CHAPTER I.

Among the many beautiful paintings by world-known artists which adorn the old Pinakothek in Munich is one symbolizing Innocence, by Carlo Dolce. It represents a lovely, rosy-cheeked girl gazing frankly at you; down her shoulders floats a stream of golden hair, and clasped to her bosom is a lamb.

Before this picture, one spring day in the year 1855, stood a gentleman admiring it with all the rapture of one who knows how difficult it is to achieve such a miracle of art—to place upon canvas a face so instinct with life, so full of that divine something which only genius can impart.

“It is indeed beautiful, most beautiful,” thought Conrad Seinsheim. “And yet,” after an inward pause, during which his eyes rested on a young lady who was copying it—“and yet real flesh and blood, when cast in the mould of beauty, infinitely surpass aught that was ever accomplished by brush or chisel.”

It was only a profile view he had of her face—for the painting hung in a corner, and she was in the corner too, with her left side next to the wall—but this view sufficed to send a thrill through every fibre of his body.

Conrad was no longer a very young man; his age was five-and-thirty, and he had already seen a good deal of the world. His father, a wealthy merchant of Cologne, had died, leaving him a handsome fortune, and with his last breath almost had urged him to marry. And Conrad had travelled and visited well-nigh every capital in Europe, enjoying to the utmost the pleasures which choice society affords, but had not yet found the woman whom he could really love. The fair women whom he had met had been mere butterflies of fashion, idlers basking in the smiles of men as vain and idle as themselves. But here, at last, was one who came up to his high ideal of female loveliness, and who withal was not a drone. But it was Walburga’s expression, rather than the exquisite classic outline of her countenance, that made his heart throb as it did; it imaged a soul nourished upon the visions of genius. The girl was evidently enjoying, with delight too deep for words, this Carlo Dolce; and, guided by the light of sympathy, its ethereal life, which other copyists might have missed, she was catching and retaining, and you might almost have fancied, from her mien of rapture, that she knew the spirit of the old master was hovering over her and guiding her delicate white hand.

“The sunshine of her soul is inspiring, and fills me with gladness too,” exclaimed Conrad inwardly. “She does not turn to look at me; she goes right on, filled with the joy of her work. Oh! have I not found here the being whom I have been so vainly seeking?”

After admiring the young artist a few minutes he continued his way along the gallery. But his mind was too occupied with the living picture which he had just seen to care a jot for anything else, and all the rest of the day this vision of beauty haunted him.

At three o’clock the Pinakothek is closed; and at this hour Walburga betook herself to her humble but cosey home in Fingergasse,[43] where, summoning her friend, Moida Hofer, who lodged with her, and who kept an old curiosity shop in the same street, the two sallied forth for a stroll in the English Garden.[44] They were fast friends, these girls, having been many years together, and never were they so happy as in each other’s company. And now, while they wandered through this delightful park, they talked about their school-days, and rejoiced that not yet a day of parting had come.

“Well, as for me, I shall never marry, you know,” spoke Walburga.

“Oh! yes, you will,” the other smilingly answered. Yet in her heart Moida believed that what Walburga said might be true. Her dearest friend was born with an affliction, a weighty cross—one which likely enough would prove a barrier to marriage. Moida, however, had no such cross, and already she had a devoted lover, whose name was Ulrich, and who, moreover, was the brother of Walburga.

Ulrich was uncommonly handsome and the last representative of the ancient and noble family of Von Loewenstein. But he was poor, and far off seemed the day when he should make Moida his bride. The latter, however, was patient. She built for herself no castles in the air; she was one of those practical souls, full of common sense, which is the genius of everyday life, and nobody had ever heard her utter a sigh. “Sometime or other our honeymoon will come,” she would tell her betrothed; “therefore, much as I love you, my Ulrich, I’ll not die of impatience.”

It would have been hard to find two young women more unlike in temperament as well as looks than Moida and Walburga; and perhaps ’tis why they dwelt in such harmony together. Miss Hofer, instead of being tall like her friend, was short and plump, with a little sprightly nose turning upward toward the sky, and she had a somewhat broad mouth. But there was a pretty dimple in her chin—a very pretty dimple; just the place for a kiss to hide itself—and she had lovely blue eyes, and such a fund of mirth and humor that it was impossible ever to be sad in her company. Of painting Moida knew absolutely nothing. But she was glad that she was not an artist; “for if I were,” she would say, “how could I find time to attend to my curiosity-shop and keep our little household in order? Ulrich is an artist, and so are you, Walburga; and we must not all three be making mountains and heads.”

“No, indeed. And I don’t know what I should do without you,” spoke Walburga, as they sauntered along the gravelled path by the lake. “You can’t tell how much I lean upon you. I really believe I am better since I took your advice about the skull.”

Walburga, who was of a nature inclined to melancholy, had for more than a year kept a skull in her bed-room, and before it she was wont to meditate sometimes for hours, until the ugly thing stole away the bloom from her cheek and drew a black mark under each of her eyes. Her appetite, too, began to fail; and ’twere not easy to say what might have happened if she had been living alone. But one morning, while she was plunged in one of her reveries before this death’s head, Moida approached, and, after kneeling beside her and saying a prayer—for Moida was a good girl, and quite as pious as Walburga, only in a different way—she reverently took the skull in her hands and said: “Now, dear friend, I think ’tis time to put this aside. ’Tis making a ghost of you. It has honeycombed you with scruples, and I am sure that your father-confessor would approve of the reformation which I am going to inaugurate. Therefore take one more good look at this eyeless, grinning object ere it disappears from your sight for ever.”

These bold words so astonished Walburga that for about a minute she could not reply, and she turned to Moida with an expression which might have deterred anybody with less spirit and determination from proceeding further. But Moida—who, let us here remark, was a descendant of Andreas Hofer, the Tyrolese patriot—was not in the least frightened by the other’s flashing eyes.

“I will use this skull with reverence,” she continued. “I promise you it shall be laid in consecrated ground; if necessary, with my own hands I’ll bury it in God’s-acre. But here in this room it shall be no more.”

“Well, I declare!” exclaimed Walburga, presently bursting into a laugh, “you are the dearest, sauciest girl I ever met.”

“Then say I may do it,” went on Moida. “For, although I am very determined, yet I prefer not to be too great a despot and carry the skull off absolutely against your will.”

“Well, let me bury it myself,” answered Walburga.

“Agreed! But I’ll accompany you to God’s-acre; for I know one of the grave-diggers, and before another hour this poor old head shall be resting in peace underground.”

So the skull was buried, after which Walburga’s cheeks recovered a good deal of their bloom. And now, while she and her friend are enjoying themselves in the open air this mild spring day, she looks more sprightly than we have ever seen her before.

“Pray tell me, Moida,” said Walburga, after they had gone round the lake and were on their way home, “what is Ulrich doing at present? You had a letter from him this morning, had you not?”

“Oh! yes,” answered the other, her ever-bright countenance growing brighter. “The dear fellow is in the Innthal,[45] where he means to make a sketch of the home of his ancestors.”

“Dear, sweet spot!” murmured Walburga.

“Ay, and dear Tyrol!” added Moida. “And he tells me Loewenstein Castle has been sold by the state to a rich gentleman from Cologne, who has engaged Ulrich to restore its faded frescos, and he is beside himself with delight. The least thing raises his spirits ever so high, and now he imagines that this undertaking will be the beginning of his fortune. I must caution the dear boy, in my answer, not to indulge in dreams.”

“Ah! true; he is given to dreaming, like myself,” said Walburga, shaking her head. “But this is a hard world, as you have often told me, and dreams will not feed us. I must sell my paintings—sell them—and not work for pure love of the beautiful.”

“Yes, indeed. Murillo, Raphael, and all of them had to eat, and bread costs money,” said Moida.

“Well, I hope this new-comer is a good man, and may he know how to keep his castle. Alas! if our family had known how to manage things, instead of letting everything go at loose ends. If there had been heads among us like yours, Moida, I should not have been living to-day in narrow, dingy Fingergasse, trying hard to make the two ends meet, and not always succeeding.”

“But then I should never have known you; a grand lady dwelling in a castle would not stoop to look at me.”

“Oh! true; and ’twas worth coming down in the world—down to a humble abode—in order to know you.” Then, after a pause: “But what else does my brother say about this gentleman?”

“Well, he says he is not a bit handsome, and that he looks stern. Ulrich says, too, he is passionately fond of art, is a believer in the aristocracy of nature, and declares he doesn’t know who his great-grandfather was. The only thing that is really not good about him is that he has no faith.”

“No faith!” sighed Walburga. “Well, at any rate, Moida, he’ll not suffer for want of company; for it cannot be denied that very few of those learned men are ever seen inside a church. Oh! how comes this?”

Moida shrugged her shoulders, but made no response. The truth is, although a very good girl, she did not think deeply on religious subjects. Walburga, on the contrary, was often much distressed by the infidelity which she saw spreading around her, and trembled for her dear brother, who had once declared that out of every hundred students who frequented the university with him seventy lost their belief in a God after being there six months; and nothing is so dead as a dead faith. And now she was not certain that Ulrich himself went to church; for of late he had been away from her a good deal. Walburga called to mind, too, a grave conversation which she once had with him about religion, when he told her something that had left a deep impression upon her.

“Believe me, sister,” said Ulrich, “a boy may be very good at home and have the best religious instruction from his parents, yet their advice and teaching will prove but a slender safeguard against the perils of the university. This is the age of science; ’tis impossible to prevent young men from studying chemistry and geology. They will flock to our halls of learning and crowd round our great professors, who are atheists, like moths about a lamp, heedless of the risk they run. Now, sister, I verily believe one true Christian university would be worth a thousand Sunday-schools. The great need of the day is to Christianize science—ay, Christianize it; make it a beacon-light and not a consuming fire.”

“Moida,” spoke Walburga, after dwelling a moment on these words of her brother—“Moida, do you think Ulrich says his prayers and goes to church as he used?”

“Oh! yes, I am quite sure he does,” replied her friend. “He declares that for love of me he will always be good.”

“Well, although ’tis not the best reason he might have for keeping his faith, yet some fish are held by a very slender line,” added the other, smiling. “So, thank God! he loves you.”

Thus conversing about Ulrich and Tyrol, and listening to the merry songs of the birds, the girls continued their walk. It was dusk when they got home. And what a snug little home it is!

But before we enter let us call the reader’s attention to three letters, “C M B,” chalked upon the door. They stand for Caspar, Melchior, Balthasar, the names which tradition gives to the wise men who came with gifts for the infant Saviour; and beneath the letters, and likewise marked in chalk, are three crosses and the year of our Lord.[46]

But now open the door and see how clean and neat everything is within. Yonder quaint-looking closet, standing between the two bed-rooms, albeit a century old and more, shows no sign of age; not a particle of dust rests upon it, not a spider’s web. The floor, too, is well scrubbed and polished, and looks all the better for having no carpet. In one of the windows are a couple of flower-pots, wherein are blooming two magnificent roses; while in the other window is a cage containing a nightingale. The bird at this moment begins to warble a sweet melody to greet Walburga, who is its mistress; while Moida, who also has a pet, finds it no easy matter to prevent Caro—a black, shaggy poodle—from tearing her in pieces for joy.

“Poor, dear Caro!” she said, holding him at arm’s length, “the horrid police would kill you, if they knew you were alive, and so I must keep you shut up within doors. Poor, dear Caro!” And this was true. In Munich aged dogs are not allowed to live; and Caro is toothless and nearly blind. But his heart is as young as ever; and his tail—oh! how much expression there is in a dog’s tail. How it wags to and fro! How it whisks up and down! How it thumps on the floor! Moida sometimes, for fun, would try to hold fast Caro’s tail while she spoke endearing words to him. But in vain. No sooner would she open her lips than away it went, ten times quicker than the pendulum of a clock, and as impossible to clench as if ’twere a bit of machinery driven back and forth by steam-power.

Nothing could better show the difference between Walburga and her friend than a glance at the different books which each of them reads. In Walburga’s sleeping-chamber, on a table close by her bed, lie two well-fingered volumes: one is _Master Eckhart, the Father of German Mystics_; the other is _Blessed Henry Suso’s Little Book of Eternal Wisdom_. For a number of years these have been well-nigh her constant companions, and she knows them almost by heart. More than once have they inspired her to renewed effort when she felt disheartened, as well as lightened the cross which afflicted her. “The swiftest steed to carry us to perfection is suffering,” says Eckhart; and these words Walburga often repeats to herself.

But in Moida’s apartment, instead of the mystics we find a song-book, an arithmetic, and the Regensburg book of cookery.

While Caro was frisking about and yelping, the nightingale, as we have already observed, was warbling a song for its mistress, who stood listening with a pensive air.

“You shall never die in a cage,” she murmured presently. “’Tis a shame to keep you even one day a prisoner.”

“How so?” exclaimed Moida, who had quick ears, and was a mortal foe to anything like mere sentimentality. “Are not birds created for our pleasure? And you take such care of yours! Why, I’m sure he is quite as happy as if he were flying about in the groves, hunting here and there for food, chased by other birds, and journeying hundreds of miles to find a warm climate in winter; whereas you give your pet plenty to eat—I sometimes think too much (Moida was economical)—and whenever it is cold your room is turned into a hot-house to please him.”

“Ah! but, Moida dear,” answered Walburga, “he has no playmate, no other little bird to love; and what is life without love?”

“Well, he loves you, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, and very much. But that is not the kind of love I mean. He has no mate to sing to. I am sure, in the song he is giving us now, he is sighing and pining for some other pretty bird whom he might kiss and caress and woo.”

“Well, I do declare!” exclaimed Moida, bursting into a laugh. Then, suddenly becoming grave: “But, no, no, I mustn’t laugh. I agree with you: love _is_ everything, and Ulrich is my nightingale. Why, every letter he writes to me is a sweet song of love.”

For several minutes after Moida uttered these words Walburga remained silent. They had awakened in her breast longings which had better have slept for ever. But we cannot escape from ourselves; and she was born with a nature full of tenderness and sympathy. It made her yearn for something which she might call all her own, something to serve and cherish and suffer for. Home! home!—this was the secret craving of Walburga’s soul. But, alas! she had barely the glimmer of a hope that this happiness would ever be hers; and even good Eckhart’s words, which she now repeated to herself, did not bring her the usual comfort.

The poor girl, too, was an orphan; her brother was away from her, and a day would come when Moida would fly off into Ulrich’s arms. “And, oh! then I’ll be lonely indeed,” she sighed.

While Walburga was thus musing on her fate Moida took up her zither,[47] and, seating herself by the open window, sang in a rich contralto voice one of the old Volkslied, beginning:

“Ach. wie ist’s möglich dann, Das ich dich lassen kann! Hab dich von Herzen lieb, Das Glaube mir!”

which may be rendered:

“Ah! how can I from thee depart? Believe me, my heart’s love thou art!”

When the song was finished Walburga, in whose eyes tears were glistening, said: “Nobody can beat my nightingale singing except you. Oh! who will sing for me when you are gone?”

“Gone! Why, I never mean to leave you, dear Walburga; no, never!” cried Moida.

“Ah! Ulrich will carry you away; and then—”

“Yes, yes, so he will, the dear boy! and then I’ll take you in my arms, and carry you away too, and thus we’ll all three fly off together,” interrupted the sunny-hearted girl.

Then Moida sang another song, and another, and another, until one by one all the stars came out of their hiding-places in the sky; and never did they shine down upon two warmer friends than these.

* * * * *

In the fairest valley of Tyrol, and perched on a spur of the mountain, a thousand feet above the swift-flowing river which gives the Innthal its name, stands Loewenstein Castle. How admirably placed it is! From afar the enemy might be espied approaching; and when he came near it needed stout lungs as well as a bold heart to climb the steep ascent which led to its walls, for ’tis like an eagle’s eyrie to get at. When the castle was built many an eagle used to soar above its battlements, and the dense pine forest which covered the land was the haunt of wolves and bears.

Tyrol is wild enough to-day. What must it have been in the ninth century? The Roman legions had once marched through the valley on their way to conquer Germany. But Rome had fallen, and only here and there an earthwork, or a paved road, or a sentinel-tower was left to tell how far her soldiers had penetrated into the wilderness. Afterwards barbarians and wild beasts had it all to themselves as before—had it all to themselves, until by and by, in the course of time, afoot, or perchance mounted on an ass which had carried him across the snowy Brenner—poor ass! how it must have longed for sunny Italy again—came a monk. St. Benedict bade him go forth and preach the Gospel; and lo! here he was, quite at home amid these shaggy-looking men, very Esaus for hairiness, and in manners a shade removed from cannibals. And this monk’s track had been followed ere long by other monks, until finally what Roman power could not do they did.

Round about the monastery the trees were felled and the land made to bloom; no farmers better than those old monks. And they cultivated the barbarians, too, as well as the soil.

Then, when times were ripe for him to appear, when there was something to plunder, on the mountain-side the robber-knight built his fastness; and Loewenstein did its share of plundering in those good old times.

But there was a chapel attached to the castle, and the baron’s lady was devout, if he was not. Gently, little by little, she persuaded her consort to take part in her devotions, and in the end made a pretty fair Christian of him. But the Von Loewensteins loved dearly to fight; the dust of the battle-field was sweeter than incense to their nostrils; and so to the Holy Land they went, nor missed a single Crusade. The knight’s bride with her own hands would buckle on his armor, then go take her post on the topmost turret, waving adieu as long as her swimming eyes could see the gleaming helmet that sometimes never gleamed again for her.

Many a century has rolled by since those brave days of battle-axes and healthy men; and now Loewenstein is only a ruin. But the monastery still stands, the grayness of its old age hidden by the greenness of its ivy, and St. Benedict would not find things much changed if he were to make his brethren a visit.

It is sunset, and the new owner of Loewenstein has just returned from Munich, whither he went to enjoy himself awhile in the Pinakothek.

“What a pleasure ’twill be,” Conrad Seinsheim is saying to himself, “to restore this ancient castle! Happily, one tower is left, and in it I can make shift to dwell until the rest of the edifice is completed.” Then, speaking aloud: “And I will embellish my home with beautiful paintings and statuary; and the first statue shall be a woman.” Here he turned his deep-set, heavy-browed eyes upon a young man who was seated beside him sketching the ruin. The latter looked up and smiled.

“And a living woman it is to be,” added Conrad.

“Have you found your dream, then, sir?” inquired Ulrich, tossing back the long, unkempt hair which he persisted in wearing, albeit it troubled him not a little, for ’twas constantly falling in his eyes.

“I believe I have,” replied Conrad. Whereupon he went on to tell of the young lady whom he had seen copying Carlo Dolce’s picture of Innocence. While he was speaking a faint tinge of red spread over Ulrich’s cheek; for Moida had written that his sister was making a copy of this very painting. Suddenly he laid his pencil aside and rose to his feet. Conrad observed him in silence, but without any air of contempt; if he did not pray himself, he respected none the less those who did, and the monastery bell was ringing the _Angelus_. As Ulrich murmured the prayer he could not help thinking that likely at this very moment Moida was saying it also.

When the sound of the bell died away Conrad passed with him into the tower, where they began examining its faded frescos.

“These must have a strange effect on you,” remarked the former. “Doubtless yonder barely perceptible figure of a lady stretching forth her hand and clasping another hand—her lover or husband, perhaps—was one of your ancestresses!”

“Well, it is indeed sad for me to view such ruin and decay in the place where myself and so many of my name were born,” answered Ulrich. “I feel all the while as if I were moving about among ghosts. But then ’tis many, many years since Loewenstein was anything better than what it is to-day. The wind, I have heard my dear mother say, used to blow in through the chinks in the wall and rock my cradle.” Here the poor fellow gave a rueful smile. “You see,” he continued, “old families die hard. It often takes them more than one generation to get down to the bottom of the hill. Why, my parents were little better off than the owls when they inhabited this ruin; and ’twas high time to quit it when they did. But we are out at last on the broad world, and I can truly say I thank God that a man like yourself has bought my ancestral home. Again let me thank you, sir, thank you from the bottom of my heart, for your kindness in giving me employment.”

These words, uttered in a frank, manly tone, pleased Conrad, who, when he first met the young artist, had taken him for a silly fellow that was clinging to the shadow of a great name while too proud to do any work. Ulrich certainly had rather a haughty mien; but, thanks to the girl to whom he was betrothed, he had acquired a good deal of common sense, and, moreover, he had a warm heart. So that Conrad, who pitied his threadbare appearance, soon grew to like him, and during the past week had made the youth take up his quarters with him in the tower.

“Well, I deem it a great piece of good-fortune to have fallen in with you,” said Conrad. “For, although I don’t believe in spirits coming back to molest those who occupy their former abodes, yet, really, to have passed a night here alone might have made my flesh creep. How old is Loewenstein, do you know?”

Ulrich, who knew pretty well the whole history of his house, now proceeded to relate it, briefly of course; yet he told enough to make the other long to hear more. And when he had finished Conrad said:

“Although I am an ardent believer in the aristocracy of nature, nevertheless I feel all the more drawn to you for being a Von Loewenstein.” After a pause he added: “I wonder who my Dream will turn out to be? Will she appreciate dwelling in a castle? Oh! yes, I am sure she will.”

And Conrad went on to tell again of Walburga’s look of rapture as she stood at her easel, and of her tall, graceful figure:

“I am sure, too, her hair is all her own; in fact, every part of her is as classic as her face.”

While he thus gave utterance to his admiration for Ulrich’s sister Ulrich’s heart was in a flutter, and he could not help thinking what happiness ’twould be if Walburga were one day to become mistress of Loewenstein. Yet at the same time he thought it not a little strange that Conrad should express such unbounded admiration for one who did not expect, any more than he did himself, that ever a man would wish her for his bride.

“But tell me,” pursued Conrad, twitching his sleeve, “is there no dear girl whom you have fallen in love with? Artists, of all men, you know, are the most prone to the tender passion.”

“Oh! indeed there is,” answered Ulrich—“as sweet a girl as ever breathed. Once a week she writes to me and I to her.”

“Well, who is she? Where does she live?”

“In Munich, sir. Her name is Moida Hofer; and, although of peasant descent, I call her noble, for many of our mountaineers have owned their rough acres for generations, and, moreover, Moida’s grandfather was Hofer the Patriot.”

“Really! Oh! then, don’t let her slip; marry her by all means, for she belongs to my nobility,” exclaimed Conrad with enthusiasm. “And of course she is beautiful?”

“Every girl, sir, is beautiful when a man loves her; and I detest Greek noses and Roman noses since I have known Moida, for she hasn’t one.”

Here the other burst into a loud laugh, which frightened away a couple of bats that had been circling about their heads; for bats and swallows, as well as owls and hawks, found their way into this ancient chamber, which had not been occupied till now since Ulrich and his sister left it as children.

“And you should hear Moida sing,” continued Ulrich; “and hear her talk, too. Oh! she is so wise. She knows how to preach to me and tell me of my faults without ever making me angry. I was living in Cloudland before I met her. She said: ‘Ulrich, come down out of the clouds and earn your bread’; and ’tis owing to her that I persevered in my art-studies and am able to paint a little.”

“You certainly have talent,” said Conrad, “judging by the sketches in your portfolio. But let me ask why you do not marry?”

At this question Ulrich heaved a sigh.

“Is it want of money?”

“Well, our honeymoon will come some day or other,” said the youth, evading a response. “She is patient—more patient than I. She cheers me up; knits stockings for me; makes me shirts; in fact, she does as much for me almost as if she were my wife. Dear, dear, dear Moida!”

“May I inquire how Miss Hofer earns a livelihood?”

“She keeps a small store, an old-curiosity shop, where one may buy for a mere trifle chairs and mirrors, and clocks and engravings, together with many other articles that at some time or another adorned noble houses. You may find there a number of things that used to belong to Loewenstein.”

“Indeed! Then I’ll buy out her whole stock—upon my word I will—and back to this spot shall come every chair and mirror and clock. O Ulrich, Ulrich! why didn’t you tell me this before?”

After thus conversing awhile within the tower, and it being settled that the young man was to begin on the morrow his labor of restoring the frescos, they passed out by what must once have been a stately passage-way, but was now so encumbered with fragments of stone and mortar that Conrad and Ulrich were obliged to stoop very low, at one place almost to creep, in order to emerge into the open air. As we have already observed, the tower was the only portion of the castle not entirely in ruin; the rest of the building was so shattered by time that it was difficult even for imagination to picture it as it had been in the days of its glory.

“Here,” said Ulrich, “used to be the chapel. On this spot the first Mass was offered up in Loewenstein.”

“Well, I will rebuild this, too, unbeliever though I am,” said Conrad. “And oh! would that my dead faith might be quickened as easily as these crumbled stones can be put into shape again. But, happily, women are still prayerful, and the young lady whom I hope to win shall have her chapel to pray in. But, alas! what desolation has come to this hallowed spot—what desolation! Everything gone except one tomb. I must not tread upon it, for doubtless one of your race lies buried underneath.”

“Only a few words on the monument are legible,” said Ulrich, stooping and brushing off the dust with his hands:

‘Hic jacet Walburga; Requiescat in pace!’

The rest I cannot make out; but I remember hearing my father say that this Walburga was a Hungarian princess, who married Hugo von Loewenstein toward the close of the fourteenth century.”

“How sad is the fall of old families!” observed Conrad after a moment’s silence, during which his eyes remained fixed on the blurred slab at his feet. “But I sometimes believe there is a law which governs the strange and solemn procession of generations: as the wheel of time goes round and round, the king takes his turn at beggary, and the beggar shuffles off his rags and mounts up to the throne.”

“Therefore at some future day, if your notion be correct, I, or one of my descendants, will get this castle back again,” said Ulrich, smiling.

“Nowadays,” pursued Conrad, as if in soliloquy, “people affect to be democratic; we win our spurs by speculating in cotton, or grain, or some other stuff, instead of by brave deeds on the battle-field. Well, well, I for one prefer the helmet and the battle-axe to the chinking of the money-changers.” Then, turning to Ulrich: “It surprises you to hear me say this, eh?”

To tell the truth, it did surprise him; but Ulrich did not show it.

“Well, a fortnight ago I would not have spoken thus,” he continued. “But the truth is, the veriest democrat loves in his secret heart a pedigree; and if he hasn’t one, he’ll pay somebody to make him a family-tree; and then he’ll buy a ruin, as I have done, and get to feel as I feel, perhaps. Why, Ulrich, I do believe somebody has thrown a spell over me; ay, this fair lady sleeping under the old stone here has touched me with her spirit wand. Why, I feel as if I were a Loewenstein—I do! I do!” Here Conrad brandished his cane and repeated aloud the Loewenstein motto: _Intaminatis fulget honoribus_.

“How it would please Walburga to hear him talking thus!” said Ulrich inwardly. “Proud as she is, I think her heart might incline towards him.”

It should perhaps be observed that hardship had wrought little effect upon Walburga. It had scarcely bent her spirit at all; and not once since she quitted the home of her forefathers had she returned to visit the dearly-loved spot. “It would be too bitter a sight to see vulgar people wandering amid its ruins,” she would tell her brother. “I’d rather have Loewenstein disappear entirely, be covered up by the mountain, than that some rich upstart should buy it, then pull down the mite that is left of its glorious walls, and erect a modern villa in their stead.”

Nor had she for several years entered Moida Hofer’s store, where so many curious objects were exposed for sale; and once, when her friend had disposed of a Loewenstein clock, one of the primitive kind, with pendulum swinging in front—ay, and disposed of it, too, for a pretty good price—Moida did not dare mention the fact. Indeed, the old-curiosity shop was now a banished theme of conversation between them.

By and by, after telling Ulrich for the twentieth time how finely the castle was to be renovated, Conrad said: “Now let us go in and take some repose; for to-morrow, you know, we are to be up early—you to do a good day’s work, while I must be off by the first train to Munich, where I am determined to have another look at my Dream.”

With this they went back into the tower, and after trying, but without success, to drive the bats out of their dormitory, Conrad and Ulrich lay down to rest. The former was soon fast asleep; but the youth, who had a more vivid imagination, stayed awake a whole hour thinking of the many who had occupied this chamber in days gone by. The moon shimmering in through the iron-barred window over his head flung a weird halo round about the lady painted on the wall; and he could not but think what a very, very ghostly chamber it was.

A month had gone by since Ulrich had laid eyes on Moida Hofer—only a month, yet it seemed as long as six months. So next morning, when Conrad was making ready to descend the hill on his way to Munich, the youth thrust his hand into his pocket, and, drawing forth some small pieces of silver, counted them over carefully. With anxious heart he counted them, and to his great delight found that there was just enough money to carry him to his betrothed and back. The other, who had a quick eye, was not slow to read what was passing in Ulrich’s mind, and said: “Is there any message you wish delivered to Miss Hofer? Or perhaps you will accompany me? Do; and we may visit her curiosity-shop together. To-morrow will be time enough to begin work on the frescos.”

“Well, I own, sir,” replied Ulrich, “’twould give me great happiness to see my lady-love; and I’ll labor all the harder for making her a visit.”

Accordingly they both set out for Munich, which was reached in four hours—eight it seemed to the impatient travellers, who as soon as they arrived went straight to Fingergasse.

Never was street better named, for it is little broader than a finger, and consequently only at high noon does the sun cheer it with its rays.

But this morning Fingergasse looked anything but dismal to the young artist, who knew that a pair of bright eyes were about to greet him, and already were shooting floods of light into his heart.

“Why, Ulrich! Ulrich!” These were Moida’s first words as she flew towards him. Perhaps in presence of a stranger she may have expected only a warm shake of the hand in response or a pat on the cheek. But in an instant the arms of her lover were twined about her neck. Then, when the greeting was over, Conrad Seinsheim was introduced, and we need not say that the girl surveyed him carefully. Moida found him not handsome like her Ulrich; rather the opposite. But she admired his broad forehead and the energy which flashed through his eyes; even his air of sternness did not displease her, for she recognized in him a man with opinions of his own, a man of power and decision.

And now, reader, blame her not for telling Conrad frankly and in her most winning way that her store was the best place in town to find old curiosities. “Why, sir,” said Moida, “I have even some fourteenth-century chairs from Loewenstein Castle, of which doubtless you have heard. ’Tis the oldest castle in Tyrol, and——”

“Moida,” interrupted Ulrich, “did I not write to you that——”

“Oh, hush! hush!” said Moida, blushing and putting her plump hand over his mouth.

“Well, I am here,” observed Conrad, trying hard not to smile—“I am here purposely to buy everything your store contains; for I am now owner of Loewenstein, and mean to fit it up as far as possible in true mediæval style.”

“Really!” exclaimed Moida. “Really!”

Whereupon Conrad did smile outright at her look of surprise and joy. Then presently she turned towards Ulrich, and her lips moved as if she were trying to speak. But he could only guess what she wanted to say. Yes, Moida, if Conrad purchases all that your little store holds, then indeed you may name your wedding-day. And if a radiant expression can make a homely face beautiful, it would have been difficult to find a more beautiful girl than Moida at this moment.

After speaking volumes to Ulrich through her blue eyes, she turned again to Conrad and said in an earnest tone: “O, sir! how kind you are. I cannot find words to express my thanks.”

The latter waved his hand, as if to say, “Pray do not thank me,” then set about examining the curiosities. These consisted of nine chairs ranged side by side along the wall, half a dozen breast-plates and helmets, a stack of arquebuses and pikes, three crossbows, some silver plates and goblets, a ewer, a couple of clocks which had not ticked in a century, an earthenware stove quaintly embossed with scenes from Holy Writ, and apparently a countless number of smaller objects, such as seals, rings, miniatures, and coins.

Picking up one of the miniatures, Conrad exclaimed: “Why, I declare, this is very like a young lady whom I saw lately in the Pinakothek, only here is a full view of her face, whereas I saw but the profile of my Dream.”

At this remark Moida stepped up and whispered: “’Tis the portrait of Walburga, the spouse of Hugo von Loewenstein; and ’tis the only thing I am not willing to part with.” The other turned towards her a moment with an air of disappointment; then, perceiving that she was in earnest, he let the subject drop.

A few minutes later Conrad was on his way to the picture-gallery, while Ulrich remained to enjoy the company of his betrothed. The first thing Moida did was to run out and fetch him a mug of beer. This may seem too trivial a fact to relate; nevertheless, truth may as well be told. She knew that in Tyrol he had had only water or wine to drink; and what can equal Munich beer? As Ulrich quietly sipped the delicious beverage, her quick eye ran over his buttons. She took them all in at a glance, and in another moment Moida’s needle was busy mending a rent in his sleeve. But while the girl sewed, she ever and anon peeped up at his face, and thought to herself: “In the whole kingdom of Bavaria there is nobody can compare with my Ulrich.” And, moreover, full of common sense as Moida was, there was nothing she admired more than the two sword-cuts on her dear boy’s cheek, in shape like a cross; and well did she remember the day when he received them, now five years ago. For, like most German students, Ulrich had belonged to a corps (his was the Teutonia), and occasionally engaged in a duel. It was on that memorable day that he addressed her the first tender word, after having had his wounds sewed up; while Moida, as she listened with fluttering heart and drooping eyes, thought to herself: “I am the third one to whom he has said this. Oh! I wonder which of us will win?”

Then she pretended that she did not care a straw for him; whereupon Ulrich presented her with a beautiful nosegay—four florins it cost him—and the rest we need not narrate.

“By the way, how is Caro?” inquired Ulrich, after holding the glass to her lips and making Moida take a sip of the beer.

“As frisky as if he were a puppy,” answered the latter, highly pleased at the question. Ulrich knew it would please her.

“Well, wouldn’t it be nice to have the old dog settled at Loewenstein, where he might get plenty of fresh air and be outdoors as much as he chose?” added the youth.

“Ay; but what chance is there of that?—unless you were to take him; and he’d be rather troublesome.”

“No pet of yours would ever trouble me,” rejoined Ulrich. “And let me tell you, Moida, strange things happen in the world.”

With this he proceeded to reveal how much Conrad Seinsheim admired a certain young lady whom he had seen in the Pinakothek.

“’Tis the very one you heard him say that miniature is so like; and I know he is gone there now purposely to see her again. And it must be Walburga, for isn’t she copying Carlo Dolce’s picture of Innocence?”

Leaving Ulrich and his betrothed to discuss the possibility of a union between a Von Loewenstein and a Seinsheim, let us follow the footsteps of Conrad.

He found the one of whom he was in quest seated at her easel, perhaps a trifle nearer the wall than before, and with the same expression on her face which had so ravished his heart the first time he lighted upon her. She seemed not to notice his approach, and when at length Conrad ventured to ask if the copy she was making were for sale, Walburga replied, apparently with indifference, and without taking her eyes off the canvas: “Yes, sir, it is.” Yet how his question set her heart a-throbbing! For the sale of the picture would enable the girl to pay several bills that were due, as well as take a trip to Nuremberg, which for years she had been longing to visit; for Nuremberg was the birthplace of Albert Dürer.

“How differently Miss Hofer would have answered me!” thought Conrad, observing Walburga with close attention. “She would have looked me full in the face and completed a bargain forthwith; ay, and persuaded me, too, to offer a high price for the picture.” Then aloud, and addressing Walburga in courtly German style: “Well, if the gracious lady will allow me to possess her beautiful copy, I shall be delighted. For I have just bought an old castle in the Tyrol, which I mean to restore, as far as money may, to its former state of grandeur, and I promise you your painting shall adorn the fairest chamber in it.”

“An old castle, indeed!” murmured Walburga, still without glancing at him. She wondered whether it might be Loewenstein. Then presently, unable to contain her eager desire to know if it was or not, she said: “May I ask, sir, in what part of the Tyrol your castle is?”

“In the Innthal, not far from Innspruck; and it once belonged to the noble house of Von Loewenstein.”

At these words a flush crimsoned the girl’s cheek for a moment, then disappeared, leaving her paler than before; while her brush, always so steady, now tremblingly touched the canvas. At length, after vainly endeavoring to master her feelings, she let the brush drop and buried her face in her hands.

Conrad’s curiosity was here raised to a high pitch; for although Ulrich had not told him that he had a sister an artist, yet he was quick-witted, and since he had seen the miniature in the old curiosity-shop—and Moida, we remember, had informed him that it came from Loewenstein—Conrad had been hoping that the young lady whom he called his Dream might prove to be one of the Loewenstein family, a near relative of Ulrich’s—his sister, perhaps.

“And why not?” he asked himself. “A likeness may be handed down through many generations; it may vanish for a space, like a lost stream, then reappear in the person of a far-off descendant. And verily, this charming girl is the living image of Walburga, the bride of Hugo von Loewenstein. And, oh! if I am right, what a treasure she will be. True, I am not highborn, and she may not view me at first with favor. But I’ll go through fire to win her!”

Presently Walburga uncovered her face, and for the first time stole a furtive glance at the one who stood beside her. Then quick her eyes were fastened on the canvas again; and while Conrad was wondering at her shyness a tear rolled down her cheek. His curiosity to know who she was now increased tenfold, and he said, in a voice the tenderness of which he did not care to conceal:

“Gracious lady, pray be not offended if I ask whether you have ever been to Loewenstein?”

“I was there once; I never wish to lay eyes on it again,” answered Walburga, trying to conceal her emotion.

“Would it offend you if I were to inquire the reason why?” pursued Conrad, now scarcely doubting who she was.

For more than a minute Walburga did not trust herself to speak. Finally she said:

“What spot, sir, can be so sad as an abandoned home? Parting with our birthplace to strangers does not tear up the deep roots whereby our heart clings to it. We feel towards it as towards a dear friend whom we have deserted. O sir! for many, many years—for centuries”—here Walburga drew herself proudly up—“my race held the castle which now is yours; and I love it so much that I cannot speak of it with calmness. A friend dies and we hide him in the earth; a dead home remains, mournfully gazing on us whenever we pass by. ’Tis why I will not go near dear, dear Loewenstein: nothing so ghostlike as an abandoned home!”

By this time tears were glistening in the dark, cavernous eyes of her listener; and when Walburga finished speaking Conrad said:

“Gracious lady, you cannot imagine how precious to me the old ruin has become. I love it, too.”

Here for the second time Walburga looked at him, but, as before, only by a swift side-glance. Then she said: “I must return you thanks, sir, for your kindness to my brother. He wrote to a young lady, his betrothed, all about it, and she told me; and I sincerely rejoice that Loewenstein has fallen into the hands of a gentleman like yourself.”

“Then you are Ulrich’s sister?” exclaimed Conrad.

“His only sister, and he my only brother. You cannot tell how I miss him.”

“Well, he accompanied me today, and is now with Miss Hofer.”

“Indeed! How delighted I am!”

“And I am much pleased with his lady-love,” added Conrad.

“Well you may be, sir. She is the salt of the earth. Ulrich needs a shrewd, practical woman for his wife; for the dear fellow is somewhat of a dreamer like myself. We both of us live in the past. But now do let me know how you came to meet Moida Hofer.”

“It happened in this wise: Your brother told me there were in her curiosity-shop many relics from Loewenstein, which I determined to possess. And really, I was charmed with the few words she addressed to me; her ways are so sprightly and winning. And I, for my part, am curious to know how you fell in with the granddaughter of Hofer the Patriot.”

“Well, I’ll tell you all about it,” answered Walburga, as she went on finishing the golden hair of her picture. “You must know, sir, that Ulrich and I were left orphans at an early age, and immediately after the death of our parents the castle fell into the hands of the state; for there were many taxes unpaid, as well as heavy debts owing here and there. So away went Loewenstein. But, although quite penniless, God sent us in our uttermost need a generous lady, who had no children of her own, and who adopted us and gave us a home in Munich. This lady had a small fortune, enough to live comfortably on and to educate us. Ah! what should we have done without her? Well, ’twas during this happy period that Ulrich made Moida’s acquaintance. She was then an orphan, too, and clad in the picturesque costume of Tyrol; a real mountain daisy she was, and brother fell in love with her. Shortly thereafter our adopted mother died, bequeathing to us her fortune, and we little thought we should ever suffer want. But, alas! the bank where our money was placed failed, and all, or nearly all, was lost. Then poor Ulrich, who had already become engaged to Moida, feared that he could not be married—at least not so soon as he had hoped. ’Twas a bitter disappointment to them both. But Moida said: ‘Let us be patient and hope. I will never give you up.’ Brother and I were now fortunately well advanced in our art studies—Ulrich, moreover, had passed through the university—and we resolved to try and earn our bread by painting.

“But ’tis easier to paint a picture than to sell one”—here Walburga’s cheek reddened—“and so for Ulrich and I ’twas Lent all the year round; and we grew very thin, for we did not even eat fish. Until one day dear Moida discovered our miserable plight: we had done our best to conceal it. Then she insisted on doing her utmost to help us. She made me share her lodging; she even clothed me. And this was most noble in her, for Moida knew that our high-born acquaintances had told Ulrich he would be marrying infinitely beneath him if he married her. Yet not one of those proud families extended to us a helping hand. About this time Moida had set up a little store—the one she keeps to-day. But she would not let me help her to dispose of anything; she treated me as if she knew I was not born for such drudgery—sometimes archly saying I could not make a good bargain, which perhaps was true.

“But when the furniture of dear Loewenstein was sold at auction, and when Moida bought it all, oh! from that day I have not set foot in her curiosity-shop; for I know every clock and cup and pike and helmet, and ’twould break my heart to see this man and that coming in and cheapening those precious heirlooms. But Moida is not displeased with me for holding aloof; she respects my feelings, although not at all a sentimental girl herself. Unhappily during the past year business has been very dull, and she sells but few things, while the rent of the store keeps high; and only that my friend has great spirit she might almost fall into despair. Yet even now, in what I may call her darkest hour, she tells Ulrich to be cheerful, that their wedding-day will come sooner or later.”

“Yes, yes; very soon,” murmured Conrad, who felt tempted to lay bare at once his whole heart to Walburga. But a moment’s reflection deterred him: it might appear too abrupt, for the young lady had never seen or spoken to him before. So, while admiring her more and more, he resolved to wait a little.

But Walburga’s voice sounded so sweetly to his ears that Conrad urged her to go on and tell him something more about herself and Moida.

Whereupon Walburga smiled and hesitated; for although she had scarcely paused an instant with her brush, yet his presence was felt to be a distraction. If she interested him, it was no less certain that he interested her. She could not feel towards Conrad as towards a stranger; she knew that he had befriended Ulrich; that he was now the owner of the place where she was born; and that the many precious things which debt and the auction-sale had scattered to the winds he was bent on recovering and taking back to Loewenstein. What wrought most potently upon Walburga was the evident interest which he showed in herself. Instead of buying her picture and then retiring, Conrad had dallied half an hour by her side, and prevailed on her to talk about her affairs with an openness at which she inwardly blushed.

Nor was he at all like the other sight-seers who were wont to visit the gallery. The two shy glances she had given him had convinced her that Conrad was no ordinary man; that whatever his origin—even if he did not know who his great-grandfather was, as Ulrich had written to Moida—yet his was not a grovelling, low-born soul.

Accordingly, after remaining silent well-nigh a minute, Walburga yielded to his request and proceeded to tell him more about herself. “Moida and I and two others, sir,” she resumed, “have a home together—which makes four of us in one small lodging.”

“Four!” repeated Conrad, just a little disturbed and wondering who the other two might be.

“Yes, four. There is myself, Moida, Caro, and a nightingale.”

“Oh! indeed—Caro and a nightingale,” ejaculated her admirer, with a sense of relief he was hardly able to conceal.

“And never was a more peaceful home. Up under the roof it is; but that gives us fresh air, and into our dormer windows the sunshine comes sooner than into any other windows on the street.”

“And you have the sweetest of all birds to sing for you,” observed Conrad.

“Yes, indeed. But I sometimes think of giving my pet his freedom. Moida laughs at me for it. Moida is——”

“Not in the least sentimental,” interrupted the other, with a smile.

“Well, true, she is not. But my bird is now a prisoner, and I am sure he must feel lonesome where he is.”

“Oh! believe me, he is far happier as your prisoner than if he were enjoying the freedom of all the woods in Bavaria,” said Conrad, with a faint tremor in his voice.

“Indeed!” exclaimed Walburga, answering his emotion by a crimson spot on her cheek.

“Well, you may be right,” he added presently. “Your kind heart may tell you that your nightingale sighs for some other little bird to love.”

At these words the sweet, pink blush spread itself with the quickness of light over Walburga’s whole cheek, and she answered:

“I declare, ’tis just what I told Moida.”

“And what did she say?”

“Moida said—and no harm in repeating it—she said Ulrich was her nightingale.”

“Her nightingale! Well, really, your friend _is_ sentimental; and I envy your brother. It must be the greatest of earthly joys to be happily wedded, as they soon will be.”

Here Walburga’s countenance grew suddenly pensive, and she murmured to herself: “Ay, the greatest of earthly joys.”

Conrad noticed the change in her expression and wondered at it. Then he thought to himself: “’Tis time for me to withdraw; I may be wearying her.”

But ere he retired he said: “May I come again, gracious lady, tomorrow or the day after? I sometimes have melancholy moods, but these lovely pictures bring the sunshine back to my heart; and the loveliest picture of all is in this part of the gallery.”

“You may, sir, if it pleases you,” was the answer he received. Then, making an obeisance, Conrad went away, leaving Walburga hardly in a fit state to continue her work; and she inwardly repeated the words which he had uttered about her nightingale: “Far happier as your prisoner than enjoying the freedom of all the woods in Bavaria.”

“What did he mean?” she asked herself. “What did he mean?”

A few minutes later the girl rose and went away too, still murmuring the question: “What did he mean?”

TO BE CONTINUED.

Footnote 43:

The narrowest street in Munich; hence the name.

Footnote 44:

The name of the park in Munich.

Footnote 45:

Valley of the Inn.

Footnote 46:

These are made afresh every year on the feast of the Epiphany.

Footnote 47:

An instrument not unlike a guitar.

ROSARY STANZAS. SORROWFUL MYSTERIES.

I.

_Luke_ xxii. 44.

No impious hand, no torture-instrument The Son of Mary yet has touched. Alone His prostrate form upon the ground is rent With cruel agony of blood to atone For thy too easy life. A heart of stone Could but dissolve before the piteous sight. All through the _Holy Hour_ he made his moan, Beneath the olives, on the sacred height; Wrongs of the ages saw in vision that dread night!

II.

JOHN xix. 1.

An act, a little word, of God made man Bears in itself his own immensity; To him the universe is but a span, A world’s full ransom his one tear might be. Not as we reckon outlay reckons he, Until his boundless love has lavished all. The knotted scourge precedes the fatal tree. Couldst thou return him less, if he should call? Or would the martyr’s palm thy coward soul appall?

III.

JOHN xix. 5.

A crown of thorns for him, a crown of bays For such as I! A fool might surely deem The servant greater than his Master. Praise Might to the sinner merest irony seem, The while the Sinless One is made a theme Of ribaldry. Before his crown of thorn Honor and earthly glory are a dream, A phantom flimsier than of vapor born: By that pierced brow the crown of all the worlds is worn.

IV.

MATT. xi. 30.

Simon to bear thy cross they would compel; Yet for the deed, though done against his will, On him and on his sons rich blessing fell, As old traditions say. How richer still The graces that the heart’s long thirst will fill For him who runs that sacred load to meet, And bear it upward to the holy hill! To share His burden be my footstep fleet: True love will make his yoke unfelt, his burden sweet.

V.

JOHN i. 29.

Behold, the Lamb of God is crucified! His head is bowed, to impart the kiss of peace; Stretched are his arms, to draw thee to his side; Opened his heart, thy heart’s love to increase. His all is spent to purchase thy release. Canst thou, my soul, love great as this refuse? Henceforth in thee let sin’s dominion cease, And with the Mother of the martyrs choose, Rather than him in death, a whole world’s wealth to lose.

PROHIBITORY LEGISLATION: ITS CAUSE AND EFFECTS.

It has been well said that “the best government is that which governs least”; and it might with infinite propriety be added that the legislative body stultifies itself when it passes laws that cannot possibly be carried into effect. One such law on our statute-books, yet constantly and notoriously violated, does more to destroy that political morality with which our people are, to say the least, not overburdened—of which certainly there is no surplus—than would ten wrong practices against which no law exists. We learned, during the late war, of how little avail legislation is when it undertakes to regulate and declare the value of gold; and it is designed briefly to set forth in this article that the proposed much-vaunted prohibitory legislation touching alcoholic liquors is false in theory, must be unsuccessful in practice; that remedial (not _repressive_) measures are what is required; and to suggest means by which the end aimed at by such enactments can be attained without invading the domain of the church, the free-will of humanity, or placing the state in the odious light of executor of a grinding tyranny exercised by a temporary majority over a recalcitrant minority.

And here, in the outset, let it be understood that there is no difference between ourselves and the most ardent favorers of the Maine Law, or any similar enactment on this matter, concerning the detestable nature of drunkenness, which we both admit to be a damning sin in the sight of God and a crying scandal before man. That it is a loathsome vice is a proposition requiring only to be stated, not argued. Even the wretched being who is enthralled by it will admit this and lament his deplorable condition. The days are past when Fox, Pitt, and Sheridan went openly drunk to the House of Commons; when the usages of the highest society were such that we still retain therefrom the saying, “Drunk as a lord”; when the literature of the age informs us everywhere that _gentlemen_ were not expected to be sober after dinner; when Burns could write in Presbyterian Scotland, “I hae been fou wi’ godly priests”; and when, in our own country, the first thing on entering and the last on leaving a house was a visit to the sideboard. Drunkenness is now deservedly considered by the entire community not only a vice but an inherently vulgar one. Fashionable society will not tolerate it, and there is no pretence of usage any longer set up that will even partially condone it. In short, it is the one unpardonable sin against modern society, and we are well pleased to see it ranked in this category. But while detesting drunkenness, and deprecating, in the strongest manner, the habitual use of intoxicating liquors, we dislike very much to perceive a tendency on the part of the public to ignore the fact that there are other sins besides the abuse of liquor, and that it is not by legal provision that people are to be kept sober. As Almighty God has been pleased to leave us our free-will, the reason is not evident why frail man should seek to take it away; and we object utterly to that queer manipulation by which the word “temperance” itself, the proper meaning of which is “moderation in any use or practice,” should be restricted to the moderate use of alcoholic drinks, much more that it should falsely be twisted and perverted into implying a total abstinence from them. Why should we be wise above what is written? Has Almighty God failed his church? Are we prepared to admit that Christianity is a miscarriage? This we tacitly do when we invoke to her aid the arm of the civil law. It is not to be doubted but there are persons so unfortunately constituted that they cannot use stimulants of any kind without abusing them. “Madam,” said Dr. Johnson to a lady who asked him to take a little wine—“madam, I cannot take a _little_, and therefore I take none at all!” Such persons must plainly abstain entirely; whether they shall do so of their own accord, by taking a simple pledge or by joining a “temperance society,” is for themselves to answer. In any case there is no safety for them save in total abstinence; but said abstinence, to have any merit whatever, must be voluntary, not one of legal enforcement.

While attention had, from time to time within the last century, been called to the intemperate use of alcoholic liquors, it is only within comparatively recent times that any organized efforts have been made to grapple with this monstrous evil. The first association for the purpose was made in Massachusetts in 1813. By its means facts and statistics were gathered and published for the purpose of calling the attention of the public to the magnitude of the evil, and suggestions made for its abatement or suppression. Similar associations were soon formed in adjoining States, and these again organized branches, until associations of the kind existed in nearly all the Eastern and Middle States. About 1820 there was formed in Boston “The American Society for the Promotion of Temperance,” which in 1829 had over one thousand auxiliary societies, no State in the Union being without one or more. The influences relied upon by this institution were the dissemination of tracts in which were portrayed the evil effects of the use of alcohol, and the employment of travelling lecturers to deliver addresses in favor of temperance. The first society professing the principle of total abstinence from intoxicating liquors was formed at Andover in 1826. These several societies, under one form or other, soon spread largely not only in our own country but in Canada, England, and Scotland, until they existed by hundreds in each; and about this time the word _temperance_ began to lose its normal signification, and to be used as a synonym for total abstinence from the use of liquors. _Teetotalism_ became the popular cry. The country was taken by storm; lecturers loomed up all over the States, administered the “pledge” publicly to hundreds of thousands; various minor denominations refitted their terms of communion in accordance with the new war-cry. In Ireland the cause of total abstinence was so successfully advocated by Very Rev. Father Mathew that he is stated to have administered the pledge to more than a million persons within three years from 1838; and since that time there has been, in the popular mind, no such thing as temperance, except in the sense of total abstinence from all that can intoxicate. All the former associations which proposed to themselves any such secondary and inefficient object as moderation in the use of liquors, or which administered either a partial pledge or one merely for a specified time, were disbanded or fell out of sight. Societies of Washingtonians, Sons of Temperance, Good Templars, and Rechabites sprang up, most of them secret and with signs, passwords, grips, tokens, etc., the members of which were pledged neither to touch, taste, handle, buy, sell, manufacture, nor use as a beverage the _accursed thing_. In 1851 the Legislature of Maine passed the well-known “Maine Law,” by which it was made penal to manufacture, have in possession, or sell intoxicating drinks. The law was repealed in 1856, and it has since been lawful to distil, keep, or sell spirits under certain restrictions, but drinking-houses are prohibited. A similar law was enacted in Massachusetts in 1867. In many of the States there is a law prohibiting the sale of liquors on Sunday, and in a majority the _local-option_ law (which leaves the question whether license to sell spirits shall be granted or not to the decision, at the polls, of the people of each city, town, township, or county) is now in full blast, with results that we shall glance at hereafter. A political party has been formed in many States, under the name of “prohibitionists,” which, though as yet but rarely sufficiently numerous or powerful to elect a governor on that single issue, yet numbers adherents enough frequently to hold the balance of power between the two prominent parties, and thus extort from candidates very important concessions in their own interests. They are active, energetic, conscientious in the main, and they besiege the various legislatures with petition upon petition against the liquor-traffic, which, to their minds, is the sum of all iniquities. The various religious sects come to their aid, loudly decrying all traffic in, and use of, spirituous drink. Matters have been brought to such a pass that a man’s reputation is imperilled by taking a glass of liquor; and there is yet wanting but the one further step of making its use illegal and its procurement impossible—a course strongly and unhesitatingly urged by almost all the various supporters of what is nowadays called _temperance_, and which seems quite likely to succeed, should the upholders of these views increase in numbers for a few more years as they have done within the last two decades.

It is a law of all fanatical movements, and one of their most peculiarly dangerous features, that they readily enmesh large numbers of people, and that their workings, tendencies, and developments fall of necessity, in the long run, into the hands of the extremists, the _intransigentes_, among themselves. Nor has this movement proved an exception, as is seen in the attempt made by legal enactment to coerce people into the practice of an enforced abstinence from stimulants—an abstinence _not_ shown to be physiologically desirable, _not_ commanded by the church, and most assuredly _not_ inculcated in Scripture. But in secret societies always, in sectarian combinations generally, and oftentimes in political parties, the experience of all ages shows that people first set up for themselves a master, and then obey him like so many slaves. They do this, too, under the delusion, for the most part, that they are carrying out their own convictions of right. It is much easier to join one of these secret organizations in a flush of curiosity, enthusiasm, or other temporary excitement than it afterwards proves to leave them in calm blood. Ties of acquaintance and _quasi_ friendship have been formed which most men strongly dislike to break. Good care is usually exercised that “the rhetorician, from whom,” as Aristotle says, “it is an error to expect demonstration,” shall be on hand to stimulate, exhort, inspirit, and incite to still further and more vigorous exertion; the boundaries between right and wrong fade away from the mental view; and few start in on this false track who fail to accompany their misled companions as far as the archbigot or archfanatic may choose to take them.

Within the Catholic Church a large number of total-abstinence societies have been formed, of course with her sanction. Most of these are at the same time _beneficial_ institutions, which in case of sickness give the member, and in case of death to his nearest kin, a certain allotted sum. But probably most priests on the mission will say that the great mass of Catholics who feel the necessity _for them_ of such abstinence take the pledge as individuals at the hands of the priest, either for a certain term or for life, without joining any special society. An immense amount of good has thus been accomplished, particularly among the poorer and laboring population, a very large proportion of whom are Catholics, and, from their circumstances and inevitable surroundings, most in danger of falling into temptation in the matter of drink, as well as most certain to suffer very severely from its effects. But it has at no time been, nor is it now, any part of the teaching of the church that her children shall not manufacture, buy, sell, and use (should they be so disposed) vinous, malt, or spirituous drink. Condemning the abuse of them, and reprobating drunkenness as a mortal sin, she yet allows to her children the moderate use and enjoyment of that wine which our Blessed Lord himself made for the use of the guests at the wedding at Cana, as well as of the other forms of it, which no physician or chemist ever found to be injurious _per se_ until it chimed in with a cry emanating from a large, an influential, _possibly_ a well-meaning, but in our view _certainly, if so_, a false-thinking, or it may be a deceived, portion of the community.

And here it may be well to note the unpardonable arrogance of assumption with which the intemperately temperate of all sorts take it for granted that all intelligence and morality belong peculiarly to those who inculcate or practise this one principle of abstinence from liquors. We see it displayed most offensively, indeed, among the variously bedizened and becollared gentry of the divers oath-bound secret societies, and among such sectaries as practically make total abstinence a term of communion; but truth compels us to go further, and to admit the tendency, even among Catholics, on the part of those who have ardently attached themselves to the societies got up with this view, to treat all outsiders as though living on a lower plane of piety and morality than themselves. “Stand thou off, for I am holier than thou” is too frequently their language in effect, if not in words; and, indeed, that is an almost inevitable effect of what the Scotch call “unco guidness.” However, the teaching and tenets of the church remain what they have always been, and the Catholic manufacturer or vender of wines and spirits, the total abstainer and the moderate drinker, go to confession, receive absolution and holy communion, together; nor do intelligent or well-instructed Catholics imagine for a moment that the formal pledge of abstinence from intoxicants, or membership in a total-abstinence society, are anything more than _adminicula_ to the individual whom his own weakness, the circumstances under which he earns a livelihood, or other reasons place in peculiar danger with reference to this vice.

But there must be some strong reason why an all-pervading necessity has been felt, in this century, for doing something in regard to drunkenness, the need of which (if ever previously perceived) has certainly never been acted upon by the most enlightened nations, whether of antiquity or of modern times. Lot was made drunk; Noe was drunk; Nabal and the Ephraimites were “drunken withal”; and all the evils and phenomena of intoxication are fully described in various passages of the Old Testament, always with reprobation, but there is not to be found in the entire book the slightest disapproval of the use of the fruit of the vine. On the contrary, oblations of wine to the Deity are enjoined upon the children of Israel; and the most horrible judgments denounced by the prophets of God upon the Jews consist in their being deprived of wine. In New Testament times our Saviour was called by the Pharisees (the prototypes of our ultra-abstainers) a wine-bibber; yet the same Jesus does not deem it at all necessary to proclaim himself on the teetotal side, or to leave us any precept against the use of wine. On the contrary, he institutes in wine the sacrament of his love, thus rendering the manufacture of wine necessary till the end of time. He himself changes water into wine. His apostles nowhere discourage its use, while they frequently speak of and upbraid professing Christians with its abuse, and one of them actually advises another to drop water and use a little wine for sanitary reasons. It would be sheer waste of time to undertake to refute those very ignorant or very dishonest persons who try to make it appear that wine, when mentioned in Scripture with commendation, is merely the unfermented juice of the grape, and that the _shechar_, _tirosh_, and _yayin_ were only intoxicating when excess in their use was reprobated. Either these people know better, and are wittingly making use of a dishonest argument, or their ignorance is too dense to be penetrated by any proof, however cogent. The reader who may wish to see this branch of the subject succinctly yet exhaustively treated should refer to an article in the _Westminster Review_ for January, 1875, entitled “The Bible and Strong Drink.”

The Greeks and Romans cultivated the vine very largely, made and used wine habitually; but their whole literature, while teeming with reference to the use, in no single instance commends the abuse, of wine. That the Spartans were accustomed to make their slaves intoxicated, in order by their example to deter young men from becoming addicted to the vice, is as well attested as any fact in history; while even in the worst periods of Roman story drunkenness is invariably referred to as disgraceful in itself, never to be predicated of people entitled to respect, and relegated, even at the _Saturnalia_, to the rabble and to slaves.

In the _Stromata_ of St. Clement of Alexandria, who lived in the latter part of the second century, we find allusion made to a few who at that day attempted to disturb the harmony of the church by imitating the example which they professed to consider set them in the narration by the Prophet Jeremias of the story of the sons of Jonadab-ben-Rechab, and we find those persons classed by him with those of whom the apostle speaks, as “commanding to abstain from that which God hath ordained to be received with thanksgiving.” Two centuries later St. Chrysostom and St. Augustine both pointedly condemn, as acting “plainly and palpably contrary to Scripture and to the doctrine of the Church,” some who, fancying they had attained spiritual information not generally accessible, tried to introduce among Christians the vow of the Nazarites. From that time till the former half of the present century we read, indeed, of drunkenness as existing; for that matter, we know of its existence in the earliest ages, and in all times and countries since, just as we do of incontinence, of theft, and of suicide by poison. It was reserved for the nineteenth century to attempt to do away with the possibility of the vice of drunkenness by rendering penal the production of the means; which is as though the law should step in to render men chaste by emasculation, theft impracticable by the abolition of property; and not in the least more feasible than would be the carrying out of an edict against the production of animal, mineral, or vegetable poisons.

Now, we should not in the least object to any well-devised and practical legislation that would do away with drunkenness entirely, if that were possible, which it unfortunately is not; nor will it ever be the case so long as the human race exists upon earth. The question, then, arises, What would be _practical_ legislation in the matter? This, in turn, involves an inquiry into the latent causes of the great commotion raised within this generation on the subject. It will be fresh in the memory of reading people in the United States that some two years ago one of our ablest metropolitan journals employed an agent to purchase samples of every possibly adulterable commodity from the most reputable venders in that city, drugs of the same description from the most respectable apothecaries—in short, specimens of everything on sale that was capable of deterioration by admixture of foreign substances; and that, on handing them over to a competent chemist for analysis, there was not a single instance of an article so purchased and tested that was not found adulterated to the last extent. All, without exception, whether articles of food, drink, medicine, or products of the arts and manufactures, were debased and corrupted—always, of course, with an inferior and cheaper, frequently with an absolutely injurious, and in some instances with a poisonous, admixture. The exposure occupied the columns of the paper referred to for some two weeks, and was then discontinued; not, however, without leaving food for reflection in the minds of the thoughtful. Now, when we consider the still greater temptation, the patent feasibility, and the larger gains resulting from adulteration of the various liquors, owing to the many hands through which they must and do pass before reaching their consumers, and the almost total impossibility, as things are, of detection, we shall have strong reason _à priori_ to believe that such adulteration takes place. But we have before us at this moment a book of some two hundred pages, entitled the _Bar-keeper’s Manual_, in which the facts are laid down, the method explained, the ingredients unblushingly named, the manipulations described, and a clear reason thus afforded why the use of liquors _nowadays_ is so ruinous to health, so productive of hitherto comparatively unknown forms of disease, and has become in this century especially such a crying abomination. In this book (which forcibly recalls to our mind an advertisement for “a man in a liquor store” that we once saw, and which wound up by stating that no one need apply who did not understand “doctoring” liquors) recipes are given for making from common whiskey any kind of gin, brandy, rum, arrack, kirschwasser, absinthe, etc., as well as any other desired brand of whiskey; together with full directions for mixing, diluting, coloring, adding strength, bead, and fruitiness, as well as for flavoring them each up to the required mark. When we find among the ingredients recommended (and evidently used, as the result of experience in this diabolical laboratory) nux vomica, cocculus indicus, strychnia, henbane, poppy-seed, creosote, and logwood, to impart strength to the false liquor, we need not inquire after the thousand other less pernicious articles used to supply color, odor, or bead to the noxious compounds. Now, from conversations held with persons who have been engaged in the liquor business in its various forms, as well as from reliable information long since spread before the public, but to quote which _in extenso_ would occupy too much space, we may generalize these facts, which we take to be not only undisputed but indisputable; viz., that _wines never_, and brandies, gins, etc., _rarely_, reach our shores in their pure state; that the same assertion is true of every imported liquor; that the subsequent adulteration is something fearful to contemplate; and that the advocates of prohibitory laws are talking within bounds when they call such preparations _poisons_. We may further learn that rarely indeed do our home-manufactured liquors pass in a pure state into the hands of the first purchaser; and that, after they have passed through two or three subsequent hands, whatever they may have become, they are anything in the world but pure liquors. By the time, then, that they reach the small groceries, drinking-shops, doggeries, and the lowest classes of saloons, all liquors will, on an average, have passed through at least seven or eight hands, each man quite as eager as the last to make all the gain he possibly can upon the article; and adulteration (he has the _Manual_ before him) presenting the safest and easiest plan, it follows that the laborer or artisan, those whose poverty forces them to frequent the lowest and meanest places, will be supplied with the most villanous article possible to be conceived under the name of liquor. Mr. Greenwood, in his work, _The Seven Plagues of London_, says:

“Where there is _no pure liquor_—and there is little such in London, even for the wealthy—perhaps nothing used by man as a stimulant is liable to greater and more injurious adulterations than _gin_; and I assert that it is _not_ to-day _to be procured pure_ (I speak not of merely _injurious_ but) of _absolutely poisonous_ drugs at a single shop in London to which a poor man would go or where he would be served.”

Mr. Nathaniel Curtis, the founder and first Worthy Chief of the Order of Good Templars, has (though his deductions from the facts are entirely different from ours) made it abundantly evident that the adulteration of all liquors, fermented, vinous, and ardent, is carried on in a most reckless manner and without regard to consequences in our own country. His words are:

“From the tramp’s _glass_ of beer, through the sot’s _glass_ of rum, _jorum_ of whiskey, or _pull_ of gin, up to the merchant’s madeira or sherry and the millionaire’s _goblet_ of champagne, we have shown them all to be, not what the drinker supposes—and that were bad enough in all conscience—but _universally drugged_, most frequently _poisoned_, and not in one case of ten thousand containing more than a small percentage of the article the purchaser paid for.”

We might multiply authorities, chemical, medical, and purely statistic, on this subject to an indefinite extent, but it would occupy too much space; besides which, reading men are already sufficiently convinced of the facts. Within the last few years such a mass of damning evidence has been put before the public on this subject that the man must be wilfully blind who does not admit adulteration of the most injurious sort to be the rule in all the various branches and phases of the liquor-traffic. One quotation, however, we must make from the pages of the _Dublin Review_, July, 1870, article “Protestant London,” in which the writer suggests something very like our own view, though he seems to have an idea that the wholesale adulteration was, in England, confined to fermented liquors, which is indeed a grave mistake, whether as regards England, Scotland, Ireland, Denmark, or in fact any of the countries peculiarly afflicted by this demon of drink. The writer says:

“Yet the effects of beer in England are confessedly far worse than those of wine in France. We believe the real explanation of this to be its adulteration. It is by drinking, at first in moderation, adulterated beer that the habit of intoxication becomes a slavery, by which men are afterwards led on to the abuse of gin. There are at this moment thousands of habitual drunkards among us who would never have been drunkards at all, had they not been betrayed into the snare by drinking in moderation adulterated beer—that is, _if the beer sold in public-houses were not universally adulterated_. This evil, at least, law well administered might meet and uproot. Government should _not_ allow men both to _cheat_ and _poison_ their neighbors with impunity.”

It is, then, not at all surprising that _mania a potu, delirium tremens_, and other disorders arising from the abuse of good or the use of drugged liquor should have become so common in this country as to furnish a good or, at any rate, a plausible reason why many conscientious persons have attributed to the use of liquor effects due, either solely or in great measure, to the stupefying and poisonous decoctions vended under that name. But while this would have been, at all times as it is now, an excellent and an all-sufficient reason for trying to induce people to refrain, whether by pledge or otherwise, from such infernal compounds, and for having analysts appointed by law to examine and test the liquors sold in every tavern, we insist that it is no argument at all for doing away by law with the use of liquor _in toto_. We believe sincerely that no single measure (that can be carried out) would do more to lessen the national curse of drunkenness than the appointment of competent chemists to see to the purity of the liquors vended. And, considering the advanced state of chemical science among us, is it absurd to suppose, that if the government were determined that so it should be, the selling of adulterated liquor might not easily be made so dangerous a trade as to be very soon given over? It is lamentable that people are so eager for gain that they will and do adulterate everything capable of the process. Physicians tell us that it is nearly impossible to get at the ordinary drug-stores any of the higher-priced medicines in their pure state; that opium, quinine, etc., are nearly always impure, mixed with foreign ingredients; and that, for this reason, their prescriptions often fail of the intended effect. This, certainly, is no good reason for enacting a law to abolish entirely the use of adulterable drugs; nor because tea, coffee, sugar, tobacco, mace, mustard, and pepper are rarely found pure should we therefore abandon their use altogether.

Here, of course, it will be contended that the cases are not parallel; that whereas the abuse of liquor, or the use of the drugged article going by that name, renders man like the brute, degrades and obliterates the image of God in us, yet such is not the case with the adulterated commodities of food or with the drugs referred to. True, the analogy does not hold equally good throughout in each case, but the principle is exactly the same in all. We will go further, admitting that liquor is in very few cases an absolute necessity; but what a large number of mankind regard it as of prime importance to their well-being, to their comfort, or, finally, to their enjoyment! How few of the great mass of humanity, on the other hand, are of that unfortunate constitution of mind, of body, or of both that they cannot restrain themselves within the bounds of moderation in the use of liquor vinous or fermented! Suppose even that the passage of a prohibitory law by the majority were consonant with church and Scriptural teachings, would it be fair or reasonable that for the lamentable weakness of the very few the comfort and enjoyment of the vast mass of humanity should be lightly set aside as an unconsidered trifle? That Anglican bishop who said he “would rather see England free than England sober” expressed a noble sentiment, and we think, with him, that enforced sobriety (as would be that produced by such a law) would be dearly purchased at the expense of virtual slavery. Some one pithily condemns _that false system of morality that begins by pledges of total abstinence_, but the falsity of such a scheme is trifling compared with that which would invite us to come and admire a nation sober, enforcedly sober, _de par la loi!_ As well ask us to applaud the sobriety of the convicts in the penitentiary. We are not placed in the world to be free from temptation, but to resist it. All theologians assure us that this is a state of probation, nor is it the business of the civil code either to abolish property lest many may steal, or to suppress the manufacture of liquor lest some shame themselves and sin against God by getting drunk. Again, if you begin this business, where is it to end? Human beings are very full of kinks and crotchets. Each half-century is sure to have its peculiar vagary. What may not be that of the next one? King James considered tobacco as a direct emanation from the devil; and John Wesley was no whit behind him either in the belief or its expression. It is certainly quite as unnecessary, quite as much an article _de pur luxe_, as beer, wine, or spirits. Who is bail to me that, the principle once established of suppressing human nature by act of Congress, future Good Templars, prospective Rechabites, Sons of Temperance yet to come, nay, the whole Methodistic fraternity, may not revivify the views of Wesley and thunder anathemas against Yaras, Fine-cut, and Cavendish? Or there may arise an expounder of Scripture who shall deduce thence a system of vegetarianism (quite as unlikely doctrines and practices have been deduced from Holy Writ) to his own satisfaction and that of crowds greater than wait on the ministrations of our latest evangelists. Of course then, marshalled to victory by the “Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals,” they will soon have a law enacted forbidding to us all beefsteak or mutton-chop! There is, in short, no end to the antics and absurdities that may, nay, that must, arise under the ægis of such a precedent as this law would furnish. We, for our part, fully believe in rendering to Cæsar what belongs to him; but it is the province of the church, representing God upon earth—of religion, in other words—so to dispose man as to enable him to withstand temptation to sin and crime; and the business of the civil power to punish him _for offences committed_, not to remove all temptation to wrongdoing. In short, the law is not held to an impossibility, which this would plainly be, unless the world were made a _tabula rasa_. The assumption, therefore, by the civil law, of the divinely-conferred duty and prerogative of the church would, in any case, be a usurpation, were it even practicable. We shall see that in the case before us, at least, it would be purely impossible to carry out the legal mandate by all the power of the government, were it multiplied a hundred-fold.

The heavy tariff on foreign, and the large internal revenue tax on domestic, liquors, necessitated by our civil war, have also been a great inducement to the adulteration of spirits, as well as to the advance of that already too wide-spread practice of cheating the government in matter of revenue, now so common as hardly to be regarded in the light of a moral wrong. Howsoever it may have come about, the fact is that the tone of political morality with us is about as low as it has ever been in any country that the sun shines on. From the Stocking & Leet trial, through the troubles of Tammany’s magnates and the charges of complicity with smugglers pending against some of our most prominent mercantile firms, down to the “crooked whiskey” cases of to-day, as well as the constantly-bandied and the sometimes thoroughly proven charges of bribery against our most highly-placed public men, we see everywhere either a desperate resolution to evade all law, or a serene belief that deception and the withholding of tax and tariff legally due cease to be cheating and swindling when the government is the party of the second part. It is now clearly made out that, since the laying on of high duties and revenue tax, it has cost our government an average of three dollars to collect every two dollars received from that source in the public treasury; while as to the amount of which the government is annually defrauded, no calculation other than an approximate one can, of course, be made, but those whose position gives them the best chance to form an accurate judgment place the yearly sum at the minimum of $80,000,000. Before our late war we had a federal treasury ever full. Indeed, but a very short time before that dismal experience the general government distributed a large surplus among the States; our treasury notes were always above par, and our simple government bonds at high premium. With the advent of war came the necessity for raising a large and an immediate revenue. Taxation, direct and indirect, was resorted to, the like of which has rarely (if ever) been known in civilized countries. Paper money, redeemable at the pleasure of the government, was issued. Gold and silver entirely disappeared. An army of internal revenue officers had to be created, and a supplementary host of detectives to ferret out infractions of the new-made laws. The tax on common whiskey was placed at two dollars and fifty cents per gallon, and corresponding sums on foreign liquors; Cognac, for example, being rated at seven dollars per gallon. Our people were not accustomed to, and did not like, taxation; and the government neither knew how to suggest, nor its officials how to carry out honestly and skilfully, any well-devised plans for the collection of revenue on such a gigantic scale. Here there was a strong inducement at once both to the illicit manufacture and to the increased adulteration of liquors, the latter of which (though existing too largely before) took, from that time, large strides in advance, and both have uninterruptedly continued their progress till the present day, threatening (unless most stringent measures be taken for their repression) to ruin our country, morally, and a large number of her citizens temporally and eternally. It is true that the tax on home-manufactured spirits was largely cut down in 1870, and that on foreign wines and liquors heavily curtailed; but those at all acquainted with the subject know how little this step, taken after eight years of the reverse practice, was likely to interfere with clandestine manufacture, and how immensely it tended to give a superadded impetus to the practice of adulteration. Our internal revenue officers are now legion, yet they do not collect one-half of the revenue that should be collected; and of that one-half not more than two-fifths inures to the benefit of the treasury. Our detectives swarm everywhere, yet illicit distillation and poisonous adulteration of liquors are on a very rapid increase. Now, a very large number of people, learned and lay, rich and poor, of practical experience in the use of liquor, and deriving their information from the experience of others, or from reading, are strongly of the opinion that the best and most practicable mode of decreasing actual drunkenness, and of mitigating or diminishing the acknowledged evils of drink, would be the furnishing of pure liquors instead of the noxious compounds now on sale. Certainly, to put the matter in the mildest terms, there prevails a very extensive belief, founded, we think, upon good reason, that if pure liquors alone were sold drunkenness would not prevail as it now does. It is not contended that intoxication would thereby be done away with, any more than that the most skilful devices can ever entirely prevent theft, forgery, murder, or other crime; but we insist that the tendency to drunkenness, now so inseparable (as experience shows) from the use of the drugged article, would not exist in a tithe of the instances nor to a hundredth part of the extent that we daily see. Certain it is that in the last century, and until adulteration began to prevail extensively in the present, the terrific effects of liquor-drinking now known to us, under so many different names and forms of disease, did not present themselves with any frequency; and it is equally certain that just in proportion to the universality of adulteration has been the commonness and virulence of mania and delirium resulting from drink. We have said that stringent measures should be taken to guard the interests of the comparatively helpless consumers, so that they may have some reasonable ground for believing that in taking a glass of ale or beer they have not imbibed a dose of _cocculus indicus_, that a drink of whiskey does not of necessity imply an undefined amount of _nux vomica_, or that the symptoms resultant from a mixture of brandy and water at dinner are not due to _strychnia_ or _creosote_. We found it much easier during the war to raise prices on account of the enhanced value of gold than it has since proved to diminish them in accordance with the approximation of greenbacks to coin. So, too, in this matter of suppressing adulteration of drink (which is the remedy we propose, and which will be just so far valuable as it is thorough and uncompromising, while comparatively useless unless rigidly and strenuously carried out), we have called into play a practice, we have evoked a demon, which is not to be abolished or banished by feeble instrumentality. We shall illustrate what may be done here in our own country by what has been successfully accomplished in Sweden (a country in which drunkenness and its attendant evils had attained a magnitude beyond, perhaps, any other of Europe); nor can we do it better than by the following account taken from Dr. Carnegie’s late book, entitled _The License Laws of Sweden_:

“In the town of Gothenburg, however, these measures (_prohibitory laws_), partly from local reasons, were not found sufficiently restrictive; and a committee, appointed in 1865, readily traced a concurrent progress between the increasing pauperism and the increasing drink. The laws were evaded, the police set at naught, and nothing remained but to inaugurate a radically new system. This consisted of various measures, all subordinate to one great principle—viz., that no individual, either as proprietor or manager, under a public-house license, should derive any gain from the sale of liquor. To carry out this principle in its integrity the whole liquor-traffic of the town was gradually transferred to a company, limited, consisting of the most highly respected gentlemen of the town, who undertook, by their charter, to carry on the business in the interests of temperance and morality, and neither to derive any profit from it themselves nor to allow any person acting under them to do so. The company now rent all the houses and licenses from the town, paying a moderate interest on the capital invested, and making over the entire profits of the trade to the town treasury. The places for drink—the number of which was immediately curtailed—are of two classes, public-houses and retail shops, both bound to purchase their wine and spirits (analyzed and authoritatively pronounced pure) from the company, to sell them without any profit, to supply good food and hot meals on the premises, and not to sell Swedish brandy except at meals. The public-houses are managed by carefully-chosen men, who derive their profits from the sale of malt liquors (also analyzed before being put on sale), coffee, tea, soda and seltzer water, cigars, etc., and from the food and lodgings. The retail shops are managed entirely by women, who have a fixed salary but no share in the profits. This system began to work in October, 1865. Its effects have been at once perceptible. In 1864 the number of fines paid in Gothenburg for drunkenness was 2,164; in 1870, with a largely increased population, 1,416. Cases of _delirium tremens_ in 1864 were 118; in 1868 but 54. Nor are the financial effects less encouraging. In 1872 the company realized in net profits no less than £15,846, which, being paid over to the town, far more than covers the entire poor-rate. Another pleasant fact is that this large amount of trade is virtually carried on without any paid-up capital, the whole outlay of the company having only amounted to £454.”

It is interesting to learn from the same authority whence the above extract is taken that whilst the consumption of liquor in Sweden is still enormous, it has been reduced (mainly owing to the care exercised in testing its purity, and partially, also, to well-regulated restriction) from ten gallons per head throughout the kingdom in 1860 to about two gallons in 1870, which is about the same proportion as in Scotland at present; and that the universal testimony of the Swedish philanthropists, far from favoring absolute prohibition, looks rather to purity of liquor, conjoined with moderate restriction, and finds the results eminently satisfactory. But while we point to their experience, as well as to common sense, right reason, the practice both of the ancient and modern world till the beginning of this agitation of a factitious temperance; while we invoke the teachings of Scripture for those who profess to be guided in matters of morals and doctrine by that, and by that alone, and appeal to the constant practice and to the authority of the church, which should, with Catholics, be paramount to all other considerations, yet we are painfully aware that to produce conviction in the minds of extremists is a task that no logic can accomplish. It is, like the cure of the vice itself which gives occasion for this article, only to be accomplished by the grace of God. The English-speaking world—the most enterprising and energetic portion of the human race—occupying, for the most part, regions which suggest toiling and striving physically and mentally so as, in the opinion of many of them, to necessitate an occasional resort to alcoholic stimulants, have used these liquors largely, we will say too largely, if you please. Other shrewd and unscrupulous Anglo-Saxons have stepped in and poisoned, for gain, the cup which they thought one of refreshment. Death and disease, drunkenness and dipsomania, have been so long and so frequently the result that the attention of the public is imperatively called to it. “Take the pledge,” says one; “that will settle the matter”—forgetting that without the help of God no pledge is of any account, and that with his grace no pledge is needed. “Join the order,” bawls another; “here you find the sovereign panacea for drink”—oblivious of the fact that these secret institutions are never permanent, rarely at peace within themselves, constantly shifting in views and practice, and that in joining them the neophyte simply takes as many masters as there are members, exchanging the slavery to drink for one still more galling and quite as sinful. “No license to sell less than a quart,” says yet another. The quart is soon disposed of, and many another quart and gallon go the same road. “Sell no liquor, open no drinking-house on Sunday,” screams a full-throated chorus of religionists. This, too, is tried, and the poor man, obliged to choose between entire dulness and intoxication, prepares himself on Saturday night for a Sunday’s drinking bout. “No license less than three hundred dollars,” suggest the cannie property-holders; and, presto! higher adulteration; more poison in the drink; a higher rate per glass, it may be, but not a tippling-shop less in country or city. “No license at all,” is the next cry. It is tried; adulteration becomes still more barefaced, but the same amount of drinking is done, it can hardly be said clandestinely, for it is done in the face of day, and everybody knows or may know of it. Macrae’s _America_ tells us that when an investigation was instituted into the workings of the prohibitory or no-license system in Boston, there were found to be in that city over two thousand places where liquor was vended by the glass, and that the average annual amount spent per head (men, women, and children included) for liquor in the entire State was a little over ten dollars. “_We’re all for the Maine Law here_,” said a man to Mr. Macrae, “_but we’re agin its enforcement_.” It may here be stated once for all, without possibility of successful contradiction, that not one of these laws, whether for Sunday-closing, higher license, no license, partial license, or entire prohibition, ever was carried out, or ever had any other effect than possibly to add to the cost, and certainly to enlarge illicit distillation and set an enhanced premium on the adulteration of liquors.

Quicquid delirant reges, plectuntur Achivi!

Maine was obliged, after a few years’ trial, to abrogate her prohibitory law; and the most ardent favorers of _local option_, which has now had a full and fair trial in many States, confess it a failure. Our own experience of it is that drunkenness is nowhere so rife as in the midst of those very regions where no license is granted and entirely prohibitory laws are supposed to prevail; and there is surplusage of testimony to the facts.

Strange, certainly, it seems to us, that among the various modes, some plausible and some supremely silly, that have been proposed and acted upon with a view of checking the ravages of intemperance, so few should have suggested, and none should have acted upon the idea of trying, what might be the possible effect of pure liquor. Common sense should have at once suggested it, and a portion of the redundant and exuberant philanthropy of the age might have been well, at least harmlessly, employed in making an experiment which could in no case have worked disastrously, as all those plans have done which familiarize the people with systematized violation of law, to gratify the morbid craving for those poisons the use of which, growing with every indulgence, soon leaves the victim incapable of resisting the craving that never abandons him but with life. Most people, however, once fairly inoculated with the views of the temperance societies (we refer to the _secret_ institutions under that name), see everything but from one point of view; the vision becomes jaundiced, prejudice carries the day, argument is of no avail, moderate measures are futile, liquor in any shape, alcohol in any quantity, are the _accursed thing_, and those who deal in them, nay, those who see no objection to their use, are _Amalekites_. What to them are the vested interests of the eight hundred thousand persons engaged in the manufacture and sale of liquor in the United States alone? What the employment of hundreds of thousands engaged in its transportation? What care they about the wives and families of either? It is of no sort of consequence to them that over sixty million dollars accrue to the federal treasury, even under the present extremely defective system of collection, from the tax on domestic liquors; half as much more from the tariff on foreign wines and spirits; and that the amounts paid for municipal, county, State, and federal purposes, by license on liquor-selling and drinking-houses, are simply incalculable. As well plant and try to cultivate the sands from high-water mark to ebb-tide as attempt to reason with such people! They are the _communists_ of our country, the _impracticables_, the men of one idea, and that idea a wrong one. We would much like to be able to reach them, to be able to make them hear the words of genuine truth and soberness; but they are “joined to their idols,” as Ephraim of old; the doctrines of the “lodge,” the rulings of the _W. Patriarch, W. Chief Templar_ (or whatever else may be the name of the presiding _Grand Mogul_), are of more avail to them than all the philosophy and all the logic of ancient and modern times. What are the Fathers of the church to the Rev. Boanerges Blunderbuss, at Brimstone Corner, who explains to the satisfaction of his hearers that wine, “which cheers the heart of God and of man,” is but the unfermented juice of the grape, and that our Saviour, at his last supper, squeezed out some three or four clusters of grapes into the goblet whence he and his disciples drank? Talk to one of these people about the desirableness of some regard for the habits and customs of the multitudes in this wide world who use wine and spirits without abusing them; he regards you with a withering contempt for your ignorance, and informs you that _they are all drunkards_ and must be _reformed_; that if five glasses of wine make a man drunk, one-half of a glass must make him one-tenth part drunk; that liquor is never necessary, even in disease as a remedy; that the Good Samaritan was really poisoning the poor fellow to whom he gave the wine; and he leaves on your mind the general impression that Solomon had yet a great deal to learn from Sons of Temperance and prohibitory-law men when he over-hastily recommended in his Proverbs to “give drink to the sorrowful.” Just as impracticable, though in a different way and for a different reason, is the man who has no sympathy for habits and needs which he never knew; who never had a generous impulse in his life; whose every act is based on cold reason and personal interest; who seldom or never took, and who never longed for, a glass of wine since his wedding-day; who has no sympathy for those differently situated in life or of different physiological diathesis. He has neither genuine sympathy for the unfortunate drunkard nor fellow-feeling for those who use liquor. Mistaking oftentimes his own plentiful surroundings for honesty, the want of temptation for temperance, and his own success in life for virtue, we need expect from him no other cry than “do away with the whole thing.”

Those poor degraded wretches at the other extreme of society who, from congenital inclination, bad surroundings, evil training, folly, disease, or the gnawing remorse engendered by failure in life, have fallen a prey to the accursed poisons sold as drink, their intellect shattered and their physical constitution prostrate, do not, we confess, deserve a very ardent sympathy from a community for which they have done little but harm. Still, that community was to blame that received money for licensing the houses that sold them narcotics instead of beer, henbane instead of wine, and liquid damnation for strong drink. It is, at least, a duty which we owe in future to all who can control themselves that, when they ask for bread, they shall not be furnished with a stone.

We are very anxious not to be misunderstood. This article is not intended to be either a recommendation of, or an excuse for, tippling habits, still less as an argument in favor of the drinking usages of the last century or of any other period distinguished for copious drinking. The personal habits and practice of the writer are opposed entirely to the use of wine, beer, or spirits. His profession does not render them necessary nor his taste crave them, and he would that in this one respect the world “were altogether such as” he is; but he cannot ignore the fact that all men are not so constituted physically, so situated in a worldly point of view, or mentally disposed in the same way. What all can clearly see is that a cry is being raised, an attempt being made, to add in a clandestine and illegitimate way something that shall in effect be tantamount to a precept, and that this something so foisted upon us is opposed to the practice of the church, consequently to the Scriptures. We see that this cry has become fashionable, a fear of being reckoned with the “vulgar herd” (for drunkenness is a vice of the vulgar) or a fear of giving offence causing many to be silent who should “cry aloud and not spare,” lest haply the harm may be done and it be too late for the remedy. Now, the whole clamor, save in so far as it inveighs against drunkenness, “the disgrace of man and the mother of misery,” proceeds on the false hypotheses, 1, that the Holy Scripture discountenances the moderate use of liquor; 2, that the church opposes it; 3, that the ancient philosophers condemned it; 4, that it is injurious in health; 5, that it is valueless as a remedy in sickness; and, 6, that prohibitory laws should be passed forthwith forbidding under penalty the manufacture, purchase, sale, or importation of wine, beer, or spirits. Not a single one of these assertions is true, or has about it the semblance of verisimilitude to any but the average brain of the secret-society _affilié_, or the fungus that stands in the place of a heart for the bigoted sectary. Were they every one true, we should still be opposed to the manner in which it is attempted to carry them into effect; fully believing, as we do, that the whole matter of personal reform lies within the domain of the church, upon which region the civil power has no right to trench. Of course the state has a perfect and undisputed right to tax wines, liquors, etc., like all other articles of luxury, to any extent she may deem advisable, either for revenue or repression of habits of expense among her citizens. But, inseparably bound up with this right, and as a corollary from it, it is the duty of the state to see that the article or articles for allowing the sale of which she receives revenue shall not injure, much less ruin, her citizens; and it is in the performance of this duty that we affirm government to have been totally remiss and delinquent. Had it been otherwise, and had the state been half as anxious to perform her duty as she has been always eager to claim her right, there never would have been the faintest plausibility in the cry raised; no agitation could have resulted; with her performance of the duty the clamor must, of necessity, cease, and with it those secret societies, so powerless for good, so potential for evil, that have been evoked by it.

There is, however, no limit in our age to the power of clap-trap, of a cry well started and persistently kept up. Back such a cry by the unremitting efforts of a few secret organizations, which demagogues well know how to use as a means of climbing into power, and superadd the influence of some of the sects, it deepens to a howl, and a careless or lethargic community is easily induced to believe that there must be some reason for the clamor; that what so many people say must be true; that where so much smoke exists there must have been a fire at some time; and, finally, that the object on which so many persons seem to have set their minds, to carry which so many are combined, must be a good one. From this point to supporting it with vote and influence the step is an easy one. Hence it is that, absurd as is the proposal of those who favor Congressional prohibitory laws touching liquor, we feel no certainty that its unreasonableness will prove a barrier to its being at some time put into effect. We have indicated previously that there exists, even among Catholics, who should know better, a lurking notion that in joining the T. B. A. or any of its congeners, they take a step forward in holiness, approach nearer to the imitation of the Saviour, and outstrip in piety those who remain outside the institution using (and able to enjoy without abusing) “the liberty wherewith Christ has made them free.” Now, this is false, and consequently is not Catholic doctrine or feeling. It is according to the doctrine of the church, with which the practice of Catholics must agree, that should the experience of any individual prove to him that total abstinence from drink is _in his special case_ easier than moderation in its use, and that he ought, consequently, not to use liquor at all; and if, in addition, he is clearly of opinion that this, his proper course, is much facilitated by joining a Catholic temperance association, he has a clear right, nay, it is his duty, to attach himself to it. Further, should a Catholic have a friend, whom he can largely influence, who is becoming over-fond of drink, and whom he judges in conscience he can reclaim by taking with him the pledge of total abstinence, or by accompanying him into any of the Catholic associations got up and recommended for such purposes, the Catholic so doing acts nobly and performs a meritorious work, greater and more laudable just in proportion as he himself was further removed from temptation or danger of fall in the matter of drink. But it is not a bounden duty enjoined on every Catholic Christian to abstain entirely from liquor, much less to join a temperance society; and, except where it is done to save another, as in the case just presented, the Catholic so joining it is no more laudable, certainly, than he who stands aloof, using his God-given liberty in the matter.

While the church, like her divine Lord and Founder, has never forcibly interfered with man’s free-will, yet her entire history proves that her salutary influence has been exerted, and that, too, with the highest success, against every shape in which the sin of luxury has appeared. The Catholic countries of the world are not now, and they never have been, the drunken countries. Drunkards are not found to-day among those who frequent the tribunal of penance; and, with that consistency of action and oneness of doctrine which is found in no other existent institution, the church maintains that against the sin of drunkenness, as against all other forms of sin, there is no thoroughly effectual remedy but the frequentation of her sacraments. Pledges and associations, while sanctioned by her, are regarded as mere _adminicula_, tending to bring the sinner to the use of confession, the performance of enjoined penance, and the worthy reception of the Blessed Sacrament. Abstinence, whether for a time or for life, she looks upon as a work of perfection, of remedy, or of penance for the individual. The _pledge_, as administered by her, is neither oath nor vow, but either a resolution taken by one’s self in the presence of another, or at the utmost a solemn promise made to man. While more than fifteen hundred years ago the church anathematized the heresy of the Manicheans, who taught that spirituous liquors are not creatures of God, and that, as they are intrinsically evil, he who uses them is thereby guilty of sin, yet both before and after the rise of that detestable sect all the writings of her fathers and doctors, all the decrees of her synods and councils, all the decisions of her Supreme Pontiffs, and all the labor of her priests have been persistently directed towards teaching her members to “subdue the flesh with its affections and lusts.” How well she succeeded let her conquest to Christianity of the conquering northern barbarian hordes testify. Of these, whose temperament rendered them peculiarly inclined to debauch, whose habits by no means belied their inclinations, and whose besetting sin was drunkenness even after their conversion to the faith, she made sober nations. Acts of Parliament, municipal and other local measures, show us the huge strides toward unbounded intemperance in drink taken by the English people from the time when, in giving up the true church, they abandoned the sacrament of penance; while the same acts, and what we have had of so-called repressive law-tinkering on the same subject in our own country, show us the utter futility of any and every attempt by the civil law to render men moral by statute—to do God’s work without the help of the Omnipotent. Were it even possible for the state to succeed in carrying out the most stringent prohibitory or repressive laws that it ever entered the brain of the wildest or most narrow-minded fanatic to conceive, what would be the result? Simply that people would, like inmates of the work-house or penitentiary, endure privation without practising abstinence. The church of God takes no such ground; and the state can no more succeed in carrying out such measures than did Domitian with his sumptuary decree. Legislators forget what the church always bears carefully in mind and has always inculcated—viz., that _drunkenness is the sin not of the drink but of the drunkard_. The assertion that alcohol in any form is an emanation of the evil spirit, or the denial of the lawfulness of the use of liquor, is in itself just as much a heresy today as it was in the days of the Egkratites. But, that we may not overrun our limits in pursuing this branch of the subject, we refer such readers as may be anxious to see it fully and ably treated to the valuable little work entitled _The Discipline of Drink_, by Rev. T. E. Bridgett, C.SS.R.

It is not, however, from Catholic sources that the proposal emanates to cut off by legal enactment the supply of beer, wine, and spirits, which many people—indeed, the vast majority of the civilized inhabitants of the earth—deem necessary for their health, conducive to their comfort, or desirable for their enjoyment. Such schemes come from the _Radicaux enragés_; from those who addle their intellects by striving to decipher the mystic number of the Apocalyptic beast; from the men of the George Fox stripe, to whom a _steeple-house_ is the unclean thing; always from men on whom the name of the Church of Rome operates as does the flaunting of a red rag by the picador on the bull in the amphitheatre of Seville; and, finally, from those who believe neither in this nor in anything else that man should hold sacred, but who see and seek in the secret societies, and in the agitation of this and similar questions, a stepping-stone to power and a means of gaining influence.

Were one to judge by the pamphlets and tracts written on the side of the prohibitionists, he would readily suppose that it is admitted on all hands by physicians and chemists that alcohol is of no use as a remedial or curative agent; that it is not food, is not life-sustaining; that no possible good can come out of Nazareth; that the unclean thing is altogether accursed, and should be relegated to the bottomless pit whence it sprang. And, that we may not overburden this article, we shall simply give the conclusion arrived at by a writer in the _Edinburgh Review_ for July, 1875, entitled “The Physiological Influence of Alcohol,” in which the writer (himself a physician, whose yearning to find against us is evident throughout), after an able comparison and summing up of the cases, experiments, and arguments of Doctors Richardson, Thudichum, Dupré, Anstie, and other celebrated authorities, thus perorates:

“The inference is plain. The nutritious capability of alcohol, when used in appropriate circumstances and in reasonable quantity, is yet a matter of controversy, and a question which has yet to be further investigated and weighed by competent scientific authorities before any absolute judgment regarding it can be pronounced that shall be worthy of general acceptance.”

Those who feel any interest in this part of the subject would do well to read the entire article referred to, and we feel convinced that nine out of ten who do so will come to the conclusion, from the data given, that the able writer’s patent bias is what caused the very non-committal wording of his final dictum; while the same number will decide the large preponderance of proof to be in favor of the nutritive qualities of alcohol. We have failed to see in any of the “temperance” documents the remotest hint that there was anything at all to be said in favor of alcohol as an article of nutriment. Is this honest? These people must calculate largely on the gullibility of the public; but they should recollect, too, that the same public, when it once discovers their prevarication, is very ready to apply the proverb, _Falsus in uno_, etc.

The great Swedish chancellor, Oxenstierna, said to his son: “You do not yet know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed.” We are in this respect neither better nor worse off than other countries, with perhaps this exception: that our best citizens, those of largest experience and soundest judgment, are too self-respecting, too proud, to descend into the dirty arena of politics, a vast majority of such never having attended a primary meeting in their lives, and many, very many, rarely casting a vote. True, when corruption has run its course, when ring-rule becomes unendurable, this class will sometimes, as lately in New York, arouse itself. Now, the men of one idea, the canters (honest and dishonest), and the knaves are not so. They never miss an opportunity of propagating their views, and it would seem almost as though there were an intimate and necessary connection between the falsity or illiberality of the view and the pertinacity of its upholders in spreading it. Besides, they are not indifferent to, but they hate, broad and liberal views on any subject; they must gauge all humanity by their own instrument, which, while it suits the pint-pot, is but ill adapted to the hogshead. “_Les idées générales sont toujours haïes par les idées partielles_,” says a French writer to whom (while we by no means agree with him in everything) ability must be conceded. Should people ever have the power to do it—a contingency by no means unlikely in this century, in which the secret societies seem to hold “high carnival” (May a subsequent Lenten time purge the world of such foul humors!)—they will infallibly enact a penal prohibitory law. This will be accomplished by means of the already-organized associations, the oath-bound classes, the pledged abstainers, some of the sects, largely aided by the lethargy and carelessness of people who hold clearer and more correct views. It will be worse than useless to pass such laws, unless provision be made for stringently carrying into effect their details. Suppose that the prohibitory law proposed has been enacted and is vigorously enforced, and let us cursorily examine what is this Golden Age, this antedated millennium promised us so confidently by our over-temperate friends.

A blockade of coast will be necessary, to which the blockade of the Confederate territory during the late war will be as nothing, either for extent of coast to be guarded or for the numbers, ingenuity, and means at the command of the blockade-runners. The Canadian and Mexican borders will require cordons of sentries day and night, to furnish which one hundred armies such as we possess would be ridiculously inadequate. A government detective force of at least one-fourth our adult male population will have to be employed, organized, and paid; and not less than one-half of the remainder will soon be in prison for infraction or evasion of the law. Meanwhile, the revenues will have diminished by fully one-third, while the governmental expenses will have been tenfold increased. The hundreds of thousands who now make a livelihood for themselves and families by the manufacture, transport, and sale of beer, wines, or spirits must find other employment or join the already too numerous army of tramps; and in this case what becomes of the unfortunate families? If the laboring man finds it difficult to procure work now, what will it be then? Taxation must, of necessity, be decoupled; and meantime a large proportion of the population will have come to the conclusion that they are suffering under the most odious of all tyrannies, and will be ripe for revolution. The pretext will not be wanting in the details of carrying out the provisions of the law. This state of things might last, at the utmost, a year, during which insurrections would be of constant occurrence in every part of the country; outbreaks in the cities would take place day after day; and, finally, the minority, in revolution against what they considered an unjust and tyrannical edict, would carry the day either peacefully at the polls (by aggregating to themselves such of the majority as had become convinced of the absurdity of the law) or, sword in hand and at the mouth of the cannon, would revindicate to themselves the rights so wantonly trampled upon. The results of such a victory may be better imagined than described. History, fortunately, has but few examples of such revolutions against the extravagance of over-zealous reform, but those few are terrifically replete with warning.

We wish, then, to insist that _no law at all_ is better by far than a law which, in its nature, _cannot be carried into effect_. That this is such a law we think manifest on the above showing; and did we wish further proof, it is readily found in the fact that all those communities, great or small, towns, counties, or states, that have tested this, or even much milder doses of similarly-intended laws, have been obliged either to abandon them after a longer or shorter trial, or to acknowledge their impotence to execute them, and to own that under such _régime_ the evils deprecated become more virulent and drunkenness more rampant. Contempt, too, for the law, in one instance, has the inevitable tendency to sap the foundations of respect for all law, not merely in the mind of the drunkard but in that of the moderate drinker, as well as of those who abet them both in their violation of legal enactment. Meanwhile, the sensible man, the practical but unpledged total abstainer, cannot be expected to feel strongly interested in the success of a law which his judgment tells him to be merely an arbitrary _enforcement, by a majority, of their views of morality_ on a minority entitled to their own ideas and practices in this matter alike by natural reason, Scriptural teaching, and church commands. “A nation is near destruction when regard for law has disappeared.”

Fully aware, as we are, that the arguments and deductions, the statements and quotations, contained in this paper are far from being in accord with the oral and printed teachings most in vogue and most palatable to the reading public, and much as we might desire to be on the popular side, still we are not prepared, for the attainment of this end, to sacrifice our convictions of right, to ignore the experience of the past, to turn a deaf ear to the teachings of the church, or to superadd to her commands practices in morals that she knows not. We cannot undertake to find in Scripture injunctions that do not exist; still less are we willing to lie supine when erroneous views are stealthily creeping in (even amongst ourselves), are sedulously promulgated over the length and breadth of the non-Catholic world, and when the attempt is making to enforce _even desirable_ practices in morals and personal discipline by false arguments and means that will not stand the test of right reason. Let us review the ground and gather together the results.

The use of intoxicating liquor or strong drink has been known in all countries and from the earliest times; drunkenness must have been and was equally well known. In no system, even of heathenism, has intoxication been recommended; and in none, save that of Mohammed, has abstinence from liquor been enjoined. The Old and New Testaments, while teeming with allusions to the use of _wine_ and _strong drink_, nowhere lay down any precept forbidding their use, but frequently by the clearest implication, and in a few instances by express injunction, command the use of both; and the manufacture of wine _must_, by the institution of our Blessed Saviour, be kept up so long as the world shall exist. There is _no_ proof for the assertion, that alcohol is not food, and _less_ for the averment that it has no efficacy as a remedial agent. The taste for liquor is a natural one and inherent to all men, but probably stronger and more necessary of gratification among hard-working men, and in damp or cold climates, than in the case of sedentary persons or in mild and hot countries. It is _not_ the province of civil government to remove temptation to the infraction of the moral law; its province is _to keep order_ and _to punish infractions_ of law. To pass a series of totally prohibitory laws would be to attempt the legal suppression of human nature; which being impossible, such legislation must be absurd. There are great evils in the present management of the liquor-traffic, chiefly arising from the wholesale adulterations with poisonous drugs everywhere _largely_ practised, but most ruinously in the northern countries of Europe, in Canada, and in the United States. Were the traffic so taken in charge by governments or carefully-appointed companies that _pure liquors only_ should be furnished for consumption, all profits from the sale accruing to government, the great mass of the evils (now justly complained of) in connection with the liquor trade would disappear, while at the same time an immense revenue would accrue to the federal or State treasury, as the case might be. If these prohibitory laws were passed, and carried out in their spirit, dreadful evils would be the result; and, finally, such laws never can be carried out at all, and, by consequence, it is not competent for government to enact them. The whole matter of intemperance comes purely within the domain of morals; religion alone can deal with it radically; and while the civil law should and must punish drunkenness, with the crimes resulting therefrom, it is to Christianity alone that we must look for the effectual reformation of the drunkard and prevention of his sin.

These are the arguments that present themselves to us against the enactment of what are called “prohibitory laws”; and we believe the suggestions above given, regarding the evils of the present liquor trade and the mode of ridding the world of those evils, to be in full consonance both with the facts and with common sense.

“Si quid novisti rectius istis. Candidus imperti; si non, his utere mecum.”

FRENCH PROVERBIAL SAYINGS.[48]

There is, in the French language, one peculiarity amongst others which only becomes perceptible to foreigners after a somewhat lengthened residence in France—namely, the frequent use of proverbial expressions of which the original meaning, as far as the speaker is concerned, is utterly lost.

For instance, a person grandly dressed out is said to be _sur son trente et un_; an old piece of furniture or of attire is _vieux comme Hérode_; again, _il ne se foule pas la ratte_ means “he takes things easily”; _prendre les jambes au cou_ is to go as fast as possible; and a person who speaks French badly is said to _parler Français comme une vache Espagnole_.

When the English-speaking races use expressions of this kind, there is in them almost always some recognized allusion, quotation, or, it may be, a quaint adaptation of the words of some well-known author, ancient or modern, or they point to some fact or tradition or popular notion. In French familiar conversation, however, there are numberless proverbial and popular sayings still in common use the sense of which has been lost for centuries. Comparatively few amongst those who use them know that they are expressions borrowed, it may be, from certain customs or from history or from literature; but usually the trace is lost, the connection broken, and the reason of their existence forgotten.

These proverbial expressions have, for the most part, been recently collected, and as far as possible accounted for, and their source and history, where not discovered, at least suggested, in an ingenious volume by M. Charles Rozan, in which he gives also certain popular words usually qualified as vulgar, but “whose fundamental meaning it is all the more acceptable to learn, from the fact of their not being yet admitted into the official dictionaries; since,” he adds, “it is intruders more especially whom we would question as to who they are, whence they come, and what they have done.”

In the present notice we have chiefly selected examples having a local, historical, or in some way characteristic interest, and, with one or two exceptions, we have left aside those taken from the drama, besides the numerous sayings, not by any means peculiar to France alone, which relate to classical antiquity, and which any one possessing a very moderate knowledge of ancient history and literature would at once understand.

_Je m’en moque comme de l’an quarante_ is a saying which dates from the beginning of the eleventh century. There was at that period an extensive belief that the end of the world was at hand, and that the _thousand years_ and more supposed to have been assigned by our Lord as the duration of his church on earth, and of society in general, were to expire in the year 40 of that century. Sinners were converted in crowds; many talked of turning hermit; but, once this redoubtable epoch was over, men changed their tone, and from that time to this the expression used in speaking of a thing which need inspire no alarm is: “I care no more for it than for the year forty!”

_La beauté du Diable_ we should naturally suppose meant an appalling ugliness. It means nothing of the kind, but, on the contrary, that exceeding prettiness frequently noticeable in young girls between the ages of fourteen and nineteen, or thereabouts, which then passes away. This, the freshness of youthful beauty, seems to derive its name from the old proverb, _The devil was handsome when he was young_—namely, while he was yet an unfallen angel.

Ladies somewhat advanced in the debatable ground of life’s pilgrimage, when youth has made way for the nameless years of “a certain age,” are said to _coiffer Sainte Catherine_.

It was formerly the custom in France, as it still is in Spain and some parts of Italy, on particular festivals, to array in festal garments and headgear the statues of the saints. St. Catherine being the patroness of virgins, the care of her adornment was always entrusted to young girls. This charge, however agreeable and honorable at sixteen, might, nevertheless, not be desirable in perpetuity, and thus it came to be said of any middle-aged maiden: “She stays to _coiffer_ St. Catherine.”

To speak French very badly, or with a bad accent, is called _parler Français comme une vache Espagnole_. The people inhabiting the Basque provinces obtain their name from the indigenous word _vaso_—mountain—which, when taken adjectively, is augmented by the final _co_, and thus becomes _vasoco_, and, by contraction, _vasco_—mountaineer. The French, knowing little enough of Spanish, said at first _vacco_, and then _vacce_. Thus, _parler comme un vacce Espagnol_ meant at first to allude to the _inhabitants_ of the Basque provinces of Spain, whose language still bears all the characteristics of a primitive tongue, and who have great difficulty in expressing themselves in French; but _vacce_, at a time when the Latin had left its traces everywhere, was said for _vache_, the peasants in many of the French provinces retaining it still. Thence arose the confusion which produced the senseless comparison, “to speak French like a Spanish cow.”

_Attendez-moi sous l’orme_ (wait for me under the elm) implies that “the rendezvous you ask is disagreeable to me, and I will not keep it.” The type of an unpleasant rendezvous is that which compels an appearance before the judge, and it is to this that the expression here quoted originally referred. Formerly the judges administered justice under a tree planted in the open space before the church or the entrance of a seignorial mansion; hence the phrase of _juges de dessous l’orme_, and also that of _danser sous l’orme_. _Attendez-moi sous l’orme_ means, Find me there if you can (ironically), and to name a rendezvous which one has no intention of keeping.[49]

_Faire Charlemagne_ is to retire from the game after winning it, without giving the adversary a chance of revenge. This expression evidently alludes to the death of the great Charles, who, when he had become the monarch of the West, quitted this life without having lost any of his conquests.

To make unlawful profits by deceiving as to the price of any articles a person has been charged to buy is called “shoeing the mule” (_Ferrer la mule_). The expression dates from the time when the counsellors of the Parliament repaired to the _Palais de Justice_ mounted on mules, and the lackeys who remained outside during the sittings of the Assembly spent their time in gambling, extorting from their masters the money they wanted for their amusement by pretending that they had had to pay for shoeing the mules. Others carry the origin of the saying back to the time of Vespasian; the muleteer of that emperor, when on a journey, having been bribed to do so, suddenly stopped the mules under pretext of having them shod, so as to give time to a person whom they had met on the way to speak to the emperor of his affairs.

_Faire danser l’anse du panier_ is said of a cook who fraudulently obtains from her mistress more money for her purchases at market than they have really cost. The idea is that of shaking the basket so as to make its contents take up as much room as possible, and thus look worth their alleged price.

_Connaître les êtres de la maison_ is to know the doors, staircases, passages, rooms, outlets, etc.—in a word, the internal arrangements—of the house. _Êtres_, which for a long time was written _aîtres_, has for its origin the Latin _atria_, in the sense of dwelling.

_Je l’ai connu poirier_ is said of a _parvenu_ whose sudden rise from a mean condition has not earned him much consideration. There was in a village near Brussels an image of St. John, black and worm-eaten with age, and held in great veneration by the people. M. le Curé, thinking it time to replace it by a new one, sacrificed his best pear-tree for that purpose. One of his parishioners, who had shown great veneration for the ancient statue, took no notice whatever of the new one. “Have you lost your devotion to St. John?” the curé one day asked him. “No, M. le Curé; but the new St. John is not the real one—_I knew him when he was a pear-tree_.”

The expression of _Cordon Bleu_ is a singular example of the degradation of an aristocratic word, and we discover its ancestry with the same feeling that we once received the answer of a poor mason’s apprentice, who, on being asked his name, gave as his Christian and surname those of two of the oldest and noblest families in the county of Devon.

To the Order of the Holy Ghost, instituted in 1578 by Henri III., not every one could aspire. It consisted of only one hundred members, at the head of whom, as grand master, was the king.[50] The Dauphin, the sons and grandsons of the monarch, knights by right, were, as well as the princes of the blood, received at the time of their First Communion. Foreign princes were not admitted before the age of twenty-five; dukes and other nobles of high rank not until thirty-five; and in all cases none was allowed to enter who could not trace back at least three generations of nobility on the father’s side. The cord to which the symbol of the order was attached was blue, and the knights themselves were commonly designated _Cordons Bleus_.

The distinction being reserved to only a small number of persons of the highest rank, it gradually became customary to give the name of _cordon bleu_ to persons of superior merit. The Order of the Holy Ghost was abolished at the Revolution. All the dignities as well as all the ideas which had grouped themselves around this noble order have disappeared with it. Its name is no longer used in the figurative language of France to recall great merit or a distinguished name; the last memory of the order lingers in the kitchen, and the only _cordon bleu_ of the nineteenth century is a good cook!

Those who have hard work and scant pay are wont to observe that they might just as well _travailler pour le roi de Prusse_. The kingdom of Prussia not having been a century and a half in existence, this expression cannot have an earlier origin. M. Rozan asks, therefore, which is it of the five Fredericks who thus puts in doubt the royal generosity? Some persons say that it is Frederick William I., constantly anxious to show himself economical of the property of his subjects, unlike his father, who was, according to the expression of Frederick the Great, “great in little things and little in great.” Either from what the one did not spend at all, or from what the other spent amiss, a conclusion might be drawn in the sense of the proverb. We incline, however, rather to charge upon the Great Frederick himself all the responsibility of the French reproach.

Frederick II. was fond of employing French workmen, but not quite so fond of paying them; and as no people know better than the French that _noblesse oblige_, it is no matter of surprise that he should have furnished them with a proverb. We also find an example of his sparing management in the conflict which arose between him and Voltaire (who was very economical also) about lumps of sugar and candle-ends. In the agreement he had made with the poet Frederick had promised him, besides the key of chamberlain and the Cross of Merit, the ordinary appointments of a minister of state—_i.e._, an apartment at the château, board, firing, two candles a day, and so many pounds of tea, sugar, coffee, and chocolate every month. These articles, though duly provided, were of such bad quality that Voltaire complained to the king. Frederick professed to be infinitely pained, and promised to give fresh orders. Were the orders given? In any case the provisions were as bad as ever, and Voltaire again remonstrated. The king got out of the affair with equal economy and cunning. “It is frightful,” he exclaimed, “to think how badly I am obeyed! I cannot hang those rascals for a lump of sugar or an ounce of tea; they know it, and laugh at my orders. But what most pains me is to see M. de Voltaire disturbed in his sublime ideas by small miseries like these. Ah! let us not waste upon mere trifles the moments that we can devote to friendship and the muses. Come, my dear friend, you can do without these little provisions. They occasion you cares unworthy of you; we will speak of them no more. I will command that for the future they shall be stopped.”

On another occasion Frederick was having a new front put to a Lutheran place of worship in Berlin. The ministers complained to the king that they had not light enough to carry on the service. The building, however, being too far advanced for his majesty to wish to incur the cost of alteration, he sent back their address, after writing upon it: “Blessed are they who see not, and yet believe.”

As a last proof of the just implication of the proverb, an English traveller, who does full justice to the eminent qualities of the monarch, says: “Never was there a fat soldier in any country; but the King of Prussia has not even a fat sergeant. A profound knowledge of financial economy is a point on which this sovereign excels. It is also a reason why his troops should never be otherwise than lean.”

This observer might have added that Frederick made it a rule never to allow his soldiers any pay on the 31st day of the month. There were thus seven days in the year on which the whole Prussian army _travaillait pour le roi de Prusse_.

_Manger de la vache enragée_ is to suffer great privations, to procure with difficulty the merest necessaries of life, and so to be reduced, as it were, to “eat the flesh of a mad cow.” The expression has also come to mean the trials of every kind which, in the course of life, ought to strengthen the body to endure hardness and the mind to a habit of fortitude.

On entering upon a house or _appartement_ in Paris it is customary to make a present of a few francs to the concierge, which present is called _le dernier adieu_. The newcomer, if a foreigner, wonders why the first dealings he has with the concierge of his new abode should be so singularly misnamed as “the last farewell.” The words are a corruption of the _Denier à Dieu_—God’s penny—the piece of money given to the person with whom a bargain was concluded, with the intention of taking God to witness that the engagement had been made, and of offering him a pledge that it should be faithfully kept. The sums thus given were bestowed by the receiver in alms to the poor, and were not appropriated, like the _arrhes_, a part payment of what was due to the person with whom an agreement had been made.

The lugubrious associations connected with the name of the melancholy building at the back of Notre Dame de Paris encourage the idea that the word _morgue_ must relate to corpses, or in any case to death. M. Rozan disabuses us of the mistake.

There was formerly at the entrance of prisons a room where new arrivals were detained for a few days after committal, in order that the keepers might learn to know their faces and appearance sufficiently well to preclude any chance of their escape. Later on the corpses found in the Seine or elsewhere were exposed in this same room, the public being admitted to see them through a small aperture made in the door.

Until 1804 the corpses were exposed in the lower jail dependent on the prison of the Grand Châtelet, when they were transferred to the quay of the _Marché Neuf_ in a small building which received the name of _morgue_, an old French word for _face_ or _visage_, and used also to express a fixed or scrutinizing look. It is doubtless in the latter sense that we find the true meaning of the term.

Now that we have given a greatly abridged version of portions of M. Rozan’s work, we refer the reader for the remaining curious fragments of information scattered throughout its pages to the book itself. At the same time we venture a suggestion that in future editions it might be well if the author were, as far as practicable, to classify its contents under certain heads—such, for instance, as are dramatic, historic, local, or classic, etc., in their origin or allusion—so as to allow some continuity of ideas in its perusal, and to gather its at present scattered stones into a collection of mosaics.

Footnote 48:

_Petites Ignorances de la Conversation._ Par. Charles Rozan. Paris: Hetzler. 1877.

Footnote 49:

We may here mention that the finest elm in France is probably that in the court of the Deaf and Dumb Institution in the Rue St. Jacques in Paris. It is 50 metres in height and 5 in circumference, the last remaining of the 6,000 feet of trees planted under Henri IV. We mention this merely for the sake of our European readers, not for those accustomed to the sylvan giants of the Western world.

Footnote 50:

Henri III. instituted this order in memory of the three great events of his life which had happened on the Feast of Pentecost—namely, his birth, his election to the crown of Poland, and his accession to the throne of France.

THE HOME-RULE CANDIDATE. _A STORY OF “NEW IRELAND.”_