sun still brightened the gray tower of Mauran among the mountain oaks, but the evening shadows had begun to gather in the valley below. Accordingly, they hurried along the road that bordered the river, the irons on their shoes clattering over the stones and giving out an occasional spark. The woman’s feet, however, often faltered, and, contrary to custom, her tongue was mute. But this was no affliction to her husband, and he pretended not to observe it. At length, on crossing the boundary that separates Martres from Cazères, he suddenly found himself alone, and, hearing a cry, looked around. His wife remained fastened on the line, as if by some invisible influence, with one foot in the parish of Martres and the other in that of Cazères, without the power of moving. He hurried back to her assistance, but, in spite of herculean efforts, he could not move her an inch, more than if she had been Lot’s wife. Night was now coming on fast. Not a ray of the sun was left on St. Michael’s tower, and they were only half way home. A cart from the mountains came by, drawn by three cows, and he begged the driver’s assistance. The woman seized hold of the cart. The driver goaded the cows. They were usually gentle and tractable, as becomes the female nature, but they now set off as if suddenly gone mad, leaving the poor woman behind, her arms nearly dislocated with her efforts, but her feet still glued to the ground. Then came along some Spaniards with their mules covered with gay tassels and bells. New efforts were made to remove her. She clung desperately to bridle and harness, but the mules so reared and kicked that she was obliged to give up the attempt. “Certainly the devil must have a hand in this,” said the husband. The woman rent the mountains with her cries, and at length was forced to confess the deed she had done. It was evidently a case in which the spiritual powers alone could be of any avail, and, as she could no more go back than forward, her husband sent to Martres to make known the case and ask the benefit of the clergy. As St. Vidian would have it, they were all keeping solemn vigil at his shrine, and, taking the torches that stood around it, they came hastening out with cross and banner, and as soon as they took possession of the relic the woman had stolen, her feet recovered their liberty. After this the comb was kept under lock and key, and, at a later day, was placed in the reliquary where it now is. Of course so stupendous an event caused a great sensation in the valley, which had not been so stirred up since the Norman invasion, and made the comb not only an object of universal curiosity but of increased veneration. The legend is related to this day. It is pretended that the women of Cazères are a little spiteful about it, and dress their shining black hair with much more care than their neighbors at Martres, probably to show they have no need of the comb of St. Vidian.

St. Vidian figures everywhere in this region. Charming legends, handed down from father to son for ages, have thrown quite a veil of poetry over numberless places. They are not very clear as to the precise place of the saint’s birth, but they are quite positive that he was one of the _preux_ who served under Charlemagne, and had even a dash of imperial blood in his veins. In his youth he became a hostage for his father, who had been taken prisoner by the Basques of Luceria, then idolaters. They sold the young Frank as a slave. An Englishman bought and adopted him, and as soon as Vidian was sufficiently inured to the use of arms he organized a crusade against Luceria, which he pillaged and completely destroyed. Of course such a feat recommended him to his imperial kinsman. Charlemagne invited him to his court and created him duke. About this time the Saracens crossed the Pyrenees and began to ravage the plain of Toulouse. Vidian joined the imperial hosts who came to the rescue of the land, and entrenched himself with his followers at Martres, then called Angonia. He defended the place so bravely against the enemy that for a while it was supposed saved, but, surprised by an ambuscade near a fountain where he had gone to stanch his wounds, he was slain after a stout resistance, and the town taken and devastated. When it rose from its ruins it took the name of Martres in memory of those who were martyred in trying to defend it.

It is certain that all this part of France was once overrun by the Moors. They, and the Normans after them, probably destroyed not only most of the ancient Christian churches, but the monuments left by the Romans. History has not recorded all the efforts made to repel them, but a confused memory of the struggle has been left in the minds of the people, and, colored by time and the warm southern imagination, these memories have become a genuine cycle of poetic traditions, not the less founded on fact because only written with the sword and blood of their ancestors.

The country around Martres is full of character and beauty. The Garonne, fresh from its mountain sources, winds through the verdant plain. To the south are broad terraces and wooded hills, and behind is the grand barrier of mountains, their summits all crystal in the morning light, and at evening all rose and amethyst. No wonder the Romans thought it rivalled Italy, and established themselves here. On one of the neighboring plateaus have been found the remains of a magnificent Roman villa that must have belonged to some wealthy person of luxurious and cultivated tastes, to judge by the objects brought to light from time to time. In 1826 a vault was found by a laborer, and excavations were systematically made which led to the discovery of sumptuous apartments paved with mosaics and marble, with remains of columns, statues, and bas-reliefs, and fine bathing-rooms with furnaces and earthen pipes, and all the accessories of Roman luxury. Among the works of art that have been found here are about forty busts and medallions of Roman emperors and empresses from Augustus down; a white marble statue of a reclining naiad; the beautiful head of another statue called the Venus de Martres; medallions of Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, Cybele, and Atys; large bas-reliefs of Serapis, the labors of Hercules, etc., and several bronzes. These form quite a gallery of ancient art in the museum at Toulouse, where we saw them in the old cloister of Augustinian friars.

Beneath one of the plateaus is a pretty fountain with a cross near it, in the midst of gentle undulations of verdure, shaded by a grove. Here St. Vidian had his encounter with the Moors and was slain. The pebbles in the spring are said to be still stained with his blood. Every year his exploits are celebrated here by a mimic battle between the Moors and Christians, in which nearly all the male population take part. It is said the brilliant costume of the Saracens is so attractive to the younger portion that they show a lamentable disposition to enter the service of the infidel. However, by dint of cautious measures, both armies are kept about equal. They consist of nearly one hundred and twenty-five men each, of whom fifty are horsemen. The Moorish cavaliers wear red and white turbans with silver trimmings; green stomachers adorned with a yellow crescent; orange coats turned out with red facings; girdles of scarlet silk; and blue pantaloons of Oriental amplitude. It will at once be perceived that nothing could be more gorgeous. The infantry are less pretentious. They content themselves with the white pantaloons of the French hussar, but make up for this with bright orange vests a Mameluke might envy. The Christian knights wear a black pasteboard helmet with a silver cross on the front, a blue tunic, and a tin cuirass that is quite dazzling in the sun. The foot-soldiers are dressed in gray, with blue caps, and a silver cross on their breasts. Both armies are furnished with tall lances, and each has its standard. That of the Moors is green and orange. On it gleams the ominous silver crescent. The Christians’ is blue and bears the redoubtable figure of St. Vidian.

The battle takes place on St. Vidian’s day. The relics of the saint are exposed in the church. High Mass is celebrated with the utmost pomp. Even the followers of Islam are so unfaithful to their traditional intolerance as to attend and present arms at the Elevation of the Host, in utter disregard of the Prophet. Mass over, the clergy and people go in procession to the miraculous fount, bearing the shrine and chanting the hymn of St. Vidian. There they bathe the bust of the saint in memory of his wounds. These traditional services concluded, the military ardor of the soldiers begins to assert itself. The two armies draw up on the neighboring field. Prodigious acoustic performances are made on the drum of the commune. Military evolutions begin. The banners fly. Red, yellow, and blue uniforms flash across the green field. The cavaliers show themselves true paladins. Such curveting and prancing have not been seen since the days of Charlemagne and Haroun al Raschid; at least, on such steeds—mostly farm horses the worse for wear. Sometimes the contest becomes too warm and real. However, their ardor never lasts longer than is warranted by tradition. The Moorish flag is invariably captured by the Christians, and the battle-field deserted till the next anniversary of St. Vidian’s martyrdom.

Vigilantius, the first heresiarch that troubled the peace of Christian Gaul, was a native of Callagorris. He was of a roving turn and a lover of novelty. In early life he crossed over into Spain and there became an inn-keeper. Then we hear of him as a priest at Barcelona. He made the acquaintance of St. Paulinus (afterwards of Nola) in Spain, who was induced to give him a letter of recommendation to St. Jerome. Furnished with this, he went to the Holy Land, but there he took sides with the enemies of St. Jerome and attacked the monastic life, celibacy of the clergy, the veneration of relics, the use of candles in the daytime, etc. St. Jerome, sarcastically referring to his original calling, told him the faculty of testing wine and that of expounding the Scriptures were not quite the same, and advised him to acquire the elements of grammar and the other sciences, and then learn to be silent. His countrymen do not seem to have been influenced by his example, however, but have always been remarkable for their confidence in the saints and veneration for relics.

Five or six miles beyond Martres we came to St. Martory, so named from a holy monk of the East whose beautiful legend is related by St. Gregory. One evening this saint, on his way to a neighboring monastery, overtook a poor leper forced by fatigue and disease to rest by the wayside. Filled with intense compassion, St. Martyri, as he is otherwise called, spread his cloak on the ground, placed the leper thereon, and, carefully wrapping him up, took him on his shoulder and proceeded on his way. The abbot of the monastery, seeing him coming, cried: “Hasten, my brethren, to open the gates. Behold Brother Martyri coming, bearing the Lord.” While they were gone to execute his command the leper descended from the good monk’s shoulders, and, taking the form under which the Redeemer is usually represented, he addressed him in these words: “Martyri, thou hast had pity on me on earth; I will glorify thee in heaven.” And, while the monk was gazing at him in speechless amazement, he ascended to heaven. When St. Martyri entered, the abbot asked what he had done with the person he was carrying. The saint replied: “Oh! had I known who he was, I would have held him by the feet!” And he related how light he had seemed on the way. The body of St. Martory is still revered in the church.

Not long after leaving St. Martory we came in sight of the towers of St. Gaudens at one end of a broad plateau, once the place of a Roman encampment. Behind it are the mountains that enclose the beautiful valleys of Aure and Campan, the Pic du Midi, and the whole of the mighty chain that binds sea to sea. Below is a vast plain, fertile and smiling, supposed to be the bed of a lake in which the waters of the Neste once mingled with those of the Garonne. On the other side are to be seen the ancient thermal place of Labarthe, overlooked by a feudal tower and a village that dates from the fourth century, called Valentine, in honor, it is said, of Valentinian II., who was assassinated in Gaul Narbonnaise in 392. Here and there in the fields are found remains that attest the importance of the place under the Romans—fragments of tombs, bas-reliefs, and antique vases. At one corner of the church of Valentine is the head of a Roman soldier with his helmet on, and near it a white marble urn. Inserted in the wall of the church is a marble slab with a Latin inscription, thought to be of the fourth century, which may be thus rudely rendered:

“Nymphius, whose limbs are cold and stiff in eternal sleep, reposes here. His soul is in heaven. It contemplates the stars, while his body is left to the repose of the tomb. His faith dispelled the darkness that seemed to envelop it. O Nymphius! the renown of thy virtues raised thee to the very stars and placed thee in the zenith. Thou art immortal, and thy glory will be perpetuated in ages to come. The province honors thee as its father. The entire population made vows for the preservation of thy life. At the celebration of the games due to thy munificence the spectators on the gradations of the arena testified their joy by acclamations. Once thy beloved country, at thy command, assembled its magistrates and spoke worthily by thy lips. Now our cities, deprived of thee, are plunged in mourning, and the senators, in consternation, are incapable of action. They are like the human body that, deprived of its head, falls lifeless and inert, or a flock without its shepherd that knows not which way to direct its steps. Serena, thy spouse, abandoned to grief, erects this monument to thee, and finds in this pious duty a slight solace for her pain. Thy companion for eight lustres, she only thought and acted by thee. At thy side life seemed sweet. Now, abandoned to her sorrow, she sighs for the eternal life, hoping that which she now possesses may be brief.”

What a tale might be woven out of the epitaph of this old Roman, who died fourteen hundred years ago in this remote valley—made up of domestic bliss, political honors, the happiness that virtue alone can bestow, and an untimely death mourned by the public and, above all, by the gentle-hearted Serena!

The Romans knew how to choose their sites. Nothing can exceed the charm of this region, especially in the month of May, when we visited it for the first time. The fresh valleys, the clear streams, the unexpected views at every turn, the harmonious outlines of the landscape, are a perpetual delight to the eye. The fertile plain of Valentine especially is so lovely that all the mountain-tops seem crowding together to gaze at and admire it, and they send down their purest streams to preserve its freshness and beauty.

On the sides of the plateau that overlooks Valentine a young shepherd, named Gaudentius, led his flocks to pasture in the latter part of the fifth century. His mother, a holy woman of the name of Quitterie, had brought him up in the practice of the most fervent piety. The country at that time was in possession of the Visigoths. Euric had succeeded to the throne by slaying his brother, Theodoric II. He was a man of great military genius, who extended his conquests in Gaul from the Loire beyond the Rhone, and carried war beyond the Pyrenees with so much success that he conquered most of the Peninsula. Toulouse was thus made the capital of an immense empire that extended from Provence to Andalusia. Euric was a fanatical Arian, and, attributing his success to his fidelity to his principles, he began a violent persecution of the Catholics, though they constituted a large part of his subjects. Executioners were frequently his missionaries, and one of these summarily opened heaven to the young shepherd Gaudentius, who, refusing to apostatize, gave a last look at his mother, who encouraged him, and submitted to martyrdom. His remains were carefully transported to the place of his residence, and, after the downfall of the Visigoths, an oratory was erected over his grave.

Such miracles were now wrought through the instrumentality of St. Gaudens that his fame extended all through the country, people came to live around his tomb, and a village soon sprang up that took his name. More than a thousand years passed away without diminishing the affluence at St. Gaudens’ tomb, but in the sixteenth century the town was taken by Montgomery the Huguenot, the church stripped of its ornaments and greatly injured, the statues broken, the tombs desecrated, and most of St. Gaudens’ relics thrown into the flames. But that was a way of reforming the Huguenots had.

“N’est ce pas réformer, quand on trouve une église Trop riche, lui ravir ses trésors anciens?”

says the old Plainte de la Guienne of 1577 with a bitterness that is quite natural. The bullet-holes made in the church are still pointed out. This is a noteworthy building of the Romanesque style, with round arches, clustered columns, and carved capitals. Each aisle ends in a chapel, and a choir is at the apsis. Over the altar is a statue of the Virgin that, before the Revolution, belonged to the neighboring abbey of Bonnefont, now completely destroyed. This statue is the production of Pierre Lucas, the founder of the academy of art at Toulouse. A priory was formerly attached to the church of St. Gaudens, dependent on the abbey of St. Sernin at Toulouse, but it has been totally destroyed. The old cloister of Pyrenean marble, built by Bernard I., Bishop of Comminges, and of the race of its counts, has also been destroyed. Of the tombs that once lined the arcades, only one here and there is left, with its touching mediæval inscription, and perchance some consoling emblem of religion, such as a cluster of grapes on a vine branch, recalling the Saviour’s words, “I am the vine and ye are the branches”; the monogram of Christ; the Alpha and Omega, etc.—symbols of hope graven on the cold marble tomb. And there is an ancient portal over which used to hang the horseshoes of Abderahman’s steed, which, according to tradition, plunged and reared when his master attempted to pillage the shrine of St. Gaudens, and thus lost its shoes. The horse of Montgomery seems to have been of a coarser nature, and as insensible as his ferocious owner to the spiritual influences around the tombs of the saints.

There is a kind of mournful pleasure in sitting down among the ruins of such old cloisters, listening to the echoes of past times, and trying to decipher the pious inscriptions on the tombstones among the rank grass, and to divine the history of those who lie beneath—once centres of fond affection, but now forgotten and unknown. Through the rifts in the wall is seen the peaceful rural valley, with the Pyrenees in the distance, resplendent in the light; and the contrast between all that is graceful and sublime in nature, and the desolation of this spot once beautified by art and hallowed by religion, is exceedingly touching. How peaceful, how religious, this cloister must have been, where paced the silent, prayerful monk among the tombs! And there is a sacredness in its present desolation that appeals to the heart; if the solemnity of the ancient arches is wanting, there is no lack of beauty in the lovely vistas among the picturesque mountains and delicious valleys.

St. Gaudens is a place of four or five thousand inhabitants, with old blackened houses full of industry. The country around is densely populated, and at certain seasons many go into the neighboring districts to add to their slender earnings. The young men have a commercial taste, and all through the Pyrenees you meet peddlers and colporteurs from St. Gaudens, hawking their small wares with amusing pertinacity. The girls, too, in harvest-time descend to the neighboring valleys to offer their services, and there are many popular _rondeaux_ that allude to them.

“Las fillos de Sen Gaoudens nou n’an d’argent, Las qui nou n’an qu’en bouléren: Faridoundaino, qu’en bouléren.”

—The girls of St. Gaudens are penniless, and those without money desire it. Tum-te-tum, yes, desire it.

“Aou pays bach, anem! anem! Coillé d’argent! En sega blat et dailla hen, Faridoundaino, n’en gagnaren.”

—Down to the valleys let us go, go! Money to seek, by reaping grain and raking hay. Tum-te-tum, we shall gain some.

On the outskirts of St. Gaudens is shown the house where St. Raymond was born—the celebrated founder of the order of Calatrava, which rendered such glorious services to Spain, and thereby to all Christendom, in the struggle with the Moors. It is a humble birthplace for one who gathered under his banner the haughtiest grandees of Spain. His companion, Durand, was also a native of St. Gaudens. They both became monks at the noted abbey of Escale-Dieu, where they inured themselves by austerities for the mission Providence had in reserve for them. There would seem to be but little in common with the peaceful pursuits of the Cistercians and the valiant exploits of the knights of Calatrava, to those who know nothing of the bracing discipline of monastic life.

Not far from St. Gaudens is the chapel of Notre Dame du Bout-du-Puy—a place of pilgrimage, enriched with indulgences by Pope Innocent XI. It is under the continual guardianship of a hermit. This Madonna is particularly invoked by people in danger of death. Among the _ex votos_ on the wall is the picture of a child carried away by a neighboring torrent, the mother kneeling on the bank with eyes and arms raised towards heaven, where Mary appears, commanding the waves to bring back her child.

We have mentioned the tower of Labarthe. The viscounts of this name were the lords of the Four Valleys for several centuries, and played an important _rôle_ in the history of Bigorre. The fifth Vicomte de Labarthe married the grand-daughter of Eudoxia, the daughter of Emmanuel Comnenus, Emperor of Constantinople, who died at Rome in the odor of sanctity, and was buried at the church of the Vatican. Geraud de Labarthe, Archbishop of Auch, put on the cross and accompanied Richard the Lion-hearted to the Holy Land as the prefect of his army. One of the glories of this race is Marshal Paul de Labarthe, Lord of Thermes, who lived in the sixteenth century and saw six kings succeed each other on the throne of France. He took part in the siege of Naples, and, made prisoner by the corsairs, endured a severe captivity for two years. He afterwards distinguished himself in the Piedmont war and fighting in Scotland against the English, and was finally created Marshal of France. He was so noted for his humanity that the Huguenots said he could not hold his place as governor of Paris because he was “too little inclined to slaughter.” Some of his descendants still live in Bigorre.

On our way to Bagnères de Bigorre we stopped to visit the abbey of Escale-Dieu, at the bottom of a deep valley enclosed among the hills. The name is derived from _Scala Dei_—the ladder of God—a ladder to aid man in his ascent to heaven! No name could be more appropriate for a monastery where, as Wordsworth says, paraphrasing the words of St. Bernard:

“Man more purely lives; less oft doth fall; More promptly rises; walks with nicer tread; More safely rests; dies happier; is freed Earlier from cleansing fires; and gains withal A brighter crown.”

This abbey is on the banks of the Arros, a river noted for its impetuous character and sudden overflows. It has its source in the valley of Oueil, the ancient _Vallis Oculi_—so called from its shape, where it is said three barons once could breakfast together without leaving their own domains. Near by is a little hamlet called Mayleu, on the edge of a torrent, where on stormy nights pale lights are said to wave to and fro on the current, which the mountaineers say are caused by the soul of an old miser that agitates the waters—emblem of his restless life, spent in grasping the goods of others with insatiable avidity. His influence surely extends all along the Arros.

The valley of Escale-Dieu was given to a community of Cistercian monks in the twelfth century by Beatrix, Countess of Bigorre, in order, as she says in her charter, that she “might be accounted as a sister in Christ by the brethren of Escale-Dieu in their watchings, and fastings, and prayers, and obtain the redemption of her soul, her husband’s, her father, Centulle’s, her mother, Amable’s, and other relatives’.” The Cistercians were famous as agriculturists, and in bestowing on them large tracts of land the old lords of the middle ages ensured the best means of bringing the country under cultivation and humanizing the inhabitants. The monks built a church here under the invocation of SS. Peter and Paul, which was consecrated October 23, 1142, by the Archbishop of Auch, in the presence of the Countess Beatrix and her husband, many abbots and neighboring lords, and an immense crowd of people. This church became the St. Denis of the counts of Bigorre, who doubtless thought to rest here in peace till the end of the world; for the abbey was at that time so remote from the highways of travel that its solitude was almost unbroken. The Countess Beatrix was one of the first to be buried here, but her tomb was broken open at the Revolution, and the remains, spared by centuries, fell into dust at contact with the air.

The first abbot of Escale-Dieu was a son of the Vicomte de Labarthe, and his successors, over forty in number, were mostly from the great families of the country. The house was immediately dependent on the Holy See, and the Sovereign Pontiff forbade any one to rob, burn, make any arrest, commit murder, or do any violence on its domains.

One peculiarity about its history is that, contrary to most great monasteries, no town or village ever sprang up around it. It remained solitary in its valley, studying “the secret lore of rural things” and pruning the wings of Contemplation, unconscious that Providence was to give it a mission in the world seemingly incompatible with the spirit of the order. The monks became so numerous, however, that two colonies were sent across the Pyrenees under the charge of St. Raymond and Durand, to found the abbeys of Yergo and Fitero. In 1147 the town of Calatrava, the bulwark of Andalusia, was taken by Alfonso, King of Castile, and entrusted to the care of the Knights Templars, who held it for ten years. Then the success of the Moors made them fear they would not be able to defend it any longer, and they resigned the place to the king. The latter, embarrassed at having it thrown on his hands, offered it to any one who would undertake its defence. St. Raymond, indignant to see knights, vowed to the defence of religion, thus abandon the post of danger, asked the honor of taking their place. The king willingly consented. St. Raymond went through the provinces preaching a kind of crusade, and twenty thousand soldiers ranged themselves under the Cistercian banner. Their success made him conceive the idea of cementing the union of the knights with his order. The abbot of Escale-Dieu did not at first approve of the design. “What an idea,” said he, “for solitaries by profession to convert a monastery into a school of war, and flatter themselves tumultuous exercises can be combined with the silence of prayer and the chanting of Psalms!” A chapter of the Cistercian order was held, but the Kings of France and Castile, and the Duke of Burgundy, overcame the scruples of the abbot, and the pope issued a bull authorizing the affiliation of the Knights of Calatrava with the Cistercian Order as lay brothers. All the houses in Spain were subjected to the rule of the abbot of Escale-Dieu, who had the right of visiting and inspecting them till the secularization of the knights.

The most brilliant era in the history of Escale-Dieu is the thirteenth century. Two saints had sprung from the house (for we must not forget St. Bertrand of Comminges, one of the most popular saints of the Pyrenees, whose tomb is still honored in the town called by his name); it held rule over ten monasteries in Spain; and it was greatly enriched by the neighboring lords, particularly by the counts of Bigorre, who made it their burial-place. The Countess Petronilla, so famous for her five husbands, was a great benefactress of the house. Besides endowing it during her life, she bequeathed it, at her death, all her gold and silver vessels and reliquaries, her jewels, rings, and precious stones, her dresses (probably for vestments), sheets, and blankets. Her first husband was Gaston, Viscount of Bearn, who took sides with Count Raymond of Toulouse, but was reconciled to the church before his death. The second was Nuñez Sancho of Aragon, whom she repudiated under pretext of consanguinity. The third was Guy de Montfort, son of the great opponent of the Albigenses, who was killed at the siege of Castelnaudary. The fourth, Aymar de Rançon, who died about the same time as her second husband. And finally, Boson de Matas, Lord of Cognac. After these five chapters she died at the Abbey of Escale-Dieu in great need, it is thought, of expiatory prayers and good works. Henry III. of England was captivated by the beauty of her daughter Amate, and three other princes sought to obtain her hand in marriage; but she married Gaston VII. of Bearn, and two of her daughters, by the intermediation of Abbot Bernard of the house of Castelbajac, married princes of Aragon.

One of the viscounts of Lavedan also became a benefactor to the abbey, and in his deed of conveyance declares he gives it the soil, the rocks, the vegetation, the fruit, leaves, all that rises from the land towards heaven, and all it contains in its depths.

Rising over the valley of Escale-Dieu are the ruins of the old feudal castle of Mauvezin, like a vulture’s nest on the cliff, overlooking the whole country. It was once considered impregnable, and was, after that of Lourdes, the most important fortress in Bigorre. From this castle went many a valiant knight to the Crusades. One of them, in making his preparations to go beyond the seas with St. Louis, gave to “God and Madame St. Mary of Escale-Dieu” fifty sols of Morlaas money[109] from the rents of the thermal springs of Capvern.

Footnote 109:

A sol Morlaas was worth about 2.4 francs.

In early times the abbey found a kind protector in the castle; but when, at a later period, it became the stronghold of freebooters, who only issued forth to pillage the lowlands and fat abbeys, the good monks of Escale-Dieu had reason to call it a _Mauvais Voisin_—a bad neighbor—a name that has ever since clung to it.

When the English took possession of the country after the treaty of Brétigny, the Black Prince established a garrison of soldiers here, who rendered themselves as famous for their brigandage as for their heroic exploits. When the Duke of Anjou and Duguesclin went to the Pyrenees in 1374 to root the English out of the land, the castles of Lourdes and Mauvezin long resisted their stoutest efforts. The latter was besieged by eight thousand men, but the castle was so strong that it would have held out a long time, had not the supply of water been cut off by the capture of the outer cistern. The garrison now suffered all the horrors of thirst under a burning sun. Froissart says the weather was excessively warm, and not a drop of rain had fallen for six weeks. There was no choice but to surrender. Captain Raimounet de l’Epée, the commander of the fortress, like the true Gascon he was, made the best of his fate, and offered to yield up the castle on conditions that were the most advantageous to himself and his soldiers. Unwilling to lose any of his plunder, he stipulated that they should be allowed to depart in freedom, taking with them all they and their sumpter-horses could carry. The duke consented, saying: “Go about your business, every man to his own country, without entering any fort that holds out against us; for, if you do, and I get hold of you, I will deliver you up to Josselin [the executioner], who will shave you without a razor.”

Raimounet had fought well for the English, but he had an eye to the main chance, and he now showed the nature of his bravery by entering the service of the Duke of Anjou and continuing, under the _fleurs-de-lis_ of France, the pillaging he had so long practised under the leopards of England. What he had not seized in the name of St. George he now took in honor of St. Denis, and thus filled both pockets at once. He died fighting by the side of the Duke of Anjou under the walls of Naples.

The sixteenth century, so fatal to innumerable churches and monasteries in France, did not spare the abbey of Escale-Dieu. The Huguenots now invaded the peaceful valley and proved far worse than the old troopers of Raimounet de l’Epée. The first band came in 1518 and burned the stables and the abbot’s residence. In 1567 a more formidable company appeared that put the monks to flight and took possession of the abbey, which they made the centre of their operations, issuing suddenly forth from time to time, like birds of prey, to plunder some church, or monastery, or well-garnished priest’s house. Blasphemies now resounded beneath the arches only accustomed to the voice of prayer and psalmody. All religious emblems were destroyed. The sanctuary angels feared to tread witnessed their orgies. At length, by the combined efforts of some of the lords of Bigorre, they were routed from the abbey, but before leaving they set fire to it and nearly destroyed it. In this destruction was included the fine old Romanesque church of the twelfth century, where St. Raymond and St. Bertrand had so often prayed, and the cloister they had so often paced in silent meditation. It is a poor comfort to know that the leaders of this sacrilegious deed were taken and executed at Toulouse. The monks returned to Escale-Dieu, but only to find it in ruins. In the course of time, however, it was rebuilt, but in an inferior style, as suited their diminished means, and the house led a precarious existence till the French Revolution, when it was once more ravaged, the very tombs violated, and the monks for ever dispersed.

The abbey is now owned by a layman who is more interested in agriculture than archæology. It contains, however, but little that is ancient. At the end of a long file of poplars you see the dome and white walls of the church, a building of the seventeenth century, now a grange. There is a flower-garden on the site of the ancient cloister, and in the walls are encrusted a few of the old columns with palm-leaves sculptured on the capitals, emblem of spiritual victory. And the hallowed name of Escale-Dieu, which once gave laws to Spanish knights, is now degraded to a mere post station.

Mauvezin itself became the hold of the Huguenots under Captain de Sus in 1584, and they made the castle more than ever worthy of its name. They extended their ravages as far as St. Bertrand of Comminges, and the name of their leader became a terror in the land. Now the castle is in ruins, which are as melancholy as its history. The square, massive tower that withstood so many attacks is roofless, windowless, and dismantled. Beneath is the vaulted dungeon where the prisoner once groaned in vain—dark and hopeless as the tomb. Over one of the doors of the tower is an escutcheon on which the arms of Foix are quartered with those of Bearn, with the inscription _Fébus mé fé_—Phœbus made me; for here lived for a time the famous Gaston Phœbus of Bearn. The kite and the osprey inhabit it now. The hoarse notes of birds of prey well suit the place where once resounded the war-cries of Raimounet de l’Epée and Captain de Sus.

Two leagues from Mauvezin is Bagnères de Bigorre, one of the most popular watering-places in the Pyrenees. Here “_Esculapius est sans barbe et sans rides_” says the poet Lemierre. Long before you arrive you see the tower of the Jacobins rising into the air light and slender as a column. It is a clean, attractive town in a circular valley surrounded by hills cultivated to the very top, or covered with woods whose shady paths are full of mystery. The valley is watered by several streams, and cooled by mountain breezes that are delicious in summer. Numerous canals convey the waters of the Adour through most of the streets of the town, giving a certain freshness to the air, and a supply of water for domestic purposes. An old author attributes the foundation of the place to Venus and Hebe, and says it was here the god Mars came to be healed when wounded at the siege of Troy. It was, at least, frequented by the Romans, who gave it the name of _Vicus Aquensis_. Their homages to the nymphs who guard the springs are still to be seen graven on marble, such as: _Nymphis pro salute sud, Sever. Seranus_ V. S. L. M.

Like most of the towns of this region, Bagnères was formerly held by the Visigoths, Saracens, Normans, and English one after the other, but seems to have been spared by the Huguenots, who perhaps were more afraid of offending the water-nymphs than the saints. The people, it is said, propitiated their leaders by sending them occasionally a tribute of butter and maize. The town, notwithstanding its antiquity, has but few ancient remains. There is a feudal tower or two that formed part of the old fortifications, necessary when, as Froissart says, it was so often worried and beset by the garrison at Mauvezin. The old church of the Templars is standing, but used for profane purposes.

There are many agreeable promenades around Bagnères. One of these is to a green hollow among abrupt cliffs, called the _Elysée-Cottin_, from Madame Cottin, who was very fond of this quiet nook. It was here she is said to have conceived the noble character of Malek Adhel, which so delighted us in our youth, and wrote not only _Mathilde_ but some of her other works. It is a charming retreat with a fountain in the bottom of the valley, in her time shaded by fine beeches and ash-trees, which have since been cut down.

The Allée Maintenon is so called in honor of Mme. de Maintenon, who accompanied the Duc du Maine here for his health. This Allée begins at the end of the town, and, climbing a steep hill, proceeds along the plateau of Pouey till it comes to a spot where you can see the whole plain of Bigorre, and the waters of the Adour dashing down the steep sides of the mountains. Here, taking the road to Campan, you soon come to the place where once stood the Capuchin convent of Médoux, founded in the sixteenth century by Susanne de Grammont, Marchioness of Monpezat. It was particularly renowned for a miraculous statue of the Virgin, honored under the name of _Sancta Maria in Melle dulci_, corrupted into Notre Dame de Médoux. The convent was destroyed during the Revolutionary period, but the Madonna, so dear to popular piety, was saved and now adorns the high altar of the church of Asté. The people say it was miraculously transported through the air and thus saved. It is of white marble, and a genuine work of art, by an Italian sculptor. It was the gift of one of the viscounts of Asté, who were generous patrons of the monastery. The expression and pure outline of the face, the dignity of the attitude, and the graceful flow of the drapery excite the admiration of every visitor.

A modern villa now occupies the place of the convent. It is in the midst of a fine park watered by a stream that comes pouring out of a cool grotto. Nothing could be more delightfully rural. Not far off is an old feudal tower, and beyond is Baudeau, the birthplace of Larrey, the favorite surgeon of Napoleon. The Vicomte de Castelbajac has sung the beauties of this spot where once stood

“Une chapelle hospitalière Toujours ouverte au pélerin, Jamais il n’y frappait en vain; Et le malheur et la misère, La pauvre veuve et l’orphelin, Y trouvaient toujours la prière Et l’aumône du Capucin.”

“CATHEDRAL WOODS,” MANCHESTER, MASSACHUSETTS.

Hushed grow our voices as our footsteps fall These darksome woods’ high fretted roof beneath, Whose living arches, sprung from living sheath, Are organ-pipes for winds to play withal. We leave, without, the meadow’s autumn glare— Its Tyrian wealth of asters prodigal, Its pomp of scarlet-robed cardinal, Its gentian that doth heaven’s livery wear. So leave we, too, the sparkle of the sea, And land-locked beach where waves break lazily.

Herein we seem among the hills at rest; Their balm by breath of salt wind undefiled; Freshness of streams, and strength of great rocks piled, Seem by our souls in this calm shade possessed, Where hemlocks stretch their dusky branches o’er The scattered rocks, whereto the green moss clings, Catching the prisoned sunbeam as it flings A miser’s portion of its golden store, As if it feared to break the shadow deep, To mar some vigil these grave giants keep.

Here only mountain incense seeming fills The lofty arches, by sea-wind unbent, That rise as if with height still nobler blent: Some peak, cloud-piercing, 'mid the sunlit hills Whose glamour holds us fast, whose blossoms lie The darkness of the broken rocks amid, Whose written speech in these lithe ferns is hid, Whose forests whisper in the winds’ low sigh. Should any bird this inland silence break, Sure in his song the mountains’ soul would wake.

Hearken! breaks through the silence soft a sound Faint as the thought of half-forgotten dream. Not speech so sad is that of mountain stream That from all loftiest heights doth reckless bound, Scattering its broken life in shining drift Of constant dew that mocketh at the sun. Nor breathes the wind in such low, measured tone When doth it lightly leafy branches lift— This wakes and dies in mournful monotone: The sea’s vast life dashed out against a stone!

Some law this chant seems ever to obey— Advancing, swells, now sinketh in retreat, Sad-voiced like life that knoweth but defeat, Yet still with patient purpose keeps its way. Joy-burdened silence of the hills, farewell! And salt sea-wind, thy carven choir reclaim! Brave sun, set all these dusky trunks aflame! Lost are our mountains in yon ceaseless swell That, shoreward rolling, lapsing quietly, Holds all the strength of the untiring sea.

The land grows little, and we crave the blue No earthly shade e’er shutteth from the sun, The barren sands whereon the light waves run But rest not, bidding evermore adieu, And evermore returning, bringing gifts They give and take, and still give o’er again. We crave the vastness of the salty plain! As sea-bird on unbreaking billow drifts Our hearts with that soft plashing throb in time— Longing, we list our dim cathedral chime.

One well might paint the hemlock solitude, The quiet shadow that the sunshine breaks; Even in color give the song that wakes At windy touch amid the peaceful wood. Limned all might be, indeed, so cunningly That one should hear the babble of glad stream, E’en catch the climbing mountains’ happy gleam; But—who could paint the murmur of the sea? Who dream, amid these dark boughs closing o’er, The song eternal of the broken shore?

JULIETTE: A NORMAN STORY.

I.

Marriage is in one respect not unlike greatness: some are born to it, some achieve it, some have it thrust upon them. And the last-named some are apt to find it as unprofitable an acquisition as to Napoleon the Little it proved to be the nephew of his uncle.

Now, M. de Boisrobert was a born bachelor, and, left to himself, a bachelor he would have died. But who shall gainsay fate? Upon him gayly baccalaureating Fate fixed her eagle eye and made up her mind that he should marry. Not without reason has Fate been made a female. When a person of that charming but inflexible sex makes up her mind that any bachelor of her acquaintance shall marry, we know what happens. Married M. de Boisrobert accordingly was, with what direful consequences to the poor gentleman the reader shall see.

Up to his forty-fifth year Messire Guillaume Georges de Boisrobert, Sieur de Boisrobert and Saintange, had lived the happy life of a country gentleman upon his estates in Normandy, near Evreux, satisfied with himself and with the world. Indeed, he had every reason to be satisfied, possessing as he did a fine château, a princely income, an honorable name, an easy conscience, and the respect of all who knew him. From the summit of his towers, look which way he would (and his sight was keen, as so good a sportsman’s should be), he could scarce fix the boundary of his domains. Farms, meadow-land, and woodland, his broad acres stretched for many a mile along the blue waters of the Eure; upon his pastures fed sheep and cattle by the hundred; in his stables neighed scores of gallant steeds. Yet, strange to say, with all his wealth, envy had no word for him, nor was he even decried more than it was fitting a rich and handsome bachelor should be. Certain maiden ladies of uncertain age, to whose charms he had, perhaps, been ungallantly cold, sometimes, indeed, made light among themselves of his pretensions to noble birth. That, truly, was the simple gentleman’s weakness, and he loved to style himself after the stately fashion written above.

“He De Boisrobert, forsooth!” Mlle. Reiné might say over her tatting (or is it tattling the ladies call it?). “He was never aught but plain” (“plain indeed!” Mlle. Gudule would giggle, pointing the _mot_ with her crochet-needle. Ah! thou thoughtest otherwise, fair Gudule, of his beauty when the embroidered slippers, and watch-pockets, and what-nots worked by thy own fair fingers—or thy maid’s—deluged the château and made largesse for its kitchen!)—“plain Guillaume Robert till his father, the notary, got an army contract and left him money enough to buy the wood in which his dismal old château is buried—the stingy old hunks!”

Now, this was not entirely true; and these fair Ariadnes were, to say the least, uncharitable. But it must be remembered, for the credit of the sex, that these events took place very long ago—so long ago, indeed, as the time of that great and glorious monarch, Louis XIV.—“le doyen des Rois,” as he called himself—whose majesty was like the sun (which orb, indeed, depicted in the act of illuminating the world, he modestly took for his device), and whose grandeur was indisputably shown in the fact that he could eat more for dinner than any man in his kingdom.[110] In point of fact, no small number of his loving subjects, owing to their sovereign’s majestic and princely appetite, had rarely anything to eat at all. But to return to our sheep.

Footnote 110:

Read the monarch’s usual _menu_ in the memoirs of the Princess Palatine, who seems to look with a certain _naïve_ admiration on the trencher prowess of her august kinsman: “The king devours with ease at a single meal four basins of different kinds of soup, a pheasant whole, a partridge, a dish of salad, two slices of ham, some mutton with gravy, a plate of pastry, and for dessert (_O dura messorum ilia!_) a quantity of hard-boiled eggs and fruits of every sort, the whole washed down with abundance of wines.” Here, at least, he might justly claim to be _nec pluribus impar_.

M. de Boisrobert was not stingy. On the contrary, his open-handed, and even profuse, hospitality endeared him to all the men about him, who had, no doubt, their own private reasons for liking him, as some of the women had theirs for looking upon him with a different feeling. The manner of his living was almost lordly; and when he was at home, it was nothing but junketing and merriment from month’s end to month’s end. An enthusiastic sportsman himself, his stables and his kennels contained the best that money could buy; while his huntsmen, his gamekeepers, and his beaters were a small army in themselves. Being so rich and so generous, he was naturally looked upon with great respect, and even liking, through all the country round; and many a man who had little reverence for aught besides would doff his hat most humbly to the well-furnished larder of that excellent M. de Boisrobert.

It must be said, however, that in his case—what is unhappily not always true—this respect was rightly his, for better reasons. Amiable, simple, and sincere, a scrupulous observer of his word, his charity was greater than his hospitality, and his piety was as unbounded as his wealth. Every morning he was first at Mass in the little village church of Boisrobert, whose excellent _curé_ was his favorite and, it may be said, his only intimate associate. His best friends, indeed, he counted among that admirable class, whose sterling and unobtrusive virtues he thoroughly appreciated. It was strange that so worthy a _penchant_ was destined to lead him into the great danger of his life. Of the great folks our friend was a little shy; and as for the small farmers and _hobereaux_, or “squireens” (to borrow from the familiar speech of Ireland a word which alone fitly translates it), who made the bulk of the neighboring landed proprietors, their tastes and habits were little congenial to his own. So good Father Bernard and he were much together; and a pleasant sight it was to see the two friends placidly angling, side by side, for the fish which somehow a French angler seems quite as well satisfied never to catch; or, in the bright summer evenings, playing bowls with all the zest of school-boys on the village green. No more welcome guest than Father Bernard entered the gates of the Château de Boisrobert; and when the November nights grew chilly, and the logs were piled high and glowing in the wide Norman hearth (its owner always quoted Horace at such times, and old Mère Chicon, the housekeeper, knew as well as any one that _dissolve frigus_ was the Latin for “stir up the fire and fetch a bottle of Burgundy,” and had had, indeed, many bouts thereanent with the village schoolmaster, in which that worthy was not always triumphant), our hero liked nothing better than to engage his friend in a contest at chess, or _trictrac_, or _piquet_, or, over a jug of Norman cider or the aforesaid Burgundy, to discuss the movements of the court, with which he professed to be in constant communication.

That was, as we have said, the honest gentleman’s foible—almost his sole one; he secretly worshipped rank, and often sighed to think that he, who might—and, he sometimes added to himself, should—have been a De Rohan was only a De Boisrobert, barely a gentleman, by virtue of the lands his money had bought. Yet, if not the rose, he had at least lived near the rose. The son of a notary himself, he was yet distantly connected with one of the noblest names in France, as he was by no means slow in making folks aware.

“My good cousin, De Beaumanoir,” he would say in an off-hand way, pronouncing the name _tout sec_, like the provincial ladies in the _Roman Comique_, though to his face he never ventured to address him otherwise than as M. le Comte—“my good cousin De Beaumanoir writes me that he is to visit Saint-Aignan at his country-seat, and will have me to be of the party.”

Or, mysteriously: “The army—but this, you conceive, my friend, is between ourselves—a secret, mind you, of state—the army moves on Flanders this week. I have it direct from Beaumanoir.”

It was then, as you may read in Scarron’s sprightly pages, a common ambition of provincial gentlemen to be thought on familiar terms with the great folks of the court. Truly, an extraordinary time!

At these _naïve_ confidences the _curé_, who knew his friend’s failing, but respected his virtues, smiled, if at all, to himself.

But M. de Boisrobert’s reverence for his noble kinsman went further than talking of him in season and out of season. He gave a more substantial proof of his regard in making him his sole heir. “The money should go with the title,” he said; “the family must be kept up.” It seemed to him a little price to pay for the privilege of being admitted for a month or two in the year to the rather frigid hospitality of the Hôtel Beaumanoir, of being nightly snubbed by the bluest blood in France, and of having down a great man or two for a day in the shooting season, to convert the Château Boisrobert to his enamored fancy into a new Versailles. His noble cousin he would gladly have had stay longer; but the count, after yawning through forty-eight hours of _ennui_, invariably left. The lands of Boisrobert he wanted; its simple and placid life he could not stomach. His palate was seasoned to higher flavors.

Not to put too fine a point on it, M. the Count de Beaumanoir was as insolent, imperious, and ungrateful a scoundrel as was to be found in a court where gentry of his pattern were rather a drug. Had it not been that he enjoyed the confidence and familiarity of a still greater rogue than himself—no less a one, to wit, than Monsieur, the brother of the Most Christian King—he would long since have come to grief. He was more than suspected of a share in the mysterious poisoning of the hapless Henrietta of Orleans, and it was only the credit of his patron and his own well-known courage and skill as a swordsman that kept these doubts from taking form.

Such was the heir whom our worthy M. de Boisrobert had selected for the reversion of his vast estates; and his promise once given, the count determined that it should be kept.

II.

Daybreak of a pleasant morning in October, 1681. In the court-yard and stables of the Château de Boisrobert, and in the great farm-yard near by, all is bustle and confusion. Grooms and footmen, herdsmen and farm-servants, are scurrying to and fro, with lanterns and lighted torches, through the gray dawn, tumbling over one another in their haste, shrieking out contradictory orders at the top of their lungs, clamoring and making all the noise possible, as though they had taken a contract for the purpose and felt they had but a limited time to fulfil it. In the farm-yard the heavy Norman horses are being harnessed, with collars that would be in themselves a load for a horse of our degenerate days, to the unwieldy Norman carts, already loaded with huge sacks of wheat and barley; further on, in the barns, a prodigious lowing and bleating and bellowing tell where Pierrot and Hugues are marshalling their herds; in the court-yard, saddled and bridled, are stamping and snorting the steeds which shall bear M. de Boisrobert and his bodyguard of two armed domestics to the great fair of Moulin-la-Forêt. Himself booted and spurred for the journey, that gentleman stands upon the terrace of the château, overlooking these preparations; chiding here, encouraging there, animating all by word and gesture. M. de Boisrobert has not been a nobleman long enough to forget that he is a farmer, and prefers to be his own steward. He finds it saves time and temper as well as money.

By dint of much exhortation and shrill volubility of expletives in the curious Norman _patois_ all is at last in readiness, and they are off, with many tender partings and tearful embraces between Blaise and Madelon, and much scolding from Mère Chicon the housekeeper, and fervent adjurations to the _Bon Dieu_ to bring them a good market and a safe return. The latter prayer may seem superfluous, as the distance is but thirty miles and they are a stout party. But it is the day of the famous Mandrin, most redoubtable of robbers, and of the terrible _chauffeurs_ who extort the farmer’s hidden hoard by roasting his feet at his own fire; so there is some room for trepidation in the bosoms of the simple peasant-girls whom this animated company soon leave behind.

We have not space to follow the great cavalcade as it goes bellowing and baaing and shrieking and _sacrréing_ over the white roads between the hedges and the apple-orchards to the great fair. We cannot even stop with M. de Boisrobert at the tidy little _auberge_ of the Pomme d’Or for the welcome _déjeuner_ of _soupe aux croûtes_, to be followed by ham, and perhaps a _poulet_ with the freshest of eggs and salad, and the most delicious of cheeses, and a most refreshing draught of cool cider from the great stone jug. Nor can we do more than glance at the humors of the fair—much like other fairs, for the matter of that—with its inevitable jugglers and tumblers and charlatans, swallowing flames as if they were sausages, and pulling endless yards of ribbon from their mouths, to the delight of gaping rustics; its gipsies and gingerbread hawkers; its shrill-voiced peasant women, in high Norman caps, selling eggs and poultry; its shriller-voiced ballad-singers piping out:

“Si le roi m’avait donné Paris sa grand’ ville,”

or some other favorite _chanson_ of the time. These joys we must pass lightly by, to say that, before the afternoon was well over, M. de Boisrobert had already sold his entire venture at an excellent profit, and it was rumored about the fair that he would go home richer by 20,000 francs (equal to 80,000 now) than when he came. The interest in the lucky capitalist increased; it extended even to his horses, and one or two simple rustics went so far as to push their way, during the temporary absence of the grooms, into the stables, there to gaze in open-mouthed admiration upon the steeds that had the honor of bearing—so history renews itself—M. Cæsar de Boisrobert and his fortune.

The hour for departure drew nigh. As the days were getting short and the homeward ride was long and lonely, and, as already hinted, far from safe—few roads in France were safe in those days after nightfall—M. de Boisrobert commanded an early start. He himself was to ride on ahead, attended only by his two mounted valets, leaving the wagoners and herdsmen to follow more leisurely with the carts. The horses were accordingly brought forth and saddled, and the worthy squire was just setting foot in stirrup when he was accosted by a _curé_, who, calling him by name, politely craved leave to ride with him, as their road lay in the same direction. M. de Boisrobert assented more than gladly, for not only was company desirable, but a _curé_ the company he most desired, and which could be accepted, as would not have been the case with every comer, without suspicion. So they set forth together.

The _curé_ turned out a most agreeable travelling companion, and M. de Boisrobert secretly felicitated himself on the chance which had thrown them together. So charmed was he with his new-found friend that, when the latter pressed upon him the offer of a supper and a bed at the vicarage, he wavered, until reminded by the sum he had about him of the wisdom of pushing on. But even while he doubted came a most distressing mishap. The horse ridden by one of the servants stumbled, fell, and, before his rider had fairly scrambled to his feet, rolled over stone dead. There was nothing for it but to mount Blaise behind Constant, and so get on as best they might. But, lo and behold! scarcely had Constant drawn rein for the purpose than, with what seemed to the startled hearers almost a shriek, the beast he bestrode set off at a furious gallop, which soon left his luckless rider on the ground with a broken leg. And, strange to say, the poor animal had run but a few yards further when he too stopped, staggered, and—_pouf!_ before one could say Jack Robinson, or its equivalent in Norman French, he is as dead as the very deadest of door-nails or herrings.

Whatever M. de Boisrobert may have thought of this odd coincidence, he had little leisure to dwell upon it; for the next instant his own steed was in convulsions, and, barely giving him time to spring from the saddle, like the others rolled over dead. How account for so singular a fatality? Had some poisonous weed got into their fodder? had some venomous reptile stung them in their stalls? or—uneasy doubts crept into the good gentleman’s mind—had they been foully dealt with by reptiles in human form who meant to waylay and rob, if not murder, the travellers? If the latter, it would be indeed most prudent to accept the good _curé’s_ hospitality. His house was luckily not far off, and the disabled servant being first made comfortable in a wayside cabin, and the sound one despatched to the nearest town for a surgeon, M. de Boisrobert and the _curé_ took their way to the home of the latter.

Night had fallen when they reached it, but enough light still remained to show that it was a partly-ruined château, dating probably from the time of the Crusades. One wing had been so far reconstructed as to be habitable, and the ancient chapel, the _curé_ explained, had also been put in order to serve as the village church. “My parish,” he added with a sigh, “is too poor to build a better.” A moat, still filled with green and stagnant water, surrounded the walls; a few planks served for a pathway across it, where once had hung the feudal drawbridge; a dark and snake-like ivy crawled up the crumbling walls; dense woods cast about it a funereal gloom. Altogether its outward aspect was sombre and forbidding in the extreme, and M. de Boisrobert could not repress a shudder or stifle a sinister presentiment as he looked upon his quarters for the night. Had his host been anybody but a _curé_, he would have felt like drawing back even then.

A little old man, who filled in the modest household by turns the comprehensive functions of butler, valet, groom, gardener, waiter, cook, and general factotum, took their horses in silence, but with a curious glance at the visitor the latter could not help remarking, and the _curé_ led the way to the drawing-room. This was a lofty, vaulted apartment almost bare of furniture, on the walls of which flapped dismally a few tattered pieces of tapestry, the relics of old-time grandeur. A faggot or two crackled and sputtered feebly on the gloomy hearth. Near it, busied apparently over woman’s work of some kind, were seated an old woman of repulsive aspect and a young girl, the latter of whom the _curé_ introduced as Juliette, his niece, and, briefly requesting her to entertain their guest, excused himself to see to the latter’s entertainment for the night.

And now, as the heroine of this exciting history has at last arrived—a little tardiness, as you know, messieurs, must be forgiven to her sex—it seems only becoming that she should have a chapter to herself.

III.

Lovely? Of course she is lovely. What a ridiculous question! Who ever heard of a heroine who wasn’t lovely, still less a heroine who was also the niece of a rob—_Peste!_ The cat was almost out of the bag that time—so nearly out, in fact, that we may as well slip the noose and let her go at once. Scat! And now, the author’s mind being freed of an enormous load, he breathes more freely and announces that our luckless M. de Boisrobert has literally fallen into a den of thieves. For what purpose otherwise that artful hint about the rustics prying into the stables, the horses falling dead upon the way, the elaborate setting forth of the gloom and desolation hanging like a pall over the ruined château—to what end, do you suppose, was all this expenditure of literary artifice, except to prepare the reader’s mind for some blood-curdling and harrowing event? But the _curé_? the _curé_? Why, simply no _curé_ at all: a wolf in sheep’s clothing, as there were then but too many in France.[111]

Footnote 111:

It should be said here that the main incident on which this tale is founded is true, and that this sacrilegious disguise was in those days frequently assumed by French robbers the better to disarm suspicion. The fact is in itself a striking testimony to the implicit confidence which the clergy of France have always inspired, and deserved.

Of this, however, as yet M. de Boisrobert knew nothing. Filled with vague forebodings of evil he could neither define nor reason down, he felt but little in the humor for talk, and still less—being, as you remember, in his tenth lustrum—for flirtation. So, after one or two wise remarks upon the weather, or the state of the crops, or the latest opera, or whatever other topics gentlemen-farmers then chose to break the ice of conversation with a pretty girl, had been answered _more virgineo_ with shy blushes, or faltering monosyllables, or embarrassed and embarrassing silence, M. de Boisrobert betook himself to the window to look out upon the surrounding country. A full moon threw upon every object a lustre like that of day, and—ha! what is this he sees in the court-yard? Can that be his host, the _curé_, talking so confidentially to those exceedingly sinister-looking chaps (one of whom he now remembers to have had pointed out to him at the fair as a coiner of base money, the other as a more than suspected thief), and handling those three exceedingly long and ugly-looking poniards!—ugh! how their keen edges glitter in the moonlight as the rascals run their dirty thumbs along to try their temper.

M. de Boisrobert turned from the window with a gesture of affright and despair, and beheld Juliette standing before him, no longer a timid child but a lovely and courageous woman, one finger upon her lip, the other pointing to the ill-featured duenna, who had had the good manners to go to sleep. In a few rapid whispers, and still more eloquent gestures, she explained the danger and her unalterable resolve to save him or perish in the attempt. Whether it was her words or her beauty, M. de Boisrobert felt instantly reassured. Indeed, had he known anything of the course of such adventures, he must have felt so from the moment he laid eyes on her. For what other purpose except to save him could he suppose so lovely a creature was to be found in so vile a den? And let it here be said for the benefit of scoffers that the present writer is well aware how often this incident has been used for purposes of fiction—at least ten thousand times in the English language alone. Yes; but does not the very frequency of its use prove it to be founded on fact, that some time or other it was true? Very well; this is the time it was true. Besides, who has said that Juliette is to succeed in her noble but rash endeavor? Suppose—now just suppose—she were to fail; in which of your fictions do you find a stroke of originality like that? If the historian were revengeful; if he had a mind to distort facts, as historians in very remote ages are said sometimes to have done—well, well, we shall see.

In her hurried warning Juliette had made shift to tell M. de Boisrobert that it was meant to put a sleeping potion in his wine, and afterwards to enter his chamber and kill him while still under the influence of the drug.

“Do not for your life refuse to drink,” she added, “but be careful to eat the apple I shall offer you after it, and which will contain the antidote to the drug.”

Scarcely had she ended when the pretended _curé_ came in with his precious comrades, whom he introduced as parishioners. (“A fit flock for such a shepherd!” thought poor M. de Boisrobert.) Supper was served at once, and all went as the young girl had foretold. The wine was drunk and the apple duly presented and eaten with a confidence that must seem truly sublime under the circumstances, remembering, too, that one of M. de Boisrobert’s remote ancestors had lost his entire patrimony through accepting a similar gift from a near female relation. Feigning weariness and sleep, the traveller begged to be excused and was shown to his room.

No sooner was he alone than he began to examine his means of defence and offence. The flints, of course, were taken from his pistols and the bolts removed from the door—they would be poor robbers, totally unworthy the attention of an enlightened reader, who would neglect such obvious precautions as these. Somewhat disconsolately M. de Boisrobert looked under the bed and into the wardrobe, but found no comfort there. Then he piled all the furniture against the door, drew his sword, said his prayers, set his teeth, thought of Juliette (O middle-aged and most forlorn of Romeos!), and awaited the conspirators.

He had not long to wait. Scarcely had he taken position when a stealthy tread outside, a fumbling at the latch, and probably a strong odor of garlic penetrating through the keyhole, announced their arrival. The door was first softly, then strongly, pushed, and then, as the unlooked-for resistance showed their plot was discovered, a furious volley of oaths was followed by an onset that made the barricade tremble. Now should we dearly love to entertain the reader with the description of a terrific combat _à l’outrance_—also _à la_ Dumas—wherein M. de Boisrobert, calmly awaiting his foes’ approach, falls upon them with such ferocity that in a twinkling he has one spitted like a lark, another cloven to the chine, and the third in headlong flight and bawling lustily for mercy, but pricked sorely in tender places by the relentless sword. But, alas!—such is the fatal limitation of your true story—nothing of the sort took place. On the contrary, our hero was in all probability horribly frightened and thoroughly glad to see a secret panel suddenly slide back, and a white hand thrust through the opening, while the sweetest voice he had ever heard begged him to make haste. To seize that hand—and who shall blame him if he pressed it to his lips?—to dart through the opening—quick! quick! good Jean!—to close the panel, is the work of an instant. Scarcely is it shut when cr-rack! crash! bang! go door and barricade, and the foiled assassins are heard stamping and swearing furiously about the deserted room. If you could but have seen their faces and heard—no, it would not have been edifying to hear their language. But the fugitives are safe. Need it be said that the foresight of the faithful Jean (who, of course, follows his young mistress, having, indeed, waited this long time in the robber’s den only for a chance to be on hand in this emergency) had provided horses, on which they soon reached Evreux, where they lodged an information, which, there being no police there to speak of, led to the prompt arrest of the ruffians.

Placing the lovely Juliette in a convent, M. de Boisrobert returned home. But it was observed that he hunted less than formerly, that he was often closeted with Father Bernard and his notary, and that he spent much time in settling his affairs. Need the result be told? What in the world is a middle-aged bachelor to do whose life is saved by a lovely maiden of spotless virtue? For, be it known, the fair Juliette, left an orphan only a week before, had, by her dying father, a rich farmer of Brézolles, been consigned to the guardianship of this wicked brother, whose evil courses he was far from suspecting. All that is as plain as a pikestaff; as it is that in less than six months after, just long enough to get the trousseau ready (from the Worth of the day, of course) and to see the wicked uncle comfortably hanged, the bells of Friar Lawrence’s—we should say of Father Bernard’s—little church at Boisrobert rang out a merry answer to the problem last propounded.

When the distant echoes of these wedding chimes reached the ears of M. le Comte de Beaumanoir at Paris, he was not at all angry, as people thought he would be. Oh! dear, no. On the contrary, he only smiled, showing a remarkably fine set of teeth. So that people said he was a brave man, this poor M. le Comte, and not by any means as black as he was painted. And, indeed, a great many folks began to commiserate him and to abuse M. de Boisrobert.

IV.

Well?

Well what?

Why, what came of M. de Beaumanoir showing his teeth?

Oh! that? Nothing—just nothing at all. That’s the trouble, you see, of telling a true story: one’s imagination is hampered at every step. It would have been most delightful and exciting to have invented a frightful tale of the count’s vengeance; how he slew his recalcitrant kinsman, immured his weeping bride in a dungeon for life, and laid waste the lands of Boisrobert with fire and sword, etc., etc. But the truth is, he did nothing of the kind. Indeed, his teeth were speedily drawn, and he was glad to get away with his worthless life. The false _curé_ confessed before his death that the count had suborned him to kill his kinsman as he returned from the fair, promising him a sum equal to that which he would be sure to find on M. de Boisrobert’s person, and even suggesting the disguise. He little thought that the very scheme he fondly imagined was to secure him his coveted inheritance was destined really to lose it to him for ever. So ever come to grief the machinations of the wicked! This last escapade was a little too much even for courtly morals, and Monsieur was quietly advised to hint to his murderous favorite that his health would probably be the better for a change of air.

And the fatal consequences resulting from this marriage?

Yes, yes, of course; how stupid to forget it! Well, a cynic might say that for a bachelor to marry at all, especially at forty-five—but never mind the cynic. Their married life was surely not unhappy? Let us hope not. Do Romeo and Juliet ever throw teacups at each other over the breakfast-table because that duck of a spring bonnet is not forthcoming? In romances certainly not; but in true stories—hem! Let us trust, however, that peace reigned eternal over the domestic hearthstone at the Château de Boisrobert. But his marriage had cost its owner an illusion—a life-long illusion; and that is a painful thing at forty-five. Disenchantment seems to come harder as one gets older and has anything left to be disenchanted of. He ceased to believe that rank and birth are the same as goodness, or even greatness, and it cost him many a pang, and no doubt a great deal of real though whimsical unhappiness, to be forced thus suddenly and radically to readjust his scheme of life. But, in spite of the adventure which gave him a wife, perhaps because of it, he never lost his faith in _curés_ or in Juliette; and the games of bowls and of _trictrac_ were all the pleasanter for the sweet face that thenceforth lit them up, and the romping curly-pates that disturbed them and in time effaced from their fond father’s memory his lingering regret for the loss of a noble heir.

TO AUBREY DE VERE. AFTER READING “POEMS OF PLACES—ITALY,” EDITED BY H. W. LONGFELLOW.

I stood in ancient church, ruined and vast, Whose crumbling altar of its Lord was bare, Whose shattered windows let in all the glare Of noonday heat, and noise of crowds that passed With careless jest, of malice not assoiled. Within, fast-fading angels still lent grace Of art, believing, to the holy place That cruel hands of its best gift despoiled. With weary feet I trod the broken floor, With tearless eyes the maimèd aisles gazed down, When, lo! afar a waxen taper shone, Burning a hidden altar clear before: Here hastened I, here knelt—O poet true! Thine was the light that shone my sorrow through.

COLONIZATION AND FUTURE EMIGRATION.

God has apparently chosen the United States as the theatre for the demonstration of the truth that the Catholic Church is the church of the people. She has always been the church of the people; many of her most severe persecutions have been caused by the stand she has taken in behalf of popular rights and individual freedom against the tyranny of kings and the exactions of nobles. But never before has she been furnished with so large a field for the manifestation and development of her popular and democratic character as has been prepared for her here. It is her destiny, we believe, to save the republic from the ruin to which the sects and their offspring, the atheists, would lead her. Even those of our Catholic readers who may not fully share this belief will admit that, to all seeming, the Catholic Church is destined to play an important part in the future history of our country—at least that she has grown in numbers, material wealth, and social influence during the last thirty years to an almost marvellous degree.

A better or more certain method of accomplishing the work of the church in the United States could scarcely have been devised than the congregation of a large share of the Catholic emigration in our great cities. The Catholic Church in the United States is not “a foreign church” in any other sense than the Bible, or Shakspere’s plays, or Homer’s poems are “foreign” books; she is, as they are, and far more than they are, the common inheritance of all, and she is as much at home here, and as rightfully at home, as she is or ever was in any other land. Indeed, the church of God is not and cannot be foreign to any of God’s creatures. But a large proportion of her children in the United States at present are either of foreign birth or are the descendants of foreign-born persons in the first or second generation. These people did not bring the Catholic Church with them to America: they found her here; she had always had an existence here since Christopher Columbus planted the cross upon San Salvador, and since the Jesuit priests sailed up the St. Lawrence and down the Mississippi rivers. If, however, the emigration which has poured into this country since 1840 had not arrived, or had it come from non-Catholic countries, and had the growth of the church here been dependent wholly, or even chiefly, upon the natural increase of American Catholic families and upon converts from Protestantism or heathenism, the church in America to-day would have been numerically insignificant; which is only the same as to say that, if emigration had ceased after the first European exodus, the population of the United States to-day would be equally insignificant.

We may form some idea of what the progress of the church under these conditions would have been here by remembering what it has been in England since the cessation of the active persecutions which followed the Reformation. There are about 1,800,000 Catholics in England to-day. Of these not less than 800,000 are Irish, French, German, Spanish, and Italian emigrants or their children; the remaining 1,000,000 represent all the converts of English birth, as well as the descendants of the old Catholic families who always retained the faith. Half a century has elapsed since the English Catholics were emancipated from the last remnant of the persecuting and restrictive legislation which had oppressed them since the days of Elizabeth. During this half-century the church in England has been free—free in its own government, free in its work of propagating the faith and of bringing back the English people to the religion which their fathers had cherished for a thousand years.

Yet, with some advantages that Catholics in the United States did not and do not yet possess, the growth of the church in England during the last fifty years has been vastly less than the progress she has made in this country during the same period. In 1830 there were more Catholics in England than in the United States; since then the church in both countries has been equally free, with the advantages at the start on the side of England. But now the Catholics in the United States outnumber those in England more than fourfold.

In 1830, according to the most trustworthy estimates, there were 600,000 Catholics in England and 475,000 in the United States; now they number two millions there and from six to seven millions here. In England to-day the church has a cardinal, twelve suffragan bishops, and 2,064 priests; in the United States she has a cardinal, 66 archbishops and bishops, and 5,297 priests. In England, according to the English _Catholic Directory_ for last year, there were 997 Catholic churches, 7 theological seminaries, 312 ecclesiastical students, 15 colleges, 38 asylums, and 5 hospitals. In the United States, according to the American _Catholic Directory_ for the same year, there were 5,292 Catholic churches, 34 theological seminaries, 1,217 ecclesiastical students, 62 colleges, 219 asylums, and 95 hospitals.[112]

Footnote 112:

These figures, as far as they relate to the institutions of the church in England, are probably not entirely correct. The _Register_ from which we have quoted contains no tabular statement of these institutions, and we have been compelled to arrive at the totals by an enumeration of our own, the accuracy of which has been rendered doubtful by the confused manner in which the statistics of each diocese were given. However, our figures cannot be very greatly at fault.

We have drawn out this comparison for the purpose of accentuating our former remark that the marvellous growth of the church in the United States during the last half-century has been mainly due to emigration from Catholic countries. Had it not been for these accessions, it is doubtful, in our opinion, whether the church in the United States would to-day equal in numbers the church in England. But would its growth have been so great, so pronounced, so commanding to the attention of all beholders, had this emigration been directed away from the cities and dispersed throughout the rural and agricultural sections of the country? A little reflection will, we think, show that this question must be answered in the negative. It would have availed the church nothing had these emigrants been placed in their new homes under conditions where the preservation of their faith in any practical form would have been almost impossible; where they would have been deprived of the care and counsel of their spiritual guides and of the sacraments necessary for salvation; where their children would have remained unbaptized, their marriages have been degraded to civil contracts, and their souls starved and enfeebled by the absence of the Bread of Life. Yet that this would have been the fate of the great majority of them, had they not congregated in the cities, cannot be doubted, unless, indeed, God had chosen to work another miracle in their behalf and to create for them a miraculous supply of priests—a supply so large that every little hamlet in the far-off wilds of the West and North should have been furnished with a spiritual director.

Some boast of having even nine millions of Catholics in the republic; but it can be shown that there are perhaps half as many more Americans now living who are the children of Catholic parents in the first or second generation, but who have lost their faith and grown up as Protestants or without any religion at all, chiefly because their parents had gone into districts where there were no priests, and where the exercise of their religion, save as a spiritual meditation, was impossible.[113] It was only when the Catholic emigrants began to arrive here in large numbers, and to dwell together by hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands in the great cities, that it became possible, humanly, to provide for their religious wants and for their Catholic education. How nobly they have themselves furnished the material means for this work the statistics given above show. They have mainly done it for themselves. In England the Irish Catholics, in their works of charity and in the erection of their churches, have often been aided by the contributions of their wealthy English fellow-Catholics; but in America the foreign-born and the descendants of the foreign-born Catholics have for the most part built their own churches, their own convents, seminaries, and schools, and have received but little aid from their co-religionists of native ancestry. Indeed, in some instances within our own knowledge it is the latter who have been the beneficiaries of the former; and many an American Catholic to-day is indebted to the charity and self-denial of German, French, and Irish Catholics for the services of the priest who was the means of his conversion, and for the erection of the church in which he hears Mass. We repeat that all this was made possible by the congregation of our Catholic emigrants in the cities, and that the most deplorable consequences would have followed had not this congregation taken place.

Footnote 113:

A very ingenious statement was published some time ago in one of our journals, setting forth what was believed to be “the constituent elements of the population of the United States in 1870.” This statement may be thus summarized: In 1784 the entire white population of the United States was 3,172,000 persons; of these 1,141,920 were of Irish birth, 751,280 were of other Celtic races, 841,800 were of Anglo-Saxon extraction, and 427,000 were of Dutch and Scandinavian birth. The total immigration to the United States from 1790 to 1870 was 8,199,000 persons, of whom 3,248,000 came from Ireland, 796,000 from Anglo-Saxon races; and 4,155,000 from all other sources. The total population in 1870 was 38,500,000; and this vast number was thus analyzed:

Joint product in 1870 of Irish colonial 14,325,000 elements and subsequent Irish immigration, including that from Canada

Joint product in 1870 of Anglo-Saxon 4,522,000 colonial elements and subsequent Anglo-Saxon immigration

Joint product in 1870 of all other 19,653,000 colonial elements and all subsequent immigration, including the negroes

—————

38,500,000

From these figures was drawn the somewhat startling deduction that the population of the United States in 1870 was composed of 24,000,000 of Celtic birth or origin (Irish, Scotch, French, Spanish, and Italian), and that of these 14,325,000 were of Irish birth or origin, 4,522,000 of Anglo-Saxon birth or origin, and that the remaining 9,978,000 were of neither Celtic nor Anglo-Saxon extraction. We are not in any way responsible for the accuracy of these figures; but that they express at least an approximation to the truth we do not doubt.

It is not, moreover, in spiritual matters only that our emigrants have been wise in congregating in the cities. One must remember the condition in which the great majority of them landed here during the years when emigration was at the flood-tide, and then compare with that their present state and the future which is before them and their children. They were desperately, or apostolically, poor, because they came from lands where it was impossible for them to acquire anything beyond the means of bare subsistence. They were uneducated, because they had been the subjects of governments whose studied policy it was to keep them in ignorance. They had neither the capital nor the knowledge necessary to render them successful as independent agriculturists. Labor was most abundant in the cities, and in the cities they remained. What have they done there? If you seek their monument, look around you! Behold not only the 57 Catholic churches (12 of them built almost or quite exclusively by Germans, 1 by Poles, 1 by Italians, 1 by Bohemians, 1 by Frenchmen, and 30 by Irishmen), the 17 monasteries, the 22 convents, the magnificent Protectory, the theological seminary, the 3 colleges, the 22 select schools, the 19 asylums, the 4 homes for aged men and women, the 4 hospitals, and the 85 parochial schools of which the city and diocese of New York alone boast; but the great business houses, the large manufactories, the numberless smaller though important factories, stores, and shops belonging to the foreign-born and foreign-descended population of this metropolis; make a similar examination of what this class of our citizens have done in Brooklyn, Baltimore, Boston, Hartford, Portland, Springfield, Cincinnati, Detroit, Milwaukee, St. Paul, Albany, Buffalo, Newark, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Chicago, San Francisco, and twoscore more of our large cities; and then compare these truly magnificent religious, moral, charitable, commercial, and industrial results with all that the same people could have accomplished had they been scattered as sheep without shepherds throughout our Western and Northern wilds, destined to lose their faith, deprived of the support and strength which common association and common interest afford, and doomed, most probably, to lives of hopeless poverty and unremunerative struggle. God has been too good to them, and to the country in which they have become so important a factor, to permit this, and what the arrogance of man has so often stigmatized as folly has proved to be the highest and best wisdom both for eternal and for temporal ends. The whole number of foreign emigrants who have landed in the United States during the first 75 years of this century was 9,526,966. We showed in a former article[114] what proportion of these has remained in the cities; and we have now pointed out some of the results of this congregation.

Footnote 114:

“The European Exodus,” THE CATHOLIC WORLD, July, 1877.

We must not be understood, however, to convey the idea that a very considerable proportion of our foreign-born Catholic citizens have not made homes for themselves in the rural districts of the country, under conditions which rendered it possible for them to continue the active exercise of their religion, and that the happiest results have not followed. In the New England States, in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, in Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, and Minnesota, the number of Irish and German Catholic farmers—well-to-do, prosperous, and faithful—is very large. In the New England States the increase of this class has of late been marked. The farms throughout this section are generally small; their native owners, especially when they are young men, find it difficult to extract from them incomes large enough to supply their desire for the luxuries of life; they are often anxious to try their fortunes in the cities or in the West; whenever one of them offers his little estate for sale the purchaser is most likely a German or Irishman, whose wants are more modest, and who finds it quite possible to derive from a farm of twenty or thirty acres a comfortable subsistence for his family. This change in the proprietorship of the soil in New England has gone on to an extent much larger than is generally known; and one would labor under a serious mistake who supposed that the foreign-born and foreign-descended population of New England was altogether, or even unduly, congregated in the cities. There are in New England, according to the last _Catholic Directory_, 539 Catholic priests, 508 churches, 167 chapels and stations, with a Catholic population of about 890,000 souls; and it is evident from an examination of the list of the churches that a large proportion of them are in the small towns and rural districts of these States. It may be unwelcome news to our Protestant readers, but it is true, that nearly 25 per cent. of the present population of New England is composed of Roman Catholics. It may be still more unpleasant for them to learn that nearly 70 per cent. of the births in that region are those in Roman Catholic families. New England, indeed, promises to be the first portion of the country which is likely to become distinctively Roman Catholic. The immigration into New England is small, but it is mostly composed of Catholics; the increase of population is very largely Catholic; the emigration is almost entirely non-Catholic. From this digression from our main subject we return with the remark that the rural Catholic population in the Middle and Western States—a population largely composed of foreign-born citizens and their descendants—constitutes a most important factor in the material strength of the Catholic body, and that, as we shall show, the future course of foreign emigration should, and most probably will, tend mainly to increase this class.

The late decline in emigration to the United States, and the present lull, amounting almost to stagnation, which has taken place in it, together with the fact that there is abundant reason to suppose that this lull is but temporary and that emigration will again ere very long pour in upon us, suggest some reflections respecting the changed character which that emigration will probably assume, the changed conditions under which it will be carried on, and the changed duty of the Catholic body in the United States towards it. What was so essentially necessary in the past will be necessary, under these new conditions, no longer; what was so often impossible in the past will now become generally easy of accomplishment. The Catholic Church in the United States has passed through the stage of its infancy and feebleness, and has entered upon the period of its manhood and strength. Firmly planted throughout the land, it fears nothing and can watch over and abundantly protect the faith and the education of its children. In every State and Territory, save Alaska, at least one bishop; in seven States two bishops; in five States three bishops; in one State six, in another State eight bishops, and with more than 5,000 priests—surely with this army of shepherds the sheep and the lambs of the flock can be fed and guarded from the wolves of infidelity, sectarianism, and bigotry. God has built up his church in the republic in the manner, and chiefly through the agencies, which we have pointed out, and has thus fitted her, armed her, and made her strong for the great work which still lies before her. That work is the conversion of the non-Catholic portion of our fellow-citizens; the nurture of Catholic children; and the care, the protection, and, if need be, the conversion of the emigrants who, in the future, are to come to us from the Old World. It is only with this latter branch of her duty that we now deal. Emigrants to the United States have hitherto arrived here chiefly as isolated individuals, or at best as isolated families. There have been some attempts at colonization—that is, in bringing in one company a large number of individuals and of families, destined to migrate together to a spot already selected for them, and which they are to occupy as a community. Most frequently these attempts at colonization have been successful. Where they have failed the failure has been due to some incapacity or dishonesty on the part of the agents who had the matter in charge, and not to any vice in the system itself. There is evidence to show that emigration in future will be to a great extent, and may be almost wholly, conducted on the colonization principle. We have already said that emigration from Ireland in the future would most probably be confined within small limits; but if anything could stimulate it, it would be the development in Ireland of wise plans for colonization, carried out by men of probity, experience, and practical wisdom. Our chief sources of emigration, however, for some years to come, are likely to be England, Scotland, Germany, France, Austria, Bohemia, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Italy, Poland, and Russia. There are causes at work which even now are stimulating emigration from each of these countries, and these causes may attain great strength. As an instance of the curious manner in which apparently insignificant causes, originating at a distance, produce large effects, we may mention the fact that the shipping of fresh meat from this country to Great Britain—an enterprise only in its infancy—has already so seriously unsettled the relations existing between landlords and farmers in England and Scotland that the latter are declaring their inability to make both ends meet, and are turning their thoughts towards emigration. So general and so serious is this feeling that the leading journal of Scotland has sent to this country a trusted member of its permanent staff (the editor of its agricultural department for many years), with instructions “to make the fullest possible inquiry into everything connected with the stock-raising department of agriculture” in the United States, extending his researches to Texas, “where he proposes to examine thoroughly the system of cattle and sheep breeding and raising carried on in that State on so immense a scale, and to obtain all the information that is to be had with respect to the breeds of cattle, the methods taken to improve the quality of the stock, and Texan agricultural methods and circumstances generally.” He is then to visit other States for the same purpose, and “all along his route he will take note of all the phases and conditions of agriculture, and of the suitability of the States for advanced farming.” The results of his investigations, published in Scotland and England, will enable the farmers there “to determine the full significance of the competition of American cattle-growers in the British dead-meat market,” and in all probability determine many of them to emigrate to this country, with their capital and their skill, to engage in this competition on the American side.

Farming in England and Scotland—especially in Scotland—has long been a precarious and hazardous business; and now the reduction of four or six cents a pound in the price of beef which has been caused by the importation of about 1,000 tons of American beef and mutton every week at Glasgow and Liverpool, threatens to be the last straw to break the back of at least the Scotch farmer. Irish agriculturists likewise depend to a great extent for their profits upon the money received for their cattle, and they, too, will feel as severely as their Scottish friends the ruinous consequences, to them, of a reduction of twenty-five per cent. in the market value of their principal commodity. Thus the emigration of the well-to-do farmers of the United Kingdom is likely to be stimulated, and these agriculturists, most probably, would need but little persuasion to induce them to emigrate, if they emigrated at all, in colonies, and not as isolated families or individuals. So, also, as respects the future emigration from the Continent of Europe. Different causes are at work in each of the countries above named, but they all tend to the same result.

We have already hinted that the emigration of the future will be of a different class from the emigration of the past. At the present moment, and probably for some time to come, it would be dishonest, cruel, and unwise to encourage the emigration to this country of people without capital—those who must earn daily wages in order to live. Hitherto the great majority of our emigrants have been people of this class, and most fortunate is it that they came in such vast numbers. The time will again arrive, no doubt, when this class will be once more necessary and welcome among us, and when they will come, as they have come before, in thousands and tens of thousands. But at present they are not needed here; to bring them hither would be cruel to us as well as to themselves. The emigrants whom we need, and who are for some time most likely to come, are those who possess considerable worldly wealth at home, but who, like the English, Scotch, and Irish farmers of whom we have spoken, find it difficult to provide sufficiently for their increasing families, or wish to secure for them, in the New World, better fortunes than they can hope for in the Old. On the European Continent, and especially in Germany, other causes are at work which are morally certain to promote emigration. The war in the East may be localized—although all the probabilities point to a different conclusion—but even now it has increased the burdens which oppress the German people, and rendered the “blood-tax” that they are compelled to pay heavier and harder to bear. There is probably no intelligent man in Germany who does not look forward to a not distant day when that country will be again engaged in a desperate conflict; and meanwhile the military service exacted from every German citizen, and the cost of maintaining the army, press with a crushing weight upon the country. A thoughtful and experienced writer in one of our daily journals—a writer who, if we mistake not, has himself had extensive experience in the organization of emigration enterprises—thus treats of this subject:

“But it is in Germany that the fears awakened throughout Continental Europe will contribute most powerfully to a renewal of interest in the subject of emigration among classes to whom this country even now presents all requisite advantages. The stern methods employed by Bismarck to repress emigration movements—his interference with the freedom of American citizens who dared to speak of the attractions held out by the fertile West, and his suppression of whatever seemed likely to facilitate emigration to the United States—were all called forth by the anxious desire of people to escape the liability to military service. The military glories of the empire had charms for the cities, which acquired delusive appearances of prosperity. Among the population of rural districts the situation was different. The burdens and penalties of war, and of a system which exacts incessant preparation for war as a condition of national safety, have among these people stimulated the feeling in favor of emigration to a degree which the action of the Imperial Government has imperfectly controlled. The dread, vague before, will now be a reality. What, as a mere contingency, has sufficed to foster the wish to leave the Fatherland is now so near a certainty that the movement in favor of emigration needs but a guiding hand to assume large proportions. And the emigration available is of the description which, discreetly operated upon, should be attracted rather than repelled by the considerations which have driven wage-earners back to Europe. Those who would gladly get out of Germany to save their sons from service in the army look to the land for a livelihood, and would form valuable accessions to the Western States. As far as Germany is concerned, the difficulty is in reaching this class. Agencies that might be freely used in England or Holland are in Germany unavailable. All that seems possible there is to provide authentic information through channels which would not conflict with local law or incur the suspicion which, in view of recent experience, interested representations are likely to excite. Might not our consular agencies be utilized, not as emigration bureaux, but as means of supplying to those who seek it information in reference to lands and farms in the West and South, and to other matters connected with the opening or purchase of farms, and stocking and working them? The laborious head of the Statistical Bureau some years ago compiled a volume of statistics which to the working-men of the Old World was invaluable. The manual at present needed would deal with the phases of the emigration question, and would be much more than an accumulation of figures. It would be more legitimate than half the matter which emanates from the department and is printed at the public cost; and it would contribute to a revival and increase of the only immigration which can be honestly encouraged in the face of hard times.”

The French have never shown much anxiety for emigration; but the arrivals of emigrants from that country have increased during late years, and were slightly larger last year than in 1875. In France the burdens which are felt in Germany are also a cause of suffering, if not of complaint; and emigration from France, if the proper means for stimulating and directing it were employed, might reach large proportions. In Holland causes like those to which we have alluded as potent in Great Britain exist. The emigration from Russia has hitherto been of a peculiar character; it has consisted mainly of the Mennonites, whose anti-war principles impelled them to escape from the military service exacted from all Russian subjects, and from which only the temporary and partial concessions of the czar exempted some of them. The mission now undertaken by Russia is of a character which will compel her ruler, ere he has finished his task, to press every one of his subjects into the military service, directly or indirectly. The desire for emigration from Russia may be expected to increase, although some time will probably elapse before large results can be hoped for from it. The emigration from Austria has thus far been small. The total arrivals of emigrants from that country at the port of New York during the last 30 years have been only 21,677, of whom 1,210 came last year and 1,088 in 1875. But Austria is a country especially fit to emigrate from, and the incentives which are powerful in Germany will ere long be felt in Austria also. From Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Denmark, and Poland emigration of the better class may with reason be anticipated; and even from Italy, which has sent us 42,769 emigrants since 1847, considerable accessions may be expected.[115]

Footnote 115:

During the year ended December 31, 1876, 157,440 immigrants arrived in the United States, of whom 102,960 were males and 54,480 females. Their ages were: under fifteen years, 26,608; fifteen and under forty, 111,764; forty years and upward, 19,068. The countries of last permanent residence or citizenship of the immigrants were: England, 21,051; Ireland, 16,506; Scotland, 4,383; Wales, 294; Isle of Man, 8; Guernsey, 1; Germany, 31,323; Austria, 6,047; Hungary, 475; Sweden, 5,204; Norway, 6,031; Denmark, 1,624; Netherlands, 709; Belgium, 454; Switzerland, 1,572; France, 6,723; Italy, 2,980; Malta, 2; Greece, 24; Spain, 597; Portugal, 816; Gibraltar, 16; Russia, 6,787; Poland, 854; Finland, 22; Turkey, 59; Arabia, 13; India, 22; Burmah, 9; China, 16,879; Asiatic Russia, 83; Japan, 6; Asia, not specified, 14; Egypt, 3; Liberia, 14; Algeria, 9; Africa, not specified, 17; Quebec, 15,545; Nova Scotia, 3,200; New Brunswick, 1,494; Prince Edward Island, 437; Newfoundland, 58; British Columbia, 484; Mexico, 532; Central America, 14; U. S. of Colombia, 20; Venezuela, 37; Guiana, 3; Brazil, 28; Argentine Republic, 6; Chili, 20; Peru, 11; South America, 10; Cuba, 880; Porto Rico, 17; Jamaica, 23; Bahamas, 559; Barbados, 32; other West India Islands, 43; Curaçoa, 14; Azores, etc., 960; Bermudas, 29; Iceland, 30; Mauritius, 3; Sandwich Islands, 20; Australasia, 1,261; East Indies, 16; and born at sea, 23.

During the month ended April 30, 1877, there arrived at the port of New York 7,353 immigrants, of whom 4,553 were males and 2,800 females.

The countries or islands of last permanent residence or citizenship of the immigrants were as follows:

England, 1,500; Scotland, 191; Wales, 46; Ireland, 1,364; Germany, 2,184; Austria, 286; Sweden, 415; Norway, 67; Denmark, 171; France, 241; Switzerland, 183; Spain, 58; Italy, 350; Holland, 60; Belgium, 26; Russia, 35; Poland, 34; Hungary, 37; Quebec, Ontario, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland, 25; Cuba, 19; Sicily, 18; India, 14; Mexico, 8; U. S. of Colombia, 4; Venezuela, Bermuda, and born at sea, 3 each; Greece, China, and Peru, 2 each; Turkey and Iceland, 1 each.

We have before us a collection of documents relating to colonization in the West and Northwest. One of them describes the admirable plan of the Coadjutor-Bishop of St. Paul for Catholic colonization in Minnesota. In a powerful letter addressed, on the 16th of September last, to the President of the Board of Colonization of the Irish Catholic Benevolent Union, the bishop dwells upon the evils which have followed the settlement of our Irish emigrants in the large cities—evils which we have no wish to belittle; but he also confesses that the misfortunes of those who went into the rural districts were equally deplorable. He remarks:

“Those who—exceptions to the rule—did move forward into the country, in search of homes on the land, suffered in many instances from the absence of proper and systematic direction no less than their companions in cities. They lost their faith. They strayed away from church and priest, from Catholic associations, and in certain States to-day there are whole districts where you hear the purest of Celtic names, and where, nevertheless, not one man proclaims himself a Catholic or smiles at the mention of the old land.”

And then, after a charming picture of a certain little Irish Catholic colony in the West, of which he says that, beginning in poverty and hardship twenty years ago,

“To-day those families are prosperous—rich; their children are as innocent and as true as if they had always breathed the atmosphere of the most Catholic of lands; the number of families has doubled, through mere natural increase; their district of country is for ever secured to the church,”

Bishop Ireland goes on to say that the results of his own colonization labors in Minnesota may be thus described:

“We began last February. Our first step was to secure the control of 117,000 acres of land, situated in Swift County, belonging to the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad. There was at the time in the county about as much more vacant government land open for settlement under the pre-emption and homestead acts. The price of the railroad land was fixed, so that during the time it was to remain under our control the company could not advance its figures. We at once placed a priest in the colony, whose duty it was to direct and advise the immigrant as well as to minister to his spiritual wants. An office was opened in St. Paul, where the immigrant would be received on his arrival from the East, and where all letters of inquiry would be answered. Two weeks after publication of our plans had been made in the Catholic press, immigrants commenced to arrive, and up to the date at which I am writing over eight hundred entries have been made by our people on government land, and about 60,000 acres of railroad land have been occupied. We permit no speculation, so that each quarter section generally represents a family, persons, as a rule, being allowed to take more land only when they have grown sons, who soon will themselves need a home.”

He then gives a letter from the register of the Land Office, showing that the number of land entries made in Swift County from January 1 to June 1, 1876, was 1,317, and saying that over 800 of these were made by “your people.” The register adds:

“In this connection allow me to bear testimony to the intelligence, integrity, and good order always manifested by your colonists in all their business relations with this office. I can now call to mind no instance in which one under the influence of liquor has been in this office. Cases of profanity are extremely rare; in no instance have we had trouble or contention with any one. They are model colonists. I know this opinion to be shared by all who come in contact with them.”

The bishop adds:

“We have already in the colony two churches; one more will be built in spring. Two promising towns have sprung up—De Graff and Randall. In De Graff there are some forty houses, stores or residences, a large brick-yard, a grist-mill; a grain elevator and a convent school are to be put up during the winter. The settlers, whom I had the pleasure of visiting a month ago, are full of hope and delighted with their prospects. Last spring Swift County was a wild, untenanted prairie; to-day on every side new houses and freshly-broken ground meet the eye. Our expenses in organizing and directing the colony were large; still, we were able to meet them by direct revenue from the colony itself. Each settler paid a small entrance fee, and we sold town lots. We have also reserved from sale some choice sections of land, which can at any time, if there is need, be disposed of at a high advance over the original price; so that we are safe against all losses in our enterprise. As soon as a settlement is formed the land advances at once in value; one farm bought in Swift County last spring at two dollars per acre has been sold since at nine dollars per acre, and a settlement that embraces three or four hundred families always affords room for a valuable town-site. The two excellences which I deem our Minnesota plan possesses are the following: We had control of the land; this is necessary to ward off speculation and preserve the land for our own colonists. No sooner would twenty families be settled in a district than the surrounding land would be bought up by speculators or strangers, if you had not complete control over it in some manner. Next, we began the colony with a priest on the spot; the presence of a priest does more than any other agency to attract immigrants and to encourage them in their difficulties. We have been so well satisfied with our work in Swift County that our programme for next year includes the opening of two new colonies.”

Our space does not permit us to summarize even the accounts of the other Catholic colonization movements which have come under our notice. These movements are serious and important, and those engaged in them should take every possible precaution to prevent them from falling into the hands of careless, incompetent, or dishonest persons. The work, it appears, will have two chief departments—the home and foreign agencies. The former will undertake and supervise the task of selecting and securing proper localities for colonies, and of procuring as settlers families and individuals already resident here, but whose interests would be promoted by their translation to these new homes; the foreign agencies would be employed in diffusing the necessary information among the classes in Europe who would be most likely to emigrate, and who would be the most desirable emigrants, and in inducing them to join new colonies already established or to form others of their own. The _Catholic Advocate_, of Louisville, Ky., in some well-considered remarks on the subject, says:

“Now, it is our opinion that a great impetus could be given to this good work if the directors of the colonization project could so manage as to awaken the Irish people at home to the value of the movement; if they could have their plans placed in all their development before that class in Ireland from which emigration recruits its numbers. This could be best and most efficiently done by inducing the formation of corresponding organizations in the old country. There are very many thousands of people in Ireland, with farming-stock worth two and three and four hundred pounds sterling, holding their lands by an insecure tenure and at a rack-rent, who would come out to this country to-morrow, with all their valuables converted into gold, if they knew or understood the advantages of the colonization scheme. As it is now, they only hear about it. It comes to them by newspapers, as a kind of far-off echo. It is not brought forcibly to their notice. Its benefits are not urged upon them personally. There is no persuasion about it, and it is as a dead interest to the great majority of the people, who, if they only knew and understood it thoroughly, would grasp at it. The British government was very earnest in its efforts to colonize Australia and New Zealand some years ago, and the advantages it had to offer were far and far away from those offered by the Catholic colonization movement amongst us. But how did the British government act? It sent agents amongst the Irish and English and Scotch, prepared with maps and pamphlets and lectures, to impress the value of their project upon the people at home and put it immediately before their eyes. What was the consequence? Numbers of emigrants came forward, and of a class which had the means to colonize, and they settled in Brisbane, Queensland, and New Zealand, where they are to-day prosperous and promising. We do not say that paid agents should be sent to Ireland for the purpose we indicate, but it would be very easy to communicate with influential persons there to put before them the value of forming organizations in connection with Bishop Ireland’s scheme, with the St. Louis scheme, and any others that may be started. What is required is emigrants with some capital, and this is the way to get them.”

Bishop Ireland, in the letter from which we have already quoted, sets forth at some length what such a body as the Irish Catholic Benevolent Union could do in this work. It could constantly agitate the subject of colonization, and it could establish a national bureau of information, which would collect information, publish pamphlets, secure the co-operation of bishops and priests, and open colonies of their own. But the “crowning stone in the work of colonization,” in the bishop’s opinion, would be “the formation of joint-stock colonization societies.” He says:

“By no other means can the poor among our people—those most in need of homes—be colonized. However successful our Minnesota plan may seem to have been, it does not reach the poor. We have received hundreds of letters from most deserving persons, to whom we were obliged to answer that we had no place for them in our colony. How many there are who have simply means to bring them West, but who can neither pay for land nor maintain themselves while waiting for the first crop! A joint-stock company would give them land on long time, at reasonable rates of interest, and would also advance them small sums to assist them in opening their farms. The plan might be somewhat as follows: The executive power of the company should be in the hands of most reliable business men. Stockholders would be promised that their money would be paid back in five years, with interest at six per cent. per annum, and, in order that men of all classes might take part in the work, shares would be put at low figures. The inducement to take shares is that good is done to our fellow-countrymen without any loss to ourselves. The company purchases a tract of land; cash in hand, the land would cost but little. Immigrants, in purchasing it from the company, would give back a mortgage, promising to pay the full price in four or five years, with interest at eight per cent. per annum. An industrious settler could not fail to meet such obligations. If he failed to do so, the land reverts to the company, worth much more than it was when first purchased. The company derives its expenses from the two per cent., which it charges the settlers over what it pays its shareholders; but to protect itself the better it could sell the land at a slightly increased figure, especially a few choice pieces; it could also lay out for its profit a town-site, and sell the lots.

“There should be colonies in every State where cheap lands are to be found. The movement should be made general, our entire Irish Catholic people entering into it: one class coming forward with advice and money, the other profiting, for their own good and that of their religion, of the assistance offered to them. What is to be done must be done quickly. The time is fast passing when cheap lands can be had in America. Already the tide of immigration—bearing, alas! but a small number of our people—has crossed the Missouri, leaving in its wake but inconsiderable portions of unoccupied land, and reaching even now the limits of the arable lands of the continent. Patriotism and religious zeal are two great incentives to action for Irish Catholics. Colonization is a work upon which both can be most easily brought to bear.”

Already one such joint-stock company has been formed—on the 10th of April last—in St. Paul, in which the bishop and the coadjutor-bishop of that see have taken shares.

It will henceforth be the duty of the church in America to see that no Catholic family landing on our shores and seeking a new home in our Western States and Territories shall be permitted to stray beyond her control, but shall be conducted to localities where her priests are already prepared to receive them, and where their fellow-citizens will be bound to them by the ties of faith. Catholics in this land are already about as one in six. We receive accessions every day from the ranks of the Protestant sects; few, if any, of our own number fall away from us; the emigration of the future, to a great extent, will be in our hands. Thus will the church in America—where to-day, to use his own words, our Holy Father “is more truly Pope than in any other land”—grow in strength and beauty, and thus will she be prepared, when the hour comes, to save the republic for which her sons, from the hour of her birth until now, have shed their blood, and given their toil and their prayers, in unstinted measure.

A THRUSH’S SONG.

Underneath a leafy cover, Green with morning-wealth of June, Wanting still, like gift of lover Craving even greater boon, Deeper chords of light to perfect summer’s fulness, love’s high noon;

Just apart from all the glitter Of a busy crystal world Where, amid quick human twitter, Pond’rous engine huge arms hurled, Leaping shuttle wrought bright fancies, girded wheels obedient whirled;

Just a little from the glimmer, From the footfalls’ tuneless tread— With the distance ever dimmer— Rose, so calm o’ershadowèd, Sound of lusty drum and hautboy, with clear flute voice interlaid,

Notes exultant loud outpouring Chant of nations, lightly bound With frail melody, up soaring O’er the people gathered round, Resting from the glare a little, from the wearing sight and sound.

Ears of loyal Briton tingling Hark’ning there, “God save the Queen”; Erin’s children’s tears commingling At “The Wearing of the Green,” Thinking of a loveless bondage, truer trust that might have been.

Sounds of wrathful people seeming Storming through the “Marseillaise,” Stirred a land, nigh dead in dreaming, Through Hortense’s song of praise, Through its wailing sadness tolling bells of old chivalric days.

Through sad France’s slumber breaking Germany’s triumphant hymn, Armed peoples, eager waking, Watching Rhine-lights growing dim, Hearing clear a weary nation struggling sore with spectres grim.

In the nations’ anthems swelling Ever twanged some chord of wrong: Broken notes in anguish welling Even in our starlit song— Shadowy notes from swamp and prairie mingling with the suffering throng.

Stilled at last the music’s clamor, Drum and hautboy laid to rest, Softly through the silence’ glamour Stole the light wind of the west, Gently parted the green branches, tenderly each leaf caressed.

And a sudden thrill of sweetness, Mellow, careless, glad, and clear, Love’s noon-song in its completeness, Poured in peaceful nature’s ear From a thrush’s throat of silver—happy song without one tear—

Fell like precious, heav’n-dropped token 'Mid the elements of strife, 'Mid the melodies, grief-broken, Blare of trumpet, shriek of fife— Only with undarkened blessing was the thrush’s singing rife.

Where the ways were broad and ordered England’s Indian blossoms flamed; Here, where guarding thickets bordered, Bloom of May June’s sunshine claimed, Lifting, 'mid the throngs of people, glance, half-fearing, half-ashamed;

Trembling at the cymbals’ crashing Through the ancient solitude, Till the thrush’s sweetness flashing, With its wild-wood joy imbued, Seemed a covenant from heaven, arc of promise, rainbow-hued.

In the upper silence singing, Hidden minstrel, unafraid, In the sunlit branches, swinging, By the west wind, whispering, swayed, All the lower tumult silenced in the clear, blue depths o’erhead;

Whence the peace of heav’n, descending, Filled the bird’s song, true and clear, Lightsome duty sweetness lending, Joy o’erbrimming in its cheer, Freedom on his pinions resting, sunshine soft, and heaven near.

Careless strength and free heart blending In each note’s melodious mirth, Calm within a pure soul bending Praising for its heavenly birth, For its gift of soaring pinions, lightening so the bonds of earth.

With that clear and sudden sweetness Sober fancies swept along, And its wild-wood, perfect meetness Seemed our country’s truer song— Sunshine soft, and heaven near it, and no undertone of wrong.

So, methought, her clear voice, ringing, Should in strength of freedom rise, With the sweetness of its singing Every evil exorcise; Blessing for her children winning through her nearness to the skies.

PHILADELPHIA, June, 1876.

THE CONGREGATION OF CLUNY. TRANSLATED FROM SCHOEPPNER’S “CHARACTER-BILDER DER GESCHICHTE DES MITTELALTERS.”

At the close of the ninth century the great wealth of the Benedictine Order in France had produced a relaxation of discipline and a departure from regular observance in many of its monasteries which brought it into a state of decadence. One principal source of this degeneracy lay in the want of all organic union binding together the distinct monasteries, each one of which was exclusively subject to its own abbot. It is true that in earlier times the bishops exercised a certain jurisdiction over them; but this was seriously impeded by the fact that the abbot was frequently equal to the bishop in power and in external consideration. The pope was too distant; disorder could strike deep root before any information would reach him, and even then he was ordinarily able to employ only indirect methods of remedying the evil. This seems to have been felt by all those who, from the tenth century onwards, endeavored, by various additional statutes, explanations, and stricter applications of the Rule of St. Benedict, to bring back those who were subject to it to a more conscientious fulfilment of the obligations of their religious profession. At the time when the Carlovingian dynasty, represented in the person of Charles the Simple, was verging toward extinction, William the Pious, Duke of Aquitaine and Count of Auvergne, in concert with his duchess, Ingeburga, formed the plan of founding a new monastery. He took counsel respecting the carrying out of his design with Hugh, Abbot of St. Martin’s at Autun.

In company with the duke and duchess Hugh made an exploration of their domains in search of a suitable location, and selected a meadow on the banks of the little river Grosne, near an agreeable cascade, where a chapel in honor of the Blessed Virgin and St. Peter had been already erected. The duke objected that this was his favorite hunting-ground, and that the noise and tumult of deer-chasing would frequently disturb the quiet of the monastery. “Well, then,” replied the abbot, “drive away the hounds and bring in the monks; you well know which of the two will bring you the most favor with God.” The duke cheerfully assented to this proposition, and took measures for the erection of a monastery in honor of the apostles SS. Peter and Paul upon this territory, of which he had but recently acquired the possession.

At the recommendation of Hugh, Berno was invited from a neighboring monastery to become the first abbot. He was succeeded by Odo, the son of a Frankish knight, who had been brought up at the court of Duke William, had afterwards devoted himself to the religious state, and was at the time of his election in the maturity of his manhood. Odo saw that in many monasteries the end of the religious vocation had been entirely forgotten, and, in order that he might restore the primitive discipline of St. Benedict, he determined to reform the monastic state in accordance with its original spirit and intention, and to induce the monasteries in his own vicinity to adopt his reformation. He was a man well fitted to undertake such a task, by his personal austerity, his self-devotion to the good of others, and his extraordinary charity, which was so great that he was ready at any time to bestow all he had upon the poor, without any thought of reserving on one day what might be necessary for the next. The influence of his personal character, and the effect of his active efforts during a prolonged life, were so great that a number of monasteries became affiliated to the one over which he immediately presided. He is, therefore, properly speaking, the founder of the Cluniac Order.

His meek and humble successor, Aymard, won for himself by his amiable virtues the confidence of all the brethren of the order, and the favor of the great and powerful, who were profuse in conferring upon it liberal gifts, charters of protection and privilege. His successors in office, Majolus, Odilo, and Hugh I., were all equally eminent by their able administration, their great influence in all the most important ecclesiastical and political movements of their time, and their high favor with emperors, kings, and princes. Emperors, kings, popes, and bishops maintained intimate relations with the abbots of Cluny, and all the great and powerful nobles of the country sought their advice in matters of importance. Three Sovereign Pontiffs were taken from Cluny to fill the chair of St. Peter. When the son of a king was obliged to become a fugitive, he sought for a refuge at Cluny, and princes who were weary of life and disturbed by remorse of conscience came there to do penance among the brethren. The rulers of foreign countries were lavish of their donations to the order, the popes were equally munificent in conferring marks of their high favor, and bishops were eager for the affiliation of the most important monasteries in their dioceses with Cluny. The immense revenues which flowed into its coffers from all countries in the world became at last proverbial.

The internal discipline and external splendor of Cluny were maintained in an undisturbed permanence and stability for a period of two centuries. At the end of that time both were grievously shattered by the disastrous administration of the unworthy Abbot Pons, a man of worldly levity in character and manners, haughty and ambitious in his disposition, whose whole course of official conduct was such as to threaten the complete downfall of the order. After a length of time he was formally impeached and tried at the tribunal of Rome, by which he was deposed from his office as abbot. Disregarding this sentence, he seized anew on the possession of the monastery of Cluny by force of arms, but was soon after overpowered and cast into a prison, where he was carried off by a sudden attack of fever.

After a short period of only three months, during which the abbatial chair was occupied by Hugh II., Peter the Venerable was placed over the Cluniac Order, which he ruled for thirty-nine years, precisely during the period of St. Bernard, who was his intimate friend, and whom he survived about three years. His activity, prudence, and universal reputation, the intellectual power, deep learning, and exalted virtue which merited for him the appellation of Venerable by which he is designated in history, sufficed not only to heal Cluny from the wounds inflicted on it by the Abbot Pons, but to raise the whole order to its highest summit of importance, and to make the monastery which was its centre flourish in a state of unexampled spiritual and temporal prosperity. If we consider the many journeys which this great abbot undertook on affairs of the utmost importance connected with the public interests of the day, it would seem that he was exclusively a statesman; his vast correspondence seems sufficient to have employed the time of one whose whole attention was given to counselling all sorts of persons seeking his advice by letters; his theological works are like the productions of one actively occupied in study; the strictness with which he observed and enforced upon his subjects in the cloister the monastic rule indicates a contemplative ascetic; his administration of the temporalities of his monastery presents him in the light of an able financier and man of business. The world was filled with his fame, and his order attained the highest zenith of its glory during his administration, which ended at his death, during the Christmas-tide of the year 1156.

All the special rules of the Cluniac Order were based upon the Rule of St. Benedict. The ecclesiastical chant and the service of the choir employed much more time and attention, according to the customs of Cluny, than in other Benedictine monasteries. As far as possible, uniformity was enforced in the different houses after the model of the mother-house. Besides the special prayers which each one said according to his own devotion, one hundred and thirty-eight psalms were prescribed to be recited daily, which was usually done while engaged in performing the various tasks; and even in the great heats of summer, on the days when talking was permitted, there was only time for a recreation of half an hour. Every negligence or mistake in the choir-service received instantly a reproof. This was regarded as a spiritual military service, in which no individual caprice or negligence could be tolerated. Special care was exacted on the greater festivals of the church, and their high importance was recognized by the greater length of the choral song, the reading of longer lessons, and a more fervent devotion. During High Mass no Low Masses were allowed to be said, so that no one could in that way consult his own convenience and escape from the public and solemn celebration. The moment of the departure of one of the brethren from this world was treated as a specially solemn occasion. As soon as he had received Extreme Unction a wooden cross was put under his head in place of a pillow. All who could possibly attend were obliged to assist at the last agony of the dying man, and, although at other times running through the corridors was strictly forbidden, it was specially ordered whenever the passing-bell announced that one of the brethren was about to depart this life. Special revenues were devoted to all charitable purposes, and their conscientious expenditure strictly enjoined. There was a particular endowment for eighteen poor men who were perpetually supported by the mother-house. Six brothers were appointed for the service of the poor, one of whom waited on them, another acted as porter of their hospital, two others furnished the wood out of the forest for their fires, and two had charge of ovens for baking bread, to be given away in alms to the poor. Everything remaining on the tables of the refectory after the meals was taken by the almoner for distribution among the poor. A cover was laid for each one of the most distinguished benefactors at every meal, even though they were living at a great distance or had been long dead, and all their portions were taken for the poor. Twelve loaves, each weighing three pounds, were prepared each day for widows, orphans, feeble and aged persons. On Holy Thursday the ceremony of foot-washing was performed for as many poor men as there were brothers in the community, all of whom were afterwards served at dinner. On certain special occasions, and on all the festivals when the table of the brethren was better served than usual, more abundant alms were distributed. The almoner was bound to make a weekly visitation of the houses in the village near the monastery, that he might find out every poor person who was sick, and furnish him with food, wine, and medicines. The number of poor persons who regularly received aid was estimated at seventeen thousand. The Abbot Odilo sold the ornaments of the church and a crown presented by the German emperor Henry II. in order to relieve the wants of the people during a famine. The subordinate monasteries were required to imitate in this generous alms-giving the example of Cluny, and a similar observance of hospitality was also exacted. Precise rules were laid down for the reception of visitors of different ranks and conditions, who were continually arriving at the monastery on foot or on horseback. If they were ecclesiastics, they were not only invited to partake of the hospitality of the monastery, but also to participate in its religious exercises. Every one who travelled on foot received a certain amount of bread and wine on his arrival and at his departure. If the poverty of the house did not permit anything more than a temporary shelter and a friendly reception, this, at least, was to be cheerfully given to every one. The prior was not to consider what was within his means, but to go beyond them in providing for the wants of strangers. Frequently, when they had consumed all the provisions of the larder, the monks had to endure hunger until new supplies, which often came unexpectedly, were furnished by royal and noble benefactors.

The life of the monastic brethren was austere. Besides the regular and very long choir-service, which no one was dispensed from attending, the fasts were frequent. The flesh of quadrupeds was never allowed, and on the ferial days and the entire period from Septuagesima to Easter, not even fat could be used in preparing the food. The principal article of their daily diet was beans, with an occasional allowance of eggs and cheese, and more rarely of fish. After night prayers no one could taste food or drink anything without special necessity and permission. The violation of these rules and of the law of strict poverty was considered as a grievous transgression, exposing the offender to excommunication and privation of Christian burial.

Obedience, the pivot of all the virtues of an ecclesiastic, was regarded as having a higher and more extended obligation for religious. Its disregard was esteemed worthy of the severest punishment, and the incorrigible were subject to expulsion. Priors and other officials were twice admonished, and afterwards deposed without any hope of restitution. The observance of a strict rule of silence was regarded as a specially efficacious help to the acquisition of perfect spiritual virtues, and, in the opinion of the Abbot Odo, monastic life was utterly worthless without it. Absolute silence was invariably observed during meal-times, and during all times of the day throughout Lent and several other penitential seasons. The Cluniac monks became so expert in the use of the sign-language through their disuse of speech that they might have dispensed with talking altogether without the least inconvenience. The most perfect silence and stillness, undisturbed even by hasty and noisy walking through the cloisters, reigned throughout the monastery.

Every fault must be expiated by penance, or at least an acknowledgment before the abbot. Those who were late must remain standing or prostrate until a sign was given to them to repair to their places. The tardy at table received also a penance. Public offences received public penances, in order that every one might have sensible evidence that the community was vigilant in observing the behavior of each individual member. Smaller offences were punished by solitary confinement, making a station at the church-door, or exclusion from the common exercises. Those which were more serious were punished by flagellation, and, if the offence had been public, the penance was administered at the door of the church while the people were assembling for Mass, and the cause of it announced to them by an official of the monastery. For the gravest faults the culprit was put in irons or imprisoned in a dark, underground dungeon. St. Hugh’s maxim was that a monastery is not dishonored by the faults of its members, but by their impunity. Several brothers were appointed to make the rounds of the monastery at intervals, and to declare in chapter every disorder which they observed, whereupon due penance was inflicted on the delinquents. This duty devolved on the prior for the first hour of the night, and at intervals during its progress, with a special charge of watching that all the doors were properly closed and fastened.

Such a special care was observed in regard to cleanliness that the most particular housekeeper could not be more thorough or exact in a well-regulated private family than were these monks of Cluny in their domestic arrangements. This care for cleanliness showed a deep psychological insight into the close connection between this exterior virtue and interior purity, which is often endangered and damaged by a slovenly disregard of outward propriety. Articles of clothing and all the bed and table furniture were regularly changed according to an invariable rule. Careful supervision was observed towards the novices in respect to their personal neatness in such minute particulars as washing, combing their hair, etc., and conveniences for these purposes were provided in abundance for all, that they might easily make use of them when they came in from work to go to the choir or the refectory.

The clothing was very plain, in contrast to the worldly elegance and vanity in dress which prevailed in many other religious communities, but all the different articles of dress were provided in abundance, with two complete outfits for each one. The winter clothing was made to suit the season and the climate, warm and comfortable; for the men who made the regulations of Cluny were not so narrow-minded as to adhere scrupulously to purely exterior customs which were suitable to Italy but utterly unfit for the ruder climate of the North.

The sick were cared for with the most tender solicitude, six brothers were deputed to the service of the infirmary, and the best ass in the stables was set apart to haul wood for the fire. The infirmarian was always provided with spices and wholesome herbs to make the food of the sick more appetizing and wholesome. Meat was provided for them every day, and even on fasting-days. A certain part of the presents made to the monastery was assigned to the purchase of comforts and delicacies for the sick and weakly. They were dispensed from the rule of silence, and only required to refrain from abusing the privilege of talking. The abbot and grand-prior were required to make frequent visits to the sick, and the cellarer was bound to see each one, in company with the infirmarian, every day, and inquire what kind of food he wished for and in what way it should be prepared. As soon as one was released from the infirmary he came to the chapter, and, standing up, said to the prior: “I have been in the infirmary and have not kept the rules of the order according to our obligation.” The prior answered: “May God pardon you!” whereupon the convalescent brother went to the place of the penitents and recited the seven penitential psalms or seven _Pater Nosters_.

As for the interior legislation and administration of the order, a general chapter was held at Cluny once a year, where all the abbots, priors, and deans of the entire congregation were bound to appear under pain of deposition, those only who lived in distant countries being exempted from attendance oftener than once every two years. Every question which related to the rules was submitted to this chapter, and to the votes of all the brethren of the monastery of Cluny. Each one was obliged to make known in the chapter, without any regard to personal considerations, whatever he had noticed in any of the houses or in any individual member of the order which was worthy of censure, and was protected from any unpleasant consequences which might possibly ensue afterwards to himself from his disclosures. All priors whose administration or personal conduct was censurable were deposed by the chapter; and, finally, they made an examination of all the novices of the congregation.

As soon as the chapter was dissolved the supreme power reverted to the abbot of Cluny. He appointed all the priors and confirmed all the abbots-elect, being strictly forbidden to receive any presents or perquisites in connection with any such official act. He could make such regulations as he saw fit in all the houses; all his sentences upon individual delinquents which were in conformity with the canons were binding; and in the interval between the capitular assemblies he could depose from all offices without appeal. He was bound to share as much as possible in the common life of the other monks, to be with them in the common dormitory and at the common table, and to use the same food, the only mark of distinction being that he was served with wine of a better quality and with two loaves at dinner.

Next in rank and authority came the grand-prior, appointed by the abbot with the counsel of the elders of the monastery and the assent of the chapter. Under the abbot’s supreme direction he presided over all the spiritual and temporal offices of the monastery, with a special oversight of those brothers who were charged with out-door employments on the cloistral domains. Every year, after the vintage, he made an inspection of all the farm-lands, examined the stores laid up in the barns and cellars, and directed the division of the fruits of the harvest for the use of those who resided in the outlying farm-houses, and for the general use within the monastery.

The interior order of the house was under the oversight of the prior of the community, who had several assistants, and in case of absence a deputy. The rule prescribed that no account should be taken of birth or other personal considerations of human respect in the choice of prelates and officers, but only of moral virtue, experience, and prudence. No abbot or prior, not even the abbot-general of the congregation, was allowed to travel without some of the brethren in his company, as witnesses of his conduct and associates in fulfilling the devotions prescribed by the rule.

We can form some estimate of the extent of the monastic buildings of Cluny from the circumstance related in history, that in the year 1245 Pope Innocent IV., with twelve cardinals and his entire suite; also two patriarchs, three archbishops, eleven bishops, with their respective suites; farther, the king of France, with his mother, wife, brother, and sister, and the whole of their retinue; the emperor of Constantinople, the crown-princes of Aragon and Castile, several dukes and counts, and a crowd of knights, ecclesiastics, and monks, were accommodated within the precincts of the monastery without encroaching on any part of it which was ordinarily occupied by the community or incommoding any of the brethren.

The fine arts were made to contribute to that which is their highest end—the service of religion—in the Cluniac Order more than in any other contemporary institute. They were all employed in harmony and unity with each other to enhance the splendor of the divine service. The candles and lamps by which the church was lighted were placed in costly hoops beset with precious stones. Instead of candelabra, trees artistically wrought in bronze stood near the altar, having the lighted candles prescribed for the solemn ceremonies blazing among their branches. Paintings covered the walls; the windows were richly ornamental and filled with colored glass. Costly tapestry and hangings, beautifully-carved stalls, a decorated pavement, chimes of bells of unusual size, reliquaries of gold whose beauty of workmanship even surpassed their costliness, chalices, ciboriums, and monstrances of gold, sparkling with jewels, vestments heavy and stiff with cloth of gold, and all else that was magnificent in sacred art and decoration, made the church of Cluny a theme of praise and admiration throughout all France. It was probably at the date of its erection the largest in the world, and rested upon sixty-eight columns, each eight and one half feet in diameter. Thirty-two of these pillars supported the vast dome, and the whole edifice, which was built in the peculiar form of an archiepiscopal cross, was regarded as one of the most splendid monuments of the Roman style of architecture in France. Sculpture, carving, and painting rivalled each other in the decoration of this magnificent church, and there still remained at the beginning of the present century a representation of the Eternal Father on a gold ground in the vaulting of the apse, ten feet in height, which retained all its original brilliancy of color. The choir-stalls, which were of a comparatively late period, were two hundred and twenty-five in number at the time of the suppression—showing how numerous the community had become—and the towers were filled with a great many bells, the largest of which were melted down to cast cannon during the religious wars. At present but little remains of this grand structure in a state of ruin. During the French Revolution the whole was sold for building material for the sum of twenty thousand dollars, and thus rude force destroyed this grand work of the spirit of Christianity.

The cultivation of science was fostered in the Cluniac Order with much greater care and zeal than in some of the other monastic bodies. Its founders were more solicitous for the promotion of intellectual labor than for material industry. The Abbot Peter wrote: “In virtue of a special privilege, the abbots of Cluny from ancient times promoted literary occupations with zeal and energy. It is not the desire of winning a high reputation which stimulates them to write books, but the feeling that it would be shameful to neglect the imitation of their predecessors, the holy Fathers of the church, and thus to prove themselves degenerate sons.” Under such superiors the brethren were not deterred by any ill-grounded scruple from applying themselves to the study of the heathen classics, and in fact considered this study as a valuable auxiliary to the investigation of the Sacred Scriptures. The works of the great ecclesiastical writers were fully appreciated and diligently perused, and the valuable manuscripts collected in the library of Cluny were not considered as a mere assortment of curiosities for the sake of show, but as useful implements for the cultivation of science, and in a generous spirit of liberality were freely lent to other monasteries for the sake of making copies or recensions. The books used for the church service were written out in a beautiful, ornamental text, richly adorned with initial letters executed in the most elaborate style of art; and those who were engaged in this kind of work, if it would not admit of interruption, were excused from choir for the time being. The ability and industry of the Cluniac monks in collecting manuscripts and preserving precious monuments of ancient history have been recognized even in later times, and abundant documents of that zeal for the promotion of science which was not damped by the earnestness with which religious discipline was enforced have come down to our own day.

The confraternity of Cluny, which had speedily risen to a high consideration throughout France, attained to a higher and more solidly-established reputation during the period extending through nearly forty years of the administration of Peter the Venerable. The renovation of the Benedictine Order in its original spirit which had been effected by the Cluniac reform became renowned in other countries as well as in France, and awoke the desire of attempting to accomplish the same happy results elsewhere by the use of similar methods. Every founder of a new monastery in France desired to introduce the rule and submit to the supremacy of Cluny. Kings, princes, and bishops urged upon the already existing monastic communities, especially when they had fallen into disorder, incorporation with the Cluniac congregation. During the rule of Peter the Venerable it was increased by the addition of three hundred and fourteen monasteries, collegiate foundations, and churches, and at its most flourishing period it embraced within its limits more than two thousand distinct houses. At the time of the Crusades it extended itself even beyond the sea. Cluniac houses were founded in the valley of Josaphat and on Mt. Tabor, and in the time of Abbot Peter a monastery in a suburb of Constantinople was united to the mother-house, over which he presided.

Men of all conditions who desired to do penance for their sins, to seek a refuge from the dangers of the world, or to find spiritual direction and come under a holy influence for their own sanctification, sought to make reparation and deserve the grace of God by rich gifts to Cluny, to consecrate themselves to God in some house of the order by the religious vows, or to secure for themselves by becoming affiliated to it a share in the sacrifices and prayers perpetually offered within its sacred enclosures. It is related that Count Guy of Macon, who had been a bitter persecutor of the order, one day presented himself at the gates of Cluny in company with his son, several grandsons, thirty knights, and the wives of each one of the noble group respectively, all of whom demanded permission to take the vows of religion. Under the sixth abbot, Hugh I., three thousand monks were present at one general chapter. The crowd of applicants for admission became so great that Hugh VI. was once compelled to issue an edict forbidding the reception of any new candidates during a term of three years. Under Peter the Venerable the number of monks resident at Cluny increased from two hundred to four hundred and sixty, some of whom, however, led a solitary life as hermits in the neighboring forests.

The popes were lavish in their grants of privileges to Cluny and the monasteries connected with it. Alexander II. decreed that no bishop or prelate should have the right of excommunication in respect to the Cluniac congregation. Urban II. allowed the use of episcopal insignia to the abbot, and Calixtus II. conceded to him the special privileges of a cardinal. The brethren of the order were even permitted to have the celebration of Mass continued for their own benefit during an interdict.

There is nothing which shows more clearly the high esteem in which Cluny was held than the decree of Pope Innocent IV. in the third session of the Council of Lyons: that accredited copies of all the official documents relating to the diplomatic intercourse of emperors, kings, and other princes with the Roman Church should be deposited in its archives. This important and precious collection was still in existence at the outbreak of the Revolution.

The history of Cluny has a very great importance in connection with the general history of the mediæval period, but especially with the great ecclesiastical reformation of Gregory VII., which was prepared by the interior working of the order within the church. For many prudential reasons the fact that the great ecclesiastical movement of the eleventh century had its source in the monastery of Cluny was kept out of sight as much as possible; but it is proved by abundant evidence, and Gregory VII. himself, who was its prior when St. Leo IX. persuaded him to return with him to Rome in 1049, speaks of the peculiar and intimate relations between Cluny and the Holy See.

THE BRIDES OF CHRIST.

VII. ST. AGATHA.

“She hath no breasts—is cruelly maimed withal: What shall we do for her, when spoken for, Our little sister? Sheathe her, if a door, In boards of cedar; if she be a wall, Build up a house of silver,[116] and instal Her worship”—so the monks. O bleeding core Of maidenhood, thy Spouse and King shall pour Balm in thy wounds, the lilies’ growth recall!

When Etna belched forth Phlegethon, and rolled Its molten flanks upon Catania, The saint’s veil they did reverently unfold And wave it in the face of fire—Behold! Piled black against the convent’s wall to-day, That Red Sea curdled by Saint Agatha!

Footnote 116:

Song of Solomon viii. 8, 9.

VIII. ST. LUCIA.

“What’s this? Two human eyes upon a dish? Wretch! what dost mean?” “Lucia sends thee these; She greets thee: 'Be no longer ill at ease; They are thine! When mine, a spirit devilish, With them, with pink bloom and pale limbs, did fish For men’s souls.’” Quick! to her—ere horror freeze. Her wan lips smiled beneath the bandages: “Thou hast languished for mine eyes—have, then, thy wish!”

She raised the fillet—the youth dropped as dead. “Look up!” a sweet voice spake, “and praise the Lord!” He obeyed trembling—O illumined head! Low with an altered spirit he adored. Thenceforth an angel’s eyes, her own instead, Lighted her to her martyrdom’s reward.

IX. ST. URSULA.

A bower of woven palms! In white arrayed, Marshalled beneath that verdant canopy By fair-haired Ursula of Brittany, Eleven thousand martyrs, each a maid! For England’s heir, Etherius, had obeyed His bride’s will, honoring her virginity. To Rome on pilgrimage, by river and sea, They sailed, and prettily the bold mariner played.

Saint, dear to tender years! thou and thy doves Fell pierced with many arrows, and the Rhine With blood of innocents ran red as wine— Still teach that to the pure Death’s kiss is Love’s! Still teach it, though thy mortuary shrine May moulder, while the stream to ocean moves!

THE UNKNOWN EROS.[117]

Footnote 117:

_The Unknown Eros, and Other Odes._ London: George Bell & Sons. 1877.

There seems a growing and lamentable tendency among English poets in these days to divide themselves up into schools. We have the Tennysonian, the Swinburnian, the Rossettian, as a little earlier we had the Lake school, the Byronic, and so on. In these schools of poetry, as in schools of painting, there are certain marked features peculiar to each and forming, as it were, the common property of that one. Certain tones and colors belong to this: subdued grays, royal purples, dim and far-away lights on meadow and mere. Another is a lustier flesh-and-blood school: its men and women are decidedly, though musically, improper. The choice expressions and tender care that the other lavishes on the beauties of nature this one devotes to a maiden’s hair, or her cheek, or her nose, the droop of her lashes, or the arch of her brow. A third affects the mystic in matter and form; the more incomprehensible it is, the finer the poetry. It is like the “vague school” in painting. One is sometimes puzzled to know whether the picture be a battle-piece, a landscape, a portrait, or a nightmare on canvas. And so they go on.

This follow-my-leader tendency is unquestionably a mark of feebleness. It would be so in any art; it is obviously so in an art that springs from inspiration, and is thus necessarily original. A poet is comprehensible; a school of poets is absurd. Imagine a school of Homers, of Virgils, of Dantes, of Shaksperes, of Miltons, of Byrons! Why, the world could not hold them.

Weak as our days may be in original poets, they are strong at least in numbers. Probably, unless in the days of good Queen Anne, never before did such a constant and voluminous stream of English verse roll through the press. Most of it falls still-born on the market; yet nothing seems to discourage the poets. From Tupper to Tennyson they publish and publish and publish all the time. Yet there is not a living English poet to-day—unless Aubrey de Vere, whose best work has been his latest—who did not establish whatever fame he has almost a quarter of a century ago, and whose poems since that period have not shown a marked and steady decline.

In the author of _The Unknown Eros_ we find a man who has certainly something new to say; who follows no leader; who has thoughts, and a mode of expressing them, all his own; who cares less for how than for what; whose work compels attention, and who depends in nowise on the jingle of words, the tricks of adjective and rhyme—the ballet-dancing, so to say, of the English language—for his attraction. Indeed, in respect of form he is far behind the other poets of the time. He almost disregards it. Yet, as will be seen, the strange dress that he has chosen for his creation fits it admirably, and moulds itself at will to the strenuous freedom of the combative athlete, the scorn of a man of fine feelings and bright intelligence, the meditative mood of the student, or the softer movements of a lover. His instrument is now a clarion call to battle, now a lover’s lute, now a dirge. It has the strength and simplicity of the Gregorian chant, which in a few notes and changes expresses the heights of inspiration and exultation, the depths of dread, the saddest sorrow of the human heart.

The volume is a collection of odes, written at various and long intervals apparently, and in a style of metre resembling somewhat that of the minor poems of Milton. It has often the regular irregularity of the Greek chorus, with much of the latter’s elasticity, brightness, flexibility, and crystalline texture. In all this it is novel—markedly and successfully so. It is more novel, however, in subject-matter. It is refreshing to come across a man, a poet especially, who can drop out of the commonplace, and do it without affectation. So accustomed have we grown, however, to the commonplace that we follow him at first with difficulty. His “Eros” is indeed an unknown god to the run of readers. He is no Cupid rosy-red, with flowery bow and fire-tipped dart to smite and melt the hearts of sweet young lovers. He does not slumber in summer meads, or rove listlessly by laughing streamlets, or roguishly haunt the bosky dells, or float adown the slanting sunbeam to flame on the unwary and capture their hearts and kindle them into passion while they languish in the soft arms of Mother Nature. His God is not this pagan deity. He is remote, obscure, harsh-seeming. The poet’s song is no pleasing love-tune. It is martial, high, far away, up on crags remote and to be reached only by thorny paths with bleeding feet and straining eyes, and hearts that faint many times on the way. True love is banished from the earth, the poet seems to think; and in place of him, high, pure, serene, with his head lifted up and bathed in the clear light and refulgence of heaven, and his feet only touching the earth, men have set a toy, a plaything, a fair bestiality.

“What rumored heavens are these,” he asks,

“Which not a poet sings, O, Unknown Eros? What this breeze Of sudden wings Speeding at far returns of time from interstellar space To fan my very face, And gone as fleet, _Through delicatest ether feathering soft their solitary beat_, With ne’er a light plume dropp’d, nor any trace To speak of whence they came, or whither they depart?

* * * * *

O, Unknown Eros, sire of awful bliss, What portent and what Delphic word, Such as in form of snake forebodes the bird, Is this? In me life’s even flood What eddies thus? What in its ruddy orbit lifts the blood Like a perturbed moon of Uranus Reaching to some great world in ungauged darkness hid; And whence This rapture of the sense Which, by thy whisper bid, Reveres with obscure rite and sacramental sign A bond I know not of nor dimly can divine; This subject loyalty which longs For chains and thongs Woven of gossamer and adamant, To bind me to my unguess’d want, And so to lie, Between those quivering plumes that thro’ fine ether pant, For hopeless, sweet eternity?”

The hard questions here put the poet answers, to some degree at least, in other odes. In the “Legem Tuam Dilexi” (p. 43) he sings:

“The 'Infinite.’ Word horrible! at feud With life, and the braced mood Of power and joy and love; Forbidden, by wise heathen ev’n, to be Spoken of Deity, Whose Name, on popular altars, was '_The Unknown_,’ Because, or ere It was reveal’d as One Confined in Three, The people fear’d that it might prove Infinity, _The blazon which the devils desired to gain_; And God, for their confusion, laugh’d consent; Yet did so far relent, That they might seek relief, and not in vain, _In dashing of themselves against the shores of pain_.”

Was there ever a truer picture painted by man of the curse of lost souls and the hopeless relief they find “in dashing of themselves against the shores of pain”—that relief that the demented seek in beating their weary brains out or letting out the stream of the tired and useless life into the dark ocean of infinity, severing with maddened and sacrilegious hand the little knot that separates Time from Eternity? And what stronger picture of the prevalence of evil and the inherent tendency in the fallen world to rebel than this:

“Nor bides alone in hell The bond-disdaining spirit boiling to rebel. But for compulsion of strong grace, The pebble in the road Would straight explode, _And fill the ghastly boundlessness of space_. The furious power, To soft growth twice constrain’d in leaf and flower, Protests, and longs to flash its faint self far Beyond the dimmest star. The same Seditious flame, Beat backward with reduplicated might, Struggles alive within its stricter term, And is the worm.”

And here follows the response to the search after the “Unknown Eros”:

And the just Man does on himself affirm God’s limits, and is conscious of delight, Freedom and right, And so His Semblance is, Who, every hour, By day and night, Buildeth new bulwarks ’gainst the Infinite. _For, ah, who can express How full of bonds and simpleness Is God, How narrow is He_, And how the wide waste field of possibility Is only trod Straight to His homestead in the human heart, And all His art Is as the babe’s, that wins his mother to repeat Her little song so sweet!

* * * * *

Man, Darling of God. Whose thoughts but live and move Round him; Who woos his will To wedlock with His own, and does distil To that drop’s span _The attar of all rose-fields of all love_! Therefore the soul select assumes the stress Of bonds unbid, which God’s own style express Better than well, And aye hath borne, To the Clown’s scorn, The fetters of the three-fold golden chain....”

What “the three-fold golden chain” is that binds “the soul select” to God no Catholic needs to be told. Free and loyal self-sacrifice, in a world where self-sacrifice, whether we like it or not, is necessary and must be endured, brings us nearest and makes us likest to Him, the true Eros who “emptied himself for us.” These lines will help us to read the riddle of the “Unknown Eros,” “some note” of whose “renown and high behest” the poet thinks might thus “in enigma be express’d”:

“There lies the crown Which all thy longing cures. Refuse it, Mortal, _that it may be yours_! It is a spirit though it seems red gold; And such may no man, but by shunning, hold. Refuse it, though refusing be despair; And thou shalt feel the phantom in thy hair.”

This thought again is more fully wrought out in the conclusion of the same ode, “Legem Tuam Dilexi”:

“... For to have naught Is to have all things without care or thought!

* * * * *

And lastly bartering life’s dear bliss for pain; But evermore in vain; For joy (rejoice ye Few that tasted have!) Is Love’s obedience Against the genial laws of natural sense, Whose wide self-dissipating wave, Prison’d in artful dikes, Trembling returns and strikes Thence to its source again, In backward billows fleet, Crest crossing crest ecstatic as they greet; Thrilling each vein, Exploring every chasm and cove Of the full heart with floods of honeyed love, And every principal street And obscure alley and lane Of the intricate brain With brimming rivers of light and breezes sweet Of the primordial heat; Till, unto view of me and thee, Lost the intense life be, Or ludicrously display’d, by force Of distance, as a soaring eagle, or a horse On far-off hillside shown, May seem a gust-driv’n rag or a dead stone.”

To those who read these lines carefully it will not be necessary to say that the author is a Catholic. His name, though modestly withheld from the present volume, is not unknown. It is many years ago since Coventry Patmore sang his sweet love-songs, _The Betrothal_ and _The Espousals_.

They were received favorably enough by the critics—far more favorably, indeed, than have been many higher and greater poems on their first appearance: Keats’ _Endymion_, for instance. Then a strange silence struck the poet, and he was dumb.

If the present volume is the growth of all these silent years, Mr. Patmore has not suffered by his solitude. Between his earlier work and the present there is no comparison. Indeed, it takes a very careful reading of the first to detect therein the germ of the strong growth and most beautiful flower that compel admiration to-day. Those were nothing more than the story, told with all the fond minuteness of a gentle, ardent, intelligent, and chivalrous young lover, of his first true love; of the flowery paths and pleasant ways that led up to it; of the gracious nothings that make that time so sweet and ever memorable to the lovers; the lone communings, the tremulous doubts, the bitter-sweet emotions, the sun and shade, the laughing April showers that weave Love’s many-colored web and make a brief paradise for the new Adam and Eve, with no serpent lurking in the grass—all this is told delightfully and with delight. The verse is sweet and pleasant and flowing as the subject; but it is a song to while away a drowsy hour, not to cause us to halt and listen in the busy march and fierce strife of life. We glance over them with lazy pleasure as we watch the gambols of children in the sun.

These later poems are of a far different and more solemn nature. The poet has lived much, felt much, suffered much, joyed much, thought and meditated much in this long interval. He has been lifted to the heights of heaven; he has been dashed back to the gates of hell. He has been tossed on the waves of Doubt and felt the brotherhood of Despair. He has lost her who first taught him to sing; whose gentle glances thrilled the tender chords of his nature and moved them to utter sweet music. Here is her picture:

“But there danced she, who from the leaven Of ill preserved my heart and wit All unawares, for she was heaven, Others at best but fit for it. I mark’d her step, with peace elate, Her brow more beautiful than morn, Her sometime air of girlish state Which sweetly waived its right to scorn; The giddy crowd, she grave the while, Although, as ’twere beyond her will, About her mouth the baby smile That she was born with linger’d still. Her ball-dress seemed a breathing mist, From the fair form exhaled and shed, Raised in the dance with arm and wrist All warmth and light, unbraceleted. Her motion, feeling ’twas beloved, The pensive soul of tune express’d, And, oh, what perfume, as she moved, Came from the flowers in her breast!”[118]

Footnote 118:

“The Angel in the House,” _The Espousals_, p. 61.

Here is she ten years later:

“Her sons pursue the butterflies, Her baby daughter mocks the doves With throbbing coo: in his fond eyes She’s Venus with her little Loves; Her step’s an honor to the earth, Her form’s the native-land of grace, And, lo, his coming lights with mirth Beauty’s metropolis, her face! Of such a lady proud’s the lord, And that her happy bosom knows; She takes his arm without a word, In lanes of laurel and of rose.”[119]

Footnote 119:

_The Espousals_, p. 73.

And here at last is her “Departure,” as told in the latest volume:

“It was not like your great and gracious ways! Do you, that have naught other to lament, Never, my Love, repent Of how, that July afternoon, You went, With sudden, unintelligible phrase, And frighten’d eye, Upon your journey of so many days, Without a single kiss or a good-by? I knew, indeed, that you were parting soon; And so we sate, within the sun’s low rays, You whispering to me, for your voice was weak, Your harrowing praise. Well, it was well, my Wife, To hear you such things speak, And see your love

Make of your eyes a growing gloom of life, As a warm south wind sombres a March grove. And it was like your great and gracious ways To turn your talk on daily things, my Dear, Lifting the luminous, pathetic lash To let the laughter flash, Whilst I drew near, Because you spoke so low that I could scarcely hear. But all at once to leave me at the last, More at the wonder than the loss aghast, With huddled, unintelligible phrase, And frighten’d eye, And go your journey of all days With not one kiss or a good-by, And the only loveless look the look with which you pass’d, ’Twas all unlike your great and gracious ways.”[120]

Footnote 120:

_The Unknown Eros_, pp. 63-65.

It goes without saying that such a loss must tell with incalculable force on a man of intense sensibility. Trials of this kind best prove a man. Some they crush; others they humiliate only to exalt. If we may judge by the silent testimony of the book before us, his great loss made this man greater. He felt, if not for the first time, more keenly than ever before, how uncertain and passing is all merely human happiness. The known Eros that had charmed his life suddenly passed away “with sudden, unintelligible phrase,” and in the darkness that fell upon his soul his humbled eyes were opened to the unknown Eros who was near him all the while.

But, beyond and beside this, between the publication of his earlier poems and the latest his conversion to the Catholic faith took place. So we judge, at least, from internal evidence in the books. Here was a new and most powerful agent introduced to act upon his nature. Moreover, the world had moved in the interval. Many and mighty changes had taken place in the world, and they did not pass unfelt or unobserved by the silent poet. But before we come to these we will give one more response to his questioning of the oracle before whom of all he burns his incense. In the “Deliciæ Sapientiæ de Amore” he sings joyously:

“Love, light for me Thy ruddiest blazing torch, That I, albeit a beggar by the Porch Of the glad Palace of Virginity, May gaze within, and sing the pomp I see....

* * * * *

Bring, Love, anear, And bid be not afraid Young Lover true, and love-foreboding Maid, And wedded Spouse, if virginal of thought; For I will sing of naught Less sweet to hear Than seems A music in their half-remember’d dreams.

* * * * *

... The heavens themselves eternal are with fire Of unapproach’d desire, By the aching heart of Love, which cannot rest, In blissfullest pathos so indeed possess’d. O, spousals high; O, doctrine blest, Unutterable in even the happiest sigh; This know ye all Who can recall With what a welling of indignant tears Love’s simpleness first hears The meaning of his mortal covenant, And from what pride comes down To wear the crown Of which ’twas very heaven to feel the want.

* * * * *

Therefore gaze bold, That so in you be joyful hope increas’d, Thorough the Palace portals, and behold The dainty and unsating Marriage-Feast. O, hear Them singing clear 'Cor meum et caro mea’ round the 'I am,’ The Husband of the Heavens, and the Lamb Whom they for ever follow there that kept, Or, losing, never slept Till they reconquer’d had in mortal fight The standard white.

* * * * *

Gaze and be not afraid, Young Lover true and love-foreboding Maid. The full noon of deific vision bright Abashes nor abates No spark minute of Nature’s keen delight. ’Tis there your Hymen waits! There where in courts afar all unconfused they crowd, As fumes the starlight soft In gulfs of cloud, And each to the other, well-content, Sighs oft, '’Twas this we meant!' Gaze without blame, Ye in whom living Love yet blushes for dead shame. There of pure Virgins none Is fairer seen, Save One, Than Mary Magdalene.

* * * * *

Love makes the life to be A fount perpetual of virginity; For, lo, the Elect Of generous Love, how named soe’er, _affect Nothing but God, Or mediate or direct_, Nothing but God, The Husband of the Heavens: And who Him love, in potence great or small, Are, one and all, Heirs of the Palace glad And only clad With the bridal robes of ardor virginal.”

The Love that our poet has been seeking, has found, and here hymns in strains that at times are truly little short of seraphic, will now be known to the reader; and we leave this high, ethereal Court of Love that is human indeed, yet more than human, to glance at other and more ordinary, though still lofty, subjects which the poet has touched.

In a sense it is really refreshing to find that he is not always in the skies; that he is very human and made of flesh and blood like ourselves. Indeed, so human is he that he openly confesses, in a poem of matchless beauty and delicacy, to having found a substitute for his dead wife. Ordinary men, who are not poets, yet who nevertheless have hearts, will give a rough reading to the exquisite ode, “Tired Memory” (p. 93), wherein the poet, lamenting his wife, and confessing truthfully, albeit sadly, that

“In our mortal air None thrives for long upon the happiest dream,”

and seeking round “for some extreme of unconceived, interior sacrifice, whereof the smoke might rise to God,” cries in agony:

“My Lord, if thy strange will be this, That I should crucify my heart, Because my love has also been my pride, I do submit, if I saw how, to bliss, Wherein She has no part.”

“And I was heard,” he adds, let us hope untruthfully; for the “crucifixion of his heart” took the shape apparently of a second wife, thus:

“My heart was dead, Dead of devotion and tired memory, When a strange grace of thee _In a fair stranger_, as I take it, bred To her some tender heed, Most innocent Of purpose therewith blent, And pure of faith, I think, to thee; yet such That the pale reflex of an alien love, So vaguely, sadly shown, Did her heart touch Above All that, till then, had woo’d her for its own. And so the fear, which is love’s chilly dawn, Flush’d faintly upon lids that droop’d like thine, And made me weak, By thy delusive likeness doubly drawn, And Nature’s long-suspended breath of flame, Persuading soft, and whispering Duty’s name, Awhile to smile and speak With this thy Sister sweet, and therefore mine...”

But this is not so much the humanity to which we referred. We think that three characteristics will strike the readers of these odes: 1, the high spiritual nature of many; 2, the deep pathos and human love of others; 3, the lofty scorn and fierce sarcasm displayed, mistakenly sometimes, in certain of the odes.

The poet is an Englishman of Englishmen, and, only for his Catholic faith, it seems to us that he would be one among the prophets of despair, whose name is legion and whose day is the present.

“O, season strange for song!”

he cries in the Proem;

“Is’t England’s parting soul that nerves my tongue As other kingdoms, nearing their eclipse, Have, in their latest bards, uplifted strong The voice that was their voice in earlier days? Is it her sudden, loud and piercing cry, The note which those that seem too weak to sigh Will sometimes utter just before they die?”

To speak frankly, we do not think it is. We do not think England’s soul is parting yet. We think there is much good left in this world for England to do; at the very least there is much atonement to be made for the many and great evils and national crimes—among others that greatest of all, apostasy—for which that soul has to answer. She can do much, she has done something, toward making this atonement; and the time of grace was never nearer to her than at present. Nevertheless, it is impossible to deny the intense pathos and exquisite beauty of the following sad lines:

“Lo, weary of the greatness of her ways, There lies my Land, with hasty pulse and hard, Her ancient beauty marr’d, And, in her cold and aimless roving sight, _Horror of light_....”

In the sixth ode, entitled “Peace,” he returns to this theme:

“O England, how hast thou forgot, In dullard care for undisturbed increase Of gold, which profits not, The gain which once thou knew’st was for thy peace! Honor is peace, the peace which does accord Alone with God’s glad word: 'My peace I send you, and I send a sword.’

* * * * *

Beneath the heroic sun Is there then none Whose sinewy wings by choice do fly In the fine mountain-air of public obloquy, To tell the sleepy mongers of false ease That war’s the ordained way of all alive, And therein with good-will to dare and thrive Is profit and heart’s peace?

* * * * *

Remnant of Honor, brooding in the dark Over your bitter cark, Staring, as Rispah stared, astonied seven days, Upon the corpses of so many sons, Who loved her once, Dead in the dim and lion-haunted ways, Who could have dreamt That times should come like these!”

We do not altogether go with Mr. Patmore in this invective, however much we may admire its form. England has certainly acted meanly in many important European questions of late years. She will probably so act in many more in the future, if she finds it advisable or profitable. And it is a poor excuse to ask what other European nation has not acted or would not act, had it the chance, equally meanly with England. We may be very wrathful about the matter; we may have some very hard things to say against England for not drawing the sword in certain cases; yet between the nation that is too ready to fight and the nation that guards severely what are strictly its own primary interests without fighting, we certainly prefer the latter. The bloody road is a sad road to glory, and its end is never seen. While, then, we may for the moment side with the passionate poet who sits down in his studio and hurls his wrath in words of flame against the ministry for not leading the country into war and reviving ancient glories, as they are called, on second thoughts, while still, perhaps, thoroughly disgusted with the ministry and the meanness of their ways, we become gradually reconciled to the situation, and thank Heaven, though of course not the ministers, that we can sleep quietly in our beds. It may be an ignoble sense—doubtless it is; yet if it prevailed a little more generally throughout the world just now, the world would not, in the long run, be the sufferer from it.

There is another peace against which Mr. Patmore declaims in no measured terms in “The Standards.” This was written soon after the launching of Mr. Gladstone’s first pamphlet, not so much against “the English Catholics,” as the author states in a note—he would do well to remember that the world is a little larger than England—but against _Catholics_: against the Catholic Church and its chief.

“... That last, Blown from our Zion of the Seven Hills, Was no uncertain blast! Listen: the warning all the champaign fills, And minatory murmurs, answering, mar The Night, both near and far, Perplexing many a drowsy citadel Beneath whose ill-watch’d walls the Powers of Hell, With armed jar And angry threat, surcease Their long-kept compact of contemptuous peace! Lo, yonder, where our little English band, With peace in heart and wrath in hand, Have dimly ta’en their stand, Sweetly the light Shines from the solitary peak at Edgbaston, Whence, o’er the dawning Land, Gleam the gold blazonries of Love irate ’Gainst the black flag of Hate.”

This call is most spirited and trenchant and bold. We can only find space for the strong end:

“The sanction of the world’s undying hate Means more than flaunted flags in windy air. Be ye of gathering fate Now gladly ware. Now from the matrix, by God’s grinding wrought, The brilliant shall be brought; The white stone mystic set between the eyes Of them that get the prize, Yea, part and parcel of that mighty Stone Which shall be thrown Into the Sea, and Sea shall be no more.”

“1867” is a poem strongly written and of marked character, but with which we cannot agree. It was called out apparently by the passage of the bill extending the suffrage by the conservative ministry under the leadership of Mr. Disraeli. It is—so we read it, and we see no possibility of reading it otherwise—a direct and bitter attack on a rational extension of the popular liberties, which we take to be radically wrong in conception:

“_In the year of the great crime_, When the false English Nobles _and their Jew_, By God demented, slew The Trust they stood twice pledged to keep from wrong, One said, Take up thy Song, That breathes the mild and almost mythic time Of England’s prime! But I, Ah, me, The freedom of the few That, in our free Land, were indeed the free, Can song renew?”

* * * * *

Let us here say that if a man cannot attack Mr. Disraeli, or the Earl of Beaconsfield, on higher and fairer ground than on that of his being “a Jew,” he may as well let that statesman alone. A man who adopts this very small, very cheap, and very common mode of attack is not worthy the hearing of sensible men. Addressing the “outlawed Best”—by the bye, the poet is very arbitrary and perplexing in his use of capitals—England’s nobles, presumably, Mr. Patmore says:

“Know, ’twas the force of function high, In corporate exercise, and public awe Of Nature’s, Heaven’s, and England’s Law, That Best, though mix’d with Bad, should reign, Which kept you in your sky!”

Does he mean that the “Best” are restricted to the English nobility? If he does mean this, he is quite wrong; if he does not mean it, then the lines immediately following are meaningless:

“But, when the sordid Trader caught The loose-held sceptre from your hands distraught, And soon, to the Mechanic vain, Sold the proud toy for naught, Your charm was broke, your task was sped, Your beauty, with your honor, dead.”

And so the ode goes on to hope that

“Prayer perchance may win A term to God’s indignant mood And the orgies of the multitude, Which now begin....”

We cannot help thinking, if God’s name must be introduced in the matter, that he is not especially indignant with Mr. Disraeli and the English nobles and people at the extension of the suffrage, and that for this reason to stigmatize 1867 as “the year of the great Crime” is nonsense. As for “the sordid Trader,” there has always been a considerable admixture of the “Trader” in the composition of the English government, noble or ignoble. The first Napoleon’s estimate of the English as “a nation of shopkeepers” was not an ill-judged one; and never was that government, at least since Reformation times, so pure and its members so honest as to-day, when “the sordid Trader” has a large hand in the administration. We do all honor to the spirit of chivalry; we do not object to class distinctions in countries where such distinctions are historic and hereditary; but we recognize manhood wherever we find it, and set it above all accidents of time or clime or artificial restrictions. At the end of the ode, however, the poet rises above his smaller self to a strain that is noble and true:

'And now, because the dark comes on apace When none can work for fear, And Liberty in every Land lies slain, _And the two Tyrannies unchallenged reign_, And heavy prophecies, suspended long At supplication of the righteous few And so discredited, to fulfilment throng, Restrain’d no more by faithful prayer or tear, And the dread baptism of blood seems near That brings to the humbled Earth the Time of Grace, Hush’d be all song, And let Christ’s own look through The darkness, suddenly increased, To the gray secret lingering in the East.”

We could linger with delight over many passages in these odes, and dwell with pleasure on the peculiar depth, conciseness, and expressiveness of the phrases used, the mere words often which the poet chooses. His power of condensation and deep philosophic comprehension and observation constantly strikes one. The concealed art of the whole is marvellous. But this, we have no doubt, will, from the copious extracts we have given, strike the reader as it has struck us. And we hasten on to quote a few more passages and take leave of the book.

We have called attention to the poet’s scorn. It is very bitter, and is at its best when it attacks not so much persons or matters which are at least open to question as when it deals with obvious shams and pretentious littleness. What could be better than this placid treatment of the modern scientific school which can see nothing more than its telescope and its instruments disclose to it?

“Not greatly moved with awe am I To learn that we may spy Five thousand firmaments beyond our own. The best that’s known Of the heavenly bodies _does them credit small_. View’d close, the Moon’s fair ball Is of ill objects worst. _A corpse in Night’s highway_, naked, fire-scarr’d, accurst; And now they tell That the Sun is plainly seen to boil and burst Too horribly for hell. So, judging from these two, As we must do, The Universe, outside our living Earth, Was all conceiv’d in the Creator’s mirth, Forecasting at the time Man’s spirit deep, _To make dirt cheap_. Put by the Telescope! Better without it man may see, _Stretch’d awful in the hush’d midnight, The ghost of his eternity_. Give me the nobler glass that swells to the eye The things which near us lie, Till Science rapturously hails, In the minutest water-drop, _A torment of innumerable tails_. These at least do live. But rather give A mind not much to pry Beyond our royal-fair estate Betwixt these deserts blank of small and great. Wonder and beauty our own courtiers are, Pressing to catch our gaze, And out of obvious ways Ne’er wandering far.”

At other times his strong humanity seems to die in him, the struggle of life seems small and profitless, and the many ends that move us weak and purposeless as children’s plans. “Here, in this little Bay,” he says:

“Full of tumultuous life and great repose, Where, twice a day, The purposeless, glad ocean comes and goes, Under high cliffs, and far from the huge town, I sit me down. For want of me the world’s course will not fail; When all its work is done, _the lie shall rot_; The truth is great, and shall prevail, _When none cares whether it prevail or not_.”

Of course we need not remind the poet that it is just the duty of honest men to see that the truth prevails and the lie rots, for his poems are a very pæan of Truth and its high offices; but in this as in others of the odes he gives complete expression to the weariness that at times creeps over all who are struggling for the right. It is like the song of the tired mariners in Tennyson’s _Lotos-Eaters_.

Again he sings:

“Join, then, if thee it please, the bitter jest Of mankind’s progress; all its spectral race Mere impotence of rest, _The heaving vain of life which cannot cease from self_, Crest altering still to gulf And gulf to crest In endless chase That leaves the tossing water anchor’d in its place! Ah, well does he who does but stand aside, Sans hope or fear, And marks the crest and gulf in station sink and rear, And prophesies ’gainst trust in such a tide: For he sometimes is prophet, heavenly taught, Whose message is that he sees only naught! Nathless, discern’d may be, _By listeners at the doors of destiny, The fly-wheel swift and still Of God’s incessant will_, Mighty to keep in bound, tho’ powerless to quell, _The amorous and vehement drift of man’s herd to hell_.”

We can quote no further at any length, though we find something to attract us in every ode; and the more we read the odes the more we find in them, the more we admire them, and the clearer they become. Though independent of each other, a secret string of purpose, of aim and aspiration, of a yearning after something that the poet has not yet quite caught or cannot as yet fully express, becomes apparent. To this is due much of the obscurity and dimness that at first offend the eye. Closer study, however, reveals a throbbing passion, a high ideal, gleams of light from heaven, the flashes of a bright intelligence warmed by a pure heart and looking from and through all things earthly heavenwards. We have seen no man of late who can lash the follies and lay bare the falsehoods of the time so thoroughly. A man of intense and rooted convictions, he may make mistakes sometimes, but at least he makes them nobly. He is very human, as we have already said. Indeed, there are touches here and there in some of the odes that are strongly sensuous, and the two last poems, “The Rosy Bosom’d Hours” and “The After-Glow,” were better omitted from the volume. Their littleness offends and breaks with a discordant jar on the high and serene atmosphere through which we have been passing. It is almost like what the introduction of one of Offenbach’s airs would be into a solemn Mass. From the poet whose “Proem” is pitched in so high a key as this:

“Therefore no 'plaint be mine Of listeners none, No hope of render’d use or proud reward, In hasty times and hard; But chants as of a lonely thrush’s throat At latest eve, That does in each calm note Both joy and grieve; Notes few and strong and fine, Gilt with sweet day’s decline, And sad with promise of a different sun,”

we certainly expected no such stuff as the following, addressed to his bride:

“At Dawlish, 'mid the pools of brine, You stept from rock to rock, One hand quick tightening upon mine, One holding up your frock.

* * * * *

I thought, indeed, by magic chance, A third [day] from Heaven to win, But as, at dusk, we reach’d Penzance, _A drizzling rain set in_.”

There is so much that is high and noble and full of great promise in this new writer—for such he really is—and we have been so honest in our admiration of it, that we feel all the more at liberty to point out some of the blemishes that mar a work of rare excellence and strange beauty. Here and there throughout the volume are lines and couplets that linger lovingly in the memory; as, for instance:

“Pierce, then, with thought’s steel probe the trodden ground Till passion’s buried floods be found....”

And again:

“Till inmost absolution start _The welling in the grateful eyes, The heaving in the heart_.”

What could be more tenderly and naturally expressive than those two last lines? Or than this:

“_Winnow with sighs_, and wash away With tears the dust and stain of clay.”

Often have we heard aspirations of the following kind, but never sweeter than this:

“Ye Clouds that on your endless journey go, Ye Winds that westward flow, Thou heaving Sea That heav’st ’twixt her and me, Tell her I come....”

The poet yokes all Nature to the wings of his fancy, and makes it the loving slave of his Love.

How simple, yet how subtly told, is this great truth:

“Who does not know That good and ill Are done in secret still, And that which shows is verily but show!”

And this deep reflection contains a volume:

“How high of heart is one, and one how sweet of mood: _But not all height is holiness, Nor every sweetness good_.”

Here is a proverb, only too often verified:

“One fool, with lusty lungs, Does what a hundred wise, who hate and hold their tongues, Shall ne’er undo.”

In “Victory in Defeat” he says—how truly!—

“Life is not life at all without delight, Nor has it any might; _And better than the insentient heart and brain Is sharpest pain_; And better for the moment seems it to rebel, If the great Master, from his lifted seat, Ne’er whispers to the wearied servant, 'Well!’”

We hope to hear again and soon from Mr. Patmore. If he can avoid a certain obscurity that will repel many who would be sincere and honest admirers of so noble a writer, it will be better for himself and those whom he addresses. Even as his work now stands we are happy to say of it, in closing our review, what a true poet whose name often adorns these pages has said: “Many parts of the book seem to me both to ascend higher and descend deeper than almost anything we have had for a long time.”

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

PRIESTHOOD IN THE LIGHT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. By E. Mellor, D.D. New York: A. S. Barnes & Co.

The author in the preface of the book before us says that his lectures were prepared at the request of the Committee of the Congregational Union of England and Wales, and though not considered as exhausting the subject, yet they furnish a contribution toward the settlement of the question of the priesthood and its claims; which settlement in the author’s aim means toward doing away altogether with the priesthood and its claims. After a careful perusal of the volume, we must confess that we think the contribution exceedingly small, and not calculated to settle anything at all in the reverend gentleman’s sense. For the doctor’s lectures are a rehash of all the old objections brought forward against the priesthood, from the time of the Reformation downwards; and which have been time and again triumphantly refuted by our controversialists; but of which refutation the author takes no heed, as if such men as Bellarmine, Petau, Suarez, Thomassin, and a host of others down to our day had never existed. If the author had wished to bring towards the settlement of the subject a _real_ contribution, the proper course for him to pursue would have been to state the objections, to bring forward the answer to each one of them given by our controversialists, to show the futility and untenableness of their answer, and to conclude that the objections yet hold good against the subject. His having, therefore, of a set purpose, or most innocently, ignored those answers leaves the question just where it was, and no one the wiser or better by the author’s lectures.

It is not possible for us in the brief space of a passing notice to attempt a refutation of all the objections he rehashes so carefully. It will suffice to remark that all his objections, even if nothing at all could be said against them, would prove nothing _positive_ against the priesthood. For they may be classified under two heads. The first are those of purely negative character, which, as they prove nothing in favor of the priesthood, neither do they prove anything against it. Under this head we put the old objection, drawn from the Epistle of St. Paul to the Hebrews, which exalts the priesthood of Christ above the Jewish priesthood, and which says _at least_ nothing against the Christian priesthood, which is identical with that of Christ.

The other class of objections is when our author examines the positive proofs brought in favor of the Christian priesthood. These proofs, so clear, so satisfactory, so weighty, the author dismisses very summarily by throwing doubt on the meaning of the words, after the fashion of the Protestant method. One example will suffice to prove our assertion. Examining the text, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained,” he disposes of it as follows: “It is not needful to enter into a consideration of the meaning of the words [as if the question was not just about the _meaning_ of the words; or as if our Lord was speaking merely for a joke] which set forth the high powers of the apostles; whether the sins they were to remit or retain were spiritual sins [are there any corporal sins?], or ecclesiastical ones, or both. The question before us is, be the function here referred to what it may, to whom was it accorded and by whom was it meant to be exercised? Almost every word in the passage has been a battle-field.” We would remark on this passage that there is no reason for waiving the question, be the function here referred to what it may, when our Lord says expressly it _is_ to remit or to retain sins; that it is evident from the text, if words or language mean anything any more, that this function was to be exercised by those to whom our Lord spoke, and by those whom they preceded, as the apostles were essentially first and representative men; but it is useless. We only wish to call the attention of our readers to the fact that, if a text clear and palpable in itself, proving a truth or a dogma, can be disposed of in this manner, no Christian truth can stand any longer, and we may as well have done with all Christian revelation. For suppose we want to bring a contribution towards the settlement of the question of the Divinity of Christ, all we have to do is to throw doubts on the meaning of the words of those texts which assert it, and the contribution is made, and so on to the end of the chapter.

We think we have made our statement good, that our author has proved nothing in his book against the Christian priesthood, as all his objections are of a negative character.

But we will exceed him in liberality, and grant for a moment that those texts by which we assert the nature and prerogatives of the priesthood prove nothing in its favor, as his negative objections prove nothing against it. What then? Has he gained anything by our concession, or has he made any step forward towards the settlement of the question? Not at all. There will always be the fact of the existence of the priesthood, in the full exercise of all its claims, staring him in the face. How to account for that fact? Our author sees the difficulty, and admits that to account for it by urging an ambitious conspiracy on the part of the presbyters or bishops is absurd, that such a conspiracy could not have succeeded in establishing itself (page 74), and endeavors to account for it by a bias of humanity towards the priesthood identical with a bias towards selfishness and sins. And he goes on developing the thought by saying that the priesthood was called into being by ill-defined terrors of the future, by a fear of God not yet cast out by love, by the irksomeness of the duties of self-discipline, by the intolerable oppressiveness of the sense of personal responsibility seeking relief by its transference to others.

Whether all these reasons can produce a bias towards the priesthood in humanity identical with the bias it has unfortunately towards selfishness and sin, we will leave to the author to assert. We think that all those reasons, when well understood and stated properly, dispose humanity towards the priesthood—in fact, create an instinct for it—and that that instinct is a legitimate, noble, generous craving of the human heart; and to say that they create a bias identical with a bias to sin is to show the most supine ignorance of human nature, of the history of mankind, and the true philosophy of history. But let that pass; do all these reasons account for the existence and claims of the priesthood? According to the author himself _they do not_. For he says himself all this contributed to prepare the way for a transformation of that religion which knows no earthly mediator (page 75).

Well, Dr. Mellor, you have accounted for the preparation of the way, but not for the fact of the existence of the priesthood. When and how did it come into existence? Who were the first who hatched it? Where was it established first? Who were the first Christians they imposed it upon? How did they succeed in persuading them to accept it? Was there any opposition on the part of the Christians who first heard of such a thing? Must not the imposition on any Christian people of a priesthood well organized into a compact body, strong and valiant, and exceedingly sensitive about its rights and claims, have been brought about by a conspiracy of somebody or other? And have you not said—page 74—that to account for the existence of the priesthood by a conspiracy is absurd?

We wish to advert to another theory before closing these remarks. He is not satisfied to have proved _more suo_ that the priesthood has no place in the New Testament; he strives to prove that it was congenial with the whole spirit and nature of it, and the proof, he alleges, is drawn from the words to the Samaritan woman: God is a spirit, and in spirit and truth he must be adored; that is, by having recourse to an invisible church, is the sense he attaches to those words. Of course, if the church is not a visible body, the mountain placed on the top of mountains, we must necessarily do away with the priesthood and sacraments, etc., for they can have no scope in an invisible, abstract thing. But in that case why not abolish Christ the Emmanuel, the God-man?

We could easily enough prove the congeniality of the priesthood with Christianity by showing to the reverend doctor that all the works of God are _permanent_. That the Incarnation is permanent in the church, and that Christ the High-Priest is permanent in the Catholic priesthood, and discharges all the functions necessary to bring all men to salvation in all time and space, in it, and through it, and so forth. But we fear the reverend gentleman has not philosophy enough to understand us, and we forbear. We will not, however, conclude our remarks without thanking the reverend lecturer for the polite courtesy which he uses towards the Catholic priesthood: first, using the _nom de guerre popish_ whenever he has occasion to make mention of it; and, secondly, for associating it with the priesthood of the English Episcopal Church. In the lecturer’s mind, perhaps, it was to do honor to the Catholic priesthood by confounding it with the other. It is a goodly company, no doubt, and we ought to be highly flattered; but we respectfully decline through excess of modesty such unmerited honor, and would rather keep by ourselves, if it is all the same to the reverend doctor.

THIRTY-FIFTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION OF THE CITY AND COUNTY OF NEW YORK, FOR THE YEAR ENDING DECEMBER 31, 1876.

Much has been written on the school question within the past few months; not, however, by opponents of the public schools as they exist here, but by those who pay for them—the taxpayers. Four million dollars for the Department of Public Schools alone is a great load. This tax increases yearly, and no doubt will soon reach the fifth million. The strange enthusiasm that led sects to trample on the religious convictions of their neighbors also led them to make light of the burden that came with the victory. But five millions is terrifying. Why not six? Will there be no end to the increase?

Perhaps the originators of the present school system recognized the moral baseness of severing the instruction which may enable the child to act with judgment from the training which teaches him moral responsibility for the judgment as well as for the action springing from it. They certainly desired to accomplish indirectly the chief end of education by placing the school machinery in the hands of philanthropists who serve without pay or emolument.

The result has been a gradual complication of the common-school system, so as to include technical education, and even the higher branches of learning. Years ago a Free College was successfully engrafted. Next came a Normal College for young ladies. In order to render this latter offshoot permanent, it was deemed necessary to provide the graduates with positions in the common schools. The first step was to raise the standard of proficiency for a teacher’s certificate; the next, to declare that the college diploma was sufficient evidence of qualification, without a public examination by the city superintendent. The report tells us that “under the by-law by which the graduates are licensed to teach without a second examination, the city superintendent and the president of the college have performed their duties in perfect harmony.”

When the mode of testing the qualification of applicants who are not Normal College graduates is discussed, the report states, “a system of rigid examinations in the superintendent’s office precludes the possibility of incompetent persons being foisted upon the system through political or social influence.”

Nor is this the only injury to the common schools. The favored graduates are not to be allowed to work for the low salaries received by primary teachers during the past thirty-five years. An _adjustment_ of salaries is demanded. These primary teachers must receive as large a sum as grammar-school teachers. This simply means an increase in the cost of the common-school system.

If that system, as it now exists here, answer to the purposes for which it was intended, it is high time for that fact to appear. Yet the gentlemen who have charge of the board, from the president down, seem strangely to disagree on most important matters. Without committing ourselves to one side or the other in the discussion, we take a few instances. The grammar schools surely form a very important branch of the system. Here is how the president treats of them in the report: “Our primary-school teachers have a lower rate of pay than our grammar-school teachers, and the primary schools have been used as training places for the better-paid positions in the grammar schools. The plan for uniformity in salaries in these two departments has received serious consideration by a committee of the board, and deserves to be carried out. The majority of our pupils receive all the education they have in the primary, _and never enter the grammar schools_. This majority deserves the first consideration. Instruction and discipline are no more difficult in one than in the other, and in neither department is the range of knowledge required to be mastered extensive.”

The president asserts that the common-school system only succeeds in furnishing primary instruction to a majority of pupils, and he would seem to imply that the enormous sum of four million dollars should be spent on the primary schools, reserving, of course, a sufficient sum for the Normal College.

Lest his opinions as to the range of knowledge required in a teacher should dishearten those who are toiling through Normal College, he inserts a few lines for their benefit: “An erroneous idea seems to prevail that a primary teacher can dispense with the higher studies. The truth is that this class of teachers more than any other class needs trained faculties and sound judgment, and these are only obtained by the discipline of hard and close study. Normal study and normal practice, to be effective, must be based on the broad foundation of a liberal education.”

Compulsory education the city superintendent pronounces a complete failure, while those who are paid to enforce it consider it successful. In the discussion some interesting facts are brought to light. The city superintendent states: “Many parents, finding that our schools are unable to govern their wilful and unruly children, send them to the parochial schools. In connection with this, it is proper to call the attention of the board to the fact that, while the average attendance of pupils in the schools immediately under its care has, during the past year, increased less than two and a half per cent., in the corporate schools it has increased more than five per cent. It is also of interest to observe that, at the close of 1875, the number of pupils enrolled in the Catholic parochial schools was 30,732, while in 1867 it was only 16,342, showing an increase, in less than ten years, of nearly 90 per cent.; while the increase in the attendance of the pupils in the public schools has, during the same time, been only about 13 per cent. The increase in attendance at the corporate schools, during the same period, has been more than 57 per cent.... The question, therefore, very properly suggests itself, why should a system for compelling pupils to attend the schools be sustained at great expense to the city while there is no effective means of controlling and educating those children after they have been brought into the schools?”

These are but a few of the spots uncovered in this interesting report. Never was the want of harmony in the system more manifest. The iniquity of taxing a people for what it cannot use, and turning over the amount collected to the keeping of gentlemen who care more for pet schemes than for the real object for which the tax was levied, becomes more and more apparent. Higher education, technical education, and compulsory education are battling vigorously for larger shares of the funds; and the battle seems likely to end when the funds are made large enough to satisfy all demands. In the meantime the common-school system is slowly dying out. The primary schools are becoming departments for the employment of normal school graduates, and the grammar schools feeders for the colleges.

A QUESTION OF HONOR: A NOVEL. By Christian Reid, author of _A Daughter of Bohemia_, _Valerie Aylmer_, _Morton House_, etc. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1876.

A well-written novel, thoroughly American in its tone, its incidents, and its characters, and yet availing itself of none of the peculiar “isms” which form the chief stock in trade of our native novelists—shunning alike the “woman question” and the shallow metaphysics of “free thought,” depending for no share of its interest upon suggested immorality or social license, and vivacious in its dialogues without any reliance upon the slang which generally does duty in place of wit—was something for which some sad experience in recent fiction had forbidden us to hope. That Christian Reid is already well known to the novel-reading public is evident from the title-page of _A Question of Honor_, but that is the only one of her stories which we have read. We find in it everything to praise and nothing to condemn. It is thoroughly well written, to begin with, its descriptions of scenery being particularly artistic and well done. The author attempts nothing ambitious in the way of character-drawing, but her men and women live and have a true individuality. Their souls are not dissected after the manner with which the New England school of fiction has made us too familiar for our comfort, but their manner of life and speech and thought is indicated with a firm, graceful, and un-provincial touch which is extremely pleasant. Altogether, the book belongs to the best class of light literature. There is nothing in it to shock taste or to jar prejudice, and everything in the way of grace of style and purity of thought to recommend it. So much being said by way of praise, we may add that the author, who is evidently a Catholic, has drawn a picture of social life which is, no doubt, true to a reality of a better kind than the ordinary novel of the day aims at, but which is nevertheless un-Christian. Her characters are neither underbred nor vicious; with two exceptions, they are simply a rather pleasing variety of pagans. We do not quarrel with that, considered as a faithful transcript of reality. But we shall find it a cause for real regret if a writer so graceful and possessing so much genuine ability does not some day give us something better than a mere transcript of lives that might have been lived and ideals that might have been attained had the Creator never stooped to the level of his creatures in order to show them the one way in which he would lift them to himself.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. By the graduating class of St. Joseph’s Academy, Flushing, L. I. (Translated from the French of Mme. Foa.) New York: P. O’Shea. 1877.

Translation from the French is a literary exercise which cannot be too highly commended to young students. The publication in book-form of such students’ translations can scarcely be too severely condemned. Young ladies and young men “graduate,” as it is called, at an age ranging from seventeen to twenty or twenty-one. They are then popularly supposed to have “finished” their education, whereas not much more has been done than to set them on the right road of learning and appreciating what real education is. Indeed, if so much has been accomplished, both the pupils and their teachers may be congratulated.

To set these young persons straightway at book-making is a grave mistake—how grave may be gathered from the following specimens of translation which half a glance at the volume before us reveals.

The cover informs us that these are “Gems of Biography.” The first gem is entitled “Michael Angelo Buonarotti.” The opening page introduces us to “an old domestic” and “a young _man_ of fifteen or sixteen” “at the _door_ of the Castle of Caprese.” In page 2 the “young man” of fifteen is a “young _interlocutor_.” In the same page “to intercept the passage” is used in the sense of to block up the passage. In page 3, “to cover his curiosity” is used in the sense of to hide or conceal his curiosity. In page 4 we have this elegant sentence: “I don’t think that either of you does anything wrong in the place you go.” In page 5 the young man of fifteen, who was an Italian of four centuries back, indulges in this peculiar bit of slang: “One is not perfect at it _right away_.” A little lower on the same page he says of Michael Angelo: “He is even quicker than I _in piecing_ his man.” “_Mr._ Francis Graciana” and “_Mr._ Michael Angelo Buonarotti” occur quite frequently. “Canosse” is always made to do duty for Canossa, “Politien” for Politian or Poliziano, etc. Such phrases as “You are not _de trop_, Signor Graciana,” constantly occur; but we have no patience to examine further.

Expressions such as these—and they characterize the book, with the exception of “The Mulatto of Murillo,” which runs fairly enough—should not have been allowed to pass in a written composition; but to embalm them in a printed volume is simply an act of cruelty. The sketches in themselves are good for nothing and were not worth the trouble of translating, inasmuch as they have been far better given in English over and over again. “Flushing Series” is the threatening legend on the cover. If this volume be a specimen of what is to come, we trust sincerely that we have seen the last of the “Series.” Catholic education is too serious a subject for trifling.

THE WONDERS OF PRAYER: A remarkable record of well authenticated answers to prayer. By Henry T. Williams. New York: Henry T. Williams, Publisher.

It is not often that an author is his own publisher. In the present case this may have been a matter of necessity; but it should not have been so, for the volume is interesting enough. It is a collection of anecdotes, the authenticity of which Mr. Williams personally vouches for, showing that God answers in an immediate and direct manner the requests of those who in faith ask him for temporal blessings. “They demonstrate,” says the author, “to a wonderful degree the immediate practical ways of the Lord with his children in this world; that he is far nearer and more intimate with their plans and pursuits than it is possible for them to realize.” We have no disposition to scoff at the stories related by Mr. Williams, although the style in which they are told often provokes one to mirth. There is but one true faith in the world, but there are many people who hold more or less of this faith without knowing it. “_Souffrons toutes les religions, puisque Dieu les souffre_,” said Fénelon; and our Holy Father, the Pope, has not unfrequently expressed his affection as well as his pity for good Protestants. No doubt many of the people who are spoken of in this book were very good Protestants. And we are glad to observe in it this passage: “The present is the age of miracles as well as the past. Fully as wonderful things have been and are constantly being done this day by our unseen Lord as in the days of old when he walked in the sight of his disciples.”

THE LITTLE PEARLS; OR, GEMS OF VIRTUE. Translated by Mrs. Kate E. Hughes. New York: P. O’Shea. 1877.

Will be found very entertaining and instructive reading for our young folks, and we recommend it as suitable for a present at the distribution of school prizes. We think, however, that the name of the writer whose work is translated should have appeared on the title-page.

BESIDE THE WESTERN SEA: A Collection of Poems. By Harriet M. Skidmore (“Marie”). New York: P. O’Shea. 1877.

This gifted lady has done well to collect her scattered poems into a volume. They are chiefly of a devotional character, and, though unequal, none of them are without merit, some of a very marked kind. She has the gift of song, and she sings easily and gracefully on almost any subject. The following, though one of the shortest and least ambitious of the collection, strikes us as a very sweet poem, and affords a fair idea of the author’s powers. Its title is “The Mist”:

“I watched the folding of a soft white wing Above the city’s heart; I saw the mist its silent shadows fling O’er thronged and busy mart. Softly it glided through the Golden Gate And up the shining bay, Calmly it lingered on the hills, to wait The dying of the day. Like the white ashes of the sunset fire, It lay within the West, Then onward crept above the lofty spire, In nimbus-wreaths to rest. It spread anon—its fleecy clouds unrolled, And floated gently down; And thus I saw that silent wing enfold The Babel-throated town. A spell was laid on restless life and din, That bade its tumult cease; A veil was flung o’er squalor, woe, and sin, Of purity and peace. And dreaming hearts, so hallowed by the mist, So freed from grosser leaven, In the soft chime of vesper bells could list Sweet, echoed tones of heaven; Could see, enraptured, when the starlight came, With lustre soft and pale, A sacred city crowned with 'ring of flame,’ Beneath her misty veil.”

ROMAN LEGENDS: A Collection of the Fables and Folk-lore of Rome. By R. H. Busk, author of _Sagas from the Far East_, etc. Boston: Estes & Lauriat. 1877.

These are very graceful and interesting legends. They furnish glimpses that could not otherwise be well obtained of the peculiar constitution, habits of mind and thought, of the common people in and about Rome. For the most part they are such as have not hitherto found their way into literature, being taken as they fell from the lips of narrators to whom they had been household words, handed down from one generation to another. The task of eliciting them seems to have been no easy one, but its results are pleasant enough to earn honest gratitude for the years of labor which have been spent in gaining them. The tales themselves range under four categories, concerning which the author notes that the Romans are rigidly exact in adhering to, never by any chance giving a fairy-tale if asked for a legend, or a fairy-tale if inquired of concerning ghosts. They comprise legends; ghost-stories and local and family traditions; fairy tales and _ciarpe_, or gossip. The book is particularly rich in stories of St. Philip Neri.

PHILIP NOLAN’S FRIENDS: A story of the change of Western Empire. By Edward E. Hale. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1877.

This volume traces the course of a journey into the heart of the great South-west at the beginning of the present century. This tract was still the border-land of the Aztec kings. Throughout its vast extent Spanish heroes had wasted their lives in _ignis-fatuus_ searches. Rich discoveries of gold did not reward their diligence, and they resigned so inhospitable a region to a new order of pioneers. Even to this day the names of places bear token that the zeal of the Spanish missionaries was in no way inferior to that of the sons of Loyola along the St. Lawrence. Such was their indomitable perseverance that twenty-seven missions had been established in this region previous to 1626, and a century later the missionary spirit carried the Gospel among the Apaches, Moquis, and Navajoes.

The heroine’s escort through this _terra incognita_ to Americans is ample, the weather delightful, and we do not care to question the adequacy of the motive for the expedition. Nor does it matter that we are led to believe that Philip Nolan possesses a sterling character, though what he says or does, or what apparent influence he has over the course of events, would hardly justify this conclusion.

The novel is readable, but not by any means artistic. The author lacks the power to create a character that can think and act like a human being. He wishes us to believe his heroine possesses beauty, sensibility, and vivacity; but he lacks the subtle power to invent actions and conversations which impress individuality, and we gather our notions of the lady more from his suggestions than from the movement of the story. This seems to be the author’s weakness: his figures act and he suggests the motives and impulses.

His male characters miss no opportunity to abuse the missionaries. They regard the “black-gowns” as the cause of Indian rascality and Spanish treachery. Ill-luck is always traced to them, and the torrents of abuse poured on the servants of God lend the only touches of nature that may be found in the author’s passive figures. Of course these outbursts of hatred reveal the true character of the adventurers. They are border ruffians.

The book is partly historical. It treats of a transition period. The allegiance of the inhabitants had suffered a violent dissolution. A border element existed, mainly recruited from the United States. This element was of service in manufacturing public opinion, and, in this way, might have hastened the transfer of the Louisiana tract to its natural owner, the United States. We are inclined to the opinion that Southern interests would have brought about the transfer without the assistance of European complications or scenes of border treachery.

REPLY TO THE HON. R. W. THOMPSON, SECRETARY OF THE NAVY, ADDRESSED TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. By F. X. Weninger, D.D., of the Society of Jesus. New York: P. O’Shea. 1877.

In this pamphlet of eighty-six pages Father Weninger has undertaken the almost unnecessary task of replying to Mr. Thompson’s book, _The Papacy and the Civil Power_. If there is anything in that book to refute, it refutes itself. Mr. Thompson, however, over and above the rashness of attempting such a book at all, was rash enough to quote Father Weninger. The natural result is the present pamphlet. The pamphlet is addressed to “the American people.” If the American people take it up, they will be rewarded by some lively reading. The reverend author says at the conclusion: “We have handled our adversary throughout the whole discourse without gloves.” No reader of the pamphlet will be inclined to dispute that statement.

THE PEARL AMONG THE VIRTUES; OR, WORDS OF ADVICE TO CHRISTIAN YOUTH. By P. A. De Doss, S.J. Translated from the original German by a Catholic priest. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. 1877.

This work, written by one of the Jesuit Fathers banished from Germany, is an excellent treatise on the angelic virtue, which he considers from almost every point of view in a solid, instructive, and highly interesting manner. No more useful book could be placed in the hands of the youth of either sex.

GOD THE TEACHER OF MANKIND: A PLAIN, COMPREHENSIVE EXPLANATION OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. By Michael Müller, C.SS.R. New York, Cincinnati, and St. Louis: Benziger Brothers. 1877.

We have received advance sheets of this new and most interesting work by the indefatigable Redemptorist father to whom Catholics in this country are so much indebted for works that are really useful as well as popular. The book is too important in itself and on too important a subject to be dismissed with a hasty notice. We shall return to it later.

EDMONDO: A Sketch of Roman Manners and Customs. By Rev. Fr. Antonio Bresciani, S.J., author of _The Jew of Verona_, etc., etc. Translated from the Italian. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1877.

This is a powerfully-written story that cannot but excite the liveliest interest on account of its faithful and beautiful description of Roman scenery and vivid delineation of Roman life and customs.

The translation is well rendered, but we do not approve of the omission of two chapters from the writings of such an author as the learned Bresciani. Such men do not write anything that can be cast aside without loss to their readers and admirers.

DORA. By Julia Kavanagh.

BESSIE:

SILVIA. By the same author. D. & J. Sadlier & Co.

We have not read any one of these three stories, and can only acknowledge their receipt. From others that we have read by the same author we think it safe to recommend these to persons who are fond of novels. Julia Kavanagh is, to our thinking, one of the purest, most graceful, and most interesting story-writers of the day.

THE CATHOLIC KEEPSAKE. A gift-book for all seasons. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. 1877.

The best encomium we can bestow on this collection is to say that it is worthy of its name. The numerous sketches and stories are short, entertaining, and very agreeably written, even though a little ancient.

BESSY; OR, THE FATAL CONSEQUENCE OF TELLING LIES. By the author of _The Rat-Pond; or, The Effects of Disobedience_. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1877.

A plain, simple story for children, and, as the title designates, with a moral attached.

THE STORY OF FELICE. By Esmeralda Boyle. London: Trübner & Co. 1873.

SONGS OF THE LAND AND SEA. By Esmeralda Boyle. New York: E. J. Hale & Son. 1875.

In these poems Miss Boyle displays much true poetic feeling and a gift of melodious utterance.

THE CATHOLIC WORLD. VOL. XXV., No. 150.—SEPTEMBER, 1877.

AMONG THE TRANSLATORS. VIRGIL AND HORACE.

The number of versified translations of Greek and Latin poets which the English presses continually put forth must be a never-ending surprise to the practical American mind—if, that is to say, the practical mind ever thinks of so manifestly useless and absurd a thing at all. Authors are supposed to write and publishers to print for the purpose of making money; that either should work to any other end is a proposition which to the practical mind is simply bewildering. Yet one would think there can be but little money in laboriously turning into English a quantity of school-books which no one reads except at school, and whose only value is in their being in a foreign tongue. Original poetry is bad enough; the verdict of the practical mind on that point is pretty apt to be one with the view taken by Heine’s rich uncle, to whom the poet, at the height of his fame, was but a _Dummkopf_ (may not the uncle, alas! have been right?); but poetry at second hand, the “old clo’” of the Muses, Apollo’s second table, the cold victual of Parnassus, a disaerated Helicon—the practical mind can only gasp at the notion (which, by the way, strikes it in quite another shape than the poetical one we have chosen to give it, but just as effectively) and seek to renew its faith in human nature over the credit column of its ledger.

Another class of minds, too, not quite so practical—a class that has been at college, we will say, that knows Virgil and Horace by name, or even by certain quotations (_arma virumque_, _pallida mors pulsat_, _atra cura_, etc.), and can read Greek letters at sight, but on the whole thinks Huxley a greater force in the world to-day than Homer—the cultured class, in short, about which some of our newspapers make so much to-do—can understand why the great classic poets should be turned into English verse (for the benefit of those who have not been at college), but not at all why such versions should be multiplied. If you want Virgil in an English dress, there’s your Dryden; or Homer, there’s Pope—say our person of culture is from an extreme northern latitude, geographically or mentally, he will perhaps put Chapman here, and pooh-pooh Pope with a reference to Bentley. Do you desire Horace in the vulgar, there’s good old Francis—pray, what better do you ask? What better, indeed, can you expect to get? Just look at your _Cyclopædia Septentrionalis_ and see what it tells you! So what is the use or the meaning, what is the reason of being, of your Theodore Martins and your Coningtons, your Morrises and Cranches? What is there to be had of them all but vanity and vexation of spirit, and time and money mislaid?

Somewhat in that way, we take it, a good many folks, even of the book-buying, nay, of the book-reading, sort, must feel over every fresh announcement of a translation of one or other of the favorite classic poets. And as the supply of such things is in the long run, by a beneficent law of nature, tempered to the demand, and the mind of the book-buying many reacts upon, and often rules, the ardor of the book-making few—“book” in Lamb’s sense, be it understood—it is not surprising that the list of American translators should be of the scantiest. Mr. Cranch’s bold venture of last year—a blank-verse rendering of the _Æneid_—had few precursors or precedents. There is Mumford’s blank-verse Homer, which Professor Felton praised, and Professor Arnold, strange to say, seems not to have seen; and Mr. Bryant’s blank-verse Homer, which everybody praised and a smaller number read. Then, some years since, a Philadelphian gentleman put forth still another version of the _Iliad_ in what he said was English verse, although the precise metre of such lines as

“For Agamemnon insulted Chryses”; “But Agamemnon was much displeased”; “Wounded is Diomed, Tydeus’ son, Ulysses, also, and Agamemnon.”

unless it be hexameter—everything you cannot scan in English verse is hexameter, just as everything you cannot parse in Greek is second aorist—we have been unable to determine. We have heard, also, of a version of Horace by a professor in some Southern university, but this we have not seen. Are there any others? Mr. E. C. Stedman ten years ago printed specimens of a projected translation of Theocritus, in English hexameters, of considerable merit; but his reception does not seem to have encouraged him to go on. And that is all, a little Spartan band of four or five to oppose to the great host of British translators from Phaer to Morris. The practical mind may feel reassured of its country.

It is true that these English versions are often reprinted here; but it is only the chiefs of the army—those who shine pre-eminent among their fellows,

“sicut inter ignes Luna minores,”

or who are already known to fame for triumphs in other fields. Prof. Conington made something of a critical furor by the bold breaking away from rule and precedent in his choice of a metre, though Dr. Maginn, in his Homeric ballads, had given him the hint. In like manner our booksellers have reprinted and our book-buyers bought Mr. Morris’ _Æneid_ (we beg his pardon—_Æneids_), not because it was a new translation of Virgil, but because it was a new work of the latest popular poet; just as they printed and bought Mr. Bryant’s Homer because it was the latest work of our oldest living poet, as they printed and bought Lord Derby’s _Iliad_ because it was the work of a nobleman, and not only that, but of a leading European statesman, and therefore, in both aspects, a very surprising and desirable thing for our people, who have never been used to connect that sort of accomplishment with the idea they had formed of a nobleman, still less with their notion of a statesman. But we did not reprint or buy Mr. Worsley’s, or Prof. Newman’s, or Prof. Blackie’s, or Mr. Wright’s Homer; and even if we printed, it is to be feared we did not extensively buy, Mr. Cranch’s _Æneid_, although in the way of buying English _Æneids_ we might have done worse. Why? Not, certainly, because any of the versions named lacked merit, but because they appealed to us on their merits simply, without any outside helps to popularity, and we would none of them. The fact is, we do not care in the least for Homer or Virgil, and we care a great deal for Morris and Bryant—that is to say, while they are topics of talk; and it is one of the social duties, which persons of culture would die almost sooner than fail in, to have something, or even nothing, to say about the ordained subjects of fashionable gossip.

But in England it is otherwise. There is in that country a large class always to be counted on to buy any translation of a favorite classic which has successfully run the gauntlet of the reviews. This class is made up of diverse elements. First, the translators themselves, who in England form no inconsiderable percentage of the literary public; for every other graduate of either university who has not been a stroke-oar—that is honor enough to win or give—seems to feel within him a sacred void unfilled, a mysterious yearning unsatisfied, a clamorous duty unperformed, until he has translated some classic author in whole or in part. Every translator, of course, buys the publications of every other translator to chuckle over his failures or—let us do them justice—to applaud heartily and generously the happy dexterity which conquers a difficult passage. Then, too, even scholars who have Homer and Horace at their fingers’ ends, who think in Latin and dream in Greek, who dare to take liberties with the digamma and speak disrespectfully of the second aorist—even they to whom the best translation of a classic is as corked claret? or skim-milk—may still buy Prof. Conington’s _Æneid_ or Lord Lytton’s Horace for a better reason than the pleasure of finding fault with it. They know, none better, that, as the former puts it, a translation by a competent hand is itself an “embodied criticism” and commentary; and even scholars, after twenty centuries or so of criticism and commentary, and even of mutual vituperation, have not yet quite made up their minds as to the meaning, or at least the shades of meaning, straight through of any poet of antiquity. This is not to say that we have not here, too, scholars who might buy a translation for the same reason; but in neither country, perhaps, are there so many as to be much of a stand-by in themselves.

But the mainstay of the English translator is that sort of fashionable sentiment in favor of classical learning necessarily fostered in a country where the university is a working element and influence in political, social, and literary life. This sentiment is not so powerful or wide-spread as it once was; as it was, let us say, when a couplet made Mr. Addison a secretary of state, or a burlesque made Mr. Montague a minister and Mr. Prior an ambassador—an improvement still on the age when Sir Christopher Hatton danced himself into the chancellorship. But it is still powerful; and the university is still such a force in English life as it never has been, as it probably never will be, here. The Oxford and Cambridge debating clubs used to be regularly looked to, and are still, perhaps, now and again beaten up, by experienced huntsmen for embryo statesmen, much as the metropolitan manager will scour the provincial stage for an undiscovered star. University men edit the leading organs of public opinion; university men fill the desks in Downing Street and the Parliamentary benches in Westminster Hall; university men yawn day after day in the club-windows of Pall Mall, and night after night in the dancing and supper rooms of Belgravia—no, not the supper-rooms; that is, perhaps, the one spot of the fashionable world where young England forgets to yawn. Like enough, the learning of many of these sages is no deeper than the lore of our own pundits from Yale and Harvard; and not a few of them, no doubt, would be far more at home criticising the boat-race in the Fifth Æneid (the contestants in which they would probably characterize, in their delightful idiom, as “duffers”) than construing the Latin it is told in. Such is the proud result of modern university education in a free and enlightened Anglo-Saxon community. Nevertheless, though the university may not actually give learning, it creates a sentiment in favor of learning; it develops almost unconsciously a taste for it. One may say that it is next to impossible for any man to go through college without taking in some sense of classical culture—through the pores, as it were—which shall ever after give him a feeling of companionship, a kind of Freemasonry, with authors he could never read. To have lived among books, in an atmosphere of books, is itself in some sort an education.

Now, with this feeling for learning diffused throughout a great nation, showing itself in its chief organs of public opinion, in its selection of public officers, and even to some extent in its popular elections, and centring above all in a great city, the headquarters of all the social, political, and literary activity of the nation—its book-making, book-branding, book-buying centre—we come to see why translations from the classics should have more vogue across the water than with us. If a cabinet minister choose to beguile his leisure by turning Aristophanes into English, it is but fit that society, before having him in to dinner, should know something about it, if only to avoid such a slip as is told of Catalani. The _prima donna_ was seated, as a great compliment, next to Goethe at a state dinner, but not knowing the divine Wolfgang—or, indeed, much of anything but some operatic scores—gave her mind to the potage rather than to the poet. A friend nudged her: “Why do you not talk to M. Goethe?” “I don’t know him, and he’s stupid.” “What! not know M. Goethe, the celebrated author of the _Sorrows of Werther_?” “The _Sorrows of Werther_! Ah! M. Goethe,” cried the _diva_ with _empressement_, turning to the great man, “how can I ever thank you enough for your charming _Sorrows of Werther_! I never laughed so much at anything in my life.” She had seen a parody of that immortal work in a farce at Paris. Here, when our cabinet minister lets loose his intellectual surplus on exposures of Popery, society runs no great risk. Everybody can talk a little Popery—an easier subject, on the whole, to talk or write about than Aristophanes; and one knows pretty well what our cabinet minister’s book is about without the fatigue of failing to read it.

Of the feeling we have mentioned the taste for quotation in Parliamentary debate is a good test. An apt illustration from Horace or Virgil had at one time almost the force of an argument. “Pitt,” says the late Lord Lytton, in the excellent preface to his unrhymed version of Horace’s _Odes_, “is said never to have more carried away the applause of the House of Commons than when, likening England—then engaged in a war tasking all her resources—to that image of Rome which Horace has placed in the mouth of Hannibal, he exclaimed:

“'Duris ut ilex tonsa bipennibus Nigræ feraci frondis in Algido, Per damna, per cœdes, ab ipso Ducit opes animumque ferro.’”[121]

Footnote 121:

“Even as the ilex, lopped by axes rude Where, rich with dusky boughs, soars Algidus, Through loss, through wounds receives New gain, new life—yea, from the very steel.”

—Horat. _Carm._ iv. 4, Lord Lytton’s Trans.

Pitt, indeed, is famous for such felicities. In his speech on resigning the chancellorship in 1782, after claiming “to have used his best endeavors to fulfil with integrity every official engagement,” he continued: “And with this consolation, the loss of power, sir, and the loss of fortune, though I affect not to despise, I trust I shall soon be able to forget.”

“Laudo manentem: si celeres quatit Pennas, resigno quæ dedit ... ... probamque Pauperiem sine dote quæro.”[122]

Footnote 122:

“Constant I praise her, but resign With equal mind her gifts. When, swift deserting me and mine, Her ready wing she lifts, And, _wrapped up in my virtue_, wait Fair Poverty’s undower’d estate.”

—Horat. _Carm._ iii. 29.

The original of the line italicized Pitt modestly omitted.

Sir Robert Walpole had worse luck in attempting a like feat on his retirement, made not so gracefully in the shadow of a threatened impeachment.

“Nil conscire sibi, nulli pallescere culpæ,”[123]

Footnote 123:

“Conscious of no wrong done, no crime to pale at remembered.”

—Horat. _Ep._ 1. i.

he quoted, and was at once taken up by his rival, Pulteney, who offered to bet him a guinea that the line read _Nulla pallescere culpa_. Walpole lost, and, tossing the coin to Pulteney, the latter, before pocketing it, held it up to the House with the grim remark: “It is the first money I have received from the treasury for many years, and it shall be the last.”

It may well be that there is less of this sort of thing nowadays, when Parliamentary illustrations, among the younger members at least, seem to be drawn more extensively from natural history than from ancient poetry. Yet it is but a few years since Mr. Gladstone, on going out of office, created a sensation in his turn by his application of Virgil’s fine line,

“Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor.”[124]

Footnote 124:

“Rise from our ashes thou unknown, the predestined avenger.”

We cannot very well imagine a leading Congressman summoning Horace to enforce his argument, say, on the vital necessity to the nation of repealing the Seventh Commandment until such time as his constituents at Podunk can get enough of their neighbors’ currency to make resumption and patriotism convertible terms. Not only would he be doubtful of being understood, but he would be awed by that practical-minded public opinion at home which severely discourages in its chosen representatives such frivolities as unknown tongues. He would see behind the Speaker’s desk the grim phantom of the honest Granger transfixing him with a spectral finger, and asking him in hollow tones if he was sent to Congress to talk gibberish or to get that little appropriation; he would see the still more appalling phantom of the local editor grimly sharpening his quill and squaring himself for another of those savagely sarcastic articles about our erudite Congressman, who spends his time—the time we pay for, etc.—muddling his brains—the few brains, etc.—over obsolete rubbish in the Congressional Library, while he neglects his constituents’ interests and allows that little bill, etc., etc. He sees all this, and, instead of Horace, he quotes Josh Billings, and everybody is satisfied.

Now, this is not meant to the dispraise of either the Congressman or his constituents, but only to show that here political is divided from literary life in a way quite unknown in England. The scholar in politics is a fond illusion of youthful enthusiasm. Our politicians do not write; our literary folks do not go to Congress. A stray editor, to be sure, now and then gets in, tumbling over, as it were, from the Reporters’ Gallery, or a flourish is made of sending Mr. Motley or Prof. Lowell minister to some foreign court; but these are spasmodic exceptions, and usually result in a way to confirm the rule. We have no counterparts to Disraeli, or Gladstone, or Mr. Lowe, or Sir George Cornewall Lewis, or the Duke of Argyle. Perhaps, however, a new era is dawning with the present Secretary of the Navy, who spells his literature with a “P.”

We have said enough—the reader may think more than enough—to show why translations from the classics should flourish better in England than here, and also, by implication at least, why of all classic authors, with the one exception of Homer, Horace and Virgil should most have taken the translators’ attention. From one or other of these are all the Parliamentary quotations we have given; and it is indeed, we believe, considered what our English friends call “bad form” to quote in debate any other Latin or Greek. The cause of this popularity it is easy to see. Horace and Virgil, in the usual college curriculum, are put into the student’s hands just as he has got over his initial struggles with the language, and his mind is a little freed to feel some of the beauties as well as the difficulties of the author—to know that the rose has fragrance as well as thorns. Homer, on the contrary, from his comparative ease, comes much earlier in the Greek course, and becomes so much the more distasteful to the learner as Greek is harder than Latin; its very letters are aliens to his eyes, its alphabet is a place of briers and brambles. It is hard to get over these early dislikes. St. Augustine confesses a hatred for Homer thus implanted in his school-days which he could never overcome, while he declares Virgil to be the greatest and most glorious of poets—a censure echoed by Voltaire, who pronounced the _Æneid, le plus beau monument qui nous reste de toute l’antiquité_, and asserts that if Homer produced Virgil, it was his finest work.

Both in Virgil and Horace there is much to captivate a youthful mind and everything to keep the affections won. The story of the _Æneid_ is not only full of life and color and motion, with plenty of fighting, which all boys love of course, but, despite its later-discovered want of a reasonable hero or heroine, its episodes—the Trojan horse and the sharp street-fight in fallen Ilium, the mysterious journey through the shades under a spectral moon, the races in the Fifth Book, the midnight scout of Nisus and Euryalus, the plucky young Iulus fleshing his maiden shafts at the siege in Book Ninth, the gallant onset and tragic fate of the young champions Lausus and Pallas—all are apt to take the boyish imagination; and in older years the haunting melody of the verse, the pensive grace that suffuses the telling of the story, renew and rivet the early charm.

Horace, too, is full of matter that even boyhood can taste and manhood never tires of. The lovely bits of rural landscape scattered like so many cabinet pictures through the odes—the sweltering cattle standing knee-deep under the oak-boughs in the pool of Bandusia, the bickering, pine-arched rivulet by whose side Dellius takes his nooning; the sunny slopes of Lucretilis dotted with sheep; the romantic beauty of the Happy Isles—do we not all recall the delight we felt when these enchanting little sketches first smiled on us from the weary drudgery of Tacitus and Thucydides like vistas of fresh meadow and woodland and cascade caught by the wayfarer from the hot and dusty highway? We did not so well relish then, in that out-door time of life, the warm little interiors that contrast and set off these: the glowing fire-side piled high with logs, made merry with old Falernian, and laugh and joke and friendly talk, while the rain beats upon the roof and the snow whirls about Soracte, and, drawing closer to the cheery blaze, we hug ourselves in the “tumultuous privacy of storm”; the jolly dinner-parties, where we help to quiz Quinctius for his gravity or chaff that harebrain Telephus out of his affectation of wisdom; the more sober feasts with Mæcenas or Virgil at the little Sabine Farm—but these, too, we soon get to know, and linger over them with fond familiarity. Then, too, we win to the secret of that genial though pagan philosophy which comes home to the “business and bosoms” of all of us, and whose precepts are so pithily expressed we cannot forget them if we would: that there is a time when folly is the truest wisdom; that he alone is happy who is content with little; that a wise man takes care of the present and lets the future take care of itself, because, as Cowley puts it,

“When to future years thou extend’st thy cares, Thou dealest in other men’s affairs”;

that we must pluck the blossom of to-day, or we may never have a chance at the morrow’s.

“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying,”

says Herrick, a later Horace. As we grow older and graver his sympathetic companionship keeps pace with us still, and in his deeper tones there are hints which even Christian civilization need not disdain to add to its scheme of a lofty and noble life.

So it is that England for three centuries back—indeed, ever since she began to have a literature to house them in—has been trying to naturalize and domesticate these Roman poets. In this, however, Virgil had nearly a century the start of Horace, owing, no doubt, to the nature of his great work, which appealed to the romantic impulses of that early time. Indeed, long before either the _Æneid_ or the _Iliad_ was generally known in Europe, the stories of both had been made over into the form of romances: the former by Guillaume de Roy in French, the latter by Guido de Colonna in Spanish. De Roy’s _Livre d’Eneidos_, translated into English and printed by Caxton, “no more resembles Virgil,” cries the good Bishop of Dunkeld wrathfully, “than the devil does St. Austin.” It was probably to clear the fair fame of his beloved poet that the bishop brought out his own quaint and spirited Scotch version in 1513. The first complete English translation came out in 1558; but in the previous year appeared the Second and Fourth Books, done into blank verse by the Earl of Surrey, notable as the first-known blank verse in the language, unless we are to take as such the unrhymed, alliterative metre used by Longland in _The Vision of Piers Ploughman_. It is thought to have been Surrey’s design, had he lived, to translate the remaining books. Had he done so, he would have added an ornament to our literature.

As it is, the distinction of giving the first full translation of the _Æneid_ to the language rests with a Welshman—Dr. Thomas Phaer. He himself, however, did only the first nine books and part of the Tenth; when dying, the work was taken in hand and finished, with the Thirteenth or supplementary book of Maffeo Veggio, by another physician, Dr. Thomas Twynne. English doctors then and afterwards seem to have had a propension towards the Muse. Dr. Borde, Dr. Thomas Campion (“Sweet Master Campion”), and Dr. Thomas Lodge—they seem to have had a propensity to be named Thomas also—were only the first of a long line of tuneful leeches, ending with our own Drs. Holmes and Joyce. Is there any occult connection between physic and Parnassus, between rhyme and rhubarb, between poetry and pills? and is Castaly a medicinal spring? Phaer’s version, which is printed in black-letter, is in rhymed fourteen-syllable verse, or “long Alexandrines”—a metre which Chapman afterwards took for his Homer, and to which Mr. Morris, the latest translator of the _Æneid_, has reverted.

The long Alexandrine has perhaps as much right as any to be called the English national metre in the sense in which we call the Saturnian verse the national metre of the Latins. Chaucer took his heroic couplet from the Italian or French, and Surrey, no doubt, had from the same source, or perhaps the Spanish, the hint for his blank verse. A curious parallel might be drawn between Surrey and Ennius, who, like him, introduced a new or “strange metre—the Greek hexameter—and, like him, by doing so revolutionized the versification of his country. Another point in common is that each has been reproached for his action. Ascham impliedly finds fault with Surrey because he did not choose hexameters or unrhymed Alexandrines instead of his unrhymed verse of ten or eleven syllables; and certain of those dreadful German scholars, who know everything and a few things besides, assure us that Ennius dealt a fatal blow to Latin poetry when he foisted on it a metre unsuited to its genius. One can hardly help speculating on the result had Virgil had to content himself with the _horridus numerus Saturnius_ as the vehicle of his tenderness and elegance, or if Hamlet had had to soliloquize in the metre of Sternhold and Hopkins. Would the rude instrument have cramped the player, or would the genius of the player have elevated the instrument? As Macaulay points out, the old nursery line,

“The queen is in her parlor eating bread and honey,”

is a perfect Saturnian verse on Terence’s model:

“Dăbūnt mălūm Mĕtēllī Nævĭō pŏētæ.”

How would Mr. Gladstone’s menace,

“Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor,”

have sounded in that shape? Should we recognize, do you think, those

“Daffodils That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty,”

done up in long Alexandrines or in such hexameters as those of Master Abraham Fraunce, which moved Ben Jonson to dub him a fool:

“Now had fiery Phlegon his dayes revolution ended, And his snoring snout with salt waves all to be-washed,”

or even in Sidney’s or Spenser’s, which were, in truth, little better? No doubt Virgil and Shakspere, being great poets, would have subdued what they worked in to their own artistic uses. Yet all the same let us be thankful to the humbler artisans who furnished to their hands pipes fit for them to play on, and to make such music as the world shall never tire of hearing. It should be added that the likeness between the English and the Latin reformer does not extend to the degree of refinement attained by each. In this respect Surrey is much the more advanced. Ennius never got over the barbarism of excessive alliteration which seems to mark the early metrical efforts of all peoples.

“Sicut si quando vincleis venatica velox”; “Sicut fortis equus spatio qui forte supremo”; “Quai neque Dardaneis campeis potuere perire Nec cum capta capei, nec cum combusta cremari.”

The last passage Virgil copied, as he did many others, and it is instructive to see how his more polished taste tones down his predecessor’s jingle:

¸ “Num Sigæis occumbere campis, Num capti potuere capi? num incensa cremavit Troja viros?”[125]

Footnote 125:

“Was there no dead man’s place for you on that Sigeian plain? Had ye no might to wend as slaves? Gave Troy so poor a flame To burn her men...?”

—_Æneid_, vii. 294 seq., Morris’ Trans. p. 175.

Surrey’s blank verse has the quaintness of his age, but not its defects of taste. Martial, writing about two centuries after Ennius, sneers at him, much as Ennius had sneered at his predecessor, Nævius—he who lamented that Latin poetry was to die with him!

“Ennius est lectus, salvo tibi Roma Marone.”[126]

Footnote 126:

“And Rome reads Ennius while Virgil lives!”

Pope, writing nearly the same length of time after Surrey, has only praise for him: “Surrey, the Grenville of a former age“—at least, Pope meant it for praise.”

To return to Phaer. It may be of interest to the reader to contrast the manner of the earliest and latest English translators of the _Æneid_. Venus’ admonition to Æneas (ii. 607) is thus given by the Welsh doctor:

“Then to thy parent’s hest take heede, dread not, my mind obey: In yonder place where stones from stones and bildings huge to sway Thou seest, and mixt with dust and smoke thicke stremes of reekings rise, Himselfe the god Neptune that side doth furne in wonders wise: With forke three tinde the wall vproots, foundations allto shakes; And qvite from vnder soile the towne, with ground-works all uprakes. On yonder side with Furies most, dame Juno fiercely stands, The gates she keeps, and from the ships the Greekes, her friendly bands, In armour girt she calles. Lo! there againe where Pallas sits, on fortes and castle-towres, With Gorgon’s eyes, in lightning cloudes enclosed, grim she lowres, The father-god himself to Greekes their mightes and courage steres, Himselfe against the Troyan blood both gods and armour reres. Betake thee to thy flight, my sonne, thy labours’ ende procure, I will thee never faile, but thee to resting-place assure. She said, and through the darke night shade herselfe she drew from sight; Appeare the grisly faces then, Troyes en’mies vgly dight.”

Mr. Morris gives it thus:

“And look to it no more afeard to be Of what I bid, nor evermore thy mother’s word disown. There where thou seest the great walls cleft and stone turn off from stone, And seest the waves of smoke go by with mingled dust-cloud rolled, There Neptune shakes the walls and stirs the foundings from their hold With mighty trident, tumbling down the city from its base. There by the Scæan gates again hath bitter Juno place The first of all, and wild and mad, herself begirt with steel, Calls up her fellows from the ships. Look back! Tritonian Pallas broods o’er topmost burg on high, All flashing bright with Gorgon grim from out her stormy sky; The very Father hearteneth on, and stays with happy might The Danaans, crying on the gods against the Dardan fight. Snatch flight, O son, whiles yet thou mayst, and let thy toil be o’er; I by thy side will bring thee safe unto thy father’s door.

“She spake, and hid herself away where thickest darkness poured. Then dreadful images show forth, great godheads are abroad, The very haters of our Troy.”

The half-lines respond to the imperfect verses in Virgil, which, in the fashion of the Chinese tailor, both Mr. Morris and his forerunner conscientiously copy. Phaer has other oddities, such as “Sybly” for Sibylla, “lymbo” for Hades, “Dei Phobus” for Deiphobus, and “Duke Æneas”; while every book is wound up with a _Deo Gratias_ by way of colophon. Let us hope it was not too fervently echoed by his readers. Indeed, Phaer’s version is better than its fame.

“After the associated labors of Phaer and Twynne,” says Warton in his _History of English Poetry_, “it is hard to say what could induce Richard Stanihurst, a native of Dublin, to translate the first four books of the _Æneid_ into English hexameters.” The remark shows less than the wonted perspicuity of the historian of English poetry. What induces any translation, except the belief (the fond belief!) that the work it aims to do has not yet been done? Master Stanihurst, like many other learned men then and since, was firmly persuaded that the hexameter was your only measure for a translation of Virgil. But there are hexameters and hexameters, and Master Stanihurst’s were unluckily of the other sort. A poet who proclaims his intention to “chaunt manhood and Garboiles,” and gives us

“With tentive list’ning each wight was settled in hark’ning”

for

“Conticuere omnes intentique ora tenebant,”

or

“You bid me, ô princesse, to scarifie a festered old sore”

as an equivalent for

“Infandum, regina, jubes renovare dolorem,”

must be content with “audience fit though few.” Sir Philip Sidney and Gabriel Harvey and a few other choice spirits, all bitten with the same flea, patted poor Stanihurst on the back and told him that what Nash called “his [and their] foul, lumbring, boisterous, wallowing measures” had “enriched and polished their native tongue.” But the rest of the world laughed with Nash, and may still for that matter; for Stanihurst’s version is full of conceits even droller than Phaer’s. “Bedlamite” for _furiatâ mente_, “Dandiprat hop-thumb” for _parvulus_, Jupiter “bussing his pretty, prating parrot”—_i.e._, Venus—and Priam girding on his sword Morglay, are some of them. The last shows how the glamour of the Gothic romances, in which Virgil figured sometimes as a magician—the _Sortes Virgilianæ_ long outlived their origin—still hung about even the learned, of whom Stanihurst was indisputably one— “eruditissimus ille nobilis” Camden calls him. It may be interesting to add that he was a Catholic, a friend of Campion the martyr, and died in exile because of it.

Stanihurst seems to have played the part of horrible example to all after-translators; for although Surrey’s metre has been repeatedly used, and Phaer’s of late by Mr. Morris, and we might add by Prof. Conington (for his octosyllabic verse is but a variation of the Alexandrine, which skipped capriciously from twelve syllables to sixteen[127]), the hexameter has never again, so far as we know, been applied to rendering the _Æneid_. Yet the measure which in English goes by that name seems far better adapted, _pace_ Mr. Arnold, to the pensive grace of Virgil than to the grave majesty of Homer. It may be true, as scholars contend, that it by no means reproduces the effect of the Greek or Roman hexameter, and it may be equally true, as other scholars tell us, that we have no conception of what was the effect of the Greek or Roman hexameter on the Greek or Roman ear—though the second objection might, in malicious hands, prove an embarrassment for the first. Yet as we read Homer and Virgil there is no doubt that hexameters can be—indeed, that such have been—constructed which do go far to reproduce the effect of Homer and Virgil, according to the modern reading, upon the modern ear. Grant that this is an entirely wrong effect; that either Homer or Virgil, hearing his verses read in modern fashion, would be sure to clap hands to ear, and cry out in an agony with Martial:

Footnote 127:

See Warton, _Hist. E. P._ sec. 1.

“Quem recitas, meus est, O Fidentine, libellus; Sed male cum recitas, incipit esse tuus”;[128]

Footnote 128:

“My piece you’ve been spouting! I ne’er should have known: Next time, if you love me, do say it’s your own.”

—Mart. _Epigr._ i. 39.

it is yet the only effect we are ever likely to get until the day of judgment; and what are you going to do about it? Of course it is hopeless to try to imitate Homer’s sonorous harmonies—the καλὰ τὰ Ὁμήρον ἔπη, as Maximus Tyrius calls them, the lovely Homeric words—the πολυφλοίς βοιο θαλάσσης and ἀργυρέοιο βιοῖο. It is not in ours or any other tongue but Homer’s own to do it. But Mr. Arnold has shown that we can imitate afar off his rhythm and metrical effect, and why should we not do that? If anybody can give us hexameters that please the English ear and make it fancy, without being conscious of too much elongation, that it is listening to the faintest echo of Homer’s mighty lyre or Virgil’s silver string, why, let us have them, prithee, and a _fico_ for the grammarians.

In this desultory review of Virgilian translators we mean to confine ourselves to the _Æneid_; but we may say in passing that the _Eclogues_ were, about 1587, put into unrhymed Alexandrines by Abraham Fleming, who thus nearly anticipated the metre Prof. Newman, after much experimenting, hit on as the proper one to render Homer, and which, as Prof. Marsh says, has the disadvantage (or the merit?) to American ears of suggesting our own epic strain of _Yankee Doodle_. Fleming, however, as will be seen from the following quotation, taken from the beginning of his Fourth Eclogue, only dropped into our national music occasionally:

“O Muses of Sicilian ile, let’s greater matters singe! Shrubs, groves, and bushes lowe delight and please not every man. If we do singe of woods, the woods be worthy of a consul.”

While Virgil was thus engrossing the attention of Elizabethan scholars Horace lay comparatively neglected, although it was an era of translation, as transitional periods in the literature of a country are apt to be. Nearly all the Latin poets then extant were done into English before the beginning of the seventeenth century, and the Greek series began sonorously with Chapman’s Homer soon after. Even that most perfect of all actual or possible poets, as her courtiers called her—Queen Elizabeth—tried her hand at it in a translation of part of the _Hercules Œteus_ of Seneca. But no complete version of Horace seems to have appeared prior to Creech’s towards the end of the seventeenth century. In 1567, however, Thomas Drant published _Horace, his Arte of Poetrie, Pistles, and Satyres Englished_. In his preface is one quaint remark, to the truth of which all Horatians will bear witness: “Neyther any man which can judge can judge it one and the like laboure to translate Horace and to make and translate a love booke, a shril tragedie, or a smooth and platleuyled poesye. Thys I can truly say, of myne owne experyence, that I can sooner translate twelve verses out of the Greeke Homer than sixe out of Horace.”

The first version of the _Odes_ was that of Sir Thomas Hawkins, about 1630. This, though it seems to have been popular enough to go through several editions, was far from complete, the lighter odes being omitted as being “too wanton and loose.” Our own edition, which is the fourth, dated 1638, contains about two-thirds of the odes and epodes. Here and there we find a tolerably good verse:

“What man, what hero [Clio] wilt thou raise With shrillest pipe or Lyra’s softer lays? What god whose name in sportive straine Echo will chaunt thee back againe?”[129]

Footnote 129:

_Carm._ i. 12.

This will compare not too disadvantageously with the latest version—Lord Lytton’s—which, indeed, is not especially good:

“What man, what hero, or what god select’st thou, Theme for sweet lyre or fife sonorous, Clio, Whose honored name shall that gay sprite-voice, Echo, Hymn back rebounding?”

As a rule, however, Sir Thomas is stiff—a fault common to almost all translations of the easiest of lyrists up to a much later period. Yet in this century there were many versions of single odes, epistles, and satires, some of which have scarcely ever been surpassed. Such, for instance, were Ben Jonson’s rendering of Ode IV. 1, _Ad Venerem_, and Milton’s of I. 5, _Ad Pyrrhum_, severally included by Mr. Theodore Martin and Lord Lytton in their respective versions as beyond their skill to better; Dryden’s fine paraphrase of III. 29, _To Mæcenas_, which Mr. Martin, non sordidus auctor, pronounces finer than the original; and, on a lower plane, however, Roscommon’s version of the _Art of Poetry_. Of these, Milton’s has been said to touch the high-water mark of translation, and is indeed very elegant and close.

Ben Jonson’s set translations are often injured by a rigid strictness which Horace might have warned him against:

“Nec verbum verbo curabis reddere, fidus Interpres,”[130]

Footnote 130:

“Nor word for word translate with painful care.” —Horat. _De Arte Poet._, Francis’ Trans.

and which evoked Dryden’s protest against “the jaw-breaking translations of Ben Jonson.” Yet even in fetters he danced better than most; and some of his translations, notably the one mentioned above and one of Martial, _Liber, amicorum dulcissima cura tuorum_, it would be hard to pick flaws in.

In Jonson’s day, however, there was no mean between word-for-word rendering and the loosest paraphrase, until Denham laid down something like the true rule in his verses to Fanshawe on the latter’s translation of Guarini:

“That servile path thou nobly dost decline Of tracing word for word and line for line.... A new and nobler way thou dost pursue To make translations, and translators too. They but preserve the ashes, thou the flame, True to his sense, but truer to his fame.”

Cowley, who translated largely from Horace, runs to the opposite extreme from Jonson: his versions are as much too free as Jonson’s are too close. Yet some of his single lines are unmatched for felicity and force:

“Hence ye profane, I hate ye all, Both the great vulgar and the small”

(a phrase which has passed into a proverb) for _Odi profanum vulgus et arceo_; “The poor rich man’s emphatically poor” for _Magnas inter opes inops_; “From his toucht mouth the wanton torment slips” for _Fugientia captat Flumina_; and, best of all, perhaps, “He loves of homely littleness the ease” for Martial’s _Sordidaque in parvis otia rebus amet_—which shows how a deft translator can, without leaving his original, breathe into it, so to speak, a beauty it scarcely had—such lines as these make us regret either that Cowley did not translate more or that he was unable to transfer to his own poetry more of the same simple elegance of thought and word.

All of Cowley’s contemporaries were not so happy, however, as he in their attempts to better Horace, though many tried it. One of them, Sir Edward Sherburne, claps a periwig on Mt. Soracte:[131]

Footnote 131:

Horat. _Carm._ i. 9. One of the best versions of this ode is that of Allan Ramsay, in the Scotch dialect.

“Seest thou not how Soracte’s head (For all his height) stands covered With a white periwig of snow, While the laboring woods below Are hardly able to sustain The weight of winter’s feathered rain?”

He had evidently been reading and, with Dryden, admiring Sylvester’s _Du Bartas_:

“And when the winter’s keener breath began To crystallize the Baltic Ocean, To glaze the lake, to bridle up the floods, And periwig with snow the bald-pate woods.”

The conceited style then in vogue was not well fitted to do justice to Horace’s _simplex munditiis_, although he was now universally read and esteemed—“The next best poet in the world to Virgil,” Cowley calls him—and has left the mark of his genial influence on all the writers of the time. One finds the Horatian sentiment running like a golden thread through the minor poetry of James and Charles I., at times informing whole poems with a pithiness of phrase and a dignity which Horace might call his own. Such are Marvell’s ode on _The Return of Cromwell_, such Shirley’s “The glories of our blood and state” and “Victorious men of earth, no more”—all three among the finest productions of their kind in the language.

After the Restoration the business of translation was resumed with vigor. Dryden in his Virgil, and, somewhat later, Pope in his Homer, set a fresh model which was followed by all their successors until Cowper’s Miltonic _Iliad_ came to break the spell and pave the way to the modern style, which aims to combine freedom with fidelity, ease of manner with correctness of meaning, and so far as possible to reproduce the author himself, form as well as matter. Creech’s Horace was hardly a success, being stiff and ungainly without being particularly close, and, while showing in its metre some sense of the poet’s rhythmical grace, scarcely attempted to render the characteristic delicacy of his wording—that _curiosa felicitas_ we all have heard of. In this—and indeed in every—respect the version of Dr. Francis, which came out about half a century later, was greatly superior as a whole to any previous one, and took with Horatians a position the best of its successors has found it hard to shake. Indeed, with such of the poet’s lovers as date from the golden age of Consul Plancus, Francis is still the paramount favorite, and you will talk to them in vain of the merits of Robinson or Lytton, of Conington’s fluent ease or Martin’s sprightly grace. Francis is in the main faithful, generally pleasing, and always respectable at least, but, like most of his rivals, he lacks a certain lightness of touch, an airy gayety of treatment in the minor odes which no one, we think, has hit off so well as Mr. Theodore Martin. They are, as that accomplished writer says, in many instances what would be called now _vers de société_, and their chief value rests in the poet’s inimitable charm of manner. Unless some notion of this can be given, the translator’s labor is lost, and he offers his readers but a withered posy from which color and perfume alike are fled.

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