THE CARSWELL COMPANY LIMITED
CATHOLIC WORLD.
OP
GENERAL LITERATUKE AND SCIENCE.
VOL. I.
APRIL TO SEPTEMBER, 1865.
NEW YORK:
LAWRENCE KEHOE, PUBLISHER,
7 BEEKMAN STREET.
1865.
CONTENTS.
Ancient Saints of God, The, 19.
Ars, A Pilgrimage to, 24.
Alexandria, The Christian Schools of, 33, 721.
Animal Kingdom, Unity of Type in the, 71.
Art, 136, 286, 420.
Art, Christian, 246.
Authors, Royal and Imperial, 323.
All-Hallow Eve, or the Test of Futurity, 500, 657,
785.
Arks, Noah's, 513.
Babou, Monsieur, 106.
Blind Deaf Mute, History of a, 826.
Church in the United States, Progress of the, 1.
Constance Sherwood, 78, 163, 349, 482, 600, 748.
Catholicism, The Two Sides of, 96, 669, 741.
Cardinal Wiseman in Rome, lli
Catacombs, Recent DiscoveriePln the, 129.
Chastellux, The Marquis de, 181.
Church of England, Workings of the Holy
Spirit in the, 289.
Cochin China, French, 369.
Consalvi's Memoirs, 377.
Church History, A Lost Chapter Recovered, 414.
Canova, Antonio, 598.
Cathedral Library, The, 679.
Catholic Philosophy in the Thirteenth Century,
685.
De Guerin, Eugenie and Maurice, 214.
Divina Commedia, Dante's, 268.
Dinner by Mistake, A, 535.
Dramatic Mysteries of the Fifteenth and Six-
teenth Centuries, 577.
Dublin May Morning, A, 825.
Extinct Species, 526.
Experience, Wisdom by, 851.
Falconry, Modern, 493.
Fifth Century, Civilization in the, 775.
Guerin, Eugenie and Maurice de, 214.
Glacier, A Night in a, 345.
Grand Chartreuse, A Visit to the, 830.
Hedwige, Queen of Poland, 145.
Heart and tho Brain, 623.
Irish Poetry, Recent, 466.
Jem McGowan's Wish, 56.
Legends and Fables, The Truth of, 433.
London, Catholic Progress in, 703.
London, 836.
Laborers Gone to their Reward, 855.
Mont Cenis Tunnel, The, 60.
Mongols, Monks among the, 158.
Mourne, The Building' of, 225.
Memoirs, Consalvi's, 377.
Maintenon, Madame de, 799.
Miscellany, 134, 280, 420, 567, 712, 858.
Nick of Time, The, 124.
Perilous Journey, A, 198.
Poucette, 260.
Prayer, What came of a, 697.
Russian Religious, A, 306.
Saints of God, The Ancient, 19.
Science, 134, 280, 712.
Streams, The Modern Genius of, 233.
Stolen Sketch, The, 314.
Swetchine, Madame, and her Salon, 456.
Shakespeare, William, 548.
St. Sophia, The Church and Mosque of, 641.
Species, The Origin and Mutability of, 845.
Three Wishes, The, 31.
Terrene Phosphorescence, 770.
Upfield, Many Years Ago at, 393.
Vanishing Race, A, 708.
Wiseman, Cardinal in Rome, 117.
Winds, The, 207.
Women, A City of, 514.
Wisdom by Experience, 851.
Young's Narcissa, 797.
A Lie, 245.
Avignon, The Bells of, 783.
Domine Quo Vadis ? 76.
Dream of Gerontius, The, 517, 630.
Dorothea, Saint, 666.
ExHumo, 33.
Gerontins, The Dream of, 517, 630.
Hans Euler, 237.
POETRY.
Limerick Bells, Legend of, 195.
Mary, Queen of Scots, Hymu by, 337.
Martin's Puzzle, 739.
Saint Dorothea, 666.
Speech, 829.
Twilight in the North, 344.
Unspiritual Civilization, 747.
iv.
Contents.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
Archbishop Spalding's Pastoral, 144.
At Anchor, 287.
American Annual Cyclopaedia, US.
A Man without a Country, 720.
Banim's Boyne Water, 286.
Beatrice, Miss Kavanagh's, 574.
Cardinal Wiseman's Sermons, 139.
Cummings' Spiritual Progress, 140.
Christian Examiner, Reply to the, 144.
Correlation and Conservation of lorces, Ihe,
288, 425.
Confessors of Connaught, 574.
Cure of Ars, Life of the, 575.
Ceremonial of the Church, 720.
Darras' History of the Church, 141, 575, 860.
England, Froude's History of, 715.
Faith, the Victory, Bishop McGill's, 428.
Grace Morton, 574.
Heylen's Progress of the Age, etc., 142.
Household Poems, Longfellow's, 719.
Irvington Stories, 143.
Irish Street Ballads, 720.
John Mary Decalogne, Life of, 576.
Lamotte Fouque's Undine, etc 142.
La Mere de Dieu, 432.
Life of Cicero, 573.
Moral Subjects, Card. Wiseman's Sermons oil
287.
Mystical Rose, The, 288.
Mater Admirabilis. 429.
Month of Mary, 720.
Martyr's Monument, The, 860.
New Path, The, 288, 576.
Our Farm of Four Acres, 143.
Protestant Reformation, Abp. Spalding'a His-
tory of the, 719.
Real and Ideal, 427.
Religious Perfection, Bayma's, 431.
Russo-Greek Church, The, 576.
Retreat, Meditations and Considerations for a,
720.
Songs for all Seasons, Tennyson's, 719.
Sybfl, A Tragedy, 860.
Translation of the Iliad, Lord Derby's, 570.
Trubner's American and Oriental Literature,
576.
William Shakespre, 860.
Whittier'e Poems; 860.
Youne Catholic's Library, 432.
Year of Mary, 719.
THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. L, NO. 1. APRIL, 1865.
From Le Correspondant.
THE PROGRESS OF THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES.
BY E. RAMEUR.
[THE following article will no doubt
be interesting to our readers, not only
for its intrinsic merit and its store of
valuable information, but also as a
record of the impressions made upon
an intelligent foreign Catholic, during
a visit to this country. As might have
been expected, the author has not es-
caped some errors in his historical and
statistical statements most of which
we have noted in their appropriate
places. It will also bs observed that
while exaggerating the importance of
the early French settlements in the
development of Catholicism in the
United States, he has not given the Irish
immigrants as much credit as they de-
serve. But despite these faults, which
are such as a Frenchman might readily
commit, the article will amply repay
reading. ED. CATHOLIC WORLD.]
AFTER the Spaniards had discovered
the New World, and while they were
fighting against the Pagan civilization
of the southern portions of the conti-
nent, the French made the first [per-
manent] European settlement on the
.shores of America. They founded
Port Royal, in Acaclia, in 1604, and
from that time their missionaries be-
gan to go forth among the savages of
the North. It was not until 1620 that
the first colony of English Puritans
landed in Massachusetts, and it then
seemed not improbable that Catholi-
cism was destined to be the dominant
religion of the New World ; but sub-
sequent Anglo-Saxon immigration and
political vicissitudes so changed mat-
ters, that by the end of the last cen-
tury one might well have believed
that Protestantism was finally and
completely established throughout
North America. God, however, pre-
pares his ways according to his own
good pleasure ; and he knows how to
bring about secret and unforeseen
changes, which set at naught all the
calculations of man. The weakness
and internal disorders of the Catholic
nations, in the eighteenth century, re-
tarded only for a moment the progress
of the Catholic Church ; and Provi-
dence, combining the despised efforts
of those who seemed weak with the
faults of those who seemed strong,
confounded the superficial judgments
of philosophers, and prepared the way
for a speedy religious transformation
of America.
This transformation is going on in.
our own times with a vigor which
seems to increase every year*. The
2
The Progress of the Church
causes which have led to it were, at
the outset, so trivial that no writer of
the last century would have dreamed
of making account of them. Yet,
already at that time, Canada, where
Catholicism is now more firmly es-
tablished than in any other part of
America, possessed that faithful and
energetic population which has in-
creased so wonderfully during the last
half century ; and even in the United
States might have been found many
an obscure, but a patient and stout-
hearted little congregation a relic of
the old English Church, which after
three centuries of oppression was to
arise and spread itself with a new life.
But no one set store by the poor
French colonists ; England and Prot-
estantism, together, it was thought,
would soon absorb them ; and as for
the Papists of the United States, the
wise heads did not even suspect their
existence. The writer who should
have spoken of their future would
only have been laughed at.
The English Catholics, like the
Puritans, early learned to look toward
America as a refuge from persecution,
and in 1634, under the direction of
Lord Baltimore, they founded the col-
ony of Maryland. Despite persecu-
tion from Protestants whom they had
freely admitted into their community,
they prospered, increased, and became
the germ of the Church of the United
States, now so large and flourishing.
In the colonial archives of the Min-
istry of the Navy we have found a
curious manuscript memoir upon Aca-
dia, by Lamothe Cadillac, in which
it is stated that in 1G86 there were
Catholic inhabitants in New York, and
especially in Maryland, where they had
seven or eight priests. Another paper
preserved in the same archives men-
tions a Catholic priest residing in New
York ; and William Penn, who had
established absolute toleration in the
colony adjoining that of Maryland,
speaks of an old Catholic priest who
exercised the ministry in Pennsyl-
vania.
The Catholics at this tune are said
to have composed a thirtieth part of
the whole population of Maryland.
This estimate seems to us too low.
At all events, the increase of our un-
fortunate brethren in the faith was
retarded by persecution and difficulties
of all kinds which surrounded them.
In the Puritan colonies of the North,
they were absolutely proscribed. In
the Southern colonies, of Virginia,
Georgia, and Carolina, their condition
was but little better ; in New York they
enjoyed a precarious toleration in the
teeth of penal laws. In Maryland and
Pennsylvania alone they were granted
freedom of worship, and a legal status ;
though even in those colonies they
were exposed to a thousand wrongs
and vexations. Maryland persecuted
them from time to time and banished
their priests ; and William Penn, in
his tolerant conduct toward them, was
bitterly opposed by his own people.
Nevertheless, despite difficulties and
violence, the Anglo-American Catho-
lics increased by little and little, wher-
ever they got a foothold ; the descen-
dants of the old settlers multiplied ;
new ones came from England and
Ireland ; and a German immigration
set in, especially in Pennsylvania,
where several congregations of Ger-
man Catholics were formed at a very
early period. In the archives of this
province we have found several valu-
able indications of the state of the
Church in 1760. There were then
two priests, one a Frenchman or an
Englishman, named Robert Harding,
the other a German of the name of
Schneider. It seems probable that they
were both Jesuits.* In a letter to
Governor Loudon, in 1757, Father
Harding estimates the number of Cath-
olics in Philadelphia and its immediate
neighborhood at two thousand Eng-
lish, Irish, and German ; but in the
absence of Father Schneider he could
not be positive as to these figures. A
letter from Gouverneur Morris in 1756
* In De Courcy and Shea's " Catholic Church in
the United States " pp. -Jl 1 , -21 -2, an account will be
found of both these missionaries. The first men-
tioned was an Englishman. Both were Jesuits.
ED. C. W.
in the United States.
3
speaks of the Catholics of Maryland
and Pennsylvania as being very nu-
merous and enjoying freedom of wor-
ship, and adds, that in Philadelphia
there is a Jesuit who is a very able
and talented man. The Abbe* Robin,
a chaplain in Rochambeau's army in
1781, informs us in his narrative that
there were several Catholic churches
at Fredericksburg, Va., and even a
Catholic congregation at Charleston,
s. c.
The toleration accorded to the Jes-
uits in the United States was preca-
rious, but it amounted in time to a
pretty complete freedom ; and as they
were not disturbed when the order was
suppressed in Europe, some of their
brethren from abroad took refuge with
them; so that in 1784, we find, ac-
cording to Mr. C. Moreau, in his ex-
cellent work on the French emigrant
priests in America,* nineteen priests
in Maryland, and five in Pennsylvania.
To these we must add the priests of
Detroit, Mich., Vincennes, Ind., and
Kaskaskia and Cahokia, 111., all four
originally French - Canadian settle-
ments which were ceded to England
along with Canada, and after the
American Revolution became parts
of the United States. Counting,
moreover, the missionaries scattered
among the Indian tribes, we may
safely say that the American Republic
contained at the period of which we
are speaking not fewer than thirty or
forty ecclesiastics. The number of
the faithful may be set down as
16,000 in Maryland, 7,000 or 8,000
in Pennsylvania, 3,000 at Detroit and
Vincennes, and about 2,500 in southern
Illinois ; in all the other states together
they hardly amounted to 1,500. In a
total population therefore of 3,000,000
they numbered about 30,000, and of
these 5 5 500 were of French origin.
Such was the condition of the Church
in the United States when it was regu-
larly established in 1789 by the erec-
tion of an episcopal see at Baltimore,
and the appointment, as bishop, of Mr.
* One vol. 12mo. Paris : Douniol.
Carroll, an American priest, born of
one of the oldest Catholic families of
Maryland. The dispersion of the
clergy of France, in 1790, soon after-
ward supplied America with numerous
evangelical laborers, who gave a new
impulse to the development which was
just becoming apparent in the infant
Church.
A few years before the French Revo-
lution, Mr. Emery, superior of Saint
Sulpice, guided by what we must term
an extraordinary inspiration, came to
the assistance of the American Church,
and with the help of his brother Sul-
pitians and at the cost of the society,
founded a theological seminary at Bal-
timore. His plans were already well
matured when Bishop Carroll, soon
after his appointment, entering heartily
into the project, promised him a house
and all the assistance he could give.
Four Sulpitians accordingly set out
from Paris in 1790, taking with them
five Seminarians. They were supplied
with 30,000 francs to defray the cost
of their establishment, and to this
modest sum the crisis which soon over-
took the parent establishment allowed
them to add but little ; but this mite,
bestowed by the Church of France
in the last days of her wealth, was
destined to become, like the widow's
mite, the price of innumerable bless-
ings.
Between 1791 and 1799 the storm
of revolution drove twenty-three
French priests to the United States.
As the first apostles, when they set out
from Rome, portioned out Germany
and Gaul among themselves, so they
divided this country, and most of them
organized new communities of Chris-
tians, or by then* zeal awakened com^
munities that slept. Six of them,
Flaget, Cheverus, Dubourg, Marechal,
Dubois, and David, became bishops.
The base of operations from which
these peaceful but victorious invaders
went forth was Baltimore, the episco-
pal see around which were gathered
the old American clergy and the
greater part of the Catholic popula-
tion. It was here that the Sulpitians
The Progress of the Church
had their seminary, and this establish-
ment became a centre of attraction
for a great many of these exiled priests
who belonged to the Society of Saint
Sulpice. Some (as MM. Ciquard,
Matignon, and Cheverus) bent their
steps from Baltimore toward the labo-
rious missions among the intolerant
and often fanatical Puritans of the
North, where the Catholics a mere
handful were found scattered far
and wide; isolated in the midst of
a Protestant population ; deprived of
priests and religious services, and in
danger of totally forgetting the faith
in which they had been baptized.
Nothing discouraged these apostolic
men. Aided by divine grace, they
awakened the indifferent, converted
heretics, gathered about them the few
Catholics who immigrated from Eu-
rope, attracted all men by their affable
and conciliating manners, their intelli-
gence and education, and the disinter-
estedness of their lives. Soon on
this apparently sterile soil Catholic
parishes grew up and flourished in
the midst of people who had never
before seen a priest. Thus were
founded the churches of Massachu-
setts, Maine, and Connecticut so
quickly that, in 1810 (that is to say,
only eighteen years after the begin-
ning of the missions), it was deemed
advisable to erect for them another
bishopric. Congregations had sprung
up on every side as if by enchant-
ment, and the venerable Abbe* Che-
verus was appointed their first bishop.
Others went westward. The Abbes
Flaget, Badin, Barriere, Fournier,
and Salmon carried the faith into
Kentucky. There they found a few
Catholic families who had emigrated
from Maryland. "With them they
organized churches, which increased
with prodigious rapidity, and were
the origin of the present dioceses of
.Louisville, Covington, Nashville, and
Alton.
The Abbe's Richard, Levadour,
Dilhiet, and several others, passed
through the forest and the wilderness,
and joined the old French colonies
which still survived around the ruins
of the French military posts in the
Northwest and in the valley of the Mis-
sissippi. They found there a few mis-
sionaries, whom the Canadian Church
still maintained in those distant coun-
tries ; but their ranks were thin, and
they were old and feeble. This pre-
cious reinforcement enabled them to
give a fresh impetus to the French
Catholic congregations over whom
they kept watch in the forest. De-
troit, Vincennes, Cahokia, Kaskaskia,
and afterward St. Genevieve and St.
Louis in Missouri, ceded to the United
States in 1803, received the visits of
these new apostles, and experienced
the benefits of their intelligence and
zeal. Nearly all the places where
they fixed themselves have since
given their names to large and flour-
ishing bishoprics.
Several of the emigrant priests re-
mained in Maryland and Virginia,
and enabled the Sulpitians to com-
plete the organization of their sem-
inary, while at the same time they
assisted Bishop Carroll in providing
more perfectly and regularly for the
wants of those central provinces
which might be called the first home
of American Catholicism. The num-
ber of the faithful everywhere in-
creased remarkably. We can hardly
estimate the extraordinary influence
which these French missionaries ex-
ercised by their exemplary lives, their
learning, their great qualities as men,
and their virtues as saints ; and the
Anglo-Saxon inhabitants (who are-
thoroughly Protestant if you will, but
for all that religious at bottom) were
struck by their character all the more
forcibly because it was so totally dif-
ferent from what their prejudices had
led them to expect of the Catholic
clergy.
There is something patriarchal and
Homeric in the lives of these men,
which read like the poetic legends in
which nations have commemorated
the histoiy of their first establishment.
We have seen the journal of one of
these missionaries the Abbe Bourg,
in the United States.
who labored further North, in New
Brunswick and Nova Scotia. His
life was one long, perpetual Odyssey.
In the spring he used to start from
the Bay of Chaleur, traverse the
northern coasts of New Brunswick,
pass down the Bay of Fundy, make
the entire circuit of the peninsula of
Nova Scotia, and after a journey of
five hundred leagues, performed in
nine or ten months, visit the islands
in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and so
come back to his point of departure.
From place to place, the news of hits
approach was sent forward by the set-
tlers, so that whenever he stopped he
found the faithful waiting for him,
and whole families came fifteen or
twenty leagues to meet him. Hardly
had he arrived before he began the
round of priestly labor, of confession
and baptism, of burial and marriage.
He was the arbiter of private quar-
rels, and often of public disputes. He
found time withal to look after the
education of the children at least to
make sure that they were well taught
at home. Thus he would stay fifteen
days perhaps in one place, a month
in another, according to the number of
the inhabitants. The first communion
of the children crowned his visit.
Then the man of God, with a last
blessing on his weeping flock, disap-
peared for a whole year ; and when
the apparition so long desired, but so
transitory, had passed, it left behind
a halo of superhuman glory, which
seemed to these pious people the glory
rather of a prophet than of an ordin-
ary man.
In such ways the marks of a messen-
ger from God seemed more and more
clearly and unmistakably stamped
upon the Catholic missionary, and
Protestants themselves began to yield
to the subtle influence of so much
real virtue and self-devotion. Con-
versions were frequent even among
the descendants of the stern Puritans.
Many of the most fervent Catholic
families in the United States date
from this period. A rich Presbyterian
minister of Boston (Mr. John Thayer)
was converted, and became a priest
and an apostle. So God scattered the
seed of grace behind the footsteps of
his poor, persecuted children, who, de-
.spite their apparent misery, bore con-
tinually with them the wealth of the
soul, the power of the Word, and the
marvellous attraction of their sacrifices
and virtues.
Providence, however, had not de-
ployed so strong a force for no purpose
beyond the capture of these converts.
A very few missionaries might have
sufficed for that ; but it was now time
to prepare the land for the great
European immigration which was to
cause the astonishing growth of the
United States. Spreading themselves
over the vast area of the Union, the
emigrants found everywhere these
veteran soldiers whom the French
Revolution had sent forth into the
New World as pioneers, tried both by
the pains of persecution and the labors
of apostleship. Before this great
human tide the old emigrant priests
were like the primitive rocks which
arrest and fix geological deposits,
The Catholic part of the tossing flood
invariably settled around them and
their disciples. All over the West
the churches founded by the old French
settlers increased, and new ones sprang
up wherever a Catholic priest estab-
lished himself. From that moment
the grand progressive movement has
never ceased. The blood of the mar-
tyrs of France, the spirit of her
banished apostles, became fruitful of
blessings, of which the American
churches are daily sensible.
The first bishop in the United
States had been appointed in 1789.
Four years afterward another see
was erected at New Orleans, La.,
which, ten years later, became a part
of the United States ; and in 1808, so
rapid had been the Catholic develop-
ment, that three new bishops were
consecrated one for Louisville, Ky.,
another for New York, and the third
for Boston, Mass. Two of these sees
were occupied by the French mission-
aries who had founded them Bishop
G
The Progress of the Church
Flaget at Louisville, and Bishop Che-
verus at Boston. That of New York
was entrusted to a venerable priest
of English [Irish] origin the Rev.
Luke Concanen. In the whole United
States there were then sixty-eight
priests and about 100,000 Catholics.
Lei us now glance at the rapid in-
crease of the American Church up to
our own day.
From the States of Maryland and
Pennsylvania the Church was not
long in spreading into Virginia, New
York, Kentucky, and Ohio. The es-
tablishment of sees at Louisville and
New York was followed by the erec-
tion of others at Philadelphia m 1809,
and Richmond and Cincinnati in 1821.
The two Carolinas, in which the
Catholics had hitherto been an obscure
and rigorously proscribed class, re-
ceived a bishop at Charleston in 1820.
New Orleans, a diocese of French
creation, was divided in 1824 by the
erection of the bishopric of Mobile.
The old French colonies in the far
West were the nucleus around which
were formed other churches. The
dioceses of St. Louis, Mo. (organized
in 1826), Detroit, Mich. (1832), and
Vincennes, Ind. (1834), all took their
names from ancient French settle-
ments, and were peopled almost ex-
clusively by descendants of the French
Canadians who were their first inhab-
itants.
Thus, in the course of twenty-six
years, we see eight new sees erected,
making the number of bishops in the
United States thirteen. The number
of the clergy amounted in 1830 to
232, and in 1834 probably exceeded
300. At the date of the next offi-
cial returns (1840) there were 482
priests and three more bishoprics
those of Natchez, Miss., and Nashville,
Tenn., both established in 1837, and
that of Monterey in California, a
country of Spanish settlement which
had recently been annexed to the
United States.*
But this increase was not compar-
able to that which followed between
1840 aiid 1850. In ten years the
number of bishops was doubled by the
erection of fifteen [seventeen} new sees.
In 1840 there were sixteen; in 1850
thirty-one [thirty-three]. The growth
during this period was most percepti-
ble in the North and West. Among
the new sees were Hartford, Conn.,
Albany and Buffalo, N. Y., Pittsburg,
Penn., Cleveland, O., Chicago, 111.,
Milwaukee, Wis., St. Paul, Minn.,
Oregon City and Nesqualy, Oregon,
and Wheeling in Northern Virginia.
The others were Little Rock, Ark.,
Savannah, Ga., Galveston, Texas, and
Santa F4, New Mexico.f The clergy
in 1850 numbered 1,800, having con-
siderably more than doubled [nearly
quadrupled] their number in ten years.
Thus we see that the Church was
pressing hard and fast upon the old
New England Puritans. They soon
began to feel uneasy, and to oppose
sometimes a violent resistance to her
progress. In some of the States, es-
pecially Connecticut and New Hamp-
shire, there were laws against the
Catholics yet unrepealed ; so that the
dominant party had more ways of
showing their hatred of the Church
than by mere petty vexations. In
Boston things went so far that a nun-
nery was pillaged and burned by a
mob. It is from this time that we
must date the origin of the Know-
Nothing movement, directed ostensi-
bly against foreigners, but undoubt-
edly animated in the main by hatred
of Catholicism and alarm at its prog-
ress. The fretting and fuming of
this political party was the last effort
of Puritan antipathy. The Church
prospered in spite of it; so the Puri-
tans resigned themselves to witness
her gradual aggressions with the best
grace they could assume.
* Monterey was not a part of the United States
until 1 H4, nor a bishop's see until 1 sj(J. In place
of it we should substitute Dubuque, made a see in
1837. ED. C. W.
t And San Francisco and Monterey ED C. W.
in the United States.
Ten new sees ^were established be-
tween 1850 and 1860, and eight of
these were in the North or West
viz., Erie, Newark, Burlington, Port-
land, Fort Wayne, Sault St. Marie,
Alton, and Brooklyn. Two were in
the South Covington and Natchito-
ches. There were thus in the United
States, in 1860, forty-three bishoprics,
with 2,235 priests. Let us now see
how many Catholics were embraced
in these dioceses, and what proportion
they bore to the total population.
The number of the faithful it is not
easy to determine accurately; for a
false delicacy prevents the Americans
from including the statistics of re-
ligious belief in their census-tables.
Estimates are very variable. A work
printed at Philadelphia in 1858 by a
Protestant author sets down the num-
ber of Catholics as 3,177,140. Dr.
Baird, a Protestant minister, pub-
lished at Paris in 1857 an essay on
religion in the United States an es-
say, be it remarked, which showed
the Catholics no favor in which he
estimated their number at 3,500,000.
But neither of these estimates rests
upon trustworthy data. They were
certainly below the truth when they
were made, and are therefore far from
large enough now, for the yearly in-
crease is very great.
Our own calculations are drawn
partly from our personal observa-
tion, and partly from official docu-
ments published by various ecclesias-
tical authorities. The best criterion is
undoubtedly the rate of increase of the
clergy.
It must be evident that in America,
more than in any other country, there
is a logical relation between the num-
ber of the faithful and the number of
the priests. As the clergy depend
entirely upon the voluntary contribu-
tions of their people, there must be a
fixed ratio between the growth of the
flocks and the multiplication of pas-
tors. If the clergy increase too fast,
they endanger their means of support.
Now, if priests cannot live in America
without a certain number of parish-
ioners to support them, we may take
this number as a basis for calculating
the minimum of the Catholic population ;
and we may safely say that the popu-
lation will be in reality much greater
than this minimum ; because, as we can
testify from experience, the churches
never lack congregations, and in most
places the number of the clergy is insuf-
ficient to supply even the most press-
ing religious wants of the people. One
never sees a priest in the United States
seeking for employment. On the con-
trary, the cry of spiritual destitution
daily goes up from parishes and com-
munities which have no pastors.
Calculations founded upon the stat-
istics of " church accommodations "
given in the United States census
that is, of the number of persons the
churches are capable of holding are
not applicable to our case; because
the Catholic churches, especially in the
large cities, are thronged two or three
times every Sunday by as many dis-
tinct congregations, while the Protest-
ant churches have only one service
for all. The capacity of the churches
therefore gives us neither the actual
number of worshippers nor the pro-
portion between our own people and
those of other denominations. We
have taken, then, as the basis of our
estimate, the ratio between the number
of priests and the number of the faith-
ful, correcting the result according to
the circumstances of particular places.
The first point is to establish this ratio,
and we are led by the concurrent re-
sults of careful estimates made in some
of the States, and special or general
calculations which we have had oppor-
tunity of making in person, to fix it at
the average of one priest for every
2,000 Catholics. But we have a very
trustworthy method of verifying this
estimate, and that is by comparison
between the United States and the con-
tiguous British Provinces, in which the
statistics of religious belief are included
in the general census. Setting aside
Lower Canada, where the Catholic
population is as compact as it is in
France, we find that in Upper Can-
8
The Progress of the Church
ada, a country which resembles the
Western United States, the ratio in
1860 was one priest for every 1,850
Catholics, and in New Brunswick, a
territory very like New England, one
for every 2,400. Our average ratio of
one for every 2,000 cannot, therefore,
be far from the truth. We have made
due account of all data by which this
ratio could be either raised or lowered
in particular times and places. We
have ourselves made investigations in
certain districts, and persons well quali-
fied to speak on the subject have given
us information about others. The re-
sult of our corrected calculation gives
us 4,400,000 as the Catholic popula-
tion of the United States in 1860, the
date of the last general census. We
shall give presently the distribution of
this total among the several states ;
but we wish first to call attention to
another fact of great importance which
appears from our figures. In 1808
the Catholics were 100,000 in a total
population of 6,500,000, or l-65th of
the whole ; in 1830 they were 450,000
in 13,000,000, or l-29th of the whole;
in 1840, 960,000 in 17,070,000, or
l-18th; in 1850,2,150,000 in 23,191,-
000, or 1-1 1th; and finally, in 1860
they were over 4,400,000 in 3 1,000,000,
or l-7th of the total population. It
thus appears that for fifty years the
Catholics have increased much faster
than the rest of the inhabitants, and
especially during the last two decades.
Between 1840 and 1850 their ratio
of increase was 125 per cent., while
that of the whole population was only
36; and from 1850 to 18 60 their ratio
of increase was 109 per cent., while
that of the whole people was 35.59.
These figures, to be sure, are not
mathematically certain, for they are
deduced partly from estimates ; but we
are confident that, considering the im-
perfect materials at our disposal, we
have come as near the exact truth as
possible, both in the ratio of increase
and in the total population. Official
returns in the British Provinces con-
firm our calculations in a most remark-
able manner ; and we believe that,
estimating the future growth on the
most moderate scale, the Catholics will
number in 1 870 one-fifth of the whole
population, and in 1900 not far from
one-third.
n.
Having traced the progress of the
Church step by step in the United
States, it will now be equally interest-
ing and instructive to see how this
progress has been made in different
places. The Catholics are by no
means uniformly dispersed over the
country, and their increase has not
been equally rapid in all the states.
It will be worth our while to see in
which quarters they are settled with
the most compactness and in which
they are widely dispersed; and thus
we may predict without great risk
which regions are destined to be the
Catholic strongholds in the New World.
We have already said that the pro-
portion of the Catholics to the whole
people in 1860 was as one to seven;
but if we divide the country into two
parts we shall find that in the South-
ern states there are only 1,200,000
Catholics in a population of 12,000,000
that is, they are l-10th of the whole ;
while in the North they number
3,200,000 in 19,000,000, or more than
l-6th. Even these figures give but a
very general idea of the distribution
of the faithful. If we take the whole
country, state by state, we shall find
the proportions still more variable.
In some places the Catholic element is
already so strong that its ultimate pre-
ponderance can hardly be doubted,
while its slow development in other
quarters promises little for the future.
The following tables will enable our
readers to comprehend at once the
distribution of the Catholics among
the various states :
in the United States.
NORTHERN STATES.
STATES.
5 -
* d
3p
Per cent,
of Catholic
Populati'n
!
Catholic
Colleges.
Convents
of
Men.
Convents
of
Women.
Maine. .
649,958 )
New Hampshire
Massachusetts
320,072 J
1,231,494
52,000
160,000
5.45
13
23
80
2
* *
1
4
460,670 )
Rhode Island . .
174,621 )
100,000
16
49
1
4
Vermont .
315,827
30,000
16
13
1
New York
New Jersey
3,851,000
676,000
800,000
120,000
21
19
361
57
8
1
9
1
26
5
Pennsylvania ... . .
2,916,018
550,000
19
258
9
10
18
Ohio
2,377,417
400,000
17
172
7
3
18
Indiana
1,350,802
140,000
10
70
2
2
10
Illinois
1,691.238
250,000
15
115
1
I
8
Michigan
754,291
120,000
1.85
59
2
6
"Wisconsin
768,485
220,000
31
105
1
3
5
682,003
80,000
12
56
2
3
Minnesota
172,772
60 000
34
27
2
3
Kansas
143 645
25,000
18
16
I
2
2
California
384,770
100,000
26
100
4
2
7
Oregon and Washington . .
52,566
18,000
34
25
2
Total
18,973,649
3,225,000
17
1 586
35
39
123
SOUTHERN STATES.
STATES.
IM
1 *
III
Per cent,
of Catholic
Populati'n
!
Catholic
Colleges.
b
Convents
of
Women.
Missouri ...
1,281,200
240 000
20
120
4
14
Kentucky
1 145 477
150 000
15
OQ
7
Maryland
681 565 )
District of Columbia
75,321 (
1,012,053 )
220,000
25.50
140
9
4
11
Virginia
1,583,199
50,000
3
28
1
North Carolina
1 008 350 )
2
South Carolina
715 367)
30,000
1.75
15
1
2
Georgia
1,091,797
25 000
2 30
15
2
Tennessee
1,141,640
25,000
2 10
13
1
2
Alabama
955 619
50 000
5
27
^
2
Mississippi . . .
886 660
30 000
3 40
16
1
Arkansas
440 775
18 000
4.50
10
1
2
Louisiana
666 431
200 000
30
107
4
g
10
Texas .
604 400
100 000
16
42
1
4
Florida
145 697
8 000
6
4
93,024
80 000
86
26
1
1
1
Total
12 548 335
1 226 000
9 75
656
29
I 9
60
10
Progress of the Church
These tables show at a glance the
disproportion between the Catholics
of the North and those of the South.
In only one Northern state (that of
Maine) is the proportion of Catholics
as small as 5.45 per cent, of the whole
population ; while there are no fewer
than five Southern states in which it
is less than three per cent. If we
leave out New Mexico, Texas, Louis-
iana, Missouri, and Maryland, where
the preponderance of the faithful is
due to special causes, we find that in
the other Southern states the average
proportion is not above four per cent.
In other words, in these regions the
Church has little better than a nominal
existence. This is partly because the
stream of European immigration has
always flowed in other directions, and
partly because the negroes generally
adhere to the Baptist or Methodist
sects in preference to the Church.
But when we examine the tables
more in detail, we see that in both
sections the ratio of Catholics varies
greatly in different states. It is easy
to account for this difference in the
South. Six states only have any con-
siderable number of Catholic inhabit-
ants. Louisiana and Missouri owe
them to the old French colonies around
which the Catholic settlers clustered.
In New Mexico, more than three-
fourths of the people are of Spanish-
Mexican origin. Texas derives a great
number of her inhabitants from Mexico,
and has received a large Catholic emi-
gration both from Europe and from the
United States. Maryland, the germ
of the American Church, owes her
religious prosperity to the first English
Catholic settlers; and the Church in
Kentucky is an offshoot of that in
Maryland. Such are the special causes
of the great differences between the
churches of the various Southern states.
In the North there is less disparity.
European immigration has produced
a much more decided effect in this sec-
tion than in the preceding. From
this source come most of the faithful
of New York, Oregon, California,
Ohio, and New Jersey. In Ohio the
Germans have done the principal part,
and they have done much also in
Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The
effect of conversions is more percep-
tible in Connecticut, Rhode Island,
Massachusetts, and New York than
elsewhere. In many of the states,
however, and especially in Pennsylva-
nia, we find numerous descendants of
English Catholic settlers, while the
old French colonies of the West have
had their influence upon the popula-
tion of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minne-
sota, and Illinois, and also of the north-
ern part of New York, where the
French Canadians are daily spreading
their ramifications across the frontier.
If we look now at the localities in
which the proportion of Catholics is
greatest, we shall notice several inter-
esting points touching the laws which
have determined the direction of the
principal development of the Church,
and which will probably promote it in
the future. In the South there are
what we may call three groups of
states in which the Catholic element
is notably stronger than in the others.
One belongs exclusively to the South-
ern section, and consists of Louisiana,
Texas, and New Mexico, having an
aggregate Catholic population of 380,-
000 in 1,363,800, or 28 per cent. The
other groups (Missouri, that is to say,
and Maryland and Kentucky) form
parts of much larger groups belonging
to the Northern states. The first of
these latter, and that to which Mary-
land and Kentucky are attached, con-
sists of Pennsylvania, New York, New
Jersey, and Ohio. Its aggregate pop-
ulation is 11,647,477, of whom the
Catholics are 2,240,000, or nineteen
per cent. This group contains the
ancient establishments of Maryland
and Pennsylvania good old Catholic
communities, in which the zeal and
piety of the faithful possess that firm
and decided character which comes of
long practice and time-honored tradi-
tions. It contains, too, the magnifi-
cent seminary of Baltimore, founded
and still directed by the Sulpitians.
This is the largest and most complete
in the United States.
11
establishment of the kind in the United
States, and derives from its connection
with the Sulpitian house in Paris spe-
cial advantages for superintending the
education of young ecclesiastics, and
training accomplished ministers for
the sanctuary. Kentucky, likewise,
has some important and noteworthy
institutions, such as the seminary of
St. Thomas and the college of St.
Mary, both of which are in high repute
at the West, and the magnificent Abbey
of Our Lady of La Trappe at New
Haven, with sixty-four religious, eight-
een of whom are choir-monks. The
Kentucky Catholics deserve a few
words of special mention. The de-
scendants, for the most part, of the
first settlers of Maryland, who scattered,
about a century ago, in order to people
new countries, they partake in an emi-
nent degree of the peculiar character-
istics which have given to Kentuckians
a reputation as the flower of the Ameri-
can people. They are more decidedly
American than the Catholics of any
other district, and they are remarkable
for their homogeneousness, their ed-
ucation, and their attachment to the
faith and traditions of the Church.
The most important and numerous
Catholic population is found in the
state of New York, where the faithful
amount to no fewer than 800,000.
They have here religious establish-
ments of every kind. This condition
of things is the result, in great meas-
ure, of the well-known ability of Arch-
bishop Hughes, whose death has left a
void which the American clergy will
find it hard to fill. His reputation
was not confined to the Empire City.
He was as well known all over the
Union as at his own see, and was
everywhere regarded as one of the
great men of the country. Although
the progress of the faith in New York
has been owing in a very great degree
to immigration, it is in this city and in
Boston that conversions have been
most numerous ; and in effecting these,
Archbishop Hughes had a most im-
portant share. It is not surprising, then,
that his death should have caused a
profound sensation in the city, and
that all religious denominations should
have united in testifying respect for
his memory.
It is difficult to apply a statistical
table to the study of the question of
conversions. These are mental opera-
tions of infinite variety, both in their
origin and in their ways ; for the meth-
ods of Providence are as many and as
diverse as the shades of human thought
upon which they act. It may be re-
marked, however, that the different
Protestant sects furnish very unequal
contingents to the little army of souls
daily returning to the true faith ; and
it is a curious fact that the two sects
which furnish the most are the Epis-
copalians, who, in their forms and tra-
ditions, approach nearest to the Catho-
lic Church, and the Unitarians, who
go to the very opposite extreme, and
appear to push their philosophical and
rationalistic principles almost beyond
the pale of Christianity. These two
sects generally comprise the most
enlightened and intellectual people of
North America. On the other hand,
the denominations which embrace the
more ignorant portions of the popula-
tion (such as the Baptists, the Wesley-
an Methodists, etc., etc.) furnish, in
proportion to their numbers, but few
converts. The principal Catholic re-
view in the United States (J3rownson's
Review, published in New York) is
edited by a well-known convert, whose
name it bears, and who was formerly a
Unitarian minister.
Further North in New England
there is another Catholic group, of
recent origin, formed of the Puritan
states of Connecticut, Massachusetts,
and Rhode Island. The first see here
was established by Bishop Cheverus
only sixty years ago. These bishop-
rics, however, have already acquired
importance ; for in the diocese of Hart-
ford the Catholics are now sixteen
per cent, of the whole population, and
the rapidity of their increase and the
completeness of their church organiza-
tion give us ground for bright hopes
of their future progress. Immigration
12
The Progress of the Church
here does much to promote conver-
sions, and it will not be extravagant to
anticipate that in the course of a few
years the number of the faithful will
be doubled. The Pilot, the most im-
portant Catholic journal in the coun-
try, is published in Boston.
The far West, only a few years
ago, was a great wilderness, with only
a few French posts scattered here and
there in the Indian forest, like little
islands in the midst of a great ocean.
Now it is divided into several states,
and counts millions of inhabitants. In
this rapid transformation, Catholicism
has not remained behind. Many dio-
ceses have been established, and the
quickness of their growth has already
placed this group in the second rank
so far as regards numerical import-
ance, while all goes to show that Cath-
olicism is destined here to preponderate
greatly over all other denominations.
The states of Missouri, Illinois,
Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota
contained, in 1860, 4,575,000 souls, of
whom 890,000, or 19 per cent., were
Catholics. This is as large a propor-
tion as we find in the central group.
It is, moreover, rapidly rising, and
only one thing is necessary to make
these states before long the principal
seats of Catholicism in the Union
that is, an adequate supply of priests.
It is of the utmost importance that the
demand for missionaries in these dio-
ces be supplied at whatever cost.
The principal causes of this remark-
able increase are, first, the crowds of
immigrants attracted by the great ex-
tent of fertile land thrown open to set-
tlers ; and, secondly, the fact that the
Catholic immigrants on then- arrival
clustered, so to speak, around the old
French settlements, where the mission-
aries still maintained the discipline
and worship of the Church. At first,
therefore, it was easy to direct this
great influx of people, since they nat-
urally tended toward the pre-existing
centres of faith. The consequence
was that the Church lost by apostacies
fewer members than one might have
supposed, and fewer than were lost
in other places. But now the daily
augmenting crowds of immigrants are
dispersing themselves through less sol-
itary regions. They are coming un-
der more direct and various influ-
ences ; and hence the necessity for in-
creasing the number of churches and
parish priests becomes daily more and
more urgent. At the same time, the
means at the disposal of the bishops
become daily less and less adequate
for supplying this want, especially
since the people of the country, new
and unsettled as they are, and ab-
sorbed in material cares, furnish but
few candidates for the priesthood.
Here we see a glorious field for the
far-reaching benevolence of the So-
ciety for the Propagation of the Faith.
Nowhere, we believe, will the sending
forth of pious and devoted priests
produce fruits comparable to those of
which the past gives promise to the
future in this part of the United States.
We spoke just now of the old French
colonies, and our readers will perhaps
be surprised that we should have made
so much account of those poor little
villages, which numbered hardly more
than from 500 to 1,500 souls each
when the Yankees began to come into
the country. Nevertheless, we have
not exaggerated their importance. It
is not only that they served as centres
and rallying-points ; but so rapid is
the mutiplication of families in Amer-
ica that this French population which,
if brought together in one mass in
1800, would have counted at most
14,000 souls, now numbers, including
both the original settlements and the
swarms of emigrants who have gone
from them to the West, not fewer
than 80,000. Their descendants are
always easily recognized. Detroit,
and its neighborhood in Michigan,
Vincennes (Ind.), Cahokia and Kas-
kaskia (111.), St. Louis, St. Genevieve,
Carondelet, etc. (Mo.), Green Bay and
Prairie du Chien (Wte.), St. Paul
(Minn.) all these old settlements have
preserved the deep imprint of our
race. Even in the new colonies which
were afterward drawn from them, the
French population have uniformly
kept up the practice of their religion,
in the United States.
13
the use of their mother tongue, and a
lively recollection of their origin. Of
this fact we have obtained proof in
several instances from careful personal
observation. Small and poor, there-
fore, as these settlements were, they
had a powerful moral influence upon
the great immigration of the nine-
teenth century. The Catholic immi-
grants felt drawn toward them by the
attraction of a community of thought
and customs ; and God, whose Provi-
dence rules our lives, directed the
movement by his own inscrutable
methods.
in.
While the Catholic element was in-
creasing at the rate of 80, 125, and
109 per cent, every ten years, other
religious denominations showed an in-
crease of only twenty or twenty-five
per cent. Some remained stationary,
and a few even lost ground. Whence
comes this continued and increasing
disparity in the development of differ-
ent portions of the same people ? The
principal reason assigned for it is the
immense emigration from Ireland to
America. As the number of Catho-
lics in the United States when the
emigration began was very small,
every swarm of fresh settlers added
much more to their ratio of increase
than to that of other denominations.
Ten added to ten gives an increase of
100 per cent. ; but the same number
added to 100 gives only ten per cent.
At first sight, this seems a sufficient
explanation ; but we shall find, when
we come to examine it, that it does
not really account for our increase.
If the growth of the American Catho-
lic Church were the result wholly of
immigration, we should find that as
the number of Catholic inhabitants
increased, the apparent effect of this
immigration would be diminished. In
other words, the ratio of increase
would gradually fall to an equality
with that of other denominations. But,
so far from this being the case, the
difference between our ratio of in-
crease and that of the Protestant sects
is as great as ever is even growing
greater. The ratio which was ten
per cent, a year between 1830 and
1840, rose to 12.50 per cent, a year
between 1840 and 1850, and was
10.09 per cent, between 1850 and
1860. There are other causes, there-
fore, beside European emigration to
which we must look for an explana-
tion of Catholic progress in America.
If we study with a little attentiDn the
extent to which immigration has in-
fluenced the development of the whole
population of the country, and the ex-
act proportion of the Catholic part of
this immigration, we shall find con-
firmation of the conclusions to which
we have been led by the simple tes-
timony of figures. Immigration has
never furnished more than six or seven
per cent, of the decennial increase of
the population of the United States,
the growth of which has been at the
rate of thirty-five per cent, during the
same period. Immigration, therefore,
contributed to it only one-fifth. Again,
of these immigrants, including both
Irish and Germans, not more than
one-third have been Catholics. More-
over, we must take account of the con-
siderable number of members that the
Church has lost in the course of their
dispersion all over the country.
Clearly, then, the influence of immi-
gration is not enough to account for
the rapid progress of the faith. A
careful analysis of the Catholic popu-
lation at different tunes, and in different
places, enables us to specify two other
causes.
1. The Catholics are principally
distributed at the North among the
free states, where the population in-
creases much faster than it does at the
South ; and the Catholic families, it
has been observed, multiply much
faster than the others, in consequence,
no doubt, of their more active and
regular habits of life, sustained moral-
ity, respect for the marriage tie, and
regard for domestic obligations. This
difference in fecundity is quite percep-
tible wherever the Catholic element
14
The Progress of the Church
is strong as in Canada, and the
states of New York, Pennsylvania,
Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin,
etc., and, among the Southern states,
in Louisiana, Maryland, and Missouri.
2. Another cause of increase is the
conversion of Protestants a cause
which operates slowly, quietly, and,
at first, imperceptibly, but with that
constant and uniform power remind-
ing us of the great operations of nature
which is almost always the sign
of a Providential agency. Eloquent
theorists and brilliant writers on sta-
tistics, preferring salient facts and
striking phenomena what they call
the great principles of science too
often overlook or despise those obscure
movements which act quietly upon
the human conscience. Yet how much
more powerful is this mysterious ac-
tion like the continual dropping of
water than the showy effects which
captivate so many thinkers, whose
organs of perception seem dazzled by
the glow of their imagination ! Such
was the nature of the invisible opera-
tion which was inaugurated by the
preaching of the martyrs of the faith
whom the French Revolution cast forth
like seed all over the world. The
rules of political economy had nothing
to do with it. It acted in the secret
chambers of men's hearts and the re-
tirement of their meditative moments,
and it has gone on without interrup-
tion to the present moment, increasing
year by year. The Church seizes
upon the convictions of grown men ;
reaches the young by her admirable
systems of education; impresses all
by her living, persuasive propagand-
ism, made beautiful by the zeal and de-
votion and holiness of her missionaries.
Simple and dignified, without the af-
fectation of dignity austere, without
fanaticism their presence alone roots
up old prejudices, while their preach-
ing and example fill the soul with
new lights and with anxieties which
nothing but their instructions can set
at rest. Thus, wherever they go, the
thoughts and comparisons which they
suggest multiply conversions all around
them. You have only to question a
few Catholic families in the older
states about their early religious his-
tory, and you will see how important
an element in the prosperity of the
Church is this force of attraction so
important, that the following state-
ment may almost be taken as a gen-
eral law : Wherever a Catholic priest
establishes himself, though there be
not a Catholic family in the place, it
is almost certain that by the end of a
tune which varies from five to ten
years, he will be surrounded by a
Catholic community large enough to
form a parish and support a clergy-
man. This rule seems to us to have
no exception except in some of the
southern states. We have no hesi-
tation in stating it broadly of even
those parts of New England in which
the anti- Catholic feeling is now strong-
est,
We shall presently have occasion
to show that the only thing which pre-
vents the American Church from in-
creasing, perhaps doubling, the rapid-
ity of its progress, is the scarcity of
ecclesiastics and missionaries, from
which all the dioceses are suffering.
We have explained the important
part which converts have played in
this progress. The inquiry naturally
arises : Whence come so many conver-
sions ? What are the causes which
generally lead to them? These are
delicate and difficult questions. We
have no wish to speak ill of the Prot-
estant clergy. Most of them are cer-
tainly honorable men, estimable hus-
bands and good fathers ; but we can-
not help observing that they lack the
sacerdotal character so conspicuous
in the Catholic priest. Their minis-
try and their teaching cannot fully
satisfy the soul ; and whenever a calm
and unprejudiced comparison is drawn
between them and the Catholic clergy,
it is strange if the former do not suffer
by the contrast, and behold their
flocks, little by little, passing over to
the side of the Church. This com-
parison is one motive which often
leads Protestants, not precisely into
in the United States.
15
the bosom of the faith, but to the
study of Catholic doctrine ; and this is
a step by no means easy to persuade
them to take ; for, of every ten Prot-
estants who honestly study the faith,
seven- or eight end by becoming Cath-
olics. The Americans are a people
of a strong religious bent. Nothing
which concernh the great question of
religion is indifferent to them. They
study and reflect upon such matters
much more than we skeptical and
critical Frenchmen. The conversions
resulting from such frequent consider-
ation of religious matters ought, there-
fore, to be far more numerous in
America, and even in England, than
in other countries.
There are doubtless many other
causes which contribute to the same
result. Among them are mixed mar-
riages, which generally turn out to the
advantage of the Church, especially
in the case of educated people in the
upper ranks in society. Not only are
the children of these marriages brought
up Catholics, but almost always, as
experience has shown us, the Protest-
ant parent becomes a Catholic too.
The excellent houses of education
directed by religious orders are another
active cause of conversions. If ele-
mentary education is almost universal
in the United States, it is nevertheless
true that the higher institutions of
learning are exceedingly defective.
The colleges and boarding-schools
founded under the direction of the
Catholic clergy, though inferior to those
of France in the thoroughness of the
education they impart and the amount
of study required of their pupils, are
yet vastly superior to all other Ameri-
can establishments in their method,
their discipline, and the attainments
of their professors. The consequence
is that they are resorted to by num-
bers of Protestant youth of both sexes.
No compulsion is used to make them
Catholics ; no undue influence is ex-
erted ; the press, free as it is, rarely
finds excuse for complaint on this
score ; but facts and doctrines speak
for themselves. The good examples
and affectionate solicitude which sur-
round these young people, and the
friendships they contract, leave a deep
impression on their minds, and plant
the seed of serious thought, which
sooner or later bears fruit. Various
circumstances may lead to the final
development of this seed. Now per-
haps a first great sorrow wakens it into
life ; now it is quickened by new ideas
born of study and experience ; in one
case the determining influence may be
a marriage ; in another, intercourse
with Catholic society ; and not a few
may be moved by the falsity of the
notions of Catholicism which they find
current among Protestants, and which
their own experience enables them to
detect. This motive operates oftener
than people suppose, and generally
with those who at school or college
seemed most bitterly hostile to the
faith. In fine, those who have been
educated at Catholic institutions are
less prejudiced and better prepared
for the action of divine grace, which
Providence may send through any one
of a thousand channels.
And lastly, Catholicism acts upon
the Americans through the medium of
the habits and customs to which it
gradually attaches them, the result of
which is that in the growth of the
population the Church makes a con-
stant, an insensible, and what we might
call a spontaneous increase. It is a
well-known fact that the Catholic fami-
lies of North America, as a general
rule, are distinguished by a character
of stability, good order, and modera-
tion which is often wanting in the
Yankee race. Now this turns to the
advantage of the Church; for it is
evident that a people which fixes itself
permanently where it has once settled,
which concentrates itself, so to speak,
has a better chance of acquiring a pre-
dominance in the long run than one of
migratory habits, always in pursuit of
some better state which always eludes
it. This truth is nowhere more appar-
ent than in a county of Upper Canada
where we spent nearly three years.
The county of Glengarry was settled
16
The Progress of the Church
in 1815 by Scotchmen, some of whom
were Catholics. The colony increased
partly by the natural multiplication of
the settlers, partly by immigration,
until about 1840, when immigration
almost totally ceased, all the lands
being occupied. The population was
then left to grow by natural increase
alone. The Protestants at that time
were considerably in the majority ; but
by 1850 the proportions began to
change, and out of 17,576 inhabitants
8,870 were Catholics. In 1860 the
majority was completely reversed, and
in a population of 21,187 there were
10,919 Catholics ; in other words, the
latter, by the regular operation of natu-
ral causes, had gained every year from
one to two per cent, upon the whole.
It would not be easy to give a detailed
explanation of this fact ; we are only
conscious that some mysterious and
irresistible agency is gradually aug-
menting the proportion of the Catholic
element in American society and weak-
ening the Protestant.
American society might be compared
to a troubled expanse of water hold-
ing various substances in solution.
The solid bottom upon which the waters
rest is formed by the deposit of these
substances, and day after day, during
the moments of rest which follow
every agitation of the waves, more and
more of the Catholic element is pre-
cipitated which the waters bring with
them at each successive influx, but fail
to carry off again. It is by this hu-
man alluvium that our religion grows
and extends itself; and if this growth
is wonderful, it may be that the effect
of the infusion of so much sound doc-
trine into American society will prove
equally astonishing and precious.
Great stress has often been laid
upon the good qualities of the Ameri-
can people, but comparatively few have
spoken of their faults ; not because
they had none, but because their faults
were lost sight of in the brilliancy of
their material prosperity. But recent
events have led to more reflection
upon this point ; so it will not astonish
our readers if we point oat one or two,
such as the decay of thoughtful, sys-
tematic, methodical intelligence among
them, in comparison with Europeans ;
their narrowness of mind ; their inapti-
tude for general ideas ; and their sen-
sibly diminishing delicacy of mind.
These defects show an unsuspected but
serious and rapid degeneracy of the
Anglo-American race, and the decline
has already perhaps gone further than
one would readily believe. If Cath-
olicism, which tends eminently to de-
velop a spirit of method and order,
broadness of view and delicacy of
sentiment, should combat successfully
these failings, it would render a signal
service to the United States in return
for the liberty which they have
granted it.
But Catholics, we should add, are
indebted to the United States for some-
thing more than simple liberty. They
have there learned to appreciate their
real power. They have learned by
experience how little they have to fear
from pure universal liberty, how much
strength and influence they can acquire
in such a state of society. There is
this good and this evil in liberty
that it always proves to the advantage
of the strong ; so that when there is
question of the relations between man
and man, it must be a well-regulated
liberty, or it will result in the oppres-
sion of the weak. But the case is dif-
ferent when it comes to a question of
discordant doctrines : man has every-
thing to gain by the triumph of sound,
strong principles and the destruction
of false and specious theories. In
such a contest, let but each side appear
in its true colors, and we have nothing
to fear for the cause of truth. The
United States will at least have had
the merit of affording an opportunity
for a powerful demonstration of the
truth; and great as are the advant-
ages which the Catholic Church can
confer upon the country, she herself
will reap still greater advantages by
conferring them ; for it will turn to
her benefit in her action upon the
world at large.
In fact, the experience of the Church
in the United States.
17
in America has doubtless gone for
something in the familiarity which re-
ligious minds are gradually acquiring
with the principles of political liberty ;
and thus the growth of American
Catholicism is allied to the world-wide
reaction which is now taking place
after the religious eclipse of the last
century. This transformation of the
United States, in truth, is only one
marked incident in the intellectual
revolution which is drawing the whole
world toward the Catholic Church
England as well as America, Germany
as well as England, even Bulgaria in
the far East. The foreign press brings
us daily the signs of this progress ;
and nothing can be easier than to point
them out in France under our own
eyes. But unfortunately we have been
too much in the habit, for the last cen-
tury, of leading a life of continual
mortification, too conscious that we
were laughed at by the leaders of pub-
lic opinion. We crawled along in fear
and trembling, creeping close to the
walls, dreading at every step to give
offence, or to cause scandal, or to lose
some of our brethren. Accustomed
to see our ranks thinned and whole
files carried off in the flower of their
youth, we stood in too great fear of the
deceitful power of doctrines which
seemed to promise everything to man
and ask nothing from him in return.
And therefore many of us still find
it hard to understand the new state of
things in which we are making prog-
ress without external help. This
progress, however, inaugurated by the
energy of a few, the perseverance of
all, and the overruling hand of divine
Providence, is unquestionably going
on, and may easily be proved. We
have only to visit our churches, attend
some of the special retreats for men,
or look at the Easter communions, to
see what long steps faith and religious
practice have taken within the last
forty years. The change is most per-
ceptible among the educated classes
and in the learned professions. We
have heard old professors express their
astonishment in comparing the schools
2
of the present time with those of their
youth. It was then almost impossible
to find a young man at the Ecole Poly-
technique, at St. Cyr, or at the cole
Centrale, with enough faith and enough
courage openly to profess his religion ;
now it may be said that a fifth or per-
haps a fourth part of the students
openly and unhesitatingly perform their
Easter duty. We ourselves remem-
ber that no longer ago than 1830 it
required a degree of courage of which
few were found capable to manifest any
religious sentiment in the public ly-
ceums. Voltairianism or to speak
better, an intolerant fanaticism de-
lighted to cover these faithful few with
public ridicule ; while now, if we may
believe the best authorized accounts,
it is only a small minority who openly
profess infidelity. We can affirm that
in the School of Law the change is
quite as great, and it has begun to
operate even in that tune-honored
stronghold of materialism, the School
of Medicine.
But what must strike us most forcibly
in the examination of these questions
is the fact, already pointed out by the
Abbe Meignan, that the progress of
religion has kept even pace with the
extension of free institutions. Wher-
ever the liberal regime has been estab-
lished, the reaction in favor of religion
has become stronger, no doubt because
liberty places man face to face with
the consequences of his own acts and
the necessities of his feeble nature.
Man is never so powerfully impelled
to draw near to God as when he be-
comes conscious of his own weakness ;
never so deeply impressed with the
emptiness of false doctrines as TOhen
he has experienced their nothingness
in the practical affairs of life. The
violence of external disorder soon leads
him to, reflect upon the necessity of
solid, methodical, moral education, such
as regulates one's life, and such as the
Church alone can impart. And there-
fore the great change of sentiment of
which we have spoken is perceptible
chiefly among the educated and liberal
classes, while with the ignorant and
18
The Progress of the Church.
vulgar infidelity holds its own and is
even gaining. The educated classes,
more thoughtful, knowing the world
and having experience of men, see
further and calculate more calmly the
tendency of events ; with the common
people reason and plain sense are often
overpowered by the violence of their
temperament and the impetuosity of
their passions. Ignorance and inordin-
ate desires do the rest, and they im-
agine that man will know how to con-
duct without knowing how to govern
himself.
Whatever demagogues may say,
history proves that the head always
rules the body. The period of dis-
couragement and apprehension is past.
We shall yet, no doubt, have to go
through trials, and violent crises, and
perhaps cruel persecutions ; but we
may hope everything from the future.
And why not ? If we study the his-
tory of the Jewish people, we shall see
how God chastises his people in order
to rouse them from their moral torpor,
and raise them up from apparent ruin
by unforeseen means. Weakness, in
his hand, at once becomes strength ;
he asks of us nothing but faith
and courage. We have traced his
Providence in the methods by which
he has stimulated the growth of the
American Church -methods all the
more effectual because, unlike our own
vain enterprises, they worked for a
long time in silence and obscurity.
These Western bishoprics remained al-
most unknown up to the day when, the
light bursting forth all at once, the
world beheld a Church already organ-
ized, already strong, where it had not
suspected even her existence.
There is a magnificent and instruc-
tive scene in Athcdie, where the veil of
the temple is rent, and discloses to the
eyes of the terrified queen, Joas, whom
she had believed dead, standing in his
glory surrounded by an army. Even
so, it seems to us, was the American
Church suddenly revealed in all her
vigor to the astonished world, when her
bishops came two years ago to take
their place in the council at Rome.
And the same progress is making all
over the globe. Noiseless and un-
obtrusive, it attracts no attention from
the world ; it is overlooked by Utopian
theorists ; it goes on quietly in the do-
main of conscience ; but the day will
come when its light will break forth
and astonish mankind by its brightness.
Such are the ways of God !
NOTE. The greater part of the
materials for the preceding article
were written or collected during the
course of a journey which we made in
the United States in 1860. Since
then the progress of Catholicism has
necessarily been somewhat checked by
the events of the lamentable civil war
which is desolating the country ; but
the check has been far less serious
than might have reasonably been ap-
prehended. Religion has been kept
apart from political dissensions and
public disorders; it has only had to
suffer the common evils which war,
mortality, and general impoverishment
have inflicted upon the whole people.
If all these things are to have any
bad effect upon the progress of the
Church, it will be in future years, not
now. In fact, all the documents which
we have been able to collect show that
the numbers of both the faithful and
the clergy, instead of falling off, have
gone on increasing. In thirty-eight
dioceses there are now 275 more priests
than there were in 1860 ; from the
five other sees, namely, those of New
Orleans, Galveston, Mobile, Natchi-
toches, and Charleston, we have no
returns. This increase is confined
almost entirely to the regions in which
the Church was already strongest;
elsewhere matters have remained about
stationary.
Of this number of 275 priests added
to the Church in the course of three
years, 251 belong to the following four-
teen dioceses, namely : Baltimore,
Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Cleveland,
Brooklyn, Albany, Alton, Chicago,
Milwaukee, St. Paul, Detroit, Fort
Wayne, Vincennes, and Hartford.
The last-named belongs to the North-
The Ancient Saints of God.
19
eastern or New England group, all
the others to the Central and Western.
Thus fourteen dioceses alone show
nine-tenths of the total increase, and
the others divide the remaining tenth
among them in very minute fractions.
From some states, it is true, the re-
turns are very meagre, and from
others they are altogether wanting;
but the disproportion is so strong as
to leave no doubt that the future con-
quests of the Church in the United
States will be gained, as we have al-
ready said, principally in the Middle
and Western States.
E. R.
From The Month.
THE ANCIENT SAINTS OF GOD.
A FBENCH OFFICER'S STOEY.
BY THE LATE CARDINAL WISEMAN.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.
WE often practically divide the
saints into three classes. The ancient
saints, those of the primitive age of
Christianity, we consider as the patrons
of the universal Church, watching
over its' well-being and progress, but,
excepting Rome, having only a gen-
eral connection with the interests of
particular countries, still less of indi-
viduals.
The great saints of the middle age,
belonging to different races and coun-
tries, have naturally become their pat-
rons, being more especially reverenced
and invoked in the places of their
births, their lives, and still more their
deaths; whence, St. Willibrord, St.
Boniface, and St. Walburga are more
honored in Germany, where they
died, than in England, where they
were born.
The third class includes the more
modern saints, who spoke our yet
living languages, printed their books r
followed the same sort of life, wore
the same dress as we do, lived in
houses yet standing, founded institu-
tions still flourishing, rode in carri-
ages, and in another generation would
have traveled by railway. Such are
St. Charles, St. Ignatius, St. Philip,
St. Teresa, St. Vincent, B. Benedict
Joseph, and many others. Toward
these we feel a personal devotion in-
dependent of country; nearness of
time compensating for distance of
place. There is indeed one class
of saints who belong to every age
and every country; devotion toward
whom, far from diminishing, in-
creases the further we recede from
their time and even their land. For
we are convinced that a Chinese con-
vert has a more sensitive and glowing
devotion toward our Blessed Lady,
than a Jewish neophyte had in the
first century. When I hear this
growth of piety denounced or re-
proached by Protestants, I own I
exult in it.
For the only question, and there is
none in a Catholic mind, is whether
such a feeling is good in itself; if so,
growth in it, age by age, is an im-
mense blessing and proof of the di-
vine presence. It is as if one told
me that there is more humility now in
the Church than there was in the first
century, more zeal than in the third,
more faith than in the eighth, more
charity than in the twelfth. And so,
if there is more devotion now than
there was 1,800 years ago toward the
Immaculate Mother of God, toward
20
The Ancient Saints of God.
her saintly spouse, toward St. John,
St. Peter, and the other Apostles, I
rejoice ; knowing that devotion toward
our divine Lord, his infancy, his pas-
sion, his sacred heart, his adorable
eucharist, has not suffered loss or
diminution, but has much increased.
It need not be, and it is not, as John
the Baptist said, " He must increase,
and I diminish." Both here increase
together; the Lord, and those who
best loved him.
But this is more than a subject of
joy : it is one of admiration and con-
solation. For it is the natural course
of things that sympathies and affec-
tions should grow less by time. We
care and feel much less about the con-
quests of William I., or the prowess
of the Black Prince, than we do about
the victories of Nelson or Welling-
ton ; even Alfred is a mythical per-
son, and Boadicea fabulous ; and so it
is with all nations. A steadily in-
creasing affection and intensifying de-
votion (as in this case we call it) for
those remote from us, in proportion as
we recede from them, is as marvellous
nay, as miraculous as would be
the flowing of a stream from its source
up a steep hill, deepening and widen-
ing as it rose. And such I consider
this growth, through succeeding ages,
of devout feeling toward those who
were the root, and seem to become
the crown, or flower, of the Church.
It is as if a beam from the sun, or a
ray from a lamp, grew brighter and
warmer in proportion as it darted
further from its source.
I cannot but see in this supernatu-
ral disposition evidence of a power
ruling from a higher sphere than that
of ordinary providence, the laws of
which, uniform elsewhere, are modi-
fied or even reversed when the dis-
pensations of the gospel require it;
or rather, these have their own proper
and ordinary providence, the laws of
which are uniform within its system.
And this is one illustration, that what
by every ordinary and natural course
should go on diminishing, goes on in-
creasing. But I read in this fact an
evidence also of the stability and per-
petuity of our faith ; for a line that is
ever growing thinner and thinner
tends, through its extenuation, to inani-
tion and total evanescence; whereas
one that widens and extends as it ad-
vances and becomes more solid, thereby
gives earnest and proof of increasing
duration.
When we are attacked about prac-
tices, devotions, or corollaries of faith
"developments," in other words
do we not sometimes labor needlessly
to prove that we go no further than
the Fathers did, and that what we do
may be justified from ancient authori-
ties ? Should we not confine ourselves
to showing, even with the help of an-
tiquity, that what is attacked is good,
is sound, and is holy ; and then thank
God that we have so much more of it
than others formerly possessed? If
'it was right to say " Ora pro nobis "
once in the day, is it not better to say
it seven times a day ; and if so, why
not seventy times seven ? The rule
of forgiveness may well be the rule
of seeking intercession for it. But
whither am I leading you, gentle
reader ? I promised you a story, and
I am giving you a lecture, and I fear
a dry one. I must retrace my steps.
I wished, therefore, merely to say that,
while the saints of the Church are
very naturally divided by us into
three classes holy patrons of the
Church, of particular portions of it,
and of its individual members there
is one raised above all others, which
passes through all, composed of pro-
tectors, patrons, and nomenclators, of
saints themselves. For how many
Marys, how many Josephs, Peters,
Johns, and Pauls, are there not in the
calendar of the saints, called by those
names without law of country or age !
But beyond this general recognition
of the claims of our greatest saints,
one cannot but sometimes feel that
the classification which I have de-
scribed is carried by us too far ; that
a certain human dross enters into the
composition of our devotion ; we per-
haps nationalize, or even individualize,
The Ancient Saints of God.
21
the sympathies of those whose love is
universal, like God's own, in which
alone they love. We seem to fancy
that St. Edward and St. Frideswida
are still English; and some persons
appear to have as strong an objection
to one of their children bearing any
but a Saxon saint's name as they
have to Italian architecture. We may
be quite sure that the power and in-
terest in the whole Church have not
been curtailed by the admission of
others like themselves, first Christians
on earth, then saints in heaven, into
their blessed society; but that the
friends of God belong to us all, and
can and will help us, if we invoke
them, with loving impartiality. The
little history which I am going to re-
late serves to illustrate this view of
saintly intercession ; it was told me by
the learned and distinguished prelate
whom I shall call Monsig. B. He
has, I have heard, since published the
narrative ; but I will give it as I heard
it from his lips.
CHAPTER n.
THE FRENCH OFFICER'S FIRST AP-
PEARANCE.
ON the 30th of last month I am
writing early in August we all com-
memorated the holy martyrs, Sts. Ab-
don and Sennen. This in itself is
worthy of notice. Why should we in
England, why should they in Amer-
ica, be singing the praises of two Per-
sians who lived more than fifteen hun-
dred years ago ? Plainly because we
are Catholics, and as such in com-
munion with the saints of Persia and
the martyrs of Decius. Yet it may
be assumed that the particular devo-
tion to these two Eastern martyrs is
owing to their having suffered in
Rome, and so found a place in the
calendar of the catacombs, the basis
of later martyrologies. Probably af-
ter having been concealed in the house
of Quirinus the deacon, their bodies
were buried hi the cemetery or cata-
comb of Pontianus, outside the present
Porta Portese, on the northern bank
of the Tiber. In that catacomb, re-
markable for containing the primitive
baptistery of the Church, there yet
remains a monument of these saints,
marking their place of sepulture.*
Painted on the wall is a " floriated "
and jewelled cross ; not a conventional
one such as mediaeval art introduced,
but a plain cross, on the surface of
which the painter imitated natural
jewels, and from the foot of which
grow flowers of natural forms and
hues ; on each side stands a figure in
Persian dress and Phrygian cap, with
the names respectively running down
in letters one below the other :
SANCTVS ABDON: SANCTVS SENNET.
The bodies are no longer there.
They were no doubt removed, as
most were, in the eighth century, to
save them from Saracenic profanation,
and translated to the basilica of St.
Mark in Rome. There they repose,
with many other martyrs no longer
distinguishable ; since the ancient usage
was literally to bury the bodies of
martyrs in a spacious crypt or cham-
ber under the altar, so as to verify the
apocalyptic description, " From under
the altar of God all the saints cry
aloud." This practice has been ad-
mirably illustrated by the prelate to
whom I have referred, in a work on
this very crypt, or, in ecclesiastical
language, Confession of St. Mark's.
One 30th of July, soon after the
siege of Rome in 1848, the chapter of
St. Mark's were singing the office and
mass of these Persian martyrs, as
saints of their church. Most people
on week-days content themselves with
hearing early a low mass, so that the
longer offices of the basilica, especially
the secondary ones, are not much fre-
quented. On this occasion, however,
a young French officer was noticed by
* See Fabiola, pp. 362, 303.
22
The Ancient Saints of God.
the canons as assisting alone with
great recollection.
At the close of the function, my
informant went up to the young man,
and entered into conversation with
him.
" What feast are you celebrating to-
day ?" asked the officer.
u That of Sts. Abdon and Sennen,"
answered Monsignor B.
" Indeed ! how singular !"
" Why ? Have you any particular
devotion to those saints ?"
"Oh, yes; they are my patron
saints. The cathedral of my native
town is dedicated to them, and pos-
sesses their bodies.'*
" You must be mistaken there :
their holy relics repose beneath our
altar ; and we have to-day kept their
feast solemnly on that account."
On this explanation of the prelate
the young officer seemed a little dis-
concerted, and remarked that at P
everybody believed that the saints'
relics were in the cathedral.
The canon, as he then was, of St.
Mark's, though now promoted to the
" patriarchal " basilica of St. John, ex-
plained to him how this might be, in-
asmuch as any church possessing con-
siderable portions of larger relics be-
longing to a saint was entitled to the
privilege of one holding the entire
body, and was familiarly spoken of as
actually having it ; and this no doubt
was the case at P .
"But, beside general grounds for
devotion to these patrons of my native
city, I have a more particular and
personal one ; for to their interposition
I believe I owe my life."
The group of listeners who had
gathered round the officer was deeply
interested hi this statement, and re-
quested him to relate the incident to
which he alluded. He readily com-
plied with their request, and with the
utmost simplicity made the following
brief recital.
CHAPTER m.
THE OFFICER'S NARRATIVE.
" DURING the late siege of Rome I
happened to be placed in an advanced
post, with a small body of soldiers,
among the hillocks between our head-
quarters hi the villa Pamphily-Doria
and the gate of St. Pancratius. The
post was one of some danger, as it
was exposed to the sudden and un-
sparing sallies made by the revolu-
tionary garrison on that side. The
broken ground helped to conceal us
from the marksmen and the artillery
on the walls. However, that day
proved to be one of particular danger.
Without warning, a sortie was made
in force, either merely hi defiance or
to gain possession of some advanta-
geous post; for you know how the
church and convent of St. Pancra-
tius was assailed by the enemy,
and taken and retaken by us several
tunes in one day. The same hap-
pened to the villas near the walls.
There was no time given us for specu-
lation or reflection. We found our-
selves at once in presence of a very
superior force, or rather in the middle
of it; for we were completely sur-
rounded. We fought our best; but
escape seemed impossible. My poor
little picket was soon cut to pieces,
and I found myself standing alone in
the midst of our assailants, defending
myself as well as I could against such
fearful odds. At length I felt I was
come to the last extremity, and that in
a few moments I should be lying with
my brave companions. Earnestly de-
siring to have the suffrages of my holy
patrons in that my last hour, I in-
stinctively exclaimed, ' Sts. Abdon and
Sennen, pray for me!' What then
happened I cannot tell. Whether a
sudden panic struck my enemies, or
something more important called off
their attention, or what else to me
inexplicable occurred, I cannot say ;
all that I know is, that somehow or
^ther I found myself alone, unwounded
The Ancient Saints of God.
23
and unhurt, with my poor fellows lying
about, and no enemy near.
" Do you not think that I have a
right to attribute this most wonderful
and otherwise unaccountable escape to
the intercession and protection of Sts.
Abdon and Sennen ?"
I need scarcely say that this simple
narrative touched and moved deeply
all its hearers. No one was disposed
to dissent from the young Christian
officer's conclusion.
CHAPTER IV.
THE EXPLANATION.
IT was natural that those good ec-
clesiastics who composed the chapter
of St. Mark's should feel an interest
in their youthful acquaintance. His
having accidentally, as it seemed, but
really providentially, strolled into their
church at such a time, with so singu-
lar a bond of sympathy with its sacred
offices that day, necessarily drew them
in kindness toward him. His ingen-
uous piety and vivid faith gained their
hearts.
In the conversation which followed,
it was discovered that all his tastes
and feelings led him to love and visit
the religious monuments of Rome;
but that he had no guide or companion
to make his wanderings among them
as useful and agreeable as they might
be made. It was good-naturedly and
kindly suggested to him to come from
time to time to the church, when some
one of the canons would take him with
him on his ventidue ore walk after
vespers, and act the cicerone to him,
if they should visit some interesting
religious object. This offer he readily
accepted, and the intelligent youth and
his reverend guides enjoyed pleasant
afternoons together. At last one
pleasanter than all occurred, when in
company with Monsignor B.
Their ramble that evening led them
out of the Porta Portuensis, among
the hills of Monte Verde, between it
and the gate of St. Pancratius per-
haps for the purpose of visiting that
interesting basilica. Be it as it
may, suddenly, while traversing a
vineyard, the young man stopped.
" Here," he exclaimed, " on this
very spot, I was standing when my
miraculous deliverance took place."
"Are you sure ?"
"Quite. If I lived a hundred
years, I could never forget it. It is
the very spot."
"Then stand still a moment," re-
joined the prelate ; " we are very 'near
the entrance to the cemetery of Pon-
tianus. I wish to measure the dis-
tance."
He did so by pacing it.
" Now," he said, " come down into
the catacomb, and observe the direc-
tion from where you stand to the
door." The key was soon procured.
They accordingly went down, pro-
ceeded as near as they could judge
toward the point marked over-head,
measured the distance paced above,
and found themselves standing before
the memorial of Sts. Abdon and
Sennen.
"There," said the canon to his
young friend ; "you did not know that,
when you were invoking your holy
patrons, you were standing immedi-
ately over their tomb."
The young officer's emotion may be
better conceived than described on
discovering this new and unexpected
coincidence in the history of his suc-
cessful application to the intercession
of ancient saints.
SANCTI ABDON ET SENNEN, ORATE
PKO NOBIS.
A Pilgrimage to Ars.
From The Lamp.
A PILGRIMAGE TO ARS.
I WENT to Lyons for the express
purpose of visiting the tomb of the
Cure* of Ars ; for I knew the village
of Ars was not very far from that
city, though I had but a vague idea
as to where it was situated or how
it was to be reached. I trusted, how-
ever, to obtaining all needful informa-
tion from the people at the hotel where
I was to pass the night ; and I was
not mistaken in my expectations ; but
I must confess, to my sorrow, that I
felt for a moment a very English sort
of shamefacedness about making the
inquiry. Put to the waiter of an
Engh'sh hotel, such a question would
simply have produced a stare of as-
tonishment or a smile of pity. A visit
to the tomb of the Duke of Wel-
lington at St. Paul's, or a descent
into kingly vaults for the wise purpose
of beholding Prince Albert's coffin,
with its wreaths of flowers laid there
by royal and loving hands these
things he would have sympathized
with and understood. But a pilgrim-
age to the last resting-place of a man
who, even admitting he were at that
moment a saint in heaven, had been
but a simple parish-priest upon earth,
would have been a proceeding utterly
beyond his capacity to comprehend,
and he would undoubtedly have pro-
nounced it either an act of insanity or
one of superstition, or something par-
taking of the nature of the two. I
forgot, for a moment, that I was in a
Catholic country, and inquired my
way to Ars with an uncomfortable ex-
pectation of a sneering answer in re-
turn. Once, however, that the ques-
tion was fairly put, there was nothing
left for me but to be ashamed of my
own misgivings.
" Madame wished to visit the tomb
of the sainted Cure* ? mais oui. It
was the easiest thing in the world.
Only an hour's railway from Lyons to
Villefranche ; and an omnibus at the
latter station, which had been estab-
lished for the express purpose of ac-
commodating the pilgrims, who still
flocked to Ars from every quarter of
the Catholic world."
I listened, and my way seemed sud-
denly to become smooth before me.
Later on in the evening, I found that
the housemaid of the hotel had been
there often ; and two or three tunes at
least during the lifetime of the Cure.
I asked her for what purpose she had
gone there; whether to be cured of
bodily ailments or to consult him on
spiritual matters ? " For neither one
nor the other/' she answered, with great
simplicity ; " but she had had a great
grief, and her mother had taken her
to him to be comforted." There was
something to me singularly lovely in
this answer, and in the insight which
it gave me into the nature of that mis-
sion, so human, and yet so divine,
which the Cure had accomplished in
his lifetime. God had placed him
there, like another John the Baptist,
to announce penance to the world.
He preached to thousands he con-
verted thousands he penetrated into
the hidden consciences of thousands,
and laid his finger, as if by intuition,
upon the hidden sore that kept the soul
from God. Men, great by wealth and
station, came to him and laid their
burden of sin and misery at his feet.
Men, greater still by intellect, and
prouder and more difficult of conver-
sion (as sins of the intellect ever make
men), left his presence simple, loving,
and believing as little children. For
these he had lightning glances and
words of fire ; these by turns he repri-
manded, exhorted, and encouraged;
but when the weak and sorrowful of
God's flock came to him, he paused in
his apostolic task to weep over them
and console them. And so it was with
A Pilgrimage to Ars.
25
Jesus. The great and wealthy of the
earth came to him for relief, and he
never refused their prayers ; but how
many instances do we find in the gos-
pel of the gift of health bestowed, un-
asked and unexpected, upon some poor
wanderer by the wayside, or the yet
greater boon of comfort given to some
poor suffering heart, for no other
reason that we know of than that it
suffered and had need of comfort!
The cripple by the pool of Bethsaida
received his cure at the very moment
when he was heartsick with hope de-
ferred at finding no man to carry him
down to the waters ; and the widow of
Nain found her son suddenly restored
to life because, as the gospel express-
ly tells us, he was " the only son of
his mother, and she was a widow."
The heart of the Cure of Ars seems
to have been only less tender than that
of his divine Master; and in the
midst of the sublime occupation of
converting souls to God, he never dis-
dained the humble task of healing the
stricken spirit, and leading it to peace
and joy.
" My husband died suddenly," the
young woman went on to say, in answer
to my further questions ; " and from
affluence I found myself at. once re-
duced to poverty. I was stunned by
the blow ; but my mother took me to
the cure ; and almost before he had
said a word, I felt not only consoled,
but satisfied with the lot which God
had assigned me." And so indeed she
must have been. When I saw her,
she was still poor, and earning her
bread by the worst of all servitude,
the daily and nightly servitude of a
crowded inn ; but gentle, placid, and
smiling, as became one who had seen
and been comforted by a saint. She
evidently felt that she had been per-
mitted to approach very near to God
in the person of God's servant, and
every word she uttered was so full of
love and confidence in the sainted cure
that it increased (if that were possible)
my desire to kneel at his tomb, since
the happiness of approaching his living
person had been denied me.
The next morning I set off for
Villefranche. It is on the direct line
to Paris, and at about an hour's rail-
road journey from Lyons. When I
reached it, I found three omnibuses
waiting at the station, and I believe
they were all there for the sole pur-
pose of conveying pilgrims to Ars.
One of the conductors tried every
mode of persuasion and there are
not a few in the vocabulary of a
Frenchman to inveigle me into his
omnibus. "I should be at Ars in
half an hour, and could return at
two, three, four o'clock in short, at
any hour of the night or day that
might please me best." It was
with some difficulty I resisted the
torrent of eloquence he poured out
upon me ; but, in the first place, I felt
that he was promising what he himself
would have called " the impossible,"
since a public conveyance must neces-
sarily regulate its movements by the
wishes of the majority of its passen-
gers ; and in the next, I had a very
strong desire to be alone in body as
well as in mind during the few hours
that I was to spend at Ars:.
At last I found an omnibus destined
solely for visitors to Villefranche itself,
and the conductor promised that he
would provide me a private carriage to
Ars if I would consent to drive first to
his hotel. Cabaret he might have
called it with perfect truth, for cabaret
it was, and nothing more a regular
French specimen of the article, with
a great public kitchen, where half the
workmen of the town assembled for
their meals, and a small cupboard sort
of closet opening into it for the accom-
modation of more aristocratic guests.
Into this, bon gre, mal gre, they wished
to thrust me, but I violently repelled
the threatened honor, and with some
difficulty carrying my point, succeeded
in being permitted to remain in the
larger and cooler space of the open
kitchen until my promised vehicle
should appear. It came at last, a sort
of half-cab, half-gig, without a hood,
but with a curiously contrived harness
of loose ropes, and looking altogether
26
A Pilgrimage to Ars.
dangerously likely to come to pieces
on the road. Luckily, I am not natu-
rally nervous in such matters, and,
consoling myself with the thought that
if we did get into grief the " bon cure"
was bound to come to my assistance,
seeing I had incurred it solely for the
sake of visiting his tomb, I was soon
settled as comfortably as circumstances
would permit, and we set off at a brisk
pace.
The country around Villefranche is
truly neither pretty nor picturesque ;
and though we were not really an hour
on the road, the drive seemed tedious.
Our Jehu also, as it turned out, had
never been at Ars before ; so that he had
not only to stop more than once to in-
quire the way, but actually contrived at
the very last to miss it. He soon dis-
covered the mistake, however, and re-
tracing his steps, a very few minutes
brought us to the spot where the saint
had lived forty years, and where he
now sleeps in death. His house stands
beside the church, but a little in the
rear, so it does not immediately catch
the eye ; and the church, where his real
life was spent, is separated from the
road by a small enclosure, railed off,
and approached by a few steps. We
looked around for some person to con-
duct us, but there was no one to be
seen ; so, after a moment's hesitation,
we ascended the steps and entered the
church. If you wish to know what
kind of church it is, I cannot tell you.
I do not know, in fact, whether it is
Greek or Gothic, or of no particular
architecture at all; I do not know
even if it is in good taste or in bad
taste. The soul was so filled with a
sense of the presence of the dead saint
that it left no room for the outer sense
to take note of the accidents amid
which he had lived. There are two or
three small chapels a Lady chapel,
one dedicated to the Sacred Heart, and
another to St. John the Baptist. There
is also the chapel of St. Philomena,
with a large lifelike image of the
" bonne petite sainte" to whom he loved
to attribute every miracle charity com-
pelled him to perform j and there is
the confessional, where for forty years
he worked far greater wonders on the
soul than any of the more obvious
ones he accomplished on the body.
All, or most of all, this I saw in a
vague sort of way, as one who saw
not ; but the whole church was filled
with such an aroma of holiness, there
was such a sense of the actual pres-
ence of the man who had converted it
into a very tabernacle in the wilder-
ness a true Holy of Holies, where,
in the midst of infidel France, God
had descended and conversed almost
visibly with his people that I had
neither the will nor the power to con-
descend to particulars, and examine it
in detail.
My one thought as I entered the
church was, to go and pray upon his
tomb ; but in the first moment of doubt
and confusion I could not remember, if
indeed I had been told, the exact spot
where he was buried. The chapel of
St. Philomena was the first to attract
my notice, and feeling that I could not
be far wrong while keeping close to hia
dear little patroness, I knelt down there
to collect my ideas.
The stillness of the church made
itself felt. There were indeed many
persons praying in it, but they prayed
in that profound silence which spoke
to the heart, and penetrated it in a way
no words could have ever done.
I was thirsting, however, to ap-
proach the tomb of the saint, and at
last ventured to whisper the question
to a person near me. She pointed to
a large black slab nearly in the centre
of the church, and told me that he lay
beneath it. Yes, he was there, in the
very midst of his people, not far from
the chapel of St. Philomena, and op-
posite to the altar whence he had so
many thousands of times distributed
the bread of life to the famishing souls
who, like the multitude of old, had
come into the desert, and needed to be
fed ere they departed to their homes.
Yes, he was there ; and with a strange
mingling of joy and sorrow in the
thought I went and knelt down beside
him,
A Pilgrimage to Ars.
27
Had I 'gone to Ars but a few years
before, I might have found him in his
living person ; might have thrown my-
self at his feet, and poured out my
whole soul before him. Now I knelt
indeed beside him, but beside his body
only, and the soul that would have
addressed itself to mine was far away
in the bosom of its God. Humanly
speaking, the difference seemed against
me, and yet, in a more spiritual point
of view, it might perhaps be said to be
in my favor.
The graces which he obtained for
mortals here he obtained by more
than mortal suffering and endurance
by tears, by fastings, and nightly
and daily impetrations ; now, with his
head resting, like another St. John,
on the bosom of his divine Lord, sure-
ly he has but to wish in order to draw
down whole fountains of love and ten-
derness on his weeping flock below.
And certainly it would seem so ; for
however numerous the miracles ac-
complished in his lifetime, they have
been multiplied beyond all power of
calculation since his death.
Later on in the day, when the pres-
ent cure showed me a room nearly
half full of crutches and other memen-
tos of cures wrought " These are
only the ones left there during his life-
time," he observed, in a tone which
told at once how much more numerous
were those which cure had made use-
less to their owners since his death.
I had not been many minutes kneel-
ing before his tomb, when the lady
who had pointed it out to me asked
if I would like to see the house
which he had inhabited hi his lifetime.
On my answering gladly in the af-
firmative, she made me follow her
through a side-door and across a sort
of court to the house inhabited by the
present curd. This house had never
been the abode of M. Vianney, but
had been allotted to the priests who
assisted him in his missions. The one
which he actually inhabited is now a
sort of sanctuary, where every relic
and recollection of him is carefully
preserved for the veneration of the
faithful. We were shown into a sort
of salle a manger, sufficiently poor to
make us feel we were in the habita-
tion of men brought up in the school
of a saint, and almost immediately
afterward the present cure* entered.
He had been for many years the zeal-
ous assistant of the late cure ; and, in
trying to give me an idea of the influx
of strangers into Ars, he told me that,
while M. Vianney spent habitually
from fifteen to seventeen hours in the
confessional, he and his brother priest
were usually occupied at least twelve
hours out of the twenty-four in a simi-
lar manner. Even this was probably
barely sufficient for the wants of the
mission, for the number of strangers
who came annually to Ars during the
latter years of the cure's life was
reckoned at about 80,000, and few, if
any, of these went away without hav-
ing made a general confession, either
to M. Vianney himself, or, if that were
not possible, to one or other of the as-
sisting clergy.
It was pleasant to talk with one
who had been living in constant com-
munication with a saint; and I felt as
if something of the spirit of M. Vian-
ney himself had taken possession of
the good and gentle man with whom I
was conversing. Among other things,
he told me that the devout wish of the
saint had of late years been the erec-
tion of a new church to St. Philomena;
and he gave me a fac-simile of his
handwriting in which he had promised
to pray especially for any one aiding
him in the work. The surest way,
therefore, I should imagine, to interest
him in our necessities now that he is
in heaven would be to aid in the
undertaking which he had in mind
and heart while yet dwelling on earth.
Even in his lifetime there had been
a lottery got up for raising funds ;
and as money is still coming in from
all quarters, his wish will doubtless
soon be accomplished. I saw a very
handsome altar which has been al-
ready presented, and which has been
put aside in one of the rooms of the
cure until the church, for which it is
28
A Pilgrimage to Ars.
intended, shall have been completed.
M. le cure* showed me one or two
small photographs, which had been
taken without his knowledge during
the lifetime of the saint; and also a
little carved image, which he said was
a wonderful likeness, and far better
than any of the portraits. Afterward
he pointed out another photograph, as
large as life, and suspended against
the wall, which had been procured
after death. It was calm and holy,
as the face of a saint in death should
be, and I liked it still better in its
placid peace than the smile of the
living photograph. Even the smile
seemed to tell of tears. You know
that he who smiles is still doing battle
cheerfully and successfully indeed,
but still doing battle with the enemies
of his soul; while the grave calmness
of the dead face tells you at once that
all is over the fight is fought, the
crown is won ; eternity has set its seal
on the good works of time, and all is
safe for ever.
I could have looked at that photo-
graph a long time, and said my pray-
ers before it it seemed to repose in
such an atmosphere of sanctity and
peace but the hours were passing
quickly, and there was still much to
see and hear concerning the dead
saint. I took leave, therefore, of the
good priest who had been my cicerone
so far, and sought the old housekeeper,
who was in readiness to show me the
house where M. Vianney had lived.
We crossed a sort of court, which led
us to a door opposite the church.
When this was opened, I found my-
self in a sort of half-garden, half-yard,
in the centre of which the old house
was standing.
It is hard to put upon paper the
feelings with which a spot the habita-
tion of a saint just dead is visited.
The spirit of love and charity and peace
which animated the living man still
seems brooding over the spot where his
life was passed, and you feel intensely
that the true beauty of the Lord's
house was here, and that this has been
the place where his glory hath de-
lighted to dwell. The first room I
entered was one in which the crutches
left there by invalids had been depos-
ited. It was a sight to see. The
crutches were piled as close as they
could be against the wall, and yet the
room was almost half full. The per-
sons who used those crutches must
have been carried hither, lame and
suffering, and helpless as young chil-
dren ; and they walked away strong
men and cured. Truly "the lame
walk and the blind see ;" and the Lord
hath visited his people in the person
of his servant.
My next visit was made to the salle
a manger, where M. Vianney had al-
ways taken the one scanty meal which
was his sole support during his twenty-
four hours of almost unbroken labor.
It was poverty in very deed pover-
ty plain, unvarnished, and unadorned
such poverty as an Irish cabin might
have rivalled, but could scarcely have
surpassed. The walls were bare and
whitewashed ; the roof was merely
raftered ; and the floor, which had once
been paved with large round stones,
such as are used for the pavement of
a street, was broken here and there
into deep holes by the removal of the
stones. During his forty years' resi-
dence at Ars, M. Vianney had proba-
bly never spent a single sou upon any
article which could contribute to his
own comfort or convenience ; and this
room bore witness to the fact. How,
indeed, should he buy anything for
himself, who gave even that which
was given to him away, until his best
friends grew well-nigh weary of be-
stowing presents, which they felt would
pass almost at the same instant out of
his own possession into the hands of
any one whom he fancied to be in
greater want of them than he was ?
I stood in that bare and desolate apart-
ment, and felt as if earth and heaven
in their widest extremes, their most
startling contrasts, were there in type
and reality before me. All that earth
has of poor and miserable and unsight-
ly was present to the eyes of the
body; all that heaven has of bright
A Pilgrimage to Ars.
and beautiful and glorious was just as
present, just as visible, to the vision of
the soul. It was the very reverse of
the fable of the fairy treasures, which
vanish into dust when tested by real-
ity. All that you saw was dust and
ashes, but dust and ashes which, tried
by the touchstone of eternity, would,
you knew, prove brighter than the
brightest gold, fairer than the fairest
silver that earth ever yielded to set in
the diadem of her kings ! My reflec-
tions were cut short by the entrance of
one of the priests, who invited us to
come up stairs and inspect the vest-
ments which had belonged to the late
cure, and which were kept, I think,
apart from those in ordinary use in
the church. There was a great quan-
tity of them, and they were all in
curious contrast with everything else
we had seen belonging to M. Vianney.
Nothing too good for God ; nothing
too mean and miserable for himself
that had been the motto of his life ;
and the worm-eaten furniture of the
dining-room, the gold and velvet of
the embroidered vestments, alike bore
witness to the fidelity with which he
had acted on it. The vestments were
more than handsome some of them
were magnificent. One set I remem-
ber in particular which was very
beautiful. It had been given, with
canopy for the blessed sacrament
and banners for processions, by the
present Marquis D'Ars, the chief of
that beloved family, who, after the
death of Mdlle. D'Ars, became M.
Vianney's most efficient aid in all his
works of charity. The priest who
showed them to us, and who had also
been one of the late cure's missiona-
ries, told us that M. Vianney was ab-
solutely enchanted with joy when the
vestments arrived, and that he instant-
ly organized an expedition to Lyons
in order to express his gratitude at
the altar of Notre Dame de Fourriere.
'- 'ic whole parish attended on this
occasion. They went down the river
in boats provided for the purpose, and
with banners flying and music play-
ing, marched in solemn procession
through the streets of Lyons, and up
the steep sides of Fourriere, until they
reached the church of Notre Dame.
There the whole multitude fell on
their knees, and M. Vianney himself
prayed, no doubt long and earnestly,
before the miraculous image of Our
Lady, seeking through her intercession
to obtain some especial favor for the
man who, out of his own abundance,
had brought gifts of gold and silver to
the altar of his God.
I asked the priest for some infor-
mation about the granary which was
said to have been miraculously filled
with corn. He told me he had been
at Ars at the time, and that there
could be no doubt that the granary
had been quite empty the night before.
It was, I think, a tune of scarcity, and
the grain had been set aside for the
use of the poor. M. Vianney went
to bed miserable at the failure of his
supplies ; but when he visited the gran-
ary again early the next morning, he
found it full. It was at the top of his
own house, I believe, and was kept,
of course, carefully locked. Nobody
knew how it had been filled, or by
whom. In fact, it seemed absolutely
impossible that any one could have
carted the quantity of grain needed for
the purpose and carried it up stairs
without being detected in the act. The
priest made no comment on the mat-
ter; indeed, he seemed anything but
inclined to enlarge upon it, though he
made no secret of his own opinion as
to the miraculous nature of the occur-
rence. As soon as he had answered
my inquiries, he led us to the room
which had been the holy cure's own
personal apartment. It was, as well
as I can remember, the one over the
dining-room. No apostle ever lived
and died in an abode more entirely
destitute of all human riches. It was
kept exactly in the same state in which
it had been during his lifetime a few
poor-looking books still on the small
book-shelf, a wooden table and a chair,
and the little bed in the corner, smoothed
and laid down, as if only waiting his
return from the confessional for the
30
A Pilgrimage to Ars.
few short hours he gave to slumber
if, indeed, he did give them; for no
one ever penetrated into the mystery
of those hours, or knew how much of
the time set apart apparently for his
own repose was dedicated to God, or
employed hi supplicating God's mer-
cies on his creatures.
The history of that room was the
history of the saint. A book-shelf
filled with works of piety and devotion ;
a stove, left doubtless because it had
been originally built into the room, but
left without use or purpose (for who
ever heard of his indulging in a fire?) ;
a table and a chair that was all ; but
it was enough, and more than enough,
to fill the mind with thought, and to
crowd all the memories of that holy
life into the few short moments that I
knelt there. How often had he come
back to that poor apartment, his body
exhausted by fasting, and cramped by
long confinement in the confessional,
and his heart steeped (nay, drowned,
as he himself most eloquently expressed
it) in bitterness and sorrow by the
long histories of sins to which he had
been compelled to listen sins com-
mitted against that God whom he
loved far more tenderly than he loved
himself! How often, in the silence
and darkness of the night, has he
poured forth his soul, now in tender
commiseration over Jesus crucified
by shiners, now over the sinners by
whom Jesus had been crucified ! How
often has he (perhaps) called on God
to remove him from a world where
God was so offended ; and yet, moved
by the charity of his tender human
heart, has besought, almost in the same
breath, for the conversion of those sin-
ners whose deeds he was deploring
the cure of their diseases and the re-
moval or consolation of their sorrows !
Like a mother who, finding her chil-
dren at discord, now praya to one to
pardon, now to another to submit and
be reconciled, so was that loving, pity-
ing heart ever as it were hi contradic-
tion with itself weeping still with
Jesus, and yet still pleading for his foes.
The mere action of such thoughts
upon the human frame would make
continued life a marvel ; but when to
this long history of mental woe we
add the hardships of his material life
the fifteen or seventeen hours passed
in the confessional, in heat and cold,
in winter as in summer; the one
scanty meal taken at mid-day ; the four
hours of sleep, robbed often and often
of half their number for the sake of
quiet prayer when we think of these
things, there is surely more of miracle
in this life of forty years' duration
than in the mere fact that it won mira-
cles at last from heaven, and that God,
seeing how faithfully this his servant
did his will here on earth, complied
in turn with his, and granted his de-
sires.
No one, I think, can visit that spot,
or hear the history of that life, as it is
told by those who knew him as it
were but yesterday, without an in-
crease of love, an accession of faith, a
more vivid sense of the presence of
God in the midst ef his creatures, and
a more real comprehension of the ex-
tent and meaning of those words, "the
communion of saints," which every
one repeats in the creed, and yet
which few take sufficiently to their
heart of hearts to make it really a por-
tion of their spiritual being- a means
of working out their own salvation by
constant and loving communication
with those who have attained to it al-
ready. Thousands will seek the liv-
ing saint for the eloquence of his
words, the sublimity, of his counsels,
the unction of his consolations ; but,
once departed out of this life, who vis-
ists him in his tomb? who turns to
him for aid? who lift their eyes to
heaven, to ask for his assistance thence,
with the same undoubting confidence
with which they would have sought it
had he been still in the flesh beside
them? In one sense of the word,
many; and yet few indeed compared
to the number of those to whom " the
communion of saints" is an article of
faith, or ought at least to be so, in
something more than the mere service
of the Up. It was amid some such
The Three Wishes.
31
thoughts as these that I left the town
of Ars, grieved indeed that I had not
seen the holy cure in his lifetime, and
yet feeling that, if I had but faith
enough, I was in reality rather a
gainer than a loser by his death. He
who would have prayed for me on
earth would now pray for me in
heaven. He who would have dived
into my conscience and brought its
hidden sins to light, would obtain wis-
dom and grace for another to put his
finger on the sore spot and give it
healing. He who would perhaps have
cured me of my bodily infirmities,
could do so (if it were for the good of
my soul) not less efficiently now that
he was resting on the heart of his
divine Lord. God had granted his
prayers while he was yet upon earth
a saint indeed, and yet liable at any
moment to fall into sin would he re-
fuse to hear him now that he had re-
ceived him into his kingdom, and so
rendered him for ever incapable of of-
fending ? I hoped not, I felt not; and
in this certainty I went on my way
rejoicing, feeling that it was well for
this sinful world that it had yet one
more advocate at the throne of its
future Judge, and well especially for
France that, in this our nineteenth
century, she had given a saint to God
who would have been the glory of the
first. For truly the arm of the Lord
is not shortened. What he has done
before, he can do again ; and, there-
fore, we need not wonder if the mira-
cles of the Apostles are still renewed
at the tomb of this simple and unlet-
tered, priest, who taught their doctrines
for forty years in the unknown and far-
off village of which Providence had
made him pastor.
From Once A Week.
THE THREE WISHES.
THE Eastern origin of this tale seems
evident ; had it been originally com-
posed in a Northern land, it is probable
that the king would have been repre-
sented as dethroned by means of bribes
obtained from his own treasury. In
an Eastern country the story-teller who
invented such a just termination of his
narrative would, most likely, have ex-
perienced the fate intended for his
hero, as a warning to others how they
suggested such treasonable ideas.
Herr Simrock, however, says it is a
German tale ; but it may have had its
origin in the East for all that. Noth-
ing is more difficult, indeed, than to
trace a popular tale to its source.
Cinderella, for example, belongs to
nearly all nations; even among the
Chinese, a people so different to all
European nations, there is a popular
story which reads almost exactly like
it. Here is the tale of the Three
Wishes.
There was once a wise emperor
who made a law that to every stran-
ger who came to his court a fried fish
should be served. The servants were
directed to take notice if, when the
stranger had eaten the fish to the bone
on one side, he turned it over and be-
gan on the other side. If he did, he
was to be immediately seized, and on
the third day thereafter he was to be
put to death. But, by a great stretch
of imperial clemency, the culprit was
permitted to utter one wish each day,
which the emperer pledged himself to
grant, provided it was not to spare hia
life. Many had already perished in
consequence of this edict, when, one
day, a count and his young son pre-
sented themselves at court. The fish
was served as usual, and when the
32
The Three Wishes.
count had removed all the fish from
one side, he turned it over, and was
about to commence on the other, when
he was suddenly seized and thrown
into prison, and was told of his ap-
proaching doom. Sorrow-stricken, the
count's young son besought the em-
peror to allow him to die in the room
of his father ; a favor which the mon-
arch was pleased to accord him. The
count was accordingly released from
prison, and his son was thrown into
his cell in his stead. As soon as this
had been done, the young man said to
his gaolers " You know I have the
right to make three demands before I
die ; go and tell the emperor to send
me his daughter, and a priest to marry
us." This first demand was not much
to the emperor's taste, nevertheless he
felt bound to keep his word, and he
therefore complied with the request,
to which the princess had no kind of
objection. This occurred in the times
when kings kept their treasures in a
cave, or in a tower set apart for the
purpose, like the Emperor of Morocco
in these days ; and on the second day
of his imprisonment the young man
demanded the king's treasures. If his
first demand was a bold one, the sec-
ond was not less so ; still, an emperor's
word is sacred, and having made the
promise, he was forced to keep it;
and the treasures of gold and silver
and jewels were placed at the pris-
oner's disposal. On getting possession
of them, he distributed them profusely
among the courtiers, and soon he had
made a host of friends by his liberality.
The emperor began now to feel ex-
ceedingly uncomfortable. Unable to
sleep, he rose early on the third morn-
ing and went, with fear in his heart,
to the prison to hear what the third
wish was to be.
"Now," said he to his prisoner,
" tell me what your third demand is,
that it may be granted at once, and
you may be hung out of hand, for I
am tired of your demands."
"Sire," answered his prisoner, "I
have but one more favor to request of
your majesty, which, when you have
granted, I shall die content. It is
merely that you will cause the eyes of
those who saw my father turn the fish
over to be put out."
" Very good," replied the emperor,
"your demand is but natural, and
springs from a good heart. Let the
chamberlain be seized," he continued,
turning to his guards.
"I, sire!" cried the chamberlain;
" I did not see anything it was the
steward."
" Let the steward be seized, then,"
said the king.
But the steward protested with tears
in his eyes that he had not witnessed
anything of what had been reported,
and said it was the butler. The but-
ler declared that he had seen nothing
of the matter, and that it must have
been one of the valets. But th'ey pro-
tested that they were utterly ignorant
of what had been charged against the
count ; in short, it turned out that no-
body could be found who had seen the
count commit the offence, upon which
the princess said :
" I appeal to you, my father, as to
another Solomon. If nobody saw the
offence committed, the count cannot be
guilty, and my husband is innocent."
The emperor frowned, and forthwith
the courtiers began to murmur ; then
he smiled, and immediately their vis-
ages became radiant.
" Let it be so," said 'his majesty ;
" let him live, though I have put many
a man to death for a lighter offence
than his. But if he is not hung, he is
married. Justice has been done."
The Christian Schools of Alexandria.
33
From The Month.
EX HUMO.
BY BARRY CORNWALL.
SHOULD you dream ever of the days departed-
Of youth and morning, no more to return
Forget not me, so fond and passionate-hearted ;
Quiet at last, reposing
Under the moss and fern.
There, where the fretful lake in stormy weather
Comes circling round the reddening churchyard pines,
Rest, and call back the hours we lost together,
Talking of hope, and soaring
Beyond poor earth's confines.
If, for those heavenly dreams too dimly sighted,
You became false why, 'tis a story old :
I, overcome by pain, and unrequited,
Faded at last, and slumber
Under the autumn mould.
Farewell, farewell ! No longer plighted lovers,
Doomed for a day to sigh for sweet return :
One lives, indeed ; one heart the green earth covers-
Quiet at last, reposing
Under the moss and fern.
From The Dublin Review.
THE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS OF ALEXANDRIA.
S. Olementis Alexandrini Opera Om-
nia. Lutetice. 1629.
Geschichte der Christlicher Philosophic,
von Dr. Hdririch Ritter. Ham-
burg: Perthes. 1841.
IF any country under the sun bears
the spell of fascination in its very
name, that country is Egypt. The
land of the Nile and the pyramids, of
the Pharaohs and the Ptolemies the
land where art and science had mys-
terious beginnings before the dawn of
history, where powerful dynasties held
sway for long generations over the the land where,
3
fertile river-valley, and built for them-
selves mighty cities Thebes, the hun-
dred-gated, Memphis, with its palaces,
Heliopolis, with its temples and left
memorials of themselves that are at-
tracting men at this very day to Luxor
and Carnak, to the avenue of sphynxes
and the pyramids Egypt, where
learning
Uttered its oracles sublime
Before the Olympiads, in the dew
And dusk of early time
34
The Christian Schools of Alexandria.
Northward from its Nubian springs,
The Nile, for ever new and old,
Among the living and the dead
Its mighty, mystic stream has rolled
Egypt seems destined to be associated
with all the signal events of every
age of the world. Israel's going into
and going out of Egypt is one of the
epic pages of Holy Scripture; Sesos-
tris, King of Egypt, left his name
written over half of Asia ; Alexander,
the greatest of the Greeks, laid in
Egypt the foundation of a new em-
pire; Cleopatra, the captive and the
captor of Julius Caesar and Mark An-
tony, killed herself as the old land
passed away for ever from the race of
Ptolemy ; Clement and Origen, Por-
phyry and Plotinus, have left Egypt
the classic land of the Church's battle
against the purest form of heathen
philosophy ; St. Louis of France has
made Egypt the scene of a glorious
drama of heroism and devotion ; the
pyramids have lent their name to
swell the list of Napoleon's triumphs ;
and the Nile is linked for ever with
the deathless fame of Nelson.
In the last decade of the second
century, about the time when the pa-
gan virtues of Marcus Aurelius had
left the Roman empire to the worse
than pagan vices of his son Commo-
dus, Egypt, to the learned and weal-
thy, meant Alexandria. What Tyre
had been in the time of Solomon, what
Sidon was in the days of which Homer
wrote, that was Alexandria from the
reign of Ptolemy Soter to the days of
Mahomet. In external aspect it was
in every way worthy to bear the name
of him who drew its plans with his
own hands. Its magnificent double
harbor, of which the Great Port had
a quay-side six miles in length, was
the common rendezvous for merchant
ships from every part of Syria, Greece,
Italy, and Spain ; and its communica-
tions with the Red Sea and the Nile
brought to the warehouses that over-
looked its quay the riches of Arabia
and India, and the corn and flax of
the country of which it was the capi-
tal. The modern traveller, who finds
Alexandria a prosperous commercial
town, with an appearance half Euro-
pean, half Turkish, learns with won-
der that its 60,000 inhabitants find
room on what was little more than
the mole that divided the Great Port
from the Eunostos. But it should be
borne in mind that old Alexandria
numbered 300,000 free citizens. The
mosques, the warehouses, and the pri-
vate dwellings of the present town are
built of the fragments of the grand
city of Alexander. The great con-
queror designed to make Alexandria
the capital of the world. He chose a
situation the advantages of which a
glance at the map will show ; and if
any other proof were needed, it may
be found in the fact that, since 1801,
the population of the modern town
has increased at the rate of one thou-
sand a year. He planned his city on
such vast proportions as might be
looked for from the conqueror of
Darius. Parallel streets crossed other
streets, and divided the city into square
blocks. Right through its whole
length, from East to West that is,
parallel with the sea-front one mag-
nificent street, two hundred feet wide
and four miles in length, ran from the
Canopic gate to the Necropolis. A
similar street, shorter, but of equal
breadth, crossed this at right angles,
and came out upon the great quay di-
rectly opposite the mole that joined
the city with the island of Pharos.
This was the famous Heptastadion, or
Street of the Seven Stadia, and at its
South end was the Sun-gate; at its
North, where it opened on the harbor,
the gate of the Moon. To the right,
as you passed through the Moon-gate
on to the broad quay, was the ex-
change, where merchants from all
lands met each other, in sight of the
white Pharos and the crowded ship-
ping of the Great Port. A little back
from the gate, in the Heptastadion,
was the Caesareum, or temple of the
deified Caesars, afterward a Christian
church. Near it was the Museum,
the university of Alexandria. Long
marble colonnades connected the uni-
The Christian Schools of Alexandria.
35
versity with the palace and gardens of
the Ptolemies. On the opposite side v
of the great street was the Serapeion,
the magnificent temple of Serapis,
with its four hundred columns, of
which Pompey's Pillar is, perhaps, all
that is left. And then there was the
mausoleum of Alexander, there were
the courts of justice, the theatres, the
baths, the temples, the lines of shops
and houses all on a scale of gran-
deur and completeness which has
never been surpassed by any city of
the world. Such a city necessarily
attracted men. Alexandria was fitly
called the "many-peopled," whether
the epithet referred to the actual num-
ber of citizens or to the varieties of
tongue, complexion, and costume that
thronged its streets. The Greeks,
the Egyptians, and the Jews, each
had their separate quarter ; but there
were constant streams of foreigners
from the remote India, from the lands
beyond the black rocks that bound the
Nile-valley, and from the Ethiopic
races to which St. Matthew preached,
where the Red Sea becomes the In-
dian Ocean. At the time we speak
of, these discordant elements were
held in subjection by the Roman con-
querors, whose legionaries trod the
streets of the voluptuous city with
stern and resolute step, and were not
without occasion, oftentimes, for a dis-
play of all the sternness and resolu-
tion which their bearing augured.
Alexandria, however, in addition to
the busy life of commerce and pleasure
that went on among Greeks, Egyp-
tians, Jews, and Africans, was the
home of another kind of life, still more
interesting to us. Ptolemy Soter, who
carried out Alexander's plans, was a
man of no common foresight and
strength of character. He was not
content with building a city. He per-
formed, in addition, two exploits, either
of which, from modern experience, we
should be inclined to consider a title
to immortality. He invented a new
god, and established a university. The
god was Serapis, whom he imported
from Pergamus, and who soon became
popular. The university was the
Museum, in which lived and taught
Demetrius of Phalerus, Euclid, Stilpo
of Megara, Philetas of Cos, Apelles
the painter, Callimachus, Theocritus,
Eratosthenes, Apollonius Rhodius, and
a host of others in philosophy, poetry,
geometry, astronomy, and the arts.
Here, under successive Ptolemies,
professors lectured in splendid halls,
amid honored affluence. All that we
have of the Greek classics we owe to
the learned men of the Museum.
Poetry bloomed sweetly and luxuri-
antly in the gardens of the Ptolemies ;
though, it must be confessed, not vig-
orously, not as on Ionic coast-lands,
nor as in the earnest life of Athenian
freedom save when some Theocritus
appeared, with his broad Doric, fresh
from the sheep-covered downs of
Sicily. The name of Euclid suggests
that geometry was cared for at the
Museum; Eratosthenes, with his vo-
luminous writings, all of which have
perished, and his one or two discov-
eries, which will never die, may stand
for the type of geography, the science
for which he lived ; and Hipparchus,
astronomer and inventor of trigonom-
etry, may remind us how they taught
at the Museum that the earth was the
centre of the universe, and yet, not-
withstanding, could foretell an eclipse
almost as well as the astronomer
royal. In philosophy, the university
of Alexandria has played a peculiar
part. As long as the Ptolemies
reigned in Egypt, the Museum could
boast of no philosophy save commen-
taries on Aristotle and Plato, consist-
ing, in great measure, of subtle
obscurities to which the darkest quid-
dities of the deepest scholastic would
appear to have been light reading.
But when the Roman came in, there
sprang up a school of thought that has
done more than any other thing to
hand down the fame of Ptolemy's uni-
versity to succeeding ages. Alexan-
dria was the birthplace of Neo-Pla-
tonism, and, whatever we may think
of the philosophy itself, we must allow
it has bestowed fame on its alma
Sfi
The Christian Schools of Alexandria.
mater. At the dawn of the Christian
era, Philon the Jew was already ran-
sacking the great library to collect
matter that should enable him to
prove a common origin for the books
of Plato and of Moses. Two hun-
dred years afterward that is, just at
the time of which we speak Plotinus
was listening to Ammonius Saccas in
the lecture-hall of the Museum, and
thinking out the system of emanations,
abysms, and depths of which he is the
first and most famous expounder.
Porphyry, the biographer and enthusi-
astic follower of Plotinus, was proba-
bly never at Alexandria in person ;
but his voluminous writings did much
to make the Neo-Platonist system
known to Athens and to the cities of
Italy. In his youth he had listened
to the lectures of Origen, and thus
was in possession of the traditions
both of the Christian and the heathen
philosophy of Alexandria. But his
Christian studies did not prevent him
from being the author of that famous
book, " Against the Christians," which
drew upon him the denunciations of
thirty-five Christian apologists, in-
cluding such champions as St. Jerome
and St. Augustine. The Neo-Pla-
tonist school culminated and expired
in Proclus, the young prodigy of Al-
exandria, the ascetic teacher of Athens,
the " inspired dogmatizer," the " heir
of Plato." Proclus died in 485, and
his chair at Athens was filled by his
foolish biographer Marinus, after
which Neo-Platonism never lifted up
its head.
Between the time when Philon as-
tonished the orthodox money-getting
Hebrews of the Jews' quarter by his
daring adoption of Plato's Logos, and
the day when poor old Proclus his
once handsome and strong frame
wasted by fasting and Pythagorean
austerities died, a drivelling old man,
in sight of the groves of the Academe
and the tomb of Plato, not far from
whom he himself was to lie, many a
busy generation had trodden the halls
of the Museum of Alexandria. All
that time the strife of words had never
ceased, in the lecture-hall, in the gar-
dens of the departed Ptolemies, round
the banquet-table where the professors
were feasted at the state's expense.
All that time the fame of Alexandria
had gathered to her Museum the
young generations that succeeded each
other in the patrician homes and weal-
thy burghs of Syria, Greece, and Italy.
They came in crowds, with their
fathers' money in their purses, to be
made learned by those of whose ex-
ploits report had told so much. Some
came with an earnest purpose. To
the young medical student, the Alex-
andrian school of anatomy and the
Alexandrian diploma (in whatever
shape it was given) not to mention
the opportunity of perusing the works
of the immortal Hippocrates in forty
substantial rolls of papyrus were
worth all the expense of a journey
from Rome or Edessa. To the law-
yer, the splendid collections of laws.,
from those of the Pentateuch to those of
Zamolxis the Scythian, were treasures
only to be found in the library where
the zeal of Demetrius Phalerius and
the munificence of Ptolemy Philadel-
phus had placed them. But the vast
majority of the youth who flocked to
the Museum came with no other pur-
pose than the very general one of fin-
ishing their education and fitting them-
selves for the world. With these, the
agreeable arts of poetry and polite
literature were in far greater request
than law, medicine, astronomy, or
geography. If they could get a sight
of the popular poet of the hour in his
morning meditation under the plane-
trees of the gardens, or could crush
into a place in the theatre when he
recited his new " Ode to the Empress's
Hair ;" or if they attended the lecture
of the most fashionable exponent of
the myths of the Iliad, and clapped
him whenever he introduced an al-
lusion to the divine Plato, it was con-
sidered a very fair morning's work,
and might be fitly rewarded by a
boating party to Canopus in the after-
noon, or a revel far into the night in
any of those thousand palaces of vice
The Christian Schools of Alexandria.
37
with which luxurious Alexandria was
so well provided. And yet there is
no doubt that the young men carried
away from their university a certain
education and a certain refinement
an education which, though it taught
them to relish the pleasures of intel-
lect, in no wise disposed them to forego
the enjoyments of sense ; and a refine-
ment which, \sjiile imparting a grace-
ful polish to the mind, was quite com-
patible with the deepest moral deprav-
ity. Pagans as they were, they were
the fairest portion of the whole world,
for intellect, for manliness, for gener-
osity, for wit, for beauty and strength
of mind and body natural gifts that,
like the sun and the rain, are bestowed
upon just and unjust. Their own in-
tercourse with each other taught them
far more than the speculations of any
of the myth-hunting professors of the
Museum. They crowded in to hear
them, they cheered them, they would
dispute and even fight for a favorite
theory that no one understood, with
the doubtful exception of its inventor.
But it was not to be supposed that
they really cared for abysms or mys-
tical mathematics, or that they were
not a great deal more zealous for sup-
pers, and drinking bouts, and boating
parties. These latter employments,
indeed, may be said to have formed
their real education. Greek intellect,
Greek taste, wit, and beauty, in the
sunniest hour of its bloom, mingled
with its like in the grandest city that,
perhaps, the earth has ever seen.
The very harbors, and temples, and
palaces were an education. The first
rounding of the Pharos when the
six-mile semicircle of granite quay
and marble emporia burst on the
view, with the Egyptian sun flashing
from white wall and blue sea, and
glancing and sparkling amidst the dense
picturesque multitude that roared and
surged on the esplanade disclosed a
sight to make the soul grow larger.
The wonderful city itself was a teach-
ing: the assemblage of all that was
best and rarest in old Egyptian art,
and all that was freshest and most
lovely in the art of Greece, left no
corner of a street without its lesson to
the eye. Indoors, there was the Mu-
seum, with its miles of corridors and
galleries, filled with paintings and
sculptures ; outside, the Serapeion, the
Caesareum, the exchange, the palace,
the university itself, each a more ef-
fective instructor than a year's course
in the schools. And after all this
came the library, with its 700,000
volumes !
In the year of our Lord 181, ships
filled the Great Port, merchants con-
gregated in the exchange, sailors and
porters thronged the quays ; crowds
of rich and poor, high and low, flocked
through the streets ; youths poured in
to listen to Ammonius Saccas, and
poured out again to riot and sin ; phi-
losophers talked, Jews made money,
fashionable men took their pleasure,
slaves toiled, citizens bought and sold
and made marriages ; all the forms of
busy life that had their existence
within the circuit of the many-peopled
city were noisily working themselves
out. In the same year, Pantaenus
became the head of the catechetical
school of the patriarchal Church of
Alexandria.
It was the time when those who had
lived and walked with the Apostles
had passed away, and when the third
generation of the Church's rulers was
already growing old. St. Irenseus was
near his glorious end ; St. Eleutherius,
of memory dear to Britain, had just
closed his pontificate by martyrdom,
and St. Victor sat in his place. The
echoes of the voice of Peter had hard-
ly died out in Rome and Antioch ;
the traditions of Paul's bodily pres-
ence were yet living in Asia, in Greece,
and the Islands ; and the sweet odor
of John's life still hung about the
places where his sojourning had been :
many a church of Greece and Egypt
and of the far East had the sepulchre
of its founder, an Apostle or an apos-
tolic man, round which to pray. It
was the age of the persecutions, and
the age of the apologies. In every
The Christian Schools of Alexandria.
city that was coming about which from
the first had been inevitable. The
Church was laying hold of human
learning, and setting it to do her own
work. i fixing upon Alexandria as
the spot where, at this period, the con-
test between Christian science and
Gentile learning, Gentile ignorance
and Gentile brute force, was most in-
teresting and most developed, we must
pass by many other Churches, not in
forgetfulness, though in silence. We
must pass by Rome, the capital of the
world, not because there were not
learned men there whom Jesus Christ
had raised up to battle with heathen
philosophy ; for it was but a few years
since Justin Martyr had shed his blood
for the faith, and Apollonius from his
place in the senate had spoken his
" apology" for his fellow Christians.
But the enemies which the Gospel had
to meet at Rome were not so much
the learning and science of the heathen
as his evil passions and vicious life;
and the sword of persecution, at Rome
hardly ever sheathed, kept down all
attempts at regularity or organization
in public teaching. We must pass by
Athens, still the intellectual capital of
the world, not because there were not
at Athens also worthy doctors of the
wisdom of the cross witness, to the
contrary, Athenagoras, the Christian
philosopher, who presented his apolo-
gy to Marcus Aurelius. But Athens,
though at the end of the second cen-
tury and long afterward she was the
mother of orators, poets, and philoso-
phers, seems to have been too thor-
oughly steeped in the sensuous idola-
try of Greece to have harbored a
school of Christianity by the side of the
Porch and the Lyceum. If the same
was true of Athens then as a century
afterward, her smooth-tongued, " bab-
bling" sophists, and her pagan charms,
must have had to answer for the soul
of many a poor Christian youth that
went to seek learning and found per-
dition. We pass by Carthage, in spite
of Tertullian's great name ; Antioch,
notwithstanding Theophilus, whose
labors against the heathen still bore
fruit ; Sardis, in spite of Melito, then
just dead, but living still in men's
mouths by the fame of his learning,
eloquence, and miracles ; and Hierapo-
lis, in spite of Apollinaris, who, like so
many others, approached the emperor
himself with an apology. All over
the Church there were men raised up
by God, and fitted with learning to con-
front learning, patience to instruct ig-
norance, and unflinching fortitude to
endure persecution men in every way
worthy to be the instruments of that
great change which was being wrought
out through the wide world of the
Roman empire.
But at Alexandria, the school of
Christianity existed under interesting
and peculiar conditions . St. Mark had
landed on the granite quay of the
Great Port with Peter's commission ;
he had been martyred, and his succes-
sors had been martyred after him;
and for a long time Christianity here,
as everywhere else, had been contempt-
uously ignored. It spread, however, as
we know. In time, more than one
student, before he attended his lecture
in the splendid halls of the Museum,
had given ear to a far different lesson
in a different school. The Christian
catechetical school of Alexandria is
said to have been founded by St.
Mark himself. If so, it is only what
we might naturally expect ; for wher-
ever heathens were being converted,
there a school of teachers had to be
provided for their instruction ; and we
read of similar institutions at Jerusa-
lem, at Antioch, and at Rome. But
the catechetical school of Alexandria
soon assumed an importance that no
other school of those times ever at-
tained. Whether it was that the in-
fluence of the university gave an im-
petus to regular and methodical teach-
ing, or that the converts in Alexandria
were in great measure from a culti-
vated and intellectual class, it appears
to have been found necessary from the
earliest times to have an efficient
school, with a man of vigor and intel-
lect at its head, capable of maintain-
ing his position even when compared
The Christian Schools of Alexandria.
with the professors of the university.
The first of the heads or doctors of the
school of whom history has left any
account, is Pantaenus. Panticnus is
not so well known as his place in
Church history and his influence on
his age would seem to warrant. He
was appointed to his important post
at a time when Christians all over
the world must have been rejoicing.
The fourth persecution was just dying
out. For twenty years, with the ex-
ception of the short interval immedi-
ately after the miracle of the Thun-
dering Legion, had Marcus Aurelius,
imperial philosopher of the Stoic sort,
continued to command or connive at
the butchery of his Christian subjects.
What were the motives that led this
paragon of virtuous pagans to lower
himself to the commonplace practices
of racking, scourging, and burning, is
a question that depends for its answer
upon who the answerer is. Philoso-
phers of a certain class, from Gibbon
to Mr. Mill, are disposed to take a
lenient, if not a laudatory, estimate of
his conduct in this matter, and think
that the emperor could not have
acted otherwise consistently with his
principles and convictions, as handed
down to us in his "Meditations."
Doubtless he had strong convictions on
the subject of Christianity, though it
might be questioned whether he came
honestly by them. But his convictions,
whatever they were, would probably
have ended in the harmless shape
of philosophic contempt, had it not
been for the men by whom he was
surrounded. They were Stoics, of
course, like their master, but their
stoicism was far from confining itself
to convictions and meditations. They
were practical Stoics, of the severest
type which that old-world Puritanism
admitted. As good Stoics, they were
of all philosophers the most conceited,
and took it especially ill that any sect
should presume to rival them in their
private virtues of obstinacy and en-
durance. It is extremely probable that
the fourth persecution, both in its com-
mencement and its revival, was owing
to the good offices of Marcus Aurelius's
solemn-faced favorites. But, whatever
be the blame that attaches to him, he
has answered for it at the same dread
tribunal at which he has answered for
the deification of Faustina and the
education of Commodus.
However, about the year 180, per-
secution ceased at Alexandria, and
the Christians held up their heads and
revived again, after the bitter whiter
through which they had just passed.
Their first thoughts and efforts appear
to have been directed to their school.
The name of Pantaenus was already
celebrated. He was a convert from
paganism, born probably in Sicily, but
certainly brought up in Alexandria.
Curiously enough, he had been a
zealous Stoic, and remained so, in the
Christian sense, after his conversion.
There is no doubt that he was well
known among the Gentile philosophers
of Alexandria. Perhaps he had lec-
tured in the Museum and dined in the
Hall. Probably he had spent many a
day buried in the recesses of the great
libraries, and could give a good account
of not a few of their thousands of vol-
umes. He must have known Justin
Martyr perhaps had something to
say to the conversion of that brilliant
genius, not as a teacher, but as a friend
and fellow-student. He may have come
across Galen, when that lively medical
man was pursuing his researches on
the immortal Hippocrates, or enter-
taining a select circle, in the calm of
the evening, under one of the porticos
of the Heptastadion. No sooner was
he placed at the head of the Christian
school than he inaugurated a great
change, or rather a great development.
Formerly the instruction had been in-
tended solely for converts, that is, cate-
chumens, and the matter of the teach-
ing had corresponded with this object.
Pantgenus changed all this. The ces-
sation of the persecution had, perhaps,
encouraged bolder measures ; men
would think there was no prospect of
another, as men generally think when
a long and difficult trial is over ; so
the Christian schools were to be opened
40
The Christian Schools of Alexandria.
to all the world. If Aristotle and
Plato, Epicurus and Zeno, had their
lecturers, should not Jesus Christ have
schools and teachers too ? And what
matter if the Christian doctrine were
somewliat novel and hard was not
Ammonius the Porter, at that very
time, turning the heads of half the
students in the city, and filling his
lecture-room to suffocation, by ex-
pounding transcendental theories about
Plato's Logos, and actually teaching
the doctrine of a Trinity? Shame
upon the Christian name, then, if they
who bear it do not open their doors,
now that danger is past, and break the
true bread to the hungry souls that
eagerly snatch at the stones and dry
sticks that others give ! So thought
Pantsenus. Of his teachings and
writings hardly a trace or a record has
reached us. We know that he wrote
valued commentaries on Holy Scrip-
ture, but no fragment of them remains.
His teaching, however, as might have
been expected, was chiefly oral. He
met the philosophers of Alexandria
on their own ground. He showed
that the fame of learning, the earnest-
ness of character, the vivid personal
influence that were so powerful in the
cause of heathen philosophy, could
be as serviceable to the philosophy
of Christ. The plan was novel in the
Christian world at least, in its sys-
tematic thoroughness. That Pantaenus
had great influence and many worthy
disciples is evident from the fact that
St. Clement of Alexandria, his succes-
sor, was formed in his school, and that
St. Alexander of Jerusalem, the cele-
brated founder of the library which
Eusebius consulted at Jerusalem, writ-
ing half a century afterward to Alex-
andria, speaks with nothing less than
enthusiasm of the " happy memory" of
his old master. If we could pierce the
secrets of those long-past times, what
a stirring scene of reverend wisdom
and youthful enthusiasm would the for-
gotten school of the Sicilian convert
unfold to our sight ! Doubtless, from
amidst the confused jargon of all man-
ner of philosophies, the voice of the
Christian teacher arose with a clear
and distinct utterance ; and the fame
of Panteenus was carried to far coun-
tries by many a noble Roman and
many an accomplished Greek, zealous,
like all true academic sons, for the
glory of their favorite master.
After ten years of such work as this,
Pantaenus vacated his chair, and went
forth as a missionary bishop to con-
vert the Indians. Before passing on
to his successor, a few words on this
Indian mission, apparently so inoppor-
tune for such a man at such a time,
will be interesting, and not unconnect-
ed with the history of the Christian
schools.
In the "many-peopled" city there
were men from all lands and of all
shades of complexion. It was noth-
ing strange, then, that an embassy of
swarthy Indians should have one day
waited on the patriarch and begged
for an apostle to take home with them
to their countrymen. No wonder,
either, that they specified the celebrated
master of the catechisms as their dig-
nissimus. The only wonder is that he
was allowed to go. Yet he went ; he
set out with them, sailed to Canopus,
the Alexandrian Richmond, where the
canal joined the Nile; sailed up the
ancient stream to Koptos, where the
overland route began ; joined the cara-
van that travelled thence, from well
to well, to Berenice, Philadelphus's
harbor on the Red Sea ; embarked,
and, after sailing before the monsoon
for seventy days, arrived at the first
Indian port, probably that which is
now Mangalore, in the presidency of
Bombay. This, in all likelihood, was
the route and the destination of Pan-
teenus. Now those among whom his
missionary labors appear to have lain
were Brahmins, and Brahmins of great
learning and extraordinary strictness
of life. Moreover, there appears to
be no reason to doubt that the Church
founded by St. Thomas still existed,
and even flourished, in these very parts,
though its apostolic founder had been
martyred a hundred years before.
It was not so unreasonable, then, that
The Christian Schools of Alexandria.
41
a bishop like Pantasnus should have
been selected for such a Church and
such a people. Let the reader turn
to the story of Robert de' Nobili. and
of John de Britto, whose field of labor
mortalized in history as Clement of
Alexandria. He had sat under Pan-
tamus, but he was no ordinary scholar.
Like his instructor, he was a convert
from paganism. He was already a
extended to within a hundred miles of master in human learning when the
the very spot where Pantaenus prob-
ably landed. St. Francis Xavier had
already found Christians in that region
who bore distinct traces of a former
connection with Alexandria, in the
very points in which they deviated
grace came. He had sought far and
wide for the. truth, and had found it in
the Catholic Church, and into the lap
of his new mother he had poured
all the treasures of Egyptian wisdom
which he had gathered in his quest.
from orthodoxy. De' Nobili's trans- Athens, Southern Italy, Assyria, and
formation of himself into a Brahmin
of the strictest and most learned caste
is well known. He dressed and lived
Palestine had each been visited by
the eager searcher ; and, last of all,
Egypt, and Alexandria, and Pantaanus
as a Brahmin, roused the curiosity of had been the term of his travels, and
his adopted brethren, opened school,
and taught philosophy, inculcating
such practical conclusions as it is un-
necessary to specify. De Britto did
the very same things. If any one
will compare the Brahmins of De
Britto and De' Nobili with those
earlier Brahmins of Pantaanus, as de-
scribed, for instance, by Cave from
Palladius, he will not fail to be struck
with the similarity of accounts ; and
if we might be permitted to fill up the
picture upon these conjectural hints,
we should say that it seems to us very
likely that Pantaenus, during the years
that he was lost to Alexandria, was
expounding and enforcing, in the flow-
ing cotton robes of a venerable Sanias-
tes, the same deep philosophy to
Indian audiences as he had taught to
admiring Greeks in the modest pallium
of a Stoic. Recent missionary experi-
ence has uniformly gone to prove that
deep learning and asceticism are, hu-
manly speaking, absolutely necessary
had given to his lofty soul the "ad-
mirable light" of Jesus Christ. When
Pantaenus went out as a missioner to
India, Clement, who had already as-
sisted his beloved master in the work
of the schools, succeeded him as their
director and head. It was to be Cle-
ment's task to carry on and to develop
the work that Pantaenus had inaugu-
rated to make Christianity not only
understood by the catechumens and
loved by the faithful, but recognized
and respected by the pagan philoso-
phers. Unless we can clearly see the
necessity, or, at least, the reality of
the philosophical side of his character,
and the influences that were at work
to make him hold fast to Aristotle and
Plato, even after he had got far be-
yond them, we shall infallibly set him
down, like his modern biographers, as
a half-converted heathen, with the shell
of Platonism still adhering to him.
It cannot be doubted that in a so-
ciety like that of Alexandria hi its palmy
in order to attempt the conversion of days there were many earnest seekers
Brahmins with any prospect of success :
and the mission of Pantaanus seems at
once to furnish an illustration of this
fact, and to afford an interesting glimpse
of " Christian Missions" in the second
century. But we must return to Alex-
andria.
The name that succeeds Pantaanus
on the rolls of the School of the Cate-
chisms is Titus Flavius Clemens, im-
of the truth, even as Clement himself
had sought it. One might even lay it
down as a normal fact, that it was the
character of an Alexandrian, as dis-
tinguished from an Athenian, to specu-
late for the sake of practising, and not
to spend his time in "either telling
or hearing some new thing." If an
Alexandrian was a Stoic, never was
Stoic more demure or more intent on
warring against his body, after Stoic
42
The Christian Schools of Alexandria.
fashion ; if a geometrican, no disciple
of Bacon was ever more assiduous in
experimentalizing, measuring, compar-
ing, and deducing laws ; if a Platon-
ist, then geometry, ethics, poetry, and
everything else, were enthusiastically
pressed into the one great occupation
of life the realizing the ideal and the
getting face to face with the unseen.
That all this earnestness did not uni-
formly result in success was only too
true. Much speculation, great earn-
estness, and no grand objective truth
at the end of it this was often the lot
of the philosophic inquirer of Alexan-
dria. The consequence was that not
unfrequently, disgusted by failure, he
ended by rushing headlong into the
most vicious excesses, or, becoming a
victim to despair, perished by his own
hand. So familiar, indeed, had this
resource of disappointment become to
the philosophic mind, that Hegesias, a
professor in the Museum, a little be-
fore the Christian era, wrote a book
counselling self-murder ; and so many
people actually followed his advice as
to oblige the reigning Ptolemy to turn
Grand Inquisitor even in free-thinking
Egypt, and forbid the circulation of
the book. Yet all this, while it re-
vealed a depth of moral wretchedness
which it is frightful to contemplate,
showed also a certain desperate earn-
estness ; and doubtless there were, even
among those who took refuge in one
or other of these dreadful alternatives,
men who, in their beginnings, had
genuine aspirations after truth, min-
gled with the pride of knowledge and
a mere intellectual curiosity. Doubt-
less, too, there was many a sincere
and guileless soul among the philoso-
phic herd, to whom, humanly speak-
ing, nothing more was wanting than
the preaching of the faith. Their eyes
were open, as far as they could be
without the light of revelation : let
the light shine, and, by the help of
divine grace, they would admit its
beams into their souls.
There are many such, in every form
of error. In Clement's days, especial-
ly, there were many whom Neo-Platon-
ism, the Puseyism of paganism, cast
up from the ocean of unclean error
upon the shores of the Church. Take
the case of Justin Martyr : he was a
young Oriental of noble birth and con-
siderable wealth. In the early part
of the second century, we find him
trying first one school of philosophers
and then another, and abandoning
each in disgust. The Stoics would
talk to him of nothing but virtues and
vices, of regulating the diet and curb-
ing the passions, and keeping the in-
tellect as quiet as possible a conve-
nient way, as experience taught them,
of avoiding trouble; whereas Justin
wanted to hear something of the Ab-
solute Being, and of that Being's deal-
ings with his own soul a kind of
inquiry which the Stoics considered
altogether useless and ridiculous, if
not reprehensible. Leaving the Stoics,
he devoted himself heart and soul
to a sharp Peripatetic, but quarrelled
with him shortly and left him in dis-
gust; the cause of disagreement be-
ing, apparently, a practical theory
entertained by his preceptor on the
subject of fees. He next took to the
disciples of Pythagoras. But with
these he succeeded no better than
with the others ; for the Pythagoreans
reminded him that no one ignorant
of mathematics could be admitted into
their select society. Mathematics, hi
a Pythagorean point of view, included
geometry, astronomy, and music all
those sciences, in fact, in which there
was any scope for those extraordinary
freaks of numbers which delighted the
followers of the old vegetarian. Jus-
tin, having no inclination to undergo a
novitiate in mathematics, abandoned
the Pythagoreans and went elsewhere.
The Platonists were the next who
attracted him. He found no lack of
employment for the highest qualities
of his really noble soul in the lofty
visions of Plato and the sublimated
theories of his disciples and commen-
tators ; though it appears a little sin-
gular that, with his propensities to-
ward the ideal and abstract, he should
have tried so many masters before he
The Christian Schools of Alexandria.
43
sat down under Plato. However, be
that as it may, Plato seems to have
satisfied him for a while, and he be-
gan to think he was growing a very
wise man, when these illusions were
rudely dispelled. One day he had
walked down to a lonely spot by the
sea-shore, meditating, probably, some
deep idea, and perhaps declaiming
occasionally some passage of Plato's
Olympian Greek. In his solitary
walk he met an old man, and entered
into conversation with him. The
event of this conversation was that
Justin went home with a wonderfully
reduced estimate of his own wisdom,
and a determination to get to know a
few things about which Plato, on the
old man's showing, had been wofully
in the dark. Justin became a con-
vert to Christianity. Now, Justin had
been at Alexandria, and, whether the
conversation he relates ever really took
place, or is merely an oratorical fiction,
the story is one that represents sub-
stantially what must Tiave happened
over and over again to those who
thronged the university of Alexandria,
wearing the black cloak of the phi-
losopher.
Justin lived and was martyred some
half a century before Clement sat in
the chair of the catechisms. But it
is quite plain that, in such a state of
society, there would not be wanting
many of his class and temperament
who, in Clement's tune, as well as fifty
years before, were in search of the true
philosophy. And we must not forget
that in Alexandria there were actually
thousands of well-born, intellectual
young men from every part of the
Roman empire. To the earnest among
these Clement was, indeed, no ordinary
master. In the first place, he was
their equal by birth and education,
with all the intellectual keenness of
his native Athens, and all the ripeness
and versatility of one who had " seen
many cities of men and their man-
ners." Next, he had himself been a
Gentile, and had gone through all
those phases of the soul that precede
and accompany the process of conver-
sion. If any one knew their difficul-
ties and their sore places, it was he, the
converted philosopher. If any one
was capable of satisfying a generous
mind as to which was the true philoso-
phy, it was he who had travelled the
world over in search of it. He could
tell the swarthy Syrian that it was of
no use to seek the classic regions of
Ionia, for he had tried them, and the
truth was not there ; he could assure
him it was waste of time to go to
Athens, for the Porch and the Garden
were babbling of vain questions he
had listened in them all. He could
calm the ardor of the young Athenian,
his countryman, eager to try the banks
of the Orontes, and to interrogate the
sages of Syria ; for he could tell him
beforehand what they would say. He
could shake his head when the young
Egyptian, fresh from the provincial
luxury of Antinoe, mentioned Magna
Graecia as a mysterious land where
the secret of knowledge was perhaps
in the hands of the descendants of the
Pelasgi. He had tried Tarentum, he
had tried Neapolis ; they were worse
than the Serapeion in unnameable
licentiousness less in earnest than
the votaries that crowded the pleasure-
barges of the Nile at a festival of the
Moon. He had asked, he had tried,
he had tasted. The truth, he could
tell them, was at their doors. It was
elsewhere, too. It was in Neapolis,
in Antioch, in Athens, in Rome; but
they would not find it taught in the
chairs of the schools, nor discussed by
noble frequenters of the baths and the
theatres. He knew it, and he could
tell it to them. And as he added many
a tale of his wanderings and search-
ings many an instance of genius
falling short, of good-will laboring in
the dark, of earnestness painfully at
fault many of those who heard him
would yield themselves up to the vig-
orous thinker whose brow showed both
the capacity and the unwearied ac-
tivity of the soul within. He was the
very man to be made a hero of. What-
ever there was in the circle of Gentile
philosophy he knew. St. Jerome calls
44
The Christian Schools of Alexandria.
him the " most learned of the writers
of the Church," and St. Jerome must
have spoken with the sons of those
who had heard him lecture noble
Christian patricians, perchance, whose
fathers had often told them how,
in fervent boyhood, they had been
spell-bound by his words in the Chris-
tian school of Alexandria, or learned
bishops of Palestine, who had heard
of him from Origen at Caesarea or St.
Alexander at Jerusalem. From the
same St. Alexander, who had listened
to Panteenus by his side, we learn that
he was as holy as he was learned ;
and Theodoret, whose school did not
dispose him to admire what came from
the catechetical doctors of Alexandria,
is our authority for saying that his
"eloquence was unsurpassed." In the
fourth edition of Cave's " Apostolici,"
there is a portrait that we would fain
vouch to be genuine. The massive,
earnest face, of the Aristotelian type,
the narrow, perpendicular Grecian
brow, with its corrugations of thought
and care, the venerable flowing beard,
dignifying, but not concealing, the
homely and fatherly mouth, seem to
suggest a man who had made all
science his own, yet who now valued a
little one of Jesus Christ above all
human wisdom and learning. But we
have no record of those features that
were once the cynosure of many eyes
in the " many-peopled" city ; we have
no memorial of the figure that spoke
the truths of the Gospel in the words
of Plato. We know not how he looked,
nor how he sat, when he began with
his favorite master, and showed, with
inexhaustible learning, where he had
caught sight of the truth, and, again,
where his mighty but finite intellect
had failed for want of a more " admir-
able light ;" nor how he kindled when
he had led his hearers through the
vestibule of the old philosophy, and
stood ready to lift the curtain of that
which was at once its consummation
and its annihilation.
But the philosophers of Alexandria,
so-called, were by no means, without
exception, earnest, high-minded, and
well-meaning. Leaving out of the
question the mob of students who came
ostensibly for wisdom, but got only a
very doubtful substitute, and were quite
content with it, we know that the Mu-
seum was the headquarters of an
an ti- Christian philosophy which, in
Clement's time, was in the very spring
of its vigorous development. Exactly
contemporary with him was the cele-
brated Ammonius the Porter, the
teacher of Plotinus, and therefore the
parent of Neo-Platonism. Ammonius
had a very great name and a very
numerous school. That he was a
Christian by birth, there is no doubt ;
and he was probably a Christian still
when he landed at the Great Port and
found employment as a- ship-porter.
History is divided as to his behavior
after his wonderful elevation from the
warehouses to the halls of the Museum.
St. Jerome and Eusebius deny that he
apostatized, while the very question-
able authority of the unscrupulous
Porphyry is the only testimony that
can be adduced on the other side ; but,
even if he continued to be a Christian,
his orthodoxy is rather damaged when
we find him praised by such men as
Plotinus, Longinus, and Hierocles.
Some would cut the knot by asserting
the existence of two Ammoniuses, one
a pagan apostate, the other a Chris-
tian bishop a solution equally con-
tradicted by the witnesses on both
sides. But, whatever Saccas was,
there is no doubt as to what was the
effect of his teaching on, at least, half
of his hearers. If we might hazard a
conjecture, we should say that he ap-
pears to have been a man of g-eat
cleverness, and even genius, but too
much in love with his own brilliancy
and his own speculations not to come
across the ecclesiastical authority in a
more or less direct way. He supplied
many imposing premises which Origen,
representing the sound half of his au-
dience, used for Christian purposes,
whilst Plotinus employed them for re-
vivifying the dead body of paganism.
The brilliant sack-bearer seems to
have been, at the very least, a liberal
The Christian Schools of Alexandria.
45
Christian, who was too gentlemanly to
mention so very vulgar a thing as the
Christian "superstition" in the classic
gardens of the palace, or at the serene
banquets of sages in the Symposium.
The question, then, is, How did
Christianity, as a philosophy, stand
in relation to the affluent professors
of Ptolemy's university? That they
had been forced to see there was such
a thing as Christianity, before the time
of which we speak (A.D. 200), it is im-
possible to doubt. It must have dawn-
ed upon the comprehension of the most
imperturbable grammarian and the most
materialist surgeon of the Museum that
a new teaching of some kind was slow-
ly but surely striking root in the many
forms of life that surrounded them.
Rumors must long before have been
heard in the common hall that execu-
tions had taken place of several mem-
bers of a new sect or society, said to
be impious in its tenets and disloyal in
its practice. No doubt the assembled
sages had expended at the time much
intricate quibble and pun, after heavy
Alexandrian fashion, on the subject of
those wretched men ; more especially
when it was s put beyond doubt that no
promises of reward or threats of pun-
ishment had availed to make them
compromise their " opinions " in the
slightest tittle. Then the matter would
die out, to be revived several times in
the same way ; until at last some one
would make inquiries, and would find
that the new sect was not only spread-
ing, but, though composed apparently
of the poor and the humble, was clear-
ly something very different from the
fantastic religions or brutal no-religions
of the Alexandrian mob. It would be
gradually found out, moreover, that
men of name and of parts were in its
ranks; nay, some day of days, that
learned company in the Hall would
miss one of its own number, after the
most reverend the curator had asked
a blessing if ever he did and it
would come out that Professor So-
and-so, learned and austere as he was,
had become a Christian ! And some
would merely wonder, but, that past,
would ask their neighbor, in the equiv-
alent Attic, if there were to be no more
cakes and ale, because he had proved
himself a fool ; others would wonder,
and feel disturbed, and think about
asking a question or two, though not
to the extent of abandoning their seats
at that comfortable board.
The majority, doubtless, at Alexan-
dria as elsewhere, set down Christian-
ity as some new superstition, freshly
imported from the home of all super-
stitions, the East. There were some
who hated it, and pursued it with a
vehemence of malignant lying that can
suggest only one source of inspiration,
that is to say, the father of all lies him-
self. Of this class were Crescens the
Cynic, the prime favorite of Marcus
Aurelius, and Celsns, called the Epi-
curean, but who, in his celebrated
book, written at this very time, appears
as veritable a Platonist as Plotinus
himself. Then, again, there were
others who found no difficulty in re-
cognizing Christianity as a sister phi-
losophy who, in fact, rather welcomed
it as affording fresh material for dia-
lectics good, easy men of routine,
blind enough to the vital questions
which the devil's advocates clearly
saw to be at stake. Galen is pre-emi-
nently a writer who has reflected the
current gossip of the day. He was a
hard student in his youth, and a learn-
ed and even high-minded man in his
maturity, but he frequently shows him-
self in his writings as the "fashionable
physician," with one or two of the
weaknesses of that well-known char-
acter. He spent a long time at Alex-
andria, just before Clement became fa-
mous, studying under Heraclian, con-
sulting the immortal Hippocrates, and
profiting by the celebrated dissecting-
rooms of the Museum, in which, unless
they are belied, the interests of science
were so paramount that they used to
dissect not live horses; but living
slaves. He could not, therefore, fail
to have known how Christianity was
regarded at the Museum. Speaking
of Christians, then, in his works, he
of course retails a good deal of non-
46
The Christian Schools of Alexandria.
sense about them, such as we can
imagine him to have exchanged with
the rich gluttons and swollen philoso-
phers whom he had to attend profes-
sionally in Roman society ; but when
he speaks seriously, and of what he
had himself observed, he says, frankly
and honestly, that the Christians de-
served very great praise for sobriety
of life, and for their love of virtue, in
which they equalled or surpassed the
greatest philosophers of the age. So.
thought, in all probability, many of the
learned men of Alexandria.
The Church, on her side, was not
averse to appearing before the Gen-
tiles in the garb of philosophy, and it
was very natural that the Christian
teachers should encourage this idea,
with the aim and hope of gaining ad-
mittance for themselves and their good
tidings into the very heart of pagan
learning. And was not Christianity
a philosophy ? In the truest sense of
the word and, what is more to the
purpose, in the sense of the philoso-
phers of Alexandria it was a philoso-
phy. The narrowed meaning that in
our days is assigned to philosophy, as
distinguished from religion, had no ex-
istence in the days of Clement. Wis-
dom was the wisdom by excellence, the
highest, the ultimate wisdom. What
the Hebrew preacher meant when he
said, " Wisdom is better than all the
most precious things," the same was
intended by the Alexandrian lecturer
when he offered to show his hearers
where wisdom was to be found. It
meant the fruit of the highest specula-
tion, and at the same time the neces-
sary ground of all-important practice.
In our days the child learns at the
altar-rails that its end is to love God,
and serve him, and be happy with him ;
and after many years have passed, the
child, now a man, studies and specu-
lates on the reasons and the bearings
of that short, momentous sentence. In
the old Greek world the intellectual
search came first, and the practical
sentence was the wished-for result.
A system of philosophy was, therefore,
in Clement's time, tantamount to a re-
ligion. It was the case especially with
the learned. Serapis and Isis were all
very well for the " old women and the
sailors," but the laureate and the as-
tronomer royal of the Ptolemies, and
the professors, many and diverse, of
arts and ethics, in the Museum, scarce-
ly took pains to conceal their utter
contempt for the worship of the vul-
gar. Their idols were something more
spiritual, their incense was of a more
ethereal kind. Could they not dispute
about the Absolute Being? and had
they not glimpses of something inde-
finitely above and yet indefinably re-
lated to their own souls, in the Logos
of the divine Plato ? So the Stoic
mortified his flesh for the sake of some
ulterior perfectibility of which he could
give no clear account to himself; the
Epicurean contrived to take his fill of
pleasure, on the maxim that enjoyment
was the end of our being, " and to-
morrow we die ;" the Platonist specu-
lated and pursued his " air-travelling
and cloud-questioning," like Socrates
in the basket, in a vain but tempting
endeavor to see what God was to man
and man to God; the Peripatetic, the
Eclectic, and all the rest, disputed,
scoffed, or dogmatized about many
things, certainly, but, mainly and fin-
ally, on those questions that will uever
lie still: Who are we? and, Who
placed us here ? Philosophy included
religion, and therefore Christianity was
a philosophy.
When Clement, then, told the phi-
losophers of Alexandria that he could
teach them the true philosophy, he was
saying not only what was perfectly
true, but what was perfectly under-
stood by them. The catechetical school
was, and appeared to them, as truly a
philosophical lecture-room as the halls
of the Museum. Clement himself had
been an ardent philosopher, and he
reverently loved his masters, Socrates
and Plato and Aristotle, whilst he had
the feelings of a brother toward the
philosophers of his own day. He be-
came a Christian, and his dearest ob-
ject was to win his brethren to a par-
ticipation in his own good fortune
The Christian Schools of Alexandria.
47
He did not burn his philosophical
books and anathematize his masters;
like St. Paul, he availed himself of the
good that was in them and commended
it, and then proclaimed that he had the
key of the treasure which they had
labored to find and had not found.
This explains how it is that, in Clement
of Alexandria, the philosopher's man-
tle seems almost to hide the simple
garb of the Christian. This also ex-
plains why he is called, and indeed
calls himself, an Eclectic in his sys-
tem ; and this marks out the drift and
the aim of the many allusions to phi-
losophy that we find in his extant
works, and in the traditions of his
teaching that have come down to us.
If Christianity was truly called a phi-
losophy, what should we expect in its
champion but that he should be a
philosopher ? Men in these days read
the Stromata, and find that it is, on
the outside, more like Plato than like
Jesus Christ; and thus they make
small account of it, because they can-
not understand its style, or the reason
for its adoption. The grounds of ques-
tions and the forms of thought have
shifted since the days of the catechet-
ical school. But Clement's fellow-
citizens understood him. The thrifty
young Byzantine, for instance, under-
stood him, who had been half-inclined
to join the Stoics, but had come, in his
threadbare pallium, to hear the Chris-
tian teacher, and who was told that
asceticism was very good and com-
mendable, but that the end of it all was
God and the love of God, and that
this end could only be attained by a
Christian. The languid but intellectual
man of fashion understood him, who
had grown sick of the jargon of his
Platonist professors about the perfect
man and the archetypal humanity, and
who now felt his inmost nature stirred
to its depths by the announcement and
description of the Word made flesh.
The learned stranger from Antioch or
Athens, seeking for the truth, under-
stood him, when he said that the Chris-
tian dogma alone could create and per-
fect the true Gnostic or Knower ; he
understood perfectly the importance of
the object, provided the assertion were
true, as it might turn out to be. Un-
less Clement had spoken of asceticism,
of the perfect man, and of the true
Gnostic, his teaching would not have
come home to the self-denying student,
to the thoughtful sage, to the brilliant
youth, to all that was great and gener-
ous and amiable in the huge heathen
society of the crowded city. As it was,
he gained a hearing, and, having done
so, he said to the Alexandrians, " Your
masters in philosophy are great and
noble : I honor them, I admire and
accept them ; but they did not go far
enough, as you all acknowledge. Come
to us, then, and we will show what is
wanting in them. Listen to these old
Hebrew writers whom I will quote to
you. You see that they treated of all
your problems, and had solved the
deepest of them, whilst your fore-
fathers were groping in darkness. All
their light, and much more, is our in-
heritance. The truth, which you seek,
we possess. ' What you worship, with-
out knowing it, that I preach to you/
God's Word has been made flesh has
lived on this earth, the model man, the
absolute man. Come to us, and we
will show you how you may know God
through him, and how through him God
communicates himself to you." But
here he stopped. The " discipline of
the secret" allowed him to go no fur-
ther in public. The listening Chris-
tians knew well what he meant ; his
pagan hearers only surmised that there
was more behind. And was it not
much that Christianity should thus
measure strength and challenge a con-
test with the old Greek civilization on
equal terms, and about those very mat-
ters of intellect and high ethics in which
it especially prided itself?
But the contest, never a friendly
one, save with the dullest and easiest
of the pagan philosophers, very soon
grew to be war to the knife. We have
said that the quiet lovers of literature
among the heathen men of science
were perfectly ready to admit the
Christian philosophy to a fair share
48
The Christian Schools of Alexandria.
in the arena of disputation and discus-
sion, looking upon it as being, at worst,
only a foolish system of obtrusive nov-
elties, which might safely be left to
their own insignificancy. But, quite
unexpectedly and startlingly for easy-
going philosophers, Christianity was
found, not merely to claim the pos-
session of truth, but to claim it wholly
and solely. And, what was still more
intolerable, its doctors maintained that
its adoption or rejection was no open
speculative question, but a tremendous
practical matter, involving nothing less
than all morality here and all happi-
ness hereafter; and that the unfortu-
nate philosopher, who, in his lofty
serenity, approved it as right, and
yet followed the wrong, would have
to undergo certain horrors after death,
the bare suggestion of which seemed
an outrage on the dignity of the philo-
sophical character. This was quite
enough for hatred; and the philoso-
phers, as their eyes began to open,
saw that Crescens and Celsus were
right, and accorded their hatred most
freely and heartily.
But Christianity did not stop here.
With the old original schools and their
offshoots it was a recognized principle
that philosophy was only for philoso-
phers ; and this was especially true of
Clement's most influential contempor-
aries, the Neo-Platonists. The vul-
gar had no part in it, in fact could not
come within the sphere of its influence ;
how could they ? How could the sail-
ors, who, after a voyage, went to pay
their vows in the temple of Neptune
on the quay, or the porters who drag-
ged the grain sacks and the hemp
bundles from the tall warehouses to
the holds of Syrian and Greek mer-
chantmen, or the negro slaves who
fanned the brows of the foreign prince,
or the armorers of the Jews' quarter,
or the dark-skinned, bright -eyed
Egyptian women of the Rhacotis
suspected of all evil from thieving
to sorcery, or, more than all, the
drunken revellers and poor harlots
who made night hideous when the
Egyptian moon looked down on the
palaces of the Brucheion how could
any of these find access to the sublime
secrets of Plato or the profound com-
mentaries of his disciples ? Even if
they had come in crowds to the lec-
ture-halls which no one wanted them
to do, or supposed they would do
they could not have been admitted
nor entertained ; for even the honest
occupations of life, the daily labors
necessary in a city of 300,000 free-
men, were incompatible with imbibing
the divine spirit of philosophy. So
the philosophers had nothing to say
to all these. If they had been asked
what would become of such poor
workers and sinners, they would pro-
bably have avoided an answer as best
they could. There were the temples
and Serapis and Isis and the priests
they might go to them. It was certain
that philosophy was not meant for the
vulgar. In fact, philosophy would be
unworthy of a habitation like the Mu-
seum would deserve to have its pen-
sions stopped, its common hall abolish-
ed, and its lecture-rooms shut up if
ever it should condescend to step into
the streets and speak to the herd. It
was, therefore, with a disgust unspeak-
able, and a swiftly-ripening hatred,
that the philosophers saw Christianity
openly proclaiming and practising the
very opposite of all this. True, it had
learned men and respected men in its
ranks, but it loudly declared that its
mission was to the lowly, and the
mean, and the degraded, quite as
much as to the noble, and the rich,
and the virtuous. It maintained that
the true divine philosophy, the source
of joy for the present and hope for the
future, was as much in the power of
the despised bondsman, trembling un-
der the lash, as of the prince-go \ 7 ernor,
or the Cgesar himself, haughtily wield-
ing the insignia of sovereignty. We
know what its pretensions and tenets
were, but it is difficult to realize how
they must have clashed with the no-
tions of intellectual paganism in the
city of Plotinus how the hands that
would have been gladly held out in
friendship, had it come in respectable
The Christian Schools of Alexandria.
49
and conventional guise, were shut and
clenched, when they saw in its train
the rough mechanic, the poor maid-
servant, the negro, and the harlot.
There could be no compromise be-
tween two systems such as these.
For a time it might have seemed as
if they could decide their quarrel in
the schools, but the old Serpent and
his chief agents knew better : and so
did Clement and the Christian doctors,
at the very time that they were taking
advantage of fair weather to occupy
every really strong position which the
enemy held. The struggle soon grew
into the deadly hand-to-hand grapple
that ended in leaving the corpse of
paganism on the ground, dead but not
buried, to be gradually trodden out of
sight by a new order of things.
It must not, however, be supposed
that the Christian school of Alexan-
dria was wholly, or even chiefly, em-
ployed in controversy with the schools
of the heathen. The first care of the
Church was, as at all times, the house-
hold of the faith : a care, however, in
the fulfilment of which there is less
that strikes as novel or interesting at
first sight than in that remarkable ag-
gressive movement of which it has
been our object to give some idea.
But even in the Church's household-
working there is much that is both
instructive and interesting, as we get
a glimpse of it in Clement of Alexan-
dria. The Church in Alexandria, as
elsewhere, was made up of men from
every lot and condition of life. There
were officials, civil and military, mer-
chants, shop-keepers, work-people
plain, hard-striving men, husbands,
and fathers of families. In the wake
of the upper thousands followed a long
and wide train the multitude who
compose the middle classes of a great
city ; and it was from their ranks that
the Church was mainly recruited.
They might not feel much interest
in the university, beyond the fact that
its numerous and wealthy students
were a welcome stimulus to trade ;
but still they had moral and intellect-
4
ual natures. They must have craved
for some kind of food for their minds
and hearts, and cannot have been satis-
fied with the dry, unnourishing scraps
that were flung to them by the super-
cilious philosophers. They must have
felt no small content those among
them who had the grace to hearken
to the teachings of Clement when he
told them that the philosophy he taught
was as much for them as for their mas-
ters and their betters. They listened
to him, weighed his words, and ac-
cepted them ; and then a great ques-
tion arose. It was a question that was
being debated and settled at Antioch,
at Rome, and at Athens, no less than
at Alexandria; but at Alexandria it
was Clement who answered it. " We
believe your good tidings," they said ;
" but tell us, must we change our lives
wholly and entirely ? Is everything
that we have been doing so far, and
our fathers have been doing before
us, miserably and radically wrong?"
They had bought and sold ; they had
married and given in marriage ; they
had filled their warehouses and freight-
ed their ships ; they had planted and
builded, and brought up their sons and
daughters. They had loved money,
and the praise of their fellow-men;
they had their fashions and their cus-
toms, old and tune-honored, and so in-
terwoven with their very life as to be
almost identified with it. Some of their
notions and practices the bare an-
nouncement of the Gospel sufficiently
condemned ; and these must go at once.
But where was the line to be drawn ?
Did the Gospel aim at regenerating
the world by forbidding marriage and
laying a ban on human labor; by
making life intolerable with asceti-
cism ; by emptying the streets and the
market-places, and driving men to
Nitria and the frightful rocks of the
Upper Nile ? And what made the
question doubly exciting was the two-
fold fact, first, that in those very days
men and women were continually flee-
ing from home and family, and hiding,
in the desert ; and secondly, that there
were in that very city congregations of
50
The Christian Schools of Alexandria.
men calling themselves Christians, who
proclaimed that it was wrong to marry,
and that flesh-meat and wine were sin-
ful indulgences.
The answer that Clement gave to
these questionings is found mainly in
that work of his which is called Ptzda-
ffogus, or "The Teacher." The an-
swer needed was a sharp, a short, and
a decisive one. It needed to be like a
surgical operation rapidly performed,
completed, with nothing further to be
done but to fasten the bandages, and
leave the patient to the consequences,
whatever they might be. Society had
to be reset. We need not repeat for
the thousandth time the fact of the un-
utterable corruptness and rottenness of
the whole pagan world. It was not
that there were wanting certain true
ideas of duty toward the state, the
family, the fellow-citizen : the evil lay
far deeper. It was not good sense that
was wanting ; it was the sense of the
supernatural. " Let us eat and drink,
for to-morrow we die," was the formula
that expressed the code of popular mo-
rality ; and because men could not " eat
and drink" comfortably and luxurious-
ly without some sort of law, order, and
mutual compact, it followed as a neces-
sary consequence that there must be
law, order, and compact. It was not,
therefore, that Clement had merely to
hold up the Gospel and show them its
meaning here and its application there.
He had to shift the very groundwork
of morality, to take up the very foun-
dations of the moral acts that go to
make up life as viewed in the light of
right and wrong. He had to substi-
tute heaven for earth, hereafter for
here, God for self. And he did so
in a fashion not unknown in the Catho-
lic Church since, as indeed it had been
not unknown to St. Paul long before.
He simply held up to them the cruci-
fix. Let any one turn to the com-
mencement of the Pcedagogus, and
he will find a description of what a
teacher ought to be. At the begin-
ning of the second chapter he will
read these words : " My children, our
teacher is like the Father, whose Son
he is ; in whom there is no sin, great
or small, nor any temptation to sin ;
God in the figure of a man, stainless,
obedient to his Father's will ; the
Word, true God, who is in the Father,
who is at the Father's right hand, true
God in the form of a man ; to whom
we must strive with all our might to
make ourselves like." It sounds like
the commencement of a children's re-
treat in one of our modern cities to
hear Clement proclaim so anxiously
that the teacher and model of men is
no other than Jesus, and that we must
all become children, and go and listen
to him and study him ; yet it is a sen-
tence that must have spoken to the
very inmost hearts of all who had a
thought or care for their souls in
Alexandria ; and one can perceive,
in the terms used in the original
Greek, a conscious adaptation of epi-
thets to meet more than one Platonic
difficulty. It was the reconciliation of
the true with the beautiful. The Alex-
andrians, Greek and Egyptian, with
their Greek longings for the beautiful,
and their Egyptian tendings to the
sensible, were- not put off by Clement
with a cold abstraction. A mathema-
tical deity, formed out of lines, rela-
tions, and analogies, such as Neo-
Platonism offered, was well enough
for the lecture-room, but had small
hold upon the heart. Christianity
restored the thrilling sense of a per-
sonal God, which Neo-Platonism de-
stroyed, but for which men still sighed,
though they knew not what they were
sighing for ; and Christianity, by
Clement's mouth, taught that the liv-
ing and lovely life of Jesus was to be
the end and the measure of the life of
all. They were to follow him : " My
angel shall walk before you," is Clem-
ent's own quotation. And having
thus laid down the regenerating prin-
ciple God through Jesus Christ
he descends safely and fearlessly into
details. Minutely and carefully he
handles the problems of life, and sets
them straight by the light of the life of
Jesus.
These details and these directions,
The Christian Schools of Alexandria.
51
as left to us by Clement in the Pceda-
gogus, are only what we might antici-
pate from a Christian teacher to his
flock ; and yet they are very interest-
ing, and disclose many facts that are
phers themselves really understood and
practically followed : " Let us eat and
drink !" Again, a navigable river, a
rainless sky, and a climate perhaps the
finest in the world, offered both induce-
full of suggestion to one who reads by ments and facilities for parties of pleas-
the light of the Catholic faith. Who
would not like to hear what Clement
said to the Church of Alexandria about
dress, beauty, feasting, drinking, fur-
niture, conversation, money, theatres,
sleep, labor, and housekeeping ? We
know well that there must have been
ample scope for discourse on all these
topics. The rich Alexandrians, like
the rich Romans, and the rich Corin-
thians, and the rich everywhere, were
fearfully addicted to luxury, and their
poorer neighbors followed their exam-
ple as well as they could. But there
were circumstances peculiar to Alex-
andria that enabled it to outdo the rest
of the world in this matter ; putting
Rome, of course, out of the question.
It was the market for India ; and see-
ing that almost everything in the way
of apparel came from India, Alexan-
dria had the pick of the best that the
world could afford, and seems not to
have been behindhand in taking ad-
vantage of its privilege. Nobody en-
joyed more than the Alexandrian
whether he were a descendant of the
Macedonian who came in with the
Conqueror, or a, parvenu of yesterday
grown great by his wheat-ships or his
silk-bales >to sweep the Heptastadion,
or promenade the Great Quay, or
lounge in the gardens of the Museum,
in what ancient tailors and milliners
would call a synthesis of garments, as
ample, and stiff, and brilliant as Indian
looms could make them. Then, again,
Alexandria was a university town.
Two hundred years of effeminate
Ptolemies and four hundred of wealthy
students had been more than enough
to create a tradition of high, luxurious
living. The conjunction of all that
was to be got for money, with any
amount of money to get it with, had
made Alexandria a model city for car-
rying out the only maxim which the
greater number even of the philoso-
ure and conviviality in general. It is
true the river was only a canal : one
thing was wanting to the perfection
of Alexandria as a site for an empire
city, viz., the Nile ; but that the canal
was a moderate success in the eyes of
the Alexandrians may be inferred from
the fact that Canopus, where it finished
its short course of thirteen or fourteen
miles, and joined the Nile, was a per-
fect city of river-side hotels, to which
the boats brought every day crowds of
pleasure-seekers. Very gay were the
silken and gilded boats, with their
pleasant canopies and soothing music ;
and very gay and brilliant, but not
very reputable, were the groups that
filled them, with their crowns of flow-
ers, their Grecian attitudinizing, and
their ingenious arrangements of fan-
working slaves. This was the popu-
lation which it was Clement's work to
convert to purity and moderation.
It is very common with Clement's
modern critics, when making what our
French allies would call " an appreci-
ation" of him, to set him down as a
solemn trifler. They complain that
they cannot get any "system of
theology" out of his writings ; indeed,
they doubt whether he so much as had
one. They find him use the term
" faith" first in one sense and then in
another, and they are especially of-
fended by his minute instructions on
certain matters pertaining to meat,
drink, and dress. To any one who
considers what Clement intended to do
in his writings, and especially in the
Pcedagogus, there is no difficulty in
seeing an answer to a difficulty like
this. He did not mean to construct a
" system of theology," and therefore it
is no wonder if his critics cannot find
one. He did not even mean to state
the broad, general principles of the
Gospel: his hearers knew these well
enough. What he did mean to do was,
The Clmsiian Schools of Alexandria.
to apply these general rules and prin-
ciples to a variety of cases occurring
in everyday life. And yet, as a mat-
ter of fact, it is to be observed that he
always does lay down broad principles
before entering into details. In the
matter of eating, for instance, regard-
ing which he is very severe in his de-
nunciations, and not without reason,
he takes care to state distinctly the
great Catholic canon of mortification :
"Though all things were made for
man, yet it is not good to use all, nor
at all times." Again, in the midst of
his contemptuous enumeration of an-
cient wines, he does not forget to say,
" You are not robbed of your drink :
it is given to you, and awaits your
hand ;" that which is blamed is excess.
He sums up what he has been saying
against the voluptuous entertainments
then so universal by the following
sentence a novelty, surely, to both
extremes of pagan society in Alexan-
dria " In one word, whatever is natu-
ral to man must not be taken from
him ; but, instead thereof, must be
regulated according to fitting measure
and time."
In deciding whether Clement was a
"solemn trifler," or not, there is
another consideration which must not
be omitted, and that is his sense of the
humorous. It may sound incongruous
when speaking of a Father of the
Church, and much more of a reputed
mystical Father like Clement, but we
think no one can deny that he often
supplements a serious argument by a
little stroke of pleasantry. As many
of his sentences stand, a look or a
smile would lighten them up and make
them sparkle into humor. Paper and
ink cannot carry the tone of the voice
or the glance of the eye, and Clement's
voice has been silent and his eye
dimmed for many a century ; but may
we not imagine that at times something
of archness in the teacher's manner
would impart to his weighty words a
touch of quaintness, and the habitual-
ly thoughtful eye twinkle with a gleam
of pleasantry ? He would be no true
follower of Plato if it were not so.
Who shall say he was not smiling
when he gave out that formal list of
wines, of eatables, and of scents most
affected by the fashionables of those
days ? He concludes an invective
against scandalous feats by condemn-
ing the universal crown of roses as a
" nuisance :" it was damp, it was cold ;
it hindered one from using either his
eyes or his ears properly. He advises
his audience to avoid much curious
carving and ornamenting of bed-posts;
for creeping things, he says, have a
habit of making themselves at home
in the mouldings. He asks if one's
hands cannot be as well washed in a
clay basin as in a silver one. He
wonders how one can dare to put a
plain little loaf on a grand "wing-
footed" table. He cannot see why a
lamp of earthenware will not give as
good a light as one of silver. He al-
ludes with disgust to "hissing frying-
pans," to " spoon and pestle," and even
to the " packed stomachs" of their pro-
prietors ; to Sicilian lampreys, and At-
tican eels ; shell-fish from Capo di
Faro, and Ascrean beet from the foot
of Helicon ; mullet from the Gulf of
Thermae, and pheasants from the
Crimea. We hear him contemptuous-
ly repeat the phrases of connoisseurs
about their wines, the startling variety
of which we know from other sources
besides his writings : he speaks of the
" scented Thasian," the aromatic " Les-
bian," the " sweet wine of Crete," the
"pleasant Syracusan." The articles
of plate which he enumerates to con-
demn would be more than sufficient to
furnish out a modern wedding break-
fast. To scents he gives no quarter.
We have heard a distinguished pro-
fessor of chemistry assert, in a lecture,
that wherever there is scent on the
surface there is sure to be dirt beneath ;
and, from the well-known fact that in
Capua there was one whole street oc-
cupied by perfumers, he could draw
no other inference than that Capua
must have been " a very dirty city."
It would appear that Clement of Al-
exandria was much of this opinion.
He gives a picture of a pompous per-
The Christian Schools of Alexandria.
53
sonage in a procession, " going along
marvellously scented, for the purpose
of producing a sensation, and yet un-
derneath as foul as he could be." He
enumerates the absurd varieties of
ointments in fashion, and orders them
to be thrown away. He is indignant
at the saffron-colored scented robe
that the gentlemen wore. He will
have no flowing or trailing vestments ;
no " Attic buskins," no " Persian san-
dals." He complains that the ladies
go and spend the whole day at the
perfumer's, the goldsmith's, and the
milliner's, just as if he were speaking
of " shopping" in the nineteenth cen-
tury, instead of A.D. 200. He blames
the men for frequenting the barbers'
shops, the taverns, and the dicing-
houses. It is amusing in these days
to read of his denunciations of shaving.
He has no patience with " hair-haters :"
a man without the hair that God gave
him is a " base sight." " God attached
such importance to hair," he says,
" that he makes a man come to hair
and sense at the same time." But,
in reality, this vehement attack on the
" smooth men," as he calls them, points
to one of the most flagrant of heathen
immoralities, and reveals in the con-
text a state of things to which we may
not do more than allude. He con-
demns luxury in furniture, from "beds
with silver feet, made of ivory and
adorned with gold and tortoise-shell,"
down to "little table-daggers," that
ancient ladies and gentlemen used in-
differently to their food and to their
slaves. All this is not very deep, but
it is just what Clement wanted to say,
and a great deal more useful in its
place and connection than a " system
of theology." We may add that it is
a great deal more interesting to us,
who know pretty well what Clement's
" system of theology" was, but not so
well what were the faults and failings
of his Christian men and women in
those far-off Alexandrian times.
There is another epithet bestowed
upon Clement, more widely and with
better authority than that of " trifler."
He is called a mystic. He deals in
allegorical interpretations of Holy
Scripture, in fanciful analogies, and
whimsical reasonings ; he was carried
away by the spirit of Neo-Platonism,
and substituted a number of idle myths
for the stern realities of the Gospel.
It is not our business at present to
show, by references, that this accusa-
tion is untrue ; but we may admit at
once that it is not unfounded, and we
maintain that it points to an excellence,
rather than a defect, in his teaching.
From the remarks made just now, the
reader will be prepared to expect that
a teacher in Alexandria in Clement's
days must have been a mystic. It
was simply the fashion ; and a fashion,
in thought and speech, exacts a certain
amount of compliance from those who
think or speak for the good of its fol-
lowers. Neo-Platonism was not ex-
tant in his time as a definite system,
but ever since the days of Pinion its
spirit had been the spirit of the Mu-
seum. Nature, in its beauty and va-
riety, was an allegory of the soul so
said the philosophers, and the crowd
caught it up with eagerness. The
natural philosopher could not lecture
on Aristotle De Animalibus with-
out deducing morals in the style of
JEsop. The moralist, in his turn,
could hardly keep up his class-list
without embodying his Beautiful and
his Good in the eesthetical garb of a
myth the more like Plato, the better.
The mathematician discoursed of num-
bers, of lines, and of angles, but the
interesting part of his lecture was
when he drew the analogy from lines
and numbers to the soul and to God.
Alexandria liked allegory, and be-
lieved, or thought she believed, that
the Seen was always a type of the
Unseen. Such a belief was not un-
natural, and by no means hopelessly
erroneous ; nay, was it not highly use-
ful to a Christian teacher, with the
Bible in his hand, in which he would
really have to show them so many
things, per allcgoriam dicta ? Clement
took up the accustomed tone. Had
he done otherwise, he would have been
strange and old-fashioned, whereas he
54
The Christian Schools of Alexandria.
wanted to get the ear of his country-
men, and therefore thought it no harm
to fall in with their humor for the
mythical ; just as good Father Faber
preached and wrote like a modern
Englishman, and not like an antique
Douai controversialist, or a well-mean-
ing translator of " Sermons from the
French." But, say the objectors,
Clement's interpretation of Scripture
is so very forced and unnatural. The
whole subject of allegorical interpreta-
tion of Sacred Scripture is too wide to
be entered upon here; but that the
Bible, especially the Old Testament,
has an allegorical sense, no one de-
nies, and the decision of what is the
true allegorical sense depends more
upon the authority of the teacher than
upon the interpretation itself. In the
time of Clement, when the Gnostics
were attributing the Old Testament to
the Evil Principle, there was a special
necessity for a warm and loving ac-
knowledgment that it was the voice
and the teaching of God to man ; and
it is no wonder, therefore, that he al-
lows himself, with the brilliant fancy
of an Athenian, even if sometimes
with the fantasticalness of an Alexan-
drian, to extract meanings out of the
sacred text which our sober eyes could
never have discovered. As it is, we
owe to his mysticism no small portion
of the eloquence and beauty of his
writings ; we may instance that charm-
ing passage in the P<sdagogus where
he alludes to the incident related in
the twenty-sixth chapter of Genesis
"Abimelech, King of the Palestines,
looking out through a window, saw
Isaac playing with Rebecca his wife."
Isaac represents, the little one of
Christ, and is interpreted to be joy ;
Rebecca is patience ; the royal Abim-
elech signifies heavenly wisdom. The
child of Jesus Christ, joyful with a joy
that none but that blessed teacher can
give, lovingly sports with his " help-
mate," patience, and the wisdom that
is from above looks 0:1 and wonderingly
admires. The beauty of conception
and perfection of form that is insepa-
rable from true Greek art, whether in
a statue or a medal, an epic or an
epigram, is by no means wanting to
the first of the Greek Fathers. A
reader who should take up the Pceda-
gogus for no other than literary reas-
ons would not be disappointed ; he
would receive, from his reading, a very
high idea of the wisdom, the eloquence,
and, above all, the saintly unction of
the great Catholic doctor and philoso-
pher who first made human science
the handmaid of Christian theology.
The witnessing to the truth before
heathen philosophers and the teaching
the children of the faith might have
fully employed both the zeal and the
eloquence of Clement. But there was
another and a sadder use for words,
in the task of resisting the heresies
that seemed to grow like foul excres-
cences from the very growth of the
Church herself. Alexandria, the city
of Neo-Platonism, was also with
nearly as good a title the city of
Gnosticism. To examine the his-
tory of Gnosticism is not a tempting
undertaking. On the one side, it is
like walking into a fog, as dense and
unpleasant as ever marked a London
November ; on the other, it is to dis-
turb a moral cess-pool, proverbially
better left alone. Of the five groups
of the Gnostic family, which seem to
agree in little beside worshipping the
devil, holding to "emanations," and
owing their origin to Simon Magus,
the particular group that made Alex-
andria its headquarters acknowledged
as its leading names Basilides, Valen-
tine, and Mark, each of whom outdid
the other in the absurdity of his ravings
about eons, generations, and the like,
and in the abominableness of his prac-
tical licentiousness. Valentine and
Mark were contemporaries of Clem-
ent, if not personally (Valentine is
said to have died A.D. 150) at least
in their immediate influence. No one
can tell satisfactorily what made these
precious followers of Simon Magus
spend their days in patching up second-
hand systems out of the rags of cast-
off Oriental mysticism. No doubt
their jargon appeared somewhat less
The Christian Schools of Alexandria.
55
unnatural in their own days than it
does in ours. They lived nearer the
times when the wrecks of primeval
revelation and history had been
wrought into a thousand fantastic
shapes on the banks of the Indus, the
Euphrates, and the Nile, and when, in
the absence of the true light, men occu-
pied themselves with the theatrical illu-
minations of Bel, Isis, and Vishnu.
But these Gnostics, in the clear dawn of
the Gospel, still stuck to the fulsome
properties of the devil's play-house.
Unsavory and dishonest, they deserve
neither respect for sincerity nor allow-
ance for originality ; they were mere
spinners of " endless genealogies," and,
with such a fig-leaf apron, they tried
to conceal for a while the rankness of
the flesh that finally made the very
pagans join in hounding them from
the earth. The infamous Mark was
holding his conventicles in Alexandria
about the very time that Panteenus
and Clement were teaching. To read
of his high-flown theories about eons
and emanations, his sham magic, his
familiarity with demons, his impo-
sitions on the weaker sex, and the
frightful licentiousness that was the
sure end of it all, is like reading the
history of the doings of the Egyptian
priests in the Serapeion rather than
of those who called themselves Chris-
tians. And yet these very men, these
deluded Marcosians, gave out to
learned and unlearned Alexandria that
they alone were the true followers of
Christ. We may conceive the heart-
breaking work it would be for Clement
to repel the taunts that their doings
brought upon his name and profession,
and to refute and keep down false
brethren, whose arguments and strength
consisted in an appeal to curiosity
and brute passion. And yet how nobly
he does it, in that picture of the true
Gnostic, or Knower, to which he so
often returns in all his extant works!
But philosophers, faithful, and here-
tics do not exhaust the story of Clem-
c-nt's doing-*. It lends a solemn light
to the memorable history we are not-
ing, to bear in mind that the Church's
intellectual war with Neo-Platonist
and Gnostic was ever and again inter-
rupted by the yells of the blood-thirsty
populace, the dragging of confessors
to prison, and all the hideous appara-
tus of persecution. Which of us would
have had heart to argue with men who
might next day deliver us to the hang-
man ? Who would have found leisure
to write books on abstract philosophy
with such stern concrete realities as
the scourge and the knife waiting
for him in the street? Clement's
master began to teach just as one per-
secution was ceasing; Clement him-
self had to flee from his schools before
the "burden and heat" of another;
these were not times, one would sup-
pose, for science and orderly teaching.
Yet our own English Catholic annals
can, in a manner, furnish parallel cases
in more than one solid book of con-
troversy and deep ascetical tract,
thought out and composed when the
pursuivants were almost at the doors.
So true it is that when the Church's
work demands scientific and written
teaching, science appears and books
are written, though the Gentiles are
raging and the peoples imagining their
vain things.
Here, for the present, we draw to a
close these desultory notes on the Chris-
tian Schools of Alexandria. They
will have served their purpose if they
have but supplied an outline of that
busy intellectual life which is associat-
ed with the names of Pantaenus and
Clement. There is another name that
ought to follow these two the name
of Origen, suggesting another chapter
on Church history that should yield
to none in interest and usefulness.
The mere fact that in old Alexandria,
in the face of hostile science, clogged
and put to shame by pestilent heresies,
ruthlessly chased out of sight ever and
again by brute force in spite of all
this, Catholic science won respect from
its enemies without for a moment neg-
lecting the interests. of its own children,
is a teaching that will never be out of
date, and least of all at a time like
ours, and in a country where learning
56
Jem M-Gowaris Wish.
sneers at revelation, where a thousand
jarring sects invoke the sacred name
of Christ, and where public opinion
the brute force of the modern world,
as the rack and the fagot were of the
ancient never howls so loudly as
when it catches sight of the one true
Church of the living and eternal God.
From The Lamp.
JEM M'GOWAN'S WISH.
" I WISH I were a lord," said Pat
M' Go wan, a lazy young fellow, as he
stretched over his grandmother's turf-
fire a pair of brawny fists that were as
red as the blaze that warmed them.
" You wish to be a lord !" answered
Granny M'Gowan ; " oh, then, a mighty
quare lord you would make ; but, as
long as you live, Pat, never wish again ;
for who knows but you might wish in
the unlucky minute, and that it would
be granted to you ?"
" Faix, then, granny, I just wish I
could have my wish this minute."
"You're a fool, Pat, and have no
more sense in your head than a cracked
egg has a chance of a chicken inside
of it. Maybe you'd never cease re-
penting of your wish if you got it."
" Maybe so, granny, but for all that
Fd like to be a lord. Tell me, granny,
when does the unlucky minute come
that a body may get their wish ?"
"Why, you see, Pat, there is one
particular little bit of a minute of time
in every twenty-four hours that, if a
mortal creature has the unlucky chance
to wish on that instant, his wish,
whether for good or for bad, for life or
death, fortune or misfortune, sickness
or health, for himself or for others, the
wish is granted to him; but seldom
does it turn out for good to the wisher,
because it shows he is not satisfied
with his lot, and it is contrary to what
God in his goodness has laid down for
us all to do and suffer for his sake.
But, Pat, you blackguard, I see you
are laughing at your old granny be-
cause you think I am going to preach
a sermon to you ; but you're mistaken.
I'll tell you what happened to an uncle
of my own, Jem M'Gowan, who got
his wish when he asked for it."
" Got his wish oh, the lucky old
fellow !" cried Pat. " Do, granny, tell
me all about him. Got his wish ! oh,
how I wish I was a lord !"
" Listen to me, Pat, and don't be
getting on with any of your foolish
nonsense. My uncle, Jem M'Gowan,
was then something like yourself, Pat
a strapping, able chap, but one that,
like you too, would sooner be scorch-
ing his shins over the fire than cutting
the turf to make it, and rather watch-
ing the potatoes boiling than digging
them out of the ridge. Instead of
working for a new coat, he would be
wishing some one gave it to him.
When he got up in the morning, he
wished for his breakfast; and when he
had swallowed it, he wished for his
dinner ; and when he had bolted down
his dinner, he began to wish for his
supper; and when he ate his supper,
he wished to be in bed ; and when he
was in bed, he wished to be asleep
in fact, he did nothing from morning to
night but wish, and even in his dreams
I am quite sure he wished to be awake.
Unluclcy for Jem, his cabin was con-
vanient to the great big house of
Squire Kavanagh ; and when Jem
went out in the morning, shivering
with cold, and wishing for a glass -of
whisky to put spirits in him, and he
saw the bedroom windows of Squire
Kavaiiagh closed, and knew that the
squire was lying warm and snug in-
side, he always wished to be Squire
Kavanagh. Then, when he saw the
Jem M'Gowan's Wish.
57
squire driving the horse and the hounds
before him, and he all the while work-
ing in the field, he wished it still more ;
and when he saw him dancing with
the beautiful young ladies and illigant
young gentlemen in the moonlight of
a summer's evening, in front of his
fine hall-door and under the shade of
the old oak-trees, he wished it more
than ever. The squire was always
coming before him ; and so happy a
man did he seem that Jem was al-
ways saying to himself, ' I wish I was
Squire Kavanagh,' from, cockcrow to
sunset, until he at last hit upon the
unfortunate minute in the twenty-four
hours when his wish was to be granted.
He was just after eating his dinner
of fine, mealy potatoes, fresh-churned
buttermilk, and plenty of salt and salt-
butter to relish them, when he stretched
out his two legs, threw up his arms,
and yawned out, 'Oh, dear, I wish I
was Squire Kavanagh !'
"The words were scarce uttered
when he found himself, still yawning,
in the grand parlor of Kavanagh
House, sitting opposite to a table laid
out with china, and a table-cloth, silver
forks, and no end of silver spoons, and
a roaring hot beefsteak before him.
Jem rubbed his eyes and then his
hands with joy, and thought to him-
self, ' By dad, my wish is granted, and
I'll lay in plenty of beefsteak first of
all.' He began cutting away ; but,
before he had finished, he was inter-
rupted by some people coming in. It
was Sir Harry M'Manus, Squire Brien,
and two or three other grand gentle-
men; and says they to him, 'Kava-
nagh, don't you know this is the day
you're to decide your bet for five hun-
dred pounds, that you will leap your
horse over the widest part of the pond
outside ?'
"'Is it me? says Jem. 'Why, I
never leaped a horse in my life !'
"'Bother!' says one; 'you're joking.
You told us yourself that you did it
twenty times, and there's the English
colonel that made the bet with you,
and he'll be saying, if you don't do it,
that the Irish are all braggers ; so, my
dear fellow, it just comes to this you
must either leap the pond or fight me ;
for, relying upon your word, I told the
colonel I saw you do it myself.'
"'I must fight you or leap the pond,
is it ?' answered Jem, trembling from
head to foot.
" ' Certainly, my dear fellow,' re-
plied Sir Harry. 'Either I must
shoot you or see you make the leap ;
so take your choice.'
"'Oh! then, bring out the horse,'
whimpered Jem, who was beginning
to wish he wasn't Squire Kavanagh.
" In a minute afterward, Jem found
himself out in the lawn, opposite a
pond that appeared to him sixty feet
wide at the least. ' Why,' said he,
'you might as well ask me to jump
over the ocean, or give a hop-step-and-
a-leap from Howth to Holyhead, as get
any horse to cross that lake of a pond.'
" ' Come, Kavauagh,' said Sir Hen-
ry, 'no nonsense with us. We know
you can do it if you like ; and now that
you're in for it, you must finish it.'
" ' Faix, you'll finish me, I'm afeerd,'
said Jem, seeing they were in earnest
with him ; ' but what will you do if I'm
drowned ?'
" ' Do ?' says Sir Henry. ' Oh, make
yourself aisy on that account. You
shall have the grandest wake that ever
was seen in the country. We'll bury
you dacently, and we'll all say that the
bouldest horseman now in Ireland is
the late Squire Kavanagh. If that
doesn't satisfy you, there's no pleasing
you ; so bring out the horse immedi-
ately.'
"'Oh! murder, murder!' says Jem
to himself ; ' isn't this a purty thing,
that I must be drowned to make a
great character for a little spalpeen
like Squire Kavanagh? Oh, then, it's
I that wish I was Jem M' Go wan
again ! Going to be drowned like
a rat, or smothered like a blind kitten !
and all for a vagabond I don't care a
straw about. I, that never was on a
horse's back before, to think of leaping
over an ocean ! Bad cess to you,
Squire Kavanagh, for your boastin'
and your wagerin' !'
58
Jem M-Gowarfs Wish.
"Well, a fine, dashing, jumping,
rearing, great big gray horse was led
up by two grooms to Jem's side. 'Oh,
the darling!' said Sir Harry; 'there
he goes ! there's the boy that will win
our bets for us! Clap him at once
upon the horse's back,' says he to the
grooms. The sight left Jem's eyes
the very instant he saw the terrible
gray horse, well known as one of the
most vicious bastes in the entire coun-
try. If he could, he'd have run away,
but fright kept him standing stock-
still; and, before he knew where he
was, he was hoisted into the saddle.
* Now, boys,' roared Sir Harry, ' give
the horse plenty whip, and my life for
it he is over the pond.'
"Jem heard two desperate slashes
made on the flanks of the horse. The
creature rose on his four legs off the
ground, and came down with a soss
that sent Jem up straight from the
saddle like a ball, and down again
with a crack fit to knock him into a
hundred thousand pieces, not one of
them bigger than the buttons of his
waistcoat. ' Murder !' he shrieked ;
' I wish I was Jem M' Go wan back
again !' But there was no use in say-
ing this, for he had already got his
wish. The horse galloped away like
lightning. He felt rising one instant
up as high as the clouds, and the next
he came with a plop into the water,
like a stone that you would make take
a ' dead man's dive.' He remembered
no more till he saw his two kind
friends, Sir Harry M'Manus and Squire
Brien, holding him by the two legs in
the air, and the water pouring from
his mouth, nose, and every stitch of
his clothes, as heavy and as constant
as if it was flowing through a sieve, or
as if he was turned into a watering-
pot.
" ' I'm a dead man/ says he, looking
up in the face of his grand friends as
well as he could, and kicking at the
same time to get loose from them. ' I'm
a dead man ; and, what's worse, I'm a
murdered man by the two of you.'
" ' Bedad, you're anything but that,'
said Sir Harry. ' You're now the
greatest man in the county, for, though
you fell into the pond, the horse leapt
it ; and I have won my bet, for which
I am extremely obliged to you.'
" After shaking the water out of him,
they laid him down on the grass, got a
bottle of whisky, and gave him as much
as he chose of it. Jem's spirits began
to rise a little, and he laughed heartily
when they told him he had won 500
from the English colonel. Jem got
on his legs, and was beginning to walk
about, when who should he see coming
into the demesne but two gentlemen
one dressed like an officer, with under
his arm a square mahogany box, the
other with a great big horsewhip. Jem
rubbed his hands with delight, for he
made sure that the gentleman who car-
ried the box was going to make Squire
Kavanagh that is, himself some
mighty fine present.
" ' Kavanagh/ said Sir Harry, ' you
will want some one to stand by you as
a friend in this business ; would you
wish me to be your friend ?'
" ' In troth, I would,' says Jem. * I
would like you to act as a friend to
me upon all occasions.'
" ' Oh, that's elegant!' said Sir Har-
ry. ( We'll now have rare sport.'
" ' I'm mighty glad to hear it,' Jem
replied, 'for I want a little sport after
all the troubles I had.'
"'Oh, you're a brave fellow/ said
Sir Harry.
" ' To be sure I am/ answered Jem.
'Didn't I leap the gray horsQ over the
big pond ?'
" The gentleman with the box and
whip here came up to Jem and his
friends ; and the whip-gentleman took
off his hat, and says he, ' Might I be
after asking you, is there any one of
the present company Squire Kava-
nagh ?'
" Jem did not like the looks of the
gentleman, and Sir Harry M'Manus
stepped before him, and said 'Yes ; he
is here to the fore. What is your busi-
ness with him ? I am acting as his
friend, and I have a right to ask the
question.'
" ' Then, I'll tell ye what it is/ said
Jem MGowan's Wish.
59
the gentleman. f He insulted my sis-
ter at the Naas races yesterday.'
" ' Faix/ says Jem, * that's a lie !
Sure, I wasn't near Naas races.'
" The word was hardly out of his
mouth when he got a crack of a horse-
whip across the face, that cut, he
thought, his head in two. He caught
hold of the gentleman, and tried to
take the whip out of his hand ; but, in-
stead of the strength of Jem M' Go wan,
he had only the weakness of Squire
Kavanagh, and he was in an instant
collared ; and, in spite of all his kick-
ing and roaring, lathered with the big
whip from the top of his head to the
sole of his foot. The gentleman got at
last a little tired of beating him, and,
flinging him away from him, said
'You and I are now quits about the
lie, but you must give me satisfaction
for insulting my sister.'
" ' Satisfaction !' roared out Jem, as
lie twisted and turned about with the
pain of the beating. ' Beclad, I'll never
be satisfied till every bone in your ugly
body is broken.'
" ' Very well,' said the gentleman.
'My friend, Captain M'Ginnis, is come
prepared for this.'
" Upon that, Jem saw the square
box opened that he thought was filled
with a beautiful present for him ; and
he saw four ugly-looking pistols lying
beside each other, and in one corner
about two dozen of shining bran-new
bullets. Jem's knees knocked together
with fright when he saw Captain
M'Ginnis and Sir Harry priming and
loading the pistols.
" ' Oh ! murder, murder ! this is
worse than the gray horse,' he said.
' Now I am quite sure of being killed
entirely.' So he caught hold of Sir
Harry by the coat, and stuttered out,
* Oh, then, what in the world are ye
going to do with me ?'
" ' Do ?' replied his friend ; * why,
you're going to stand a shot, to be
sure.'
" ' The devil a shot I'll stand,' said
Jem. ' I'll run away this minute.'
" ' Then, by my honor and veracity,
if you do/ replied Sir Harry, ' I'll stop
you with a bullet. My honor is con-
cerned in this business. You asked
me to be your friend, and I'll see you
go through it respectably. You must
either stand your ground like a gentle-
man, or be shot like a dog.'
" Jem heartily wished he was no
longer Squire Kavanagh ; and as they
dragged him up in front of the gentle-
man, and placed them about eight
yards asunder, he thought of the quiet, ,"'^ .
easy life he led before he became a'
grand gentleman. He never while a
laboring boy was ducked in a pond, or
shot like a wild duck. But now he
heard something said about 'making
ready ;' he saw the gentleman raise
his pistol on a level with his head ; he
tried to lift his arm, but it stuck as fast
by his side as if it was glued there.
He saw the wide mouth of the wicked
gentleman's pistol opened at his very
eye, and looking as if it were pasted
up to his face. He could even see the
leaden bullet that was soon to go
skelpin' through his brains ! He saw
the gentleman's finger on the trigger !
His head turned round and round, and
in an agony he cried out ' Oh, I wish
I was Jem M' Go wan back again !'
" ' Jem, you'll lose half your day's
work,' said Ned Maguire, who was
laboring in the same field with him.
' There you've been sleeping ever since
your dinner, while Squire Kavanagh,
that you are always talking about, was
shot a few minutes ago in a duel that
he fought with some strange gentleman
in his own demesne.'
" ' Oh,* said Jem, as soon as he
found that he really wasn't shot, 'I
wouldn't for the wealth of the world
be a gentleman. Better to labor all
day than spend half an hour in the
grandest of company. Faix, I've had
enough and to spare of grand company
and being a gentleman since I have
gone to sleep here in the potato-field ;
and Squire Kavanagh, if he only knew
it, had much more reason, poor man,
to wish he was Jem M'Gowan than I
had to wish I was Squire Kavanagh/
"And ever after that, Pat," con-
60
The Mont Cenis Tunnel.
eluded the old lady, " Jem M'Gowan
went about his work like a man, in-
stead of wasting his time in nonsensical
wishings."
" Thankee, granny," yawned Pat
M' Go wan, as he shuffled off to bed.
" After that long story, I don't think
I'll ever wish to be a lord again."
From Chambers's Journal.
THE MONT CENIS TUNNEL.
THE tunnel through the Alps at
present being pierced to connect the
railway system of France and Italy,
has acquired the title of the " Mont
Cenis Tunnel ;" but its real position
and direction have very little in com-
mon with that well-known Alpine pass.
On examining a chart of the district
which has been selected for this im-
portant undertaking, we shall observe
that the main chain of the Cottian
Alps extends in a direction very near-
ly East and West, and that this portion
of it is bounded on either side by two
roughly parallel valleys. On the North
we have the valley of the Arc, and on
the South the valley of the Dora Ri-
pari, or, more strictly speaking, the
valley of Rochemolles, a branch of
the Dora. The AJC, flowing from East
to West, descends from Lanslebourg to
Modane, and from thence, after joining
the Isere, empties itself into the Rhone
above Valence. The torrent Roche-
molles, on the other hand, flowing from
West to East, unites itself with the
Dora Ripari at Oulx, descends through
a narrow and winding valley to Susa,
and thence along the plain to Turin.
The postal road, leaving St. Michel,
mounts the valley of the Arc as far as
Lanslebourg, then turns suddenly to
the South, passes the heights of the
Mont Cenis, and reaches Susa by a
very steep descent. On mounting the
valley of the Arc, and stopping about
eighteen miles West of Mont Cenis,
and a mile and a half below the Al-
pine village of Modane, we arrive at a
place called Fourneaux. Here, at
about three hundred feet above the
level of the main road, is the Northern
entrance of the tunnel ; the Southern
entrance is at the picturesque village
of Bardonneche, situated at about
twenty miles West of Susa, in the val-
ley of Rochemolles.
The considerations which decided
the Italian engineers upon selecting
this position for the contemplated tun-
nel, were principally the following:
first, it was the shortest route that
could be found ; secondly, the differ-
ence of level between the two extrem-
ities was not too great ; and, thirdly,
the construction of the connecting lines
of railway on the North, from St.
Michel to Fourneaux,and on the South,
from Susa to Bardonngche were, as
mountain railways go, practicable, if
not easy. The idea of a tunnel
through the Alps had long occupied the
minds of engineers and of statesmen
both in France and Italy ; but it is to
the latter country that we must give
the credit of having worked the idea
into a practical shape, and of having
inaugurated one of the most stupend-
ous works ever undertaken by any
people. To pierce a tunnel seven and
a half English miles long, by ordinary
means, through a hard rock, in a posi-
tion where vertical shafts were impos-
sible, would be an exceedingly diffi-
cult, if not, in a practical point of
view, an impossible undertaking, not
only on account of the difficulties of
ventilation, but also on account of the
immense time and consequent expense
which it would entail. It was evident,
The Mont Cenis Tunnel
61
then, that if the project of a tunnel
through the Alps was ever to be real-
ized, some extraordinary and com-
pletely new system of mining must be
adopted, by means of which not only
a rapid and perfect system of ventila-
tion could be insured, enabling the
miners to resume, without danger, their
labors immediately after an explosion,
but which would treble, or at least
double, the amount of work usually
performed in any given time by the
system hitherto adopted in tunnelling
through hard rock. To three Pied-
montese engineers, Messrs. Grandis,
Grattoni, and Sommeiller, is due the
merit of having solved this most diffi-
cult problem ; for whether the opening
of the Alpine tunnel take place in ten
or twenty years, its ultimate success is
now completely assured.
A short review of the history of this
undertaking, and a summary of the
progress made, together with a de-
scription of the works as they are con-
ducted at the present time, derived
from personal observation, cannot fail
to be interesting to English readers.
Early in 1857, at St. Pier d' Arena,
near Genoa, a series of experiments
was undertaken before a select govern-
ment commission, to examine into the
practicability of a project for a me-
chanical perforating-engine, proposed
by Messrs. Grandis, Grattoni, and Som-
meiller, for the more rapid tunnelling
through hard rock, and with a view to
its employment in driving the proposed
shaft through the Alps. This ma-
chine was to be worked by means of
air, highly compressed by hydraulic or
other economical means ; which com-
pressed air, after performing its work
in the perforating or boring machines,
would be an available and powerful
source of ventilation in the tunnel.
These experiments placed so complete-
ly beyond any doubt the practicability
of the proposed system, that, so soon
as August of the same year, the law
permitting the construction of the tun-
nel was promulgated.
At this time, absolutely nothing had
been prepared, with the exception of a
very general project presented by the
proposers, and the model of the ma-
chinery with which the experiments
had been made before the government
commission ; we cannot, therefore, be
much surprised on finding that' $ome
considerable time elapsed before f the
new machinery came into su^Qessful*
operation, the more particularly when
we consider the entire novelty - df : the
system, and the unusual difficulties na-
turally attending the first starting of
such large works, in districts so wild
and uncongenial as those of Four-
neaux and Bardonne^he. Fourneaux
was but a collection of mountain-huts,
containing about four hundred inhabi-
tants, entirely deprived of every means
of supporting the wants of any in-
crease of population, and where out-
side-work could not be carried on for
more than six months in the year,
owing to its ungenial climaHj?" Nor
was the case very different at Bardon-
neche, a small Alpine village, situated
at more than thirteen hundred metres
(4,225 feet) above the level of the sea,
and populated by about one thousand
inhabitants, who lived upon the pro-
duce of their small patches of earth,
and the rearing of sheep and goats,
and with their only road of communi-
cation with the outer world in a most
wretched and deplorable condition.
Under these circumstances, we can
imagine that the task of bringing to-
gether large numbers of workmen,
and their competent directing staff,
must have been by no means easy ;
and that the first work of the direc-
tion, although of a nature really most
arduous and tedious (requiring, above
all, time and patience), was also of a
nature that could scarcely render its
effects very apparent to the world at
large for some considerable time.
Again, it was necessary in this time to
make the detailed studies not only of
the tunnel itself, but of the compress-
ing and perforating machinery on the
large scale proposed to be used. This
machinery had to be made and trans-
ported through a country abounding in
difficulties. Then, as might be ex-
62
The Mont Cents Tunnel.
pected, actual trials showed serious de-
fects in the new machines for the com-
pression of air ; and, in perfecting the
mechanical perforators, unexpected dif-
ficulties were encountered, which often
threatened to prove insurmountable.
The total inexperience and unskilful-
ness of the workmen, and the necessi-
ty of giving to them the most tedious
instruction; accidents of most dis-
heartening and discouraging kinds
all tended to delay the successful ap-
plication of the new system.
The first important work to be un-
dertaken was the tracing or setting out
of the centre line of the proposed tun-
nel. It was necessary first to fix on
the summit of the mountain a number
of points, in a direct line, which should
pass through the two points chosen, or
rather necessitated by the conditions
of the locality, for the two ends of the
tunnel in the respective valleys of the
Arc and of Rochemolles ; secondly,
to determine the exact distance be-
tween these two ends ; and thirdly, to
know the precise difference of level
between the same points. These op-
erations commenced toward the end
of August, 1857. Starting from the
Northern entrance at Fourneaux, a
line was set out roughly in the direc-
tion of Bardonneche, which line was
found to cut the valley of Rochemolles
at a point considerably above the pro-
posed Southern entrance of the tunnel.
On measuring this distance, however, a
second and corrected line could be
traced, which was found to be very
nearly correct. Correcting this second
line in the same manner, always de-
parting from the North end, a third line
was found to pass exactly through
the two proposed and given points.
The highest point of this line was
found to be very nearly at an equal
distance from each end of the tunnel,
and at but a short distance below the
true summit of the mountain-point,
called the Grand Vallon." The line
thus approximately determined, it was
necessary to fix definitely and exactly
three principal stations or observato-
riesone on the highest or culminat-
ing point of the mountain, perpendic-
ularly over the axis of the tunnel ;
and the other two in a line with each
entrance, in such a manner that, from
the centre observatory, both the others
could be observed. At the Southern
end, owing to the convenient conform-
ation of the mountain, the observatory
could be established at a point not
very far from the mouth of the tunnel ;
but toward the North, several project-
ing points or counterforts on the moun-
tain necessitated the carrying of the
Northern observatory to a very consid-
erable distance beyond the entrance of
the gallery not, however, so far as
not to be discerned clearly and dis-
tinctly, and without oscillation, by the
very powerful and excellent instru-
ment employed. These three points
permanently established, remain as a
check for those intervening, and serve
as the base of the operations for the
periodical testing of the accuracy of
the line of excavation.
The first rough tracing out of the
line was completed before the winter
of the year 1857, and it was consid-
ered sufficiently correct to permit the
commencement of the tunnel at each
end by the ordinary means manual
labor. In the autumn of 1858, the
corrected line was traced, and the ob-
servatories definitely fixed, and all
other necessary geodetic operations
completed. Contemporaneously was
undertaken a careful levelling be-
tween the two ends, taken along the
narrow path of the Colle di Frejus,
and bench-marks were established at
intervals along the whole line. All
the data necessary for an exact profile
of the work were now obtained. The
exact length of the future tunnel was
found to be twelve thousand two hun-
dred and twenty metres, or about seven
and a half English miles ; and Ihe dif-
ference of level between the two
mouths was ascertained to be two hun-
dred and forty metres, or seven hun-
dred and eighty feet, the Southern or
Bardonneche end being the highest.
Under these circumstances, it would
have been easy to have established a
The Mont Cenis Tunnel
63
single gradient from Bardonneche
down to Fourneaux of about two
centimetres per metre that is, of about
one in fifty. But a little reflection
will show, that in working both ends of
the gallery at once, in order to effect
the proper drainage of the tunnel, it
would be necessary to establish two
gradients, each inclining toward the
respective mouths, and meeting in some
point in the middle. This, in fact, has
been done, and the two hundred and
forty metres' difference of level has
been distributed in the following
manner : From Bardonnche, the gra-
dient mounts at the rate of 0.50 per
one thousand metres that is, one in
two thousand as far as the middle of
the gallery ; here it descends toward
Fourneaux with a gradient of 22.20
metres per one thousand, or about one
in forty-five. The highest point of the
Grand Vallon perpendicularly over
the axis of the tunnel is 1615.8 metres,
or 5251.31 feet.
The difficulties encountered in the
carrying out of these various geodetic
operations can scarcely be exagge-
rated. It is true that nothing is more
easy than to picket out a straight line
on the ground, or to measure an angle
correctly with a theodolite ; but if we
consider the aspect of the locality in
which these operations had to be con-
ducted, repeated over and over again,
and tested in every available manner
with the most minute accuracy, we
shall be quite ready to accord our
share of praise and admiration to the
perseverance which successfully car-
ried out the undertaking. In these
regions, the sun, fogs, snow, and terrific
winds succeed each other with truly
marvellous rapidity, the distant points
become obscured by clouds, perhaps
at the very moment when an important
sight is to be taken, causing most vex-
atious delays, and often necessitating a
recommencement of the whole opera-
tion. These delays may in some cases
extend for days, and even weeks. To
these inconveniences add the necessity
of mounting and descending daily with
delicate instruments from three thou-
sand to four thousand feet over
rocks and rugged mountain-paths, the
time occupied in sending from one
point to another, and the difficulty of
planting pickets on elevated positions
often almost inaccessible. All these
inconveniences considered, and we must
admit the unusual difficulties of a series
of operations which, under other cir-
cumstances, would have offered noth-
ing peculiarly remarkable.
As has already been pointed out,
the excavation of the gallery at both
ends had already been in operation,
by ordinary means, since the latter
part of the year 1857 ; this work con-
tinued without interruption until the
machinery was ready ; and the prog-
ress made in that time affords a val-
uable standard by which to measure
the effect of the new machinery. In
the interval between the end of 1857
and that to which we have now ar-
rived, namely, the end of 1858, many
important works had been pushed for-
ward. At Bardonneche, the commu-
nications had been opened, and bridges
and roads constructed for facilitating
the transport of the heavy machinery.
Houses for the accommodation of the
workmen had been rapidly springing
up, together with the vast edifices for
the various magazines and offices. The
canal, more than a mile and a half in
length, for conveying water to the air-
compressing machines, was construct-
ed, and the little Alpine village had
become the centre of life and activity.
At Fourneaux, works of a similar
character had been put in motion;
only here the transport of the water
for the compressors was more costly
and difficult, the water being at a low
level. At first, a current derived from
the Arc was used to raise water to the
required height, but afterward it was
found necessary to establish powerful
forcing-pumps, new in their details,
which are worked by huge water-
wheels driven by the Arc itself. Early
in the month of June, 1859, the first
erection of the compressing machinery
was commenced at Bardonneche. The
badness of the season, however, and
64
The Mont Oenis Tunnel
the Italian campaign of this year, de-
layed the rapid progress, and even
caused a temporary suspension of this
work. The results obtained by the
experiments which had previously
been made on a small scale at St.
Pier d' Arena, failed completely in sup-
1 lying the data necessary to insure a
practical success to the first applica-
tions of the new system ; numberless
modifications, both in the compressing-
engines and in the perforating-ma-
chines, were found necessary ; and
several months were consumed in ex-
perimenting with, modifying, and im-
proving the huge machinery ; so that
it was not before the 10th of Novem-
ber, 1860, that five compressors were
successfully and satisfactorily at work.
On the 12th, however, two of the large
conducting-pipes burst, and caused a
considerable amount of damage, with-
out causing, however, any loss of life.
This accident revealed one or two very
serious defects in the manner of work-
ing the valves of the engine ; and in
order to provide against the possibility
of future accidents of the same na-
ture, further most extensive modifica-
tions were undertaken.
By the beginning of January, 1861,
the five compressors were again at
work; and on the 12th of this month
the boring-engine was introduced for
the first time into the tunnel. Very
little useful result was, however, ob-
tained for a long and anxious period,
beyond continually exposing defects
and imperfections in the perforators.
The pipes conducting the compressed
air from the compress Ing-machines to
the gallery gave at first continued
trouble and annoyance ; soon, however,
a very perfect system of joints was
established, and this source of difficulty
was completely removed. After much
labor and patience, and little by little,
the perforating-machines became im-
proved and perfected, as is always the
case in any perfectly new mechanical
contrivance having any great assem-
blage of parts. Actual practice forced
into daylight those numberless little
defects which theory only too easily
overlooks ; but there was no lack of
perseverance and ingenuity on the
part of the directing engineers ; one
by one the obstacles were met, encoun-
tered, and eventually overcome, and
the machines at last arrived at the
state of precision and perfection at
which they may be seen to-day. About
the month of May, 1861, the work
was suspended for about a month, in
consequence of a derangement in the
canal supplying water to the compress-
ors ; and it was considered necessary
to construct a large reservoir on the
flank of the mountain, to act as a de-
posit for the impurities contained in
the water, and which often caused
serious in convenience in the compress-
ors. In the whole of the first year,
1861, the number of working days was
two hundred and nine, and the advance
made was but one hundred and seven-
ty metres (five hundred and fifty feet),
or about eighteen inches per day of
twenty-four hours, an amount less than
might have been done by manual
labor in the same time. In the year
1862, however, in the three hundred
and twenty-five days of actual work,
the advance made was raised to three
hundred and eighty metres (one thou-
sand two hundred and thirty-five feet),
giving a mean advance of 1*17 metres,
or about three feet nine inches per day.
In the year 1863, the length done
(always referring to the South or Bar-
donneahe side) was raised to above
four hundred metres; and no doubt
this year a still greater progress will
have been made.
At the Fourneaux or Northern end
of the tunnel owing to increased dif-
ficulties peculiar to the locality the
perforation of the gallery was much
delayed. A totally different system of
mechanism for the compression of air
was necessitated ; and it was not be-
fore the 25th of January, 1863, that
the boring-machine was in successful
operation on this side, or two years
later than at Bardonneslie. The ex-
perience, however, gained at this latter
place, and the transfer of a few skilful
workmen, soon raised the advance
The Mont Cenis Tunnel.
65
made per day to an amount equivalent
to that effected at the Southern en-
trance. Thus, on the South side
(omitting the first year, 1861) since
the beginning of 1862, and on the
North side since the beginning of 1863,
the new system of mechanical tunnel-
ling may be said to have been in regu-
lar and successful operation.
In the beginning of September of
this year were completed in all three
thousand five hundred and seventy
metres of gallery. From this we de-
duct sixteen hundred metres done by
manual labor, leaving, for the work
done by the machines, a length of
nineteen hundred and seventy metres.
From this we can make a further de-
duction of the one hundred and seventy
metres executed in the first year of
experiment and trial at Bardonneche,
so that we have eighteen hundred
metres in length excavated by the
machines in a time dating from the
beginning of 1862 at the South end,
and from the beginning of 1863 at the
North end of the tunnel. Thus, up to
the month of September, 1864, we
have in all four j'ears and six months ;
and eighteen hundred metres divided
by 4*5 gives us four hundred metres as
the rate of progress per year at each
side, or in total, eight hundred metres
per year. Basing our calculation,
then, on this rate, we find that the
eight thousand six hundred and fifty
metres yet to be excavated will re-
quire about ten and a half more years ;
so that we may look forward to the
opening of the Mont Cenis tunnel at
about the year 1875. The directing
engineers, who have given good proof
of competency and skill, are, however,
of opinion that this period may be
considerably reduced, unless some
totally unlooked-for obstacles are met
with in the interior of the mountain.
As has been indicated above, sixteen
hundred metres in length of the tun-
nel was completed by manual labor
before the introduction of the mechani-
cal boring-engines, in a period of five
years at the North and three years at
the South side, equal to four years at
5
each end ; and eight hundred metres
in four years gives us two hundred
metres per year, or just one-half exca-
vated by the machine in the same
period.
In using the machines, up to the
present time, a perfect ventilation of
the tunnel has been secured by the
compressed air escaping from the ex-
haust of the boring-engines ; or by
jets of air expressly impinged into the
lower end of the gallery to clear out
rapidly the smoke and vapor formed
by the explosion of the mine. It
should be remembered, moreover, that
in working a gallery of this kind,
where vertical shafts are impossible,
by manual labor, a powerful and costly
air-compressing apparatus would have
been necessary for the ventilation of
the tunnel alone, so that the economy
of the system, as applied at the Mont
Cenis over the general system of tun-
nelling in hard rock, is evident. I pro-
pose, in the second portion of this
article, to give a short description of
the machinery employed and the sys-
tem of working adopted, both at the
South and North ends of the Mont
Cenis gallery.
ii.
Travellers who are given to pedes-
trian exercises may easily visit the
works being carried on for the per-
foration of the tunnel through the
Alps, both at Bardonneche and at
Modane, passing from one mouth of
the tunnel to the other by the Colle
di Frejus ; and in fine weather, the
tourist would not repent the eight
hours spent in walking from Bar-
donneche to Susa a distance of about
twenty-five miles. The road descends
the valley of the Dora Ripari, and
abounds in beautiful scenery. The
raihvay to be constructed along this
narrow defile will be found to tax
the skill of the engineer as much
as any road yet attempted. Its
total length, from the terminus at
Susa to the mouth of the Mont
Cenis tunnel, will be forty kilome-
66
The Mont Cenis Tunnel.
tres, or about twenty-four miles ; and
the difference of level between these
two points is about two thousand five
hundred feet, the line having a maxi-
mum gradient of one in forty, and a
minimum of one in eighty -four. There
will be three tunnels of importance,
having a total length of about ten
thousand feet; three others of lesser
dimensions, having a total length of
five thousand five hundred feet; and
twelve other small tunnels, of lengths
varying from two hundred and twenty
to eight hundred and fifty feet, their
total length being five thousand four
hundred feet. Thus, the total length
of tunnel on these twenty-four miles
of railway will be nearly twenty-one
thousand feet, or about four miles
just one-sixth of the whole line. There
will also be several examples of bridges
and retaining walls of unusual dimen-
sions.
The works being carried on at Bar-
donneche are on a larger scale than
at Modane ; so we will, with our read-
ers' permission, suppose ourselves ar-
rived in company at the former place,
and the first point which we will visit
together will be the large house con-
taining the air-compressing machinery.
Before entering, however, we will throw
a glance at the exterior of the building.
We find before us, as it were, two
houses, in a direct line one with the
other one situated at the foot of a
steep ascent ; and the other at about
seventy or eighty feet above it, on the
side of the mountain. These two houses
are, however, but one, being joined by
ten rows of inclined arch-work. Along
the summit of each row of arches is a
large iron pipe, more than a foot in
diameter. These ten pipes, inclined
at an angle of about forty-five degrees,
come out of the side of the upper house,
and enter the side of the lower house,
and serve to conduct the water from
the large reservoir above to the air-
compressing machinery, which is ar-
ranged in the house below, exerting
in this machinery the pressure of a
column of water eighty-four feet six
inches in height. On entering the
compression-room, we have before us
ten compressing-machines, precisely
the same in all their parts five on
the right hand, and five on the left,
forming, as it were, two groups of five
each. In the centre of these two
groups are two machines, in every
respect like a couple of small steam-
engines, only they are worked by com-
pressed air instead of steam, and which
we will call aereomotori. Each of these
aereomotori imparts a rotary motion to
a horizontal axis extending along the
whole length of the room, and on
which are a series of cams, which
regulate the movements of the valves
of the great compressors. This axis
we will call the "main shaft." One
group of five compressors is totally in-
dependent of the other, and has its ae-
reomotore with its main shaft ; but still,
with one single aereomotore, by means
of a simple connecting apparatus, it is
possible to work one or the other
group separately, or both together;
also, any number of the ten compress-
ors can be disconnected for repairs
without affecting the action of the rest,
or may be injured without conveying
any injury to the others. In front of
each of the ten compressors are placed
cylindrical recipients, in every respect
like large steam-boilers, except that
they have no fire-grate or flues, each
having a capacity of seventeen cubic
metres, or five hundred and eighty-
three cubic feet. These recipients are
put into communication one with the
other by means of a tube similar to
a steam-pipe connecting a series of
steam-boilers ; and each connection is
furnished with a stop-valve, so that
any one recipient can be isolated from
the rest.
Let us now examine the end and
action of this machinery. As the
aereomotori which work the valves
of the machines for forcing air into
the recipients are themselves worked
by compressed air coming from the
recipients, it is evident that before we
can put the compressing-machines in
motion, we must have already some
supply of compressed air in the cylin-
The Mont Cenis Tunnel
67
drical vessels. This supply of air,
compressed to a pressure of six at-
mospheres, is obtained in the follow-
ing manner : Each group of five re-
cipients, filled with air at the ordinary
atmospheric pressure, is put in com-
munication with a large pipe which
enters into a cistern placed in the
side of the mountain at about one
hundred and sixty-two feet above the
floor of the compressing-room. The
first operation, then, is to open the
equilibrium valves placed at the bot-
tom of the two pipes (one from each
group of recipients) ; water then rushes
into the vessels, compressing the ordi-
nary air therein contained to about a
pressure of six atmospheres. A com-
munication is now opened between this
compressed air and the cylinders of
the aereomotori, which commence their
action precisely as a steam-engine
would do on the admission of steam ;
a rotary motion is given to the main
shaft ; and the equilibrium valves,
placed in chambers at the bottom of
each of the ten pipes coming from the
cistern of water placed in the house
above, are opened. We will observe
the operation in one of the ten lines
of action, as it were, consisting of the
pipe conducting the water from the cis-
tern, the compressing-machine, and the
cylindrical recipient. The equilibrium
valve at the bottom of the pipe being
opened in the manner above explained,
the water, with its head of eighty-four
feet six inches, rushes past it, along
a short length of horizontal pipe (in
which is an exhaust valve, now closed),
and begins to mount a vertical column
or tube of cast-iron about ten feet high
and two feet in diameter : the air in
this column undergoes compression
until it has reached a pressure suffi-
cient to force open a valve in a pipe
issuing from the summit of the tube,
and connecting it with the recipient.
This valve being already weighted
with the pressure of the air com-
pressed to six atmospheres by the
means previously explained, a cer-
tain quantity of air is thus forced
into the vessel; at this moment, an*
other revolution of the main shaft
causes the equilibrium valve* at the
bottom of the conducting-pipe to be
shut, and at the same time opens the
exhaust valve at the foot of the verti-
cal column. The head of water being
now cut off, and the exhaust open, the
water in the vertical column begins to
sink by its own gravity, leaving a
vacuum behind it, if it were not for
a small clack-valve opening inward
in the upper part of the compressing
column, which opens by the external
pressure of the air, so that by the time
all the water has passed out of the
exhaust valve, the compressor is again
full of atmospheric air ; the valve in
connection with the recipient being
closed by the compressed air impris-
oned in the vessel. The aereomotori
continue their motion, another revolu-
tion of the main shaft shuts the ex-
haust and opens the equilibrium or
admission valve ; the column of water
is again permitted to act, and the same
action is repeated, more air being forced
into the recipient at each round or pul-
sation of the machine. Now, supposing
no consumption of the compressed air
to take place beyond that used for
driving the aereomotori, it seems evi-
dent that the water in the vessels
would be gradually forced out, owing
to the growing pressure of the air in-
side, above the pressure of the column
of water coming from the higher cis-
tern ; but the communication with this
higher cistern is always kept open, the
column of water acting, in fact, as a
sort of moderator or governor to the
compressing-machine, rising or falling
according to the consumption of the
compressed air, and always insuring
that there shall be a pressure of six
atmospheres acting against the valve
at the summit of the vertical column.
A water-tube placed on the outside
of each group of recipients, with a
graduated scale marked on it, indicates
at a glance the consumption of air. If
the perforating-machines in the tunnel
cease working, the pressure augments
in the recipients, and the water in them
falls until an equilibrium is established,
68
The Mont Cenis Tunnel.
between the pressure of the column
of water and the force of the com-
pressors, until, in fact, these work with-
out being able to lift the valve at the
summit of the vertical compressing
column. On the other hand, if more
air than usual be used for ventilating
the tunnel, or by an accidental leakage
in the conducting-pipes, the water rises
rapidly in the recipients, and conse-
quently in the water-gauge outside,
and in thus creating an equilibrium,
indicates the state of things. By this
means a continual compensation of
pressure is kept up, which prevents any
shock on the valves, and causes the
machine to work with the regularity
and uniformity of a steam-engine pro-
vided with a governor. In every turn
of the main shaft, a complete circle of
effects take place in the compressors;
and experience has shown that three
turns a minute of the shaft that is,
three pulsations of the compressing-
machine per minute are sufficient. It
will thus be seen that a column of
water, having the great velocity due to
a head of eighty-four feet six inches,
acts upon a column of air contained
in a vertical tube ; the effect of this
velocity being to inject, as it were, a
certain quantity of air into a recipient
at each upward stroke of the column,
and at each downward stroke drawing
in after it an equivalent quantity of
atmospheric air as a fresh supply. The
ten recipients charged with air com-
pressed to six atmospheres (ninety
pounds on the square inch) in the man-
ner above explained, serve as a reser-
voir of the force required for working
the boring-engines in the tunnel, and
for ventilating and purifying the gal-
lery. The air is conducted in pipes
about eight inches in diameter, having
a thickness of metal of about three-
eighths of an inch. Much doubt had
previously been expressed as to the
possibility of conveying compressed
air to great distances without a very
great and serious loss of power. The
experience gained, however, at the
Mont Cenis has shown that, conveyed
to a distance of thirteen English miles,
the loss would be but one-tenth of the
original force ; and that the actual
measured loss of power in a distance
of six thousand five hundred feet, a
little more than a mile and a quarter,
was less than 1-1 2 7th of the original
pressure in the recipients.
The mouth of the tunnel is but a
few hundred yards from the air-com-
pressing house we will now proceed
thither. For nearly a mile in length
the gallery is completed and lined with
masonry. At the first view, we are
struck with the bold outline of its sec-
tion and its ample dimensions. Ex-
cepting, perhaps, the passage of an
occasional railway-truck, laden with
pieces of rock and rubbish, we find
nothing to remind us of the numbers
of busy workmen and of the powerful
machines which are laboring in the
tunnel. All is perfectly quiet and
solitary. Looking around us as we
traverse this first and completed por-
tion, we observe nothing very different
from an ordinary railway-tunnel, with
the exception of the great iron pipe
which conveys the compressed air, and
is attached to the side of the wall. At
the end of about a quarter of an hour
we begin to hear sounds of activity,
and little lights flickering in the dis-
tance indicate that we are approaching
the scene of operations. In a few
moments we reach the second division
of the tunnel, or that part which is
being enlarged from the comparatively
small section made by the perforating-
machine to its full dimensions, pre-
viously to being lined with masonry.
In those portions where the workmen
are engaged in the somewhat dan-
gerous operation of detaching large
blocks of stone from the roof, the tun-
nel is protected by a ceiling of mas-
sive beams, under which the visitor
passes not, however, without hur-
rying his pace and experiencing a
feeling of satisfaction when the dis-
tance is completed. Gradually leav-
ing behind us the bee-like crowd
of busy miners, with the eternal ring
of their boring-bars against the hard
rock, we find the excavated gallery
The Mont Cenis Tunnel.
69
getting smaller and smaller, and the
difficulties of picking our way in-
creasing at every step ; the sounds be-
hind us get fainter and fainter, and in
a short time we are again in the midst
of a profound solitude.
The little gallery in which we are
now stumbling our way over blocks of
stone and rubbish, only varied by long
tracts of thick slush and pools of
water, is the section excavated by the
boring-machine in dimension about
twelve feet broad by eight feet high.
The tramway which has accompanied
us all the way is still continued along
this small section. In the middle por-
tion underneath the rails is the canal,
inclined toward the mouth of the tun-
nel, for carrying off the water ; and in
this canal are now collected the pipes
for conveying the compressed air to
the machines, and the gas for illumin-
ating the gallery. At the end of a few
minutes, a rattling, jingling sound in-
dicates that we are near the end of
our excursion, and that we are ap-
proaching the perforating-machines.
On arriving, we find that nearly the
whole of the little gallery is taken up
by the engine, the frame of which,
mounted upon wheels, rests upon the
main tramway, so that the whole can
be moved backward or forward as
necessary. On examining the arrange-
ment a little closely, we find that in
reality we have before us nine or ten
perforators, completely independent of
one another, all mounted on one frame,
and each capable of movement in any
direction. Attached to every one of
them are two flexible tubes, one for
conveying the compressed air, and the
other the water which is injected at
every blow or stroke of the tool into
the hole, for the purpose of clearing
out the debris and for cooling the
point of the "jumper." In front,
directed against the rock, are nine or
ten tubes (according to the number of
perforators), very similar in appear-
ance to large gun-barrels, out of which
are discharged with great rapidity an
equal number of boring-bars or jump-
ers. Motion is given to these jumpers
by the direct admission of a blast of
compressed air behind them, the re-
turn stroke being effected by a some-
what slighter pressure of air than was
used to drive them forward. We will
suppose the machine brought up for
the commencement of an attack. The
points most convenient for the boring
of the holes having been selected, the
nine or ten perforators, as the case
may be, are carefully adjusted in front
of them. The compressed air is then
admitted, and the boring of the holes
commences. On an average, at the end
of about three-quarters of an hour, the
nine or ten holes are pierced to a depth
of two feet to two feet six inches. An-
other ten holes are then commenced,
and so on, until about eighty holes
are pierced. The greater number of
these holes are driven toward the cen-
tre of the point of attack, and the rest
round the perimeter. The driving of
these eighty holes to an average depth
of two feet three inches, is usually
completed in about seven hours, and the
second operation is then commenced.
The flexible tubes conveying the
compressed air and the water are de-
tached from the machines, and placed
in security in the covered canal. The
perforating-machine, mounted on its
frame or truck, is drawn back on the
tramway behind two massive folding-
doors of wood. Miners then advance
and charge the holes in the centre with
powder, and adjust the matches ; fire
is given, and the miners retire behind
the folding-doors, which are closed.
The explosion opens a breach in the
centre part of the front of attack.
Powerful jets of compressed air are
now injected, to clear off the smoke
formed by the powder. As soon as
the gallery is clear, the other holes
in the perimeter are charged and
fired, and more air is injected. Then
comes the third operation. Gangs of
workmen advance and clear away the
debris and blocks of stone detached
by the explosion of the mine, in little
wagons running on a pair of rails
placed by the side of the main tram-
way. This done, the main line is pro-
70
The Mont Cenis Tunnel.
longed to the requisite distance, and
the perforating engine is again brought
forward for a fresh attack. Thus, we
have three distinct operations first,
the mechanical perforation of the holes ;
secondly, the charging and explosion
of the mine ; and thirdly, the clearing
away of the debris. By careful regis-
ters kept since the commencement of
the work, it is found that the mean
duration of each successive operation
is as follows : for the perforation of
the holes, seven hours thirty-nine min-
utes ; for the charging and explosion
of the mine, three hours twenty-nine
minutes ; for the clearing away of the
debris, two hours thirty-three minutes ;
or, in all, nearly fourteen hours. Oc-
casionally, however, the three opera-
tions may be completed in ten hours,
all depending upon the hardness of the
rock. It has been found practically
more expeditious to make two series of
operations in twenty-four hours.
Whatever may be the nature of the
rock, if it is very hard, the depth of
the holes is reduced ; that is, the per-
foration is only continued for a certain
given time about six and a half hours
which, for the eighty holes with ten
perforaters, gives us about three-quar-
ters of an hour for each hole. The
rock is generally of calcareous schist,
crystallized, and exceedingly hard,
traversed by thick veins of quartz,
which often break the points of the
boring-tools after a few blows. Each
jumper gives about three blows per
second, and makes one-eighteenth of a
revolution on its axis at each blow, or
one complete revolution every six sec-
onds. Thus, in the three-quarters of
an hour necessary to drive a single
hole to the depth of twenty-seven
inches, we have four hundred and fifty
revolutions of the bar, and eighteen
hundred violent blows given by the
point against the hard rock, and that
under an impulse of about one hundred
and eighty pounds. These figures
will give us some idea of the wear and
tear of the perforating-machines. It is
calculated that on an average one per-
fo rating-machine is worn out for every
six metres of gallery, so that more than
two thousand will be consumed before
the completion of the tunnel. The
total length completed at the Bardon-
neche side at the present time is just
two thousand three hundred metres,
or nearly a mile and a half.
At the north or Modane end, the
mechanical perforators are precisely
the same as at Bardonneche, as also is
the system of working in the gallery.
The machinery for the compression of
air, however, is very different, more
simple, and in every way an improve-
ment upon that at the South end. Not
finding any convenient means of obtain-
ing a head of eighty-four feet of water
sufficient in quantity for working a
series of compressors, as at Bardon-
ne"che, there has been established at
Modane a system of direct compres-
sion, the necessary force for which
is derived from the current of the
Arc. Six large water-wheels moved
by this current give a reciprocating
motion to a piston contained in a large
horizontal cylinder of cast iron. This
piston, having a column of water on
each side of it, raises and lowers al-
ternately these two columns, in two
vertical tubes about ten feet high,
compressing the air in each tube alter-
nately, and forcing a certain quantity,
at each upward stroke of the water,
to enter into a cylindrical recipient.
There is very little loss of water in
this machine, which in its action is
very like a large double-barreled com-
mon air-pump. It is a question open
to science whether the employment of
compressed air for driving the perfor-
ating engines in a work such as is in
operation at the Mont Cenis, could not
be advantageously and economically
exchanged for the employment of a
direct hydraulic motive force, the ven-
tilation of the tunnel being provided
for by other means. The system, how-
ever, employed at Modane has many
advantages, which it is impossible to
overlook, and its complete success has
given a marked and decided impulse
to the modern science of tunnelling
through hard rock.
Unity of Type in the Animal Kingdom.
71
Translated from tho Civilta Cattolica.
ON THE UNITY OF TYPE IN THE ANIMAL KINGDOM.
The generation of a human creature
takes place neither by the development
of a being which is found in the germ,
sketched as it were like a miniature,
nor by a sudden formation or an in-
stantaneous transition from potential
to actual existence. It is effected by
the true production of a new being,
which pre-exists only virtually in the
activity of the germ communicated by
the conceiver, and the successive trans-
formation of the potential subject.
This truth, an a priori postulate of
philosophy, and demonstrated by phys-
iology a posteriori, was illustrated by
us in a preceding dkrticle. Here we
must discard an error which has sprung
from this truth. For there have been
materialists who maintained that there
was but one type in the whole animal
kingdom, that is, man, as he unites in
himself in the highest possible degree
perfection of organism and delicacy of
feelings ; and that all the species of infe-
rior animals were so many stages in the
development of that most perfect type.
This opinion is thus expressed by
Milne-Edwards in his highly esteemed
lectures on the Physiology and Com-
parative Anatomy of Man and Ani-
mals :
" Every organized being undergoes
in its development deep and various
modifications. The character of the
anatomical structure, no less than its
vital faculties, changes as it passes
from the state of embryo to that of a
perfect animal in its own species. Now
all the animals which are derived from
the same type move during a certain
time in the same embryonic road, and
resemble each other in that process of
organization during a certain period
of time, the longer as their zoological
relationship is closer; afterward they
deviate from the common road and
each acquires the properties belong-
ing to it. Those that are to have a
more perfect structure proceed further
than those whose organization is com-
pleted at less cost. It results from
this that the transitory or embryonic
state of a superior animal resembles,
in a more or. less wonderful manner,
the permanent state of another animal
lower hi the same zoological series.
Some authors have thought right to
conclude from this that the diversity
of species proceeds from a series of
stages of this kind taking place at dif-
ferent degrees of the embryonic devel-
opment ; and these writers, falling into
the exaggerations to which imitators
are especially liable, have held that
every superior animal, in order to
reach its definitive form, must pass
through the series of the proper forms
of animals which are its inferiors in
the zoological hierarchy; so that man,
for instance^ before he is born, is at
first a kind of worm, then a mollusk,
then a fish, or something like it, be-
fore he can assume the characters be-
longing to his species. An eminent
professor has recently expressed these
views in a concise form, saying that
the embryology of the most perfect
being is a comparative transitory anat-
omy, and that the anatomic table of
the whole animal kingdom is a fixed
and permanent representation of the
movable aspect of human organoge-
ny."
Thus, according to this opinion, man
is the only type of animal life ; and
every inferior species is but an im-
itation, more or less perfect, of the
same; an inchoation stopped in its
course at a greater or shorter distance
from the term to which the work of
nature tends in its organization of
the human embryo. In short, an en-
72
Unity of Type in the Animal Kingdom.
toma in difetto, to use the language of
Dante.
The doctrine is not new in the
scientific world. It was proclaimed
in the last century by Robinet, who
held that all inferior beings are but
so many proofs or sketches upon which
nature practises in order to learn how
to form man. In the beginning of the
present century Lamarck, in Germany,
following Kielmayer, reproduced the
same theory. According to him all
the species of animals inferior to man
are but so many lower steps at which
the human embryo stops in its gradual
development. Man, on the contrary,
is the last term reached by nature
after she has travelled all through
the zoological scale, to fit herself for
that work. About the same time the
celebrated naturalist, Stephen Geof-
froy Saint Hilaire, began to dissemi-
nate in France analogous ideas under
the name of stages of development
(arret de developpement) ; and these
ideas, exaggerated by some of his dis-
ciples, amounted in their minds to
the same doctrine of Lamarck, just
alluded to. Among them Professor
Serres holds the first rank, and it is
to him that Milne-Edwards alludes in
the passage just cited. He expresses
himself thus :
" Human organogeny is a compara-
tive transitory anatomy, as compara-
tive anatomy is the fixed and perma-
nent state of the organogeny of man ;
and, on the contrary, if we reverse the
proposition, or method of investiga-
tion, and study animal life from the
lowest to the highest, instead of con-
sidering it from the highest to the
lowest, we shall see that the organ-
isms of the series reproduce incessant-
ly those of the embryos, and fix them-
selves in that state which for animals
becomes the term of their develop-
ment. The long series of changes of
form presented by the same organ-
ism in comparative anatomy is but
the reproduction of the numerous series
of transformations to which this or-
ganism is subjected in the embryo in
the course of its development. In the
embryo the passage is rapid, in virtue
of the power of the life which ani-
mates it ; in the animal the life of the
organism is exhausted, and it stops
there, because it is not permitted to
follow the course traced for the human
embryo. Distinct stages on the one
hand, progressive advance on the
other, here is the secret of develop-
ment, the fundamental difference which
the human mind can perceive between
comparative anatomy and organogeny.
The annual series thus considered in
its organisms is but a long chain of
embryos which succeed each other
gradually and at intervals, reaching
at last man, who thus finds his physi-
cal development in comparative or-
ganogeny."
Thus speaks Serres. And in an-
other place :
"The whole animal kingdom ap-
pears only like one animal in the
course of formation in the different
organisms. It stops here sooner, there
later, and thus at the time of each in-
terruption determines, by the state in
which it then is, the distinctive and
organized characters of classes, fami-
lies, genera, and species."
ii.
THIS OPINION REFUTED BY PHILOSO-
PHICAL REASONS.
The futility of the above doctrine is
manifest, in the first place, from the
weakness of the foundation on which
it rests. That foundation is no other
than a kind of likeness which appears
at first sight between the rudimental
forms which, in the first steps of its
development, are assumed by the hu-
man embryo, and the forms of some
inferior animals. For the germ, by
the very reason that it has not, as it
was once believed, all the organism of
the human body in microscopic pro-
portions, but in order to acquire it
must pass from potential to actual
existence by that very reason, is
Unity of Type in the Animal Kingdom.
73
subjected to continual metamorphoses,
that is, to successive transformations,
which give it different aspects, from
that of a little disc to the perfect hu-
mah figure. Now, it is clear that,
in this gradual transition from the
mere power to the act of perfect or-
ganization, a kind of analogy or like-
ness to some of the numberless forms
of inferior organizations of the animal
kingdom may, and must, be fonud in
its intermediate and incomplete state.
But, evidently, between analogy and
identity there is an immense difference ;
and the fact of there being an analogy
with some of those forms, gives us no
right to infer that there is one with all.
Hence this theory is justly despised by
the most celebrated naturalists as the
whim of an extravagant fancy.
" According to Lamarck," says Fre*-
dault, in speaking of this, theory, " all
the animals are but inferior grades at
which the human germ stopped in its
development, and man is but the re-
sult of the last efforts of a nature which
has passed successively through the
grades of its novitiate, and has arrived
at the last term of its perfection. Pre-
sented in this view, the doctrine of
epigenesis raised against itself the most
simple and scientific common sense, as
being manifestly erroneous. Numer-
ous works on the development of the
germ have demonstrated that appear-
ances were taken for realities, and
that imagination had created a real
romance. It has been proved that if,
at certain epochs of its development,
the human germ has a distant resem-
blance either to a worm or a reptile,
such resemblance is very remote, and
that on this point we must believe
as much as we would believe of the
assertion of a man who, looking at the
clouds, should say that he could dis-
cover the palaces and gardens of Ar-
mida, with horsemen and armies, and
all that a heated imagination might
fancy."
However, laying aside all that, the
opinion which we are now examining
originates, with those who uphold it, in
a total absence of philosophical con-
ceptions. That strange idea of the
unity of type and of its stages, in order
to establish the forms of inferior ani-
mals, would never have risen in the
mind of any one who had duly consid-
ered the immutability of essences and
the reasci of the formation of a thing.
The act of making differs from the
thing made only as the means differs
from the end. Both belong to the
same order one implies movement,
the other rest. Their difference lies
only in this : that what in the term is
unfolded and complete, in its progress
toward the term is found to be only
sketched out, and having a tendency
to formation. Hence it follows that,
whatever the point of view from which
we consider the embryo of each ani-
mal, it is nothing else but the total
organism of the same in the course of
formation ; and, therefore, it differs as
substantially from every other organ-
ism as the term itself toward which it
proceeds. And what we affirm of the
whole organism must be said of each
of its parts, which are essentially re-
lated to the whole and follow the na-
ture of the whole. The first rudi-
ments, for instance, of the hands of
man could not properly be compared
to the wings of a bird. As they are
hands after being made, so they are
hands in the process of formation ; as
their structure is different, so is their
being immutable.
Whatever may be the likeness be-
tween the first appearances of the hu-
man embryo and the forms of lower
animals, they are not the effect of a
stable existence, but of a transitory
and shifting existence, which does not
constitute a species, but is merely and
essentially a movement toward the
formation of the species. On the con-
trary, the forms presented by animals
already constituted in their being be-
long to a stable and permanent exist-
ence, which diversifies one species from
another. The difference, then, be-
tween the former and the latter is in-
terior and substantial, and cannot be
changed into exterior and accidental,
as it would be if it consisted in stop-
74
Unity of Type in the Animal Kingdom.
ping or in travelling further on. The
movement or tendency which takes
place in the germ to become another
thing until the said germ assumes a
perfect organization relative to the be-
ing it must produce, is not a quality
which can be discarded, since it is in-
timately combined with the subject it-
self in which it is found. The essence
itself must be changed in it in order to
obtain stability and consistency. But
if the essence be changed, we are out
of the question, since in that case we
should have, not the human embryo
arrested at this or that stage on its
road, but a different being substituted
for it; of analogous exterior appear-
ance, perhaps, but substantially differ-
ent, which would constitute an annual
of inferior degree.
In short, each animal is circumscribed
in its own species, like every other being
in nature. If to reach to the perfec-
tion required by its independent exist-
ence it needs development, every step
in that journey is an inchoation of the
next, and cannot exist but as such.
To change its nature and to make it a
permanent being, is as impossible as
to change one essence into another.
Again : From the opinion we are re-
futing it would follow that all animals,
man excepted, are so many monsters,
since they are nothing else but de-
viations, for want of ulterior develop-
ment, from what nature really intends
to do as a term of its action. Thus
anomaly is converted into law, disor-
der into order, an accidental case into
a constant fact.
Finally, in that hypothesis we should
have to affirm not only that the infe-
rior and more imperfect species ap-
peared on earth before the nobler and
the more akin to the unique and per-
fect type, but also that on the appear-
ance of a more perfect species the pre-
ceding one had disappeared ; being in-
ferior in the scale of perfection. For
what other reason could be alleged for
nature's stopping at a bird when it in-
tends to make a man, but that the
causes are not properly disposed, or
that circumstances are not quite favor-
able to the production of that perfect
animal? Then when the causes are
ready, and the circumstances propi-
tious, it is necessary that man be fash-
ioned and that the bird disappear.
Now all that is contrary to experience.
For all the species, together with the
type, are of the same date, and we see
them born constantly in the same cir-
cumstances which are common to all,
either of temperature or atmosphere
or latitude, etc.
The theory, then, of the unity of
type in the animal kingdom and of
stages of development falls to the
ground, if we only look at it from a
philosophical point of view.
in.
IT IS EEFUTED BY PHYSIOLOGICAL
REASONS.
However, physiological arguments
have more force in this matter
than the philosophical ; since they
are more closely connected with the
subject, and have in their favor the
tangible evidence of fact.
We shall take our arguments from
three celebrated naturalists as the rep-
resentatives of an immense number,
whom want of space forbids us to
quote.
Flourens shows the error of that
opinion by referring to the diversity
of the nervous system. The nervous
system is the foundation of the ani-
mal organism ; it is the general instru-
ment of vital functions, of sensation,
and of motion. If then one archetyp-
al idea presides over the formation of
the different organisms, only one ner-
vous system ought to appear in each,
more or less developed or arrested.
But experience teaches us the contra-
ry. It shows nervous systems differ-
ing in different animals ordained to
different functions, each perfect in its
kind. " Is there a unity of type ?"
asks this celebrated naturalist. "To
say that there is but one type is
to say that there is but one form of
Unity of Type in the Animal Kingdom.
75
nervous system ; because the form of
the nervous system determines the
type ; that is, it determines the general
form of the animal. Now, can we
affirm that there is but one form of
nervous system ? Can we hold that the
nervous system of the zoophyte is th.e
same as that of the mollusk, and this
latter the same as that of the articula-
ta, or this again the same as that of the
vertebrata? And if we cannot say that
there is only one nervous system, can
we affirm that there is only one type ?"
He speaks likewise of the unity of
plan. Every creature is built differ-
ently, and the difference is especially
striking between members of the sev-
eral grand divisions of the animal
kingdom. The plan then of each is
different, and so is the typical idea
which prescribes its formation. No
animal can then be considered as the
proof or outline of another.
" Is there a unity of plan ? The plan
is the relative location of the parts.
One can conceive very well the unity
of plan without the unity of number ;
for it is sufficient that all the parts,
whatever their number may be, keep
always relatively to each other the
same place. But can one say that the
vertebrate animal, whose nervous
system is placed above the digestive
canal, is fashioned after the same plan
as the mollusk, whose digestive canal
is placed above the nervous system?
Can one say that the crustacean,
whose heart is placed above the spinal
marrow, is fashioned after the same
pattern as the vertebrate, whose spinal
marrow is placed above the heart?
Is the relative location of the parts
maintained ? On the contrary, is it not
overthrown ? And if there is a change
in the location of parts, how is there a
unity of plan ?"
Miiller draws nearer to the con-
sideration of the development of the
human embryo, and forcibly illustrates
the falsehood of the pretended theory.
" It is not long since it was held with
great seriousness that the human
foetus, before reaching its perfect state,
travels successively though the differ-
ent degrees of development which
are permanent during the whole life
of animals of inferior classes. That
hypothesis has not the least foundation,
as Baer has shown. The human em-
bryo never resembles a radiate, or an
insect, or a mollusk, or a worm. The
plan of formation of those animals
is quite different from that of the
vertebrate. Man then might at most
resemble these last, since he himself
is a vertebrate, and his organization is
fashioned after the common type of
this great division of the animal king-
dom. But he does not even resemble
at one time a fish, at another a reptile,
a bird, etc. The analogy is no greater
between him and a reptile or a bird,
than it is between all vertebrate
animals. During the first stages of
their formation, all the embryos of
vertebrate animals present merely
the simplest and most general delin-
eations of the type of a vertebrate ;
hence it is that they resemble each
other so much as to render it very
difficult to distinguish them. The fish,
the reptile, the bird, the mammal, and
man are at first the simplest expression
of a type common to all; but hi pro-
portion as they grow, the general re-
semblance becomes fainter and fainter,
and their extremities, for instance, after
being alike for a certain time, assume
the characters of wings, of hands, of
feet, etc."
Mr. Milne-Edwards takes the same
view of embryonic generation:
" I agree with Geoffrey Saint Hilaire,
that often a great analogy is observed
between the final state of certain parts
of the bodies of some inferior animals,
and the embryonic state of the same
parts of other animals belonging to
the same type the organism of which
is further developed, and with the
same philosopher, I call the cause of
the state of permanent inferiority ar-
rests of development. But I am far
from thinking with some of his dis-
ciples that the embryo of man or of
mammals exhibits in its different de-
grees of formation the species of the
less perfect of animate creation. No ! a
76
Domine, Quo Vadis?
mollusk or an annelid is not the embryo
of a mammal, arrested in its organic
development, any more than the mam-
mal is a kind of fish perfected. Each
animal carries within itself, from the
very origin, the beginning of its speci-
fic individuality, and the development
of its organism, in conformity to the
general outline of the plan of struc-
ture proper to its species, is always a
condition of its existence. There is
never a complete likeness between an
adult animal and the embryo of an-
other, between one of its organs and
the transitory state of the same in the
course of formation ; and the multiplic-
ity of the products of creation could
never be explained by a similar trans-
mutation of species. We shall see
hereafter, that in every zoological
group composed of animals which
seem to be derived from a common
fundamental type, the different species
do not exhibit at first any marked dif-
ference, but soon begin to be marked
by various particularities of construc-
ture always growing and numerous.
Thus each species acquires a character
of its own, which distinguishes it from
all others in the way of development,
and each of its organs becomes differ-
ent from the analogous part of every
other embryo. But the changes which
the organs and the whole being un-
dergo after they have deviated from
the common genesiac form, are gen-
erally speaking the less considerable
in proportion as the animal is destined
to receive a less perfect organism, and
consequently they retain a kind of re-
semblance to those transitory forms."
Reason then and experience, theory
and fact, philosophy and physiology,
agree in protesting against the arbi-
trary doctrine of the unity of type in
the animal kingdom ; a doctrine which
has its origin in an absence of sound
scientific notions and a superficial ob-
servation of the phenomena of nature.
Through the former defect men failed
to consider that if the end of each
animal species is different, different
also must be its being, and therefore
a different type must preside as a rule
and supreme law over the formation
of the being. By the latter, some
very slight and partial analogies have
been mistaken for identity and univer-
sality, and mere appearances have
been assumed as realities.
From Blackwood's Magazine.
DOMINE, QUO VADIS?*
BY P. S. WORSLEY.
THERE stands in the old Appian Way,
Two miles without the Roman wall,
A little ancient church, and grey :
Long may it moulder not nor fall !
There hangs a legend on the name
One reverential thought may claim.
'Tis written of that fiery time,
When all the angered evil powers
Leagued against Christ for wrath and crime,
How Peter left the accursed towers,
* See Mrs. Jameson's "Sacred and Legendary Art," p. 180.
Domine, Quo Vadis? 77
Passing from out the guilty street,
And shook the red dust from his feet.
Sole pilgrim else in that lone road,
Suddenly he was 'ware of one
Who toiled beneath a weary load,
Bare-headed, in the heating sun,
Pale with long watches, and forespent
With harm and evil accident.
Under a cross his weak limbs bow,
Scarcely his sinking strength avails.
A crown of thorns is on his brow,
And in his hands the print of nails.
So friendless and alone in shame,
One like the Man of Sorrows came.
Read in her eyes who gave thee birth
That loving, tender, sad rebuke ;
Then learn no mother on this earth,
How dear soever, shaped a look
So sweet, so sad, so pure as now
Came from beneath that holy brow.
And deeply Peter's heart it pierced;
Once had he seen that look before ;
And even now, as at the first,
It touched, it smote him to the core.
Bowing his head, no word save three
He spoke " Quo vadis, Domine V
Then, as he looked up from the ground,
His Saviour made him answer due
" My son, to Rome I go, thorn-crowned,
There to be crucified anew ;
Since he to whom I gave my sheep
Leaves them for other men to keep."
Then the saint's eyes grew dim with tears.
He knelt, his Master's feet to kiss
" I vexed my heart with faithless fears ;
Pardon thy servant, Lord, for this."
Then rising up but none was there
No voice, no sound, in earth or air.
Straightway his footsteps he retraced,
As one who hath a work to do.
Back through the gates he passed with haste,
Silent, alone and full in view ;
And lay forsaken, save of One,
In dungeon deep ere set of sun.
Then he who once, apart from ill,
Nor taught the depth of human tears,
78
Constance Sherwood.
Girded himself and walked at will,
As one rejoicing in the years,
Girded of others, scorned and slain,
Passed heavenward through the gates of pain.
If any bear a heart within,
Well may these walls be more than stone,
And breathe of peace and pardoned sin
To him who grieveth all alone.
Return, faint heart, and strive thy strife ;
Fight, conquer, grasp the crown of life.
From The Month.
CONSTANCE SHERWOOD.
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
BY LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON.
CHAPTER I.
I HAD not thought to write the story
of my life ; but the wishes of those
who have at all times more right to
command than occasion to entreat
aught at my hands, have in a man-
ner compelled me thereunto. The di-
vers trials and the unlooked-for com-
forts which have come to my lot during
the years that I have been tossed to
and fro on this uneasy sea the world
have wrought in my soul an ex-
ceeding sense of the goodness of God,
and an insight into the meaning of the
sentence in Holy Writ which saith,
" His ways are not as our ways, nor
his thoughts like unto our thoughts."
And this puts me in mind that there
are sayings which are in every one's
mouth, and therefore not to be lightly
gainsayed, which nevertheless do not
approve themselves to my conscience
as wholly just and true. Of these is
the common adage, " That misfortunes
come not alone." For my own part,
I have found that when a cross has
been laid on me, it has mostly been a
single one, and that other sorrows
were oftentimes removed, as if to
make room for it. And it has been
my wont, when one trial has been
passing away, to look out for the next,
even as on a stormy day, when the
clouds have rolled away in one direc-
tion and sunshine is breaking over-
head, we see others rising in the dis-
tance. There has been no portion of
my life free from some measure of
grief or fear sufficient to recall the
words that " Man is born to trouble as
the sparks fly upward ;" and none so
reft of consolation that, in the midst of
suffering, I did not yet cry out, " The
Lord is my shepherd; his rod and
his staff comfort me."
I was born in the year 1557, in a
very fair part of England, at Sher-
wood Hall, in the county of Stafford.
For its comely aspect, commodious
chambers, sunny gardens, and the
sweet walks in its vicinity, it was as
commendable a residence for persons
of moderate fortune and contented
minds as can well be thought of.
Within and without this my paternal
home nothing was wanting which might
please the eye, or minister to tranquil-
Constance Sherwood.
79
lity of mind and healthful recreation.
I reckon it amongst the many favors I
have received from a gracious Provi-
dence, that the earlier years of my life
were spent amidst such fair scenes,
and in the society of parents who ever
took occasion from earthly things to
lead my thoughts to such as are im-
perishable, and so to stir up in me a
love of the Creator, who has stamped
his image on this visible world in
characters of so great beauty ; whilst
in the tenderness of those dear parents
unto myself I saw, as it were, a type
and representation of his paternal
love and goodness.
My father was of an ancient family,
and allied to such as were of greater
note and more wealthy than his own.
He had not, as is the manner with
many squires of our days, left off re-
siding on his own estate in order to
seek after the shows and diversions of
London ; but had united to a great hu-
mility of mind and a singular affection
for learning a contentedness of spirit
which inclined him to dwell in the
place assigned to him by Providence.
He had married at an early age, and
had ever confonned to the habits of
his neighbors in all lawful and kindly
ways, and sought no other labors but
such as were incidental to the care of
his estates, and no recreations but
those of study, joined to a moderate
pursuit of field-sports and such social
diversions as the neighborhood afford-
ed. His outward appearance was rath-
er simple than showy, and his man-
ners grave and composed. When I
call to mind the singular modesty of
his disposition, and the retiredness of
his manners, I often marvel how the
force of circumstances and the urging
of conscience should have forced one
so little by nature inclined to an unset-
tled mode of life into one which, albeit
peaceful in its aims, proved so full of
danger and disquiet.
My mother's love I enjoyed but for
a brief season. Not that it waxed
cold toward me, as happens with some
parents, who look with fondness on the
child and less tenderly on the maiden ;
but it pleased Almighty God to take
her unto himself when I was but ten
years of age. Her face is as present
to me now as any time of my life. No
limner's hand ever drew a more faith-
ful picture than the one I have of her
even now engraved on the tablet of my
heart. She had so fair and delicate
a complexion that I can only liken it
to the leaf of a white rose with the
lightest tinge of piak in it. Her hair
was streaked with gray too early for
her years ; but this matched well with
the sweet melancholy of her eyes,
which were of a deep violet color. Her
eyelids were a trifle thick, and so were
her lips ; but there was a pleasantness
in her smile and the dimples about
her mouth such as I have not noticed
in any one else. She had a sweet
womanly and loving heart, and the
noblest spirit imaginable ; a great zeal
in the service of God, tempered with
so much sweetness and cordiality that
she gave not easily offence to any one,
of howsoever different a way of think-
ing from herself ; and either won them
over to her faith through the suavity
of her temper and the wisdom of her
discourse, or else worked in them a
personal liking which made them pa-
tient with her, albeit fierce with others.
When I was about seven years of
age I noticed that she waxed thin and
pale, and that we seldom went abroad,
and walked only in our own garden
and orchard. She seemed glad to sit
on a bench on the sunny side of the
house even in summer, and on days
when by reason of the heat I liked to
lie down in the shade. My parents
forbade me from going into the vil-
lage ; and, through the perverseness
common to too many young people, on
account of that very prohibition I
longed for liberty to do so, and wearied
oftentimes of the solitude we lived in.
At a later period I learnt how kind
had been their intent in keeping me
during the early years of childhood
from a knowledge of the woful divi-
sions which the late changes in reli-
gion had wrought in our country;
which I might easily have heard from
80
Constance Sherwood.
young companions, and maybe in such
sort as to awaken angry feelings, and
shed a drop of bitter in the crystal cup
of childhood's pure faith. If we did
walk abroad, it was to visit some sick
persons, and carry them food or cloth-
ing or medicines, which my mother
prepared with her own hands. But
as she grew weaker, we went less
often outside the gates, and the poor
came themselves to fetch away what
in her bounty she stored up for them.
I did not notice that our neighbors
looked unkindly on us when we were
seen in the village. Children would
cry out sometimes, but half in play,
" Down with the Papists !" but I wit-
nessed that their elders checked them,
especially those of the poorer sort;
and " God bless you, Mrs. Sherwood !"
and " God save you, madam !" was
often in their mouths, as she whom I
loved with so great and reverent an
affection passed alongside of them, or
stopped to take breath, leaning against
their cottage-palings.
Many childish heartaches I can
even now remember when I was not
suffered to join in the merry sports of
the 1st of May ; for then, as the poet
Chaucer sings, the youths and maidens
go '
" To fetch the flowers fresh and branch and bloom,
And these, rejoicing in their great delight,
Efee each at other throw the blossoms bright."
I watched the merry wights as they
passed our door on their way to the
groves and meadows, singing mirthful
carols, and bent on pleasant pastimes ;
and tears stood in my eyes as the
sound of their voices died away in the
distance. My father found me thus
weeping one May-day, and carried me
with him to a sweet spot in a wood,
where wild-flowers grew like living
jewels out of the green carpet of moss
on which we sat; and there, as the
birds sang from every bough, and the
insects hovered and hummed over ^ve-
ry blossom, he entertained me with such
quaint and pleasant tales, and moved
me to merry laughter by his witty de-
vices ; so that I set down that day in
my book of memory as one of the joy-
fullest in all my childhood. At Easter,
when the village children rolled pasch
eggs down the smooth sides of the
green hills, my mother would paint me
some herself, and adorned them with
such bright colors and rare sentences
that I feared to break them with rude
handling, and kept them by me
throughout the year, rather as pictures
to be gazed on than toys to be played
with in a wanton fashion.
On the morning of the Resurrec-
tion, when others went to the top of
Cannock Chase to hail the rising sun,
as is the custom of those parts, she
would sing so sweetly the psalm which
speaketh of the heavens rejoicing and
of the earth being glad, that it grieved
me not to stay at home ; albeit I some-
times marvelled that we saw so little
company, and mixed not more freely
with our neighbors.
When I had reached my ninth birth-
day, whether it was that I took better
heed of words spoken in my hearing,
or else that my parents thought it was
time that I should learn somewhat of
the conditions of the times, and so
talked more freely in my presence, it
so happened that I heard of the
je % opardy in which many who held the
Catholic faith were, and of the laws
which were being made to prohibit in
our country the practice of the ancient
religion. When Protestants came to
our house and it was sometimes hard
in those days to tell who were such at
heart, or only in outward semblance
out of conformity to the queen's pleas-
ure I was strictly charged not to
speak in their hearing of aught that
had to do with Catholic faith and wor-
ship ; and I could see at such times on
my mother's face an uneasy expres-
sion, as if she was ever fearing the
next words that any one might utter.
In the autumn of that year we had
visitors whose company was so great
an honor to my parents, and the occa-
sion of so much delight to myself, that
I can call to mind every little circum-
stance of their brief sojourn under our
roof, even as if it had taken place but
Constance Sherwood.
81
yesterday. This visit proved the first
step toward an intimacy which greatly
affected the tenor of my life, and pre-
pared the way for the direction it was
hereafter to take.
These truly honorable and well-be-
loved guests were my Lady Mount-
eagle and her son Mr. James Laboura,
who were journeying at that time from
London, where she had been residing
at her son-in-law the Duke of Nor-
folk's house, to her seat in the coun-
try; whither she was carrying the
three children of her daughter, the
Duchess of Norfolk, and of that lady's
first husband, the Lord Dacre of the
North. The eldest of these young
ladies was of about my own age, and
the others younger.
The day on which her ladyship was
expected, I could not sit with patience
at my tambour-frame, or con my les-
sons, or play on the virginals; but
watched the hours and the minutes in
my great desire to see these noble
wenches. I had not hitherto consorted
with young companions, save with Ed-
mund and John Genings, of whom I
shall have occasion to speak hereafter,
who were then my playmates, as at
a riper age friends. I thought, in the
quaint way in which children couple
one idea with another in their fantastic
imaginations, that my Lady Mount-
eagle's three daughters would be like
the three angels, in my mother's mis-
sal, who visited .Abraham in his tent.
I had craved from my mother a
holiday, which she granted on the
score that I should help her that fore-
noon in the making of the pasties and
jellies, which, as far as her strength
allowed, she failed not to lend a hand
to ; and also she charged me to set the
bed-chambers in fair order, and to
gather fresh flowers wherewith to
adorn the parlor. These tasks had
in them a pleasantness which whiled
away the time, and I alternated from
the parlor to the store-room, and the
kitchen to the orchard, and the poul-
try-yard to the pleasure-ground, run-
ning as swiftly from one to the other,
and as merrily, as if my feet were
keeping time with the glad beatings of
my heart. As I passed along the ave-
nue, which was bordered on each side
by tall trees, ever and anon, as the
wind shook their branches, there fell
on my head showers of red and gold-
colored leaves, which made me laugh ;
so easy is it for the young to find occa-
sion of mirth in the least trifle when
their spirits are lightsome, as mine
were that day. I sat down on a stone
bench on which the western sun was
shining, to bind together the posies I
had made ; the robins twittered around
me; and the air felt soft and fresh. It
was the eve of Martinmas- day Hal-
low tide Summer, as our country folk
call it. As the sun was sinking behind
the hills, the tread of horses' feet was
heard in the distance, and I sprang in
on the bench, shading my eyes wit-i
my hand to see the approach of that
goodly travelling-party, which was
soon to reach our gates. My paren's
came out of the front door, and beck-
oned me to their side. 1 held my po-
sies in my apron, and forgot to so!
them down; for the first sight of my
Lady Mounteagle, as she rode up th.?
avenue with her son at her side, and
her three grand-daughters with theh*
attendants, and many richly-attired
serving-men beside, filled me with awe.
I wondered if her majesty had looked
more grand on the day that she rod 3
into London to be proclaimed queen.
The good lady sat on her paltry in so
erect and stately a manner, as if age
had no dominion over her limbs and
her spirits ; and there was something
so piercing and commanding in her
eye, that it at once compelled rever-
ence and submission. Her son had
somewhat of the same nobility of mien,
and was tall and graceful in his move-
ments ; but behind her, on her pillion,
sat a small counterpart of herself, in-
asmuch as childhood can resemble old
age, and youthful loveliness matronly
dignity. This was the eldest of her
ladyship's grand-daughters, my sweet
Mistress Ann Dacre. This was my
first sight of her who was hereafter to
hold so great a place in my heart and
82
Constance Sherwood.
in my life. As she was lifted from the
saddle, and stood in her riding-habit
and plumed hat at our door, making a
graceful and modest obeisance to my
parents, one step retired behind her
grandam, with a lovely color tinging
her cheeks, and her long lashes veil-
ing her sweet eyes, I thought I had
never seen so fair a creature as this
high-born maiden of my own age ; and
even now that time, as it has gone by,
has shown me all that a court can dis-
play to charm the eyes and enrapture
the fancy, I do not gainsay that same
childish thought of mine. Her sisters,
pretty prattlers then, four and six
years of age, were led into the house
by their governess. But ere our guests
were seated, my mother bade me kiss
my Lady Mounteagle's hand and com-
mend myself to her goodness, praying
her to be a good lady to me, and over-
look, out of her great indulgence, my
many defects. At which she patted
me on the cheek, and said, she doubted
not but that I was as good a child as
such good parents deserved to have;
and indeed, if I was as like my mother
in temper as in face, I must needs be
such as her hopes and wishes would
have me. And then she commanded
Mistress Ann to salute me ; and I felt
my cheeks flush and my heart beat
with joy as the sweet little lady put
her arms round my neck, and pressed
her lips on my cheek.
Presently we all withdrew to our
chambers until such time as supper
was served, at which meal the young
ladies were present; and I marvelled
to see how becomingly even the young-
est of them, who was but a chit, knew
how to behave herself, never asking
for anything, or forgetting to give
thanks in a pretty manner when she
was helped. For the which my mother
greatly commended their good man-
ners; and her ladyship said, "In truth,
good Mistress Sherwood, I carry a
strict hand over them, never suffering
their faults to go unchastised, nor per-
mitting such liberties as many do to
the rum of their children." I was
straightway seized with a great confu-
sion and fear that this was meant as a
rebuke to me, who, not being much
used to company, and something over-
indulged by my father, by whose side
I was seated, had spoken to him more
than once that day at table, and had
also left on my plate some victuals not
to my liking; which, as I learnt at
another time from Mistress Ann, was
an offence for which her grandmother
would have sharply reprehended her.
I ventured not again to speak in her
presence, and scarcely to raise my eyes
toward her.
The young ladies withdrew early to
bed that night, and I had but little
speech with them. Before they left
the parlor, Mistress Ann took her sis-
ters by the hand, and all of them,
kneeling at their grandmother's feet,
craved her blessing. I could see a
tear in her eye as she blessed them ;
and when she laid her hand on the
head of the eldest of her grand-daugh-
ters, it lingered there as if to call down
upon her a special benison. The next
day my Lady Mounteagle gave per-
mission for Mistress Ann to go with
me into the garden, where I showed
her my flowers and the young rabbits
that Edmund Genings and his brother,
my only two playmates, were so fond
of; and she told me how well pleased
she was to remove from London unto
her grandmother's seat, where she
would have a garden and such pleas-
ant pastimes as are enjoyed in the
country.
"Prithee, Mistress Ann," I said,
with the unmannerly boldness with
which children are wont to question
one another, " have you not a mother,
that you live with your grandam?"
"I thank God that I have," she an-
swered ; " and a good mother she is to
me ; but by reason of her having lately
married the Duke of Norfolk, my
grandmother has at the present time
the charge of us."
" And do you greatly love my Lady
Mounteagle?" I asked, misdoubting in
my folly that a lady of so grave aspect
and stately carriage should be loved
by children.
Constance Sherwood.
83
"As greatly as heart can love," was
hex pretty answer.
"And do you likewise love the Duke
of Norfolk, Mistress Ann?" I asked
again.
" He is my very good lord and fath-
er," she answered; " but my knowledge
of his grace has been so short, I have
scarce had time to love him yet."
" But I have loved you in no time,"
I cried, and threw my arms round her
neck. " Directly I saw you, I loved
you, Mistress Ann."
"Mayhap, Mistress Constance," she
said, " it is easier to love a little girl
than a great duke."
" And who do you affection beside
her grace your mother, and my lady
your grandam, Mistress Ann ?" I said,
again returning to the charge; to which
she quickly replied :
"My brother Francis, my sweet
Lord Dacre."
"Is he a child?" I asked.
" In truth, Mistress Constance," she
answered, "he would not be well pleased
to be called so ; and yet methinks he
is but a child, being not older, but
rather one year younger than myself,
and my dear playmate and gossip."
" I wish I had a brother or a sister
to play with me," I said ; at which
Mistress Ann kissed me and said she
was sorry I should lack so great a com-
fort, but that I must consider I had a
good father of my own, whereas her
own was dead ; and that a father was
more than a brother.
In this manner we held discourse all
the morning, and, like a rude imp, I
questioned the gracious young lady as
to her pastimes and her studies and the
tasks she was set to ; and from her in-
nocent conversation I discovered, as
children do, without at the time taking
much heed, but yet so as to remember
it afterward, what especial care had
been taken by her grandmother that
religious and discreet lady to instil
into her virtue and piety, and in using
her, beside saying her prayers, to be-
stow alms with her own hands on pris-
oners and poor people ; and in particu-
lar to apply herself to the cure of dis-
eases and wounds, wherein she herself
had ever excelled. Mistress Ann, in
her childish but withal thoughtful way,
chid me that in my own garden were
only seen flowers which pleased the
senses by their bright colors and per-
fume, and none of the herbs which
tend to the assuagement of pain and
healing of wounds ; and she made me
promise to grow some against the time
of her next visit. As we went through
the kitchen-garden, she plucked some
rosemary and lavender and rue, and
many other odoriferous herbs ; and sit-
ting down on a bench, she invited me
to her side, and discoursed on their
several virtues and properties with a
pretty sort of learning which was mar-
vellous in one of her years. She
showed me which were good for pro-
moting sleep, and which for cuts and
bruises, and of a third she said it eased
the heart.
"Nay, Mistress Ann," I cried, "but
that must be a heartsease ;" at which
she smiled, and answered :
" My grandam says the best medi-
cines for uneasy hearts are the bitter
herb confession and the sweet flower
absolution."
" Have you yet made your first com-
munion, Mistress Ann ?" I asked in a
low voice, at which question a bright
color came into her cheek, and she re-
plied :
" Not yet ; but soon I may. I was
confirmed not long ago by the good
Bishop of Durham ; and at my grand-
mother's seat I am to be instructed by
a Catholic priest who lives there."
" Then you do not go to Protestant
service ?" I said.
"We did," she answered, "for a
short time, whilst we stayed at the
Charterhouse ; but my grandam has
understood that it is not lawful for
Catholics, and she will not be present
at it herself, or suffer us any more to
attend it, neither in her own house nor
at his grace's."
While we were thus talking, the
two little ladies, her sisters, came from
the house, having craved leave from
the governess to run out into the gar-
84
Constance Sherwood.
den. Mistress Mary was a pale deli-
cate child, with soft loving blue eyes ;
and Mistress Bess, the youngest, a
merry imp, whose rosy cheeks and
dimpling smiles were full of glee and
merriment.
" What ugly sober flowers are these,
Nan, that thou art playing with ?" she
cried, and snatched at the herbs in her
sister's lap. " When I marry my Lord
William Howard, I'll wear a posy of
roses and carnations."
"When I am married," said little
Mistress Mary, " I will wear nothing
but lilies."
" And what shall be thy posy, Nan ?"
said the little saucy one again, " when
thou dost wed my Lord Surrey?"
" Hush, hush, madcaps !" cried Mis-
tress Ann. " If your grandam was to
hear you, I doubt not but the rod would
bo called for."
Mistress Mary looked round affright-
ed, but little Mistress Bess said in a
funny manner, " Prithee, Nan, do rods
then travel ?"
"Ay; by that same token, Bess,
that I heard my lady bid thy nurse
take care to carry one with her."
"It was nurse told me I was to
marry my Lord William, and Madge
my Lord Thomas, and thee, Nan, my
Lord Surrey, and brother pretty Meg
Howard," said the little lady, pouting ;
" but I won't tell grandam of it an it
would be like to make her angry."
" I would be a nun !" Mistress Mary
cried.
" Hush!" her elder sister said ; "that
is foolish talking, Madge ; my grand-
mother told me so when I said the
same thing to her a year ago. Chil-
dren do not know what Almighty God
intends them to do. And now methinks
I see Uncle Labourn making as if he
would call us to the house, and there
are the horses coming to the door. We
must needs obey the summons. Prithee,
Mistress Constance, do not forget me."
Forget her ! No. From that day
to this years have passed over our
heads and left deep scars on our
hearts. Divers periods of our lives
have been signalized by many a strange
passage ; we have rejoiced, and, oftener
still, wept together; we have met in
trembling, and parted in anguish ;
but through sorrow and through joy,
through evil report and good report,
in riches and hi poverty, in youth and
in age, I have blessed the day when
first I met thee, sweet Ann Dacre, the
fairest, purest flower which ever grew
on a noble stem.
CHAPTER II.
A YEAR elapsed betwixt the period
of the so brief, but to me so memorable,
visit of the welcomest guests our house
ever received to wit, my Lady Mount-
eagle and her grand-daughters and
that in which I met with an accident,
which compelled my parents to carry
me to Lichfield for chirurgical advice.
Four times in the course of that year
I was honored with letters writ by
the hand of Mistress Ann Dacre ;
partly, as the gracious young lady
said, by reason of her grandmother's
desire that the bud acquaintanceship
which had sprouted in the short-lived
season of the aforesaid visit should,
by such intercourse as may be carried
on by means of letters, blossom into
a flower of true friendship ; and also
that that worthy lady and my good
mother willed such a correspondence
betwixt us as would serve to the sharp-
ening of our wits, and the using our
pens to be good servants to our
thoughts. In the course of this
history I will set down at intervals
some of the letters I received at divers
times from this noble lady; so that
those who read these innocent pictures
of herself, portrayed by her own hand,
may trace the beginnings of those
virtuous inclinations which at an
early age were already working in
her soul, and ever after appeared
in her.
On the 15th day of January of the
next year to tliat in which my eyes
had feasted on this creature so em-
bellished with rare endowments and
Constance Sherwood.
85
accomplished gracefulness, the first
letter I had from her came to my
hand ; the first link of a chain which
knit together her heart and mine
through long seasons of absence and
sore troubles, to the great comforting,
as she was often pleased to say, of
herself, who was so far above me in
rank, whom she chose to call her
friend, and of the poor friend and
servant whom she thus honored
beyond her deserts. In as pretty a
handwriting as can well be thought
of, she thus wrote :
" MY SWEET MISTRESS CONSTANCE,
Though I enjoyed your company
but for the too brief time during
which we rested under your honored
parents' roof, I retain so great a sense
of the contentment I received there-
from, and so lively a remembrance of
the converse we held in the grounds
adjacent to Sherwood Hall, that I am
better pleased than I can well express
that my grandmother bids me sit down
and write to one whom to see and to
converse with once more would be to
me one of the chiefest pleasures in
life. And the more welcome is this
command by reason of the hope it
raises in me to receive in return a
letter from my well-beloved Mistress
Constance, which will do my heart
more good than anything else that
can happen to me. 'Tis said that
marriages are made in heaven. When
I asked my grandam if it were so, she
said, ' I am of opinion, Nan, they are
made in many more places than one ;
and I would to God none were made
but such as are agreed upon in so
good a place.' But methinks some
friendships are likewise made in hea-
ven ; and if it be so, I doubt not but that
when we met, and out of that brief
meeting there arose so great and sud-
den a liking in my heart for you,
Mistress Constance, which, I thank
God, you were not slow to reciprocate,
that our angels had met where we
hope one day to be, and agreed to-
gether touching that matter.
" It suits ill a bad pen like mine to
describe the fair seat we reside in at
this present time the house of Mr.
James Labourn, which he has lent
unto my grandmother. 'Tis most
commodious and pleasant, and after
long sojourn in London, even in
winter, a terrestrial paradise. But,
like the garden of Eden, not without
dangers ; for the too much delight I
took in out-of-doors pastimes and
most of all on the lake when it was
frozen, and we had merry sports upon
it, to the neglect of my lessons, not
heeding the lapse of time in the pur-
suit of pleasure brought me into
trouble and sore disgrace. My grand-
mother ordered me into confinement
for three days in my own chamber,
and I. saw her not nor received her
blessing all that time ; at the end of
which she sharply reproved me for
my fault, and bade me hold in mind
that 'twas when loitering in a garden
Eve met the tempter, and threatened
further and severe punishment if I
applied not diligently to my studies.
When I had knelt down and begged
pardon, promising amendment, she
drew me to her and kissed me, which
it was not her wont often to do.
' Nan,' she said, * I would have thee
use thy natural parts, and improve
thyself in virtue and learning; for
such is the extremity of the tunes,
that ere long it may be that many
first shall be last and many last shall
be first in this realm of England. But
virtue and learning are properties
which no man can steal from another ;
and I would fain see thee endowed
with a goodly store of both. That
great man and true confessor, Sir
Thomas More, had nothing so much
at heart as his daughter's instruction ;
and Mistress Margaret Roper, once
my sweet friend, though some years
older than my poor self, who still
laments her loss, had such fine things
said of her by the greatest men of
this age, as would astonish thee to
hear ; but they were what she had a
right to and very well deserved. And
the strengthening of her mind through
study and religious discipline served
86
Constance Sherwood.
her well at the time of her great
trouble; for where other women
would have lacked sense and courage
how to act, she kept her wits about
her, and ministered such comfort to
her father, remaining near him at the
last, and taking note of his wishes,
and finding means to bury him in a
Christian manner, which none other
durst attempt, that she had occasion
to thank God who gave her a head as
well as a heart. And who knows,
Nan, what may befal thee, and what
need thou mayst have of the like
advantages ? '
My grandmother looked so kindly
on me then, that, albeit abashed at the
remembrance of my fault, I sought to
move her to further discourse; and
knowing what great pleasure she had
hi speaking of Sir Thomas More, at
whose house in Chelsea she had often-
times been a visitor in her youth, I
enticed her to it by cunning questions
touching the customs he observed in
his family.
" < Ah, Nan !' she said, that house
was a school and exercise of the
Christian religion. There was neither
man nor woman in it who was not
employed in liberal discipline and
fruitful reading, although the principal
study was religion. There was no
quarrelling, not so much as a peevish
word to be heard ; nor was any one
seen idle; all were in their several
employs : nor was there wanting sober
mirth. And so well-managed a gov-
ernment Sir Thomas did not maintain
by severity and chiding, but by gen-
tleness and kindness.'
"Methought as she said this, that
my dear grandam in that matter of
chiding had not taken a leaf out of
Sir Thomas's book ; and there was no
doubt a transparency in my face which
revealed to her this thought of mine ;
for she straightly looked at me and
said, ' Nan, a penny for thy thoughts !'
at the which I felt myself blushing,
but knew nothing would serve her but
the truth ; so I said, in as humble a
manner as I could think of, 'An if
you will excuse me, grandam,! thought
if Sir Thomas managed so well with-
out chiding, that you manage well
with it.' At the which she gave me a
light nip on the forehead, and said,
' Go to, child ; dost think that any but
saints can rule a household without
chiding, or train children without whip-
ping ? Go tliy ways, and mend them
too, if thou wouldst escape chastise-
ment; and take with thee, Nan, the
words of one whom we shall never
again see the like of in this poor
country, which he used to his wife or
any of his children if they were dis-
eased or troubled, " We must not look
at our pleasures to go to heaven in
feather-beds, or to be carried up thither
even by the chins." ' And so she dis-
missed me ; and I have here set down
my fault, and the singular goodness
showed me by my grandmother when
it was pardoned, not thinking I can
write anything better worth notice than
the virtuous talk with which she then
favored me.
"There is in this house a chapel
very neat and rich, and an ancient
Catholic priest is here, who says mass
most days ; at the which we, with my
grandmother, assist, and such of her
servants as have not conformed to the
times ; and this good father instructs
us in the principles of Catholic re-
ligion. On the eve of the feast of
the Nativity of Christ, my lady stayed
in the chapel from eight at night till
two in the morning ; but sent us to bed
at nine, after the litanies were said,
until eleven, when there was a ser-
mon, and at twelve o'clock three mass-
es said, which being ended we broke
our fast with a mince-pie, and went
again to bed. And all the Christmas-
time we were allowed two hours after
each meal for recreation, -instead of
one. At other times, we play not at
any game for money ; but then we
had a shilling a-piece to make us
merry ; which my grandmother says is
fitting in this time of mirth and joy
for his birth who is the sole origin
and spring of true comfort. And
now, sweet Mistress Constance, I must
bid you farewell ; for the greatest of
Constance Sherwood.
87
joys has befallen me, and a whole
holiday to enjoy it. My sweet Lord
Dacre is come to pay his duty to my
lady and tarry some days here, on his
way to Thetford, the Duke of Norfolk's
seat, where his grace and the duchess
my good mother have removed. He
is a beauty, Mistress Constance ; and
nature has so profusely conferred on
him privileges, that when her majesty
the queen saw him a short time back
on horseback, in the park at Rich-
mond, she called him to her carriage-
door and honored him with a kiss, and
the motto of the finest boy she ever
beheld. But I may not run on in
this fashion, letting my pen outstrip
modesty, like a foolish creature, mak-
ing my brother a looking-glass and
continual object for my eyes ; but
learn to love him, as my grandam says,
in God, of whom he is only borrowed,
and not so as to set my heart wholly
on him. So beseeching God bless
you and yours, good Mistress Con-
stance, I ever remain, your loving
friend and humble servant,
" ANN DACRE."
Oh, how soon were my Lady Mount-
eagle's words exalted in the event!
and what a sad brief note was penned
by that affectionate sister not one
month after she writ those lines, so
full of hope and pleasure in the pros-
pect of her brother's sweet company !
For the fair boy that was the continu-
al object of her eyes and the dear
comfort of her heart was accidentally
slain by the fall of a vaulting horse
upon him at the duke's house at Thet-
ford.
" MY GOOD MISTRESS CONSTANCE"
(she wrote, a few days after his la-
mentable death), "The lovingest
brother a sister ever had, and the
most gracious creature ever born, is
dead ; and if it pleased God I wish I
were dead too, for my heart is well-
nigh broken. But I hope in God his
soul is now in heaven, for that he was
so young and innocent; and when
here, a short time ago, my grand-
mother procured that he should for the
first, and as it has pleased God also
for the only and the last, time, confess
and be absolved by a Catholic priest,
in the which the hand of Providence
is visible to our great comfort, and
reasonable hope of his salvation.
Commending him and your poor friend,
who has great need of them, to your
good prayers, I remain your affection-
ate and humble servant,
" ANN DACRE."
In that year died also, in childbirth,
her grace the Duchess of Norfolk,
Mistress Ann's mother; and she then
wrote in a less passionate, but withal
less comfortable, grief than at her
brother's loss, and, as I have heard
since, my Lady Mounteagle had her
death-blow at that time, and never
lifted up her head again as heretofore.
It was noticed that ever after she
spent more time in prayer and gave
greater alms. Her daughter, the
duchess, who at the instance of her
husband had conformed to the times,
desired to have been reconciled on her
deathbed by a priest, who for that end
was conducted into the garden, yet
could not have access unto her by
reason of the duke's vigilance to hin-
der it, or at least of his continual
presence in her chamber at the tune.
And soon after, his grace, whose wards
they were, sent for his three step-
daughters to the Charterhouse ; the
parting with which, and the fears she
entertained that he would have them
carried to services and sermons in the
public churches, and hinder them in
the exercise of Catholic faith and
worship, drove the sword yet deeper
through my Lady Mounteagle's heart,
and brought down her gray hairs with
sorrow to the grave, notwithstanding
that the duke greatly esteemed and
respected her, and was a very moral
nobleman, of exceeding good temper
and moderate disposition. But of
this more anon, as 'tis my own history
I am writing, and it is meet I should
relate in the order of time what events
came under my notice whilst in Lich-
88
Constance Sherwood.
field, whither my mother carried me,
as has been aforesaid, to be treated by
a famous physician for a severe hurt I
had received. It was deemed con-
venient that I should tarry some time
under his care ; and Mr. Genings, a
kinsman of her own, who with his
wife and children resided in that town,
one of the chiefest in the county,
offered to keep me in their house as
long as was convenient thereunto a
kindness which my parents the more
readily accepted at his hands from
their having often shown the like unto
his children when the air of the coun-
try was desired for them.
Mr. and Mrs. Genings were of the
religion by law established. He was
thought to be Catholic at heart;
albeit he was often heard to speak
very bitterly against all who obeyed
not the queen hi conforming to the
new mode of worship, with the ex-
ception, indeed, of my mother, for
whom he had always a truly great
affection. This gentleman's house
was in the close of the cathedral, and
had a garden to it well stored with
fair shrubs and flowers of various
sorts. As I lay on a. low settle near
the window, being forbid to walk for
the space of three weeks, my eyes
were ever straying from my sampler
to the shade and sunshine out of
doors. Instead of plying at my nee-
dle, I watched the bees at their sweet
labor midst the honeysuckles of the
porch, or the swallows darting in and
out of the eaves of the cathedral, or
the butterflies at their idle sports over
the beds of mignonette and heliotrope
under the low wall, covered with ivy,
betwixt the garden and the close.
Mr. Genings had two sons, the eldest
of which was some years older and
the other younger than myself. The
first, whose name was Edmund, had
been weakly when a child, and by
reason of this a frequent sojourner at
Sherwood Hall, where he was carried
for change of air after the many ill-
nesses incident to early age. My
mother, who was some years married
before she had a child of her own,
conceived a truly maternal affection
for this young kinsman, and took
much pains with him both as to the
care of his body and the training of
his mind. He was an apt pupil, and
she had so happy a manner of im-
parting knowledge,' that he learnt
more, as he has since said, in those
brief sojourns in her house than at
school from more austere masters.
After I came into the world, he took
delight to rock me in my cradle, or
play with me as I sat on my mother's
knee ; and when I first began to walk,
he would lead me by the hand into the
garden, and laugh to see me clutch
marigolds or cry for a sunflower.
" I warrant thou hast an eye to gold,
Con," he would say ; " for 'tis the yel-
low flowers that please thee best."
There is an old hollow tree on the
lawn at Sherwood Hall where I often
hid from him in sport, and he would
make pretence to seek me elsewhere,
till a laugh revealed me to him, and a
chase ensued down the approach or
round the maze. He never tired of
my petulance, or spoke rude words, as
boys are wont to do ; and had a more
serious and contemplative spirit than
is often seen in young people, and like-
wise a singular fancy for gazing at
the sky when glowing with sunset
hues or darkened by storms, and most
of all when studded at night with
stars. On a calm clear night I have
noticed him for a length of time, for-
getting all things else, fix his eyes on
the heavens, as if reading the glory of
the Lord therein revealed.
My parents did not speak to him of
Catholic faith and worship, because
Mr. Genings, before he suffered his
sons to stay in their house, had made
them promise that no talk of religion
should be ministered to them in their
childhood. It was a sore trial to my
mother to refrain, as the Psalmist saith,
from good words, which were ever
rising from her heart to her lips, as
pure water from a deep spring. But
she instructed him in many things
which belong to gentle learning, and
in French, which she knew well ; and
Constance Sherwood.
89
taught him music, in which he made
great progress. And this wrought
with his father to the furtherance of
these his visits to us. I doubt not but
that, when she told him the names of
the heavenly luminaries, she inwardly
prayed he might one day shine as a
star in the kingdom of God ; or when
she discoursed of flowers and their
properties, that he should blossom as a
rose in the wilderness of this faithless
world ; or whilst guiding his hands to
play on the clavichord, that he might
one day join in the glorious harmony
of the celestial choirs. Her face itself
was a preachment, and the tones of
her voice, and the tremulous sighs she
breathed when she kissed him or gave
him her blessing, had, I ween, a privi-
lege to reach his heart, the goodness of
which was readable in his countenance.
Dear Edmund Genings, thou wert in-
deed a brother to me in kind care and
companionship whilst I stayed in Lich-
field that never-to-be-forgotten year!
How gently didst thou minister to the
sick child, for the first time tasting the
cup of suffering ; now easing her head
with a soft pillow, now strewing her
couch with fresh-gathered flowers, or
feeding her with fruit which had the
bloom on it, or taking her hand and
holding it in thine own to cheer her to
endurance! Thou wert so patient and
so loving, both with her who was a
great trouble to thee and oftentimes
fretful with pain, and likewise with
thine own little brother, an angel in
beauty and wit, but withal of so petu-
lant and froward a disposition that
none in the house durst contradict him,
child as he was ; for his parents were
indeed weak in their fondness for him.
In no place and at no time have I seen
a boy so indulged and so caressed as
this John Genings. He had a pretty
wilfulness and such playful ways that
his very faults found favor with those
who should have corrected them, and
he got praise where others would have
met with chastisement. Edmund's
love for this fair urchin was such as
is seldom seen in any save in a parent
for a child. It was laughable to see
the lovely imp governing one who
should have been his master, but
through much love was his slave, and
in a thousand cunning ways, and by
fanciful tricks, constraining him to do
his bidding. Never was a more way-
ward spirit enclosed in a more win-
some form than in John Genings.
Never did childish gracefulness rule
more absolutely over superior age, or
love reverse the conditions of ordinary
supremacy, than in the persons of these
two brothers.
A strange thing occurred at that
time, which I witnessed not myself,
and on which I can give no opinion,
but as a fact will here set it down, and
let such as read this story deem of it
as they please. One night that, by
reason of the unwonted chilliness of
the evening, such as sometimes occurs
in our climate even in summer, a fire
had been lit in the parlor, and the
family were gathered round it, Ed-
mund came of a sudden into the room,
and every one took notice that his face
Avas very pale. He seemed in a great
fear, and whispered to his mother,
who said aloud "Thou must have
been asleep, and art still dreaming,
child." Upon which he was very ur-
gent for her to go into the garden, and
used many entreaties thereunto. Upon
which, at last, she rose and followed
him. In another moment she called
for her husband, who went out, and
with him three or four other persons
that were in the room, and I remained
alone for the space of ten or fifteen
minutes. "When they returned, I heard
them speaking with great fear and
amazement of what they had seen ; and
Edmund Genings has often since de-
scribed to me what he first, and after-
ward all the others, had beheld in the
sky. He was gazing at the heavens,
as was his wont, when a strange spec-
tacle appeared to him in the air. As
it were, a number of armed men with
weapons, killing and murdering others
that were disarmed, and great store of
blood running everywhere about them.
His parents and those with them wit-
nessed the same thing, and a great
90
Constance Sherwood.
fear fell upon them all. I noticed
that all that evening they seemed
scared, and could not speak of this
appearance in the sky without shud-
dering. But one that was more bold
than the rest took heart, and cried,
" God send it does not forbode that
the Papists will murder us all in our
beds !" And Mistress Genings, whose
mother was a French Huguenot, said,
"Amen!" I marked that her hus-
band and one or two more of the
company groaned, and one made, as
if unwittingly, the sign of the cross.
There were some I know in that town,
nay and in that house, that were at
heart of the old religion, albeit, by
reason of the times, they did not give
over attending Protestants' worship.
A few days later I was sitting alone,
and had a long fit of musing over the
many new thoughts that were crowd-
ing into my mind, as yet too childish
to master them, when Edmund came
in, and I saw he had been weeping.
He said nothing at first, and made
believe he was reading ; but I could
see tears trickling down through his
fingers as he covered his face with
his hands. Presently he looked up
and cried out,
" Cousin Constance, Jack is going
away from us."
" And if it please God, not for a
long time," I answered; for it grieved
me to see him sad.
" Nay, but he is going for many
years, I fear," Edmund said. " My
uncle, Jean de Luc, has asked for him
to be brought up in his house at La
Rochelle. He is his godfather, and
has a great store of money, which he
says he will leave to Jack. Alack!
cousin Constance, I would that there
was no such thing in the world as
money, and no such country as France.
I wish we were all dead." And then
he fell to weeping again very bitterly.
I told him in a childish manner
what my mother was wont to say to
me when any little trouble fell to my
lot that we should be patient, and
offer up our sufferings to God.
" But I can do nothing now for
Jack," he cried. "It was my first
thought at waking and my last at
night, how to please the dear urchin;
but now 'tis all over."
" Oh, but Edmund," I cried, " an if
you were to be as good as the blessed
saints in heaven, you could do a great
deal for Jack."
" How so, cousin Constance ?" he
asked, not comprehending my mean-
ing ; and thereupon I answered :
" When once I said to my sweet
mother, 'It grieves me, dear heart,
that I can give thee nothing, who
gives me so much,' she bade me take
heed that every prayer we say, every
good work we do, howsoever imper-
fect, and every pain we suffer, may be
offered up for those we love ; and so
out of poverty, and weakness, and
sorrow, we have wherewith to make
precious and costly and cheerful gifts."
I spoke as a child, repeating what I
had heard; but he listened not as a
child. A sudden light came into his
eyes, and methinks his good angel
showed him in that hour more than
my poor lips could utter.
" If it be as your sweet mother
says," he joyfully cried, "we are rich
indeed ; and, even though we be sin-
ners and not saints, we have some-
what to give, I ween, if it be only our
heartaches, cousin Constance, so they
be seasoned with prayers."
The thought which in my simplicity
I had set before liim took root, as it
were, in his mind. His love for a
little child had prepared the way for
it ; and the great brotherly affection
which had so long dwelt in his heart
proved a harbinger of the more per-
fect gift of charity ; so that a heaven-
ly message was perchance conveyed
to him that day by one who likewise
was a child, even as the word of the
Lord came to the prophet through the
lips of the infant Samuel. From that
time forward he bore up bravely
against his grief; which was the
sharper inasmuch that he who was the
cause of it showed none in return, but
rather joy in the expectancy of the
change which was to part them. He
'
Constance Sherwood.
91
would still be a-prattling on it, and
telling all who came in his way that
he was going to France to a good
uncle ; nor ever intended to return, for
his mother was to carry him to La
Rochelle, and she should stay there
with him, he said, and not come back
to ugly Lichfield.
" And art thou not sorry, Jack," I
asked him one day, " to leave poor Ed-
mund, who loves thee so well ?"
The little madcap was coursing
round the room, and cried, as he ran
past me, for he had more wit and
spirit than sense or manners :
" Edmund must seek after me, and
take pains to find me, if so be he would
have me."
These words, which the boy said in
his play, have often come back to my
mind since the two brothers have at-
tained unto a happy though dissimilar
end.
When the tune had arrived for Mis-
tress Genings and her youngest son
to go beyond seas, as I was now im-
proved in health and able to walk, my
father fetched me home, and prevailed
on Mr. Genings to let Edmund go
back with us, with the intent to divert
his mind from his grief at his brother's
departure.
I found my parents greatly dis-
turbed at the news they had had
touching the imprisonment of thirteen
priests on account of religion, and of
Mr. Orton being likewise arrested,
who was a gentleman very dear to
them for his great virtues and the
steadfast friendship he had ever shown
to them.
My mother questioned Edmund as
to the sign he had seen hi the heavens
a short time back, of which the report
had reached them ; and he confirming
the truth thereof, she clasped her
hands and cried :
" Then I fear me much this fore-
bodes the death of these blessed con-
fessors, Father Weston and the rest."
Upon which Edmund said, in a
humble manner :
" Good Mistress Sherwood, my dear
mother thought it signified that those
of your religion would murder in their
beds such as are of the queen's re-
ligion ; so maybe in both cases there
is naught to apprehend."
" My good child," my mother an-
swered, " in regard of those now in
durance for their faith, the danger is
so manifest, that if it please not the
Almighty to work a miracle for their
deliverance, I see not how they may
escape."
After that we sat awhile in silence ;
my father reading, my mother and I
working, and Edmund at the window
intent as usual upon the stars, which
were shining one by one in the deep
azure of the darkening sky. As one
of greater brightness than the rest
shone through the branches of the old
tree, where I used to hide some years
before, he pointed to it,. and said to me,
who was sitting nearest to him at the
window :
" Cousin Constance, think you the
Star of Bethlehem showed fairer in
the skies than yon bright star that has
just risen behind your favorite oak?
What and if that star had a message
for us !"
My father heard him, and smiled.
" I was even then," he said, " reading
the words of one who was led to the
true religion by the contemplation of
the starry skies. In a Southern clime,
where those fair luminaries shine with
more splendor than in our Northern
heavens, St. Augustine wrote thus ;"
and then he read a few sentences in
Latin from the book in his hand,
" Raising ourselves up, we passed by
degrees through all things bodily, even
the very heavens, whence sun and
moon and stars shine upon the earth.
Yea, we soared yet higher by inward
musing and discourse and admiring of
God's works, and we came to our own
minds and went beyond them, so as to
arrive at that region of never-feiling
plenty where thou feedest Israel for
ever with the food of truth." These
words had a sweet and solemn force in
them which struck on the ear like a
strain of unearthly music, such as the
wind-harp wakes in the silence of the
92
Constance Sherwood.
night. In a low voice, so low that it
was like the breathing of a sigh, I
heard Edmund say, " What is truth ?"
But when he had uttered those words,
straightway turning toward me as if to
divert his thoughts from that too pithy
question, he cried : " Prithee, cousin
Constance, hast thou ended reading, I
warrant for the hundredth time, that
letter in thine hand ? and hast thou not
a mind to impart to thy poor kinsman
the sweet conceits I doubt not are
therein contained ?" I could not choose
but smile at his speech ; for I had
indeed feasted my eyes on the hand-
writing of my dear friend, now no
longer Mistress Dacre, and learnt off,
as it were by heart, its contents. And
albeit I refused at first to comply with
his request, which I had secretly a
mind to ; no sooner did he give over
the urging of it than I stole to his
side, and, though I would by no means
let it out of my hand, and folded down
one side of the sheet to hide what was
private in it, I offered to read such
parts aloud as treated of matters
which might be spoken of without
hindrance.
With a smiling countenance, then,
he set himself to listen, and I to be the
mouthpiece of the dear writer, whose
wit was so far in advance of her years,
as I have since had reason to observe,
never having met at any time with one
in whom wisdom put forth such early
shoots.
" DEAR MISTRESS CONSTANCE "
(thus the sweet lady wrote),
" Wherefore this long silence and neg-
lect of your poor friend ? An if it be
true, which pains me much to hear,
that the good limb which, together
with its fellow, like two trusty foot-
men, carried you so well and nimbly
along the alleys of your garden this
time last year, has, like an arrant
knave, played fast and loose, and failed
in its good service, wherein, I am
told, you have suffered much incon-
venience, is it just that that other ser-
vant, your hand, should prove rebel-
lious too, refuse to perform its office,
and write no more letters at your bid-
ding ? For I'll warrant 'tis the hand
is the culprit, not the will ; which nev-
ertheless should be master, and com-
pel it to obedience. So, an you love
me, chide roundly that contumacious
hand, which fails in its duty, which
should not be troublesome, if you but
had for me one-half of the affection I
have for you. And indeed, Mistress
Constance, a letter from you would be
to me, at this tune, the welcomesi
thing I can think of; for since we left
my grandmother's seat, and came to
the Charterhouse, I have new friends,
and many more and greater than I de-
serve or ever thought to have ; but,
by reason of difference of age or of
religion, they are not such as I can
well open my mind to, as I might to
you, if it pleased God we should meet
again. The Duke of Norfolk is a
very good lord and father to me ; but
when there are more ways of thinking
than one in a house, 'tis no easy mat-
ter to please all which have a right to
be considered ; and, in the matter of
religion, 'tis very hard to avoid giving
offence. But no more of this at pres-
ent; only I would to God Mr. Fox
were beyond seas, and my lady of
Westmoreland at her home in the
North ; and that we had no worse com-
pany in this house than Mr. Martin,
my Lord Surrey's tutor, who is a gentle-
man of great learning and knowledge,
as every one says, and of extraordinary
modesty in his behavior. My Lord
Surrey has a truly great regard for
him, and profits much in his learning
by his means. I notice he is Catholic
in his judgment and affections ; and
my lord says he will not stay with him,
if his grace his father procures minis-
ters to preach to his household and
family, and obliges all therein to fre-
quent Protestant service. I wish my
grandmother was in London ; for I am
sometimes sore troubled in my mind
touching Catholic religion and con-
forming to the times, of which an
abundance of talk is ministered unto
us, to my exceeding great discomfort,
by my Lady Westmoreland, his grace's
Constance Sherwood.
93
sister, and others also. An if I say
aught thereon to Mistress Fawcett (a
grave and ancient gentlewoman, who
had the care of my Lord Surrey du-
ring his infancy, and is now set over
us his grace's wards), and of misliking
the duke's ministers and that pestilent
Mr. Fox (I fear me, Mistress Con-
stance, I should not have writ that un-
beseeming word, and I will e'en draw
a line across it, but still as you may
read it for indeed 'tis what he is;
but 'tis from himself I learnt it, who
in his sermons calls Catholic religion a
pestilent idolatry, and Catholic priests
pestilent teachers and servants of An-
tichrist, and the holy Pope at Rome
the man of sin) she grows uneasy,
and bids me be a good child to her, and
not to bring her into trouble with his
grace, who is indeed a very good lord
to us in all matters but that one of
compelling us to hear sermons and the
like. My Lord Surrey mislikes all
kinds of sermons, and loves Mr. Mar-
tin so well, that he stops his ears when
Mr. Fox preaches on the dark mid-
night of papacy and the dawn of the
gospel's restored light. And it angers
him, as well it should, to hear him
call his majesty King Philip of Spain,
who is his own godfather, from whom
he received his name, a wicked popish
tyrant and a son of Antichrist. My
Lady Margaret, his sister, who is a
year younger than himself, and has a
most admirable beauty and excellent
good nature, is vastly taken with what
she hears from me of Catholic reli-
gion ; but methinks this is partly by
reason of her misliking Mr. Fulk and
Mr. Clarke's long preachments, which
we are compelled to hearken to ; and
their fashion of spending Sunday,
which they do call the Sabbath-day,
wherein we must needs keep silence,
and when not in church sit still at
home, which to one of her lively dis-
position is heavy penance. Methinks
when Sunday comes we be all in dis-
grace ; 'tis so like a day of correction.
My Lord Surrey has more liberty ;
for Mr. Martin carries him and his
brothers after service into the pleasant
fields about Westminster Abbey and
the village of Charing Cross, and suf-
fers them to play at ball under the
trees, so they do not quarrel amongst
themselves. My Lord Henry How-
ard, his grace's brother, always main-
tains and defends the Catholic religion
against his sister of Westmoreland ;
and he spoke to my uncles Leonard,
Edward, and Francis, and likewise to
my aunt Lady Montague, that they
should write unto my grandmother
touching his grace bringing us up as
Protestants. But the Duke of Nor-
folk, Mrs. Fawcett says, is our guar-
dian, and she apprehends he is re-
solved that we shall conform to the
times, and that no liberty be allowed
us for the exercise of Catholic reli-
gion."
At this part of the letter I stopped
reading ; and Edmund, turning to my
father, who, though he before had
perused it, was also listening, said:
" And if this be liberty of conscience,
which Protestants speak of, I see no
great liberty and no great conscience
in the matter."
His cheek flushed as he spoke, and
there was a hoarseness in his voice
which betokened the working of strong
feelings within him. My father smiled
with a sort of pitiful sadness, and
answered :
" My good boy, when thou art some-
what further advanced in years, thou
wilt learn that the two words thou art
speaking of are such as men have
abused the meaning of more than any
others that can be thought of; and I
pray to God they do not continue to do
so as long as the world lasts. It seems
to me that they mostly mean by ' lib-
erty' a freedom to compel others to
think and to act as they have them-
selves a mind to ; and by * conscience/
the promptings of their own judgments
moved by their own passions."
" But 'tis hard," Edmund said, 'tis
at times very hard, Mr. Sherwood,
to know whereunto conscience points,
in the midst of so many inward clam-
ors as are raised in the soul by con-
flicting passions of dutiful affection
94
Constance Sherwood.
and filial reverence struggling for the
mastery. Ay, and no visible token of
God's will to make that darkness light.
Tis that," he cried, more moved as he
went on, " that makes me so often gaze
upward. Would to God I might see
a sign in the skies ! for there are no
sign-posts on life's path to guide us on
our way to the heavenly Jerusalem,
which our ministers speak of."
" If thou diligently seekest for sign-
posts, my good boy," my father an-
swered, "fear not but that he who
said, ' Seek, and you shall find,' will
furnish thee with them. He has not
left himself without witnesses, or his
religion to be groped after in hopeless
darkness, so that men may not discern,
even in these troublous times, where
the truth lies, so they be in earnest in
their search after it. But I will not
urge thee by the cogency of arguments,
or be drawn out of the reserve I have
hitherto observed in these matters,
which be nevertheless the mightiest
that can be thought of as regards the
soul's health."
And so, breaking off this discourse,
he walked out upon the terrace ; and
I withdrew to the table, where my
mother was sitting, and once more
conned over the last pages of my ladys
letter, which, when the reader hath
read, he will perceive the writer's rank
and her right to be thus titled.
"And now, Mistress Constance, I
must needs inform you of a matter I
would not leave you ignorant of, so
that you should learn from strangers
what so nearly concerns one whom you
have a friendship to and that is my
betrothal with my Lord Surrey. The
ceremony was public, inasmuch as was
needful for the solemnising of a con-
tract which is binding for life ' until
death us do part,' as the marriage ser-
vice hath it. How great a change this
has 'wrought in my thoughts, none
knows but myself ; for though I be but
twelve years of age (for his grace
would have the ceremony to take
place on my birthday), one year older
than yourself, and so lately a child
that not a very long time ago my
grandmother would chastise me with
her own hands for my faults, I now am
wedded to my young lord, and by his
grace and all the household titled
Countess of Surrey! And I thank
God to be no worse mated ; for my
lord, who is a few months younger than
me, and a very child for frolicksome
spirits and wild mirth, has, notwith-
standing, so great a pleasantness of
manners and so forward a wit, that one
must needs have pleasure in his com-
pany ; and I only wish I had more of it.
Whilst we were only friends and play-
mates, I used to chide and withstand
him, as one older and one more staid
and discreet than himself; but, ah me !
since we have been wedded, 'tis grand
to hear him discourse on the duty of
wives, and quote the Bible to show they
must obey their husbands. He carries
it in a very lordly fashion ; and if I
comply not at once with his commands,
he cries out what he has heard at the
play-house :
' Such duty as the subject owes the prince
Even such a woman oweth to her husband ;
And when she's froward, peevish sullen, sour,
And not obedient to his honest will,
What is she but a foul contending rebel
And graceless traitor to her loving lord ?
I ana ashamed that women are so simple
To offer war where they should kneel for peace ;
Or seek for rule, supremacy, or sway,
Where they are bound to serve, love, and obey.'
He has a most excellent memory. If
he has but once heard out of any En-
glish or Latin book so much read as is
contained in a leaf, he will forthwith
perfectly repeat it. My Lord Henry,
his uncle, for a trial, invented twenty
long and difficult words a few days
back, which he had never seen or heard
before ; yet did he recite them readily,
every one in the same order as they
were written, having only once read
them over. But, touching that matter
of obedience, which I care not to gain-
say, 'tis not easy at present to obey my
lord my husband, and his grace his
father, and Mistress Fawcett, too, who
holds as strict a hand over the Count-
ess of Surrey as over Mistress Ann
Dacre ; for the commands of these
my rulers do not at all times accord :
but I pray to God I may do my duty,
and be a good wife to my lord ; and I
Constance Sherwood.
95
wish, as I said before, my grandmother
had been here, and that I had been
favored with her good counsel, and
had had the benefit of shrift and
spiritual advice ere I entered on this
stage of my life, which is so new to me,
who was but a child a few weeks ago,
and am yet treated as such in more
respects than one.
" My lord has told me a secret which
Higford. his father's servant, let out to
him; and 'tis something so weighty
and of so great import, that since he
left me my thoughts have been truants
from my books, and Monsieur Sebas-
tian, who comes to practice us on the
lute, stopped his ears, and cried out
that the Signora Contessa had no mer-
cy on him, so to murther his composi-
tions. Tis not the part of a true wife
to reveal her husband's secrets, or else
I would tell you, Mistress Constance,
this great news, which I can with
trouble keep to myself; and I shall
not be easy till I have seen my lord
again, which should be when we walk
in the garden this evening ; but I pray
to God he may not be off instead to
the Mall, to play at kittlepins ; for then
I have small chance to get speech with
him to-day. Mr. Martin is my very
good friend,- and reminds the earl of
his duty to his lady; but if my lord
comes at his bidding, when he would
be elsewhere than in my company, 'tis
little contentment I have in his visits.
" 'Tis yesterday I writ thus much,
and now 'tis the day to send this let-
ter; and I saw not my lord last night
by reason of his grandfather my Lord
Arundel sending to fetch me unto his
house in the Strand. His goodness to
me is so great, that nothing more can
be desired ; and his daughter my Lady
Lumley is the greatest comfort I have
in the world. She showed me a fair
picture of my lord's mother, who died
the day he was born, not then full
seventeen years of age. She was of
so amiable a disposition, so prudent,
virtuous, and religious, that all who
knew her could not but love and es-
teem her. And I read a letter which
this sweet lady had written in Latin
to her father on his birthday, to his
great contentment, who had procured
her to be well instructed in that lan-
guage, as well as in her own and in
all commendable learning. Then I
played at primero with my Lord Arun-
del and my Lady Lumley and my
uncle Francis. The knave of hearts
was fixed upon for the quinola, and I
won the flush. My uncle Francis
cried the winning card should be titled
Dudley. 'Not so,' quoth the earl;
* the knave that would match with the
queen in the suit of hearts should
never win the game.' And further
talk ensued ; from which I learnt that
my Lord Arundel and the Duke of
Norfolk mislike my Lord Leicester,
and would not he should marry the
queen; and my uncle laughed, and
said, 'My lord, no good Englishman
is there but must be of your lord-
ship's mind, though none have so good
reason as yourself to hinder so base a
contract ; for if my Lord of Leicester
should climb unto her majesty's throne,
beshrew me if he will not remember
the box on the ear your lordship min-
istered to him some time since ;' at
which the earl laughed, too ; but my
Lady Lumley cried, ' I would to God
my brother of Norfolk were rid of my
Lord Leicester's friendship, which has,
I much fear me, more danger in it
than his enmity. God send he does
not lead his grace into troubles greater
than can well be thought of!' Alack,
Mistress Constance, what uneasy times
are these which we have fallen on ! for
methinks 'troubles' is the word in
every one's mouth. As I was about
to step into the chair at the hall-door
at Arundel House, I heard one of my
lord's guard say to another, 'I trust
the white horse will be in quiet, and so
we shall be out of trouble.' I have
asked Mr. Martin what these words
should mean ; whereupon he told
me the white horse, which indeed I
might have known, was the Earl of
Arundel's cognisance; and that the
times were very troublesome, and plots
were spoken of in the North anent
the Queen of Scots, her majesty the
96
Two Sides of Catholicism*
queen's cousin, who is at Chates-
worth ; and when he said that, all of a
sudden I grew red, and my cheeks
burned like two hot coals ; but he took
no heed, and said, 'A true servant
might well wish his master out of
trouble, when troubles were so rife/
And now shame take me for taking
up so much of your time, which should
be spent in more profitable ways than
the reading of my poor letters ; and I
must needs beg you to write soon, and
hold me as long as I have held you,
and love me, sweet one, as I love you.
My Lady Margaret, who is in a sense
twice my sister, says she is jealous of
Mistress Constance Sherwood, and
would steal away my heart from her ;
but, though she is a winsome and cun-
ning thief in such matters, I warrant
you she shall fail therein. And so,
commending myself to your good
prayers, I remain
" Your true friend and loving ser-
vant, "ANN SURREY."
As I finished and was folding up my
letter the clock struck nine. It was
waning darker without by reason of a
cloud which had obscured the moon.
I heard my father still pacing up and
down the gravel-walk, and ever and
anon staying his footsteps awhile, as if
watching. After a short space the
moon shone out again, and I saw the
shadows of two persons against the
wall of the kitchen garden. Presently
the hall-door was fastened and bolt-
ed, as I knew by the rattling of the
chain which hung across it. Then
my father looked in at the door and
said, " 'Tis time, goodwife, for young
folks to be abed." Upon which my
mother rose and made as if she
was about to withdraw to her bed-
chamber. Edmund followed us up
stairs, and, wishing us both good-
night, went into the closet where he
slept. Then my mother, taking me
by the hand, led me into my father's
study.
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
Translated from Der Katholik.
THE TWO SIDES OF CATHOLICISM.
THE Church is, in a twofold respect,
universal or catholic. While, on the
one hand, she extends herself over the
whole earth, and encircles the entire
human race with the bond of the same
faith and an equal love, on the other
she makes known, by this very act,
the most special inward character of
her own being. Thus the Church is
the Catholic Church, both in her in-
terior being and in her exterior mani-
festation.
The ground of the well-known say-
ing of St. Ambrose, "Where Peter
is, there is the Church,"* lies in the
thought, that the nature of the Church
admits of only one form of historical
manifestation. The idea of the true
Church can only be realized where
Peter is, in the communion of the legi-
timate Pope as the successor of Peter.
This proposition has its proximate
justification in that clear expression of
the will of Jesus Christ, the founder of
the Church, in which he designates the
Apostle Peter as the rock on which he
will build his Church. Moreover, it is
precisely this rock-foundation which
is to make the Church indestructible.*
From this it follows that, in virtue of
the ordinance of Jesus, the office of
Peter, or the primacy given him in
the Church, was not to expire with
the death of the apostle. For, if the
Ubi Petnis ibi ecclesia. In Ps. xl. No. 30.
* Matt. xvi. 18.
Two Sides of Catholicism.
97
Church is indestructible precisely on
account of her foundation upon the
rock-man Peter, he must remain for
all time the support of the Church,
and historical connection with him is
the indispensable condition on which
the Church can be firmly established
in any part of the earth. This con-
stant connection with the Apostle Peter
is maintained through the bishop of
Rome for the time being. For these
two offices, the episcopate of Rome
and the primacy, were connected with
each other in the person of the Apos-
tle Peter. Consequently the same su-
perior rank in the Church which Peter
possessed is transmitted to the legiti-
mate bishop of Rome at the same time
with the Roman episcopal see. Thus
the Prince of the Apostles remains in
very deed the rock-foundation of the
Church, continually, in each one of
his successors for the time being.
In the view of Christian antiquity,
the unity of the Church was the par-
ticular object for which the papacy
was established.* This unity, appre-
hended in its historical development,
gives us the conception of catholicity .f
Both these marks of the Church
must embody themselves in the form
of an outwardly perceptible historical
reality. The Church being indebted
for her unity, and by necessary conse-
quence for her catholicity, precisely to
her historical connection with Peter,
catholicity is thus rooted in the idea
of the papacy. But does its ultimate
and most profound principle lie there-
in?
The argument, briefly sketched
above, obliges us to rest the catho-
licity of the Church on the actual
* St. Cyprian, De Unit Eccl. Primatus Petro da-
fur, ut una Christi ecclesia et cathedra una monstretur
The primacy is given to Peter, that the Church of
Christ may be shown to be one, and the chair one.
t Ibid. Ecclesia quoque. una est, qua in multitud-
inem. latius increm^nto f<xcunditatis extcnditur . .
ecclesia Domini luce perfusa per obem totam radios
suos porrifjit. Unum tamen lumen est, quod ubique
diffund/tur, nee unitas corporis separatur.
The Church also is on-j, which is extended to a
very great multitude by the increase of fruitful-
ness . . . the Church of the Lord pervaded with
light extends its rays over the whole world. Nev-
ertheless the light which is everywhere diffused is
one, and the unity of the body is never separated.
institution of Christ. We can, how-
ever, inquire into the essential reason
of this institution. Does this reason
lie simply in a free, voluntary deter-
mination of Christ, or in the interior
essence of the Church herself ? In the
latter case, the Church would appear
as Catholic, because the end of her es-
tablishment could be fulfilled under no
other condition. There would be in
her innermost being a secret determi-
nation, by force of which the idea of
the Church is completely incapable
of realization under any other form
than that of catholicity. A Christian
Church without the papacy were,
therefore, entirely inconceivable. If
this is actually the case, there lies
hidden under the rind of the Church's
visible form of catholicity, a still deep-
er catholicity, in which we are bound
to recognize the most profound princi-
ple of the outward, historical side of
catholicity.
But that inward principle, the mar-
row of the Church, where are we to
look for it ? Our theologians, follow-
ing St. Augustine, teach that the
Church, like man, consists of soul and
body. The theological virtues form
the soul of the Church, and her body
is constituted by the outward profession
of the faith, the participation of the
sacraments, and exterior connection
with the visible head of the Church.*
St. Augustine, indeed, also designates
the Holy Ghost as the soul or the
inner principle of the Church. This
is the same thought with the one
which will be presently evolved, in
which the inner principle of cathol-
icity will be reduced to the concep-
tion of the supernatural. This, how-
ever, considered in itself, is withdrawn
from the region of historical manifes-
tation. In order that it may pass
from the region of the invisible into
that of apprehensible reality, it needs
a medium that may connect together
both orders, the invisible order of the
supernatural and the order of histori-
cal manifestation. It is only in this
* Bellarm., DeJSccl. miliL, cap. ii.
98
Two Sides of Catholicism.
way that catholicity can acquire for
itself a historical shape, and assume
flesh and blood.
We might be disposed to regard the
sacraments as this medium, because
they are the instruments by which
grace is conferred, in a manner appre-
hensible through the senses. Never-
theless, we cannot find the constitutive
principle of the Church in the sacra-
ments alone. It is well known that
Protestantism has set forth the legiti-
mate administration of the sacraments
as a mark of the true Church. A
searching glance at the Protestant
conception of the Church will here-
after give us a proof that a bare com-
munication in sacraments, at least from
the Protestant stand-point, cannot pos-
sibly verify itself as making a visible
Church. According to the Protestant
doctrine of justification, a sacrament is
indebted for its grace-giving efficacy
solely to the faith of the receiver. In
this view, therefore, the connection of
the invisible element of the superna-
tural with the historically manifested
reality, and consequently the making
visible of the true Church, is depend-
ent on conditions where historical ful-
filment is not provable. "Who can
prove whether the recipient of a sacra-
ment has faith ? It is true that, ac-
cording to the Catholic view, an ob-
jective efficacy is ascribed to the sacra-
ment, i. e., the outwardly perceptible
completion of the sacramental action
of itself permits the invisible element
of the supernatural to penetrate into
the sphere of the visible.
Notwithstanding this, the Catholic
sacrament is, by itself alone, no suffi-
cient medium through which the being
of the true Church can be brought into
visibility. Did she embody herself
historically only in so far as a sensible
matter and an outward action are en-
dued with a supernatural efficacy, the
element of the supernatural would
come to a historical manifestation only
as the purely objective. A profound
view of the essence of the Church
would not find this satisfactory. The
Church, even on her visible side, is
not a purely objective, or merely out-
ward, institution. The ultimate prin-
ciple of catholicity and this state-
ment will make our conception intelli-
gible although implanted in the world
as a supernatural leaven from above,
has nevertheless its seat in the deepest
interior of the human spirit. Thence
it penetrates upward into the sphere
of historical manifestation, and thus
proves itself a church-constitutive prin-
ciple. Such a connection of the region
of the interior and subjective with that
of historical and visible reality is
caused by the objective efficacy of a
sacrament, only in the case where the
same is productive of its proper effect.
This, however, according to Catholic
doctrine, presupposes an inward dis-
position on the part of the recipient,
the presence of which cannot be mani-
fested to outward apprehension. A
Church, whose essence consisted mere-
ly in the bond established through the
sacraments, could either not be veri-
fied with certitude, or would have an
exclusively exterior character. Ac-
cordingly, we have not yet found, in
the Catholic sacramental conception,
the middle term we are seeking, by
which the essence of catholicity can
be brought into visible manifestation.
Rather, this process has to be already
completed and the conception of the
Church to be actualized, before the
sacrament can manifest its efficacy.
Through this last, the element of the
supernatural, i. e., the invisible germ
of the Church, must be originally
planted or gradually strengthened in
individual souls. But this is effected
by the sacrament as the organ and in
the name of the Church, though in
particular cases outside of her com-
munion.
The continuous existence of Cathol-
icity is essentially the self-building
of the body of Christ. It produces its
own increase through the instrument-
ality of the sacraments.* The union
between the supernatural and the his-
torical actuality, or the bond of cathol
* Eph. iv. 16.
Two Sides of Catholicism.
99
icity, is not tlien first established in
the sacraments. These only mediate
for individual souls the reception into
the union, or confirm them in their or-
ganic relation to it, and are signs of
fellowship. In addition to what has
been already said, there is another rea-
son, and one of wider application, to be
considered, as bearing on this point.
The principle of a new life which has
to be infused into individual souls
through the sacraments is sanctifying
grace. In this, therefore, by logical
consequence, we should be obliged to
recognize the interior constitutive prin-
ciple of the Church, if it were true
that the connection between the inner
being of the Church and her historical
manifestation were brought to pass
through the efficacy of the sacraments.
According to this apprehension of the
subject, only the saints would belong
to the true Church.
One might seek to evade this last
conclusion by averring that in the in-
stance of baptism, the sacrament pro-
duces in the soul of the recipient, be-
side sanctifying grace, still another
effect, independently of the disposi-
tion, namely, the baptismal character.
This character is an indelible mark
impressed on the soul. Here, then, is
given us a supernatural principle which
penetrates the deepest interior of the
human spirit, and which is, at the same
time, capable of verifying itself as a
historical fact ; inasmuch as it is infal-
libly infused into the soul through an
outward, sensible action, and thereby,
through the medium of the latter, be-
comes visible. Beside this, one might
be still more inclined to regard the
baptismal character as the Church's
formative principle, because the same
is stamped upon the soul through a
sacrament, whose special end is to in-
corporate with the body of Christ its
individual members; for which reason,
also, baptism is designated in the lan-
guage of the Church as the gate of
the spiritual life, vitas spiritualis
janua.*
Decret. pro Armenia.
We must, however, in this imme-
diate connection, put in a reminder,
that it is a disputed point in theology,
whether baptism is really, in all cases,
the indispensably necessary condition
of becoming a member of the Church.
In the opinion of prominent theolo-
gians, a mere catechumen can, under
certain circumstances, be a member of
the Church.* Be that as it may, no
one will certainly dispute the fact that
a catechumen, whose soul is glowing
with divine love, belongs at least to the
soul of the Church. In him, therefore,
the inner germ of the Church's life
really exists before the reception of
the baptismal character. Beside this,
it appears to us that the sacramental
character, precisely in view of its de-
terminate end, is not so qualified that
we can put it forward as the interior
principle of catholicity. The bap-
tismal character is intended for a dis-
tinctive mark ; by it the seal of Church
membership is stamped on the soul. It
is true that the same action by which
the character is impressed on the soul
also makes the baptized person a mem-
ber of the Church, or, that in the same
act which plants the inner germ of the
Church's being in the heart, the soul
receives also the characteristic outward
impress of that being. But in so far
as it is the immediate and proper facul-
ty of the baptismal character to impress
the stamp of the Church in indelible
features upon the soul, the very concep-
tion of this character presupposes neces-
sarily the conception of the Church, as
prior to itself; which shows that we
cannot find the principle of the interior
being of the Church in the baptismal
character. This is confirmed by the
additional consideration that the bap-
tismal character is not effaced from
those souls which have broken off
every kind of connection with the
Church, and have absolutely nothing
remaining in them by which they com-
municate in her being. Finally, the
existence of the Church, at least so far
as her inner being or soul is concerned,
* Suarez, De Fide. Disp. ix., $ i., No. 18.
100
Two Sides of Catholicism.
does not date its origin from the insti-
tution of baptism. We must, therefore,
go one step further, in order to discover
the interior source of catholicity. As
has been heretofore pointed out, this
source lies in that region which we are
usually wont to designate as the Super-
natural Order. Let us, therefore, make
a succinct exposition of the interior
law of development in this order.
According to the Catholic doctrine,
faith is the beginning of human salva-
' turn, the ground and root of justifica-
tion,* i. e., of the supernatural life of
the soul. St. Paul designates faith
" the substance of things hoped for."f
That is to say, the beatific vision of
God, and with it the point toward
which the whole supernatural order
tends and in which it rests, has its
foundation laid in faith, and is already
in germ contained in it. Christ, and
with him the fountain of our super-
natural life, dwells in us through faith. J
Is Christ, therefore, called the founda-
tion, beside which no other can be
laid, then is faith recognized in the
basis of the supernatural order, be-
cause by faith we are immediately
brought into union with Christ.
Wherefore the apostle makes our par-
ticipation in the fruits of the work of
redemption precisely dependent on the
condition, " If so ye continue in the
faith, grounded and settled."|| The
same portion as foundation, which
faith has in the inner life of grace in
the soul, is also accorded to it in rela-
tion to the exterior structure of the
Church. The visibility of the true
Church is only the historical embodi-
ment of the element of the supernat-
ural. The divine building of the
Church has for its foundation the
apostles,^[ that is, as the sense of the
passage evidently is, through the faith
which they preached. Very remark-
able is the form of expression in the
well-known saying of the apostle :
" One Lord, one &ith, one baptism."**
* Trid. Sess. vi. , cap. 8.
$ Eph iii. 17.
II Coloss. i. 2 {.
** Eph. iv. 5.
t Heb. xi. i.
I) ! Cor. iii. 11.
IT Eph. ii. 20.
Here the unity of faith is given the
precedence of the unity produced
through baptism, as being its necessa-
ry pre-requisite. The one baptism is
the bond of unity of the Church only
in the second line. Through it, name-
ly, the fruitful germ of the one faith
in which exclusively the unity of the
Church has its root, is continually
planted in individual souls, an actual
confession of that faith being also in-
cluded in the ceremony of baptism
itself.
The Church herself makes use of
language which clearly shows that she
regards faith as the deepest principle
of her being.* The Catechism of the
Council of Trent defines the Church
as " the faithful dispersed throughout
the world."f
According to St. Thomas, also, the
unity, and consequently the catholicity
of the Church, is radically grounded
in faith. The angelic doctor means
here living faith, or fides formata.
According to this view, the principle
of catholicity pervades the inner-
most depth of subjectivity. At the
same time it is clear how the same
comes to an historical manifestation.
This takes place in the symbol of the
Church. The faith which finds its
historical expression in the ecclesiasti-
cal symbol is to be regarded as fides
formata,l for this reason, because it is
a confession of faith made in the name
and by the personality of the collec-
tive Church, which possesses its in-
ward principle of unity in the fides
formata, or living faith. Moreover,
the symbol of the Church is a con-
stant warning for those of her mem-
bers who have not the grace of sanc-
tification to make their faith living
through charity .
In the foregoing doctrinal exposi-
tion St. Thomas has marked out for
us the path to be followed in seeking
* Condi. Lateran., iv. cap. Firmiter : Unafidelium
uninersalis ecclesia.
t Catech. Rom. , pars 1 , cap. x. . qu. 2.
i That is, faith made perfect by charity as it ex-
ists in a person who is in the state of grace, in
contradistinction from the faith of a sinner.
TKANSLATOB
Secunda Secundce, qu. 1. a. q. ad 3.
Two Sides of Catholicism.
101
for the medium of union between the
exterior and ulterior catholicity of the
Church. Our argument must start,
therefore, from the position that the
unity of the Church in the first line is
a unity in faith. In this notion we
have the speculative middle term be-
tween the inner being of the Church
and her historical form of manifesta-
tion. From the blending of both
these elements is formed the full, ade-
quate idea of catholicity. This last
exhibits itself as a force acting in two
distinct spheres, that of the inward
subjectivity and that of historical ob-
jectivity. Consequently, the exterior
and interior catholicity of the Church,
or the two sides of Catholicism, must
be reduced to the same principle. A
further evolution of this thought will
make it clear, why the being of the
true Church can only find its true ac-
tualization in the historical form of
Catholicism.
The catholic visible form of the
Church, as pointed out above, is indi-
cated in the papacy. But in what re-
lation does the latter stand to the in-
terior catholicity of the Church ? In
order to find the right answer to this
decisive question, we must first more
exactly define in what sense the pa-
pacy must be regarded as the bond of
the historical unity of the Church. It
must be so regarded, precisely in so
far as the primacy has been instituted
for the special end of preserving the
faith incorrupt. According to the
teaching of the Fathers of the Church,
Peter is the Church's foundation of
rock, in virtue of his faith.* By this,
of course, is not meant the personal
confession of the Apostle Peter, but
the object-matter of the same, the
contents of the faith to be preached by
Peter and his successors. Peter,
says Leo the Great, is called by
Christ the Rock, on account of the
solidity of the faith which he was to
preach, pro soliditate fidei quam erat
prcsdicaturus.^ This is not the place
* See the relevant passages from the fathers in
Ballerini, De vi ac rations primatus Rom. Pont., cap.
xiL, U, No. 1. t Serm. 02.
to develop further in what way the
papacy proves itself in act the cement
of the unity of faith. We shall
speak of that later. It is enough for
our purpose, in the meanwhile, to take
note of the judgment of the ancient
Church. According to the doctrine of
the Fathers of the Church, the funda-
mental significance which the papacy
has for the Church, rests upon a rela-
tion of dependence between her faith
and the faith of Peter, including by
consequence that of his successors.
In this sense St. Hilarius distinctly
calls the faith of the Apostle Peter
the foundation of the Church.* The
same view is found in St. Ambrose,f
expressed in nearly the same words.
But if Peter is the Church's founda-
tion of rock precisely through his
faith, that mutual relation between
the inner catholicity of the Church
and the papacy is no longer doubtful.
For that the Church, according to her
inward essence, verifies herself as the
Catholic Church, she owes precisely
to her faith, as likewise, on the other
side, her catholic visible form is con-
ditioned by the outward profession of
the same faith. Consequently, the
papacy as guardian of the unity of
faith, stands also in a necessary con-
nection with the inner being of the
Church. Here then we have the
uniting member we have been seeking
between inward and outward catho-
licity, the essence and the manifesta-
tion of the Church. In so far as the
historical connection with Peter must
be conceived as a bond of faith, in
this same connection or in the form of
Catholicism, the true Church, even as
to her inner being, comes historically
into visible manifestation.
Faith, which we affirm to be the
essential kernel of Catholicism, has
two sides, one which is interior and
subjective, and another which comes
to outward manifestation. With the
heart we believe unto justification, but
with the mouth confession is made
unto salvation.]: A revealed truth
* De Trin., vi. 37.
$ Eom. x. 10.
t De Incarn., cap. 5.
102
Two Sides of Catholicism.
corresponds to supernatural faith as
its necessary object. Therefore, it
may be remarked in passing, the sub-
jective act of faith is equally infalli-
ble with the divine testimony itself,
upon which it is essentially based.*
This revealed object of faith, without
which a supernatural faith is entirely
inconceivable, is mediated or set forth
through an organ directly instituted by
God for this purpose. An individual,
who thinks that he has discovered,
through private investigation or in
any other way, a particular point of
doctrine, which hitherto has not been
universally received as such, to be a
revealed truth, can only make it an
object of supernatural faith, when he
is able to judge with certainty that
this supposed new doctrine of faith
would be approved by the infallible,
divinely appointed organ of revealed
truth.f
This mediating organ is, however,
as we shall fully show in the course of
our further exposition, no other than
the Apostle Peter, and through the
relation which he bears to him, his le-
gitimate successor in office. Peter is
the support and the strength of his
brethren, inasmuch as his faith, to
which the dogmatic utterance of his
successors gives a new expression ac-
cording to the needs of the Church,
forms a criterion for the faith of the
Church. Peter, preaching of the faith,
continually apprehensible through the
papal definitions of faith, gives to the
faith of the Church the specific form
under which the same incorporates
itself historically in an ecclesiastical
confession. But in the Church-con-
fession of faith, -as we have before
shown, its inner being comes into visi-
ble manifestation. As medium of Pe-
ter's preaching of the faith, the papacy
is consequently also a Church-consti-
tutive principle, inasmuch as through
the actualization of the supreme power
delegated to him by Christ, the being
of the Church is made visible, and ob-
* St. Thomas, Secunda Secunda, q. 1 a. 3.
t Suarez, DeFide. Disp. iii., Sect, xiii., No. 9.
tains an historical form. This is the
sense of the words, " On this Rock I
will build my Church."
As we have, in the foregoing re-
marks, conceived of the papacy as the
angle at which the two sides of Ca-
tholicism meet, the uniting bond of the
outward and inward catholicity of the
Church, we are further bound to show
why precisely the papacy is the appro-
priate organ to establish that union
between the essence and the manifesta-
tion of Catholicism, and thereby to
mediate the actualization of the true
idea of the Church. For this purpose
we must endeavor to penetrate some-
what deeper into the inner being or
soul of the Church. We shall there
find a tendency which makes the Cath-
olic form of manifestation of the
Church a postulate of her being. This
tendency lies in the character of the
supernatural. In the conception of the
supernatural we shall endeavor to
point out the radical conception of Ca-
tholicism. The papacy, and the Cath-
olic visible form of the Church medi-
ated by it, is, in our opinion, the ne-
cessary consequence of the supernat-
urality of her being.
Thus far we have sketched in brief
outlines the mutual relation of the two
sides of Catholicism. We must re-
serve for a subsequent article the de-
tailed theological proof of that which
we have for the present suggested as
a new theory. Meanwhile we would
like to exhibit, in a few words, the in-
terest which an investigation of this
subject claims for itself at this partic-
ular period of time.
ii.
The distinction between an exterior
and interior catholicity of the Church
is but slightly touched upon in our
books of dogmatic instruction. No
one need wonder at this circumstance.
It is well known that the controversy
with Protestantism gave occasion to
the usual modern method of treating
of the marks of the Church. The
Two Sides of Catholicism.
103
method of the great controversialists
of the age of the Reformation has, at
least in regard to the present ques-
tion, remained, to a considerable ex-
tent, the model for the dogmatic writ-
ers of the present time. The theolo-
gians of a former time, however, found
no necessity for expressly distinguish-
ing between the catholicity of the be-
ing of the Church and that of her
manifestation. It was enough for their
purpose to prove that the Church, in
her historical manifestation, is the Cath-
olic Church.
The Protestantism of the epoch of
the Reformation claimed for its con-
gregations the honor of having actual-
ized the true idea of the Church. The
churches of Wittenberg, Zurich, and
Geneva each pretended to be the true
copy of the evangelical primitive
Church. It was easy for Catholic
polemics to destroy this pretension.
It was only necessary to inspect the
particular Protestant churches a little
closely. Such a reconnoissance con-
ducted necessarily to the indubitable
conclusion that none of those com-
munions had the marks of the true
Church upon it, and that these were
realized only in the Church in com-
munion with the Pope.
Modern Protestantism is much more
modest in its pretensions. The present
champions of the Protestant cause
characterize, without disguise, the at-
tempt of the Reformers to bring the
essence of the true Church historically
into manifestation in their commun-
ions as a gross error and a backsliding
into Catholicism. They will have it,
that the characteristic principle of
Protestantism lies precisely in the ac-
knowledgment that the true essence of
the Church can find its correlative ex-
pression in none of the existing
churches. The true Church, accord-
ing to this notion, remains an unat-
tainable ideal as long as the world
stands. Not to actualize the idea of
the Church, only to strive after its ac-
tualization, is the task of a religious
communion. The Protestantism of the
day accordingly recognizes it as its vo-
cation "to give Christianity precisely
the expression and form which best
corresponds to the necessities of the
time, the demands of an advanced
science and culture, the grade of intel-
lectual and moral development of the
Christian nations."*
Protestant polemic theology makes
the following use of this view. Over
against the magnificent historical man-
ifestation of the Catholic Church, the
torn and rent condition of the Prot-
estant religious community presents a
striking contrast. The proximate con-
clusion that the true Church can only
be found within the circle of Catholi-
cism, they seek now to anticipate on
the Protestant side by the observation
th#t already from the outset one makes
a false start who would wish to recog-
nize the true Church by her form of
historical manifestation. According to
the Protestant view, the mark of cath-
olicity verifies itself exclusively in the
inner being of the Church, and not in
her outward manifestation. For, owing
to the constant progress of human de-
velopment, and the extremely diversi-
fied individuality of single nations, the
historical manifestation of the Church
must be multiform to the same extent
as the intellectual and moral wants of
the different peoples are various. Nev-
ertheless, in spite of the manifold dif-
ferences which distinguish the paiticu-
lar churches in their historical mani-
festation, the members of the same
blend themselves together into a great
invisible spiritual kingdom. This is
the ideal Church.
This is the response which modern
Protestantism makes when Catholic
criticism places before its eyes the
melancholy picture of its inward di-
visions and the history of its variations.
From the historical manifestation of a
church to its inner being they say the
conclusion is invalid. In order, there-
fore, to make Catholic polemics effec-
tive, the relation between the essence
and the manifestation of the Church
must be first of all theologically es-
* Schenkel, ; ' Essence of Prot.," p. -J.
104
Two Sides of Catholicism.
tablished. It is only after this has
been done that the comparison between
"the Church and the churches" can be
exhibited in its entire argumentative
force.
The theory of the ideal church is
not yet effectively refuted, when we
on the Catholic side content ourselves
with proving that the true Church
must become visible. This general
proposition does not exclude the pro-
position of our opponents. For, ac-
cording to the Protestant doctrine, also,
the creative power of the spirit of
Christianity exhibits itself in the con-
struction of visible congregations, and
the gradual actualization of the ideal
Church is conditioned by a sensibly
apprehensible mediation. The fimal
decision of this question must there-
fore be sought in the demonstration of
the proposition that the inmost being
of the Church can only realize itself
historically in the one specific form ;
that a catholicity of the essence of the
Church without a catholicity in her
manifestation is entirely inconceivable.
Only by this demonstration will the
retreat of Protestant polemics into the
ideal Church be for ever cut off.
Some have argued against the Prot-
estant view, that as Christian truth is
one so the visible Church can also be
but one.* The argument is valid only
in the prior supposition that there can
be but a single form of historical mani-
festation for the inner being of the
Church. This, however, Protestant-
ism denies in the sense, that from its
stand-point every particular church
represents the idea of the Church,f
* Moehler, " Symbolism."
t This is also the theory of High-Church Episcopa-
lianism. Mr. Sewall has defined it more logically
than any other writer of that school. According to
him, the unity of the Church consists in this, that
all churches are formed after one ideal model, or on
one principle, and the separate churches of indi-
vidual bishops are each a perfect organic whole.
That is. Catholic unity is an abstract unity, concret-
ed in each particular bishop and diocese. Hence
there can be no organized unity of the universal
Church, but only union or friendly communion of
independent churches. This notion was highly
approved by Bishop Whittingham, who expressed
it in this way, that the true communion of church-
es with each other is in speculo Trinitatis. It is
pure Congregationalism, bating the difference be-
tween a dioceso governed by a chief and inferior
pastors, and a single congregation under one pas-
even though it may be on one side
only. According to the diversified
stages of cultivation in the Christian
people, so they say, now one, now
another side of Christian truth attains
to its expression in the particular con-
fessions, but in none the full and entire
truth. The contradiction existing be-
tween these, therefore, in nowise falls
back upon the Christian verity itself.
This Protestant evasion can also be
alone met in the way above designated,
by establishing the relation between
the essence and the manifestation of
Catholicism.
It has been further argued that a
Church of the Nations, which the
Christian Church must be, according
to its idea, is entirely inconceivable
without the papacy at its summit.*
Here, also, it is presupposed, as already
proved, that the conception of univer-
sality which is essentially connected
with the idea of the true Church must
also necessarily impress itself upon her
actual explication of herself in time.
But it is precisely against this notion
that modern Protestantism contends.
Therefore, if our polemic arms are to
bring down their man, the affair must
begin with a sharper delineation of the
mutual relation between the essence
and the visible form of the Church.
Beside the polemic advantages to be
gained in the course which has been
suggested, there is another in the in-
terest of pacification. Under the rub-
bish of the Protestant Church-idea
there still lies buried a remnant of
tor or several of the same order. But it is the only
logical conception of a visible church possible,
when the papacy, or principle of universal organic
unity, is denied. It is the logical result of the
schismatical position of the Greeks, who have no
unity among themselves except that which is na-
tional, but are divided into several independent
bodies. Hence, the so-called "union movement,"
as clearly shown by Cardinal Patrizi in the Decree
sent to the English bishops, is one which proceeds
from a denial of Catholic unity, and therefore can
never lead to unity, but only aim at union, or vol-
untary co-operation of distinct churches with each
other. The High-Church theory differs from that
of the German Protestants in this that the former
requires that all churches should be alike, and each
one represent completely the ideal Church ; but
both are based on the same principle, that of an
abstract, invisible unity and catholicity, concreted
in an individual and not a generic and universal
mode. TRANSLATOR.
* DSllinger, ' The Church and the Churches."
Two Sides of Catholicism.
105
Catholic truth. "We ought not to shun
the trouble of bringing this to light.
It is the Christian truth contained in
his confession which binds the believ-
ing Protestant to it. Catholic theology
has to reclaim this as its own property.
It has the mission intrusted to it to show
how the religious satisfaction, which the
deeper Protestant mind thinks it finds
in the doctrinal conception of its con-
fession, is imparted to it in richer abun-
dance and morally purified through
the dogma of the Church. Through
this conciliatory method, an understand-
ing of the Catholic truth can be much
more easily and effectually imparted
to the unprejudiced Protestant mind
than by a rough polemical method.
This end is most essentially served
by the distinction between the es-
sence and the manifestation of Cath-
olicism.
Protestant piety makes a great
boast of its deep spirituality. The
modern ideal theory of the Church
owes a great share of its popularity to
its aptitude of application in this direc-
tion. By means of this conception,
the Protestant Church is expected to
exhibit itself in a new light as the
church of the interior and spiritual
life. Does one attain the same depth
of view from the Catholic stand-point?
All doubt on this point must disappear
on thorough consideration of what we
have above named, the inner side of
Catholicism.
There is another ground for the
favor with which this ideal theory of
the Church is at present received.
Protestant theology regards it as a
means of its own resuscitation. The
old doctrine of justification by faith
alone has in great part lost the charm
it once exercised over the hearts of the
German people. The once mighty
battle-cry of inward, subjective faith
is no longer to the taste of our age.
Therefore, in our time, instead of the
antiquated idea of immediate union
with Christ, the world-moving power
of the mind, the creative power of the
idea, is set up as the distinguishing
principle of Protestantism. The latter
is thus made to appear as the most
powerful protector of the liberal as-
pirations of the age.
Catholic controversy must take some
cognizance of this, if it would make
its own proper principle prevail.
While Protestantism seeks to gain
the favor of the contemporary world
by obsequiously yielding to the caprices
of the spirit of the age, the inner
principle of Catholicism raises it above
the vacillations which sway particular
periods. Only a Church which, thanks
to its native principle, is not borne
along by intellectual and social periodi-
cal currents, can effectually correct
their movement. In order, therefore,
to measure accurately the influence
which the Church, by virtue of her in-
stitution, is called to exercise upon
human society, we must penetrate into
her innermost essence, to the very
point where Catholicism has its deep-
est principle. First from this point
can we correctly understand in how
far the Church is a social power.
From this point of view alone can we
comprehend her aptitude to be the
teacher of the nations. And precisely
of this social and instructive vocation
have our contemporaries lost the right
understanding to a great extent. It
is one of the mightiest tasks of our
modern theology to make the minds of
men once more capable of apprehend-
ing this truth.*
The high importance of authority
in the system of Catholicism is well
known. This fundamental principle
runs a danger of being placed in a
false light, when it is depressed to the
level of the historical and exterior side
of the Church. Ecclesiastical authori-
ty, separated from the ground which
lies back of it and which is above the
temporal order, may appear even to
the well-disposed as a mere brake for
the stoppage of all intellectual prog-
ress. This suggests a temptation to
desire a compromise between the
Church and the spirit of the age.
"When one takes a merely exterior and
* A few sentences rather digressive from the main
topic of the article are hero omitted. TRANSLATOB.
106
Monsieur JBabou.
historical view of church authority,
the proper spirit of joyousness which
ought to belong to faith is wanting in
the submisssion which is rendered to
its decrees. It is very easy, then, to
fall into a sort of diplomatic way of
acting toward the Church as teacher of
doctrine. One seeks to accommodate
one's self to her doctrine through sub-
tile distinctions. On the contrary, the
boldest scientific mind frankly and
cheerfully bows itself under the yoke
of the obedience of faith, when it sees
that the Church, in her doctrinal de-
cision, is acting from her own interior
principle.
Our doctrinal exposition requires
now that we should go into a more
thorough argument respecting the im-
manent principle of Catholicism, which
we shall first of all undertake to do
on Scriptural grounds. This part of
the subject will be treated hi an ensu-
ing article.
From The CornMll Magazine.
MONSIEUR BABOU.
IN the immediate vicinity of the
capital of the kingdom of Lilliput
there is a charming village called
" Les Grenouillettes." This rural re-
sort of the citizens of Mildendo con-
sists, mainly, of three hotels, thirty
public-houses, and five ponds. The
population I should reckon at about
ten millions, inclusive of frogs, who
are the principal inhabitants, and who
make a great noise in the world there.
Hither flock the jocund burgesses,
and dance to the sound of harp and
viol. . . .
It occurs to me that, sprightly as I
may think it to call Belgium Lilliput,
the mystification! miight possibly be-
come tiresome and inconvenient if per-
sisted in throughout this narrative, be-
side becoming absolutely unnecessary.
As for the village in question, I have
a reason or two for not calling it by its
right name.
About half-a-dozen years ago, my
brother (Captain John Freshe, R. N.),
his wife, and I had been wearily jog-
ging all a summer's day in search of
country lodgings for a few weeks in
the immediate neighborhood of Brus-
sels. Now nothing can be more diffi-
cult to find in that locality, except
under certain conditions.
You can live at a village hotel, and
pay a maximum price for minimum
comfort.
You can, possibly, lodge in a public-
house, where it will cost you dear,
however little you pay.
Or you can, in some villages, hire
empty rooms in an entirely empty
house, and hire furniture from Brus-
sels, and servants, if you have none,
by the month.
This last alternative has the advan-
tage of ennobling your position into a
quasi-martyrdom, by, in a measure,
compelling you to stay where you are,
whether you like it or not.
Toward the end of that longest of
the long days, we began to regard life
and circumstance with the apathy of
despair, and to cease to hope for any-
thing further from them except din-
ner.
The capital of the kingdom of Lilli-
put appeared to be partially sur-
rounded by a vast and melancholy
campagna of turnips. These wilds,
immeasurably spread, seemed length-
ening as we went. Village after vil-
Monsieur Babou.
107
had we reached, and explored
in vain. Judging by our feelings, I
should say we had ransacked at least
half-a-hundred of those rural colonies.
Almost all these villages possessed at
least six public-houses and two ponds.
Some few had no ponds, but all had six
public-houses. Rural, dusty, cracked
public-houses; with frowzy gardens,
with rotten, sloppy tables and benches ;
with beery gorillas playing at quoits
and ninepins.
The names of none of these settle-
ments seemed to us pronounceable by
human beings, with the exception of
two, which sounded like Diggum and
Hittumontheback. But our city driver
appeared to be acquainted with the
Simian tongue, and was directed from
village to village by the good-natured
apes whom he interrogated.
About sunset we came to a larger
and quite civilized place, with a French
name, signifying "The Tadpoles"
the place I have described at the com-
mencement of this narrative. Our
dusty fly and dejected horse turned
into the carriage entrance of the first
little hotel we saw. It stood sideways
to a picturesque little lake, with green
shores. The carriage entrance went
through the house. Beyond, we had
caught sight of a paved yard or court,
and of a vista of green leafmess that
looked cool and inviting. We heard
the noisy jangling of a barrel-organ
playing a polka, and we found a per-
formance going on in the court that
absorbed the attention of the whole
household. No one seemed to hear,
or at least to heed, the sound of our
wheels, but, when our vehicle fairly
stopped in the paved yard, a fishy-eyed
waiter came toward us, jauntily flipping
time with his napkin. We begged
him to get us dinner instantly.
" Way, Mosou," replied that official,
in the sweet Belgian-French language,
and let us out of the fly. We had
been so long cramped up in it that we
were glad to walk, and stand, and look
about the court while our food was got
ready.
The organ-grinder had not ceased
grinding out his polka for a moment.
The wiry screams of his infernal ma-
chine seemed to charm him as much
as they did the rest of the company
assembled. He was the usual Savoy-
ard, with a face like a burnt crust ; all
fire-brown eyes, sable ringlets, and in-
sane grimace. He leaned against a
low stone post, and ground out that
horrible bray, like a grinning maniac.
We walked to a short distance, and
took in the scene.
A little sallow young man, having a
bushy mustache, stood near a door into
the house, with a dish in his hand, as
if he had been transfixed in the act of
carrying it somewhere. Beside him,
on the step of the door, sat a blonde
young woman, with large blue eyes
and a little mouth as pretty and as
fade as a Carlo-Dolcian Madonna. Evi-
dently these were the landlord and his
lady.
On a garden-bench, by the low wall
that divided the court from the garden
beyond, sat, a little apart, a young per-
son of a decidedly French aspect,
dressed quite plainly, but with Parisian
precision, in black silk. In her hand
and on her lap lay some white em-
broidery. She was not pretty, but
had neat, small features, that wore a
pleasant though rather sad smile, as
she suspended her work to watch what
was going on. An old woman in a
dark-blue gown and a clean cap, with
a pile of freshly-ironed linen in her
arms, stood at the top of some steps
leading into a little building which was
probably the laundry. She was wag-
ging her old head merrily to the dance
tune. Other lookers-on lounged about,
but some of them had vanished since
our arrival for instance, the fishy-
eyed waiter and a burly individual in
a white nightcap.
The centre of attraction remains to
be described. Within a few paces of
the organ-grinder, a little girl and boy
danced indefatigably on the stones, to
the unmusical music of his box. The
little boy was a small, fair, sickly child,
in a linen blouse, and about four years
old. He jumped, and stamped, and
108
Monsieur Bdbou.
laughed excitedly. The little girl
looked about a year older. She was
plump and rosy, dressed in a full pink
frock and black silk apron. She had
light brown hair, cut short and
straight, like a boy's. She danced
very energetically, but solemnly, with-
out a smile on her wee round mouth.
She poussetted, she twirled her pink
frock spread itself out like a parasol.
Her fat little bare arms akimbo, she
danced in a gravely coquettish, thor-
oughly business-like way ; now cross-
ing, changing places with her partner ;
now setting to him, with little pattering
feet; now suddenly whisking and
whirling off. The little boy watched
her, and followed her lead : she was
the governing spirit of the dance.
Both children kept admirable time.
They were dancing the tarantella,
though they had never heard of it;
but of all the poetry of motion K the
tarantella is the most natural measure
to fall into.
The organ-grinder ground, and
grinned, and nodded; the landlord
and his wife exchanged looks of
admiration and complacency whenever
they could take their eyes off the little
dancing nymph: it was easy to see
they were her proud parents. The
quiet young lady on the bench looked
tenderly at the tiny, sickly boy, as he
frisked. We felt sure she was his
mother. His eyes were light blue,
not hazel ; but he had the same neat
little features.
All of a sudden, down from an open
window looking into the court, there
came an enormous voice
" Ah, ah ! Bravo ! Ah, ah, Mon-
sieur Babebibo-BOU ! "
The little boy stopped dancing ; so
did the little girl, and every one looked
up at the window. The little boy,
clapping his hands and screaming
with glee, ran under it. No one
could be seen at that aperture, but
we had caught a momentary glimpse
of a big blond man in a blue blouse,
who had instantly dropped out of
sight, and who was crouching on the
floor, for we saw, though the child
below could not, the top of his straw
hat just above the window-edge. The
little boy screamed, "Papa,- papa!"
The great voice, making itself preter-
natnrally gruff, roared out
" Qui est la ? Est-ce par chance
Monsieur Babebibo-BOU ? " (The first
syllables very fast, the final one ex-
plosive.)
" Way, way ! C'est Mosou Babi-
bou ! " cried the child, trying to imi-
tate the gruff voice, and jumping and
laughing ecstatically.
Out of the window came flying a
huge soft ball of many colors, and
then another roar: "Avec les com*
pliments du Roi de tous les joujoux, a
Monsieur Babebibo-BOU ! "
More rapture. Then a large white
packet, palpably sugar-plums, " Avec
les compliments de la Reine de tous
les bonbons, a Mademoiselle Marie, et
a Monsieur Babebibo-BOU ! "
Rapture inexpressible, except by
shrill shrieks and capers. The plump
little girl gravely advances and assists
at the examination of the packet,
popping comfits into her tiny mouth
with a placid melancholy, which I
have often observed in fat and rosy
faces.
Meanwhile, the organ-grinder has
at last stopped grinding, has lowered
his box, and is eating a plateful of
cold meat and bread which the old
woman has brought out to him. The
landlord and his wife have disappeared.
The young Frenchwoman on the gar-
den-bench has risen, and come toward
the children ; and now, from a door-
way leading into the house, issues the
big blond man we caught a momentary
glimpse of at the window.
The little boy abandons the sugar-
plums to his playfellow, and crying
"Papa! papa!" darts to the new
comer, who stoops and gathers him
up to his broad breast, in his large
arms and hands, kissing him fondly
and repeatedly. The child responds
with like effusion. The father's great
red face, with its peaked yellow beard,
contrasts touchingly, somehow, with
the wee pale phiz of his little son.
Monsieur Babou.
109
The child's tiny white puds pat the
jolly cheeks and pull the yellow beard.
Then the man in the blouse sets his
son carefully on the ground, and kisses
the young Frenchwoman who stands
by.
The big man has evidently been
absent awhile from his family. " How
goes it, my sister ? " says he.
"Well, my brother," she answers
quietly. " Thou hast seen Auguste
dance. Thou hast seen how well,
and strong, and happy he is the
good God be thanked."
"And after him, thee, my good
sister," says the big man, affec-
tionately.
We had been called in to dinner by
this time, but the open window of our
eating-room looked into the court close
to where the group stood. We ob-
served that Mademoiselle Marie had
remained sole possessor of the packet
of sweets; and that the little boy,
content to have got his papa, made no
effort to assert his rights in them.
The big papa interfered, saying,
"Mais, mals, la pstite .... Give
at least of the bonbons to thy comrade.
It is only fair."
" Let her eat them, Jean," put in
his sister, with naive feminine gen-
erosity and justice. " They are so
unwholesome for Auguste, seest thou ?"
The big man laughed, lit his pipe,
and the three went away into the little
garden, where they strolled, talking
in the summer twilight.
We came happily to an anchor
here, in' this foggy little haven, and
finding we could secure, at tolerably
moderate charges, the accommodation
we required, made up our minds to
stay at this little hotel for the few
weeks of our absence from Brussels.
ii.
Next morning we were breakfasting
in the garden under a trellis of hop-
leaves, when the big man in the blouse
came up the gravel-walk, with his
small son on his shoulder.
They were making a tremendous
noise. The little boy was pulling his
father's great red ear ; he affected to
bellow with anguish, his roaring voice
topped by the child's shrill, gleeful
treble. We saluted the new comers
in a neighborly manner.
" A beautiful day, Madame," said
the big man, in French, taking off his
hat and bowing politely to John's wife,
at the same time surrounding his son
safely with his left arm.
" Madame and these Messieurs are
English, is it not ?"
"A pretty place," we went on to
say, after owning our nationality, " and
very pleasant in this hot weather after
the glare of Brussels."
" It is that ; and I am here as often
as possible," returned our new ac-
quaintance. "My sister is staying
here for the advantage of this little
man. . . . Monsieur Auguste, at your
service. Salute then the society, Au-
guste. You must know he has the
pretension to be a little delicate, this
young man. An invalid, if you please ;
consequently his aunt spoils him! It
is a ruse on his part, you perceive.
Ah, bah ! An invalid ! My word, he
fatigues my poor arm. Ah h ! I
cannot longer sustain him. I faint
I drop him down he goes . . . la-
a a!"
Here, lowering him carefully, as if
he were crystal, he pretended to let
his son suddenly tumble on a bit of
grass-plot.
"At present" (grumbling) "here
he is, broken to pieces probably ; we
shall have the trouble of mending
him. His aunt must bring her needle
and thread."
Monsieur Auguste was so enchanted
with this performance that he encored
it ecstatically. His father obeyed, and
then sent him off running to call out
his aunt to breakfast, which was laid
under a neighboring trellis.
" He is strong on his legs, is it not,
Madame ?" said the father, looking af-
ter him ; his jolly face and light blue
eyes a little grave, and wistful. "His
spirits are so high, see you ? He is
110
Monsieur Bdbou.
too intelligent, too intellectual he has
a little exhausted his strength; that
says all. He is well enough ; he has
no malady ; and every day he is get-
ting stouter, plainly to the eye."
Here the aunt and nephew joined
us. Our new acquaintance introduced
her.
" Ma belle-soeur. Ma chere, Mad-
ame and these Messieurs are English.
They are good enough to take an in-
terest in this infant Hercules of ours."
He tossed the child on his shoulder
again; established on which throne
his little monarch amused himself by
ornamenting the parental straw-hat
with a huge flaring poppy and some
green leaves, beneath which the jovial
face bloomed Bacchic.
Meanwhile the quiet young French-
woman, smiling affectionately at those
playfellows as they went off together,
sat down on a chair we offered her,
and frankly entered into conversation.
In a few minutes we knew a great
deal about this little family. The man
in the blouse was a Belgian painter,
Jean Baudin, and " well seen in the
expositions of Paris and Brussels."
" His wife was my sister : we were of
Paris. When our little Auguste was
born, my poor sister died. She was
always delicate. The little one is very
delicate. Ah, so delicate, also. It is
impossible to be over-careful of him.
And his father, who is so strong so
strong ! But the little one resembles
in every manner his mother. His
poor father adores him, as you see.
Poor Jean ! he so tenderly loved his
wife, who died in her first youth. . . .
She had but eighteen years she had
six years less than I. In dying she
begged me to be to her infant a moth-
er, and to her poor Jean a sister. Jean
is a good brother, bon et brave homme.
And for the little one, he is truly a
child to be adored judiciously, it is
understood, madame : I spoil him not,
believe me. But he is clever to as-
tonish you, that child. So spirituel,
and then such a tender little good
heart a disposition so amiable. Hard-
ly he requires correction. . . . Au-
guste! how naughty thou art! Au-
guste ! dost thou hear ? Jean ! take
him then off the dusty wall, and wipe
him a little. Mon ami, thou spoilest
the child ; one must be judicious."
We presently left the garden, and,
in passing, beheld Monsieur Auguste
at breakfast. He was seated between
his papa and aunt, and was being
adored by both (judiciously and inju-
diciously) to the heart's content of all
three.
We stayed a month at this little ho-
tel at The Tadpoles. The English
family soon fraternized with that of
Jean Baudin, the Flemish painter, also
sojourning there, and the only other
resident guests.
John's wife and Mademoiselle be-
came good friends and gossips, and sat
at work and chat many a summer hour
under the hop trellises. Mademoiselle
Rose Leclerc was the Frenchwoman's
name, but her name of ceremony was
simply " Mademoiselle." John and I
used to walked about the country,
among the lanes, and woods, and han>
lets which diversify the flats on that
side of Brussels, accompanying Jean
Baudin and his paint-box. We sat
under a tree, or on a stone fence,
smoking pipes of patience, while Jean
made studies for those wonderful, elab-
orate tiny pictures, the work of his big
hands, by which he and his little son
lived. I remember, in particular, a
mossy old cottage, rough and grey ;
the front clothed with vines, the quaint
long gable running down behind to
within a yard of the ground. Baudin
sketched that cottage very often ; and
often used its many picturesque fea-
tures.
Sometimes it was the rickety, black-
timbered porch, garlanded with vine ;
a sonsy, blond-haired young Flemish
maiden sat there, and twirled the bob-
bins on a lace-cushion, in a warm yel-
low flicker of sunshine. Sometimes
Jean went right into the porch and
into the cottage itself, and presently
brought us out an old blue-gowned,
black-coifed creature, knitting as she
kicked the grand-babe's clumsy cradle
Monsieur Babou.
Ill
with her clumsy sabot ; a ray through
the leafy little window-hole found the
crone's white hair, and the infant
cheek. Honest Jean only painted
what he saw with his eyes. He could
copy such simple poetry as this, and
feel it too, though he could indite no
original poems on his canvas pages.
He was a hearty good fellow, and we
soon got to like him, and his kindly,
unpretentious, but not unshrewd,
talk that is, when it could be got off
the paternal grooves which, to say
the truth, was seldomer than we (who
were not ourselves at that period the
parents of prodigies) may have se-
cretly desired.
In the summer evenings we used to
sit in the garden all together, the
ladies graciously permitting us to
smoke. We liked to set the children
a-dancing again on the grass-plot be-
fore us ; and I must here confess that
they saltated to a mandolin touched
by this hand. I had studied the in-
strument under a ragged maestro of
Naples, and flattered myself I per-
formed on it with credit to both, and
to the general delight.
Sometimes Jean Baudin would tie
to his cane a little pocket-handkerchief
of Monsieur Auguste, and putting this
ensign into his hand, cause him to go
through a certain vocal performance
of a martial and defiant character.
The pale little man did it with much
spirit, and a truculent aspect, stamping
fiercely at particular moments of the
strain. I can only remember the
effective opening of this entertain-
ment. Thus it began " Les Beiges "
(at this point the small performer
threw up the staff and flag of his
country, and shouted ff) " SONT
BRAVES IT Papa and aunt re-
garded with pride that ferocious cham-
pion of his valiant compatriots, look-
ing round to read our astonishment
and rapture in our faces.
We all got on excellently with the
hotel folk, ingratiating ourselves chief-
ly by paying a respectful court to the
solid and rosy little princess of the
house. Jean Baudin painted her, sit-
ting placid, a little open-mouthed,
heavy-lidded, over-fed, with a lapful of
cherries. We all made much of her
and submitted to her. John's wife
presented her with a frock of English
print, of a charming apple-green ;
out of which the fat pink face bloomed
like a carnation-bud out of its calyx.
The young landlord would bring us
out a dish to our garden dinner-table,
on purpose that he might linger and
chat about England. That country,
and some of its model institutions, ap-
peared to excite in his mind a mixture
of awe and curiosity, wonder and
horror. For instance, he had heard
he did not altogether believe it (dep-
recatingly) that not only were the
shops of London closed, with shutters,
on the Sunday, but also the theatres ;
and not only the theatres, but also the
expositions, the gardens and salons of
dance, of music, of play. How ! it
was actually the truth ?
" Certainly, what Madame was good
enough to affirm one must believe.
But then what do they? No busi-
ness, no amusement what then do
they, mon Dieu ! "
" They go to church, read the Bible,
and keep the Sabbath day holy," as-
serts Mrs. Freshe, in perfect good
faith, and severely and proudly, as
becomes a Protestant Britishwoman.
"Tiens, tiens! But it is triste,
that . Is it not that it is triste,
Madame ? Tiens, tiens ! And this is
that which is the Protestantism.
Since Madame herself affirms it, one
can doubt no longer."
And he goes pondering away, to
tell his wife ; with no increased ten-
dency to the reformed faith.
Even Joseph, the stolid and fishy-
eyed waiter, patronized us, and grave-
ly did us a hundred obliging services
beyond his official duty.
On a certain evening, Mademoiselle,
John, John's wife, and I, sat as usual
at book or work under the trellises ;
while the two children, at healthful
play, prattled under the shade of the
laurel-bushes hard by. As usual, the
solid little Flemish maiden was tyr-
112
Monsieur Babou.
annizing calmly over her playfel-
low. We constantly heard her small
voice, quiet, slow, and dominating:
"Je le veux." "Je ne le veux pas."
They had for playthings a little hand-
bell and a toy-wagon, and were play-
ing at railways. Auguste was the
porter, trundling up, with shrill cries,
heavy luggage-trucks piled with grav-
el, gooseberry-skins, tin soldiers, and
bits of cork. Marie was a rich and
haughty lady about to proceed by the
next convoi, and paying an immense
sum, in daisies, for her ticket, to
Auguste, become a clerk. A disputed
point in these transactions appeared
to be the possession of the bell ; the
frequent ringing of which was indeed
a principal feature of the perform-
ance. Auguste contended hotly, but
with considerable show of reason, to
this effect : That the instrument be-
longed to him, in his official capacities
of porter and clerk, rather than to the
rich and haughty lady, who as a pas-
senger was not, and could not be, en-
titled to monopolize the bell of the
company. Indeed, he declared him-
self nearly certain that, as far as his
experience went, passengers never
did ring it at all. But Marie's " Je
le veux" settled the dispute, and car-
ried her in triumph, after the crushing
manner of her sex, over all frivolous
masculine logic.
Mademoiselle sat placid beside us,
doing her interminable and elaborate
satin-stitch. She was working at a
broad white slip, intended, I under-
stood, to form the ornamental base of
a petticoat. It was at least a foot
wide, of a florid and labyrinthine pat-
tern, full of oval and round holes,
which appeared to have been cut out
of the stuff in order that Mademoiselle
might be at the pains of filling them
up again with thready cobwebs. She
would often with demure and innocent
complacency display this fabric, in its
progress, to John's wife (who does not
herself, I fancy, excel in satin-stitch),
and relate how short a time (four
months, I think) she had taken to
bring it so near completion. Mrs.
Freshe regarded this work of art
with feminine eyes of admiration, and
slyly remarked that it was really
beautiful enough " meme pour un
trousseau." At the same time she
with difficulty concealed her disap-
proval of the waste of precious time
incurred by the authoress of the petti-
coat-border. Not that Mademoiselle
could be accused of neglecting the
severer forms of her science ; such as
the construction of frocks and blouses
for Monsieur Auguste adorned, it
must be admitted, with frivolous and
intricate convolutions of braid. And
the exquisite neatness of the visible
portions of Monsieur Jean's linen also
bore honorable testimony to Made-
moiselle's more solid labors.
Into the midst of this peaceful gar-
den-scene entered a new personage.
A man of middle height, with a knap-
sack at his back, came up the gravel-
walk : a handsome brown-faced fellow
of five-and-thirty, with a big black
beard, and a neat holland blouse, and
a grey felt hat.
Mademoiselle and he caught sight
of each other at the same instant.
Both gave a cry. Her rather sal-
low little face flushed like a rose. She
started up; down dropped her petti-
coat-work; she ran forward, throwing
out her hands ; she stopped short
shy, and bright, and pretty as eighteen !
The man made a stride and took her
in his arms.
" Ma Rose ! ma Rose ! Enfin !" cried
he in a strangled voice.
She said nothing, but hung at his
neck, her two little hands on his should-
ers, her face on his breast.
But that was only for a moment.
Then Mademoiselle disengaged her-
self, and glanced shamefacedly at us.
Then she came quickly up came to
John's wife, slid an arm round her
neck, and said rapidly, tremulously,
with sparkling, tearful eyes :
" C'est Jules, Madame. C'est mon
fiance depuis quatre ans. Ah, Mad-
ame, j'ai honte mais," and ran back
to him. She was transformed. In
place of that staid, almost old-maidish
Monsieur Babou.
113
little person we knew, lo! a bashful,
rosy, smiling girl, tripping, skipping,
beside herself with happy love ! And
her little collar was all rumpled, and
so were her smooth brown braids.
Monsieur Jules took off his felt hat, and
bowed politely when she came to us,
guessing that he was being introduced.
His brown face blushed a little, too: it
was a happy and honest one, very
pleasant to see.
The children had left off playing,
and stared wide-eyed at these extra-
ordinary proceedings. Mademoiselle
ran to her little nephew, and brought
him to Jules.
"I recognize well the son of our
poor Lolotte," said he, softly, lifting
and kissing him. "And that dear
Jean, where is he?"
Even as he spoke there came a
familiar roar from that window over-
looking the court-yard, by which the
painter sat at his easel almost all day.
" Qhe ! Monsieur Ba-Bou !"
The little boy nearly jumped out of
his new friend's arms.
"Papa! papa! Laissez-moi, done,
Mosou! Papa!"
"Is it that thou art by chance this
monsieur whom they call?" laughed
Jules, as he put him down.
"Way, way!" cried the little man
as he pattered off, with that gleeful
shriek of his. " C'est moi, Mosou Ba-
Bou ! Ba-Bou!"
" Thou knowest that-great voice of
our Jean," said Mademoiselle; "when
he has finished his day's labor he
always calls his child like that. Hav-
ing worked all day for the little one,
he goes now to make himself a child
to play with him. He calls that to
rest himself. And truly the little one
idolizes his father, and for him will
leave all other playfellows even me.,
Come, then, Jules, let us seek Jean."
And with a smiling salute to us the
happy couple went arm-in-arm out of
the garden.
in.
We did not see much of our friends
8
the next day. After their early din-
ner, Jean came up the garden all alone,
to smoke a pipe, and stretch his legs
before he returned to his work. We
thought his good-natured face was a
little sad, in spite of his cheerful abord,
as he came to our garden parlor and
spoke to us.
" It is a pleasure to see them, is it
not ?" said he, looking after the lovers,
just vanishing under the archway of
the court-yard, into the sunny village
road. ' Mademoiselle had left off her
sober black silk, and floated hi the
airiest of chintz muslins.
" My good little Rose merits well
her happiness. She sent that brave
Jules marching four years ago, because
she had promised my poor wife not to
abandon her helpless infant. Truly
she has been the best of little mothers
to my Auguste. Jules went away an-
gry enough ; but without doubt he must
have loved her all the better when he
came to reflect. He has been to Italy,
to Switzerland, to England know I
where ? He is artist-painter, like
me of France always understood.
Me, I am Flemish, and very content
to be the compatriot of Rubens, of
Vandyke. But Jules has very much
talent : he paints also the portraits, and
has made successes. He is a brave
boy, and deserves his Rose."
" Will the marriage take place now,
at last ?" we ventured to ask.,
"As I suppose," answered Jean, his
face clouding perceptibly.
"But you will not separate; you
will live together, perhaps," suggested
John's wife.
"Ah, Madame, how can that be?
Jules is of France and I of Belgium!,
When I married I brought my wife to
Brussels ; naturally he will carry his
to Paris. C'est juste."
"Poor little Auguste will miss his
aunt," said John's wife, involuntarily,
"and she will hardly bear to leave
him, I think."
"Ah, Madame," said Jean, with ever
so little bitterness in his tone, " what
would you? The little one must
come second now; the husband will
114
Monsieur Babou.
be first. Yes, yes, and it is but fair !
Auguste is strong now, and I must
find him a good bonne. I complain
not. I am not so ungrateful. My
poor Rose must not be always the
sacrifice. She has been an angel to
us. See you, she has saved the life
of us both. The little one must have
died without her, and apparently I
must have died without the little one.
C'est simple, n'est ce pas?" smiling.
Then he gave a sigh, truly as if he
could not repress it, and walked away
hastily. "We looked after him, com-
passion in our hearts.
" That sickly little boy will hardly
live if his aunt leaves him," said Mrs.
Freshe, " and his father knows it."
" But what a cruel sacrifice if she
stayed !" said John.
" And can her lover be expected to
wait till Auguste has grown up into a
strong man ?" I put in.
The day after was Sunday. Com-
ing from an early walk, I heard a tre-
mendous clamor, of woe or merriment,
proceeding from a small sitting-room
that opened into the entrance passage.
The door was wide, and I looked in.
Jean Baudin was jammed up in a
corner, behind a barricade of chairs,
and was howling miserably, entreating
to be let out. His big sun-browned
face was crowned by a white coif made
of paper, and a white apron was tied
round his great waist over his blue
blouse. Auguste and Marie danced
about the barricade with shrill screams,
frantic with joy.
When Baudin saw me he gave a
dismal yell, and piteously begged me
to come to his assistance. " See, then,
my dear young gentleman, how these
bandits, these rebels, these demons,
maltreat their poor bonne! Help,
help !" and suddenly, with a roar like
a small Niagara, he burst out of his
prison and took to his heels, round and
round the court and up the garden,
the children screaming after him the
noise really terrific. Presently it died
away, and he came back to the door-
step where I stood, Auguste on his
shoulder and the little maiden demure-
ly trotting after. " At present, I am
the bonne," said he. " Rose and her
Jules are gone to church; so is our
hostess. In the meanwhile, I under-
take to look after the children. Have
you ever seen a little bonne more
pretty ? with my coquette cap and my
neat apron hein ?"
That evening the lovers went out in
a boat on the great pond, or little lake,
at the back of the hotel. They car-
ried Auguste with them. We all went
to the water's edge ; the rest remained
a while, leaning over the rails that
partly skirted the parapet wall ex-
cept Jean, who strolled off with his
tiny sketch-book. A very peaceful
summer picture was before us, which
I can see now if I shut my eyes I
often see it. A calm and lovely Au-
gust evening near sunset ; a few gold-
en feathers afloat in the blue sky.
Below, the glassy pond that repeats
blue sky, red-roofed cottages, green
banks, and woody slopes repeats,
also, the solitary boat rowed by Jules,
the three Jight-colored figures it con-
tains, and a pair of swans that glide
stately after. The little boy is throw-
ing bits of bread or cake to them.
As we stood there and admired this
pretty little bright panorama, John's
wife observed that the child was fling-
ing himself dangerously forward, in
his usual eager, excited way, at every
cast he made.
"I wonder," said she, "that his aunt
takes no notice. She is so absorbed
in talk with Jules she never turns her
head. Look! look! A h!"
A dreadful shriek went up from
lake and shore. The poor little fellow,
had overbalanced himself, and had
gone headlong into the lake. Some
one had flashed over the parapet wall
at the same moment, and struck the
water with a splash and a thud. Some
one was tearing through it like a steam-
engine, toward the boat. It was my
brother John. We saw and heard
Jules, frantic, and evidently impotent
to save ; we saw him make a vain
clutch at something that rose to the
surface. At the same time we per-
Monsieur Bdbou.
115
ceived that he had scarce power to
keep Rose with his left hand from
throwing herself into the water.
Hardly three minutes had yet passed,
yet half the population seemed throng-
ing to the lake-side, here, where the
village skirted it.
And suddenly we beheld a terrible
a piteous sight. A big, bareheaded
man, that burst through the people,
pale, furious, awful ; his teeth set, his
light blue eyes flaring. He seemed to
crash through the crowd, splintering
it right and left, like a bombshell
through a wall, and was going crazy
and headlong over the parapet into
the water. He could swim no more
than Jules.
" Sauve ! sauve* !" cried John's wife,
gripping his hand and hanging to it as
he went rushing past. " My husband
has found him. See ! see there, Jean
Baudin! He holds up the dear child."
She could not have kept him back a
moment probably he did not feel her
touch ; he was only dragging her with
him. But his wild eyes, fixed and
staring forward, had seen for them-
selves what he never heard her say.
Fast, fast as one arm could oar him,
my brother was bringing Jean his lit-
tle one, held above water by the other
hand. Then that poor huge body
swayed and shivered; the trembling
hands went out, the face unlocked a
little, there came a hoarse sob, and
e a thin, strangled cry in a dream
" Mon petit ! mon petit I"
But strong again, and savage with
ve, how he snatched the pale little
burden from John, and tore up the
bank to the hotel. There were wooden
back-gates that opened into the court
on the lake-side, but which were un-
used and locked. At one mighty kick
they yawned open before Jean, and
he rushed on into the house. Here all
had been prudently prepared, and the
little dripping body was quickly strip-
ped and wrapped in hot blankets. The
village doctor was already there, and
two or three women. Jean Baudin
helped the doctor and the women with
a touching docility. All his noisy
litt:
roughness was smoothed. He tamed
his big voice to a delicate whisper.
He spoke and moved with an affecting
submissive gentleness, watching what
there was he could do, and doing it
exactly as he was bid. Now and then
he spoke a word or two under his
breath " One must be patient, I know,
Monsieur le Medecin ; yes, yes." And
now and then he muttered piteously
" Mon petit ! mon petit !" But he was
as gentle as a lamb, and touchingly
eager to be helpful.
In half an hour his pain got the bet-
ter of him a little.
" Mais, mon Dieu, mon Dieu !" he
moaned, "how I suffer! Ah, Mon-
sieur, is it not that he breathes a little,
my dear little one? Ah, my God,
save me him! Mon petit! mon petit!"
He went into a corner of the room,
and stood with his forehead against
the wall, his shoulders heaving with
silent sobs. Then he came back quiet
and patient again.
" Priez, priez pour moi, Madame,"
said he, once, to John's wife.
" I am praying without ceasing, my
poor friend," said she. And once she
hastily laid a handkerchief soaked in
essence on his forehead, for she thought
he was surely going to faint, when the
hope, long, long deferred, began to turn
his heart sick.
All this time John and I lingered in
the dusky passage, in which that door
ajar made a cleft of yellow light.
Every now and then a dim figure stole
up to us with an eager sad whisper,
asking, " How goes it ? how goes it ?"
and slipped away down-stairs with the
comfortless answer.
It was poor Jules, who could do
nothing for his Rose but this. She
had thrown herself on the floor in a
darkening room, and lay there moan-
ing. Her dire anguish, sharp as a
mother's for the little one, was cruelly
and unduly aggravated by self-re-
proach, and by the self-inflicted agony
of her exile from that room up-stairs.
She dared not enter Jean's presence.
She felt that he must for ever abhor
the sight of her; she was afraid he
nc
Monsieur Batiou.
might curse her! She rejected all
kindness, all sympathy, especially from
Jules, whom she quite fiercely ordered
to quit her. But when it got quite
dark, the poor fellow took in a candle,
and set it on a table ; and he spent the
time in going up and down-stairs to
fetch her that whisper of news, which,
perhaps, he sweetened with a little
false hope before he offered it to her.
At last we outside heard a move-
ment a stifled exclamation ; and then
one of the women ran out.
" The child has opened his eyes !"
said she, as she hurried down-stairs
for some article required.
Presently we heard a man sobbing
softly ; and then yes, a faint tiny
voice. And after that nothing, for a
long while. But at last at last! a
miserable, awful cry, and a heavy,
heavy fall. And then came out John's
wife, at sight of whose face we turned
sick at heart, and followed her silently
down-stairs. We knew what had hap-
pened : the little one was dead.
He had opened his eyes, and had
probably known his father; for the
light that his presence always kindled
there had come into the little white
face. Jean, too ready to clutch the
delusive hope, fell a-sobbing with rap-
ture, and kissing the little fair head.
The child tried to speak, and did
speak, though but once.
" He said, ' Ba-Bou' quite distinct-
ly," said John's wife, " and then such
a pretty smile came ; and it's it's
there still, on his little dear dead face,
John."
Here she broke down, and went into
a passion of tears, sobbing for " poor
Jean ! poor Jean !"
He had fainted for the first time in
his strong life, and so that blessed un-
consciousness was deadening the first
insupportable agony of his dreadful
wound. They carried him out, and
laid him on his bed, and I believe the
doctor bled him. They hoped he
would sleep afterward from sheer ex-
haustion.
Presently poor Jules came to us,
crying like a i-hild, and begging us to
go to his Rose to try to rouse her, if
only to make her weep. She had fall-
en into a dry depth and abyss of de-
spair an icy crevasse, where even his
love could not reach her.
Since she had known the child was
dead, she had not stirred, except to
resist, moaning, every attempt to lift
her from the floor, where she had cast
herself, and except that she shuddered
and repulsed Jules, especially, when-
ever he went near her.
We went into the room where she
lay. My good brother stooped, and
spoke to her in his tender, manly fash-
ion, and lifted her, with a resolution
to which she yielded, and seated her
on a sofa beside his wife, whose kind
arms closed round her suffering sister.
And suddenly some one had come
in whom Rose could not see, for her
eyes were pressed to that womanly bo-
som. John's wife made a little warn-
ing gesture that kept us others silent.
It was poor Jean himself; he came
in as if in search of somewhat ; he
was deadly pale, and perhaps half
unconscious what he did. He was
without shoes, and his clothes and
blond hair and beard were tumbled
and disordered just as when they had
laid him on his bed. When he saw
Rose, he came straight up to her, and
sat down on her other side.
" Ma pauvre Rose," said he piteous-
ly
She gave a cry and start of terror,
and turned and saw him. The poor
fellow's broken heart was in his face ;
she could not mistake the sweet-
natured anguish there. Half bewil-
dered by his inconceivable grief, he
had gone to her, instinctively, like a
child, for sympathy and comfort.
" Ma pauvre Rose," said he, broken-
ly ; " notre petit "
Passionately she took his great head
between her hands, and drew it down
on her bosom, and kissed it passion-
ately weeping at last.
And we all came out softly, and left
them left them to that Pity which
sends us the wholesome agony of such
tears.
Cardinal Wiseman in Rome.
117
CARDINAL WISEMAN IN ROME.
"!T was in the year 1863," says
Monsignore Manning, in his funeral
oration on the great prince of the
Church whose loss the whole Catholic
world is now deploring, " that the
sovereign pontiff, speaking of the
cardinal, described him as * the man
of divine Providence for England.' "
And truly it seems to us that the di-
rect inspiration of the Holy Ghost
has seldom been so clearly apparent
in the choice of a bishop as it was in
the case of him who has filled the
cathedral chair of Westminster for
the last fifteen years. When we re-
member the peculiar circumstances
under which he began his pastorship
the reaction which was steadily, though
as yet almost imperceptibly, going on
in favor of the Church ; the doubt
and perplexity and wavering with
which a crowd of wandering souls
were groping in darkness for the por-
tals of divine truth ; and then the
outburst of anger with which the na-
tion at large read the bulls of the
Holy Father, raising up the English
Church from the humiliation in which
she had lain for three hundred years,
we shall readily understand that a
rare union of qualities was required
in the man who should understand
and direct those honest seekers after
truth, and breast successfully that
storm of popular fury. That Nicholas
Wiseman, who had left England at
the age of sixteen, and passed twenty
years of his youth and early man-
hood at Rome absorbed, just at the
time when the character is most liable
to be moulded by external associations,
in the theological studies and cere-
monies and sacred traditions of the
ecclesiastical capital that he, we say,
should have displayed such a remark-
able fitness for both these works, is
not only an indication of the great
qualities of the man, but an instruc-
tive commentary on the school in
which he had been formed. It shows
us that a Roman education, while it
enlarges the view and sweeps away
local prejudices, yet leaves untouch-
ed the salient points of national
character. For his success in dealing
with the Catholic movement which
followed the emancipation act of 1829,
Cardinal Wiseman was largely in-
debted to the quickness and accuracy
of perception in theological matters
which he had acquired during his long
residence at the centre of the Chris-
tian Church ; what helped him most
in his victory over the burst of Prot-
estant fury which followed the restora-
tion of the English hierarchy, and
found official expression in the eccle-
siastical titles bill, was his thorough
English boldness and honesty of
speech and manly bearing. He ap-
pealed to his countrymen's traditional
love of fair-play ; they heard him ;
and before long all classes learned to
love and respect him.
Of the twenty years' schooling by
which he prepared himself for his
work in England, the cardinal has
left us some admirable sketches, scat-
tered through his books. Dr. Man-
ning alluded briefly to the influence of
his Roman education. We propose
to gather up what the cardinal him-
self has said about it ; to paint with
his own pencil a picture of his life of
preparation ; leaving other hands, if
they will, to paint his subsequent life
of labor.
Nicholas Wiseman was born at Se-
ville, in Spain, on the second of
August, 1802. % His father was an
English merchant, his mother an Irish
lady. He lost his father in infancy,
and at the age of six, in consequence
of those wars of invasion which for
a time made Spain no longer habitable,
was taken to Ireland to be educated.
After spending one or two years at a
boarding-school near Waterford, his
mother went with him to England, and
118
Cardinal Wiseman in Rome.
placed him at St. Cuthbert's college,
Ushaw, near Durham. Dr. Lingard
was then vice-president of the col-
lege, "and I have retained upon my
memory," wrote the cardinal, nearly
fifty years afterward, " the vivid rec-
ollection of specific acts of thoughtful
and delicate kindness, which showed
a tender heart, mindful of its duties
amidst the many harassing occupations
just devolved on him through the
death of the president and his own
literary engagements ; for he was re-
conducting his first great work through
the press. But though he went from
college soon after, and I later left the
country, and saw him not again for
fifteen years, yet there grew up an in-
direct understanding first, and by de-
grees a correspondence and an inti-
macy which continued to the close of
his life."*
It was in the course of the eight
years which he passed at this rev-
erend seat of learning lineal de-
scendant of the old English college of
Douay that he determined to be-
come a priest. Here he first began
to manifest that deep affection for the
city of St. Peter which distinguished
him down to the end of his life. " Its
history," he says, " its topography, its
antiquities, had formed the bond of a
little college society devoted to this
queen of cities, while the dream of its
longings had been the hope of one day
seeing what could then only be known
through hearsay tourists and fabulous
plans." But the hope was fulfilled
soon and unexpectedly. In 1818,
Pope Pius VII. restored the English
college at Rome, " after it had been
desolate and uninhabited during al-
most the period of a generation."
Nicholas Wiseman was one of a band
of young men sent out to colonize it.
He gives a charming description of
the arrival of the little party at their
Roman home, and the delight and
surprise with which they roamed,
alone and undirected, through the
solemn building, with its wide cor-
* Recollections of the Last Four Popes. Leo Xn.
Cliap. vii.
ridors ; its neat and cheerful rooms ;
its wainscotted refectory, from whose
groined ceiling looked down St. George
and the dragon ; its library heaped
with tumultuous piles of unorganized
volumes ; its garden, glowing with the
lemon and orange, and presenting to
one's first approach a perspective in
fresco by Pozzi ; and, above all, its
chapel, illuminated from floor to roof
with saints of England and celestial
glories ; or, better still, adjoining the
college, the old roofless church of the
Holy Trinity, where in generations
long past many a pilgrim from the
British Isles had knelt to pray when
the good priests of his nation fed and
lodged him on his visit to the tomb of
the apostles. Pleasant must have
been the meeting, on that December
afternoon in the year 1818, between
these six young men and their appoint-
ed rector Dr. Gradwell, who, being ab-
sent when they arrived, came home
that evening and found himself at the
head of a college, and his frugal meal
appropriated by the hungry students.
The happiness of that day casts a
glow over the page on which, when he
was an old man, the cardinal recorded
the incidents. On Christmas eve he
was presented, with some of his com-
panions, to the venerable Pius VII.
We can imagine the feelings of awe
with which he approached this saintly
man, released only a few years before
from the French capitivity. " There
was the halo of a confessor round the
tiara of Pius that eclipsed all gold
and jewels Instead of
receiving us, as was customary, seated,
the mild and amiable pontiff rose to
welcome us, and meet us as we ap-
proached. He did not allow it to be a
mere presentation, or a visit of cere-
mony. It was a fatherly reception,
and in the truest sense our inaugura-
tion into the duties that awaited us.
The friendly and almost na-
tional grasp of the hand, after due
homage had been willingly paid, be-
tween the head of the Catholic Church,
venerable by his very age, and a youth
who had nothing even to promise ;
Cardinal Wiseman in Rome.
119
the first exhortation on entering a
course of ecclesiastical study its very
inaugural discourse from him whom
he believed to be the fountain of spir-
itual wisdom on earth ; these surely
formed a double tie, not to be broken,
but rather strengthened, by every sub-
sequent experience."
Doubtless his early dreams of Rome
were now surpassed by the reality of
his daily life. It was unalloyed spirit-
ual and intellectual enjoyment. Study
was no task ; it was only a sort of
pleasure; and the hours of relaxation
became a source of mental schooling,
even while he was pursuing the most
delightful recreations. It is not diffi-
cult to imagine how he must have
spent his holidays roaming through
the field of art, or resting at some seat
of the Muses, or wandering along the
stream of time, bordered by monu-
ments of past greatness every foot-
step awakening the echoes of classic
antiquity, or calling up the most sacred
memories of the early suffering
Church. Even the solitude of buried
cemeteries, "where the tombs them-
selves are buried, where the sepulchres
are themselves things decayed and
mouldering in rottenness," is no solitude
to him ; for he peoples it with the
shadowy forms of the Scipios and Na-
sones whose ashes are there deposited.
How often, in after years, did he not
recur with fond delight to the " images
of long delicious strolls, in musing
loneliness, tlirough the deserted ways
of the ancient city ; of climbings among
its hills, over ruins, to reach some
vantage-ground for mapping the subja-
cent territory, and looking beyond on
the glorious chains of greater and
lesser mountains, clad in their imperial
hues of gold and purple ; and then
perhaps of solemn entrance into the
cool solitude of an open basilica,
where the thought now rests, as the
body then did, after the silent evening
prayer, and brings forward from many
well-remembered nooks every local
inscription, every lovely monument of
art, the characteristic feature of each,
or the great names with which it is as-
sociated Thus does
Rome sink deep and deeper into the
soul, like the dew, of which every
separate drop is soft and weightless,
but which still finds its way to the root
of everything beneath the soil, im-
parting there to every future plant its
own warm tint, its own balmy fra-
grance, and its own ever rejuvenescent
vigor."
Such were his hours of recreation :
still more delightful were his hours of
study, especially in " the great public li-
braries, where noiseless monks brought
him and piled round him the folios
which he required, and he sat as still
amidst a hundred readers as if he had
been alone." Every day his love, his
enthusiasm, for his work seemed to in-
crease. So he passed six or seven
years, " lingering and lagging behind
others," and revelling in spiritual and
intellectual luxury. " Every school-
fellow had passed on, and was hard at
his noble work at home, was gaming a
crown in heaven to which many have
passed." Our young student had kissed
the feet of the dead Pius VIL, as he
lay in state in one of the chapels of
St. Peter's; had mourned over the
departure of the great minister Con-
salvi; had presented himself to Leo
XIL, and told him, " I am a foreigner
who came here at the call of Pius
VIL, six years ago ; my first patrons,
Pius VII., Cardinals Litta, De Pietro,
Fontana, and now Consalvi, are dead.
I therefore recommend myself to your
Holiness's protection, and hope you
will be a father to me at this distance
from my country." He had obtained
the Holy Father's promise. Already
he was known for a youth of marvel-
lous talents and learning. He had
maintained a public disputation in
theology, and been rewarded for his
success by the title of D.D. At last
came the jubilee-year of 1825. " The
aim of years, the goal of long prepar-
ation, the longed-for crown of unwa-
vering desires, the only prize thought
worthy of being aspired to, was at-
tained in the bright jubilee spring of
Rome. It marks a blessed epoch in a
120
Cardinal Wisvman in Rome.
life to have had the grace of the priest-
hood superadded to the exuberant ben-
edictions of that year."
Fortunately for the English college,
and fortunately, perhaps we should
add, for England, he was not yet to
depart for the field of his great labor.
To use his own modest words, he was
found to be at hand in 1826, when
some one was wanted for the office of
vice-rector of the English college, and
so was named to it; and when, in
1828, the worthy rector, Dr. Grad-
well, was appointed bishop, Dr. Wise-
man was, by almost natural sequence,
named to succeed him.
Thus he continued to drink in the
spirit of catholicity, and devotion, and
steadiness in faith, of which Rome is
the fountain on earth. With reverent
affection he traced out the mementos
of primitive Christianity,, the tombs of
the martyrs and saints, the altars and
hiding-places and sacred inscriptions
of the catacombs. These holy retreats
had for him a fascination such as no
other spot even in Rome possessed.
Again and again he recurs to them in
his writings, lingering fondly around
the hallowed precincts, and inspiring
his readers with the love for them that
burned so ardently in his own breast.
One of the last pieces that came from
his pen was the little story of a mar-
tyr's tomb, which we have placed in
this number of our magazine.
Other studies were not neglected.
While his companions were indulging
in the mid-day sleep, which almost
everybody takes in Rome, he was at
his books. Often he passed whole
nights in study, or walking to and
fro, in meditation, through the cor-
ridors of the English college. The
seasons of vacation he would often
spend collating ancient manuscripts
in the Vatican library, and one of the
fruits of that labor was his fforce Sy-
riacce, published when he was only
twenty-five years old. In the same
year (1827), he was appointed
though without severing his connec-
tion with the English college pro-
fessor of oriental languages in the
Roman university. It is no doubt
to these two events that he alludes
in the following extract from his
"Recollections" of Leo XII., though
he tells the story as if he had been
only a witness of the circumstances:
"It so happened," he says, "that a
person connected with the English
college was an aspirant to a chair
in the Roman university. He had
been encouraged to compete for it, on
its approaching vacancy, by his pro-
fessors. Having no claims of any
sort, by interest or connection, he
stood simply on the provision of the
papal bull, which threw open all pro-
fessorships to competition. It was but
a secondary and obscure lectureship
at best ; one concerning which, it was
supposed, few would busy themselves
or come forward as candidates. It
was, therefore, announced that this
rule would be overlooked, and a per-
son eveiy way qualified, and of con-
siderable reputation, would be named.
The more youthful aspirant unhesi-
tatingly solicited an audience, at which
I was present. He told the Pope
frankly of his intentions and of his
earnest wish to have carried out, in
his favor, the recent enactments of
his Holiness. Nothing could be more
affable, more encouraging, than Leo's
reply. He expressed his delight at
seeing that his regulation was not a
dead letter, and that it had animated
his petitioner to exertion. He assured
him that he should have a fair chance,
1 a clear stage and no favor,' desiring
him to leave the matter in his hands.
" Time wore on ; and as the only
alternative given in the bull was proof,
by publication of a work, of proficiency
in the art or science that was to be
taught, he quietly got a volume through
the press probably very heavy ; but
sprightliness or brilliancy was not a
condition of the bull. When a va-
cancy arrived, it was made known,
together with the announcement that
it had been filled up. All seemed lost,
except the honor of the pontiff, to
which alone lay any appeal. An-
other audience was asked, and in-
Cardinal Wiseman in Rome.
121
stantly granted, its motive being, of
course, stated. I was again present,
and shall not easily forget it. It was
not necessary to re-state the case. ' I
remember it all/ the Pope said most
kindly ; * I have been surprised. I
have sent for C , through whom
this has been done ; I have ordered
the appointment to be cancelled, and
I have reproved him so sharply that
I believe it is the reason why he is
laid up to-day with fever. You have
acted fairly and boldly, and you shall
not lose the fruits of your industry.
I will keep my word with you and the
provisions of my constitution.* With
the utmost graciousness he accepted
the volume now treasured by its au-
thor, into whose hands the copy has
returned acknowledged the right to
preference which it had established,
and assured its author of fair play.
" The Pope had, in fact, taken up
earnestly the cause of his youthful
appellant; instead of annoyance, he
showed earnestness and kindness ; and
those who had passed over his preten-
sions with contempt were obliged to
treat with him and compromise with
him on terms that satisfied all his de-
sires. Another audience for thanks-
giving was kindly accorded, and I wit-
nessed the same gentle and fatherly
temper, quietly cheerful, and the same
earnest sympathy with the feelings of
him whose cause had been so gracious-
ly carried through. If this young
client gained no new energies, gath-
ered no strength from such repeated
proofs of interest and condescension ;
if these did not both direct and impel,
steer and fill, the sails of his little bark
through many troubled waters; nay,
if they did not tinge and savor his
entire mental life, we may write that
man soulless and incapable of any
noble emotions."
We must not suppose, however, that
all this while he was so lost among his
books as to have forgotten that land
for whose conversion he was destined
to labor through the best part of his
life. He told a dear friend how, hav-
ing to wait one day at the Sapienza
for the Hebrew lecture, he went into
the Church of St. Eustachio to pray ;
and there, before the altar of the Bless-
ed Sacrament and the altar of the
Holy Virgin Mother, the thought came
into his mind that, as his native coun-
try, in the oath which she imposes
upon the chief personages of the state,
solemnly abjures these sacred mys-
teries, it was his duty to devote him-
self to the defense and honor of those
very doctrines in England. And no
one who has read his sermons and
lectures and pastorals can have failed
to notice the burning love for the Eu-
charist and the Blessed Virgin which
inspired him.
The time was not yet for his mission
to England; and it is so hard, when
the mind has been long running in one
groove, to break out of it and take a
totally different course, that perhaps
he might have come in time to look
upon the Roman theological schools
as the ultimate sphere of usefulness
for which God had destined him, had
he not been suddenly called forth
from his studious retirement by the
voice of the supreme pontiff. It was
in 1827 that Leo XII. determined to
institute in the church of Gesu e
Maria a course of English sermons,
to be attended by all colleges and re-
ligious communities that spoke the
language, and by as many other per-
sons as chose to listen. It was in-
tended, of course, principally for the
benefit of strangers. His Holiness
appointed Dr. Wiseman preacher.
" The burden was laid there and
then," says the cardinal, describing
the audience at which he received
this commission, "with peremptory
kindness, by an authority that might not
be gainsaid. And crushingly it pressed
upon the shoulders. It would be im-
possible to describe the anxiety, pain,
and trouble which this command cost
for many years after. Nor would
this be alluded to were it not to illus-
trate what has been kept in view
through this volume how the most
insignificant life, temper, and mind
may be moulded by the action of a
122
Cardinal Wiseman in Rome.
great and almost unconscious power.
Leo could not see what has been the
influence of his commission, hi merely
dragging from the commerce with the
dead to that of the living one who
would gladly have confined his time
to the former, from books to men,
from reading to speaking. Nothing
but this would have done it. Yet
supposing that the providence of one's
life was to be active, and in contact
with the world, and one's future duties
were to be in a country and in times
where the most bashful may be driven
to plead for his religion or his flock,
surely a command overriding all in-
clination and forcing the will to un-
dertake the best and only preparation
for those tasks, may well be contem-
plated as a sacred impulse and a
timely direction to a mind that wanted
both. Had it not come then, it never
more could have come ; other bents
would have soon become stiffened and
unpliant; and no second opportunity
could have been opened after others
had satisfied the first demand."
From this time it would seem as if
England had a stronger hold upon his
heart than ever. The noble purpose
which worldly men have since laugh-
ed at as a wild dream of devoting
himself to the conversion of England,
became the ruling idea of his life.
And often alone at night in the college
chapel he would " pour out his heart
in prayer and tears, full of aspirations
and of a firm trust; of promptings
to go, but fear to outrun the bidding
of our divine -Master." He offered
himself to the Pope for this great
work ; but still the time was not come ;
and he was told to wait.
But if he was not to go yet himself,
he had his part to perform in making
others ready. He well knew that to
fit his pupils for their work, he must
teach them something beside theology.
Englishmen were a sort of Brahmins ;
the missionary who went among them
must go as one versed in all learning,
or he would not be listened to. He
saw how the natural sciences were
growing to be the favorite pursuit
we may almost say the hobby of
modern scholars, and in a preface to a
thesis by a student of the English
college he insisted on the necessity of
uniting general and scientific know-
ledge to theological pursuits. As
another instance of the personal in-
fluence which several successive pon-
tiffs exercised over his studies, and the
many kind marks of interest which
contributed to attach him so strongly
to their persons, we may repeat an
anecdote which he tells in reference
to this little essay. He went to pre-
sent it to Pius VIII., but the Holy
Father had it already before him, and
said, " You have robbed Egypt of its
spoil, and shown that it belongs to the
people of God." The same idea
which he briefly exposed in this essay,
he developed more fully and with
great wealth of illustration in a course
of lectures on the Connection between
Science and Revealed Religion, de-
livered first to his pupils and after-
ward to a distinguished audience at
the apartments of Cardinal Weld.
It was partly with a view to the re-
vision and publication of these lectures
that he visited England in 1835.
During his stay in London, he
preached a series of controversial dis-
courses in the Sardinian chapel dur-
ing the Advent of 1835, and another
in St. Mary's, Moorfields, in Lent,
1836. The latter were published un-
der the title of Lectures on the Prin-
cipal Doctrines and Practices of the
Catholic Church. They exhibit in a
remarkable degree the qualities, so
rare in polemical literature, of kind-
ness, moderation, and charity for all
men. The odium theologicum, indeed,
has less place at Rome than anywhere
else in the Christian world. It was
at the very centre and chief school of
the science of divinity that he learned
to fight against error without temper,
and expose falsehood without hard
language. " I will certainly bear will-
ing testimony," he says, "to the ab-
sence of all harsh words and uncharit-
able insinuations against others in pub-
lic lectures or private teaching, or even
Cardinal Wiseman in Rome.
123
in conversation at Rome. One grows
up there in a kinder spirit, and learns
to speak of errors in a gentler tone than
elsewhere, though in the very centre
of highest orthodox feeling." Dr. Wise-
man went back to the English college,
leaving among his countrymen at home
an enviable reputation for honesty,
learning, and good sense.
A few years more passed in fre-
quent contact with the Holy Father,
and under the continuous influence
of the sacred associations with which
eighteen centuries have peopled the
Christian capital, and Nicholas Wise-
man was then ready to go forth to his
work. The recollection of number-
less favors and kind words from the
supreme pontiff went with him, and
strengthened him, and colored his
thoughts. He has told of the cordial
and paternal treatment with which he
was honored by Gregory XVI. in par-
ticular. " An embrace would supply
the place of ceremonious forms on
entrance. At one time a long, famil-
iar conversation, seated side by side ;
at another a visit to the penetralia of
the pontifical apartment (a small suite
of entresols, communicating by an in-
ternal staircase) occupied the time.
What it has been my
happiness to hear from him in such
visits, it would be betraying a sacred
trust to reveal ; but many and many
words there spoken rise to the mind
in times of trouble, like stars, not only
bright in themselves, but all the bright-
er in their reflection from the bright-
ness of their mirror. They have been
words of mastery and spell over after
events, promises, and prognostics which
have not failed, assurances and sup-
ports that have never come to
naught."*
* He gives an amusing account of a perplexing
situation from which this same Pope once unwit-
tingly delivered him, while he was engaged in his
course of lectures on Science and Revealed Relig-
In 1840 it was determined to in-
crease the number of vicars apostolic in
England from four to eight, and Dr.
Wiseman, at the same time, was ap-
pointed coadjutor to Bishop Walsh at
Wolverhampton. " It was a sorrowful
evening," he says, " at the beginning
of autumn, when, after a residence in
Rome prolonged through twenty-two
years, till affection clung to every old
stone there, like the moss that grew
into it, this strong but tender tie was
cut, and much of future happiness had
to be invested in the mournful recol-
lections of the past."
Here we leave him. It was not
until ten years later that he became
cardinal, but though from 1840 to 1850
he filled only a subordinate position,
he was working hard and well during
this period, and fast rising to be the
foremost man of all the Catholics of
England. And his work never ceased.
He lived to see the hierarchy estab-
lished, and the conversion of his coun-
trymen making steady if not rapid
progress ; but his energy never flagged
when a part of his task was done ; he
passed on from one labor to another,
until that last day, when " he entered
into the sanctuary of God's presence,
from which he never again came forth.'*
ion at the apartments of Cardinal Weld. " On one
of the days of delivery," says he, " I had been pre-
vented from writing the lecture in time, and was
laboring to make up for my delay, but in vain.
Quarter after quarter of each hour flew rapidly on,
and my advance bore no proportion to the matter
before me. The fatal hour of twelve was fast ap-
proaching, and I knew not what excuse I could
make, nor how to supply, except by a lame re-
cital, the important portion yet unwritten of my
task for an index to the lectures had been printed
and circulated. Just as the last moment arrived, a
carriage from the palace drove to the door, with a
message that I would step into it at once, as His
Holiness wished to speak to me. This was, indeed,
a deus ex machinathe only and least thought of
expedient that could have saved me from my em-
barrassment. A messenger was despatched to in-
form the gathering audience of the unexpected
cause of necessary adjournment of our sitting till
the next day. The object of my summons was one
of very trifling importance, and Gregory little knew
what a service he had unintentionally rendered
124
The Nick of Time.
rrom All The Year Bound.
THE NICK OF TIME.
LET us suppose a case that might
occur if it has not occurred.
John Mullet, immersed (say) in the
button trade at Birmingham, has made
money in business. He bequeaths his
property by will, and is in due time
gathered to his fathers. His two
sons, Jasper and Josiah, take certain
portions ; and other portions are to go
either to the family of Jasper or to that
of Josiah, according as either one of
those brothers survives the other. Jas-
per remains in England ; but Josiah
goes out to Australia, to establish some-
thing that may make his children
great people over there. Both broth-
ers, twelve thousand miles apart,, die
on the same day, May 1st, one at noon
(Greenwich time), the other at noon
(Sydney time). Jasper's children
have been on pleasant cousinly terms
with Josiah's ; but they are aware of
the fact that it would be better for
them that Josiah should die before
their own father, Jasper. Josiah's
children, on the other hand, be they
few or many, although they always
liked uncle Jasper, cannot and do not
ignore the fact that their interests
would be better served by the surviv-
orship of Josiah than that of Jasper.
The two sets of cousins, therefore,
plunge into a contest, to decide the
question of survivorship between the
two sons of old John Mullet.
This is one variety of a problem
which the courts of law and equity are
often called upon to settle. Occasion-
ally th'.j question refers to two persons
who die at the same time, and in each
other's company. For instance : To-
ward the close of the last century,
George Netherwood, his children by
his first wife, his second wife, and her
son, were all wrecked during a voyage
from Jamaica to England. Eight
thousand pounds were left by will, in
such a way that the relations of the
two wives were greatly interested in
knowing whether the second Mrs.
Netherwood did or did not survive her
husband, even by one single minute
a matter which, of course, could not
be absolutely proved. Again, in 1806,
Mr. Mason and one son were drowned
at sea ; his remaining eight children
went to law, some of them against the
others ; because, if the father died be-
fore the son, 5,000 would be divided
equally among the other eight children ;
whereas, if the son died before the
father, the brothers only would get it,
the sisters being shut out. A few
years afterward Job Taylor and his
wife were lost in a ship wrecked at
sea ; they had not much to leave be-
hind them ; but what little there was
was made less by the struggles of two
sets of relatives, each striving to show
that one or other of the two hapless
persons might possibly have survived
the other by a few minutes. In 1819
Major Colclough, his wife, and four
children, were drowned during a voy-
age from Bristol to Cork; the hus-
band and wife had both made wills ;
and there arose a pretty picking for
the lawyers in relation to survivorships
and next of kin, and trying to prove
whether the husband died first, the
wife first, or both together. Two
brothers, James and Charles Corbet,
left Demerara on a certain day in 1828,
in a vessel of which one was master
and the other mate; the vessel was
seen five days afterward, but from
that time no news of her fate was
ever received. Their father died about
a month after the vessel was last seen.
The ultimate disposal of his property
depended very much on the question
whether he survived his two sons or
they survived him. Many curious
arguments were used in court. Two
or three captains stated that from
August to January are hurricane
The Nick of Time.
125
months in the West Indian seas, and
that the ship was very likely to have
been wrecked quite early in her voy-
age. There were, in addition, certain
relations interested in James's dying
before Charles ; and they urged that,
if the ship was wrecked, Charles was
likely to have outlived by a little space
his brother James, because he was a
stronger and more experienced man.
Alas for the "glorious uncertainty!"
One big-wig decided that the sons sur-
vived the father, and another that the
father survived the sons. About the
beginning of the present reign, three
persons, father, mother, and child, were
drowned on a voyage from Dublin to
Quebec ; the husband had made a
will, leaving all his property to his
wife ; hence arose a contest between
the next of kin and the wife's relations,
each catching at any small fact that
would (theoretically) keep one poor
soul alive a few minutes longer than
the other. About ten years ago, a
gentleman embarked with his wife and
three children for Australia : the ship
was lost soon after leaving England ;
the mate, the only person who was
saved among the whole of the crew
and passengers, deposed that he saw
the hapless husband and wife locked
in each other's arms at the moment
when the waves closed over them.
There would seem to be no question
of survivorship here ; yet a question
really arose ; for there were two wills
to be proved, the terms of which would
render the relatives much interested in
knowing whether husband or wife did
really survive the other by ever so
small a portion of time.
These entangled contests may rest
in peace, so far as the actual decisions
are concerned. And so may others
of a somewhat analogous nature. Such,
for instance, as the case of an old lady
and her housekeeper at Portsmouth.
They were both murdered one night.
The lady had willed all her property
to the housekeeper, and then, the law-
yers fought over the question as to
which of the women died first. Or,
the case of a husband who promised,
on his marriage-day, to settle 1,200
on his wife "in three or four years."
They were both drowned about three
years after the marriage ; and it was
not until after a tough struggle in
chancery that the husband's relatives
conquered those of the wife albeit,
the money had nearly vanished in law
expenses by that time. Or, the case
of a man who gave a power of attor-
ney to sell some property. The prop-
erty was sold on the 8th of June, but
the man was never seen after the 8th
of the preceding March, and was sup-
posed to have been wrecked at sea;
hence arose a question whether the
man was or was not dead on the day
when the property was sold- a ques-
tion in which the buyer was directly
interested. The decisions in these
particular cases we pass over ; but it
is curious to see how the law some-
times tries to guess at the nick of time
in which either one of two persons
dies. Sometimes the onus of proof
rests on one of the two sets of rela-
tions. If they cannot prove a survi-
vorship, the judgment is that the
deaths were simultaneous. Sometimes
the law philosophizes on vitality and
decay. The Code Napoleon lays
down the principle that of two persons
who perish by the same calamity, if
they were both children, the elder
probably survived the younger by a
brief space, on account of having
superior vital energy; whereas, if
they were elderly people, the younger
probably survived the elder. The
code also takes anatomy and physiol-
ogy into account, and discourses on
the probability whether a man would
or would not float longer alive than a
woman, in the event of shipwreck.
The English law is less precise in this
matter. It is more prone to infer sim-
ultaneous death, unless proof of sur-
vivorship be actually brought forward.
Counsel, of course, do not fail to make
the best of any straw to catch at. Ac-
cording to the circumstances of the
case, they argue that a man, being
usually stronger than a woman, prob-
ably survives her a little in a case of
126
The Nick of Time.
simultaneous drowning; that, irrespect-
ive of comparative strength, her great-
er terror and timidity would incapaci-
tate her from making exertions which
would be possible to him ; that a sea-
faring man has a chance of surviving
a landsman, on account of his ex-
perience in salt-water matters; that
where there is no evidence to the con-
trary, a child may be presumed to
have outlived his father ; that a man
in good health would survive one in
ill health ; and so forth.
The nick of time is not less an im-
portant matter in reference to single
deaths, under various circumstances.
People are often very much interested
in knowing whether a certain person
is dead or not. Unless under specified
circumstances, the law refuses to kill
a man that is, a man known to have
been alive at a certain date is pre-
sumed to continue to live, unless and
until proof to the contrary is adduced.
But there are certain cases in which
the application of this rule would in-
volve hardship. Many leases are de-
pendent on lives; and both lessor
and lessee are concerned in knowing
whether a particular life has terminated
or not. Therefore, special statutes
have been passed, in relation to a lim-
ited number of circumstances, enacting
that if a man were seen alive more
than seven years ago, and has not
since been seen or heard of, he may
be treated as dead.
The nick of time occasionally affects
the distribution or amount of property
in relation to particular seasons.
Some years ago the newspapers re-
marked on the fact that a lord of
broad acres, whose rent-roll reached
something like 40,000 a year, died
"about midnight" between the 10th
and llth of October; and the possi-
ble consequences of this were thus
set forth : " His rents are payable at
* old time,' that is, old Lady-day and
old Michaelmas -day. Old Michael-
mas-day fell this year on Sunday, the
llth instant. The day begins at mid-
night. Now, the rent is due upon the
first moment of the day it becomes
due; so that at one second beyond
twelve o'clock of the 10th instant,
rent payable at old Michaelmas-day is
in law due. If the lord died before
twelve, the rents belong to the parties
taking the estates ; but if after twelve,
then they belong to and form part of
his personal estate. The difference of
one minute might thus involve a
question on the title to about 20,000."
We do not know that a legal difficulty
did arise ; the facts only indicate the
mode in which one might have arisen.
Sometimes that ancient British insti-
tution, the house clock, has been at
war with another British institution,
the parish church clock. A baby was
born, or an old person died, just be-
fore the house clock struck twelve on
a particular night, but after the church
clock struck. On which day did the
birth or death take place yesterday
or to-day ? And how would this fact
be ascertained, to settle the inherit-
ance of an estate ? We know an in-
stance (not involving, however, the
inheritance to property) of a lady
whose relations never have definitely
known on which day she was born ;
the pocket watch of the accoucheur
who attended her mother pointed to a
little before twelve at midnight, where-
as the church clock had just struck
twelve. Of course a particular day
had to be named in the register ; and
as the doctor maintained that his
watch was right, there were the mate-
rials for a very pretty quarrel if the
parties concerned had been so dis-
posed. It might be that the nick of
time was midnight exactly, as meas-
ured by solar or sun-dial time : that
is, the sun may have been precisely in
the nadir at that moment ; but this
difficulty would not arise in practice,
as the law knows only mean time, not
sun-dial time. If Greenwich time
were made legal everywhere, and if
electric clocks everywhere established
communication with the master clock
at the observatory, there might be
another test supplied ; but under the
conditions stated, it would be a nice
matter of Tioeodledum and Tweedledee
The Nick of Time.
127
to determine whether the house clock,
the church clock, or a pocket watch,
should be relied upon. All the pocket
watches in the town might be brought
into the witness-box, but without avail ;
for if some accorded with the house
clock, others would surely be found to
agree better with the church clock.
This question of clocks, as com-
pared with time measured by the sun,
presents some very curious aspects in
relation to longitude. What's o'clock
in London will not tell you what's
o'clock in Falmouth, unless you know
the difference of longitude between the
two places. The sun takes about
twenty minutes to go from the zenith
of the one to the zenith of the other.
Local time, the time at any particular
town, is measured from the moment
of noon at that town ; and noon itself
is when the sun comes to the me-
ridian of that place. Hence Fal-
mouth noon is twenty minutes after
London noon, Falmouth midnight
twenty minutes after London mid-
night; and so on. When it is ten
minutes after midnight, on the morn-
ing of Sunday, the 1st of January, in
London, it is ten minutes before mid-
night, on Saturday, the 31st of De-
cember, at Falmouth. It is a Sab-
bath at the one place, a working-day
at the other. That particular mo-
ment of absolute time is in the year
1865 at the one, and 1864 at the
other. Therefore, we see, it might
become a ticklish point in what year a
man died, solely on account of this
question of longitude, irrespective of
any wrong-going or wrong-doing of
clocks, or of any other doubtful points
whatever. Sooner or later this ques-
tion will have to be attended to. In
all our chief towns, nearly all our
towns indeed, the railway-station clocks
mark Greenwich time, or, as it is
called, " railway time ;" the church
clocks generally mark local tune ; and
some commercial clocks, to serve all
parties, mark both kinds of time on
the same dial-face, by the aid of an
additional index hand. Railway time
is gradually beating local time ; and
the law will by-and-by have to settle
which shall be used as the standard in
determining the moment of important
events. Some of the steamers plying
between England and Ireland use
Greenwich time in notifying the de-
partures from the English port, and
Dublin time in notifying those from
the Irish port; a method singularly
embarrassing to a traveller who is in
the habit of relying on his own watch.
Does a sailor get more prog, more
grog, more pay, within a given space
of absolute time when coming from
America to England, or when going
from England to America ? The dif-
ference is far too slight to attract
either his attention or that of his em-
ployers ; yet it really is the case that
he obtains more good things in the
former of these cases than in the lat-
ter. His days are shorter on the
homeward than on the outward voy-
age ; and if he receive so much pro-
visions and pay per day, he interprets
day as it is to him on shipboard.
When in harbor, say at Liverpool, a
day is, to him as to every one else
who is stationary like himself, a pe-
riod of definite length ; but when he
travels Eastward or Westward, his
days are variable in length. When
he travels West, he and the sun run a
race; the sun of course beats; but
the sailor accomplishes a little, and
the sun has to fetch up that little be-
fore he can complete what foot-racers
call a lap. In other words, there is a
longer absolute time between noon
and noon to the sailor going West,
than to the sailor ashore. When he
travels East, on the contrary, he and
the sun run toward each other ; inso-
much that there is less absolute time
in the period between his Monday's
noon and Tuesday's noon than when
he was ashore. The ship's noon is
usually dinner-time for the sailors ;
and the interval between that and the
next noon (measured by the sun, not
by the chronometer) varies in length
through the causes just noticed. Once
now and then there are facts recorded
in the newspapers which bring this
128
The Nick of Time.
truth into prominence a truth de-
monstrable enough in science, but not
very familiar to the general public.
When the Great Eastern made her
first veritable voyage across the At-
lantic in June, 1860, she left South-
ampton on the 17th, and reached New
York on the 28th. As the ship was
going West, more or less, all the
while, she was going with or rather
after the sun ; the interval was great-
er between noon and noon than when
the ship was anchored off Southamp-
ton ; and the so-called eleven days of
the voyage were eleven long days.
As it was important, in reference to a
problem in steam navigation, to know
how many revolutions the paddles
made in a given time, to test the power
of the mighty ship, it was necessary to
bear in mind that the ship's day was
longer than a shore day ; and it was
found that, taking latitude and longi-
tude into account, the day on which
the greatest run was made was nearly
twenty-four and a half hours long;
the ship's day was equal to half an
hour more than a landsman's day.
The other days varied from twenty-
four to twenty-four and a half. On
the return voyage all this was reversed ;
the ship met the sun, the days were
less than twenty-four ordinary hours
long, and the calculations had to be
modified in consequence. The sailors,
too, got more food in a homeward
week than an outward week, owing to
the intervals between the meals being
shorter albeit, their appetites may
not have been cognizant of the differ-
ence.
And this brings us back to our hy-
pothetical Mullets. Josiah died at noon
(Sydney time), and Jasper died on the
same day at noon (Greenwich time).
Which died first? Sydney, although
not quite at the other side of the world,
is nearly so ; it is ten hours of longi-
tude Eastward of Greenwich ; the sun
rises there ten hours earlier than with
us. It is nearly bed-time with Sydney
folks when our artisans strike work for
dinner. There would, therefore, be
a reasonable ground for saying that
Josiah died first. But had it been
New Zealand, a curious question might
arise. Otago, and some other of the
settlements in those islands, are so
near the antipodes of Greenwich, that
they may either be called eleven and
three-quarter hours East, or twelve
and a quarter hours West, of Green-
wich, according as we suppose the
navigator to go round the Cape of
Good Hope or round Cape Horn. At
six in the morning in London, it is
about six in the evening at New Zea-
land. But of which day? When it
is Monday morning in London, is it
Sunday evening or Monday evening
in New Zealand ? This question is
not so easy to solve as might be sup-
posed. When a ship called at Pitcairn
Island several years ago, to visit the
singular little community that had de-
scended from the mutineers of the
Bounty, the captain was surprised to
find exactly one day difference between
his ship's reckoning and that of the isl-
anders; what was Monday, the 26th,
to the one, was Tuesday, the 27th, to
the other. A voyage East had been
the origin of one reckoning, a voyage
West that of the other. Not unlikely
we should have to go back to the voy-
age of the Bounty itself, seventy-seven
years ago, to get to the real origin of
the Pitcairners' reckoning. How it
may be with the English settlers in
New Zealand, we feel by no means
certain. If the present reckoning be-
gan with some voyage made round
Cape Horn, then our Monday morn-
ing is New Zealand Sunday evening ;
but if with some voyage made round
the Cape of Good Hope, then our
Monday morning is New Zealand
Monday evening. Probabilities are
perhaps in favor of the latter sup-
position. We need not ask, " What's
o'clock at New Zealand ?" for that can
be ascertained to a minute by counting
the difference of longitude ; but to ask,
"What day of the week and of the
month is it at New Zealand?" is a
question that might, for aught we can
see, involve very important legal con-
sequences.
fiecent Discoveries in the Catacombs.
129
From the Dublin Review.
RECENT DISCOVERIES IN THE CATACOMBS.
The chromo-lithographic press, es-
tablished at Rome by the munificence
of Pius IX., has issued its first publi-
cation, four sheets in large folio,
Imagines Selectee Deiparce Virginis
in Ccemeteriis Suburbanis Udo depictce,
with about twenty pages of text from
the pen of the Cavaliere G. B. de
Rossi. The subject and the author
are amply sufficient to recommend
them to the Christian archaeologist,
and the work of the artists employed
is in every way worthy of both. It
is by no means an uncommon idea,
even among Catholics who have visited
Rome and done the catacombs, that
our Blessed Lady does not hold any
prominent place in the decorations of
those subterranean cemeteries. Prot-
estant tourists often boldly publish
that she is nowhere to be found there.
The present publication will suffice to
show, even to those who never leave
their own homes, the falsehood of this
statement and impression. De Rossi
has here set before us a selection of
four different representations of Holy
Mary, as she appears in that earliest
monument of the Christian Church;
and, in illustrating these, he has taken
occasion to mention a score or two of
others. Moreover, he has vindicated
for them an antiquity and an impor-
tance far beyond what we were pre-
pared to expect ; and those who have
ever either made personal acquaintance
with him, or have studied his former
writings, well know how far removed
he is from anything like uncritical and
enthusiastic exaggerations. Even such
writers as Mr. Burgon (" Letters from
Rome") cannot refrain from bearing
testimony to his learning, moderation,
and candor; they praise him, often
by way of contrast with some Jesuit
or other clerical exponent of the
mysteries of the catacombs, for all
those qualities which are calculated to
9
inspire us with confidence in his inter-
pretations of any nice points of Chris-
tian archaeology. But we fear his
Protestant admirers will be led to
lower their tone of admiration for him,
and henceforward to discover some
flaw in his powers of criticism, when
they find him, as in these pages,
gravely maintaining, concerning a
particular representation of the Ma-
donna hi the catacombs, that it is of
Apostolic, or quasi- Apostolic antiquity.
It is a painting on the vaulted roof of
an arcosolium in the cemetery of St.
Priscilla, and it is reproduced in the
work before us in its original size.
The Blessed Virgin sits, her head
partially covered by a short slight
veil, holding the Divine Infant in her
arms ; opposite to her stands a man,
holding in one hand a volume, and
with the other pointing to a star which
appears between the two figures.
This star almost always accompanies
our Blessed Lady in ancient paintings
or sculptures, wherever she is repre-
sented either with the Magi offering
their gifts, or by the manger's side
with the ox and the ass ; but with a
single figure, as in the present instance,
it is unusual. Archaeologists will pro-
bably differ in their interpretation of
this figure ; the most obvious conjecture
would, of course, fix on St. Joseph;
there seem to be solid reasons, how-
ever, for preferring (with De Rossi)
the prophet Isaias, whose predictions
concerning the Messias abound with
imagery borrowed from light, and who
may be identified on an old Christian
glass by the superscription of his
name. But this question, interesting
as it is, is not so important as the
probable date of the painting itself;
and here no abridgment or analysis of'
De Rossi's arguments can do justice
to the moderation, yet irresistible force,
with which he accumulates proofs of"
130
Recent Discoveries in the Catacombs.
the conclusion we have already stated,
viz., that the painting was executed, if
not in Apostolic times and as it were
under the very eyes of the Apostles
themselves, yet certainly within the
first 150 years of the Christian era.
He first bids us carefully to study
the art displayed in the design and
execution of the painting; he com-
pares it with the decorations of the
famous Pagan tombs discovered on the
Via Latina in 1858, and which are
referred to the times of the Anton-
inuses ; with the paintings in the pon-
tifical cubiculum in the cemetery of St.
Callixtus, and with others more re-
cently discovered in the cemetery of
Pretextatus, to both of which a very
high antiquity is conceded by all com-
petent judges ; and he justly argues
that the more classical style of the paint-
ing now under examination obliges us to
assign to it a still earlier date. Next,
he shows that the catacomb in which
it appears was one of the oldest, St.
Priscilla, from whom it receives its
name, having been the mother of
Pudens and a contemporary of the
Apostles (the impress of a seal, with
the name Pudens Felix, is repeated
several times on the mortar round the
edge of a grave in this cemetery) ;
nay, further still, it can be shown that
the tombs of Sts. Pudentiana and
Praxedes, and therefore, probably, of
their father St. Pudens himself, were
in the immediate neighborhood of the
very chapel in which this Madonna is
to be seen ; moreover, the inscriptions
which are found there bear manifest
tokens of a higher antiquity than can
be claimed by any others from the
catacombs: there is the complete
triple nomenclature of pagan times,
e. g., Titus Flavius Felicissimus ; the
epitaphs are not even in the usual
form, in pace, but simply the Apostolic
salutation, Pax tecum, Pax tibi ; and
finally, the greater number of them
are not cut on stone or marble slabs,
but written with red paint on the tiles
which close the graves a mode of
inscription of which not a single ex-
ample, we believe, has hitherto been
found in any other part of the cata-
combs. This is a mere outline of the
arguments by which De Rossi estab-
lishes his conclusion respecting the
age of this painting, and they are not
even exhibited in their full force in
the present publication at all. For a
more copious induction of facts, and a
more complete elucidation both of the
history and topography of the cata-
combs, we must be content to wait till
the author's larger work on Roma
Sotterranea shall appear.
The most recent painting of the
Madonna which De Rossi has here
published is that with which our
readers will be the most familiar. It
is the one to which the late Father
Marchi, S. J., never failed to introduce
every visitor to the catacomb of St.
Agnes, and has been reproduced in
various works ; the Holy Mother with
her hands outstretched in prayer, the
Divine Infant on her bosom, and the
Christian monogram on either side of
her and turned toward her. This
last particular naturally directs our
thoughts to the fourth century as the
date of this work ; and the absence of
the nimbus and some other indications
lead our author to fix the earlier half
of the century in preference to the
later. Between these two limits, then,
of the first or second, and the fourth
century, he would place the two others
which are now published ; he distin-
guishes them more doubtfully, as be-
longing respectively to the first and
second half of the third century. In
one, from the cemetery of Domitilla,
the Blessed Virgin sits holding the
Holy Child on her lap, whilst four
Magi offer their gifts ; the other, from
the catacomb of Sts. Peter and Mar-
cellinus, represents the same scene,
but with two Magi only. In both
there is the same departure from the
ancient tradition of the number of the
wise men, and from the same cause,
viz., the desire to give a proper
balance and proportion to the two
sides of the picture, the Virgin occu-
pying the middle place. Indeed, in
one of them, it is still possible to trace
Recent Discoveries in the Catacombs.
131
the original sketch of the artist,
designing another arrangement with
the three figures only ; but the result
did not promise to be satisfactory, and
he did what thousands of his craft
have continued to do ever since, sacri-
ficed historic truth to the exigencies
of his art.
We trust our readers will be in-
duced to get this valuable work and to
study it for themselves ; the text may
be procured either in French or in
Italian, so that it is readily accessible
to all. At the same time we would
take the opportunity of introducing to
them another work by the same inde-
fatigable author, which is also pub-
lished both in French and in Italian.
At least, such is the announcement of a
prospectus now lying before us, which
states that the French translation is
published by Vives, in Paris. We
have ourselves only seen the original
Italian. It is a short monthly period-
ical, with illustrations, Bollettino di
Archeologia Cristiana, and is addressed
not merely to savans, Fellows of Royal
Societies, and the like, but rather to
all educated men who care for the his-
tory of their religion and are capable
of appreciating its evidences. De
Rossi claims for the recent discoveries
in the Roman catacombs the very
highest place among the scientific
events of the day which have an im-
portant religious bearing, and we think
that the justice of his plea must be ad-
mitted. Unfortunately, however, the
vastness of the subject, the multiplied
engagements of the author, and (not
least) the political vicissitudes of the
times, have hitherto prevented the
publication of these discoveries in a
complete and extended form. We are
happy to know that the work is satis-
factorily progressing ; but meanwhile
he has been persuaded by the sugges-
tions of many friends, and by the con-
venience of the thing itself, to publish
this monthly periodical, which will
keep us au courant with the most im-
portant additions that are being made
from time to time to our knowledge of
those precious memorials of primitive
Christianity, and also supply much in-
teresting information on other archaeo-
logical matters. In these pages the
reader is allowed to accompany, as it
were, the author himself in his sub-
terranean researches, to assist at his
discoveries, to trace the happy but
doubtful conjecture of a moment
through all its gradual stages, until it
reaches the moral certainty of a con-
clusion which can no longer be called
in question ; <?. ^., the author gives us a
portion of a lecture which he delivered
on July 3, 1852, to the Roman Ponti-
fical Academy of Archaeology. In
this lecture he maintained, in opposi-
tion to the usual nomenclature of the
catacombs, and entirely on the strength
of certain topographical observations,
that a particular cemetery, into which
a very partial opening had been made
in 1848, was that anciently called by
the name of Pretextatus, and in which
were buried St. Januarius, the eldest
of the seven sons of St. Felicitas, Fe-
licissimus and Agapitus, deacons of St.
Sixtus, Pope Urban, Quirinus, and
other famous martyrs. Five years
passed away, and this opinion had
been neither confirmed nor refuted;
but in 1857, excavations undertaken
for another purpose introduced our*
author into a crypt of this cemetery,
of unusual size and richness of orna-
ment, where one of the loculi bore an
inscription on the mortar which had
secured the grave-stone, invoking the
assistance of "Januarius, Agatop us (for
Agapitus), and Felicissimus, mar-
tyrs !" This, of course, was a strong
confirmation of the conjecture which
had been published so long before;
but this was all which he could pro-
duce in the first number of his Bollet,-
tino in January, 1863. In the second
number he could add that, as he was
going to press (February 21), small
fragments of an inscription on marble
had been disinterred from the same
place, of which only single letters had
yet been found, but which, he did not
hesitate to say, had been written by
Pope Damasus and contained his
name, as well as the name of St. Jan-
132
Recent Discoveries in the Catacombs.
uarius. In March he published the
twelve or fourteen letters which had
been discovered, arranging them in
the place he supposed them to have
occupied in the inscription, which he
conjecturally restored, and which con-
sisted altogether of more than forty
letters. In ^pril he was able still
further to add, that they had now re-
covered other portions ; amongst the
rest, a whole word, or rather the con-
traction of a word (episcop. for epis-
copus), exactly in accordance with
his conjecture, though, at the time he
made the conjecture, only half of one
of the letters had yet come to light.
We need not pursue the subject
further. Enough has been said to
satisfy those of our readers who have
any acquaintance with the catacombs,
both as to the kind and the degree of
interest and importance which belong
to this publication. Its intelligence,
however, is by no means confined to
the catacombs. The basilica of San
Clemente ; the recent excavations at
San Lorenzo, fuori le mura; the post-
script of St. Pamphilus the Martyr at
the end of one of his manuscript copies
of the Bible, reproduced in the Codex
Sinaiticus lately published by Tischen-
dorf ; the arch of Constantine; ancient
scribblings on the wall (graffiti) of
the palace of the Caesars on the Pala-
tine, etc., etc., are subjects of able and
learned articles in the several numbers
we have received. With reference to
the graffiti, one singular circumstance
mentioned by De Rossi is worth re-
peating here. Most of our readers
are probably acquainted with the graf-
fiti from this place, published by P.
Garrucci, in which one Alessamenus
is ridiculed for worshipping as his God
the figure of a man, but with the head
of an ass, nailed to a cross. P. Gar-
rucci had very reasonably conjectured
that this was intended as a blasphemous
caricature of the Christian worship;
and recently other graffiti in the very
same place have been discovered with
the title Episcopus, apparently given
in ridicule to some Christian youth;
for that the room on whose walls these
scribblings appear was used for educa-
tional purposes is abundantly proved
by the numerous inscriptions an-
nouncing that such or such a one exit
de pcedagogio. We seem, therefore,
in deciphering these rude scrawls, to
assist, as it were, at one of the minor
scenes of that great struggle between
paganism and Christianity, whereof
the sufferings of the early martyrs, the
apologies of Justin Martyr, etc., were
only another but more public and his-
torical phase. History tells us that
Caracalla, when a boy, saw one of
his companions beaten because he
professed the Christian faith. These
graffiti seem to teach us that there
were many others of the same tender
age, de domo G<z$aris, who suffered
more or less of persecution for the
same cause. Other interesting details
of the same struggle have been brought
together by De Rossi, carefully gleaned
from the patrician names which appear
on some of the ancient grave-stones,
sometimes as belonging to young vir-
gins or widows who had dedicated
themselves to the service of Christ
under the discipline of a religious com-
munity. That such a community was
to be found early in the fifth century,
in the immediate neighborhood of S.
Lorenzo fuori le mura, or, at least, that
the members of such a community
were always buried about that time in
that cemetery, is one of the circum-
stances which may be said to be clear-
ly proved by the recent discoveries.
The proofs are too numerous and min-
ute for abridgment, but the student
will be interested in examining them
as they appear in the Bollettino.
Another feature in this archaeological
publication is its convenience as a sup-
plement to the volume of Christian
Inscriptions published by the same
author. That volume, as our readers
are already aware, contains only such
inscriptions of the first six centuries
as bear a distinct chronological note
by the names of the chief magistrates,
or in some other way. Additional
specimens of these are not unfrequent-
ly discovered in the excavations still
Recent Discoveries in the Catacombs.
133
in progress on various sides of the
city ; and these De Rossi is careful to
chronicle, and generally also to illus-
lustrate by notes, in the pages of his
Bollettino. The chief value of these
additions, perhaps, is to be found in
the corroboration they uniformly give
to the conclusions which De Rossi had
already deduced, the canons of chron-
ological distinction and distribution
which he had established, from the
larger collection of inscriptions in the
work referred to whether as to the
style of writing or of diction and sen-
timents, etc. canons, the full import-
ance of which will only be recognized
when he shall have published the sec-
ond volume of the collection of epitaphs
bearing upon questions of Christian
doctrine and practice.
In the earlier numbers of the Bollet-
tino for the present year there is a
very interesting account of the recent
discoveries in the Ambrosian basilica
of Milan, where there seems no room
to doubt but that they have brought to
light the very sarcophagus in which
the relics of the gre^ St. Ambrose, as
well as those of the martyrs Sts. Ger-
vasius and Protasius, have rested for
more than ten centuries. The history
of the discovery is too long to be in-
serted here, and too interesting to be
abridged. One circumstance, however,
connected with it is too important to
be omitted. The sarcophagus itself
has not yet, we believe, been opened ;
but, from the two sepulchres below and
on either side of it, where the bishop
and the martyrs were originally de-
posited, and where they remained until
their translation in the ninth century,
many valuable relics have been gleaned.
We will only mention one of them
viz., portions of an ampulla such as
are found in the catacombs, and con-
cerning which Dr.- Biraghi, the libra-
rian of the Bibliotheca Ambrosiana
(to whose zeal we are indebted for the
whole discovery, and for the account
of it to his learning), assures us that
it has been subjected to a chemical
examination, and is shown to have
contained blood. This, as De Rossi
truly remarks, is the most notable in-
stance which has yet come before us
of this ampulla having been placed in
the sepulchre of famous and historical
martyrs, and it is of very special im-
portance as throwing a flood of light
on those words of St. Ambrose about
these relics so often quoted in the
controversy on this subject Sanguine,
tumulus madet; apparent cruoris tri-
umphales notes; inviolatce reliquice loco
suo et ordine repertce. And it is cer-
tainly singular that this discovery
should have been made at a moment
when the validity of these ampullce, as
sure signs of martyrdom, has been so
much called in question. The Sacred
Congregation of Rites had only recent-
ly reaffirmed their former sentence on
this matter; and this fact now comes
most opportunely from Milan to add
further weight to their decision, by
giving a historical basis to an opinion
which before had been thought by
some rather to rest upon theory and
conjecture. It will go far, we should
think, toward rehabilitating in the minds
of Christian archseologists the pious
belief of former ages upon this subject,
wherever it may have been shaken.
134
Miscellany.
MISCELLANY.
SCIENCE.
The Mason-Spider of Corfu. A corre-
spondent of a London journal gives an
interesting account of certain habits of
this insect, which belongs to the myga-
lidce family. The mygales are chiefly
found in hot climates, and include the
largest specimens of spiders known.
They are called mason-spiders, from the
curious manner in which they build
their houses. " The mygale nest," says
the correspondent, " varies much in
size, from one inch in length to three or
four, and even six or seven inches. In
the West Indies, where the spiders are
crab-like, the insects measure six inches
over. One nest, especially mentioned
and minutely described by Mr. Oudo-
uin, was three inches and a quarter long
and eight- tenths of an incli wide. The
nest, of cylindrical form, is made by
boring into the earth ; making his exca-
vation, the next thing, having decided
upon the dimensions of his habitation,
is to furnish it, and most beautiful are
his paper-hangings. The whole of the
interior is lined with the softest possi-
ble silk, a tissue which the 'major do-
mo' spins all over the apartment until
it is padded to a sufficient thickness and
made soft enough. Silk lining like this
gives the idea of the mygale having a
luxurious turn. This done, and the in-
terior finished, the mygale shows his
peculiarity by taking steps to keep out
the o Tro/Uoi of intruders by making not
only a door, and that self-closing, but a
door with swinging hinge, and some-
times one at each end of his nest, which
shows that he has a very good opinion
of his own work within, and knows how
to take care of it. Not having met with
any case where any one had seen the
positive operation of making the door
of these nests, I thought the details
would be interesting, the more so as
they corroborated preconceived ideas
of their construction, and were noticed
by a friend quartered at Corfu, who
brought home the nest with him. The
following is the description he gave me :
" Lying out in one of the sandy pla-
teaux covered with olive groves with
which Corfu abounds, enjoying his cigar
and lounging about in the sandy soil, he
came to a spider's nest. Examining it,
he found the lid or door would not open,
and seemed held firmly within by the
proprietor as if Jack were at home so
he applied forthwith the leverage of a
knife-blade, upon which the inmate re-
tired to his inner chamber. The aggres-
sor decided not to disturb him any more
that day, but marking the place , most
necessary thing to do thought he would
explore further the next day, if fine.
" Accordingly, the next day my i'riend
called early, intending to take off the
door and to watch the progress of res-
toration, and how it would be accom-
plished. After waiting a long time, out
came Monsieur Mygale, and looking
carefully round, and finding all quiet,
commenced operations by running his
web backward and forward across the
orifice of his nest, till there was a layer
of silken web ; upon this he ejected a
gluten, over which he scratched the fine
sand in the immediate neighborhood of
his nest ; this done, he again set to
work webbing, then gluten, sand ; then
again web, gluten, sand, about six times ;
this occupied in all about eight hours.
But the puzzling part was that this time
he was cementing and building himself
out from his own mansion, when, to the
astonishment and delight of his anxious
looker-on, he began the finishing stroke
by cutting and forming the door by fix-
ing his hind legs in the centre of the
new covering, and from these as a cen-
tre he began cutting with his jaws right
through the door he had made, striking
a clear circle round, and leaving about
one-eighth of the circumference as a
hinge. This done, he lifted the door up
and walked in. My friend then tried to
open the door with a knife, but the in-
sect pulled it tight from the inside. He
therefore dug round him and took him
off bodily mygale and nest complete.
The hinge is most carefully and beauti-
fully formed ; and there appears to be
an important object in view when the
spider covers over the whole of the ori-
fice, for immediately the door is raised
it springs back as soon as released ; and
this is caused by the elasticity of the
web on the hinge and the peculiar form-
ation of the lid or door, which is made
thicker on the lower side, so that its
135
own weight helps it to be self-closing,
and the rabbeting of the door is wonder-
fully surfaced. Bolts and Chub locks
with a latch-key the mygale family do
not possess, but as a substitute the
lower part of the door has clawholding
holes, so that a bird's beak or other
lever being used, Mons. Mygale holds
on to the door by these, and with his
legs against the sides of his house,
offers immense resistance against all
Instinct of Insects. One of the regular
course of free scientific lectures deliv-
ered at the Paris Sorbonne this last
winter, under the auspices of the Minis-
ter of Public Instruction, was by the
distinguished naturalist M. Milne-Ed-
wards, on the instinct and intelligence
of animals. Taking for his text the say-
ing of Linnseus, Natura maxime miranda
in minimis, he spoke principally of the
instinct of insects, and especially of sol-
itary bees. These hymenoptera, in fact,
afford one of the most striking examples
known of that faculty which impels an
animal, either for its own preservation
or for the preservation and development
of its offspring, to perform the most com-
plicated and intelligent actions, readily
and skilfully, yet without having learned
how to do them. One species, the car-
penter-bee (xylocopa), bores in the trunks
of trees galleries running first horizon-
tally and then vertically to a considerable
depth. She then collects a quantity of
wax and honey. The honey she kneads
into a little ball of alimentary matter, in
the midst of which she deposits her
first egg. With the wax she constructs
a horizontal partition, formed of concen-
tric annular layers ; this encloses the
cell. On this partition she deposits a
second egg, enclosed like the first in the
provision destined for the support of
the future larva ; and over it builds an-
other partition of wax ; and so on, to the
top of the vertical cavity. Then she
dies ; she never sees her offspring. The
latter, so long as they remain larvae, feed
upon the honey which the maternal fore-
sight provided for them ; and so soon as
they have passed through their second
metamorphosis and become winged in-
sects, issue forth from their retreat, to
perform in their turn a similar labor.
Another species of solitary bee, whose
larva is carnivorous, resorts to a still
more wonderful, but, it must be con-
fessed, very cruel, expedient to supply
the worm-like progeny with food. She
constructs a gallery or tunnel in the
earth, and crowns it with a chimney
curved somewhat like a crosier, so as
to keep out the rain. Then she goes
a-huntiug, and brings back to her den a
number of caterpillars. If she kills
them at once, they will spoil before her
eggs are hatched ; if she lets them alone,
they will run away. What shall she do?
She pierces the caterpillars with her
venomous little dart, and injects into
them a drop of poison, which Mr.
Claude Bernard no doubt will analyze
some day. It does not kill, it only par-
alyzes them ; and there they lie, torpid
and immovable, till the larvae come into
the world and feast off the sweet and
succulent flesh at their leisure.
Everybody is familiar with the habits
and wonderful industry of hive-bees,
wasps, and ants. These insects seem to
be governed by something more than
blind instinct: it is hardly too much to
say that they give indubitable signs of
intelligence. They know how to modify
their course according to circumstances,
to provide against unexpected wants, to
avert dangers, and to notify to each
other whatever is of consequence to be
known by their whole community. Hu-
ber, the celebrated bee-keeper of Gene-
va, relates the following anecdote : One
of his hives having been devastated one
night by a large sphinx-moth, the bees
set to work the next morning and plas-
tered up the door, leaving only a small
opening which would just admit them,
one at a time, but which the sphinx,
with its' big body and long wings, could
not pass. As soon as the season arrived
when the moths terminate their short
lives, the bees, no longer fearing an in-
vasion, pulled down their rampart. The
next season, as no sphinx appeared to
trouble them, they left their door wide
open.
Ostrich-keeping. By late news from
the Cape of Good Hope we learn that
the farmers of that colony are beginning
to find it profitable to keep flocks of
ostriches, for the feathers of those birds
are worth 25 sterling the pound. For
thirty-five ostriches, there must be three
hundred acres of grazing-ground. The
plucking takes place once in six months ;
the yield of feathers from each bird
being worth from 10 to 12, 10s. The
original cost of the young ostriches
is said to be 5 each. Some of the
136
Miscellany.
farmers who have tried the experiment
are of opinion that ostrich-feathers will
pay better than any other produce of
the colony.
Extraordinary Inland Navigation. We
hear from South America that a steamer
built in England for the Peruvian ^ gov-
ernment, for the exploration of rivers,
has penetrated the great continent from
the Atlantic side to a distance of ninety-
five leagues only from the Pacific, or
nearly all across. The vessel, which
draws seven feet water, steamed seven
hundred leagues up the Amazon, two
hundred up the Ucayati, and thence into
the Pachitea, which had never before
been navigated except by native canoes.
What a magnificent extent of inland
navigation is here opened to commercial
enterprise ! The mind becomes some-
what bewildered in imagining the future
of those vast river- valleys when hund-
reds of steamers shall navigate the
streams, trading among millions of popu-
lation dwelling on their banks.
Is the Sun getting Bigger ? It is known
that various speculations have been put
forward as to the cause or source of the
sun's heat. Among those who consider
that it consists in the falling of asteroids
or meteorites into the sun, is Mr. J. R.
Mayer, of Heilbronn, who states that
the surface of the sun measures 115,000
million square miles, and that the aster-
oids falling thereon form a mass every
minute equal in weight to from 94,000 to
188,000 billion kilogrammes. It might
be supposed that this enormous Shower
would increase the mass and weight of
the sun, and by consequence produce an
appreciable effect on the motion of the
planets which compose our system. For
instance, it would shorten our year by
a second or something less. But the
calculations of astronomers show that
this effect does not take place ; and Mr.
Mayer states that to increase the appar-
ent diameter of the sun a single second
by the shower of asteroids would re-
quire from 33,000 to 66,000 years.
Teaching the Deaf and Dumb to Speak.
Dr. Houdin, director of an institution
for the deaf and dumb at Passy, lately
announced to the French Academy, that
after twenty-five years' experience he
had proved the possibility of communi-
cating the faculty of speech, in a certain
degree, to deaf mutes. A commission
appointed by the Academy and the Fac-
ulty to investigate the subject, reports
that the learned doctor has really suc-
ceeded in several instances in teaching
these unfortunate beings to speak and
even comprehend spoken language so
well that it is difficult to believe that
they are not guided by the ear. The
patients conversed with the members of
the commission, and answered the dif-
ferent questions put to them. They were
found to be perfectly familiar with the
use and mechanism of speech, though
destitute of the sense of hearing, and
they comprehended what was said to
them, reading the words upon the lips
of the speaker with a marvellous facility.
Thus they become fit to enter into so-
ciety and capable of receiving all man-
ner of instruction.
But here is another case still more
wonderful. What would you do if you
had to instruct and prepare for first
communion a child who was at the same
time deaf, dumb, and blind? The case
is not an imaginary one ; it has occurred
in an asylum for deaf-mutes at Notre
Dame de Larnay, in the diocese of Poi-
tiers. A nun was there charged with
the instruction of a child in this unfor-
tunate state, to whom she could appeal
only by the sense of touch. Yet the
child, who astonishes everybody by her
sensibility and intelligence, has come
by that means to a knowledge of the
spiritual life, of God and his divine
Son, of religion and its mysteries and
precepts has been prepared, in fine, for
a worthy reception of the Eucharist.
ART.
THE past winter in New York has
scarcely kept pace with its immediate
predecessor in the number and merit of
the collections of pictures opened to
public inspection or disposed of at auc-
tion. The unprecedented prices ob-
tained for the really excellent collection
of Mr. Wolfe, in Christmas week of 1863,
seemed to have inoculated art collectors
and dealers with what may be called a
cacoethes vendendi, and until far into the
succeeding summer the picture auction-
eers were called upon to knock down
dozens of galleries of " private gentle-
men about to leave the country/' vary-
ing in merit from respectable to posi-
tively bad. In these sales the moderns
had decidedly the best of it, the few
Miscellany.
137
"old masters" who ventured to appeal
to the sympathies and pockets of our
collectors being at last treated with
proper contempt. But the prices real-
ized by the Wolfe gallery, even when
reduced to a specie basis, were too high
to become a recognized standard of
vafue, and gradually the interest in such
sales, as well as the bids, declined, until
the sellers became aware (the purchas-
ers had become aware some time pre-
vious) that the market was overstocked
and the demand for pictures had ceased.
The contributions of the foreign artists
to the New York Sanitary Fair brought
probably less than a third of the money
that would have been obtained for them
had they been sold in January instead
of June, and such collections as have
been scraped together for sale during
the present season have met with but
moderate pecuniary success. It is grati-
fying to know, however, that our resi-
dent artists, both native and foreign-
born, have for the most part been busily
and profitably employed, and that in
landscape, and in some departments of
genre, their works have not suffered in
competition with similar ones by reput-
able European painters. Without wish-
ing in any respect to recommend or sug-
gest a protective system for fostering
native art, we cannot but rejoice that the
overthrow of the late exaggerated prices
for foreign works will tend to encourage
and develop American artists.
The principal art event in anticipation
is the opening of next exhibition of the
National Academy of Design in the
building now hastening to completion at
the corner of Fourth avenue and Twen-
ty-third streets. It is to be hoped that
the contributions will be worthy of the
place and the occasion. Recent exhi-
bitions have not been altogether credit-
able to the Academy.
Durand, the late president of the
Academy, and one of our oldest and
most careful landscape painters, has a
characteristic work on exhibition at
Avery's Art Agency, corner of Fourth
street and Broadway. It is called " A
Summer Afternoon," and is pervaded by a
soft, pensive sentiment of rural repose.
In the elaboration of the trees and in
the soft, mellow distances the artist
shows his early skill, albeit in some of
his later pieces the timid handling in-
separable from age is discernible.
A collection of several hundred
sketches and studies of no special
merit, by Hicks, has recently been dis-
posed of at auction. The essays of this
gentleman in landscape are not happy,
and the specimens in this collection had
better, perhaps, have been excluded.
Rossiter's pictures representing Adam
and Eve in Paradise, now on exhibition
in New York, have excited more remark
than commendation. It may be said
briefly, that they fail to do justice to
the subject.
Curnmings's " Historic Annals of the
Academy of Design" have been pub-
lished, and constitute an interesting ad-
dition to the somewhat meagre collection
of works illustrating American art his-
tory.
Mr. Thomas Ball, the well-known
sculptor of Boston, is about to depart
for Italy, with the intention of remain-
ing several years in Florence, and exe-
cuting there in marble a number of
plaster models. Among these are a life-
size statue of Edwin Forrest in the part
of " Coriolanus," and busts of the late
Rev. Thomas Starr King and Edward
Everett. The latter is sard to be an ad-
mirable likeness.
M. J. Heade. an American artist, for-
merly of Boston and Providence, is pub-
lishing in London a work upon the hum-
ming-birds of Brazil, illustrated from
designs by himself.
The United States Senate was recently
the scene of a somewhat animated de-
bate on art matters, arising out of a
proposition to authorize the artist Pow-
ell to " paint a picture for the Capitol at
a cost not to exceed $25,000." The
scheme was defeated, chiefly through
the opposition of Senator Sumner, who
thought the present an improper time
to devote so large a sum to such a pur-
pose.
A very remarkable picture by Gerdme,
the most original ,arid realistic of living
French painters, is now on exhibition at
Goupil's, in this city. It is entitled
" The Prayer of the Arab in the Desert,"
and in a small space presents a complete
epitome of Oriental life.
In London the General Exhibition of
water-color drawings, and collections of
works of Holman Hunt, Madox Brown,
and the late David Roberts, have recently
been opened. The last named contains
900 pictures, drawings, and sketches,
showing the amazing industry of the
artist, and his skill as a draughtsman.
A monument to Shakespeare, from pen-
138
ny subscriptions, is to be erected on
Primrose Hill, near London.
The sale of the celebrated Pourtales
collection at Paris has been the all-ab-
sorbing art topic abroad. The gallery,
at last accounts, was daily crowded with
representatives from all parts of Europe,
and the prices surpassed the estimates
of the experts. The value set upon the
whole collection was upward of 3,000,-
000 francs, but that sum will probably
fall far short of the real total. The
bronzes and terra-cotta occupied four
days, and produced over 150,000 francs.
The following are among the most re-
markable items : A very small statuette
of Jupiter, found at Besancon in 1820,
8,000 francs ; another small statuette of
the same, seated, formerly in the Denon
collection, 12,000 francs ; the celebrated
statuette of Apollo, supposed to date
from the sixth century B.C., from the
Neri collection, 5,000 francs ; small stat-
uette of Minerva, arms missing, found
at Besancon, 19,200 francs ; armor found
at Herculaneum, and presented by the
Queen of Naples to Josephine, pur-
chased by the Emperor for 13,000 francs ;
a small Roman bust, supposed by Vis-
con ti to be a Balbus, bought for the
Louvre for 4,550 francs ; a tripod, found
in the ruins of the town of Metapont,
and described by Panofka, purchased
for the Berlin gallery, 10,000 francs ; fine
old Roman seat, in bronze, bought for
the Louvre, 5,300 francs ; vase from
Locres, 7,000 francs ; another vase, found
in one of the tombs of the Vulci, 9,000
francs.
At the sale of the collection of the
Marquis de Lambertye, in Paris, a charm-
ing work by Meissonier, ' Reynard in
his Study, reading a Manuscript," was
purchased for 12,600 francs ; had it not
been for the effect of the Pourtales sale
on the art market, the work would have
fetched considerably more money. It
was purchased of the artist himself, for
16,000 francs, by the late marquis. An-
other and smaller picture, not six inches
by four, also by Meissonier, was sold on
the same occasion subject, "Van de
Velde in his Atelier " for 7,020 francs.
In the same collection were four works
by Decamps, whose pictures are in great
request. One of these, an Eastern land-
scape, sold for 15,500 francs ; another, a
small work, a peasant girl in the forest,
for 4,240 francs ; and two still smaller
and less important works, "Tide Out,
with Sunset," and " Gorges d'Ollioule,"
for 1,500 francs each. Three small works
by Eugene Delacroix, a " Tiger attack-
ing a Serpent," " Combat between Moors
and Arabs," and "The Scotch Ballad,"
sold, respectively, for 1,820 francs, 1,300
francs, and 2,300 francs. A minute pic-
ture by Paul Delaroche, " Jesus on the
Mount of Olives," sold for 2.200 francs ;
Diogenes sitting on the edge of an im-
mense jar, holding his lantern, by Ge-
r6me, 1,950 francs ; and " Arnauts at
Prayer," by the same, 3,900 francs. " The
Beach at Trouville," by the lately de-
ceased painter, Troyon, 4,000 francs, and
"Feeding the Poultry," by the same,
4,850 francs.
At the sale of a collection of the
works of M. Cordier, the sculptor, who
has earned considerable popularity by
his variegated works, composed of mar-
bles, onyx and bronze, and variously
tinted and decorated, a marble statue,
called "La Belle Gallinara," sold for
4,100 francs ; a young Kabyle child car-
rying a branch loaded with oranges, in
Algerian onyx and bronze, and partly
colored, 3,000 francs ; an Arab woman, a
statue of the same materials as the pre-
ceding, intended to support a lamp or
candelabrum, purchased by the Due de
Morny for 6,825 francs.
There is a report that the collections
of pictures and curiosities belonging to
the Comte de Chambord will shortly be
dispersed by the hammer in Paris.
The scaffolding before the north front
of the cathedral of Notre Dame, in Paris,
has been removed, and the fapade, with
the magnificent Gothic window, forty
feet in diameter, can now be seen to
great perfection, all the rich sculptures
having been admirably restored.
A Paris letter says : " The celebrated
painting of the ' Assassination of the
Bishop of Liege,' by Eugene Delacroix,
was recently sold at auction at 35,000
francs. The ' Death of Ophelia,' in pen-
cil, by the same painter, was knocked
down for 2,020 francs, which was con-
sidered a large sum for a sketch. ' St.
Louis at the Bridge of Taillebourg,' in
water-colors, fetched 3,100 francs. Some
copper-plates engraved by Eugene Dela-
croix himself were^likewise sold."
At the sale of the collection of the
Chevalier de Knyff, at Brussels, the Vir-
gin with the host and surrounded by
angels, by Ingres, was withdrawn at
28,500 francs.
Book Notices.
139
Among the works of art destroyed in
the recent conflagration of the ducal
palace at Brunswick was the colossal
bronze figure of Brunonia, the patron
goddess of the town, standing in a car
of victory, drawn by four horses. It
was executed by Professor Howalclt and
his sons, after a design by Rietschel.
The colossal bronze statue of Her-
cules, lately exhumed at Rome, has been
safely deposited in the Vatican.
BOOK NOTICES.
SERMONS ON OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST, AND
ON HIS BLESSED MOTHER. By his Emi-
nence Cardinal "Wiseman. 8vo., pp.
421. New York : D. & J. Sadlier &
Co.
Coming to us almost in the same mo-
ment in which we hear of Cardinal Wise-
man's death, these sermons will be read
with a deep and peculiar interest, now
that the eloquent lips which uttered
them are closed for ever. Most of them
were preached in Rome, some so long
ago as 1827. These were addressed to
congregations composed parly of eccle-
siastics, partly of Catholic sojourners in
the Eternal City, and partly of Protest-
ants. At least one was delivered in
Ireland in 1858. But although some of
the discourses belong to the period of
the author's noviceship in the pulpit,
and between some there is an interval
of more than thirty years, we are struck
by no incongruity of either thought or
style. The earliest have the finish and
elegance of maturity ; the latest all the
vigor and enthusiasm of youth.
They are not controversial, and hardly
any of them can even be called dogmatic
sermons. They are addressed more to
the heart than directly to the under-
standing, although reasoning and ex-
hortation are often so skilfully blended
that it is hard to say where one begins
and the other ends. They are the out-
pourings, in fact, of a warm and loving
heart and a full brain. The argument is
all the more effective because the cardi-
nal covers his frame-work of logic with
the rich drapery of his brilliant rheto-
ric. And yet, with all their gorgeous
phraseology, they are characterized by
a simplicity of thought which brings
them down to the level of the com-
monest intellect.
The greater part of them were preached
during the seasons of Lent and Advent,
and the subjects will therefore be found
especially appropriate to the present
period. Here is a beautiful passage in
reference to our Lord's agony in the
garden :
<{ There are plants in the luxurious East,
my dearly beloved brethren, which men
gash and cut, that from them may distil
the precious balsams they contain ; but that
is ever the most sought and valued which,
issuing forth of its own accord, pure and
unmixed, trickles down like tears upon the
parent tree. And so it seems to me, we
may without disparagement speak of the
precious streams of our dear Redeemer's
blood. "When forced from his side, in
abundant flow, it came mixed with another
mysterious fluid ; when shed by the cruel
inflictions of his enemies, by their nails,
their thorns, and scourges, there is a painful
association with the brutal instruments that
drew it. as though in some way their defile-
ment could attaint it. But here we have
the first yield of that saving and life-giving
heart, gushing forth spontaneously, pure
and untouched by the unclean hand of man,
dropping as dew upon the ground. It is the
first juice of the precious vine ; before the
wine-press hath bruised its grapes, richer
and sweeter to the loving and sympathizing
soul, than what is afterward pressed out.
It is every drop of it ours ; and alas, how
painfully so ! For here no lash, no impious
palm, no pricking thorn hath called it forth ;
but our sins, yes, our sins, the executioners
not of the flesh, but of the heart of Jesus,
have driven it all out, thence to water that
garden of sorrows ! Oh, is it not dear to
us ; is it not gathered up by our affections,
with far more reverence and love than by
virgins of old was the blood of martyrs, to
be placed for ever in the very sanctuary, yea,
within the very altar of our hearts ?"
From the discourse on the "Triumphs
of the Cross," we select the closing par-
graph :
140
Book Notices.
" blessed Jesus, may the image of these
sacred wounds, as expressed by the cross,
never depart from my thoughts. As it is a
badge and privilege of the exalted office, to
which, most unworthy, I have been raised,
to wear ever upon my breast the figure of
that cross, and in it, as in a holy shrine, a
1'raement of that blessed tree whereon thou
didst hang on Golgotha, so much more let
the lively image of thee crucified dwell
within my bosom, and be the source from
which shall proceed every thought, and
word, and action of my ministry ! Let me
preach thee, and thee crucified, not the
plausible doctrines of worldly virtue and
human philosophy. In prayer and medita-
tion let me ever have before me thy likeness.
as thou stretchest forth thine arms to invite
us to seek mercy and to draw us into thine
embrace. Let my Thabor be on Calvary ;
there it is best for me to dwell. There thou
hast prepared three tabernacles ; one for
such as, like Magdalen, have offended much,
but love to weep at thy blessed feet; one for
those who, like John, have wavered in
steadfastness for a moment, but long again
to rest their head upon thy bosom ; and one
whereinto only she may enter whose love
burns without a reproach, whose heart, al-
ways one with thine, finds its home in the
centre of thine, fibre intertwined with fibre,
till both are melted into one in that furnace
of sympathetic love. With these favorites
of the cross, let me ever, blessed Saviour,
remain in meditation and prayer, and loving
affection for thy holy rood. I will venerate
its very substance, whenever presented to
me, with deep and solemn reverence. I will
honor its image, wherever offered to me,
with lowly and respectful homage. But
still more I will hallow and love its spirit
and inward form, impressed on the heart,
and shown forth in the holiness of life.
And oh ! divine Redeemer, from thy cross,
thy true mercy-seat, look down in compas-
sion upon this thy people. Pour forth
thence abundantly the streams of bless-
ing, which flow from thy sacred wounds.
Accomplish within them, during this week
of forgiveness, the work which holy men
have so well begun,* that all may worthily
partake of thy Paschal feast. Plant thy
cross in every heart ; may each one embrace
it in life, may it embrace him in death; and
may it be a beacon of salvation to his de-
parting soul, a crown of glory to his im-
mortal spirit 1 Amen. "
What follows is from the sermon on
the "Veneration of the Blessed Vir-
gin:"
" If, then, any one shall accuse me of
wasting upon the mother of my Saviour
* Alluding to the mission just closed by the
Fathers of the Institute of Cliarity.
feelings and affections which he hath jeal-
ously reserved for himself. I will appeal
from the charge to his judgment, and lay
the cause before him, at any stage of his
blessed life. I will go unto him at the crib
of Bethlehem, and acknowledge that, while,
with the kings of the East, I have presented
to him all my gold and frankincense and
myrrh, I have ventured, with the shepherds,
to present an humbler oblation of respect to
her who was enduring the winter's frost in
an unsheltered stable, entirely for his sake.
Or I will meet him, as the holy fugitives re-
pose on their desert-path to Egypt, and con-
fess that, knowing from the example of
Agar, how a mother cast forth from her
house into the wilderness, for her infant's
sake, only loves it the more, and needs an
angel to comfort her in her anguish (Gen.
xxi. 17), I have not restrained my eyes from
her whose fatigues and pain were a hundred-
fold increased by his, when I have sympa-
thized with him in this his early flight, en-
dured for my sins. Or I will approach a
more awful tribunal, and step to the foot of
his cross, and own to him, that while I
have adored his wounds, and stirred up in
my breast my deepest feelings of grief and
commiseration for what I have made him
suffer, my thoughts could not refrain from
sometimes glancing toward her whom I saw
resignedly standing at his feet, and sharing
his sorrows ; and that, knowing how much
Respha endured while sitting opposite to her
children justly crucified by command of God
(2 Kings xxi. 10), I had felt far greater
compassion for her, and had not withheld
the emotions, which nature itself dictated,
of love, and veneration, and devout affec-
tion toward her. And to the judgment of
such a son I will gladly bow, and his meek
mouth shall speak my sentence, and I will
not fear it. For I have already heard it
from the cross, addressed to me, to you, to
all, as he said : ' Woman, behold thy son ; '
and again : ' Behold thy mother.' (John
xix. 26, 27.)"
An appendix to the volume contains
six beautiful pastorals, on devotion to
the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in connection
with education.
SPIRITUAL PROGRESS. By J. W. Cum-
mings, D.D., LL.D., of St. Stephen's
Church, New York City. 12mo., pp.
330. New York : P. O'Shea.
We cannot better state the purpose
of this excellent little book than in the
words of the author's preface : " Spir-
itual Progress is a familiar exposition of
Catholic morality, which has for its ob-
ject to tell people of common intelli-
gence what they are expected to do in
Boole Notices.
141
order to be good Christians, and how
they shall do it, and the results that
will follow." It is written not for those
strong, heroic souls, whose faith is firm,
whose devotion is ardent, and who crave
strong spiritual food ; but for that nu-
merous class of weak Christians, recent
converts, honest inquirers, and fervent
but uninstructed Catholics, who are not
yet prepared to accept the more diffi-
cult counsels of perfection; who are
ready perhaps to do what God says they
must do ; but need a little training be-
fore they can be brought to do any
more. To put an ascetic work into the
hands of such persons would often be
like giving beef to a young baby : it
would hurt, not help them. Dr. Cum-
mings's book, in fact, is a sort of spirit-
ual primer for the use of those who are
just beginning their spiritual education.
It is simple, straightforward, and prac-
tical. There is a charm in the style so
clear, so terse, often almost epigrammatic,
and sometimes rising to the poetical
which carries the reader along in spite
of himself. The tone is not conversa-
tional ; 3 r et when you read, it seems as
if you were not so much reading as lis-
tening. And that argues great literary
merit.
Here is an extract from the chapter
on "Faults of Conversation:"
" Gossip is the bane of conversation, for it
is the name under which injustice makes
her entrance into society. There is an ele-
ment in the breast of the most civilized
communities, even in times of great refine-
ment, that explains how man may, under
certain circumstances, become a cannibal.
It is exhibited in the turns our humor takes
in conversation. We are not ill-natured,
nor disposed to lay a straw in the way of
any one who has not injured us, and yet,
when spurred on by the stimulus of talking
and being talked to, we can bring ourselves
to mimic, revile, and misrepresent others,
traduce and destroy their good name, reveal
their secrets, and proclaim their faults ; and
all this merely to follow the lead of others,
or for the sake of appearing facetious and
amusing, or for the purpose of building up
ourselves by running down those whom in
our hearts we know and believe to be better
than we are But as the gos-
sip attacks the absent because the absent
cannot defend himself or herself, shall not we r
dear readers, form a society to assist the weak
and the persecuted? Shall we not enter
into a compact to defend those who cannot
defend themselves? Let us answer as a
love of fair play suggests. If we are at all
influenced by regard for Christian charity,
let us remember that it takes two to carry
on a conversation against our neighbor, and
tbat if our visitor is guilty of being a gossip,
a false witness, or a detractor, we are also
guilty by consenting to officiate as listeners."
In a chapter on the " Schooling of the
Imagination," Dr. Cummings shows how
the imaginative faculty may be made to
serve the cause of religion, especially in
the practice of meditation, and how dan-
gerous it becomes when it is not held
in check :
" We hear songs and the flutters of many
wings at Bethlehem, and see the light
streaming from heaven upon the face of the
new-born Saviour. We look out over the
blue waters of the Lake of Genesareth,
and see the quaint little bark of Peter
as it lay near the shore when Jesus
preached to the people from its side, or as it
flew before the wind when the sea waxed
wroth, and a great storm arose, he mean-
while sleeping and they fearing they would
perish. With the aid of this wonderful
faculty we see him before us in the hour of
his triumph, surrounded by the multitudes
singing, ' Hosanna to the son of David ,'
and in that sad day of his final sorrow,
when the same voices swelled the fearful
cry, ' Crucify him, crucify him.' "
A GENERAL HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC
CHURCH, FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF
THE CHRISTIAN ERA UNTIL THE PRESENT
TIME. By M. L'Abbe J. E. Darras.
First American from the last French
edition. With an Introduction and
Notes, by the Most Rev. M. J. Spald-
ing, D.D., Archbishop of Baltimore.
Parts 1, 2, and 3. 8vo. New York : P.
O'Shea.
This valuable work, which Mr. O'Shea,
with a laudable spirit- of enterprise, is
giving us by instalments, is intended for
just that class of readers who stand
most in need of a readable and pretty
full Church history. When completed
it will fill four portly volumes, imperial
octavo ; yet it is a work adapted more
especially to family reading than to the
use of the scholar in his closet. The
Abbe Darras has judiciously refrained
from obstructing the flow of his narra-
tive by minute references and quota-
tions, nor has he suffered his pen to run
away into long discussions of contro-
verted questions. What he says of the
chronology which he has followed, he
might have said, if we have read him
142
Book Notices.
aright, of his whole work : " We have
adopted a system already completed, not
that it may perhaps be the most exact
in all its details, but because it is the
one most generally followed." This
seems to be the principle which he has
kept before his eyes throughout; and
considering the purpose for which he
wrote, we think it a good one. With
all the simplicity and modesty of his
style, however, he shows a thorough
knowledge of the intricacies of his sub-
ject, and an acquaintance with what the
best scholars have written before him.
His history, therefore, fills a void which
has long been aching.
The translation, made by a lady well
known and respected by the Catholics
of the United States, reads smoothly,
and we doubt not is accurate. It has
been revised by competent theologians,
and has the special sanction of the Arch-
bishop of Baltimore, beside the appro-
bation of the Archbishops of New York
and Cincinnati. The work in the origi-
nal French received the warmest enco-
miums from the European clergy, and
the author was honored, at the conclu-
sion of his labors, by a kind letter from
the Pope.
The mechanical execution of the book
is beautiful. The paper is good, and
the type large and clear. We thank
Mr. O'Shea for giving us so important a
work in such a rich and appropriate
dress.
THE PROGRESS OF THE AGE, AND THE DAN-
GER OF THE AGE. Two lectures deliv-
ered before the St. Xavier Conference
of the St. Vincent de Paul Brother-
hood in the Hall of St. Louis Univer-
sity. By the Rev. Louis Heylen, S. J.
12rno., pp. 107. Cincinnati: John P.
Walsh.
These two lectures formed parts of a
course delivered during the winter of
1862-63, by some of the professors of
the St. Louis University. They are ad-
mirable compositions, redolent of good
sense, learning, and ripe thought, and
deeply interesting. The style has a
true oratorical ring. In the first lecture
Father Heylen, after adverting to the
fact that every age since the days of
Adam has been marked by some special
characteristic, examines the claim set
forth by our own century to be emphat-
ically the age of progress. In part he
admits and in part he denies it. In ma-
terial progress, and in the natural sci-
ences, especially as applied to the pur-
poses of industry and commerce, it
stands at the head of ages. But moral
progress is not one of its characteris-
tics. Here I feel," says he, " that I am
entering upon a difficult question. Has
there been, in the last fifty j'ears, any
marked increase of crime ? Is our age,
all things considered, really worse than
preceding ages ? This question I shall
not undertake to decide ; but there are
some forms of crime which appear to
me decidedly peculiar to our age." A
brief review of these sins of the day
leads naturally to the subject of the
second lecture. Father Heylen sees our
greatest danger in that practical mate-
rialism which places material interests
and materialistic passions above the in-
terests of the soul and the claims of vir-
tue. He considers successively its ex-
tent, its effects, and the means to avert
it the last being, of course, the ennob-
ling and spiritualizing influence of Cath-
olicism.
We advise those who wish to see
how a scholar and an orator can throw a
fresh charm into a stale subject, to read
Father Heylen's review of the startling
discoveries of modern science in the
first lecture, and his brilliant descrip-
tion in the second of the ruins with
which materialism has spread the pages
of history and the new life which Cath-
olicism has infused into effete civiliza-
tions.
Prefixed to the little volume before
us is a short biographical sketch of
Father Heylen, who died in 1863.
UNDINE, OR THE WATER-SPIRIT. Also
SlNTRAM AND HIS COMPANIONS. From
the German of Friedrich de la Motte
Fouque. 1 vol. 12mo., pp. 238. New
York : James Miller.
THIODOLF, THE ICELANDER. A Romance.
From the German of the Baron de la
Motte Fouque. 12mo., pp. 308. New
York : James Miller.
For a man of refined and cultivated
taste we know of hardly any more de-
lightful literary recreation than to turn
from the novels of our own day to one
of the exquisite romances of La Motte
Fouque. There is a nobleness of senti-
ment in his wild arid beautiful fancies
which seems to lift us out of this world
into a higher sphere. All his writings
are pervaded by an ideal Christian chiv-
airy, spiritualizing and refining the
supernatural machinery which he is so
fond of borrowing from the old Norse
legends. No other author has ever
treated the Northern mythology so well ;
because no other has attempted to give
us its beauties without its grossriess.
The gods and heroes of the Norsemen
have been very much in fashion of late
years ; but take almost any of the Scan-
dinavian tales recently translated tales
which, if they have any moral, seem to
inculcate the morality of lying and cheat-
ing, and the virtue of strong muscles
and how immeasurably finer and more
beautiful by the side of them appear the
fairy legends which Fouque interweaves
with his romances, mingling old super-
stitions with Christian faith and virtues,
in so delicate a manner that we see no
incongruity in the association. This
mutual adaptation, if we may call it so,
he effects partly by transporting us back
to those early times when the faith was
as yet only half-rooted in the Northern
soil, and when even many Christian con-
verts clnng almost unconsciously to some
of their old pagan beliefs ; partly by
the genuine religious spirit which in-
spires every page of his books, no mat-
ter what their subject ; and partly by
the allegorical significance which his
romances generally convey. So from
tales of water-sprites and evil spirits,
devils, dwarfs, and all manner of super-
natural appearances, we rise with the
feeling that we have been reading a les-
son of piety, truth, integrity, and honor.
Carlyle calls the chivalry of Fouque
more extravagant than that which we
supposed Cervantes had abolished ; but
we are far from agreeing in such a judg-
ment. A chivalry which rests upon
" wise and pious thoughts, treasured in
a pure heart," deserves something better
to be said of it.
The three tales whose titles are given
above are specimens of three somewhat
different styles in which Fouque treats
his darling subject of Christian knight-
hood. The story of "Undine" has al-
ways been a pet in every language of
Europe. Sir Walter Scott called it
"ravishing;" Coleridge expressed un-
bounded admiration of it ; the author
himself termed it his darling child. For
the tale of " Sintram" we have a particu-
lar affection. As a work of art, it is
not to be compared with the former: it
has but little of that tender aerial fancy
which makes the story of the water-
Booik Notices.
143
sprite so inexpressibly graceful ; but
there is a sombre beauty in it which is
not less captivating. It is a story
of temptation and trial, of battle with
self and triumph over sin. Its allegori-
cal meaning is more distinct than that
of Undine ; it speaks more unmistak-
ably of faith and heroic virtue. " Thio-
dolf,the Icelander," is a picture of Norse
and Byzantine manners in the tenth cen-
tury, and presents an interesting con-
trast between the rough manliness of
the former and the luxury of the court
of Constantinople. To the merits of
wealth of imagination, skilful delinea-
tion of character, and dramatic power of
narration, it is said to add historical ac-
curacy.
OUR FARM OP FOUR ACRES, AND THE
MONEY WE MADE BY IT. 12mo., pp. 128.
New York : James Miller.
It is no slight proof of the merit of
this little book that it has gone through
at least twelve editions in England, and
had so many imitators that it may al-
most be called the founder of a school
of literature. Its popularity is still un-
diminished, and promises long to con-
tinue so. Hardly any one can fail of
being interested in this simple narra-
tive of the blunders, mishaps, and final
triumphs of two city-bred sisters, in
their effort to keep a little farm and make
it pay; but to those who, either for
health's sake or economy, are about en-
tering on a similar enterprise, we can-
not too strongly recommend it. It is so
practical that we. cannot doubt it is all
true indeed its directness and air of
truth and good sense are the secrets of
its remarkable success. We commend
it to our readers as an interesting exem-
plification of a truth which ought to be
more widely known than it is that
with proper management a small family
on a small place in the country can raise
all their own vegetables, not only to their
great comfort, but with considerable
pecuniary profit. Men who spend half-
a-year's income in the rent of a city
house would do well to take to heart
the lessons of this little book.
THE IRVINGTON STORIES. By M. E. Dodge.
Illustrated by F. 0. C. Darley. IGrno.,
pp. 256. New York : James O'Kane.
This is a collection of tales for young
people, manufactured with considerable
144
Book Notices.
taste and neatness. Some of the stories
bear a good moral, distinctly brought
out.
REPLY TO THE CHRISTIAN EXAMINER ON
CATHOLICITY AND NATURALISM. 8vo.,
pp. 24. Boston : Patrick Donahoe.
The Christian Examiner for January,
1865, contained an article on "The Order
of St. Paul the Apostle, and the New-
Catholic Church/' in which the writer,
after describing a visit to the Paulist
establishment in Fifty-ninth street, and
representing Father Hecker and his
companions as being engaged in the at-
tempt to found a new Catholic Church,
passed on to the consideration of the
question what form of religion is best
adapted to the wants of the American
people. It was a remarkable article
remarkable not only for its graceful dic-
tion, but for its curious admissions of
the failure of Protestantism as a reli-
gious system. "The process of disinte-
gration," says the Examiner, "is going
forward with immense rapidity through-
out Protestant Christendom. Organiza-
tions are splitting asunder, institutions
are falling into decay, customs are be-
coming uncustomary, usages are perish-
ing from neglect, sacraments are deserted
by the multitude, creeds are decompos-
ing under the action of liberal studies
and independent thought.'' But from
these falling ruins mankind will seek
refuge not in the bosom of the Catholic
Church, says the Christian Examiner, but
in Naturalism. The object of the pam-
phlet before us is to show, after cor-
recting certain misstatements concern-
ing the congregation of Paulists, that
Naturalism is utterly unable to satisfy
those longings of the heart which, as
the Examiner confesses, no Protestant
sect can appease.
PASTORAL LETTER OP THE MOST REV. MAR-
TIN JOHN SPALDING, D. D., ARCHBISHOP
OF BALTIMORE, ETC., TOGETHER WITH THE
LATE ENCYCLICAL OP THE HOLY FATHER,
AND THE SYLLABUS OF ERRORS CON-
DEMNED. 8vo., pp. 43. Baltimore:
Kelly & Piet.
In promulgating the jubilee lately pro-
claimed by the sovereign pontiif, the
Most Rev. Archbishop Spalding takes
occasion to make a few timely remarks
on the Encyclical, the character of Pius
IX., the temporal power of the Popes,
and the errors recently condemned. He
explains the true purport of the much-
abused Encyclical, shows against whom
it is directed namely, the European
radicals and infidels and proves that it
never was the intention of the Pope, as
has been alleged, to assail the institu-
tions of this country. In view of the
absurd mistranslations of the Encyclical
which have been published by the Prot-
estant press, Catholics will be glad to
have the correct English version of that
important document, which is given by
way of appendix to the pastoral.
We have received the First Supplement
to the Catalogue of the Library of the Young
Men's Association of the City of Milwau-
kee, with the annual report of the Board
of Directors for 1863.
THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. I., NO. 2. MAY, 1865.
From the Dublin Review.
HEDWIGE, QUEEN OF POLAND.
HEDWIGE was the youngest daugh-
ter of Lewis, nephew and successor to
Casimir the Great, who, on account of
the preference he evinced for his Hun-
garian subjects, drew upon himself the
continued ill-will of the nation he was
called upon to govern. Finding he
was unable to cope with the numerous
factions everywhere ready to oppose
him, he, not without many humiliating
concessions to the nobles of Poland,
induced them to elect as his successor
his daughter Maria, wife of Sigismund,
Marquis of Brandenburg (afterward
emperor), and having appointed the
Duke of Oppelen regent of the king-
dom, retired to his native Hungary,
unwilling to relinquish the shadow of
the sceptre which continually evaded
his grasp.
On his death, which happened in
1382, Poland became the theatre of
intestine disorders fomented by the
turbulent nobles, who, notwithstanding
'the allegiance they had sworn to the
Princess Maria, refused to allow her
even to enter the kingdom. Sigismund
was not, however, -inclined thus easily
to forego his wife's claims ; and as the
Lord of Mazovia at the same time as-
pired to the vacant throne, many of the
provinces became so desolated by civil
war that the leaders of the adverse
factions threw down their arms, and
10
simultaneously agreed to offer the
crown to the Princess Hedwige, then
residing in Hungary under the care of
her mother Elizabeth. By no means
approving of a plan which thus uncer-
emoniously excluded her eldest daugh-
ter from the throne, the queen dowa-
ger endeavored to oppose injustice by
policy. Hedwige was at the time only
fourteen years of age, and the deputies
were informed that, as the princess was
too young to undertake the heavy re-
sponsibilities of sovereignty, her broth-
er-in-law Sigismund must act in her
stead until such time as she herself
should be considered capable of as-
suming the reins of government. This
stratagem did not succeed; the duke
was not allowed to cross the frontiers
of Poland, and Elizabeth found herself
compelled to part with her daughter,
if she would not see the crown placed
on the brow of whomever the diet
might elect.
Now commenced the trials of the
young Hedwige, who was thus early
called upon to exercise those virtues
of heroic fortitude, patient endurance,
and self-denial which rendered her life
a sort of continual martyrdom, a sac-
rifice daily offered up at the shrines of
religion and patriotism. At the early
age of four years she had been affi-
anced to William, Duke of Austria,
146
Hedwige, Queen of Poland.
who, in accordance with the custom of
the times, had been educated in Hun-
gary ; his affection for his betrothed
growing with his growth, and increas-
ing with his years. Ambition hatf no
charms for Hedwige; her fervent
piety, shrinking modesty, and feminine
timidity sought to conceal, not only her
extraordinary beauty, but those rare
mental endowments of which she was
possessed. Bitter were the tears shed
by this gentle girl, when her mother,
alarmed at the menaces of the Polish
nobles, informed her she must imme-
diately depart for Cracow, under the
protection of Cardinal Demetrius, Bish-
op of Strigonia, who was pledged to
deliver her into the hands of those
whom she was disposed to regard
rather as her masters than as her sub-
jects. There had been one stipulation
made, which, had she been aware of its
existence, would have added a sharper
pang to the already poignant anguish
of Hedwige : the Poles required that
their young sovereign should marry
only with the consent of the diet, and
that her husband should not only re-
side constantly in Poland, but pledge
himself never to attempt to render that
country dependent on any other power.
Although aware of the difficulties thus
thrown in the way of her union with
Duke William, her mother had sub-
scribed to these conditions; and Hed-
wige, having been joyfully received by
the prelates and nobles of her adopted
country, was solemnly crowned in the
cathedral at Cracow, October 15, 1385,
being the festival of her patron, St.
Hedwige. Her youth, loveliness, grace,
and intellectual endowments won from
the fierce chieftains an enthusiastic af-
fection which had been denied to the
too yielding Lewis ; their national pride
was flattered, their loyalty awakened,
by the innocent fascinations of their
young sovereign, and they almost
sought to defer the time which, in her
husband, would necessarily give them
a ruler of sterner mould. Nor was
Hedwige undeserving of the exalted
station she had been compelled to fill :
a worthy descendant of the sainted
Lewis, her every word and action waa
marked by a gravity and maturity
which bore witness to the supernatural
motives and heavenly wisdom by which
it was inspired ; and yet, in the silence
of her chamber, many were the tears
she shed over the memory of ties sev-
ered, she feared, for ever. Amongst
the earliest candidates for her hand
was Ziemovit, Duke of Mazovia, al-
ready mentioned as one of the com-
petitors for the crown after the death
of her father; but the Poles, still
smarting from the effects of his un-
bridled ambition, dismissed his mes-
sengers with a refusal couched in terms
of undisguised contempt. The ques-
tion of her marriage once agitated, the
mind of Hedwige naturally turned to
him on whom her heart was unaltera-
bly fixed, and whom from her child-
hood she had been taught to con-
sider as her future husband ; but an
alliance with the house of Austria
formed no part of Polish policy, and
neither the wishes nor the entreaties
of their queen could induce the diet
to entertain the idea for a moment ; in
short, their whole energy was employed
in bringing about a union which, how-
ever disagreeable to the young sove-
reign, was likely to be in every way
advantageous to the country and favor-
able to the interests of religion.
Jagello, the pagan Duke of Lithua-
nia, was from his proximity and the
extent of his possessions (comprising
Samogitia and a large portion of Rus-
sia*) a formidable enemy to Poland.
Fame was not slow in wafting to his
ears rumors of the beauty and accom-
plishments of Hedwige, which being
more than corroborated by ambassa-
dors employed to ascertain the truth,
the impetuous Jagello determined to
secure the prize, even at the cost of
national independence. The idolatry
of the Lithuanians and the early be-
trothal of Hedwige to Duke William
were the chief obstacles with which he
had to contend ; but, after a brief de-
* The territories of many of the Russian or Eu-
thenian dukea which were conquered by the Lith-
uanian pagans.
Hedwige, Queen of Poland.
147
liberation, an embassy was despatched,
headed by Skirgello, brother to the
grand-duke, and bearing the most cost-
ly presents; Jagello himself being
with difficulty dissuaded from accom-
panying them in person. The envoys
were admitted into the presence of the
council, at which the queen herself
presided, and the prince proceeded to
lay before the astonished nobles the
offers of the barbarian suitor, offers
too tempting to be weighed in the bal-
ance against such a trifle as a girl's
happiness, or the violation of what
these overbearing politicians were
pleased to term a mere childish en-
gagement, contracted before the par-
ties were able to judge for themselves.
After a long harangue, in which Skir-
gello represented how vainly the most
illustrious potentates and the most
powerful rulers had hitherto endeav-
ored to effect the conversion of Lithu-
ania, he offered as " a tribute to the
charms of the queen" that Jagello
and his brothers, together with the
princes, lords, and people of Lithuania
and Samogitia, should at once embrace
the Catholic faith ; that all the Chris-
tian captives should be restored un-
ransomed ; and the whole of their ex-
tensive dominions be incorporated with
Poland ; the grand-duke also pledging
himself to reconquer for that country
Pomerania, Silesia, and whatever other
territories had been torn from Poland
by neighboring states ; and, finally,
promising to make good to the Poles
the sum of two hundred thousand
florins, which had been sent to Wil-
liam of Austria as the dowry forfeited
by the non-fulfilment of the engage-
ment entered into by their late king
Lewis. A murmur of applause at
this unprecedented generosity ran
through the assembly ; the nobles
hailed the prospect of so unlooked-
for an augmentation of national power
and security ; and the bishops could
not but rejoice at the prospect of res-
cuing so many souls from the darkness
of heathenism, and securing at one
and the same time the propagation of
the Catholic faith and the peace of
Poland. But the queen herself shared
not these feelings of satisfaction : no
sooner had Skirgello ceased than she
started from her seat, cast a hasty
glance round the assembly, and, as if
reading her fate in the countenances
of the nobles, buried her face in her
hands and burst into a flood of tears.
All attempts to soothe and pacify her
were in vain : in a strain of passionate
eloquence, which was not without its
effect, she pleaded her affection for
Duke William, the. sacred nature of
the engagement by which she was
pledged to become his wife, pointed
to the ring on her finger, and reminded
an aged prelate who had accompanied
her from Hungary that he had himself
witnessed their being laid in the same
cradle at the ceremony of their be-
trothal. It was impossible to behold
unmoved the anguish of so gentle a
creature ; not a few of the younger
chieftains espoused the cause of their
sovereign ; and, at the urgent solici-
tation of Hedwige, it was finally de-
termined that the Lithuanian ambas-
sadors, accompanied by three Polish
nobles, should repair to Buda for the
purpose of consulting her mother, the
Queen of Hungary.
But Elizabeth, though inaccessible
to the temptations of worldly ambition,
was too pious, too self-denying, to allow
maternal affection to preponderate over
the interests of religion. Aware that
the betrothal of her daughter to the
Duke of Austria had never been re-
newed from the time of their infancy,
she, without a moment's hesitation, re-
plied that, for her own part, she de-
sired nothing, but that the queen
ought to sacrifice every Imman feeling
for the glory of Christianity and the
welfare of Poland. To Hedwige her-
self she wrote affectionately, though
firmly, bidding her lay every natural
inclination at the foot of the cross, and
desiring her to praise that God who had
chosen so unworthy an instrument as
the means by which the pure splendor
of Catholicity should penetrate the
darkness of Lithuania and the other
pagan nations. Elizabeth was aware
148
Hedwiye, Queen of Poland.
of the real power of religion over the
mind of her child, and doubted not
but that, after the first paroxysm of
grief had subsided, she should be able
to overcome by its means the violence
of her daughter's repugnance to the
proposed measure. In order "to give a
color of impartiality to their proceed-
ings, a diet was convoked at Cracow,
immediately on the return of the em-
bassy, to deliberate on the relative
claims of Jagello, William of Austria,
and the Dukes of Mazovia and Oppe-
len, all of whom aspired to the hand
of Hedwige and the crown of Poland.
The discussion was long and stormy,
for amongst those nobles more imme-
diately around the queen's person
there were many, including a large
body of ecclesiastics, who, although
convinced that no lawful impediment
existed to the marriage, yet shrank
from the cruelty of uniting the gentle
princess to a barbarian ; and these
failed not to insist upon the insult which
would be implied by such a choice to
the native Catholic princes. The ma-
jority, however, were of a different
opinion, and at the close of the diet it
was decided that an ambassador should
be despatched to Jagello, inviting him
to Cracow for the purpose of continu-
ing the negotiations in his own person.
But William of Austria was too se-
cure in the justice of his cause and
the affection of his betrothed to resign
his pretensions without an effort ; and
his ardor being by no means diminished
by a letter which he received from the
queen herself, imploring him to hasten
to her assistance, he placed himself at
the head of a numerous retinue, and,
with a treasure by which he hoped to
purchase the good-will of the adverse
faction, appeared so suddenly at Cracow
as to deprive his opponents of their
self-possession. The determination of
Hedwige to unite herself to the object
of her early and deep affection was
loudly expressed, and, as there were
many powerful leaders among others,
Gniewosz, Vice-chamberlain of Cracow
who espoused her cause, and rallied
round Duke William, the Polish nobles,
not daring openly to oppose their sov-
ereign, were on the point of abandon-
ing the cause of Jagello, when Dobes-
las, Castellain of Cracow, one of the
staunchest supporters of the Lithuanian
alliance, resolved at any risk to pre-
vent the meeting of the lovers, and
actually went so far as to refuse the
young prince admission into the castle,
where the queen -at the time was re-
siding, not only drawing his sword,
but dragging the duke with him over
the drawbridge, which he commanded
to be immediately lowered. William,
thus repulsed, fixed his quarters at the
Franciscan monastery ; and Hedwige,
fired by the insult, rode forth accom-
panied by a chosen body of knights
and her female attendants, determined
by the completion of her marriage to
place an insuperable bar between her
and Jagello.
In the refectory of the monastery,
the queen and the prince at length
met ; and, after several hours spent in
considering how best to avert the sep-
aration with which they were threat-
ened, it was arranged that William
should introduce himself privately into
the castle of Cracow, where they were
to be united by the queen's confessor.
Some time elapsed before this plan
could be carried into execution ; for
although even Dobeslas hesitated to
confine his sovereign within her own
palace, the castle gates were kept shut
against the entrance of the Duke of
Austria. Exasperated at this contin-
ued opposition, and her affection aug-
mented by the presence of its object,
from whom the arrival, daily expected,
of Jagello would divide her for ever,
Hedwige determined to admit the
prince disguised as one of her house-
hold, and a day was accordingly fixed
for the execution of this romantic pro-
ject. By some means or other the
whole plan came to the knowledge of
the vigilant castellain ; the adventur-
ous prince was seized in a passage
leading to the royal apartments, loaded
with insult, ancH driven from the pal-
ace, within the walls of which the
queen now found herself a prisoner.
Hedwige, Queen of Poland.
149
It was in vain she wept, and implored
to be allowed to see her betrothed once
more, if only to bid him farewell ; her
letters were intercepted, her attendants
became spies on her movements, and,
on the young prince presenting himself
before the gates, his life was threatened
by the barons who remained within the
fortress. This was too much ; alarmed
for her lover's safety, indignant at the
restraint to which she was subjected,
the passion of the girl triumphed over
the dignity of the sovereign. Quitting
her apartment, she hurried to the great
gate, which, as she apprehended, was
secured in such a manner as to baffle
all her efforts ; trembling with fear,
and eager only to effect her escape,
she called for a hatchet, and, raising it
with both hands, repeatedly struck the
locks and bolts that prevented her
egress. The childish simplicity of the
attempt, the agony depicted in the
beautiful and innocent countenance of
their mistress, so touched the hearts of
the rude soldiery, that, but for their
dread of the nobles, Hedwige would
through their means have effected her
purpose. As it was, they offered no
opposition, but stood in mournful and
respectful silence ; when the venerable
Demetrius, grand-treasurer of the
kingdom, approached, and falling on
his knees, implored her to be calm,
and to sacrifice her own happiness, if
not to the wishes of her subjects and
the welfare of her country, at least to
the interests of religion. At the sight
of that aged man, whose thin white
hairs and sorrowful countenance in-
spired both reverence and affection,
the queen paused, and, giving him her
hand, burst into an agony of tears ;
then, hurrying to her oratory, she
threw herself on the ground before an
image of the Blessed Virgin, where,
after a sharp interior conflict, she suc-
ceeded in resigning herself to what
she now believed to be the will of God
embracing for his sake the heavy
cross which she was to bear for the
remainder of her life.
Meanwhile Duke William, to escape
the vengeance of the wrathful barons,
was compelled to quit Poland, leaving
his now useless wealth in the charge
of the vice-chamberlain, who still ap-
parently continued his friend. Not
long after his departure, Jagello, at the
head of a numerous army, and attended
by his two brothers, crossed the fron-
tiers, determined, as it seemed, to prose-
cute his suit. At the first rumor of
his approach, the most powerful and
influential among the nobles repaired
to Cracow, where prayers, remon-
strances, and even menaces were em-
ployed to induce the queeir to accept
the hand of the barbarian prince. But
to all their eloquence Hedwige turned
a deaf ear: in vain did agents, de-
spatched for the purpose, represent the
duke as handsome in person, princely
and dignified in manner ; her con-
science was troubled, duty had enlisted
on the same side as feeling, and the
contest again commenced. Setting in-
clination aside, how dared she break
the solemn compact she had made with
the Duke of Austria? She persisted
in regarding her proposed marriage
with Jagello as nothing short of an act
of criminal infidelity ; and, independ-
ently of the affliction of her heart,
her soul became a prey to the most
violent remorse. To obtain the con-
sent of Duke William to their separa-
tion was of course out of the question ;
and before the puzzled council could
arrive at any decision, JTagello entered
Cracow, more in the style of a con-
queror than a suitor, and repaired at
once to the castle, where he found the
queen surrounded by a court surpass-
ing in beauty and magnificence all that
his imagination had pictured. Pale
as she was from the intensity of her
sufferings, he was dazzled, almost be-
wildered, by the childlike innocence and
winning loveliness of Hedwige ; and
his admiration was expressed the fol-
lowing day by the revenues of a prov-
ince being laid at her feet in the shape
of jewels^and robes of the most costly
description. But the queen was more
obdurate than ever. With her know-
ledge and consent Duke William had
returned to Cracow, though compelled
150
ffedwige, Queen of Poland.
to resort to a variety of disguises to
escape the fury of the barons, now de-
termined to put an end to his preten-
sions and his existence together ; and
it is said that, in order to avoid his in-
defatigable enemy, Dobeslas, he was
once compelled to seek refuge in a
large chimney. Forced eventually to
quit the capital without seeing Hed-
wige, he still loitered in the environs ;
nor did he return to Austria until her
marriage with Jagello terminated those
hopes which he had cherished from
his earliest infancy. In order to quiet
the queen's religious scruples, a letter
is said to have arrived from Rome,
in which, after pronouncing that the
early betrothal involved no impediment
to the marriage, the Holy Father
placed before her the merits of the of-
fering she was called upon to make,
reminding her of the torments so
cheerfully suffered by the early mar-
tyrs for the honor of God, and calling
upon her to imitate their example.
This statement, however, is not suf-
ficiently authenticated.
After the severest interior trials,
days spent in tears, fasting, and the
most earnest petitions to the throne
of Divine grace, the queen received
strength to consummate the sacrifice
demanded from her. Naturally ar-
dent and impulsive, and at an age
when every sentiment is freshest and
most keen, she was called upon to ex-
tirpate from her heart an affection not
only deep but legitimate, to inflict a
wound on the object of her tenderest
love, and, finally, to transfer her devo-
tion to one whom she had hitherto re-
garded with feelings of unqualified
aversion. The path of highest, be-
cause self-sacrificing duty, once clear
before her, she determined to act with
generosity toward a God from whom
she had received so much : her beauty,
talents, the virtues with which she was
adorned, were so many precious gifts
to be placed at the disposal of Mm by
whom -they had been bestowed. Cov-
ering herself with a thick black veil,
she proceeded on foot to the cathedral
of Cracow, and, repairing to one of
the side chapels, threw herself on her
knees, where for three hours, with
clasped hands and streaming eyes, she
wrestled with the violent feeling that
struggled in her bosom. At length
she rose with a detached heart, having
laid at the foot of the cross her affec-
tions, her will, her hopes of earthly
happiness; offering herself, and all
that belonged to her, as a perpetual
holocaust to her crucified Redeemer,
and esteeming herself happy so that
by this sacrifice she might purchase
the salvation of those precious souls
for whom he had shed his blood. Be-
fore leaving the chapel she cast her
veil over the crucifix, hoping under
that pall to bury all of human infirm-
ity that might still linger round her
heart, and then hastened to establish a
foundation for the perpetual renewal of
this type of her " soul's sorrow." This
foundation yet exists : within the same
chapel the crucifix still stands, cov-
ered by its sable drapery, being com-
monly known as the Crucifix of Hed-
wige.
The queen's consent to the Lithua-
nian alliance endeared her still more
to the hearts of her subjects, who re-
garded her as a martyr to the peace '
Poland. On the 14th of Febi
1386, her marriage was celebrs
with becoming solemnity, Jagello hai
ing previously received the sacrament
of baptism ; shortly afterward he was
crowned, in the presence of Hedwige,
under his Christian name of Wladis-
las, which he had taken in deference
to the wishes of the Poles. The un-
assuming piety, gentle disposition, and
great learning of the young queen
commanded at once the respect and
admiration of her husband. So great,
indeed, was his opinion of her pru-
dence, that, being obliged to march
into Upper Poland to crush the rebel-
lion of the Palatine of Posnia, he took
her with him in the capacity of media-
trix between himself and the disaffect-
ed leaders who had for months deso-
lated that province. This mission of
mercy was most acceptable to Hed-
wige ; after the example of the saint-
Hedwige, Queen of Poland.
151
ed Elizabeth of Hungary, her gene-
rosity toward the widows, orphans, and
those who had lost their substance
in this devastating war, was boundless ;
whilst ministering to their wants, she
failed not, at the same time, to sympa-
thize with their distress ; and, like an
angel of peace, she would stand be-
tween her husband and the objects of
his indignation. On one occasion, to
supply the necessities of the court, so
heavy a contribution had been laid
upon the peasants that their cattle did
not escape ; watching their opportu-
nity, they, with their wives and chil-
dren, threw themselves in the queen's
path, filling the air with their cries,
and conjuring her to prevent their ut-
ter ruin. Hedwige, deeply affected,
dismounted from her palfrey, and,
kneeling by their side, besought her
husband not to sanction so flagrant an
act of oppression ; and when the satis-
fied peasants retired fully indemnified
for their loss, she is said to have ex-
claimed, "Their cattle are restored,
but who will recompense them for
their tears?" Having reduced the
country to obedience, it was time for
Wladislas to turn his attention to his
Lithuanian territories, more especially
Russia Nigra, which, although gov-
erned by its own princes, was com-
pelled to do homage to the house of
Jagello. Poinerania, which by his
marriage articles he was pledged to
recover for Poland, had been usurp-
ed by the Teutonic Knights, who, sen-
sible with how formidable an opponent
they had to contend, endeavored to
frustrate his intentions, first by carry-
ing fire and sword into Lithuania, and
then by exciting a revolution in favor
of Duke Andrew, to whom, as well as
to the heathen nobles, the alliance (by
which their country was rendered de-
pendent on Poland) was displeasing.
Olgerd, the father of Wladislas, was a
fierce pagan, and his thirteen sons, if
we except the elder, inherited his cru-
elty, treachery, and rapacity. The
promised revolution in religion was
offensive to the majority of the people ;
and, to their shame be it spoken, the
Teutonic Knights (whose order was
first established to defend the Chris-
tian faith against the assaults of. infi-
dels) scrupled not to adopt a crooked
policy, and, by inciting the Lithuan-
ians against their sovereign, threw
every impediment in the way of their
conversion. Before the king had any
suspicion of his intentions, the grand-
master had crossed the frontiers, the
duchy was laid waste, and many im-
portant fortresses were already in the
hands of the order.
Wladislas, then absent in Upper
Poland, despatched Skirgello into
Lithuania, who, though haughty, licen-
tious, and revengeful, was a brave and
skilful general. Duke Andrew fled
before the forces of his brother, and
ttfe latter attacked the Knights with
an impetuosity that compelled them
speedily to evacuate their conquests.
The arrival of the king, with a number
of learned prelates, and a large body
of clergy, proved he was quite in
earnest regarding the conversion of
his subjects, hitherto immersed in the
grossest and most degrading idola-
try. Trees, serpents, vipers, were
the inferior objects of their adoration ;
gloomy forests and damp caverns their
temples ; and the most disgusting and
venomous reptiles were cherished in
every family as household gods. But,
as with the eastern Magi, fire was the
principal object of the Lithuanian wor-
ship ; priests were appointed whose
office it was to tend the sacred flame,
their lives paying the penalty if it
were allowed to expire. At Wilna,
the capital of the duchy, was a temple
of the sun ; and should that luminary
chance to be eclipsed, or even clouded,
the people fled thither in the utmost
terror, eager to appease the deity by
rivers of human blood, which poured
forth at the command of the Ziutz, or
high priest, the victims vieing with
each other in the severity of their self-
inflicted torments.
As the most effectual method of at
once removing the errors of this infat-
uated people, Wladislas ordered the
forests to be cut down, the serpents to
152
Hedwige, Queen of Poland.
be crushed under the feet of his sol-
diers, and, after extinguishing with
his own hand the sacred fires, he
caused the temples to be demolished ;
thus demonstrating to the Lithuanians
the impotency of their gods. With
the cowardice ever attendant on ig-
norance and superstition, the pagans
cast themselves with their faces to the
earth, expecting to see the sacrilegious
strangers blasted by the power of the
profaned element ; but, no such results
following, they gradually lost confi-
dence in their deities, and of their own
free will desired to be instructed in the
doctrines of Christ. Their theological
knowledge was necessarily confined to
the Lord's Prayer and the Creed, and
a day was fixed for the commencement
of the ceremony of baptism. As, 6*h
account of the number of catechumens,
it was impossible to administer the sac-
rament to each individual separately,
the nobles and their families, after
leaving the sacred font, prepared to act
as sponsors to the people, who, being
divided into groups of either sex, were
sprinkled by the bishops and priests,
every division receiving the same
name.
Hedwige had accompanied her hus-
band to Lithuania, and was gratified
by witnessing the zeal with which he
assisted the priests in their arduous
undertaking ; whilst Wladislas, aware
of the value of his young auxiliary,
was not disappointed by the degree of
enthusiastic veneration with which the
new Christians regarded the sovereign
who, at the age of sixteen, had con-
ferred upon them peace and the light
of the true faith. Hedwige was admi-
rably adapted for this task: in her
character there was no alloy of pas-
sion, pride, or frivolity ; an enemy to
the luxury and pomp which her sex
and rank might have seemed to war-
rant, her fasts were rigid and her
bodily mortifications severe. Neither
did her fervor abate during her sojourn
in the duchy. By her profuse liber-
ality the cathedral of St. Stanislas of
Wilna was completed. Nor did she
neglect the other churches and reli-
gious foundations which, by her advice,
her husband commenced in the prin-
cipal cities of his kingdom. Before
quitting Lithuania, the queen's heart
was wrung by the intelligence she re-
ceived of a domestic tragedy of the
deepest dye. Her mother, the holy
and virtuous Elizabeth of Hungary,
had during a popular insurrection
been put to a cruel death ; whilst
her sister Maria, who had fallen into
the power of the rebel nobles, having
narrowly escaped the same fate, was
confined in an isolated fortress, subject
to the most rigorous and ignominious
treatment.
Paganism being at length thor-
oughly rooted out of Lithuania, a bish-
opric firmly established at Wilna, and
the seven parishes in its vicinity amply
supplied with ecclesiastics, Wladislas,
preparatory to his return to Poland,
appointed his brother Skirgello viceroy
of the duchy. This was a fatal error.
The proud barbarians, little disposed
to dependence on a country they had
been accustomed to despoil at pleas-
ure, writhed under the yoke of the
fierce tyrant, whose rule soon became
odious, and whose vices were rendered
more apparent by the contrast which
his character presented to that of his
cousin Vitowda, whom, as a checl
upon his well-known ferocity, Wlad-
islas had designated as his colleague.
Scarcely had the court returned to
Poland, when the young prince, ami-
able, brave, and generous, by oppos-
ing his cousin's unjust and cruel ac-
tions, drew upon himself the vengeance
of the latter, and, in order to save his
life, was obliged to seek refuge in
Pomerania, from whence, as his hon-
or and patriotism alike forbade his
assisting the Teutonic Knights in
their designs upon his country, he
applied to the king for protection.
Wladislas, of a weak and jealous
disposition, was, however, at the time
too much occupied in attending to foul
calumnies uttered against the spotless
virtue of his queen to give heed to
the application. Notwithstanding the
prudence of her general conduct, and
Hedwige, Queen of Poland.
153
the tender devotion evinced by Hed-
wige toward her husband, the admi-
ration which her beauty and sweet-
ness of disposition commanded from
all who approached her was a contin-
ual thorn in his side. Her former love
for the Duke of Austria and repug-
nance to himself haunted him night
and day, until he actually conceived
suspicions injurious to her fidelity. In
the polluted atmosphere of a court
there were not wanting those who, for
their own aggrandizement, were base
enough to resort to falsehood in order
to destroy an influence at which the
wicked alone had cause to tremble.
It was whispered in the ear of the un-
fortunate monarch that his queen had
held frequent, and of course clandes-
tine, interviews with Duke William,
until, half frantic, he one day publicly
reproached her, and, turning to the
assembled bishops, wildly demanded a
divorce. The proud nobles indignant-
ly interposed, many a blade rattled in
its sheath, eager to vindicate the inno-
cence of one who, in their eyes, was
purity itself; but Hedwige calmly
arose, and with matronly dignity de-
manded the name of her accuser, and
a solemn trial, according to the custom
of her country. There was a dead
silence, a pause ; and then, trembling
and abashed before the virtue he had
maligned, the Vice-chamberlain Gnie-
wosz, before mentioned as the friend
of Duke William (whose wealth he
had not failed to appropriate), stepped
reluctantly forward. A murmur of
surprise and wrath resounded through
the council-chamber: many a sword
was drawn, as though eager for the
blood of the offender ; but the eccle-
siastics having at length calmed the
tumult, the case was appointed to be
judged at the diet of Wislica.
The queen's innocence was affirmed
on oath by herself and her whole
household, after which the castellain,
John Tenczynski, with twelve knights
of noble blood and unsullied honor,
solemnly swore to the falsehood of the
accusation, and, throwing down their
gauntlets, defied to mortal combat all
who should gainsay their assertion.
None, however, appeared to do battle
in so bad a cause ; and the convicted
traitor, silenced and confounded, sank
on his knees, confessed his guilt, and
implored the mercy of her he had so
foully aspersed. The senate, in def-
erence to the wishes of Hedwige,
spared his life ; but he was compelled
to crouch under a bench, imitate the
barking of a dog, and declare that,
like that animal, he had dared to snarl
against his chaste and virtuous sover-
eign.* This done, he was deprived of
his ofnce, and banished the crfurt ; and
Wladislas hastened to beg the forgive-
ness of his injured wife.
Meanwhile Prince Vitowda, despair-
ing of assistance and pressed on all
sides, after much hesitation joined the
Teutonic Knights in an incursion
against Lithuania. The country was
invaded by a numerous army, the
capital taken by storm, abandoned to
pillage, and finally destroyed by fire ;
no less than fourteen thousand of the
inhabitants perishing in the flames,
beside numbers who were massacred
without distinction of sex or age.
Fortunately the upper city was gar-
risoned by Poles, who determined to
hold out to the last. The slight forti-
fications were speedily destroyed ; but,
being immediately repaired, the siege
continued so long that Skirgello had
time to assemble an army before
which the besiegers were eventually
obliged to retreat. Vitowda, now too
deeply compromised to draw back,
though thwarted in his designs on Up-
per Wilna, gained possession of many
of the frontier towns, and, encouraged
by success, aimed at nothing less than
the independent sovereignty of Lithu-
ania. He was, however, opposed dur-
* This was a portion of the punishment special-
ly awarded by the penal code of Poland to the
crime of calumny. Like many other punishments
of those ages, it was symbolical in its character.
(See the valuable work of Albert du Boys, His-
toire du Drolt Criminel des Peuples Modernes, liv. ii. ;
chap. vii. ) Similar penalties had been common in
Poland from early times. Thus we find Boloslas
the Great inviting to a banquet and vapor bath no-
bles who had been guilty of some transgression ;
after the bath he administered a paternal reproof
and castigation. Hence the Polish proverb, "to
give a person a bath."
154
Hedwige, Queen of Poland.
ing two or three campaigns by Wlad-
islas in person, until, wearied of the
war, the king had the weakness not
only to sue for peace, but to invest
Vitowda with the government of the
duchy. This, as might be expected,
gave great umbrage to Skirgello, and
to another brother, Swidrigal, so that
Lithuania, owing to the ambition of
the rival princes, became for some
time the theatre of civil discord.
Among her other titles to admira-
tion, we must not omit to mention that
Hedwige was a munificent patroness
of learning. She hastened to re-estab-
lish the college built by Casimir II.,
founded and endowed a magnificent
university at Prague for the education
of the Lithuanian youth, and super-
intended the translation of the Holy
Scriptures into Polish, writing with
her own hands the greater part of the
New Testament. Her work was in-
terrupted during her husband's ab-
sence by the attack of the Hungarians
on the frontiers of Poland ; and it was
then that, laying aside the weakness
of her sex, she felt herself called upon
to supply his place. A powerful army
was levied, of which this youthful
heroine assumed the command, direct-
ing the councils of the generals, and
sharing the privations of the meanest
soldier. When she appeared on horse-
back in the midst of the troops, nothing
could exceed the enthusiasm of these
hardy warriors; and the simplicity
with which they obeyed the slightest
order of their queen was touching in
the extreme. Hedwige led her forces
into Russia Nigra, and, partly by force
of arms, partly by skilful negotiations,
succeeded in reconquering the whole
of that vast province, which her father
Lewis had detached from the Polish
crown in order to unite it to that of
his beloved Hungary. This act of in-
justice was repaired by his daughter,
who thus endeared her name to the
memory of succeeding generations.
The conquering army proceeded to
Silesia, then usurped by the Duke of
Oppelen, where they were equally suc-
cessful; so that Wladislas was in-
debted for the brightest trophies of his
reign to the heroism of his wife
Encouraged by her past success,
he determined to reconduct her into
Lithuania, in hopes by her means to
settle the dissensions of the rival
princes. Accordingly, in the spring
of 1393, they proceeded thither, when
the disputants, subdued by the irresisti-
ble charm of her manners, agreed to
refer their claims to her arbitration.
Of a solid and mature judgment, Hed-
wige succeeded in pacifying them ; and
then, by mutual consent, they entered
into a solemn compact that in their
future differences, instead of resorting
to arms, they would submit their cause
unreservedly to the arbitration of the
young Queen of Poland.
Notwithstanding its restoration to
internal tranquillity, this unfortunate
duchy was continually laid waste by
the Teutonic Knights ; and Wladislas,
determined to hazard all on one de-
cisive battle, commanded forces to be
levied not only in Lithuania, but in
Poland. Before the preparations were
completed, an interview was arranged
to take place between the king and
the grand-master, Conrad de Jungen
but the nobility, fearing lest the irrita-
ble temper of Wladislas would prove
an insurmountable obstacle to all
commodation, implored him to allo^
the queen to supply his place. On his
consent, Hedwige, accompanied by the
ecclesiastics, the barons, and a mag-
nificent retinue, proceeded to the place
of rendezvous, where she was met by
Conrad and the principal knight-com-
manders of the order. The terms
she proposed were equitable, and more
lenient than the Teutonic Knights had
any reason to expect ; but, under one
trifling pretext or another, they refused
the restitution of the usurped territo-
ries on which the king naturally in-
sisted, and the queen was at length
obliged to return, prophesying, says
the chronicler, that, after her death,
their perversity would receive its de-
served punishment at the hands of her
husband. Her prediction was fulfilled.
Some years afterward, on the plains
between Grurmervaldt and Tannen-
berg, the grand-master, with fifty thou-
sand knights, was slain, and by this
decisive victory the order was placed
at the mercy of Poland, though, from
the usual indecision of its king, the
fruits of this splendid action were less
than might have been expected.
Until her early death, Hedwige con-
tinued the guardian angel of that be-
loved country for which she had made
her first and greatest sacrifice ; and it
is likely that but for her watchfulness,
its interests would have been frequent-
ly compromised by the Lithuanian
union. Acting on this principle, she
refused to recognize the investiture of
her husband's favorite, the Palatine of
Cracow, with the perpetual fief of
Podolia; and, undazzled by the appa-
rent advantages offered by an expe-
dition against the Tartars headed by
the great Tamerlane, she forbade the
Polish generals to take part in a cam-
paign which, owing to the rashness of
Vitowda, terminated so fatally.
It was shortly after her unsuccess-
ful interview with the Teutonic Knights
that, by the death of her sister Maria,
the crown of Hungary (which ought
to have devolved on her husband Sig-
ismund) became again an object of
contention. The Hungarians, attract-
ed by the report of her moderation,
wisdom, and even military skill not an
uncommon accomplishment in females
of those times determined to offer it
ro Hedwige ; but her brother-in-law,
trusting to her sense of justice, hast-
ened to Cracow, praying her not to ac-
cept the proposal, and earnestly solicit-
ing her alliance. The queen, whom
ambition had no power to dazzle, con-
sented, and a treaty advantageous to
Poland was at once concluded.
Hedwige was a good theologian, and
well read in the fathers and doctors of
the Church ; the works of St. Bernard
and St. Ambrose, the revelations of St.
Bridget, and the sermons of holy men,
being the works in which she most de-
lighted. In Church music she was an
enthusiast ; and not long after the
completion of the convent of the Vis-
Hedwige, Queen of Poland.
155
itation, which she had caused to be
erected near the gates of Cracow, she
founded the Benedictine abbey of the
Holy Cross, where office was daily
recited in the Sclavonian language,
after the custom of the order at
Prague. She also instituted a college
in honor of the Blessed Virgin,
where the Psalms were daily chant-
ed, after an improved method, by six-
teen canons.
It was toward the close of the year
1398 that, to the great delight of her
subjects, it became evident that the
union of Wladislas and Hedwige would
at length be blessed with offspring. To
see the throne filled by a descendant
of their beloved sovereign had been
the dearest wish of the Polish people,
and fervent had been the prayers of-
fered for this inestimable blessing.
The enraptured Wladislas hastened to
impart his expected happiness to most
of the Christian kings and princes, not
forgetting the Supreme Pontiff, Boni-
face IX., by whom the merits of the
young queen were so well appreciated
that, six years after her accession, he
had addressed to her a letter, written
with his own hand, in which he thanked
her for her affectionate devotion to the
Catholic Church, and informed her
that, although it was impossible he
could accede to all the applications
which might be transmitted to the Holy
See on behalf of her subjects, yet, by
her adopting a confidential sign-man-
ual, those requests to which she indi-
vidually attached importance should
be immediately granted. The Holy
Father hastened to reply in the warm-
est terms to the king's communication,
promising to act as sponsor to the
child, who, if a boy, he desired might
be named after himself.
Unfortunately, some tune before the
queen's delivery, it became necessary
for her husband to quit Cracow, in
order to direct an expedition against
his old enemies the Teutonic Knights.
During his absence, he wrote a long
letter, in which, after desiring that the
happy event might be attended with
all possible magnificence, he entered
156
Hedwige, Queen of Poland.
into a minute detail of the devices and
embroidery to be used in the adorn-
ment of the bed and chamber, particu-
larly requesting that the draperies and
hangings might not lack gold, pearls,
or precious stones. This ostentatious
display, though excusable in a fond
husband and a powerful monarch about
to behold the completion of his dearest
wishes, was by no means in^consonance
with Hedwige's intense love of Chris-
tian simplicity and poverty. We find
her addressing to her husband these
few touching words, expressing, as the
result proved, that presentiment of her
approaching end which has often been
accorded to saintly souls : " Seeing that
I have so long renounced the pomps
of this world, it is not on that treach-
erous couch to so many the bed of
death that I would willingly be sur-
rounded by their glitter. It is not by
the help of gold or gems that I hope
to render myself acceptable to that Al-
mighty Father who has mercifully re-
moved from me the reproach of bar-
renness, but rather by resignation to
his will, and a sense of my own noth-
ingness." It was remarked after this
that the queen became more recollect-
ed than ever, spending whole hours in
meditation, bestowing large alms, not
only on the distressed of her own
country, but on such pilgrims as pre-
sented themselves, and increasing her
exterior mortifications ; wearing a hair
shirt during Lent, and using the disci-
pline in a manner which, considering
her condition, might have been deemed
injudicious. She had ever made a
point of spending the vigil of the anni-
versary of her early sacrifice at the
foot of the veiled crucifix, but on this
occasion, not returning at her usual
hour, one of her Hungarian attendants
sought her in the cathedral, then but
dimly lighted by the massy silver lamp
suspended before the tabernacle. It
was bitterly cold, the wind was moan-
ing through the long aisles, but there,
on the marble pavement, in an ecsta-
cy which rendered her insensible to
bodily sufferings, lay Hedwige, she
having continued in this state of ab-
straction from the termination of
complin, at which she invariably
assisted.
At length, on the 12th of June, 1399,
this holy queen gave birth to a daugh-
ter, who was immediately 'baptized in
the cathedral of Cracow, receiving
from the Pope's legate, at the sacred
font, the name of Elizabeth Bonifacia.
The babe was weak and sickly, and
the condition of the mother so precari-
ous that a messenger was despatched
to the army urging the immediate re-
turn of Wladislas. IJe arrived in time
to witness the last sigh of his so ar-
dently desired child, though his disap-
pointment was completely merged in
his anxiety for his wife. By the ad-
vice of the physicians it had been de-
termined to conceal the death of the
infant, but their precautions were vain.
At the very moment it occurred, Hed-
wige herself announced it to her as-
tonished attendants, and then humbly
asked for the last sacraments of the
Church, which she received with the
greatest fervor. She, however, lin-
gered until the 17th of July, when, the
measure of her merits and good works
being full, she went to appear before
the tribunal of that God whom she had
sought to glorify on earth. She died
before completing her twenty-ninth
year.
A few days previously she had taken
a tender leave of her distracted hus-
band; and, mindful to the last of the
interests of Poland, she begged him to
espouse her cousin Anne, by whose
claim to the throne of the Piasts his
own would be strengthened. She then
drew off her nuptial ring, as if to de-
tach herself from all human ties, and
placed it upon his finger, and although,
from motives of policy, Wladislas suc-
cessively espoused three wives, he
religiously preserved this memorial
of her he had valued the most ; be-
queathing it as a precious relic (and a
memento to be faithful to the land
which Hedwige had so truly loved) to
the Bishop of Cracow, who had saved
his life in battle. Immediately after
t her funeral, he retired to his Russian
Hedwige, Queen of Poland.
157
province, nor could he for some time
be prevailed upon to return and as-
sume the duties of sovereignty.
There was another mourner for her
loss, William of Austria, who, not-
withstanding the entreaties of his
subjects, had remained single for her
sake. He was at length prevailed
upon to espouse the Princess Jane of
Naples, but did not long survive the
union.
The obsequies of Hedwige were
celebrated by the Pope's legate with
becoming magnificence. All that
honor and respect from which she
had sensitively shrunk during life was
lavished on her remains; she was
interred in the cathedral of Cracow
on the left of the high altar; her
memory was embalmed by her people's
love, and was sanctified in their eyes.
Numerous miracles are said to have
been performed at her tomb : thither
the afflicted in mind and body flocked
to obtain through her intercession that
consolation which during her life she
had so cheerfully bestowed. Contrary to
the general expectation, she was never
canonized ;* her name, however, con-
tinued to be fondly cherished by the
Poles, and by the people who under
God were indebted to her for their
first knowledge of Christianity, and of
whom she might justly be styled the
apostle. On her monument was
graven a Latin inscription styling her
the " Star of Poland," enumerating
her virtues, lamenting her loss, and
imploring the King of Glory to receive
her into his heavenly kingdom.
The life of Hedwige is her best
eulogium. As it has been seqn, she
combined all the qualities not only of
her own, but of a more advanced age.
The leisure which she could snatch
from the au#irs of government she
employed in study, devotion, and works
of charity. True to her principles,
she at her death bequeathed her jew-
els and other personal property in
trust to the bishop and castellain of
* Polish writers give her the title of saint, though
her name is not inserted in the Martyrologies.
Butler's Lives of the Saints, October 1 7th.
Cracow, for the foundation of a col-
lege in that city. Two years after-
ward her wishes were carried into
effect, and the first stone was laid of
the since celebrated university.
Wladislas survived his wife thirty-
five years. In his old age he was
troubled by a return of his former
jealousy, thereby continually embit-
tering the life of his queen, a Lithuan-
ian princess, who, although exculpat-
ed by oath, as Hedwige had formerly
been, was less fortunate, inasmuch as
she was the continual victim of fresh
suspicions. The latter years of his.
reign were much disturbed by the hos-
tilities of the Emperor Sigismund, and
by the troubles occasioned in Lithu-
ania by the rebels, who had again
combined with the Teutonic Knights.
Wladislas died in 1434, at the age
of eighty years. It is said that he
contracted his mortal sickness by be-
ing tempted to remain exposed too
long to the night air, captivated by
the sweet notes of a nightingale. Not-
withstanding his faults, this monarch
had many virtues ; his piety was great,
and he practised severe abstinences ;
and although he at times gave way to
a suspicious temper, his general char-
acter was trusting, frank, and generous
even to imprudence. His suspicions,
in fact, did not originate with himself.
They sprang, in the case of both his
wives, from the tongues of calumnia-
tors, to whom he listened with a hasty
credulity. He raised the glory and
extended and consolidated the domin-
ion of Poland. He was succeeded by
his son, a child of eleven years, who
had previously been, elected to the
throne, but not until Jagello had con-
firmed and even enlarged the privileges
of the nobles. His tardy consent, at
the diet of Jedlin, roused their pride,
so that it was not until four years later
that they solemnly gave their adhe-
sion.
It has not been our purpose to give
more than a page out of the Polish
annals illustrative of the patriotic and
Christian spirit of sacrifice for which
Poland's daughters have, down to the
158
Monks among the Mongols.
present day, been no less noted than
her sons. The mind naturally reverts
to the late cruel struggle in which this
generous people has once more succumb-
ed to the overwhelming power of Rus-
sia, and her unscrupulous employment
of the gigantic forces at her command.
Europe has looked on apathetically,
and, after a few feeble diplomatic re-
monstrances, has allowed the sacrifice to
be completed. But the cause of Poland
is essentially the cause of Catholicism
and of the Church ; and this, perhaps,
may account for the small degree of
sympathy it has awakened in Euro-
pean governments. Russia's repres-
sion of her insurgent subjects became
from the first a religious persecution.
Her aim is not to Russify, but to de-
catholicize Poland. The insurrection,
quenched in blood, has been followed
by a wholesale deportation of Poles in-
to the eastern Russian provinces, where,
with their country, it is hoped they
will, ere long, lose also their faith.
These are replaced by Russian colon-
ists transplanted into Poland. To
crush, extirpate, and deport the nobil-
ity to leave the lower class alone
upon the soil, who, deprived of their
clergy martyred, exiled, or in bonds
may become an easy conquest to the
dominant schism such is the plan of
the autocrat, as we have beheld it ac-
tively carried out with all its accom-
panying horrors of sacrilege and ruth-
less barbarity. One voice alone that
of the Father of Christendom has
been raised to stigmatize' these revolt-
ing excesses, and to reprove the ini-
quity of "persecuting Catholicism in
order to put down rebellion."* The
same voice has exhorted us to pray
for our Polish brethren, and has en-
couraged that suffering people to seek
their deliverance from the just and
compassionate Lord of all.
* The terms of the Holy Father's address have
been strangely exaggerated in many continental
journals, where he is made to refer to the subject
politically, and loudly to proclaim the justice of
the Polish insurrection in that regard. The Pope
entirely restricted his animadversions on the Czar-
to his persecution of the faith of his subjects.
From The Lamp,
MONKS AMONG THE MONGOLS,
IN tracing the progress of the various
branches of science during the Middle
Ages, there is nothing more striking
than the slow stages by which a
knowledge of the truth was reached
on the subject of the earth's form, and
the relative positions of the various
countries which compose it. Though
from the very earliest period the sub-
ject necessarily occupied a consider-
able amount of attention, and though
facts began to be observed bearing
upon it in the first ages after the diffu-
sion of mankind, and were largely mul-
tiplied in proportion as the formation
of colonies and intercommunication for
purposes of commerce or war became
more frequent, yet we find very little
advance made in geographical know-
ledge from the days of Ptolemy, when
the observations of the ancients were
most systematically collected and ar-
ranged, till some centuries after, when
the maritime enterprise of the Portu-
guese impelled them to the series of
discoveries which led to the doubling
of the Cape of Good Hope, and in-
cited the genius of Columbus to the
discovery of a new world.
The cause of this slow advance of
geographical, in comparison with other
branches of knowledge, was owing in
some measure to the absence of any
exact records of the discoveries made,
by which they might have been com-
municated to others, and become the
Monks among the Mongols.
159
starting-point for further investiga-
tions ; but still more to the imperfect
means of navigation in existence, and
to those barbarian uprisings and migra-
tions which for centuries, at least, were
perpetually changing the state of Eu-
rope and Asia, and, by removing the
landmarks of nations, obliging geog-
raphy to begin as it were anew.
During the whole of this period, how-
ever, we find evidences of the patient
cultivation of this, as of all other
branches of human knowledge, within
the walls of those monastic institutions
which ignorant prejudice still regards
as the haunts of idleness, but to which
the learned of all creeds and countries
acknowledge their deep debt of obliga-
tion. Formal accounts of some dis-
tant land, either written by the travel-
ler himself or recorded from the oral
information he communicated ; histori-
cal chronicles, in which not alone the
events, but all that was known of the
country is recorded, and maps in which
the position of various places is at-
tempted to be laid down, were to be
found in every monastery both on the
continent and in our own island. The
holy men, too, who preached the gos-
pel to pagan nations were usually care-
M also to enlarge their contempora-
ries' knowledge concerning the places
and the people among whom they la-
bored. Thus the great St. Boniface
not only converted the Sclavonic na-
tions to Catholic truth, but, at the spe-
cial injunction of the Pope, wrote an
account of them and of their country.
St. Otho, bishop of Bamberg, did the
same for the countries upon the shores
of the Baltic ; the holy monk Anscaire
for Scandinavia, where he carried on
his apostolic labors ; and many others
might be mentioned.
Among the most valuable of the
contributions to the geography of the
ilization, and whose enterprises, em-
barked in at the call of duty, are in
many respects interesting.
History, whether ancient or modern,
has few chapters so remarkable as
that which records the rise of the
Mongol power. A great chief, who
had ruled over an immense horde of
this hitherto pastoral people, died, leav-
ing his eldest son an infant, and unable
to command the adhesion of his rude
subjects. The young chief, as he
grew to man's estate, found his horde
dispersed, and only a few families will-
ing to acknowledge his sway. Deter-
mined, however, to regain his power
and carry out the ambitious design
which he had formed of conquering
the world, he caused an assembly of
the whole people to be summoned on
the banks of the Selinga. At this as-
sembly one of the wise men of the
tribes announced that he had had a vis-
ion, in which he saw the great God, the
disposer of kingdoms, sitting upon his
throne in council, and heard him decree
that the young chief should be " Zingis
Khan," or " Greatest Chief" of the
earth. The shouts of the Mongols
testified their readiness to accept the
decree ; Zingis Khan was raised to
supreme power over the whole Mongol
race. He soon subdued the petty op-
position of his neighbors, and, establish-
ing the seat of his empire at Karako-
rum, spread his conquests in every
direction with extraordinary rapidity,
and died the ruler of many nations,
bequeathing his power to sons and
grandsons as warlike and ambitious
as himself. One of these, Batoo Khan,
invaded Europe with an immense
army. He overran Russia, taking
Moscow and its other principal places ;
subdued Poland and burnt Cracow;
defeated the king of Hungary in a
great battle; penetrated to Breslau,
Middle Ages were those furnished by which he burned ; and defeated, near
some monks of the order of St. Fran-
cis, who in the middle of the thirteenth
century penetrated into the remote
east, on special missions to the bar-
barian hordes that then threatened
the very existence of religion and civ-
Liegnitz, an army composed of Chris-
tian volunteers from all lands; one
of the bloodiest battles ever fought
against the eastern hordes.
It was four years after this great
battle, namely, in 1246, and when all
1GO
Monks among the Mongols.
Europe was trembling at the expec-
tation of another invasion of the
Mongols (who, having devastated the
country with fire and sword, had re-
tired loaded with spoils), that two em-
bassies were despatched by the Pope,
Innocent IV., to endeavor to induce
them to stop their progress into Eu-
rope, and to embrace Christianity.
These important missions were in-
trusted to monks of the Franciscan
order; Jean du Plan Carpini being
despatched toward the north-east,
where the camp of Batoo was fixed,
and Nicholas Ascelin, the year after,
sent into Syria and Persia.
Ascelin's mission, which comprised
three other monks of the same order
beside himself, was the most rapidly
terminated. Following the south of
the Caspian Sea, the party traversed
Syria, Mesopotamia, and Persia, and
at length reached the Mongol or Tatar
encampment of Baiothnoy Khan. Be-
ing asked their object as they ap-
proached, the holy men boldly but
undiplomatically declared that they
were ambassadors from the head of the
Christian world, and that their mission
was to exhort the Tatars to repent of
their wicked and barbarous attacks
upon God's people. Being asked what
presents they brought to the khan, ac-
cording to eastern custom, they further
replied that the Pope, as the vicar of
God, was not accustomed to purchase
a hearing or favor by such means,
especially from infidels. The Mongols
were astonished at this bold language
used toward a race accustomed to
strike terror into all who came into
contact with them. They were still
more astonished when the holy men
refused, as a reprehensible act of idol-
atry, to make the usual genuflexions
on being admitted to the presence of
the khan, unless he first became a
Catholic and acknowledged the Pope's
supremacy, when they offered to do so
for the honor of God and the Church.
Hitherto the barbarians had borne pa-
tiently the display of what they doubt-
less regarded as the idiosyncrasies of
the good friars, but this last refusal in-
cited their rage ; the ambassadors and
their master the Pope were insulted
and threatened, and it was debated in
council whether they should not be
flayed alive, their skins stuffed with
hay, and sent back to the Pope. The
interposition of the khan's mother
saved their lives, however ; but the
Mongols could never understand how
the Holy Father, who they found from
Ascelin kept no army and had gained
no battles, could have dared to send
such a message to their victorious mas-
ter, whom they styled the Son of
Heaven. Ascelin and his companions
were treated during their stay with
scant courtesy, and were dismissed
with a letter to the Pope from Baioth-
noy Khan, commanding him, if he
wished to remain in possession of his
land and heritage, to come in his own
person and do homage to him who held
just sway over the whole earth. They
reached as speedily as possible the
nearest Syrian port, and embarked for
France. They brought back to EU-:
rope some valuable information re-
specting the country of the Mongols,
though small Compared with that of
the other ambassadors whom we hav<
to mention.
Carpini was a ma.n better fitted
the office of ambassador, and abl
without sacrificing his principles or
dignity, to become " all things to
men." He travelled with a nume
suite through Bohemia and Poland to
Kiow, then the Russian capital. A
quantity of skins and furs was given
him in the northern capitals, as pres-
ents to the Tatar chiefs, and all Eu-
rope watched with interest the result
of the embassy. On the banks of the
Dnieper they first encountered the
barbarians. The purpose of their
journey being demanded, they replied
that they were messengers from the
Pope to the chief of the Tatar people,
to desire peace and friendship between
them, and request that they would em-
brace the faith of Christ, and desist
from the slaughter of the Pope's sub-
jects, who had never injured or at-
tempted to injure them. Their bear-
Monks among the Mongols.
161
ing made a very favorable impression.
They were conducted to the tent of
the chief, where they did not hesitate
to make the usual salutations ; and by
his command post-horses and a Mon-
gol escort were given them to conduct
them to Batoo Khan. They found
him at a place on the borders of the
Black Sea ; and, before being admitted
to an audience, had to pass between
two fires, as a charm to nullify any
witchcraft or evil intention on their
parts. They found Batoo seated on
a raised throne with one of his wives,
and surrounded by his court. They
again made the usual genuflexions,
and then delivered their letters, which
Batoo Khan read attentively, but with-
out giving them any reply. For some
months they were " trotted about," with
a view to show them the wealth, pow-
er, and magnificence of the people
they were among ; and in order that
they might communicate at home what
they saw. The holy men passed Lent
' among the Mongols ; and, notwith-
standing the fatigues they had passed
through, observed a strict fast, taking,
as their only food for the forty days,
millet boiled in water, and drinking
only melted snow. They witnessed
the imposing ceremony of the investi-
ture of a Tatar chief, at which a large
number of feudatory princes were pres-
ent, with no less than four thousand
messengers bearing tribute or presents
from subdued or submitted states. Af-
ter the investiture, they also were ush-
ered into the presence ; but, alas, the
gifts intrusted to them and their whole
substance were already consumed. The
Tatars, however, considerately 'dis-
pensed with this usual part of the pro-
ceedings ; for the coarse garb of the
monks, contrasting as it did with the
rich silks and garments of gold and
silver which they describe as being
worn generally during the ceremonies,
must have marked them as men who
possessed little of tin's world's goods.
The ceremonials of investiture over,
Carpini was at length called upon to
deliver his message to the newly-
appointed khan ; and a reply was given,
11
which he was desired to translate into
Latin, and convey to the Pope. It
contained only meaningless expressions
of good-will ; but the fact was, that
the khan intended to carry the war into
Europe, though he did not desire to
give notice of his intent. He offered
to send with them an ambassador to
the Pope ; but Carpini seems to have
surmised his purpose, and that this
ambassador would really be only a
spy ; and he therefore found means to
evade the offer. They returned home-
ward through the rigors of a Siberian
whiter, accompanied by several Gen-
oese, Pisan, and Venetian traders, who,
following the papal envoys, had found
their way, in pursuit of commerce, to
the Tatar encampment. The hard-
ships the good men endured on the
return journey were of tho most fear-
ful kind. Often, in crossing the exten-
sive steppes of that country, they were
forced to sleep all night upon the
snow, and found themselves almost
buried in snow-drifts in 'the morning.
Kiow was at length reached ; and its
people, who had given up the adven-
turous travellers as lost, turned out to
welcome them, as men returned from
the grave. The rest of Carpini's life
was spent in similar hardships, while
preaching the gospel to the savage peo-
ples of Bohemia, Hungary, Denmark,
and Norway ; and death came to him
with his reward, at an advanced age,
in the midst of his apostolic labors.
A few years after the missions of
Ascelin and Carpini, another Francis-
can, named William Van Ruysbroeck,
better known as Rubriquis, a native of
Brabant, was sent by Saint Louis of
France on a similar errand to the Mon-
gols, one of whose khans, it was report-
ed, had embraced Christianity. He
found the rumor void of foundation ;
and, though received courteously, as
Carpini had been, could perceive not
the slightest disposition among the bar-
barians to receive or even hear the
truth. At the camp of Sartach Khan,
Rubriquis was commanded to .appear
before the chief in his priestly vest-
ments, and did so, carrying a missal
162
Monks among the Mongols.
and crucifix in his hands, an attendant
preceding him with a censer, and sing-
ing the Salve Regina. Everything
he had with him was examined very
attentively by the khan and his wives,
especially the crucifix ; but nothing
came of this curiosity. Like Carpini,
the party were frequently exposed to
great privations, both at the encamp-
ments and on their journeys ; and on
one occasion Rubriquis piously re-
cords : " If it had not been for the
grace of God, and the biscuit which
we had brought with us, we had
surely perished." On one journey
from camp to camp, they travelled
for five weeks along the banks of
the Volga, nearly always on foot,
and often without food. Rubriquis*
companion Barthelemi broke down un-
der the fatigues of the return journey ;
but Rubriquis persevered alone, and
traversed an immense extent of coun-
try, passing through the Caucasus,
Armenia, and Syria, before he took
ship for France, to report the failure
of his mission to the pious king.
Bootless as these journeys proved,
so far as their main object was con-
cerned, there is no doubt that in many
ways they effected a large amount of
good. The religious creed of the
Mongols appears to have been confined
to a belief in one God, and in a place
of future rewards and punishments.
For other doctrines, or for ceremonies
of religion, they appear to have
cared little. They trampled the Ca-
liph of Bagdad, the " successor of the
Prophet," beneath their horses' hoofs
at the capture of that city ; and they
tolerated at their camps our Christian
monks, as well as a number of profes-
sors of the Nestorian heresy. It was
only on becoming Mohammedans that
they, and the kindred but rival race of
Ottomans, became intolerant. But it
is to be observed that Islamism, which
allowed polygamy, and avoided inter-
ference with their other national habits
and customs, would be likely to at-
tract them, in consequence of their re-
ligious indifference, as naturally as
Christianity, which sought to impose
restraints upon their ferocity and sen-
sualism, would repel them. It is no
wonder, therefore, that the efforts of
the zealous Franciscans were unsuc-
cessful. But their zeal and disinter-
estedness, their irreproachable lives
and simple manners, were not without
producing an effect upon the savage
men with whom their embassies brought
them into contact ; and by their inter-
course, and that mercantile communi-
cation for which their travels pioneered
the way, the conduct of the Mongols
toward the Christian races was sensi-
bly affected beneficially, while on the
other side they taught Europe to re-
gard the Mongols as a people to be
feared indeed, and guarded against,
but not as the demons incarnate they
had been pictured by the popular ii
agination. The benefit these devc
monks conferred upon the progress
science and civilization is scarcely
be over-estimated; as not only die
they acquaint Europe with a numl
of minute, and in the main accurate,
details respecting a vast tract of coun-
try previously unknown, and the peo-
ples by whom it was inhabited, but
they opened up new realms to com-
merce, in the exploring of which Marco
Polo, Clavijo, and subsequent travel-
lers, pushed onward to China, Japan,
and India, and prepared the way for
the great maritime discoveries of the
succeeding century.
Constance Sherwood.
163
From The Month.
CONSTANCE SHERWOOD.
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
BY LADY GEORGIANA FULLEKTON.
CHAPTER III.
As I entered the library, which my
father used for purposes of business
as well as of study, I saw a gentleman
who had often been at our house before,
and whom I knew to be a priest, though
he was dressed as a working-man of
the better sort and had on a riding
coat of coarse materials. He beck-
oned me to him, and I, kneeling, re-
ceived his blessing.
"What, up yet, little one ?" he said ;
" and yet thou must bestir thyself be-
times to-morrow for prayers. These
are not days in which priests may
play the sluggard and be found abed
when the sun rises."
" At what hour must you be on foot,
reverend father?" my mother asked,
as sitting down at a table by his side
she filled his plate with whatever might
tempt him to eat, the which he seemed
little inclined to.
" Before dawn, good Mrs. Sherwood,"
he answered ; " and across the fields
into the forest before ever the laboring
men are astir ; and you know best when
that is."
"An if it be so, which I fear it
must," my father said, "we must e'en
have the chapel ready by two o'clock.
And, goodwife, you should presently
get that wench to bed."
"Nay, good mother," I cried, and
threw my arms round her waist,
" prithee let me sit up to-night ; I can lie
abed all to-morrow." So wistfully and
urgently did I plead, that she, who had
grown of late somewhat loth to deny
any request of mine, yielded to my en-
treaties, and only willed that I should
lie down on a settle betwixt her chair
and the chimney, in which a fagot was
blazing, though it was summer-tune,
but the weather was chilly. I gazed
by turns on my mother's pale face and
my father's, which was thoughtful, and
on the good priest's, who was in an
easy-chair, wherein they had compelled
him to sit, opposite to me on the other
side of the chimney. He looked, as I
remember him then, as if in body and
in mind he had suffered more than
he could almost bear.
After some discourse had been min-
istered betwixt him and my father of
the journey he had been taking, and
the friends he had seen since last he
had visited our house, my mother said,
in a tremulous voice, " And now, good
Mr. Mush, an if it would not pain you
too sorely, tell us if it be true that your
dear daughter in Christ, Mrs. Clithe-
row, has indeed won the martyr's
crown, as some letters from York re-
ported to us a short time back ?"
Upon this Mr. Mush raised his head,
which had sunk on his breast, and said,
" She that was my spiritual daughter
in times past, and now, as I humbly
hope, my glorious mother in heaven,
the gracious martyr Mrs. Clitherow,
has overcome all her enemies, and
passed from this mortal life with rare
and marvellous triumph into the peace-
able city of God, there to receive a
worthy crown of endless immortality
and joy." His eye, that had been be-
fore heavy and dim, now shone with
sudden light, and it seemed as if the
cord about his heart was loosed, and
his spirit found vent at last in words
after a long and painful silence. More
eloquent still was his countenance than
his words as he exclaimed, " Torments
overcame her not, nor the sweetness of
life, nor her vehement affection for hus-
164
Constance Sherwood.
band and children, nor the flattering
allurements #nd deceitful promises of
the persecutors. Finally, the world,
the flesh, and the devil overcame her
not. She, a woman, with invincible
courage entered combat against them
all, to defend the ancient faith, wherein
both she and her enemies were bap-
tized and gave their promise to God to
keep the same until death. O sacred
martyr !" and, with clasped hands and
streaming eyes, the good father went
on, "remember me, I beseech thee
humbly, in thy perfect charity, whom
thou hast left miserable behind thee,
in time past thy unworthy father and
now most unworthy servant, made ever
joyful by thy virtuous life, and now
lamenting thy death and thy absence,
and yet rejoicing in thy glory."
A sob burst from my mother's breast,
and she hid her face against my father's
shoulder. There was a brief silence,
during which many quickly - rising
thoughts passed through my mind. Of
Daniel in the lions' den, and the Mach-
abees and the early Christians ; and of
the great store of blood which had been
shed of late in this our country, and of
which amongst the slain were truly mar-
tyrs, and which were not ; of the vision
in the sky which had been seen at Lich-
field ; and chiefly of that blessed wo-
man Mrs. Clitherow, whose virtue and
good works I had often before heard of,
such as serving the poor and harbor-
ing priests, and loving God's Church
with a wonderful affection greater than
can be thought of. Then I heard my
father say, "How was it at the last,
good Mr. Mush ?" I oped my eyes,
and hung on the lips of the good priest
even as if to devour his words as he
gave utterance to them.
" She refused to be tried by the
country," he answered, in a tremulous
voice ; " and so they murthered her."
" How so ?" my mother asked, shad-
ing her eyes with her hand, as if to
exclude the mental sight of that which
she yet sought to know.
" They pressed her to death," he
slowly uttered ; " and the last words
she was heard to say were ' Jesu, Jesu,
Jesu ! have mercy on me !' She was
in dying about a quarter of an hour,
and then her blessed spirit was re-
leased and took its flight to heaven.
May we die the death of the right-
eous, and may our last end be like
hers I"
Again my mother hid her face in my
father's bosom, and methought she said
not " Amen" to that prayer ; but turn-
ing to Mr. Mush with a flushed cheek
and troubled eye, she asked, "And
why did the blessed Mrs. Clitherow
refuse to be tried by the country, rev-
erend father, and thereby subject her-
self to that lingering death ?"
" These were her words when ques-
tioned and urged on that point," he an-
swered, " which sufficiently clear her
from all accusation of obstinacy or
desperation, and combine the rare dis-
cretion and charity which were in her
at all times : ' Alas !' quoth she, ' if I
should have put myself on the country,
evidence must needs have come against
me touching my harboring of priests
and the holy sacrifice of the mass in
my house, which I know none could
give but only my children and ser-
vants ; and it would have been to me
more grievous than a thousand deatl
if I should have seen any of the
brought forth before me, to give
dence against me in so good a cause
and be guilty of my blood ; and, sec-
ondly,' quoth she, ' I know well the
country must needs have found me
guilty to please the council, who so
earnestly seek my blood, and then all
they had been accessory to my death
and damnably offended God. I there-
fore think, in the way of charity, for
my part to hinder the country from
such a sin ; and seeing it must needs
be done, to cause as few to do it as
might be ; and that was the judge him-
self.' So she thought, and thereupon
she acted, with that single view to
God's glory and the good of men's
souls that was ever the passion of her
fervent spirit."
" Her children ?" my mother mur-
mured in a faint voice, still hiding her
face from him. " That little Agnes
Constance Sherwood.
165
you used to tell us of, that was so dear
to her poor mother, how has it fared
with her ?"
Mr. Mush answered, " Her happy
mother sent her hose and shoes to her
daughter at the last, signifying that
she should serve God and follow her
steps of virtue. She was committed
to ward because she would not betray
her mother, and there whipped and
extremely used for that she would not
go to the church and hear a sermon.
When her mother was murthered, the
heretics came to her and said that un-
less she would go to the church, her
mother should be put to death. The
child, thinking to save the life of her
who had given her birth, went to a
sermon, and thus they deceived her."
" God forgive them !" my father
ejaculated ; and I, creeping to my
mother's side, threw my arms about
her neck, upon which she, caressing
me, said :
" Now thou wilt be up to their de-
ceits, Conny, if they should practice
the same arts on thee."
" Mother," I cried, clinging to her,
" I will go with thee to prison and to
death ; but to their church I will not
go who love not our Blessed Lady."
" So help thee God !" my father
cried, and laid his hand on my head.
" Take heart, good Mrs. Sherwood,"
Mr. Mush said to my mother, who was
weeping ; " God may spare you such
trials as those which that sweet saint
rejoiced in, or he can give you a like
strength to hers. We have need in
these times to bear in mind that com-
fortable saying of holy writ, ' As your
day shall your strength be.' "
" 'Tis strange," my father observed,
" how these present troubles seem to
awake the readiness, nay the wish, to
suffer for truth's sake. It is like a
new sense in a soul heretofore but too
prone to eschew suffering of any sort :
'tis even as the keen breezes of our
own Cannock Chase stimulate the frame
to exertions which it would shrink
from in the duller air of the Trent
Valley."
" Ah ! and is it even so with you,
my friend ?" exclaimed Mr. Mush.
" From my heart I rejoice at it : such
thoughts are oftentimes forerunners of
God's call to a soul marked out for
his special service."
My mother, against whom I was
leaning since mention had been made
of Mrs. Clitherow's daughter, began to
tremble ; and rising said she would go
to the chapel to prepare for confession.
Taking me by the hand, she mounted
the stairs to the room which was used
as such since the ancient faith had
been proscribed. One by one that
night we knelt at the feet of the good
shepherd, who, like his Lord, was
ready to lay down his life for his sheep,
and were shriven. Then, at two of
the clock, mass was said, and my pa-
rents and most of our servants re-
ceived, and likewise some neighbors
to whom notice had been sent in se-
cret of Mr. Mush's coming. When
my mother returned from the altar to
her seat, I marvelled at the change in
her countenance. She who had been
so troubled before the coming of the
Heavenly Guest into her breast, wore
now so serene and joyful an aspect,
that the looking upon her at that time
wrought in me a new and comfortable
sense of the greatness of that divine
sacrament. I found not the thought
of death frighten me then ; for albeit
on that night I for the first time fully
arrived at the knowledge of the peril
and jeopardy in which the Catholics of
this land do live ; nevertheless this
knowledge awoke in me more exulta-
tion than fear. I had seen precautions
used, and reserves maintained, of which
I now perceived the cause. For some
time past my parents had prepared the
way for this no-longer-to-be-deferred
enlightenment. The small account
they had taught me to make of the
wealth and comforts of this perishable
world, and the histories they had re-
counted to me of the sufferings of
Christians in the early times of the
Church, had been directed unto this
end. They had, as it were, laid the
wood on the altar of my heart, which
they prayed might one day burn into
166
Constance Sherwood.
a flame. And now when, by reason
of the discourse I had heard touching
Mrs. Clitherow's blessed but painful
end for harboring of priests in her
house, and the presence of one under
our roof, I took heed that the danger
had come nigh unto our own doors, my
heart seemed to beat with a singular
joy. Childhood sets no great store on
life : the passage from this world to
the -next is not terrible to such as have
had no shadows cast on their paths by
their own or others' sins. Heaven is
not a far-off region to the pure in
heart ; but rather a home, where God,
as St. Thomas sings,
"Vitam sine termino
Nobis donet in patria."
But, ah me! how transient are
the lights and shades which flit across
the childish mind ! and how mutable
the temper of youth, never long im-
pressed by any event, however grave !
Not many days after Mr. Mush's visit
to our house, another letter from the
Countess of Surrey came into my
hand, and drove from my thoughts for
the time all but the matters therein
disclosed.
" SWEET MISTRESS CONSTANCE"
(my lady wrote), "In my last letter
I made mention, in an obscure fashion,
of a secret which my lord had told
me touching a matter of great weight
which Higford, his grace's steward,
had let out to him ; and now that the
whole world is speaking of what was
then in hand, and that troubles have
come of it, I must needs relieve my
mind by writing thereof to her who is
the best friend I have in the world, if
I may judge by the virtuous counsel
and loving words her letters do con-
tain. 'Tis like you have heard some-
what of that same matter, Mistress
Constance; for much talk has been
ministered anent it since I wrote,
amongst people of all sorts, and with
various intents to the hindering or the
promoting thereof. I mean touching
the marriage of his grace the Duke of
Norfolk with the Queen of Scots,
which is much desired by some, and
very little wished for by others. My
lord, as is reasonable in one of his
years and of so noble a spirit, and his
sister, who is in all things the counter-
part of her brother, have set their
hearts thereon since the first inkling
they had of it ; for this queen had so
noted a fame for her excellent beauty
and sweet disposition that it has
wrought in them an extraordinary
passionate desire to title her mother,
and to see their father so nobly mated,
though not more than he deserves ;
for, as my lord says, his grace's estate
in England is worth little less than the
whole realm of Scotland, in the ill
state to which the wars have reduced
it ; and when he is in his own tennis-
court at Norwich, he thinks himself as
great as a king.
" As a good wife, I should wish
as my lord does; and indeed this
marriage, Mistress Constance, would
please me well ; for the Queen of
Scots is Catholic, and methinks if his
grace were to wed her, there might
arise some good out of it to such as
are dependent on his grace touching
matters of religion ; and since Mr.
Martin has gone beyond seas, 'tis very
little I hear in this house but what is
contrary to the teaching I had at my
grandmother's. My lord saith this
queen's troubles will be ended if she
doth marry his grace, for so Higford
has told him ; but when I spoke there-
of to my Lady Lumley, she prayed
God his grace's might not then begin,
but charged me to be silent thereon
before my Lord Arundel, who has
greatly set his heart on this match.
She said words were in every one's
mouth concerning this marriage which
should never have been spoken of but
amongst a few. * Nan,' quoth she, ' if
Phil and thou do let your children's
tongues wag anent a matter which
may well be one of life and death,
more harm may come of it than can
well be thought of.' So prithee, Mis-
tress Constance, do you be silent as
the grave on what I have herein
written, if so be you have not heard
Constance Sherwood.
167
of it but from me. My lord had a
quarrel with my Lord Essex, who is
about his own age, anent the Queen
of Scots, a few days since, when he
came to spend his birthday with him ;
for my lord was twelve years old last
week, and I gave him a fair jewel to
set in his cap, for a love-token and for
remembrance. My lord said that the
Queen of Scots was a lady of so great
virtue and beauty that none else could
be compared with her; upon which
my lord of Essex cried it was high,
treason to the queen's majesty to
say so, and that if her grace held so
long a time in prison one who was her
near kinswoman, it was by reason of
her having murthered her husband
and fomented rebellion in this king-
dom of England, for the which she
did deserve to be extremely used.
My lord was very wroth at this, and
swore he was no traitor, and that the
Queen of Scots was no murtheress,
and he would lay down his head on
the block rather than suffer any should
style her such ; upon which my lord
of Essex asked, ' Prithee, my Lord
Surrey, were you at Thornham last
week when the queen's majesty was
on a visit to your grandfather, my
Lord Arundel ?' * No,' cried my lord,
* your lordship being there yourself in
my Lord Leicester's suite, must needs
have noticed I was absent; for if I
had been present, methinks 'tis I and
not your lordship would have waited
behind her majesty's chair at table
and held a napkin to her.' ' And if
you had, my lord,' quoth my Lord
Essex, waxing hot in his speech, ' you
would have noticed how her grace's
majesty gave a nip to his grace your
father, who was sitting by her side,
and said she would have him take
heed on what pillow he rested his
head.' ' And I would have you take
heed,' cries my lord, 'how you suffer
your tongue to wag in an unseemly
manner anent her grace's majesty and
his grace my father and the Queen of
Scots, who is kinswoman to both, and
even now a prisoner, which should
make men careful how they speak of
her who cannot speak in her own
cause ; for it is a very inhuman part,
my lord, to tread on such as misfor-
tune has cast down.' There was a
nobleness in these words such as I have
often taken note of in my lord, though
so young, and which his playmate
yielded to ; so that nothing more was
said at that time anent those mat-
ters, which indeed do seem too weighty
to be discoursed upon by young folks.
But I have thought since on the lines
which 'tis said the queen's majesty
wrote when she was herself a prisoner,
which begin,
1 O Fortune! how thy restless, wavering state
Hath fraught with cares my troubled wit ;
Witness this present prison, whither fate
Could bear me, and the joys I quit '
and wondered she should have no
greater pity on those in the same
plight, as so many be at this time. Ah
me ! I would not keep a bird in a cage
an I could help it, and 'tis sad men
are not more tender of such as are of
a like nature with themselves !
" My lord was away some days af-
ter this at Oxford, whither he had
been carried to be present at the
queen's visit, and at the play of Pa-
lamon and Arcite, which her majesty
heard in the common hall of Christ's
Church. One evening, as my lady
Margaret and I (like two twin cher-
ries on one stalk, my lord would say,
for he is mightily taken with the
stage-plays he doth hear, and hath a
trick of framing his speech from them)
were sitting at the window near unto
the garden practising our lutes and
singing madrigals, he surprised us
with his sweet company, in which I
find an ever increasing content, and
cried out as he approached, 'Ladies,
I hold this sentence of the poet as
a canon of my creed, that whom
God loveth not, they love not music.'
And then he said that albeit Italian
was a very harmonious and sweet lan-
guage which pleasantly tickleth the
ear, he for his part loved English
best, even in singing. Upon which,
finding him in the humor for discreet
168
Constance Sherwood.
and sensible conversation, which, al-
beit he hath good parts and a ready
wit, is not always the case, by reason
of his being, as boys mostly are, prone
to wagging, I took occasion to relate
what I had heard my Lord of Arun-
del say touching his visit to the court
of Brussels, when the Duchess of
Parma invited him to a banquet to
meet the Prince of Orange and most
of the chief courtiers. The discourse
was carried on in French; but my
lord, albeit he could speak well in that
language, nevertheless made use of an
interpreter. At the which the Prince
of Orange expressed his surprise to
Sir John Wilson, who was present,
that an English nobleman of so great
birth and breeding should be ignorant
of the French tongue, which the earl
presently hearing, said, ' Tell the prince
that I like to speak in that language
in which I can best utter my mind
and not mistake/ ' And I perceive,
my lord/ I said, ' that you are of a
like mind with his lordship, and no
lover of new-fangled and curious
terms.*
" Upon which my dear earl laughed,
and related unto us how the queen
had been pleased to take notice of
him at Oxford, and spoke merrily to
him of his marriage. 'And prithee,
Phil, what were her highness's words? '
quoth his prying sister, like a true
daughter of Eve. At which my lord
stroked his chin, as if to smooth his
beard which is still to come, and said
her majesty had cried, ' God's pity,
child, thou wilt tire of thy wife afore
you have both left the nursery.'
' Alack,' cried Meg, ' if any but her
highness had said it, thy hand would
have been on thy sword, brother, and
I'll warrant thou didst turn as red as
a turkey-cock, when her majesty thus
titled thee a baby. Nay, do not frown,
but be a good lord to us, and tell Nan
and me if the queen said aught else.'
Then my lord cleared his brow, and
related how in the hunting scene in
the play, when the cry of the hounds
was heard outside the stage, which
was excellently well imitated, some
scholars who were seated near him,
and he must confess himself also, did
shout, * There, there he's caught,
he's caught !' upon which her grace's
majesty laughed, and merrily cried out
from her box, ' Those boys in very troth
are ready to leap out of the windows !'
'And had you such pleasant sports
each day, brother?' quoth our Meg.
' No, by my troth,' my lord answered ;
' the more's the pity ; for the next day
there was a disputation held in physic
and divinity from two to seven; and Dr.
Westphaling held forth at so great
length that her majesty sent word to him
to end his discourse without delay, to
the great relief and comfort of all pres-
ent. But he would not give over, lest,
having committed all to memory, he
should forget the rest if he omitted
any part of it, and be brought to
shame before the university and the
court.' ' What said her highness when
she saw he heeded not her com-
mands ?' Meg asked. ' She was an-
gered at first,' quoth my lord, ' that he
durst go on with his discourse when
she had sent him word presently to
stop, whereby she had herself been
prevented from speaking, which
Spanish Ambassador had asked
to do ; but when she heard the
it move^ her to laughter, and she
him a parrot.'
" ' And spoke not her majesty at all ?'
I asked ; and my lord said, ' She
would not have been a woman, Nan,
an she had held her tongue after being
once resolved to use it. She made
the next day an oration in Latin, and
stopped in the midst to bid my Lord
Burleigh be seated, and not to stand
painfully on his gouty feet. Beshrew
me, but I think she did it to show the
poor dean how much better her mem-
ory served her than his had done, for
she looked round to where he was
standing ere she resumed her dis-
course. And now, Meg, clear thy
throat and tune thy pipe, for not an-
other word will I speak till thou hast
sung that ditty good Mr. Martin set to
music for thee.' I have set it down here,
Mistress Constance, with the notes as
Constance Sherwood.
169
she sung k, that you may sing it also ;
and not like it the less that my quaint
fancy pictures the maiden the poet sings
of, in her ' frock of frolic green/ like
unto my sweet friend who dwells not
far from one of the fair rivers therein
named.
A knight, as antique stories tell,
A daughter had named Dawsabel,
A maiden fair and free ;
She wore a frock of frolic green,
Might well become a maiden queen,
Which seemly was to see.
The silk well could she twist and twine,
And make the fine March pine,
And with the needle work ;
And she could help the priest to say
His matins on a holy day,
And sing a psalm in kirk.
Her features all as fresh above
As is the grass that grows by Dove,
And lythe as lass of Kent ;
Her skin as soft as Leinster wool,
And white as snow on Penhisk Hull,
Or swan that swims on Trent.
This maiden on a morn betime
Goes forth when May is in its prime,
To get sweet setywall,
The honeysuckle, the hurlock,
The lily aud the lady-smock,
To deck her father's hall.
" ' Ah,' cried my lord, when Meg had
ended her song, beshrew me, if Mon-
sieur Sebastian's madrigals are one-
half so dainty as this English piece of
harmony.' And then, -for his lord-
ship's head is at present running on
pageants such as he witnessed at
Nonsuch and at Oxford, he would
have me call into the garden Madge
and Bess, whilst he fetched his brothers
to take part in a May game, not in-
deed in season now, but which, he
says, is too good sport not to be fol-
lowed all the year round. So he must
needs dress himself as Robin Hood,
with a wreath on his head and a sheaf
of arrows in his girdle, and me as Maid
Marian ; and Meg, for that she is taller
by an inch than any of us, though
younger than him and me, he said
should play Little John, and Bess
Friar Tuck, for that she looks so glee-
some and has a face so red and round.
'And Tom,' he cried, ' thou needst not
be at pains to change thy name, for we
will dub thee Tom the piper.' < And
what is Will to be ?' asked my Lady
Bess, who, since I be titled Countess
of Surrey, must needs be styled My
Lady William Howard.' 'Why,
there's only the fool left,' quoth my
lord, ' for thy sweetheart to play, Bess.'
At the which her ladyship and his
lordship too began to stamp and cry,
and would have sobbed outright, but
sweet Madge, whose face waxes so
white and her eyes so large and blue
that methinks she is more like to an
angel than a child, put out her little
thin hands with a, pretty gesture, and
said, ' I'll be the fool, brother Surrey,
and Will shall be the dragon, and Bess
ride the hobby-horse, an it will please
her.' ' Nay, but she is Friar Tuck/
quoth my lord, ' and should not ride.'
* And prithee wherefore no ?' cried the
forward imp, who, now she no more
fears her grandam's rod, has grown
very saucy and bold; 'why should
not the good friar ride, an it doth
pleasure him ?'
" At the which we laughed and fell
to acting our parts with no little mer-
riment and noise, and sundry repre-
hensions from my lord when we mis-
took our postures or the lines he
would have us to recite. And at the
end he set up a pole on the grass-plat
for the Maying, and we danced and
sung around it to a merry tune, which
set our feet flying in time with the
music :
Now in the month of maying,
When the merry lads are playing,
Pa, la, la.
Each with his bonny lasse,
Upon the greeny grasse,
Fa, la, la.
Madge was not strong enough to dance,
but she stole away to gather white and
blue violets, and made a fair garland
to set on my head, to my lord's great
content, and would have me unloose
my hair on my shoulders, which fell
nearly to my feet, and waved in the
wind- in a wild fashion ; which he said
was beseeming for a bold outlaw's bride,
and what he had seen in the Maid Ma-
rian, who had played in the pageant
at Nonsuch. Mrs. Fawcett misdoubt-
ed that this sport of ours should be
approved by Mr. Charke, who calls all
170
Constance Sherwood.
stage-playing Satan's recreations, and
a sure road unto hell ; and that we
shall hear on it in his next preach-
ment ; for he has held forth to her at
length on that same point, and up-
braided her for that she did suffer
such foolish and profane pastimes to
be carried on in his grace's house. Ah
me ! I see no harm in it ; and if, when
my lord visits me, I play not with him
as he chooses, 'tis not a thing to be ex-
pected that he will come only to sing
psalms or play chess, which Mr. Charke
holds to be the only game it befits
Christians to entertain themselves with.
'Tis hard to know what is right and
wrong when persons be of such differ-
ent minds, and no ghostly adviser to be
had, such as I was used to at my
grandmother's house.
" All, Mistress Constance ! when I
last wrote unto you I said troubles
was the word in every one's mouth,
and ere I had finished this letter
which I was then writing, and have
kept by me ever since what, think
you, has befallen us ? "Tis anent the
marriage of his grace with the Queen
of Scots ; which I now do wish it had
pleased God none had ever thought
of. Some weeks since my lord had
told me, with great glee, that the
Spanish ambassador was about to pe-
tition her majesty the queen for the
release of her highness's cousin ; and
Higford and Bannister, and the rest
of his grace's household whom, since
Mr. Martin went beyond seas, my
lord spends much of his time with, and
more of it methinks than is beseeming
or to the profit of his manners and ad-
vancement of his behavior have told
him that this would prepare the way
for the greatly-to-be-desired end of
his grace's marriage with that queen ;
and my lord was reckoning up all the
fine sports and pageants and noble en-
tertainments would be enacted at Ken-
ninghall and Thetford when that right
princely wedding should take place ;
and how he should himself carry the
train of the queen-duchess when she
went into church ; who was the fair-
est woman, he said, in the whole
world, and none ever seen to be com-
pared with her since the days of Gre-
cian Helen. But when, some days
ago, I questioned my lord touching the
success of the ambassador's suits, and
the queen's answer thereto, he said:
' By my troth, Nan, I understand that
her highness sent away the gooseman,
for so she entitled Senor Guzman,
with a flea in his ear ; for she said
he had come on a fool's errand, and
gave him for her answer that she
would advise the Queen of Scots to
bear her condition with less impa-
tience, or she might chance to find
some of those on whom she relied
shorter by a head/ ' Oh, my lord,' I
cried ; ' my dear Phil ! God send she
was not speaking of his grace your
father !' ' Nan,' quoth he, ' she looked
at his grace the next day with looks
of so great anger and disdain, that
my lord of Leicester that false and
villainous knave gave signs of so
great triumph as if his grace was
even on his way to the Tower. Be-
shrew me, if I would not run my ra-
pier through his body if I could !'
' And where is his grace at present ?'
I asked. ' He came to town
night,' quoth my lord, 'with my
Arundel, and this morning went
JKenninghall/ After this for some
days I heard no more, for a new tutor
came to my lord, who suffers him not
to stay in the waiting-room with his
grace's gentlemen, and keeps so strict
a hand over him touching his studies,
that in his brief hours of recreation he
would rather play at quoits, and other
active pastimes, than converse with his
lady. Alack ! I wish he were a few
years older, and I should have more
comfort of him than now, when I must
needs put up with his humors, which
be as changeful, by reason of his great
youth, as the lights and shades on the
grass 'neath an aspen-tree. I must be
throwing a ball for hours, or learning
a stage-part, when I would fain speak
of the weighty matters which be on
hand, such as I have told you of.
Howsoever, as good luck would have it,
my Lady Lumley sent for me to spend
Constance Sherwood.
171
the day with her ; and from her lady-
ship I learnt that his grace had written
to the queen that he had withdrawn
from the court because of the pain he
felt at her displeasure, and his mortifi-
cation at the treatment he had been sub-
jected to by the insolence of his foes, by
whom he has been made a common ta-
ble talk ; and that her majesty had laid
upon him her commands straightway
to return to court. That was all was
known that day ; but at the very time
that I was writing the first of these wo-
ful tidings to you, Mistress Constance,
his grace whom I now know that I
do love dearly, and with a true daugh-
ter's heart, by the dreadful fear and
pain I am in was arrested at Burn-
ham, where he had stopped on his road
to Windsor, and committed to the Tow-
er. Alack ! alack ! what will follow ?
I will leave this my letter open until I
have further news to send.
" His grace was examined this day
before my Lord-keeper Bacon, and my
Lords Northampton, Sadler, Bedford,
and Cecil ; and they have reported to
her majesty that the duke had not put
himself under penalty of the law by
any overt act of treason, and that it
would be difficult to convict him with-
out this. My Lord of Arundel, at
whose house I was when these tidings
came, said her majesty was so angered
at this judgment, that she cried out in
a passion, * Away ! what the law fails
to do my authority shall effect ;' and
straightway fell into a fit, her passion
was so great ; and they were forced to
apply vinegar to restore her. I had a
wicked thought come into my mind,
Mistress Constance, that I should not
have been concerned if the queen's
majesty had died in that fit, which I
befear me was high treason, and a
mortal sin, to wish for one to die in a
state of sin. But, alack ! since I have
left going to shrift I find it hard to
fight against bad thoughts and naughty
tempers ; and when I say my prayers,
and the old words come to my lips,
which the preachments I hear do con-
tradict, I am sometimes well-nigh
tempted to give over praying at all.
But I pray to God I may never be so
wicked ; and though I may not have
my beads (which were taken from
me), that the good Bishop of Durham
gave me when I was confirmed, I use
my fingers in their stead ; and whilst
his grace was at the Tower I did say
as many ' Hail Maries' in one day
as I ever did in my life before ; and
promised him, who is God's own dear
Son and hers, if his grace came out
of prison, never to be a day of my
life without saying a prayer, or giving
an alms, or" doing a good turn to those
which be in the same case, near at hand
or throughout the world ; and I ween
there are many such of all sorts at this
tune.
" Your loving servant to command,
whose heart is at present heavier than
her pen,
" ANN SURREY."
" P. S. My Lord of Westmoreland
has left London, and his lady is in a
sad plight. I hear such things said on
all sides touching Papists as I can
scarce credit, and I pray to God they
be not true. But an if they be so bad
as some do say, why does his grace
run his head into danger for the sake
of the Popish queen, as men do style
her? They have arrested Higford
and Bannister last night, and they are
to taste of the rack to-day, to satisfy
the queen, who is so urgent on it. My
lord is greatly concerned thereat, and
cried when he spoke of it, albeit he
tried to hide his tears. I asked him
to show me what sort of pain it was ;
whereupon he twisted my arm till I
cried out and bade him desist. God
help me ! I could not have endured
the pain an instant longer ; and if they
have naught to tell anent these plots
and against his grace, they needs must
speak what is false when under the
rack. Oh, 'tis terrible to think what
men do suffer and cause others to
suffer !"
This letter came into my hand on a
day when my father had gone into
Lichfield touching some business ; and
172
Constance Sherwood.
he brought with it the news of a rising
in the north, and that his Grace of
Northumberland and my Lord of West-
moreland had taken arms on hearing
of the Duke of Norfolk's arrest ; and
the Catholics, under Mr. Richard Nor-
ton and Lord Latimer, had joined their
standard, and were bearing the cross
before the insurgents. My father was
sore cast down at these tidings ; for
he looked for no good from what was
rebellion against a lawful sovereign,
and a consorting with troublesome
spirits, swayed by no love of our holy
religion but rather contrary to it, as
my Lord of Westmoreland and some
others of those leading lords. And he
hence foreboded fresh trials to all such
as were of the ancient faith all over
England ; which was not long in ac-
cruing even in our own case ; for a
short time after, we were for the first
time visited by pursuivants, on a day
and in such a manner as I will now
briefly relate.
CHAPTEE IV.
ON the Sunday morning which fol-
lowed the day on which the news had
reached us of the rising in Northum-
berland, I went, as wais my wont, into
my mother's dressing-room, to crave
her blessing, and I asked of her if the
priest who came to say mass for us
most Sundays had arrived. She said
he had been, and had gone away again,
and that she greatly feared we should
have no prayers that day, saving such
as w.e might offer up for ourselves ; " to-
gether," she added after a pause, " with
a bitter sacrifice of tears and of such
sufferings as we have heard of, but
as yet not known the taste of our-
selves."
Again I felt in my heart a throbbing
feeling, which had in it an admixture
of pain and joy made up, I ween, of
conflicting passions such as curiosity
feeding on the presentment of an ap-
proaching change ; of the motions of
grace in a soul which faintly discerns
the happiness of suffering for con-
science sake ; and the fear of suffer-
ing natural to the human heart.
" Why are we to have no mass,
sweet mother ?" I asked, encircling her
waist in my arms ; " and wherefore
has good Mr. Bryan gone away ?"
" We received advice late last evei
ing," she answered, " that the queen*
pursuivants have orders to search tl
day the houses of the most noted i<
cusants in this neighborhood ; and 't
likely they may begin with us, wl
have never made a secret of our fa
and never will."
"And will they kill us if th(
come ?" I asked, with that same trei
bling eagerness I have so often knoi
since when danger was at hand.
" Not now, not to-day, Conny,'
answered ; " but I pray to God they
do not carry us away to prison ; fo
since this rising in the north, to be
Catholic and a traitor is one and tl
same in their eyes who have to jud<
us. We must needs hide our bool
and church furniture ; so give me tlrj
beads, sweet one, and the cross fr
thy neck."
I waxed red when my mother
me unloose the string, and tigl
clasped the cross in both my hanc
" Let them kill me, mother," I crk
" but take not off my cross."
" Maybe," she said, " the qut
officers would trample on it, and
injure their own souls in dishonoring
a holy symbol." And as she spoke
she took it from me, and hid it in a
recess behind the chimney ; which no
sooner was done, than we heard a
sound of horses' feet in the approach ;
and going to the window, I cried out,
" Here is a store of armed men on
horseback !" Ere I had uttered the
words, one of them had dismounted
and loudly knocked at the door with
his truncheon ; upon which my mother,
taking me by the hand, went down
stairs into the parlor where my
father was. It seemed as if those
knocks had struck on her heart, so
great a trembling came over her.
My father bade the servants throw
Constance Sherwood.
173
open the door; and the sheriff came
in, with two pursuivants and some
more men with him, and produced a
warrant to search the house ; which
my father having read, he bowed his
head, and gave orders not to hinder
them in their duty. He stood himself
the while in the hall, his face as white
as a smock, and his teeth almost run-
ning through his lips.
One of the men came into the
librar} r , and pulling down the books,
scattered them on the floor, and cried :
" Look ye here, sirs, what Popish
stuff is this, fit for the hangman's
burning ! " At the which another an-
swered :
" By my troth, Sam, I misdoubt
that thou canst read. Methinks thou
dost hunt Popery as dogs do game, by
the scent. Prithee spell me the title
of this volume."
" I will have none of thy gibing,
Master Sevenoaks," returned the
other. " Whether I be a scholar or
not, I'll warrant no honest gospeller
wrote on those yellow musty leaves,
which be two hundred years old, if
they be a day."
" And I'll warrant thee in that cre-
dence, Master Samuel, by the same
token that the volume in thy hand is a
treatise on field-sports, writ in the days
of Master Caxton ; a code of the laws
to be observed in the hunting and
killing of deer, which I take to be no
Popish sport, for our most gracious
queen God save her majesty !
slew a fat buck not long ago in "Wind-
sor Forest with her own hand, and
remembered his grace of Canterbury
with half her prey ;" and so saying, he
drew his comrade from the room ; I
ween with the intent to save the books
from his rough handling, for he seemed
of a more gentle nature than the rest
and of a more moderate disposition.
When they had ransacked all the
rooms below, they went upstairs, and
my father followed. Breaking from my
mother's side, who sat pale and still as
a statute, unable to move from her
seat, I ran after him, and on the land-
ing-place I heard the sheriff say
somewhat touching the harboring of
priests ; to the which he made answer
that he was ready to swear there was
no priest in the house. "Nor has
been?" quoth the sheriff; upon which
my father said:
" Good sir, this house was built in
the days of Ijer majesty's grandfather,
King Henry VH. ; and on one occa-
sion his majesty was pleased to rest
under my grandfather's roof, and to
hear mass in that room," he said,
pointing to what was now the chapel,
" the church being too distant for his
majesty's convenience: sopriestshave
been within these walls many tunes
ere I was born."
The sheriff said no more at that
time, but went into the room, where
there were only a few chairs, for that
in the night the altar and all that
appertained to it had been removed.
He and his men were going out again,
when a loud knocking was heard
against the wall on one side of the
chamber; at the sound of which my
father's face, which was white before,
became of an ashy paleness.
" Ah !" cried one of the pursuivants,
"the lying Papist! The egregious
Roman ! an oath is in his mouth that
he has no priest in his house, and here
is one hidden in his cupboard."
"Mr. Sherwood!" the sheriff
shouted, greatly moved, "lead the
way to the hiding-place wherein a
traitor is concealed, or I order the
house to be pulled down about your
ears."
My father was standing like one
stunned by a sudden blow, and I
heard him murmur, " 'Tis the devil's
own doing, or else I am stark, staring
mad."
The men ran to the wall, and
knocked against it with their sticks,
crying out in an outrageous manner
to the priest to come out of his hole.
" We'll unearth the Jesuit fox," cried
one; "we'll give him a better lodg-
ing in Lichfield gaol," shouted
another ; and the sheriff kept threat-
ening to set fire to the house. Still the
knocking from within went on, as if
174
Constance Shenoood.
answering that outside, and then a
voice cried out, " I cannot open : I am
shut in."
" 'Tis Edmund !" I exclaimed ;
" 'tis Edmund is in the hiding-place."
And then the words were distinctly
heard, "'Tis I; 'tis Edmund Gen-
ings. For God's sake, open ; I am
shut in." Upon which my father drew
a deep breath, and hastening for-
ward, pressed his "finger on a place in
the wall, the panel slipped, and Ed-
mund came out of the recess, looking
scared and confused. The pursuivants
seized him ; but the sheriff cried out,
surprised, " God's death, sirs ! but 'tis
the son of the worshipful Mr. Gen-
ings, whose lady is a mother in Israel,
and M. Jean de Luc's first cousin !
And how came ye, Mr. Edmund, to
be concealed in this Popish den?
Have these recusants imprisoned you
with some foul intent, or perverted
you by their vile cunning ?" Edmund
was addressing my father in an agi-
tated voice.
" I fear me, sir," he cried, clasping
his hands, " I befear me much I have
affrighted you, and I have been my-
self sorely affrighted. I was passing
through this room, which I have never
before seen, and the door of which
was open this morn. By chance I
drew my hand along the wall, where
there was no apparent mark, when the
panel slipped and disclosed this recess,
into which I stepped, and straight-
way the opening closed and I re-
mained in darkness. I was afraid no
one might hear me, and I should die
of hunger."
My father tried to smile, but could
not. " Thank God," he said, " 'tis no
worse ;" and sinking down on a chair
he remained silent, whilst the sheriff
and the pursuivants examined the
recess, which was deep and narrow,
and in which they brandished their
swords in all directions. Then they
went round the room, feeling the walls ;
but though there was another recess
with a similar mode of aperture, they
hit not on it, doubtless through God's
mercy ; for in it were concealed the
altar furniture and our books, with
many other things besides, which they
would have seized on.
Before going away, the sheriff ques-
tioned Edmund concerning his faith,
and for what reason he abode in a Po-
pish house and consorted with recu-
sants. Edmund answered he was no
Papist, but a kinsman of Mrs. Sher-
wood, unto whose house his father had
oftentimes sent him. Upon which he
was counselled to take heed unto him-
self and to eschew evil company, which
leads to horrible defections, and into
the straight road to perdition. Where-
upon they departed; and the officer
who had enticed his companion from
the library smiled as he passed me,
and said :
"And wherefore not at prayers, lit-
tle mistress, on the Lord's day, as all
Christian folks should be?"
I ween he was curious to see how
I should answer, albeit not moved
thereunto by any malicious intent.
But at the time I did not bethink mi
self that he spoke of Protestant
vice ; and being angered at what
passed, I said :
" Because we be kept from prajj
by the least welcome visit ever mi
to Christian folks on a Lord's
morning." He laughed and cried :
" Thou hast a ready tongue, young
mistress ; and when tried for recu-
sancy I warrant thou'lt give the judge
a piece of thy mind."
" And if I ever be in such a pres-
ence, and for such a cause," I an-
swered, " I pray to God I may say to
my lord on the bench what the blessed
apostle St. Peter spoke to his judges :
* If it be just in the sight of God to
hear you rather than God, judge ye.' '*
At which he cried :
" Why, here is a marvel indeed a
Papist to quote Scripture !" And laugh-
ing again, he went his way ; "and the
house was for that time rid of these
troublesome guests.
Then Edmund again sued for par-
don to my father, that through his rash
conduct he had been the occasion of
so great fear and trouble to him.
Constance Sherwood.
175
"I warrant thee, my good boy,"
quoth my father, " thou didst cause me
the most keen anguish, and the most
sudden relief from it, which can well be
thought of; and so no more need be
said thereon. And as thou must needs
be going to the public church, 'tis tune
that thou bestir thyself; for 'tis a long
walk there and back, and the sun wax-
ing hot."
When Edmund was gone, and I
alone with him, my father clasped me
in his arms, and cried :
" God send, my wench, thou mayest
justify thy sponsors who gave thee thy
name in baptism ; for 'tis a rare con-
stancy these tunes do call for, and
such as is not often seen, saving in
such as be of a noble and religious
spirit ; which I pray to God may be
the case with thee."
My mother did not speak, but went
away with her hand pressed against
her heart ; which was what of late I
had often seen her to do, as if the pain
was more than she could bear.
One hour later, as I was crossing
the court, a man met me suited as a
farmer ; who, when I passed him, laid
his hand on my shoulder; at the
which I started, and turning round
saw it was Father Bryan ; who, smil-
ing as I caught his hand, cried out :
"Dost know the shepherd in his
wolf's clothing, little mistress?" and
hastening on to the chapel he said
mass, at the which only a few assisted,
as my parents durst not send to the
Catholics so late in the day. As soon
as mass was over, Mr. Bryan said he
must leave, for there was a warrant
ssued for his apprehension ; and our
house famed for recusancy, so as he
might not stay in it but with great
peril to himself and to its owners. We
stood at the door as he was mounting
his horse, and my father said, patting
its neck :
" Tis a faithful servant this, rever-
nd father ; many a mile he has car-
ried thee to the homes of the sick and
dying since our troubles began."
"Ah! good Mr. Sherwood," Mr.
Bryan replied, as he gathered up the
bridle, " thou hast indeed warrant to
style the poor beast faithful. If I were
to shut my eyes and let him go, no
doubt but he would find his way to the
doors of such as cleave to the an-
cient faith, in city or in hamlet, across
moor or through thick wood. If a
pursuivant bestrode him, he might dis-
cover through his means who be re-
cusants a hundred miles around. But
I bethink me he would not budge with
such a burthen on his back ; and that
he who made the prophet's ass to speak,
would, give the good beast more sense
than to turn informer, and to carry the
wolf to the folds of the lambs. And
prithee, Mistress Constance," said the
good priest, turning to me, " canst keep
a secret and be silent, when men's
lives are in jeopardy ?"
" Aye," cried my father quickly,
" 'tis as much as worthy Mr. Bryan's
life is worth that none should know he
was here to-day."
" More than my poor life is worth,"
he rejoined ; " that were little to think
of, my good friends. For five years I
have made it my prayer that the day
may soon come and I care not how
soon when I may lay it down for his
sake who gave it. But we must e'en
have a care for those who are so rash
as to harbor priests in these evil
times. So Mistress Constance must
e'en study the virtue of silence, and
con the meaning of the proverb which
teacheth discretion to be the best part
of valor."
"If Edmund Genings asketh me,
reverend father, if I have heard mass
to-day, what must I answer ?"
" Say the queen's majesty has for-
bidden mass to be said in this her
kingdom ; and if he presseth thee more
closely thereon, why then tell him the
last news from the poultry-yard, and
that the hares have eat thy mignon-
ette ; which they be doing even now,
if my eyes deceive me not," said the
good father, pointing with his whip to
the flower-garden.
So, smiling, he gave us a last bless-
ing, and rode on toward the Chase,
and I went to drive the hares away
176
Constance Sherwood.
from the flower-beds, and then to set
the chapel in fair order. And ever
and anon, that day and the next, I
took out of my pocket my sweet Lady
Surrey's last letter, and pictured to
myself all the scenes therein related ;
so that I seemed to live one-half of my
life with her in thought, so greatly was
my fancy set upon her, and my heart
concerned in her troubles.
CHAPTER V.
NOT many days after the sheriff and
the pursuivants had been at our house,
and Mr. Bryan, by reason of the
bloody laws which had been enacted
against Papists and such as harbor
priests, had left us, though intending
to return at such times as might serve
our commodity, and yet not affect our
safety, I was one morning assisting
my mother in the store-room, wherein
she was setting aside such provisions as
were to be distributed to the poor that
week, together with salves, medicines,
and the like, which she also gave out
of charity, when a spasm came over
her, so vehement and painful, that for
the moment she lost the use of speech,
and made signs to me to call for help.
I ran affrighted into the library for my
father, and brought him to her, upon
which, in a little time, she did some-
what recover, but desired he would
assist her to her own chamber, whither
she went leaning on his arm. When
laid on her bed she seemed easier;
and smiling, bade me leave them for
awhile, for that she desired to have
speech with my father alone.
For the space of an hour I walked
in the garden, with so oppressive a
grief at my heart as I had never be-
fore experienced. Methinks the great
stillness in the air added thereunto
some sort of physical disorder ; for
the weather was very close and heavy ;
and if a leaf did but stir, I started as
if danger was at hand ; and the noise
of the chattering pies over my head
worked in me an apprehensive melan-
choly, foreboding, I doubt not, what
was to follow. At about eleven
o'clock, hearing the sound of a horse's
feet in the avenue, I turned round,
and saw Edmund riding from the
house ; upon which I ran across the
grass to a turning of the road where he
would pass, and called to him to stop,
which he did ; and told me he was
going to Lichfield for his father,
whom my mother desired presently
to see. "Then thou shouldst not
tarry," I said ; and he pushed on and
left me standing where I was ; but the
bell then ringing for dinner, I went
back to the house, and, in so doing,
took notice of a bay-tree on the lawn
which was withered and dried-up,
though the gardener had been at pains
to preserve it by sundry appliances and
frequent watering of it. Then it came
to my remembrance what my nurse
used to say, that the dying of that
sort of tree is a sure omen of a death
in a family ; which thought sorely dis-
turbed me at that time. I sat down
with my father to a brief and silent
meal; and soon after the physician he
had sent for came, whom he con-
ducted to my mother's chamber,
whereunto I did follow, and slipped in
unperceived. Sitting on one side of
the bed, behind the curtains, I heard
her say, in a voice which sounded
hollow and weak, " Good Master
Lawrenson, my dear husband was
fain to send for you, and I cared not
to withstand him, albeit persuaded
that I am hastening to my journey's
end, and that naught that you or any
other man may prescribe may stay
what is God's will. And if this be
visible to you as it is to me, I pray
you keep it not from me, for it will be
to my much comfort to be assured
of it,"
When she had done speaking, he
did feel her pulse ; and the while my
heart beat so quick and, as it seemed
to me, so loud as if it must needs im-
pede my hearing ; but in a moment I
heard him say : " God defend, good
madam, I should deceive you. While
there is life, there is hope. Greater
Constance Sherwood.
177
comfort I dare not urge. If there be
any temporal matter on your mind,
'twere better settled now, and likewise
of your soul's health, by such pious
exercises as are used by those of
your way of thinking."
At the hearing of these his words,
my father fetched a deep sigh; but
she, as one greatly relieved, clasped
her hands together, and cried, " My
God, I thank thee !"
Then, steah'ng from behind the cur-
tain, I laid my head on the pillow nigh
unto hers, and whispered, " Sweet
mother, prithee do not die, or else take
me with thee."
But she, as one not heeding, ex-
claimed, with her hands uplifted, " O
faithless heart ! O selfish heart ! to
be so glad of death !"
The physician was directing the
maids what they should do for her
relief when the pain came on, and he
himself stood compounding some med-
icine for her to take. My father asked
of him when he next would come ;
and he answered, " On the morrow ;"
but methinks 'twas even then his be-
lief that there would be no morrow
for her who was dying before her
time, like the bay-tree in our garden.
She bade him farewell in a kindly
fashion ; and when we were alone, I
lying on the bed by her side, and my
father sitting at its head, she said,
in a low voice, rf How wonderful be
God's dealings with us, and how fath-
erly his care ; in that he takes the
weak unto himself, and leaves behind
the strong to fight the battle now at
hand! My dear master, I had a
dream yesternight which had some-
what of horror in it, but more me-
thinks of comfort." My father break-
ing out then in sighs and tears as if
his heart would break, she said, " Oh,
but thou must hear and acknowledge,
my loved master, how gracious is
God's providence to thy poor wife.
When thou knowest what I have suf-
fered not in body, though that has
been sharp too, but in my soul it
will reconcile thine own to a parting
which has in it so much of mercy.
13
Thou dost remember the night when
Mr. Mush was here, and what his dis-
course did run on ?"
u Surely do I, sweet wife," he an-
swered ; " for it was such as the mind
doth not easily lose the memory of;
the sufferings and glorious end of the
blessed martyr Mrs. Clitherow. I
perceived what sorrowful heed thou
didst lend to his recital; but has it
painfully dwelt in thy mind since ?"
" By day and by night it hath not
left me ; ever recurring to my
thoughts, ever haunting my dreams,
and working in me a fearful apprehen-
sion lest in a like trial I should be
found wanting, and prove a traitor to
God and his Church, and a disgrace
and heartbreak to thee who hast so
truly loved me far beyond my deserts.
I have bragged of the dangers of the
times, even as cowards are wont to
speak loud in the dark to still by the
sound of their own voices the terrors
they do feel. I have had before my
eyes the picture of that cruel death,
and of the children extremely used for
answering as their mother had taught
them, till cold drops of sweat have
stood on my brow, and I have knelt
in my chamber wringing my hands
and praying to be spared a like trial.
And then, maybe an hour later, sit-
ting at the table, I spake merrily of
the gallows, mocking my own fears, as
when Mr. Bryan was last here ; and
I said that priests should be more
welcome to me than ever they were,
now that virtue and the Catholic cause
were made felony ; and the same would
be in God's sight more meritorious
than ever before : upon which, ' Then
you must prepare your neck for the
rope,' quoth he, in a pleasant but
withal serious manner ; at the which a
cold chill overcame me, and L very
well-nigh faulted, though constraining
my tongue to say, ' God's will be
done ; but I am far unworthy of so
great an honor.' The cowardly heart
belied the confident tongue, and fear
of my own weakness affrighted me,
by the which I must needs have
offended God, who helps such as trust
178
Constance Sherwood.
in him. But I hope to be forgiven,
inasmuch as it has ever been the wont
of my poor thoughts to picture evils
beforehand in such a form as to scare
the soul, which, when it came to meet
with them, was not shaken from its
constancy. When Conny was an
infant I have stood nigh unto a win-
dow with her in my arms, and of a
sudden a terror would seize me lest I
should let her fall out of my hands,
which yet clasped her ; and methinks
'twas somewhat of alike feeling which
worked in me touching the denying of
my faith, which, God is my witness,
is dearer to me than aught upon
earth."
"'Tis even so, sweet wife," quoth
my father ; " the edge of a too keen
conscience and a sensitive apprehen-
sion of defects visible to thine own
eyes and God's never to mine, who
was ever made happy by thy love and
virtue have worn out the frame
which enclosed them, and will rob
me of the dearest comfort of my life, if
I must lose thee."
She looked upon him with so much
sweetness, as if the approach of death
had brought her greater peace and
joy than life had ever done, and she
replied : " Death comes to me as a
compassionate angel, and I fain would
have thee welcome with me the kindly
messenger who brings so great relief
to the poor heart thou hast so long
cherished. Now, thou art called to
another task ; and when the bruised,
broken reed is removed from thy side,
thou wilt follow the summons which
even now sounds in thine ears."
" Ah," cried my father, clasping her
hand, " art thou then already a saint,
sweet wife, that thou hast read the
vow slowly registered as yet in the
depthg of a riven heart?" Then his
eyes turned on me; and she, who
seemed to know his thoughts, that
sweet soul who had been so silent in
life, but was now spending her last
breath in never-to-be-forgotten words,
answered the question contained in
that glance as if it had been framed in
a set speech.
" Fear not for her," she said, laying
her cheek close unto mine. " As her
days, so shall her strength be. Me-
thinks Almighty God has given her
a spirit meet for the age in which her
lot is cast. The early training thou
hast had, my wench ; the lack of such
memories as make the present twofold
bitter ; the familiar mention round thy
cradle of such trials as do beset Cat
lies in these days, have nurtured
thee a stoutness of heart which wil
stand thee in good stead amidst
rough waves of this troublesome
world. The iron will not enter int
thy soul as it hath done into mine."
Upon which she fell back exhausted
and for a while no sound was heai
in or about the house save the barkii
of our great dog.
My father had sent a messenger
a house where we had had notice
days before Father Ford was stayii
but with no certain knowledge he
still there, or any other priest hi
neighborhood, which occasioned hii
no small disquietude, for my mother's
strength seemed to be visibly sinkii
which was what the doctor's words he
led him to expect. The man he
sent returned not till the evening;
in the afternoon Mr. Genings and
son came from Lichfield, which, when
my mother heard, she said God was
gracious to permit her once more to
see John, which was Mr. Genings'
name. They had been reared in the
same house ; and a kindness had al-
ways continued betwixt them. For
some time past he had conformed to
the times ; and since his marriage with
the daughter of a French Huguenot
who lived in London, and who was a
lady of very commendable character
and manners, and strenuous in her
own way of thinking, he had left off
practising his own religion in secret,
which for a while he used to do. When
he came in, and saw death plainly writ
in his cousin's face, he was greatly
moved, and knelt down by her side
with a very sorrowful countenance ;
upon which she straightly looked at
him, and said : " Cousin John, my
Constance Sherwood.
179
breath is very short, as my time is also
like to be. But one word I would
fain say to thee before I die. I was
always well pleased with my religion,
which was once thine and that of all
Christian people one hundred years
ago ; but I have never been so well
pleased with it as now, when I be about
to meet my Judge."
Mr. Genings' features worked with
a strange passion, in which was more
of grief than displeasure, and grasping
his son's shoulder, who was likewise
kneeling and weeping, he said : " You
have wrought with this boy, cousin, to
make him a Catholic."
"As heaven is my witness," she
answered, "not otherwise but by my
prayers."
" Hast thou seen a priest, cousin
Constance?" he then asked: upon
which my mother not answering, the
poor man burst into tears, and cried :
" Oh, cousin cousin Constance, dost
count me a spy, and at thy death-bed ?"
He seemed cut to the heart ; where-
upon she gave him her hand, and said
she hoped God would send her such
ghostly assistance as she stood in need
of; and praying God to bless him and
his wife and children, and make them
his faithful servants, so she might meet
them all in perpetual happiness, she
spoke with such good cheer, and then
bade him and Edmund farewell with
so pleasant a smile, as deceived them
into thinking her end not so near.
And so, after a while, they took their
leave ; upon which she composed her-
self for a while in silence, occupying
her thoughts in prayer ; and toward
evening, through God's mercy, albeit
the messenger had returned with the
heavy news that Father Ford had left
the county some days back, it hap-
pened that Mr. Watson, a secular priest
who had lately arrived in England,
and was on his way to Chester, stopped
at our house, whereunto Mr. Orton,
whom he had seen in prison at London,
had directed him for his own conven-
ience on the road, and likewise our
commodity, albeit little thinking how
great our need would be at that time
of so opportune a guest, through whose
means that dear departing soul had
the benefit of the last sacraments with
none to trouble or molest her, and such
ghostly aid as served to smooth her
passage to what has proved, I doubt
not, the beginning of a happy eternity,
if we may judge by such tokens as the
fervent acts of contrition she made
both before and after shrift, such as
might have served to wash away ten
thousand sins through his blood who
cleansed her, and her great and peace-
able joy at receiving him into her
heart whom she soon trusted to behold.
Her last words were expressions of
wonder and gratitude at God's singu-
lar mercy shown unto her in the quiet
manner of her death in the midst of
such troublesome times. And me-
thinks, when the silver cord was
loosed, and naught was left of her on
earth save the fair corpse which re-
tained in death the semblance it had
had in life, that together with the nat-
ural grief which found vent in tears,
there remained in the hearts of such
as loved her a comfortable sense of the
Divine goodness manifested in this her
peaceable removal.
How great the change which that
day wrought in me may be judged of
by such who, at the age I had then
reached to, have met with a like afflic-
tion, coupled with a sense of duties to
be fulfilled, such as then fell to my lot,
both as touching household cares, and
in respect to the cheering of my father
in his solitary hours during the time
we did yet continue at Sherwood Hall,
which was about a year. It waxed
very hard then for priests to make
their way to the houses of Catholics,
as many now found it to their interest
to inform against them and such as
harbored them ; and mostly in our
neighborhood, wherein there were at
that time no recusants of so great rank
and note that the sheriff would not be
lief to meddle with them. We had
oftentimes had secret advices to beware
of such and such of our servants who
might betray our hidden conveyances
of safety ; and my father scarcely durst
180
Constance Sherwood.
be sharp with them when they offend-
ed by slacking their duties, lest they
might bring us into danger if they re-
vealed, upon any displeasure, priests
having abided with us. Edmund we
saw no more since my mother's death ;
and after a while the news did reach
us that Mr. Genings had died 'of the
small-pox, and left his .wife in so dis-
tressed a condition, against all expec-
tation, owing to debts he had incurred,
that she had been constrained to sell
her house and furniture, and was living
in a small lodging near unto the school
where Edmund continued his studies.
I noticed, as tune went by, how
heavily it weighed on my father's heart
to see so many Catholics die without
the sacraments, or fall away from their
faith, for lack of priests to instruct
them, like so many sheep without a
shepherd ; and I guessed by words he
let fall on divers occasions, that the in-
tent obscurely shadowed forth in his
discourse to my mother on her death-
bed .was ripening to a settled purpose,
and tending to a change in his state
of life, which only his love and care
for me caused him to defer. What I
did apprehend must one day needs
occur, was hastened about this time by
a warning he did receive that on an
approaching day he would be appre-
hended and carried by the sheriff be-
fore the council at Lichfield, to be ex-
amined touching recusancy and har-
boring of priests ; which was what he
had long expected. This message was,
as it were, the signal he had been
waiting for, and an indication of God's
will in his regard. He made instant
provision for the placing of his estate
in the hands of a friend of such singu-
lar honesty and so faithful a friendship
toward himself, though a Protestant,
that he could wholly trust him. And
next he set himself to dispose of her
whom he did term his most dear earth-
ly treasure, and his sole tie to this
perishable world, which he resolved to
do by straightway sending her to Lon-
don, unto his sister Mistress Congleton,
who had oftentimes offered, since his
wife's death, to take charge of this
daughter, and to whom he now de-
spatched a messenger with a letter,
wherein he wrote that the times were
now so troublesome, he must needs
leave his home, and take advantage of
the sisterly favor she had willed to
show him in the care of his sole child,
whom he now would forthwith send
London, commending her to her
keeping, touching her safety and
ligious and virtuous training, and
he should be more beholden to
than ever brother was to sister, and,
long as he lived, as he was bound
do, pray for her and her good husbanc
"When this letter was gone, and ord<
had been taken for my journey, whic
was to be on horseback, and in tl
charge of a maiden gentlewoman wl
had been staying some months in
neighborhood, and was now about
two days to travel to London, it seeim
to me as if that which I had long e
pected and pictured unto myself
now come upon me of a sudden,
in such wise as for the first time
taste its bitterness. For I saw, wit
out a doubt, that this parting was
the forerunner of a change in my fat
er's condition as great and weighty
could well be thought of. But of
howbeit our thoughts were full of
no talk was ministered between us.
He said I should hear from him in
London ; and that he should now travel
into Lancashire and Cheshire, changing
his name, and often shifting his quar-
ters whilst the present danger lasted.
The day which was to be the last to
see us in the house wherein himself
and his fathers for many centuries
back, and I his unworthy child, had
been born, was spent in such fashion
as becometh those who suffer for con-
science sake, and that is with so much
sorrow as must needs be felt by a
loving father and a dutiful child in a
first and doubtful parting, with so much
regret as is natural in the abandon-
ment of a peaceful earthly home,
wherein God had been served in a
Catholic manner for many generations
and up to that time without discontinu-
ance, only of late years as it were by
The Marquis de Chastellux.
181
night and stealth, which was linked in
their memories with sundry innocent,
joys and pleasures, and such griefs as
do hallow and endear the visible scenes
wherewith they be connected, but
withal with a stoutness of heart in him,
and a youthful steadiness in her whom
he had infested with a like courage
unto his own, which wrought in them
so as to be of good cheer and shed no
more tears on so moving an occasion
than the debility of her nature and the
tenderness of his paternal care extort-
ed from their eyes when he placed her
on her horse, and the bridle in the
hand of the servant who was to ac- (
company her to London. Their last
parting was a brief one, and such as I
care not to be minute in describing;
for thinking upon it even now 'tis like
to make me weep ; which I would not
do whilst writing this history, in the
recital of which there should be more
of constancy and thankful rejoicing in
God's great mercies, than of womanish
softness in looking back to past trials.
So I will even break off at this point ;
and in the next chapter relate the
course of the journey which was begun
on that day.
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
Abridged from Le Correspondant.
THE MARQUIS DE CHASTELLUX.
IN the bleak region of Upper Bur-
gundy, not far from the domain of
Vauban, stands the old manor of
Chastellux, famous since the fifteenth
century as the birth-place of two
brothers, one of whom became an ad-
miral, the other a marshal of France.
From this feudal stronghold came
forth one of the most amiable of the
courtiers of Louis XVI. a disciple
of Voltaire and Hume, a rival of Tur-
got and Adam Smith, a friend of
Washington and Jefferson, a forerun-
ner of the revolutionists of 1789, a phil-
osopher, an historian, a political econo-
mist, something of a poet, something
of a naturalist, something of an artist,
a man of taste, an enthusiastic student,
a brilliant talker, and an elegant writ-
er. The rude Sieurs de Chastellux
would have been not a little astonished
could they have foreseen what charac-
ter of man was destined to inherit
their title.
Frangois Jean de Beauvoir, first
known as Chevalier and afterward
Marquis de Chastellux, was born at
Paris in 1734. He was a son of the
Count de Chastellux, lieutenant-gen-
eral of the armies of the king, by
Mile. d'Aguesseau, daughter of the
chancellor. His mother, being left a
widow at an early period, withdrew
thereupon into the privacy of domes-
tic life, and the young marquis had the
good fortune to be brought up under
the eyes of the Chancellor d'Agues-
seau himself. He entered the army
at sixteen, and was hardly twenty-one
before he had risen to be colonel. He
distinguished himself highly during
the campaigns of the Seven Years'
"War, and it was as a reward of his
gallantry no less than out of compli-
ment to his hereditary rank that he
was selected on one occasion to pre-
sent to the king the flags of a con-
quered city. It is hard to understand
how, in the midst of such an active
life, he could find time for study ; but
for all that he knew Greek, Latin,
English, and Italian, and had some
acquaintance with every branch of
science cultivated in his time. From
boyhood he showed a zealous interest
in every sort of invention or discovery
which promised to be of practical use
182
The Marquis de Chastellux.
,to mankind. When the principle of
inoculation for small-pox was first
broached in Europe, everybody shrank
in alarm from the experiment. The
young marquis had himself inocu-
lated without his mother's knowledge,
and then, running to Buffon, who
knew his family, exclaimed joyfully,
" I am saved, and my example will be
the means of saving many others. "
When peace was declared in 1763,
he was not yet thirty. With his emi-
nent gifts of mind and person, a bril-
liant career in society lay open to him,
but he aimed to be something more
than a mere man of fashion. His first
literary productions were biographical
sketches of two of his brother officers,
MM. de Closen and de. Belsunce,
which appeared in the Mercure, in
1765. He wrote a lively and grace-
ful little essay on the " Union of
Poetry and Music," the same subject
which Marmontel afterward treated
in his poem of Polymnie. The great
quarrel between the schools of Gluck
and Piccini did not break out until
ten years later ; but mutterings of the
coming tempest were heard already.
Itah'an music had its enthusiastic ad-
mirers and its implacable foes, and in
the midst of their disputes Monsigny
and Gretry had just given to France
a lyric school of her own by creating
the comic opera. M. de Chastellux,
like everybody else in those days, was
passionately fond of the theatre, and
he espoused the cause of Italian music
with the ardor that characterized ev-
erything he did. About the same
time he fell into the society of the En-
cyclopoedists, and allied himself with
Helvetius, d'Alembert, Turgot, and
the rest of the philosophical party,
who received the illustrious recruit
with open arms.
About the same time that M. de
Chastellux left the army, and made
his debut in civil life, the Scottish his-
torian and philosopher, David Hume,
arrived in Paris, with the British am-
bassador, Lord Hertford. He became
the lion of the day. Courtiers and
philosophers fell down and worship-
ped him ; his skeptical opinions were
eagerly imbibed, and the three years
that he spent in the French capital
became, owing to his extraordinary
influence, one of the most important
epochs in the literary history of the
eighteenth century. M. de Chastellux
shared in the general enthusiasm ; and
the " Essays" and " Political Discours-
es" of Hume, together with the Essai
sur les mceurs et I'esprit des nations
of Voltaire, which had appeared a few
years before, wrought upon his mind
a deep and lasting impression. The
united influence of these two authors
led him to a course of study wKich re-
sulted in a work upon which his reputa-
tion was finally established. This was
his celebrated treatise, " On Public Fe-
licity; or, Considerations on the Con-
dition of Man at different Periods of
his History," in two volumes. It bears
a resemblance to both its parents. It
is historical, like the Essai sur
mceurs, and dogmatic, like the "
says" and " Discourses." And that
one of its defects. The " Consid(
tions" on the condition of man at
ous periods serve by way of introdi
tion to the author's theory of public
felicity ; lout the second part is inferior
to the first, The body of the book is
sacrificed to the introduction.
This was four years before the ap-
pearance of Adam Smith's " Wealth
of Nations." The Marquis de Mira-
beau and others of his school had be-
gun to write ; but their notions of po-
litical economy were still unfamiliar
to the public. M. de Chastellux may
therefore be regarded as one of the
first supporters of that doctrine of
human perfectibility which lies at the
bottom of all the prevailing opinions
of the eighteenth century. To this he
added another theory, that the only
end of government ought to be " the
greatest happiness of the greatest pos-
sible number." Nearly one hundred
years ago, therefore, he discovered
and developed the principle which is
now one of the most popular epitomes
of social science. His style is good,
The Marquis de Chastellux.
183
but neither very concise nor very bril-
liant. It is now and then obscure,
sometimes digressive, sometimes de-
clamatory ; but for the most part clear,
lively, and abounding in those happy
touches which show the writer to be
a man of the world as well as an
author.
It is said that the immediate occasion
of his writing the book was a conver-
sation with Mably, the author of " Ob-
servations on the History of France,"
who maintained that the world was
constantly degenerating, and that the
men of to-day were not half so good
as their grandfathers. The young
philosopher, his head full of the new
ideas, resolved to demonstrate the su-
periority of the present over the past.
The first edition of his work appeared
in 1772, two years before the death of
Louis XV. It was printed anony-
mously in Holland. Everywhere it
was read with avidity, abroad as well
as in France. It was translated into
English, German, and Italian. Vol-
taire read it at Ferney, and was so
much struck by it that he covered his
copy with marginal notes not always
of approbation which were repro-
duced in a new edition of the work by
the author's son, in 1822.
Despite great merits, which cannot
be denied it, the essay "On Public
Felicity " is now almost forgotten. In
the historical portion, M. de Chastel-
lux passes in review all the nations of
ancient and modern times, for the pur-
pose of showing that the general con-
dition of man has never before been so
good as it is now. The fundamental
principle of his work is disclosed in
the following profession of faith : " To
say that man is born to be free, that
his first care is to preserve his liberty
when he enjoys it, and to recover it
when he has lost it, is to attribute to
him a sentiment which he shares with
the whole animal kingdom, and which
cannot be called in question. And if
we add that this liberty is by its very
nature indefinite, and that the liberty
of one individual can only be limited
by that of another, we do but express
a truth which few in this enlightened
age will be found to contradict. Look
at society from this point of view,
and you will see nothing but a series
of encroachments and resistances ; and
if you Avant to form a just idea of
government, you must consider it as
the equilibrium which ought to result
from these opposing struggles ....
Government a.nd legislation are only
secondary and subordinate objects.
They ought to be regarded merely as
means through which men may pre-
serve in the social state the greatest
possible portion of natural liberty."
It is melancholy to see how, in a
work that has so much to recom-
mend it, the chapter which treats
of the establishment of Christianity is
disfigured by the skeptical philosophy
of the age. Our regret at this is per-
haps the more keen because the fault
was altogether without excuse. Tur-
got had argued before the Sorbonne,
only a few years previously, that a
belief in the progress of the human
race, so far from being incompatible
with the doctrine of redemption, is its
necessary consequence. De Chas-
tellux might have shown that, if the
coming of our Lord did not immedi-
ately effect a sensible reformation
throughout the civilized world, it was
because the vices and bad passions of
the old pagan society long survived
the overthrow of the old pagan gods.
But there is this to be said for him :
if he does not evince an adequate
appreciation of the great moral revo-
lution effected by Christianity, he at
least does not speak of it in the same
insolent tone that was fashionable in
his day. "When he comes down to
modern times, and treats of density of
population in its relation to national
prosperity, he repeats the popular
fallacy that the multiplication of
religious orders exerts a pernicious
influence upon the progress of popula-
tion. But when from general views
he descends to statistics, he refutes
his own arguments. " The number
of monks in France," he says,
" according to a careful enumeration
184
The Marquis de Chastellux.
made by order of government, a few
years ago, was 26,674, and it cer-
tainly is not less now." In point
of fact, the real number when the
property of the clergy was confiscated
in 1790 was only 17,000; and what
is that in a population of 24,000,000
or 26,000,000 ? The army withdraws
from the marriage state twenty times
that number of men, in the vigor of
their age; whereas the greater part
of the monks are men in the decline of
life.
It is a matter of astonishment that
a work which professes to treat of
"public felicity" should devote itself
entirely to the material well-being of
society, and have nothing to say of the
moral condition of mankind, which is
the more important element of the two
in making up the sum of human happi-
ness. Every author, of course, has a
right to fix the limits of his subject;
but then he must not promise on the
title-page more than he means to per-
form.
The authorship of the essay on
"Public Felicity" was not long a
secret; but de Chastellux received
perhaps as much annoyance as glory
from the discovery. His ideas did
not please everybody, and among those
who fell foul of him for his philosophi-
cal errors were some of his own fam-
ily. He made little account of their
opposition, and in 1774 came out
boldly with an eulogy on Helvetia s,
with whom he had lived for a long
tune on the most intimate terms. Two
years later, he published a second edi-
tion of his previous treatise, with the
addition of a chapter of "Ulterior
Views," in which he points out the
danger of some of the revolutionary
opinions which were then coming more
and more into vogue, and the futility
of trying to realize in actual life that
form of government which might be
theoretically the best. If he had been
alive in 1789, he would have belonged
to the monarchical party in the Con-
stituent Assembly ; and, after having
done his part in paving the way for
the revolution, he would have perished
as one of its victims. Among political
and social reformers, he must be classed
with the school of Montesquieu rather
than with that of Rousseau.
The attention of France, however,
was now fixed more and more firmly
upon the conte&t going on in America
between Great Britain and her re-
bellious colonies. Louis XVI., after
some resistance, yielded to the demand
of public opinion, and, in 1778, not
only recognized the independence of
the United States, but sent a fleet
under Count d'Estaing to help them.
A second expedition was despatched
under Count de Rochambeau. M. de
Chastellux, who then held the grade
of marechal de camp [equivalent to
something between brigadier and
major-general in the present Unil
States army ED.], obtained permit
sion to join it, and was appoint
major - general. The expedition!
corps arrived at Newport, capital
the state of Rhode Island, July II
1780. It consisted of eight ships
the line, two frigates, two gunl
and over 5,000 troops. The ne:
year came a reenforcement of 3,0(
men. Lord Cornwallis, who
manded the English forced was shi
up in Yorktown, Va., and, being close-
ly besieged by the allies and invested
by land and sea, was compelled to sur-
render in October, 1781. This forced
England to conclude a peace, and the
auxiliary corps re-embarked at Boston
on their return to France at the close
of 1782. It had been two years and
a half in America, and during this time
the republic had achieved its independ-
ence.
During his visit to America, M. de
Chastellux employed the brief periods
of leisure left him from military occu-
pations in making three tours through
the interior. He wrote down as he
travelled a journal of his observations,
and printed at a little press on board
the fleet some twenty copies of it, ten
or twelve of which found their way to
Europe. So great was the eagerness
The Marquis de Chastellux.
185
with which people there seized upon
every book relating to America, that a
number of copies were surreptitiously
printed, and a publisher at Cassel
brought out an imperfect edition. The
author then pubh'shed the book himself
in 1786 (2 vols., 12mo, Paris), under
the title, Voyages de M. le Marquis de
Chastellux dans I'Amerique septentri-
onale en 1780, 1781, et 1782. Though
written originally only for his friends,
it has a general interest, and presents
a curious picture of the condition of
North America at the period of which
it treats.
The author set out from Newport,
where the troops had landed and gone
into winter-quarters, in order to visit
Pennsylvania. Accompanied by two
aides-de-camp, one of whom was the
Baron de Montesquieu, grandson of
the author of the Esprit des lois, and
by five mounted servants, he started,
November 11, 1780, on horseback, for
that was the only means of travelling
that the country afforded. The ground
was frozen hard, and already covered
with snow. The little party directed
their steps first toward Windham,
where Lauzun's hussars, forming the
advance-guard of the army, were en-
camped. They found the Duke de
Lauzun at the head of his troops, and
this meeting between the grandsons of
d'Aguesseau and Montesquieu, and a
descendant of the Lauzuns and Birons,
all three fighting for the cause of lib-
erty in the wilds of America, was a
curious beginning of their adventures.
It was this same Duke de Lauzun, a
friend of Mirabeau and Talleyrand,
who became Duke de Biron after the
death of his uncle, was chosen a mem-
ber of the States General in 1789,
commanded the republican army of
La Vendee, and finished his career on
the scaffold.
^ The travellers crossed the mount-
ains which separated them from the
Hudson, and, after passing through a
wild and almost desert country, ar-
rived at West Point, a place celebrated
at that time for the most dramatic in-
cidents of the war of independence (the
treason of General Arnold and the
execution of Major Andre), and now
famous as the seat of the great mili-
tary school of the United States. The
American army occupying the forts of
"West Point, which Arnold's treachery
had so nearly given over to the enemy,
saluted the French major-general with
thirteen guns one for each state in
the confederation. " Never," says he,
" was honor more imposing or majestic.
Every gun was, after a long inter-
val, echoed back from the opposite
bank with a noise nearly equal to that
of the discharge itself. Two years
ago, West Point was an almost inac-
cessible desert. This desert has been
covered with fortresses and artillery
by a people who, six years before, had
never seen a cannon. The well-filled
magazines, and the great number of
guns in the different forts, the pro-
digious labor which must have been
expended in transporting and piling up
on the steep rocks such huge trunks of
trees and blocks of hewn stone, give
one a very different idea of the Ameri-
cans from that which the English min-
istry have labored to convey to Parlia-
ment. A Frenchman might well be
surprised that a nation hardly born
should have spent in two years more
than 12,000,000 francs in this wilder-
ness ; but how much greater must be
his surprise when he learns that these
fortifications have cost the state noth-
ing, having been constructed by the
soldiers, who not only received no ex-
tra allowance for the labor, but have
not even touched their regular pay!
It will be gratifying for him to know
that these magnificent works were
planned by two French engineers, M.
du Portail and M. Gouvion,* who
have been no better paid than their
workmen."
West Point stands on the bank of
* MM. du Portail and Gouvion went to America
with Lafayette, and returned with him. Each rose
afterward to the rank of lieutenant-general in the
French army. The former, through the influence
of Lafayette, was appointed minister-of-war in
1790 ; he fled -to the United States during the Reign
of Terror. The other was created major-general of
the National Guard of Paris in 1769 ; ho fell in bat-
tle in 1792.
186
The Marquis de ChasteUux.
the Hudson, in a situation which may
well be compared with the most beau-
tiful scenery of the Rhine. M. de
ChasteUux describes it with the live-
liest admiration; but he remained
there only a short time, because he
was in haste to reach the head-quarters
of Washington.
" After passing thick woods, I found
myself in a small plain, where I saw a
handsome farm. A small camp which
seemed to cover it, a large tent pitched
in the yard, and several wagons
around it, convinced me that I was at
the head-quarters of His Excellency,
for so Mr. Washington is called, in the
army and throughout America. M.
de Lafayette was conversing in the
yard with a tall man about five feet
nine inches high, of a noble'and mild
aspect: it was the general himself.
I was soon off my horse and in his
presence. The compliments were short ;
the sentiments which animated me and
the good-will which he testified for me
were not equivocal. He led me into
his house, where I found the company
still at table, although dinner had long
been over. He presented me to the
generals and the aides-de-camp, adju-
tants, and other officers attached to his
person, who form what is called in
England and America the family of
the general. A few glasses of claret
and madeira accelerated the acquaint-
ances I had to make, and I soon felt at
my ease in the presence of the greatest
and best of men. The goodness and
benevolence which characterize him
are evident from everything about
him; but the confidence he inspires
never gives occasion to familiarity, for
it originates in a profound esteem for
his virtues and a high opinion of his
talents."
The next day Washington offered
to conduct his guest to the camp of
the marquis : this was the appellation
universally bestowed in America upon
Lafayette, who commanded the ad-
vance of the army.
" We found his troops in order of
battle, and himself at their head, ex-
pressing by his air and countenance
that he was better pleased to receive
me there than he would be at his es-
tate in Auvergne.* The confidence
and attachment of his troops are inval-
uable possessions for him, well-earned
riches of which nobody can deprive
him ; but what, in my opinion, is still
more flattering for a young man of his
age (he was not more than twenty-
three) is the influence and conside
tion he has acquired in political
well as military matters. I do not ex-
aggerate when I say that private let
ters from him have often produ(
more effect upon some of the stat(
than the most urgent recommenda-
tions of the Congress. On seeing him,
one is at a loss to decide which is the
stranger circumstance that a rm
so young should have given such ex-
traordinary proofs of ability, or tl
one who has been so much trk
should still give promise of such a
career of glory. Happy his country,
should she know how to make use
his talents! happier still, should sh<
never stand in need of them !"
This last remark shows that M.
ChasteUux, with all his enthusiasm fo
the present, was not without anxietj
for the future. He spent three
at head-quarters, nearly all the wl
at table, after the American fashk
At the end of each meal nuts wei
served, and General Washington si
for several hours, eating them, " toast-
ing/' and conversing. These long
conversations only increased his com-
panion's admiration.
" The most striking characteristic of
this respected man is the perfect accord
which exists between his physical and
moral qualities. This idea of a per-
fect whole cannot be produced by en-
thusiasm, which would rather reject it,
since the effect of proportion is to di-
minish the idea of greatness. Brave
without rashness, laborious without
ambition, generous without prodigality,
noble without pride, virtuous without
severity, he seems always to have con-
* M. de ChasteUux was cousin-german by the
mother's side to the Duchess of Ayen, the mother
of Madame de Lafayette.
The Marquis de OhasteUux.
187
fined himself within those limits where
the virtues, by clothing themselves in
more lively but more changeable and
doubtful colors, may be mistaken for
faults."
The city of Philadelphia was the
capital of the confederation and the
seat of the Congress. M. de Chastel-
lux did not fail to visit it. He en-
joyed there the hospitality of the Chev-
alier de la Luzerne, French minister
to the United States, and had the pleas-
ure of meeting several young French
officers, some in the service of the
United States, others belonging to the
expeditionary corps, whom the inter-
ruption of military operations had left
at liberty, like himself. Among them
were M. de Lafayette, the Viscount de
Noailles, the Count de Damas, the
Count de Custine, the Chevalier de
Mauduit, and the Marquis de la Roue-
rie. Let us give a few particulars
about these " Gallo- Americans," as
our author calls them. The Viscount
de Noailles, brother-in-law of Lafay-
ette, and colonel of the chasseurs of
Alsace, was afterward a member of
the States General, and principal
author of the famous deliberations of
the 4th of August. The Count Charles
de Damas, an aide-de-camp of Roch-
ambeau, in after years took part, on
the contrary, against the revolutionists,
and, attempting to rescue Louis XVI.
at Varennes, was arrested with him.
The Count de Custine, colonel of. the
regiment of Saintonge infantry, is the
same who was general-in-chief of the re-
publican armies in 1792, and who died
by the guillotine the next year, like
Lauzun. The Chevalier de Mauduit
commanded the American artillery.
At the age of fifteen, with his head full
of dreams of classical antiquity, he
ran away from college, walked to Mar-
seilles, and shipped as cabin-boy on
board a vessel bound for Greece, in
order to visit the battle-fields of Pla-
teea and Thermopylae. The same spirit
of enthusiasm carried him, at the age
of twenty, to America. Appointed,
after the war, commandant at Port au
Prince, he was assassinated there by
his own soldiers in 1791. The history
of the Marquis de la Rouerie, or Rou-
arie, is still more romantic. In his
youth he fell violently in love with an
actress, and wanted to marry her.
Compelled by his family to break off
this attachment, he oletermined to be-
come a Trappist ; but he soon threw
aside the monastic habit and went to
America, where he commanded a
legion armed and equipped at his own
cost. He abandoned his surname and
title, and would only be known as Col-
onel Armand. After his return to
France, he was concerned, with others
of the nobility of Brittany, in the
troubles which preceded the revolution.
He was one of the twelve deputies
sent in 1787 to demand of the king
the restoration of the privileges of that
province, and as such was committed
to the Bastile. The next year he had
occasion to claim the same privileges,
not from the king, but from the Third
Estate. In 1791 he placed himself at
the head of the disaffected, and organ-
ized the royalist insurrection in the
west. Denounced and pursued, he
saved himself by taking to the forest,
lay hid in one chateau after another,
fell sick in the middle of winter, and
died in a fit of despair on hearing of
the execution of Louis XVI.
The Chevalier de la Luzerne,
brother of the Bishop of Langres,
afterward cardinal, so distinguished for
his noble conduct in 1789, was a man
of more coolness and deliberation, but
not less devoted to the cause of the
United States. He had given abun-
dant proof of his friendship by con-
tracting a loan on his own responsibili-
ty for the payment of the American
troops.
" M. de la Luzerne," says de Chas-
tellux, " is so formed for the station he
occupies, that one would be tempted to
imagine no other could fill it but him-
self. Noble in his expenditure, like
the minister of a great monarchy, but
plain in his manners, like a republican,
he is equally fit to represent the king
with the Congress, or the Congress
with the king. He loves the Ameri-
188
The Marquis de Chastellux.
cans, and his own inclination attaches
him to the duties of his administration.
He has accordingly obtained their con-
fidence, both as a private and a public
man ; but in both these respects he is
inaccessible to the spirit of party
which reigns but too much around him.
He is anxiously courted by all parties,
and, espousing none, he manages all."
In acknowledgment of his services
in America, the Chevalier was appoint-
ed, after the peace, minister at London ;
rather an audacious action on the
part of the government of Louis XVI.
to choose as their representative in
England the very man who had con-
tributed most of all to the independ-
ence of the United States. The state
of Pennsylvania, in gratitude for his
acts of good-will, gave the name of
Luzerne to one of her counties.
The principal occupation of these
officers, during their stay at Philadel-
phia, was to visit, notwithstanding the
inclemency of the weather, the scenes
of the recent conflicts near that city,
or to discuss the causes which had
turned the fortune of war, now in favor
of the Americans, and now against
them. Our author here shows himself
in a new light, as a tactician who, with
a thorough knowledge of the art of
war, points out the circumstances which
have led to the success or failure of
this or that manoeuvre. Those affairs
in which the French figured especially
attracted his attention. Bravery, gen-
erosity, disinterestedness, all the na-
tional virtues were conspicuous in these
volunteers who had crossed the ocean
to make war at their own expense, and
who softened the asperity of military
operations by the charm of their ele-
gant manners and chivalric bearing.
Among the battle-fields which these
young enthusiasts, while a waiting some-
thing better to do, loved to trace out
was that of Brandy wine, where M. de
Lafayette, almost immediately after
his landing in America, received the
wound in the leg of which he speaks
so gaily in a letter to his wife. La-
fayette himself acted as their guide,
and recounted to his friends, on the
very scene of action, the incidents of
this day, which was not a fortunate
one for the Americans. He did the
honors of another expedition to the
heights of Barren Hill, where he had
gained an advantage under rather cu-
rious circumstances. He had with him
there about two thousand infantry with
fifty dragoons and an equal number
of Indian's, when the English, who oc-
cupied Philadelphia, endeavored to
surround and capture him.
" General Howe [Sir Henry Clin-
ton ED.] thought he had now fairly
caught the marquis, and even carried
his gasconade so far as to invite ladies
to meet Lafayette at supper the next
day ; and, whilst the principal part of
the officers were at the play, he put in
motion the main body of his forces,
which he marched in three columns.
The first was not long in reaching the
advanced posts of M. de Lafayette,
which gave rise to a laughable adven-
ture. The fifty savages he had wit
him were placed in ambuscade in tl
woods, after their own manner ;
is to say, lying as close as rabbit
Fifty English dragoons, who had nev<
seen any Indians, entered the w(
where they were hid. The Indh
on their part, had never seen dragooi
Up they start, raising a horrible cry,
throw down their arms, and escape by
swimming across the Schuylkill. The
dragoons, on the other hand, as much
terrified as they were, turned tail, and
fled in such a panic that they did not
stop until they reached Philadelphia.
M. de Lafayette, finding himself in dan-
ger of being surrounded, made such
skilful dispositions that he effected his
retreat, as if by enchantment, and
crossed the river without losing a man.
The English army, finding the bird
flown, returned to Philadelphia, spent
with fatigue, and ashamed of having
done nothing. The ladies did not see M.
de Lafayette, and General Howe [Clin-
ton] himself arrived too late for supper."
By the side of these admirable mil-
itary sketches, we have an account of
a ball at the Chevalier de la Luzerne's.
" There were near twenty women,
The Marquis de Cha&tellux.
189
twelve or fifteen of whom danced, each
having her ' partner,' as the custom is
in America. Dancing is said to be at
once the emblem of gaiety and of love ;
here it seems to be the emblem of legis-
lation and of marriage : of legislation,
inasmuch as places are marked out,
the country-dances named, and every
proceeding provided for, calculated, and
submitted to regulation ; of marriage,
as it furnishes each lady with a part-
ner, with whom she must dance the
whole evening, without being permitted
to take another. Strangers have gen-
erally the privilege of being compli-
mented with the handsomest women ;
that is to say, out of politeness, the
prettiest partners are given to them.
The Count de Damas led forth Mrs.
Bingham, and the Viscount de Noailles,
Miss Shippen. Both of them, like true
philosophers, testified a great respect
for the custom of the country by not
quitting their partners the whole eve-
ning ; in other respects they were the
admiration of the whole assembly from
the grace and dignity with which they
danced. To the honor of my country,
I can affirm that they surpassed that
evening a chief justice of Carolina, and
two members of Congress, one of whom
(Mr. Duane) passed for being by ten
per cent, more lively than all the
other dancers."
At Philadelphia, as in camp, a
great part of the day was passed at
table. -The Congress having met, M.
de Chastellux was invited to dinner
successively by the representatives
from the North and the representa-
tives from the South ; for the political
body was even then divided by a geo-
graphical line, each side having sepa-
rate reunions at a certain tavern which
they used to frequent: so we see the
differences between North and South
are as old as the confederation itself.
He made the acquaintance of all the
leading members, and especially of
Samuel Adams, one of the framers of
the Declaration of Independence.* He
* A mistake of the reviewer's. Samuel Adams
had no hand in writing the Declaration, nor does
de Chastellux say that he had. ED. C. W.
saw also the celebrated pamphleteer,
Thomas Paine, who ten years after-
ward came to France, and was chosen
a member of the National Convention.
Together with Lafayette, our author
was elected a member of the Academy
of Philadelphia. Despite so many
circumstances to prepossess him in fa-
vor of the Americans, he appears not
a very ardent admirer of what he wit-
nesses about him. He shows but little
sympathy with the Quakers, whose
" smooth and wheedling tone" disgusts
him, and whom he represents as wholly
given up to making money. Phila-
delphia he calls "the great sink in
which all the speculations of the Unit-
ed States meet and mingle." The city
then had 40,000 inhabitants; it now
contains 600,000.
We can easily conceive that, in con-
trasting the appearance of this republic-
an government with the great French
monarchy, he should have found abun-
dant food for study and reflection. He
speaks with great reserve, but what
little he says is enough to show that
he was not so much enamored of
republican ideas as Lafayette and
most of his friends. The disciple of
Montesquieu loses much of his ad-
miration for the American constitu-
tions when he sees them in opera-
tion, and seems especially loath to
introduce them into his own coun-
try. The constitution of Pennsyl-
vania strikes him as particularly de-
fective.
" The state of Pennsylvania is far
from being one of the best governed of
the members of the confederation.
The government is without force ; nor
can it be otherwise. A popular gov-
ernment can never have any whilst
the people are uncertain and vacillat-
ing in their opinions; for then the
leaders seek rather to please than to
serve them, and end by becoming the
slaves of the multitude whom they
pretended to govern."
This constitution had one capital
defect : it provided only for a single
legislative chamber. After a disas-
trous trial, Pennsylvania was com-
190
The Marquis de Chastellux.
pelled to change her laws, and adopt
the system of two chambers, like the
other states of the Union.
Our author betrays his misgivings
most clearly in his narrative of an in-
terview with Samuel Adams. His
report of the conversation is especially
curious, as it shows how entirely the
two speakers were preoccupied by dif-
ferent ideas. Samuel Adams, who
has been called " the American Cato,"
bent himself to prove the revolution
justifiable, by arguments drawn not
only from natural right but from his-
torical precedent. The thoroughly
English character of mind of these in-
novators led them to make it a sort
of point of honor to find a sanction
for their conduct in tradition. M. de
Chastellux, like a true Frenchman,
made no account of such reasonings.
" I am clearly of opinion that the
parliament of England had no right to
tax America without her consent ; but
I am still more clearly convinced that,
when a whole people say, ' We will be
free !' it is difficult to demonstrate that
they are in the wrong. Be that as it
may, Mr. Adams very satisfactorily
proved to me that New England was
peopled with no view to commerce and
aggrandizement, but wholly by individ-
uals who fled from persecution, and
sought an asylum at the extremity of
the world, where they might be free to
live and follow their own opinions ;
that it was of their own accord that
these colonists placed themselves un-
der the protection of England; that the
mutual relationship springing from this
connection was expressed in their
charters, and that the right of impos-
ing or exacting a revenue of any kind
was not comprised in them."
There was no question between the
two speakers of the Federal Constitu-
tion, for it did not yet exist. The
states at that time formed merely a
confederation of sovereign states, with
a general congress, like the German
confederation. They had no president
or central administration. The con-
stitutions spoken of in this conversa-
tion were simply the separate constitu-
tions of the individual states, and Sam-
uel Adams, being from Massachusetts,
referred particularly to that state. M.
de Chastellux, accustomed to the com-
plex social systems of Europe, was
surprised that no property qualifica-
tion should be required of voters ; the
Americans, on the contrary, who had
always lived in a democratic commun-
ity, both before and since the decla-
ration of independence, could not com-
prehend the necessity of such a restric-
tion. Both were doubtless right ; for
it is equally difficult to establish polit-
ical inequality where it does not al-
ready exist, and to suddenly abolish it
where it does exist. The constitution
of Massachusetts, superior in this
spect to that of Pennsylvania, provk
ed for a moderating power by
creation of a governor's council, el
ed by property-holders.
Our author's first journey terminat
in the north, near the Canada frontiei
He crosses the frozen rivers in a sleij
in order to visit the battle-field of
atoga, the scene, three years before,
the capitulation of General Burgoym
the most important success which
Americans had achieved previous
the arrival of the French. Returnii
to Newport in the early part of 1781
after having travelled, in the course
two months, more than three hundi
leagues, on horseback or in sleighs, '.
passed the rest of the year solely oc-
cupied in the duties of the glorious cam-
paign which put an end to the war.
He wrote a journal of this campaign,
but it has not been published. He
speaks of it in the narrative of his
travels. From the Memoires of Ro-
chambeau, however, we learn some-
thing of his gallant behavior at the
siege of Yorktown, where, at the head
of the reserve, he repulsed a sortie of
the enemy.
His second journey was made imme-
diately after the surrender of Cornwal-
lis, and was directed toward Virginia,
the most important of the southern, as
Pennsylvania was of the northern,
states. It was the birth-place of Wash-
ington, of Jefferson, of Madison, and
The Marquis de ChasteUux.
191
of Monroe ; the state which shared
most actively in the war of independ-
ence, and which is now the principal
battle-field of the bloody struggle be-
tween North and South. This second
journey did not partake of the military
and political character of the first.
Now that the destiny of America
seemed settled, the author gave his at-
tention, principally, to natural history.
In every phrase we recognize the pupil
and admirer of Buffon. His chief
purpose was to visit a natural bridge
of rock across one of the affluents of
the James river, in the Appalachian
mountains. He describes this stupen-
dous arch with great care, and illus-
trates his narrative with several draw-
ings which he caused to be made by
an officer of engineers.
A propos of this subject, he indulges
in speculations upon the geological
formation of the New "World, quite after
the manner of the author of j&poques
de la nature. On the road he amused
himself by hunting. He describes the
animals that he kills, and gives an ac-
count of the mocking-bird, which al-
most equals Buffon's in vivacity, and
excels it in accuracy. He gives sev-
eral details respecting the opossum,
that singular animal which almost
seems to belong to a different creation.
All natural objects interest him, and
he studies them with the zeal of a first
discoverer. His description of the
mocking-bird is well worth reproduc-
ing :
"I rose with the sun, and, while
breakfast was preparing, took a walk
around the house. The birds were
heard on every side, but my attention
was chiefly attracted by a very agree-
able song, which appeared to proceed
from a neighboring tree. I approached
softly, and perceived it to be a mock-
ing-bird, saluting the rising sun. At
first I was afraid of frightening it, but
my presence, on the contrary, gave it
pleasure ; for, apparently delighted at
having an auditor, it sang better than
before, and its emulation seemed to
increase when it saw a couple of dogs,
which followed me, draw near to the
tree on which it was perched. It kept
hopping incessantly from branch to
branch, still continuing its song ; for
this extraordinary bird is not less re-
markable for its agility than its charm-
ing notes. It keeps perpetually rising
and sinking, so as to appear not less
the favorite of Terpsichore than Poly-
hymnia. This bird cannot certainly
be reproached with fatiguing its audit-
ors, for nothing can be more varied
than its song, of which it is impossible
to give an imitation, or even to furnish
any adequate idea. As it had every
reason to be satisfied with my atten-
tion, it concealed from me none of its
talents ; and one would have thought
that, after having delighted me with a
concert, it was desirous of entertaining
me with a comedy. It began to coun-
terfeit different birds ; those which it
imitated the most naturally, at least to
a stranger, were the jay, the raven, the
cardinal, and the lapwing. It ap-
peared desirous of detaining me near
it ; for, after I had listened for a quar-
ter of an hour, it followed me on my
return to the house, flying from tree to
tree, always singing, sometimes its
natural song, at others those which it
had learned in Virginia and in its
travels ; for this bird is one of those
which change climate, although it
sometimes appears here during the
winter."
Continuing his journey, the trav-
eller visited Jefferson at his country-
home, situated .deep in the wilderness,
on the skirts of the Blue Ridge. This
visit gives him opportunity for a new
historical portrait :
" It was Jefferson himself who built
his house and chose the situation.
He calls it Monticello [' little mount-
ain'], a modest title, for it is built
upon a very high mountain ; but the
name indicates the owner's attach-
ment to the language of Italy, and
above all to the fine arts, of which that
country was. the cradle. He is a man
not yet forty, of tall stature and a
mild and pleasant countenance ; but
his mind and understanding are ample
substitutes for every external grace.
192
The Marquis de Chastellux.
An American who, without having
ever quitted his own country, is skilled
in music and drawing ; a geometri-
cian, an astronomer, a natural phil-
osopher, a jurist and a statesman ; a
senator who sat for two years in the
congress which brought about the
revolution, and which is never men-
tioned without respect, though un-
happily not without regret;* a
governor of Virginia, who filled this
difficult station during the invasions of
Arnold, of Phillips, and of Corn-
wallis ; in fine, a philosopher in
voluntary retirement from the world
and public affairs, because he only
loves the world so long as he can
flatter himself with the conviction that
he is of some use to mankind. A
mild and amiable wife, charming chil-
dren, of whose education he himself
takes charge, a house to embellish,
great possessions to improve, and the
arts and sciences to cultivate these
are what remain to Mr. Jefferson after
having played a distinguished part on
the theatre of the New World. Before
I had been two hours in his company,
we were as ultimate as if we had
passed our whole lives together.
Walking, books, but above all a con-
versation always varied and interest-
ing, sustained by that sweet satisfac-
tion experienced by two persons whose
sentiments are always in unison, and
who understand each other at the
first hint, made four days seem to me
only so many minutes. No object
had escaped Mr. Jefferson's atten-
tion ; and it seemed as if from his
youth he had placed his mind, as he
has done his house, on an elevation
from which he might contemplate the
universe."
At the period of this visit, Mr. Jef-
ferson thought only of retirement ; but
when M. de Chastellux's Voyages en
Amerique appeared, three years after-
ward, he was minister-plenipotentiary
of the United States in Paris. The
* The United States were then passing through
a crisis of anarchy, which lasted until the adoption
of the Federal Constitution in 1 7^8, and the eleva-
tion of Washington to the presidency.
death of his wife had determined him
to return to public life. He formed a
solid friendship for M. de Chastellux,
of which his correspondence contains
abundant proof. The brilliant French
soldier introduced the solitary of Mon-
ticello, the " American wild-man of the
mountains," to the salons of Paris ; and
the republican statesman, with the
manners of an aristocrat, entered, noth-
ing loath, into the society of the gay
and polished capital, where he received
the same welcome and honors that
were accorded to Franklin.
This portion of the Journal closes
with some general remarks upon Vir-
ginia, which possess a new interest
now that the people of that state re-
appear upon the scene in the same
bellicose and indomitable character
which they bore of old.
" The Virginians differ essentially
from the people of the North, not only
in the nature of their climate, soil, and
agriculture, but in that indelible char-
acter which is imprinted on every
nation at the moment of its origin,
and which, by perpetuating itself from
generation to generation, justifies the
great principle that ' everything which
is partakes of that which has been. 5
The settlement of Virginia took place
at the commencement of the seventeenth
century. The republican and demo-
cratic spirit was not then common in
England ; that of commerce and navi-
gation was scarcely in its infancy.
The long wars with France and Spain
had perpetuated the military spirit,
and the first colonists of Virginia
were composed in great part of gen-
tlemen who had no other profession
than that of arms. It was natural,
therefore, for these colonists, who were
filled with military principles and the
prejudices of nobility, to carry them
even into the midst of the savages
whose lands they came to occupy.
Another cause which operated in form-
ing their character was the institution
of slavery. It may be asked how
these prejudices have been brought to
coincide with a revolution founded on
such different principles? I answer
The Marquis de Chastellux.
193
that they have perhaps contributed to
produce it. While the insurrection in
New England was the result of reason
and calculation, Virginia revolted
through pride."
The third and last journey of M. de
Chastellux led him through New
Hampshire, Massachusetts, and north-
ern Pennsylvania. This was during
the months of November and Decem-
ber, 1782, on the eve of his return to
France. He started from Hartford,
the capital of Connecticut, and, after
visiting several other places, went to
Boston, for he could not leave America
without seeing this city, the cradle of
the revolution. He found at this port
the French fleet, under command of
M. de Vaudreuil, which was to carry
back the expeditionary corps to France.
He closes his Journal with an interest-
ing account of the university at Cam-
bridge, which Ampere, who was, like
him, a member of the French Academy,
visited and described seventy years
afterward. In the appendix to his
book he gives a letter written by him-
self on board the frigate F$meraude,
just before sailing, to Mr. Madison,
professor of philosophy in William
and Mary College. It is upon a sub-
ject which has not yet lost its ap-
propriateness the future of the arts
and sciences in America. A demo-
cratic and commercial society, always
in a ferment, seemed to him hardly
compatible with scientific, and still less
with artistic, progress. But, in his
solicitude for the welfare of the coun-
try he had been defending, he would
not allow that the difficulty was in-
superable. Some of his remarks upon
this subject are extremely delicate and
ingenious.
The question which troubled him is
not yet fully answered, but it is in a
fair way of being settled. The United
States have really made but little
progress in the arts, though they have
produced a few pictures and statues
which have elicited admiration even in
Europe at recent industrial exhibitions.
They are beginning, however, to have
13
a literature. Even in the days of the
revolution they could boast of the
writings of Franklin, which combined
the-most charming originality with re-
finement and solid good sense. Now they
can show, among novelists, Fenimore
Cooper and the celebrated Mrs. Beech-
er Stowe, whose book gave the signal
for another revolution; among story-
tellers, Washington Irving and Haw-
thorne; among critics, Ticknor; among
historians, Prescott and Bancroft;
among economists, Carey ; among
political writers, Everett ; among mor-
alists, Emerson and Channing ; among
poets, Bryant and Longfellow. In
science they have done still more.
They have adopted and naturalized
one of the first of modern geologists,
Agassiz; and the hydrographical
labors of Maury, [late] director of
the Washington Observatory, are the
admiration of the whole world. Their
immense development in industrial
pursuits implies a corresponding prog-
ress in practical science. It was
Fulton, an American, who invented
the steamboat, and carried out in his
own country the idea which he could
not persuade Europe to listen to ; and
only lately the reaping-machine has
come to us from the shores of the
great lakes and the vast prairies of
the Far West.
When the Voyages en Amerique ap-
peared, the revolutionary party in
France were still more dissatisfied
with the book than they had been with
the Felicite publique. They were an-
gry at the wise and unprejudiced judg-
ments which the author passed upon
men and things in the New World ;
they were angry that he found some
things not quite perfect in republic-
an society, that his praises of democ-
racy were not louder, his denuncia-
tions of the past not more sweeping.
Brissot de Warville, whose caustic pen
was already in full exercise, published
a bitter review of the book. Some of
the hostile criticisms found their way
to the United States, and M. de Chas-
tellux, in sending a copy of his work to
General Washington, took occasion to
194
The Marquis de Chastellux.
defend himself. He received from the
general a long and affectionate reply,
written at Mount Vernon, in April,
1786.
M. de Chastellux also wrote a " Dis-
course on the Advantages and Disad-
vantages which have resulted to Eu-
rope from the Discovery of America,"
and edited the comedies of the Mar-
chioness de Gle'on. This lady, cele-
brated for her wit and beauty, was the
daughter of a rich financier. At her
house, La Chevrette, near Montmo-
rency, she entertained all the literary
world, and gave representations of her
own plays. Her friend, M. de Chastel-
lux, was himself the author of a few dra-
matic pieces, performed either at La
Chevrette or at the Prince de Conde's,
at Chantilly ; but they have never
been published. We shall respect his
reserve, and refrain from giving our
readers a taste either of these compo-
sitions or of his " Plan for a general
Reform of the French Infantry," and
other unpublished writings.
After his return from America, de
Chastellux was appointed governor of
Longwy. He had reached the age of
nearly fifty and was still unmarried,
when he met at the baths of Spa,
which were still the resort of all the
good company in Europe, a young,
beautiful, and accomplished Irish girl,
named Miss Plunkett, with whom he
fell over head and ears in love. He
married her in 1787, but did not long
enjoy his happiness, for he died the
next year. Like most men who de-
vote themselves to the pubh'c welfare,
he had sadly neglected his private af-
fairs. Being the youngest of five chil-
dren, his fortune was not large, and it
gave him little trouble to run through
it. General officers in those days
took a pride in their profuse ex-
penditures in the field : he ruined him-
self by his American campaign. His
widow was attached in the capacity of
maid of honor to the person of the esti-
mable daughter of the Duke de Pen-
thievre,the Duchess of Orleans, mother
of King Louis Philippe. This princess
adopted, after a certain fashion, his pos-
thumous son, who became one of the
chevaliers d'honneur of Madame Ade-
laide, the daughter of his patroness.
He was successively a deputy and
peer of France after the revolution
1830. He published a short memoir
of his father, prefixed to an edition
of the Felicite publique.
The jLcgend of Limerick Bells. 195
Prom The Month.
THE LEGEND OF LIMERICK BELLS.
BY BESSIE RAYNER PARKES.
THERE is a convent on the Alban hill,
Round whose stone roots the gnarled olives grow ;
Above are murmurs of the mountain rill,
And all the broad Campagna lies below ;
Where faint gray buildings and a shadowy dome
Suggest the splendor of eternal Rome.
Hundreds of years ago, these convent-walls
Were reared by masons of the Gothic age :
The date is carved upon the lofty halls,
The story written on the illumined page.
What pains they took to make it strong and fair
The tall bell-tower and sculptured porch declare.
When all the stones were placed, the windows stained,
And the tall bell-tower finished to the crown,
Only one want in this fair pile remained,
Whereat a cunning workman of the town
(The little town upon the Alban hill)
Toiled day and night his purpose to fulfil.
Seven bells he made, of very rare devise,
With graven lilies twisted up and down ;
Seven bells proportionate in differing size,
And full of melody from rim to crown ;
So that, when shaken by the wind alone,
They murmured with a soft .ZEolian tone.
These being placed within the great bell-tower,
And duly rung by pious skilful hand,
Marked the due prayers of each recurring hour,
And sweetly mixed persuasion with command.
Through the gnarled olive-trees the music wound,
And miles of broad Campagna heard the sound.
And then the cunning workman put aside
His forge, his hammer, and the tools he used
To chase those lilies ; his keen furnace died;'
And all who asked for bells were hence refused.
With these his best, his last were also wrought,
And refuge in the convent-walls he sought.
There did he live, and there he hoped to die,
Hearing the wind among the cypress-trees
196 The Legend of Limerick Bells.
Hint unimagined music, and the sky
Throb full of chimes borne downward by the breeze ;
Whose undulations, sweeping through the air,
His art might claim as an embodied prayer.
But those were stormy days in Italy :
Down came the spoiler from the uneasy North,
Swept the Campagna to the bounding sea,
Sacked pious homes, and drove the inmates forth ;
Whether a Norman or a German foe,
History is silent, and we do not know.
Brothers in faith were they ; yet did not deem
The sacred precincts barred destroying hand.
Through those rich windows poured the whitened beam,
Forlorn the church and ruined altar stand.
As the sad monks went forth, that self-same hour
Saw empty silence in the great bell-tower.
The outcast brethren scattered far and wide ;
Some by the Danube rested, some in Spain :
On the green Loire the aged abbot died,
By whose loved feet one brother did remain
Faithful in all his wanderings : it was he
Who cast and chased those bells in Italy.
He, dwelling at Marmontier, by the tomb
Of his dear father, where the shining Loire
Flows down from Tours amidst the purple bloom
Of meadow-flowers, some years of patience saw.
Those fringed isles (where poplars tremble still)
Swayed like the olives of the Alban hill.
The man was old, and reverend in his age ;
And the " Great Monastery" held him dear.
Stalwart and stern, as some old Roman sage
Subdued to Christ, he lived from year to year,
Till his beard silvered, and the fiery glow
Of his dark eye was overhung with snow.
And being trusted, as of prudent way,
They chose him for a message of import,
Which the " Great Monastery" would convey
To a good patron in an Irish court ;
Who, by the Shannon, sought the means to found
St. Martin's off-shoot on that distant ground.
The old Italian took his staff in hand,
And journeyed slowly from the green Touraine
Over the heather and salt-shining sand,
Until he saw the leaping crested main,
The Legend of Limerick Bells. 197
Which, dashing round the Cape of Brittany,
Sweeps to the confines of the Irish Sea.
There he took ship, and thence with laboring sail
He crossed the waters, till a faint gray line
Rose in the northern sky ; so faint, so pale,
Only the heart that loves her would divine,
In her dim welcome, all that fancy paints
Of the green glory of the Isle of Saints.
Through the low banks, where Shannon meets the sea,
Up the broad waters of the River King
(Then populous with a nation), journeyed he,
Through that old Ireland which her poets sing ;
And the white vessel, breasting up the stream,
Moved slowly, like a ship within a dream.
When Limerick towers uprose before his gaze,
A sound of music floated in the air
Music which held him in a fixed amaze,
Whose silver tenderness was alien there ;
Notes full of murmurs of the southern seas,
And dusky olives swaying in the breeze.
His chimes ! the children of the great bell-tower,
Empty and silent now for many a year,
He hears them ringing out the vesper hour,
Owned in an instant by his loving ear.
Kind angels stayed the spoiler's hasty hand,
And watched their journeying over sea and land.
The white-sailed boat moved slowly up the stream ;
The old man lay with folded hands at rest ;
The Shannon glistened in the sunset beam;
The bells rang gently o'er its shining breast,
Shaking out music from each lilied rim :
It was a requiem which they rang for him.
For when the boat was moored beside the quay,
He lay as children lie when lulled by song ;
But never more to waken. Tenderly
They buried him wild-flowers and grass among,
Where on the cross alights the wandering bird,
And hour by hour the bells he loved are heard.
198
A Perilous Journey.
From London Society.
A PERILOUS JOURNEY.
A TALE.
There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune
So says the sage, and it is not to
be gainsayed by any man whom forty
winters have chilled into wisdom.
Ability and opportunity are fortune.
Opportunity is not fortune ; otherwise
all were fortunate. Ability is not
fortune, else why does genius slave ?
Why ? But because it missed the op-
portunity that fitted it?
What I have wife, position, inde-
pendence I owe to an opportunity
for exercising the very simple and
unpretending combination of qualities
that goes by the name of ability. But
to my story.
My father was a wealthy country
gentleman, of somewhat more than
the average of intelligence, and some-
what more than the average of gen-
erosity and extravagance. His young-
er brother, a solicitor in large practice
in London, would in vain remonstrate
as to the imprudence of his course.
Giving freely, spending freely, must
come to an end. It did ; and at
twenty I was a well educated, gentle-
manly pauper. The investigation of
my father's affairs showed that there
was one shilling and sixpence in the
pound for the whole of his creditors,
and of course nothing for me.
The position was painful. I was
half engaged to that is, I had gloves,
flowers, a ringlet, a carte de visite of
Alice Morton. That, of course, must
be stopped.
Mr. Silas Morton was not ill-pleased
at the prospect of an alliance with his
neighbor Westwood's son while there
was an expectation of a provision for
the young couple in the union of estates
as well as persons ; but now, when
the estate was gone, when I, Guy
Westwood, was shillingless in the
world, it would be folly indeed. Nev-
ertheless I must take my leave.
" Well, Guy, my lad, bad job this ;
very bad job ; thought he was as safe
as the Bank. Would not have be-
lieved it from any one not from any
one. Of course all that nonsense
about you and Alice must be stopped
now ; I'm not a hard man, but I can't
allow Alice to throw away her life in
the poverty she would have to bear as
your wife; can't do it; wouldn't be
the part of a father if I did."
I suggested I might in time.
"Time, sir! time! How much?
She's nineteen now. You're broi _
up to nothing ; know nothing that wil
earn you a sixpence for the next si:
months ; and you talk about tii
Time, indeed ! Keep her waiting
she's thirty, and then break her
by finding it a folly to marry at all.'
" Ah ! Alice, my dear, Guy's cor
to say ' Good by :' he sees, with me,
that his altered position compels him,
as an honorable man, to give up any
hopes he may have formed as to the
future."
He left us alone to say * Farewell!'
a word too hard to say at our ages.
Of course we consulted what stould be
done. To give each other up, to bury
the delicious past, that was not to be
thought of. We would be constant,
spite of all. I must gain a position,
and papa would then help us.
Two ways were open ; a commis-
sion in India, a place in my uncle's
office. Which ? I was for the com-
mission, Alice for the office. A re-
spectable influential solicitor; a posi-
tion not to be despised; nothing but
cleverness wanted; and my uncle's
name, and no one to wait for ; no lirer
A Perilous Journey.
199
complaints ; no sepoys ; no sea voya-
ges ; and no long separation.
" Oh, I'm sure it is the best thing."
I agreed, not unnaturally then, that
it was the best.
" Now, you young people, youVe
had time enough to say ' Good by,'
so be off, Guy. Here, my lad, you'll
need something to start with," and the
old gentleman put into my hands a
note for fifty pounds.
" I must beg, sir, that you will not
insult"
God bless the boy! ' Insult!' Why
Fve danced you on my knee hundreds
of times. Look you, Guy," and the
old fellow came and put his hand on
my shoulder, " it gives me pain to do
what I am doing. I believe, for both
your sakes, it is best you should part.
Let us part friends. Come now, Guy,
you'll need this ; and if you need a
little more, let me know."
" But, sir, you cut me off from all
hope ; you render my life a burden to
me. Give me some definite task ; say
how much you think we ought to
have ; I mean how much I ought to
have to keep Alice I mean Miss
Morton in such a position as you
would wish."
Alice added her entreaties, and the
result of the conference was an under-
standing that if, within five years from
that date, I could show I was worth
500 a year, the old gentleman would
add another 500 ; and on that he
thought we might live for a few years
comfortably.
There was to be no correspondence
whatever ; no meetings, no messages.
We protested and pleaded, and finally
he said
Well, well, Guy ; I always liked
you. and liked your father before you.
Come to us on Christmas day, and
you shall find a vacant chair beside
Alice. There, now ; say * Good by,'
and be off."
I went off. I came to London to
one of the little lanes leading out of
Cannon street. Five hundred a year
in five years ! I must work hard.
I My uncle took little notice of me ;
I fancied worked me harder than the
rest, and paid me the same. Seventy-
five pounds a year is not a large sum.
I had spent it in a month before now,
after the fashion of my father : now, I
hoarded; made clothes last; ate in
musty, cheap, little cook-shops; and
kept my enjoying faculties from abso-
lute rust by a weekly half-price to the
theatres the pit.
The year passed. I went down on
Christmas, and for twenty-four hours
was alive ; came back, and had a rise
of twenty pounds in salary for the next
year. I waited for opportunity, and
it came not.
Thi jog-trot routine of office-work
continued for two years more, and at
the end of that time I was worth but
my salary of 135 per year- 135 ! a
long way from 500. Oh, for oppor-
tunity? I must quit the desk, and
become a merchant; all successful
men have been merchants ; money be-
gets money. But, to oppose all these
thoughts of change, came the memory
of Alice's last words at Christmas,
" Wait and hope, Guy, dear ; wait
and hope." Certainly ; it's so easy to.
" Governor wants you, Westwood.
He's sharp this morning ; very sharp ;
so look out, my dear nephy."
" You understand a little Italian, I
think ?" said my uncle.
" A little, sir."
"You will start to-night for Flor-
ence, in the mail train. Get there as
rapidly as possible, and find whether
a Colonel Wilson is residing there,
and what lady he is residing with.
Learn all you can as to his position
and means, and the terms on which he
lives with that lady. Write to me,
and wait there for further instructions.
Mr. Williams will give you a cheque
for 100 ; you can get circular notes
for 50, and the rest cash. If you
have anything to say, come in here at
five o'clock; if not, good morning. By-
the-by, say nothing in the office."
I need not say that hope made me
believe my opportunity was come.
I hurried to Florence and dis-
charged my mission ; sent home a
200
A Perilous Journey.
careful letter, full of facts without com-
ment or opinion, and in three weeks'
time was summoned to return. I had
done little or nothing that could help
me, and in a disappointed state of
mind I packed up and went to the
railway station at St. Dominico. A
little row with a peasant as to his de-
mand for carrying my baggage caused
me to lose the last train that night,
and so the steamer at Leghorn. The
station-master, seeing my vexation,
endeavored to console me :
" There will be a special through
train to Leghorn at nine o'clock, or-
dered for Count Spezzato : he is good-
natured, and will possibly let you go
in that."
It was worth the chance, and I hung
about the station till I was tired, and
then walked back toward the village.
Passing a small wine-ahop, I entered,
and asked for wine in English. I don't
know what whim possessed me when
I did it, for they were unable to un-
derstand me without dumb motions. I
at length got wine by these means,
and sat down to while away the time
over a railway volume.
I had been seated about half an
hour, when a courier entered, accom-
panied by a railway guard. Two
more different examples of the human
race it would be difficult to describe.
The guard was a dark, savage-look-
ing Italian, with ' rascal' and ' bully'
written all over him ; big, black, burly,
with bloodshot eyes, and thick, heavy,
sensual lips, the man was utterly re-
pulsive.
The courier was a little, neatly-
dressed man, of no age in particular ;
pale, blue-eyed, straight-lipped, his
face was a compound of fox and rab-
bit that only a fool or a patriot would
have trusted out of arm's length.
This ill-matched pair called for
brandy, and the hostess set it before
them. I then heard them ask who
and what I was. She replied, I must
be an Englishman, and did not under-
stand the Italian for wine. She then
left.
They evidently wanted to be alone,
and my presence was decidedly disa-
greeable to them ; and muttering that
I was an Englishman, they proceeded
to try my powers as a linguist.
The courier commenced in Italian,
with a remark on the weather. I
immediately handed him the Newspa-
per. I didn't speak Italian, that was
clear to them.
The guard now struck in with a
remark in French as to the fineness of
the neighboring country. I shrugged
my shoulders, and produced my cigar
case. French was not very familiar
to me, evidently.
"Those beasts of English think
their own tongue so fine they are too
proud to learn another," said the
guard.
I sat quietly, sipping my wine, and
reading.
" Well, my dear Michael Pultuski,"
began the guard.
" For the love of God, call me
by that name. My name is Alexis
Alexis Dzentzol, now."
" Oh ! oh !" laughed the guard ;
"you've changed your name, you fox ;
it's like you. Now I am the
that you knew fifteen years ago, Cc
rad Ferrate to-day, yesterday, am
for life, Conrad Ferrate. Come,
tell us your story. How did you
out of that little affair at Warsaw?
How they could have trusted you, with
your face, with their secrets, I can't
for the life of me tell ; you look so
like a sly knave, don't you, lad ?"
The courier, so far from resenting
this familiarity, smiled, as if he had
been praised.
" My story is soon said. I found,
after my betrayal to the police of the
secrets of that little conspiracy which
you and I joined, that Poland was too
hot for me, and my name too well
known. I went to France, who values
her police, and for a few years was
useful to them. But it was dull work ;
very dull ; native talent was more es-
teemed. I was to be sent on a secret
service to Warsaw ; I declined for ob-
vious reasons."
" Good ! Michael Alexis ; good,
A Perilous Journey.
201
Alexis. This fox is not to be trapped."
And he slapped the courier on the
shoulder heartily.
"And," resumed the other, "Ire-
signed. Since then I have travelled
as courier with noble families, and I
trust I give satisfaction."
" Good ! Alexis ; good Mich good
Alexis ! To yourself you give satis-
faction. You are a fine rascal ! the
prince of rascals! So decent; so
quiet ; so like the cure* of a convent.
Who would believe that you had sold
the lives of thirty men for a few hun-
dred roubles ?"
" And who," interrupted the courier,
" would believe that you, bluff, honest
Conrad Ferrate, had run away with
all the money those thirty men had col-
lected during ten years of labor, for res-
cuing their country from the Russian ?"
" That was good, Alexis, was it
not ? I never was so rich hi my life
as then ; I loved I gamed I drank
on the patriots' money."
" For how long ? Three years ?"
"More and now have none left.
Ah! Tunes change, Alexis; behold
me." And the guard touched his but-
tons and belt, the badges of his office.
" Never mind here's my good friend,
the bottle let us embrace the only
friend that is always true if he does
not gladden, he makes us to forget."
" Tell me, my good Alexis, whom
do you rob now? Who pays for the
best, and gets the second best ? Whose
money do you invest, eh ! my little
fox ? Why are you here ? Come, tell
me, while I drink to your success."
" I have the honor to serve his Ex-
cellency the Count Spezzato."
"Ten thousand devils! My ac-
cursed cousin!" broke in the guard.
"He who has robbed me from his
birth; whose birth itself was a vile
robbery of me me, his cousin, child
of his father's brother. May he be
accursed for ever !"
I took most particular pains to
appear only amused at this genuine
outburst of passion, for I saw the
watchful eye of the courier was on me
all the time they were talking.
The guard drank off a tumbler of
brandy.
" That master of yours is the man
of whom I spoke to you years ago, as
the one who had ruined me ; and you
serve him ! May he be strangled on
his wedding night, and cursed for
ever."
" Be calm, my dearest Conrad, calm
yourself; that beast of an Englishman
will think you are drunk, like one of
his own swinish people, if you talk so
loud as this."
" How can I help it ? I must talk.
What he is, that /ought to be : I was
brought up to it till I was eighteen;
was the heir to all his vast estate ;
there was but one life bet wee a me and
power my uncle's and he, at fifty,
married a girl, and had this son, this
son of perdition, my cousin. And
after that, I, who had been the pride
of my family, became of no account ;
it was * Julian/ ' sweet Julian !' "
" I heard," said the courier, " that
some one attempted to strangle the
sweet child, that was ?"
" Me you fox me. I wish I had
done it ; but for that wretched dog
that worried me, I should have been
Count Spezzato now. I killed that
dog, killed him, no not suddenly ; may
his master die like him !"
"And you left after that little
affair ?"
" Oh yes ! I left and became what
you know me."
" A clever man, my dear Conrad.
I know no man who is more clever
with the ace than yourself, and, as to
bullying to cover a mistake, you are an
emperor at that. Is it not so, Con-
rad ? Come, drink good health to my
master, your cousin."
"You miserable viper, I'll crush
you if you ask me to do that again.
I'll drink here, give me the glass
Here's to Count Spezzato: May he
die like a dog! May his carcase
bring the birds and the wolves to-
gether ! May his name be cursed and
hated while the sun lasts ! And may
purgatory keep him till I pray for his
release !"
202
A Perilous Journey,
The man's passion was something
frightful to see, and I was more than
half inclined to leave the place ; but
something, perhaps a distant murmur
of the rising tide, compelled me to stay.
I pretended sleep, allowing my head
to sink, down upon the table.
He sat still for a few moments, and
then commenced walking about the
room, and abruptly asked :
" What brought you here, Alexis?"
" My master's horse, Signor Con-
rad." "
" Good, my little fox ; but why did
you come on your master's horse ?"
"Because my master wishes to
reach Leghorn to-night, to meet his
bride, Conrad."
"Then his is the special train
ordered at nine, that I am to go with ?"
exclaimed the guard eagerly.
" That is so, gentle Conrad ; and
now, having told you all, let me pay
our hostess and go."
" Pay ! No one pays for me, little
fox ; no, no, go ; I will pay."
The courier took his departure, and
the guard kept walking up and down
the room, muttering to himself:
" To-night, it might be to-night. If
he goes to Leghorn, he meets his
future wife ; another life, and perhaps
a dozen. No, it must be to-night or
never. Does his mother go ? Fool
that I am not to ask ! Yes ; it shall
be to-night ; " and he left the room.
What should be " to-night ?" Some
foul play of which the count would
be the victim, no doubt. But how ?
when? That must be solved. To
follow him, or to wait which? To
wait. It is always best to wait ; I had
learned this lesson already.
I waited. It was now rather more
than half-past eight, and I had risen to
go to the door when I saw the guard
returning to the wine-shop with a man
whose dress indicated the stoker.
" Come in, Guido ; come in," said
the guard ; " and drink with me."
The man came in, and I was again
absorbed in my book.
They seated themselves at the same
table as before, and drank silently for
a while ; presently the guard began a
conversation in some patois I could
not understand ; but I could see the
stoker grow more and more interested
as the name of Beatrix occurred more
frequently.
As the talk went on, the stoker
seemed pressing the guard on some
part of the story with a most vin-
dictive eagerness, repeatedly asking,
" His name ? The accursed ! His
name ?"
At last the guard answered, " The
Count Spezzato."
" The Count Spezzato !" said the
stoker, now leaving the table, and
speaking in Italian.
" Yes, good Guido ; the man who
will travel in the train we take to-night
to Leghorn."
"He shall die! The accursed! He
shall die to-night !" said the stoker.
" If I lose my life, the betrayer of my
sister shall die !"
The guard, returning to the un
known tongue, seemed to be endeavor-
ing to calm him ; and I could only
catch a repetition of the word
" Empoli " at intervals. Presently
the stoker took from the seats beside
him two tin bottles, such as you may
see in the hands of mechanics who dine
out ; and I could see that one of them
had rudely scratched on it the name
"William Atkinson." I fancied the
guard produced from his pocket a
phial, and poured the contents into
that bottle ; but the action was so
rapid, and the comer so dark, that I
could not be positive ; then rising, they
stopped at the counter, had both
bottles filled with brandy, and went
out
It was now time to get to the I
station ; and, having paid my modest \
score, I went out.
A little in front of me, by the light
from a small window, I saw these two
cross themselves, grip each other's
hands across right to right, left to left,
and part.
The stoker had set down the bottles,
and now taking them up followed the
guard at a slower pace.
A Perilous Journey.
203
"How much will you give for your
life, my little fox ?" said the guard.
"To-day, very little; when I am
sixty, all I have, Conrad."
" But you might give something for
it, to-night, sweet Alexis, if you knew
it was in danger ?"
" I have no fear ; Conrad Ferrate
has too often conducted a tram for me
to fear to-night."
" True, my good Alexis ; but this is
the last train he will ride with as guard,
for to-morrow he will be the Count
Spezzato."
" How ? To-morrow ? You joke,
Conrad. The brandy was strong ; but
you who have drunk so much could
hardly feel that."
" I neither joke, nor am I drunk ;
yet I shall be Count Spezzato to-mor-
row, good Alexis. Look you, my gen-
tle fox, my sweet fox ; if you do not
buy your life of me, you shall die to-
night. That is simple, sweet fox."
" Ay ; but, Conrad, I am not in dan-
ger." '
" Nay, Alexis ; see, here is the
door " (I heard him turn the handle).
" If you lean against the door, you
will fall out and be killed. Is it not
simple?"
" But, good Conrad, I shall not lean
against the door."
"Oh, my sweet fox, my cunning
fox, my timid fox, but not my strong
fox ; you will lean against the door.
I know you will, unless I prevent
you; and I will not prevent you,
unless you give me all you have in
that bag."
The mocking tone of the guard
seemed well understood, for I heard
the click of gold.
" Good, my Alexis ; it is good ; but
it is very little for a life. Come, what
is your life worth, that you buy it
with only your master's money ? it has
cost you nothing. I see you will
lean against that door, which is so
foolish."
" What, in the name of all the dev-
ils in hell, will you have ?" said the
trembling voice of the courier.
" Only a little more ; just that belt
204:
A Perilous Journey.
that is under your shirt, under every-
thing, next to your skin, and dearer to
you; only a little soft leather belt
with pouches in. Is not life worth a
leather belt?"
" Wretch ! All the earnings of my
life are in that belt, and you know it."
" Is it possible, sweet fox, that I
have found your nest ? I shall give
Marie a necklace of diamonds, then.
Why do you wait ? Why should you
fall from a train, and make a piece of
news for the papers ? Why ?"
"Take it; and be accursed in
your life and death !'* and I heard the
belt flung on the floor of the carriage.
" Now, good Alexis, I am in funds ;
there are three pieces of gold for you ;
you will need them at Leghorn. Will
you drink? No? Then I will tell
you why, without drink. Do you
know where we are ?"
"Yes; between St. Dominico and
Signa."
" And do you know where we are
going?"
"Yes; to Leghorn."
"No, sweet Alexis, we are not;
we are going to Empoli : the train
will go no further. Look you, little
fox ; we shall arrive at the junction
one minute before the Sienna goods
train, and there the engine will break
down just where the rails cross ; for
two blows of a hammer will convert
an engine into a log ; I shall get out
to examine it; that will take a little
time ; I shall explain to the count
the nature of the injury; that will
take a little time ; and then the goods
train will have arrived; and as it
does not stop there, this train will go
no further than Empoli, and I shall
be Count Spezzato to-morrow. How
do you like my scheme, little fox ? Is
it not worthy of your pupil ? Oh, it
will be a beautiful accident; it will
fill the papers. That beast of an Eng-
lish who begged his place in the train
will be fortunate ; he will cease, for
goods trains are heavy. Eh ! but it's
a grand scheme the son, the mother,
the servant, the stranger, the engine-
driver, all shall tell no tales."
" And the stoker?" said the courier.
" Oh, you and he and I shall escape.
We shall be pointed at in the street
as the fortunate. It is good, is it not,
Alexis, my fox? I have told him
that the count is the man who be-
trayed his sister. He believes it, and
is my creature. But, little fox, it was
not my cousin, it was myself, that
took his Beatrix from her home. Is
it not good, Alexis ? Is it not genius ?
And Atkinson he, the driver is
now stupid : he has drunk from his
can the poppy juice that will make
him sleep for ever. I will be a poli-
tician. I am worthy of office. I
will become the Minister of a Bour-
bon when I am count, my dear fox,
and you shall be my comrade again, as
of old."
I was, for a time, lost to every
sensation save that of hearing. The
fiendish garrulity of the man had all
the fascination of the serpent's rattle.
I felt helplessly resigned to a certain
fate.
I was aroused by something white
slowly passing the closed window of
the carriage. I waited a little, then
gently opened it and looked out. The
stoker was crawling along the foot-
board of the next carnage, holding on
by its handles, so as not to be seen by
the occupants, and holding the signal
lantern that I had noticed at the back
of the last carriage in his hand. The
meaning of it struck me in a moment :
if by any chance we missed the goods
train from Sienna, we should be run
into from behind by the train from
Florence.
The cold air that blew in at the
open window refreshed me, and I
could think what was to be done. The
train was increasing its pace rapidly.
Evidently the stoker, in sole charge,
was striving to reach Empoli before
the other train, which we should fol-
low, was due : he had to make five
minutes in a journey of forty-five, and,
at the rate we were going, we should
do it. We stopped nowhere, and the
journey was more than half over.
We were now between Segua and
A Perilous Journey.
205
Montelupo; another twenty minutes
and I should be a bruised corpse.
Something must be done.
I decided soon. Unfastening my
bag, I took out my revolver, without
which I never travel, and looking
carefully to the loading and capping,
fastened it to my waist with a hand-
kerchief. I then cut with my knife
the bar across the middle of the win-
dow, and carefully looked out. I
could see nothing ; the rain was falling
fast, and the night as dark as ever.
I cautiously put out first one leg and
then the other, keeping my knees and
toes close to the door, and lowered
myself till I felt the step. I walked
carefully along the foot-board by side
steps, holding on to the handles of the
doors, till I came to the end of the
carriages, and was next the tender.
Here was a gulf that seemed impass-
able. The stoker must have passed
over it ; why not I ? Mounting from
the foot-board on to the buffer, and
holding on to the iron hook on which
the lamps are hung, I stretched my
legs to reach the flat part of the buffer
on the tender. My legs swung about
with the vibration, and touched no-
thing. I must spring. I had to hold
with both hands behind my back, and
stood on the case of the buffer-spring,
and, suddenly leaving go, leaped for-
ward, struck violently against the
edge of the tender, and grasped some
of the loose lumps of coal on the top.
Another struggle brought me on my
knees, bruised and bleeding, on the top.
I stood up, and at that moment the
stoker opened the door of the furnace,
and turned toward me, shovel in hand,
to put in the coals. The bright red
light from the fire enabled him to see
me, while it blinded me. He rushed
at me, and then began a struggle that
I shall remember to my dying day.
He grasped me round the throat
with one arm, dragging me close to
his breast, and with the other kept
shortening the shovel for an effective
blow. My hands, numbed and bruised,
were almost useless to me, and for
some seconds we reeled to and fro on
the foot-plate in the blinding glare.
At last he got me against the front of
the engine, and, with horrible ingen-
uity, pressed me against it till the
lower part of my clothes were burnt
to a cinder. The heat, however, re-
stored my hands, and at last I man-
aged to push him far enough from my
body to loosen my pistol. I did not
want to kill him, but I could not be
very careful, and I fired at his shoul-
der from the back. He dropped the
shovel, the arm that had nearly throt-
tled me relaxed, and he fell. I pushed
him into a corner of the tender, and
sat down to recover myself.
My object was to get to Empoli be-
fore the Sienna goods train, for I knew
nothing of what might be behind me.
It was too late to stop, but I might, by
shortening the journey seven minutes
instead of five, get to Empoli three
minutes before the goods tram was
due.
I had never been on an engine be-
fore in my life, but I knew that there
must be a valve somewhere that let
the steam from the boiler into the
cylinders, and that, being important, it
would be in a conspicuous position. I
therefore turned the large handle in
front of me, and had the satisfaction
of finding the speed rapidly increased,
and at the same time felt the guard
putting on the break to retard the train.
Spite of this, in ten minutes I could
see some dim lights ; I could not tell
where, and I still pressed on faster and
faster.
In vain, between the intervals of
putting on coals, did I try to arouse the
sleeping driver. There I was, with
two apparently dead bodies, on the foot-
plate of an engine, going at the rate of
forty miles an hour, or more, amidst a
thundering noise and vibration that
nearly maddened me.
At last we reached the lights, and I
saw, as I dashed by, that we had
passed the dread point.
As I turned back, I could see the
rapidly-dropping cinders from the tram
which, had the guard's break been suf-
ficiently powerful to have made me
206
A Perilous Journey.
thirty seconds later, would have utterly
destroyed me.
I was still in a difficult position.
There was the train half a minute be-
hind us, which, had we kept our time,
would have been four minutes in front
of us. It came on to the same rails,
and I could hear its dull rumble rush-
ing on toward us fast. If I stopped
there was no light to warn them. I
must go on, for the Sienna train did
not stop at Empoli.
I put on more fuel, and after some
slight scalding, from turning on the
wrong taps, had the pleasure of seeing
the water-gauge filling up. Still I
could not go on long ; the risk was
awful. I tried in vain to write on a
leaf of my note-book, and after search-
ing in the tool-box, wrote on the iron
lid of the tank with a piece of chalk,
"Stop everything behind me. The
train will not be stopped till three red
lights are ranged in a line on the
ground. Telegraph forward." And
then, as we flew through the Empoli
station, I threw it on the platform.
On we. went ; the same dull thunder be-
hind warning me that I dare not stop.
We passed through another station
at full speed, and at length I saw the
white lights of another station in the
distance. The sound behind had al-
most ceased, and in a few moments
more I saw the line of three red lamps
low down on the ground. I pulled
back the handle, and after an ineffec-
tual effort to pull up at the station,
brought up the train about a hundred
yards beyond Pontedera.
The porters and police of the station
came up and put the train back, and
then came the explanation.
The guard had been found dead on
the rails, just beyond Empoli, and the
telegraph set to work to stop the train.
He must have found out the failure of
his scheme, and in trying to reach the
engine, have fallen on the rails.
The driver was only stupefied, and
the stoker fortunately only dangerously,
not fatally, wounded.
Another driver was found, and the
train was to go on.
The count had listened most atten-
tively to my statements, and then,
taking my grimed hand in his, led me
to his mother.
" Madam, my mother, you have from
this day one other son: this, my
mother, is my brother."
The countess literally fell on my
neck, and kissed me in the sight of
them all; and speaking in Italian
said
" Julian, he is my son ; he has saved
my life ; and more, he has saved your
life. My son, I will not say much;
what is your name ?"
" Guy Westwood."
" Guy, my child, my son, I am your
mother ; you shall love me."
" Yes, my mother ; he is my brother,
I am his. He is English too ; I like
English. He has done well. Blanche
shall be his sister."
During the whole of this time both
mother and son were embracing me
and kissing my cheeks, after the impul-
sive manner of their passionate natures,
the indulgence of which appears so
strange to our cold blood.
The train was delayed, for my
wounds and bruises to be dressed, and
I then entered their carriage and went
to Leghorn with them.
Arrived there, I was about to say
" Farewell."
" What is farewell, now ? No ; you
must see Blanche, your sister. You
will sleep to my hotel : I shall not let
you go. Who is she that in your great
book says, ' Where you go, I will go ?'
That is my spirit. You must not leave
me till till you are as happy as
I am."
He kept me, introduced me to
Blanche, and persuaded me to write for !
leave to stay another two months, when
he would return to England with me. !
Little by little he made me talk about |
Alice, till he knew all my story.
"Ah! that is it; you shall be un-
happy because you want 500 every
year, and I have so much as that. ;
I am a patriot to get rid of my money, i
So it is that you will not take money. I
You have saved my life, and you will !
The Winds.
207
This is not conspiracy ; it is not plot ;
it is not society with ribbons ; but it is
what Italy, my country, wants. I grow
poor; Italy grows rich. I am not
wise in these things ; they cheat me,
because I am an enthusiast. Now,
Guy, my brother, you are wise ; you
are deep ; long in the head ; in short,
you are English ! You shall be my
guardian in these things you shall
save me from the cheat, and you shall
work hard as you like for all the
money you shall take of me. Come,
my Guy, is it so ?"
Need I say that it was so ? The
count and his Blanche made their
honeymoon tour in England. They
spent Christmas day with Alice and
myself at Mr. Morton's, and when they
left, Alice and I left with them, for our
new home in Florence.
From The Cornhffl Magazine.
THE WINDS.
O wild raving west winds ....
Oh ! where do ye rise from, and where do ye die?
THE question which is put in these
lines is one which has posed the in-
genuity of all who have ever thought
on it ; and though theories have re-
peatedly been propounded to answer
it, yet one and all fail, and we again
recur to the words of him who knew
all things and said, " The wind blow-
eth where it listeth, and thou hearest
the sound thereof, but canst not tell
whence it cometh or whither it goeth."
However, though we cannot assign
exactly the source whence the winds
rise or the goal to which they tend,
the labors of meteorologists have been
so far successful as to enable us to un-
derstand the causes of the great cur-
rents of air, and even to map out the
winds which prevail at different sea-
sons in the various quarters of the
globe. The problem which has thus
been solved is one vastly more simple
than that of saying why the wind
changes on any particular day, or at
what spot on the earth's surface a
particular current begins or ends.
Were these questions solved, there
would be an end to all uncertainty
about weather. There need be no
fear that the farmer would lose his
crops owing to the change of weather,
if the advent of every shower had been
foretold by an unerring guide, and the
precise day of the break in the weather
predicted weeks and months before.
This is the point on which weather-
prophets ' astro-meteorologists ' they
call themselves now-a-days still ven-
ture their predictions, undismayed by
their reported and glaring failures.
208
The Winds.
It has been well remarked that not
one of these prophets foretold the dry
weather which lasted for so many weeks
during the last summer ; yet, even at
the present day, there are people who
look to the almanacs to see what
weather is to be expected at a given
date ; and even the prophecies of " Old
Moore " find, or used to find within a
very few years, an ample credence.
In fact, if we are to believe the opin-
ions propounded by the positive phil-
osophers of the present day, we must
admit that it is absurd to place any
limits on the possibility of predicting
natural phenomena, inasmuch as all
operations of nature obey fixed and
unalterable laws, which are all discov-
erable by the unaided mind of man.
True science, we may venture to
say, is more modest than these gentle-
men would have us to think it ; and
though in the particular branch of
knowledge of which we are now treat-
ing daily prophecies (or ' forecasts,'
as Admiral Fitzroy is careful to call
them) of weather appear in the news-
papers, yet these are not announced
dogmatically, and no attempt is made
in them to foretell weather for more
than forty-eight hours in advance.
We are not going to discuss the ques-
tion of storms and storm-signals at
present, so we shall proceed to the
subje'ct in hand the ordinary wind-
currents of the earth ; and in speak-
ing of these shall confine ourselves as
far as possible to well-known and re-
corded facts, bringing in each case the
best evidence which we can adduce to
support the theories which may be
broached.
What, then, our readers will ask,
is the cause of the winds ? The simple
answer is the sun. Let us see, now,
how this indefatigable agent, who ap-
pears to do almost everything on the
surface of the earth, from painting
pictures to driving steam-engines, as
George Stephenson used to maintain
that he did, is able to raise the wind.
If you light a fire in a room, and
afterward stop up every chink by
which air can gain access to the fire,
except the chimney, the fire will go
out in a short time. Again, if a lamp
is burning on the table, and you stop
up the chimney at the top, the lamp
will go out at once. The reason of
this is that the flame, in each case,
attracts the air, and if either the supply
of air is cut off below, or its escape
above is checked, the flame cannot go
on burning. This explanation, how-
ever, does not bear to be pushed too
far. The reason that the fire goes
out if the supply of air is cut off is,
that the flame, so to speak, feeds
on air ; while the sun cannot be
said, in any sense, to be dependent on
the earth's atmosphere for the fuel for
his fire. We have chosen the illus-
tration of the flame, because the facts
are so well known. If, instead of a
lamp in the middle of a room, we were to
hang up a large mass of iron, heated,
we should find that currents of air set
in from all sides, rose up above it, and
spread out when they reached the
ceiling, descending again along the
walls. The existence of these currents
may be easily proved by sprinkling a
handful of fine chaff about in the room.
What is the reason of the circulation
thus produced? The iron, unless it
be extremely hot, as it is when
melted by Mr. Bessemer's process,
does not require the air in order
to keep up its heat; and, in fact,
the constant supply of fresh air cools
it, as the metal gives away its own
heat to the air as fast as the particles
of the latter come in contact with it.
Why, then, do the currents arise ? Be-
cause the air, when heated, expands
or gets lighter, and rises, leaving an
empty space, or vacuum, where it was
before. Then the surrounding cold
air, being elastic, forces itself into the
open space, and gets heated in its turn.
From this we can see that there
will be a constant tendency in the air
to flow toward that point on the earth's
surface where the temperature is high-
est or, all other things being equal^
to that point where the sun may be at
that moment in the zenith. Accord-
ingly, if the earth's surface were either
The Winds.
209
entirely dry land, or entirely water,
and the sun were continually in the
plane of the equator, we should ex-
pect to find the direction of the great
wind-currents permanent and un-
changed throughout the year. The
true state of the case is, however, that
these conditions are very far from be-
ing fulfilled. Every one knows that
the sun is not always immediately
over the equator, but that he is at the
tropic of Cancer in June, and at the
tropic of Capricorn in December, pass-
ing the equator twice every year at
the equinoxes. Here, then, we have
one cause which disturbs the regular
flow of the wind-currents. The effect
of this is materially increased by the
extremely arbitrary way in which the
dry land has been distributed over the
globe. The northern hemisphere
contains the whole of Europe, Asia,,
and. North America, the greater part
of Africa, and a portion of South
America ; while in the southern hem-
isphere we only find the remaining
portions of the two last-named contin-
ents, with Australia and some of the
large islands in its vicinity. Accord-
ingly, during our summer there is a
much greater area of dry land exposed
to the nearly vertical rays of the sun
than is the case during our winter.
Let us see for a moment how this
cause acts in modifying the direction of
the wind-currents. We shall find it eas-
I ier to make this intelligible if we take an
llustration from observed facts. It
takes about five times as much heat to
raise a ton weight of water through a
certain range of temperature, as it
loes to produce the same effect in the
ease of a ton of rock. Again, the ten-
dency of a surface of dry land to give out
leat, and consequently to warm the air
ibove it, and cause it to rise, is very
much greater than that of a surface
of water of equal area. Hence we can
at once see the cause of the local
winds which are felt every day in calm
weather in islands situated in hot
climates. During the day the island
become* very hot, and thus what the
French call a courant ascendant
14
is set in operation. The air above
the land gets hot and rises, while the
colder air which is on the sea all
round it flows in to fill its place, and
is felt as a cool sea-breeze. During
the night these conditions are exactly
reversed : the land can no longer get
any heat from the sun, as he has set,
while it is still nearly as liberal in
parting with its acquired heat as it
was before. Accordingly, it soon be-
comes cooler than the sea in its neigh-
borhood ; and the air, instead of rising
up over it, sinks down upon it, and
flows out to sea, producing a land-
wind.
These conditions are, apparently,
nearly exactly fulfilled in the region
of the monsoons, with the exception
that the change of wind takes place at
intervals of six months, and not every
twelve hours. In this district which
extends over the southern portion of
Asia and the Indian ocean the wind
for half the year blows from one point,
and for the other hah from that which
is directly opposite. The winds are
north-east and south-west in Hindos-
tan ; and in Java, at the other side of
the equator, they are south-east and
north-west. The cause of the winds
monsoons they are called, from an
Arabic word, mausim, meaning season
is not quite so easily explained as
that of the ordinary land and sea
breezes to which we have just referred.
Their origin is to be sought for in the
temperate zone, and not between "the
tropics. The reason of this is that the
districts toward which the air is sucked
in are not those which are absolutely
hottest, but those where the rarefac-
tion of the air is greatest. When the
air becomes lighter, it is said to be
rarefied, and this rarefaction ought ap-
parently to be greatest where the tem-
perature is highest. This would be
the case if the air were the only con-
stituent of our atmosphere. There is,
however, a very important disturbing
agent to be taken into consideration,
viz., aqueous vapor. There is always,
when it is not actually raining, a quan-
tity of water rising from the surface of
210
The Winds.
the sea and from every exposed water-
surface, and mingling with the air.
This water is perfectly invisible : as it
is in the form of vapor, it is true steam,
and its presence only becomes visible
when it is condensed so as to form a
cloud. The hotter the air is, the more
of this aqueous vapor is it able to hold
in the invisible condition.
We shall naturally expect to find a
greater amount of this steam in the air
at places situated near the coast, than
at those in the interior of continents,
and this is actually the case. The
amount of rarefaction which the dry
air on the sea-coast of Hindostan un-
dergoes in summer, is partially com-
pensated for by the increased tension
of the aqueous vapor, whose presence
in the air is due to the action of the
sun's heat on the surface of the Indian
ocean. In the interior of Asia there
is no great body of water to be found,
and the winds from the south lose most
of the moisture which they contain in
passing over the Himalayas. Ac-
cordingly the air is extremely dry,
and a compensation, similar to that
which is observed in Hindostan, can-
not take place. It is toward this dis-
trict that the wind is sucked in, and
the attraction is sufficient to draw a
portion of the south-east trade-wind
across the line into the northern hem-
isphere. In our winter the region
where the rarefaction is greatest is the
continent of Australia ; and according-
ly, in its turn, it sucks the north-east
trade-wind of the northern hemisphere
across the equator. Thus we see that
in the region which extends from the
coast of Australia to the centre of Asia
we have monsoons, or winds which
change regularly every six months.
As to the directions of the different
monsoons, we shall discuss them when
we have disposed of the trade-winds
which ought by rights, as Professor
Dove observes, rather to be considered
as an imperfectly developed monsoon,
than the latter to be held as a modifi-
cation of the former.
The origin of the trade-winds is to
be sought for, as before, in the heating
power of the sun, and their direction
is a result of the figure of the earth,
and of its motion on its axis. When
the air at the equator rises, that in
higher latitudes on either side flows in,
and would be felt as a north wind or
as a south wind respectively, if the
earth's motion on its axis did not affect
it. The figure of the earth is pretty
nearly that of a sphere, and, as it re-
volves round its axis, it is evident that
those points on its surface which are
situated at the greatest distance from
the axis, will have to travel over a
greater distance in the same time than
those which are near it. Thus, for in-
stance, London, which is nearly under
the parallel of 50, has only to travel
about three-fifths of the distance which
a place like Quito, situated under the
equator, has to travel in the same time.
A person situated in London is carried,
imperceptibly to himself, by the mo-
tion of the earth, through 15,000 miles
toward the eastward in the twenty-four
hours ; while another at Quito is car-
ried through 25,000 miles in the same
time. Accordingly, if the Londoner,
preserving his own rate of motion,
were suddenly transferred to Quito, he
would be left 10,000 miles behind the
other in the course of the twenty-four
hours, or would appear to be moving
in the opposite direction, from east to
west, at the rate of about 400 miles
an hour. The case would be just as
if a person were to be thrown into a
railway carriage which was moving at
full speed ; he would appear to his j
fellow-passengers to be moving in thei
opposite direction to them, while in re-
ality the motion of progression was in
the train, not in the person who was I
thrown into it. The air is transferred
from high to low latitudes, but this;
change is gradual, and the earth, ac-
cordingly, by means of the force oi
friction, is able to retard its relative
velocity before it reaches the tropics
so that its actual velocity, though stil
considerable, is far below 400 miles ar
hour.
This wind comes from high latitudes
and becomes more and more easterly
The Winds.
211
reaching us as a nearly true north-east
wind ; and as it gets into lower lati-
tudes becoming more and more nearly
east, and forming-a belt of north-east
wind all round the earth on the north-
ern side of the equator. In the south-
ern hemisphere, there is a similar belt
of permanent winds, which are, of
course, south-easterly instead of north-
easterly. These belts are not always
at equal distances at each side of the
equator, as their position is dependent
on the situation of the zone of maxi-
mum temperature for the time being.
When we reach the actual district
where the air rises, we find the easter-
ly direction of the wind no longer so
remarkable, as has been noticed by
Basil Hall and others. The reason is,
that by the time that the air reaches
the district where it rises, it ha,s ob-
tained by means of its friction with the
earth's surface a rate of motion round
the earth's axis nearly equal to that
of the earth's surface itself.
The trade-wind zones, called, by the
Spaniards, the "Ladies' Sesf'MGolfo
de las Damas because navigation on
a sea where the wind never changed
was so easy, shift their position ac-
cording to the apparent motion of the
sun in the ecliptic. In the Atlantic
the north-east trade begins in summer
in the latitude of the Azores ; in win-
ter it commences to the south of the
Canaries.
In the actual trade-wind zones rain
very seldom falls, any more than it
does in these countries when the east
wind has well set in. The reason of
this is, that the air on its passage from
high to low latitudes is continually be-
coming warmer and warmer. Accord-
ing as its temperature rises, its power
of dissolving (so to speak) water in-
creases also, and so it is constantly
increasing its burden of water until it
reaches the end of its journey, where
it rises into the higher regions of the
atmosphere, and there is suddenly
cooled. The chilling process con-
denses, to a great extent, the aqueous
vapor contained in the trade-wind air,
and causes it to fall in constant dis-
charges of heavy rain. Throughout
the tropics the rainy season coincides
with that period at which the sun is in
the zenith, and in this region the
heaviest rain-fall on the globe is ob-
served. The wettest place in the
world, Cherrapoonjee, is situated in the
Cossya hills, about 250 miles north-
east of Calcutta, just outside the torrid
zone. There the ram-fall is upward
of 600 niches in the year, or twenty
times as much as it is on the west
coasts of Scotland and Ireland. How-
ever, in such extreme cases as this,
there are other circumstances to be
taken into consideration, such as the
position of the locality as regards
mountain chains, which may cause the
clouds to drift over one particular spot.
To return to the wind : "W^en the
air rises at the equatorial edge of the
trade-wind zone, it flows away above
the lower trade-wind current. The
existence of an upper current in the
tropics is well known. Volcanic ashes,
which have fallen in several of the
"West Indian islands on several occa-
sions, have been traced to volcanoes
which lay to the westward of the lo-
cality where the ashes fell, at a time
when there was no west wind blowing
at the sea-level. To take a recent in-
stance : ashes fell at Kingston, Jamai-
ca, in the year 1835, and it is satisfac-
torily proved that they had been eject-
ed from the volcano of Coseguina, on
the Pacific shore of Central America,
and must consequently have been borne
to the eastward by an upward current
counter to the direction of the easterly
winds which were blowing at the tune
at the sea-level.
Captain Maury supposes that when
the air rises, at either side of the
equator, it crosses over into the oppo-
site hemisphere, so that there is a
constant interchange of air going on
between . the northern and southern
hemispheres. This he has hardly
sufficiently proved, and his views are
not generally accepted. One of the
arguments on which he lays great
stress in support of his theory is that
on certain occasions dust has fallen in
212
The Winds.
various parts of western Europe, and
that in it there have been discovered
microscopical animals similar to those
which are Found in South America.
This appears to be scarcely an incon-
trovertible proof; as Admiral Fitzroy
observes : " Certainly, such insects
may be found in Brazil ; but does
it follow that they are not also in
Africa, under nearly the same paral-
lel?"
This counter-current, or "anti-trade,"
as Sir J. Herschel has called it, is at
a high level in the atmosphere be-
tween the tropics, far above the top of
the highest mountains ; but at the ex-
terior edge of the trade-wind zone, it
descends to the surface of the ground.
The Canary islands are situated close
to this edge, and accordingly we find
that fhere is always a westerly wind
at the summit of the Peak of Tener-
iffe, while the wind at the sea-level, in
the same island, is easterly through-
out the summer months. Professor
Piazzi Smyth, who lived for some time
on the top of that mountain, making
astronomical observations, has record-
ed some very interesting details of
the conflicts between the two currents,
which he was able to observe accu-
rately from his elevated position. In
winter the trade-wind zone is situated
to the south of its summer position in
latitude, and at this season the south-
west wind is felt at the sea-level in
the Canary islands. Similar facts to
these have been observed in other
localities where there are high mount-
ains situated on the edge of the trade-
wind zone, as, for instance, Mouna
Loa, in the Sandwich islands. There
can, therefore, be no doubt that the
warm, moist west wind, which is felt
so generally in the temperate zones,
is really the air returning to the poles
from the equator, which has now as-
sumed a south-west direction on its
return journey, owing to conditions
the reverse of those which imparted
to it a north-east motion on its way
toward the equator. This, then, is our
south-west wind, which is so prevalent
in the North Atlantic ocean that the
voyage from Europe to America is
not unfrequently called the up-hill
trip, in contradistinction to the down-
hill passage home. These are the
" brave west winds" of Maury, whose
refreshing action on the soil he never
tires of recapitulating.
The south-west monsoons of Hin-
dostan, which blow from May to Oc-
tober, and the north-west monsoons
of the Java seas, which are felt be-
tween November and April, owe their
westerly motion to a cause similar to
that of the anti-trades which we have
just described. To take the case of
the monsoons of Hindostan : we have
seen above how the rarefaction of the
air in Central Asia attracts the south-
east trade-wind of the southern hemi-
sphere across the equator. This air,
when it moves from the equator into
higher latitudes, brings with it the
rate of motion, to the eastward, of the
equatorial regions which it has lately
left, and is felt as a sonth-west wind.
Accordingly, the directions of the mon-
soons are thus accounted for. In the
winter months the true north-east
trade-wind is felt, in Hindostan ; while
in the summer months its place is
taken by the south-east trade of the
southern hemisphere, making its ap-
pearance as the south-west monsoon.
In Java, conditions exactly converse
to these are in operation, and the
winds are south-east from April to
November, and north-west during the
rest of the year.
The change of one monsoon to the
other is always accompanied by rough
weather, called in some places the
" breaking out" of the monsoon ; just
as with us the equinox, or change of
the season from summer to winter,
and vice versa, is marked by " windy
weather," or " equinoctial gales."
The question may, however, well
be asked, why there are no monsoons
in the Atlantic Ocean ?
In the first place, the amount of
rarefaction which the air in Africa and
in Brazil undergoes, in the respective
hot seasons of those regions, is far less
considerable than that which is ob-
^
served in Asia and Australia at the
' corresponding seasons.
Secondly, in the case of the Atlan-
tic ocean, the two districts toward
which the air is attracted are situated
within the torrid zone, while in the In-
dian ocean they are quite outside the
tropics, and in the temperate zones.
Accordingly, even if the suction of the
air across the equator did take place
to the same extent in the former case
as in the latter, the extreme contrast
in direction between the two monsoons
would not be perceptible to the same
extent, owing to the fact that the same
amount of westing could not be im-
parted to the wind, because it had not
to travel into such high latitudes on
either side of the equator. A ten-
dency to the production of the phe-
nomena of the monsoons is observable
along the coast of Guinea, where
winds from the south and south-west
are very generally felt. These winds
are not really the south-east trade-
wind, which has been attracted across
e line to the northern hemisphere,
ey ought rather to be considered
of the same nature as the land and
ea breezes before referred to, since
find it to be very generally the
that in warm climates the ordi-
ary wind-currents undergo a deflection
a greater or less extent along a
oast-line such as that of Guinea,
razil, or north of Australia.
Our readers may perhaps ask why
t is, that when we allege that the whole
f the winds of the globe owe their
igin to a regular circulation of the air
roni the Polainregions to the equator,
back again, we do not find more
efinite traces of such a circulation in
he winds of our own latitudes? The
mswer to this is, that the traces of
lis circulation are easily discoverable
we only know how to look for them,
tn the Mediterranean sea, situated near
le northern edge of the trade-wind
le, the contrast between the equa-
rial and polar currents of air is very
lecidedly marked. The two conflict-
ids are known under various
les in different parts of the dis-
The Winds.
213
trict. The polar current, on its way
to join the trade-wind, is termed the
" tramontane," in other parts the
" bora," the " maestral," etc. ; while the
return trade-wind, bringing rain, is
well known under the name of the
" sirocco." In Switzerland the same
wind is called the " Fohn," and is a
warm wind, which causes the ice and
snow to melt rapidly, and constantly
brings with it heavy rain.
In these latitudes the contrast is not
so very striking, but even here every
one knows that the only winds which
last for more than a day or two at a
time are the north-east and the south-
west winds, the former of which is
dry and cold, the latter moist and
warm. The difference between these
winds is much more noticeable in win-
ter than in summer, inasmuch as in
the latter season Russia and the north-
ern part of Asia enjoy, relatively to
the British Islands, a much higher
temperature than is the case in winter;
so that the air which moves from those
regions during the summer months
does not come to us from a climate
which is colder than our own, but from
one which is warmer.
So far, then, we have attempted to
trace the ordinary wind-currents, but
as yet there are very many questions
connected therewith which are not
quite sufficiently explained. To men-
tion one of these, we hear from many
observers on the late Arctic expedi-
tions, that the most marked character-
istic of the winds in the neighborhood
of Baffin's Bay, is the great predomi-
nance of north-westerly winds. It is
not as yet, nor can it ever be satisfac-
torily, decided how far to the north-
ward and westward this phenomenon
is noticeable. The question then is,
Whence does this north-west wind
come?.
As to the causes of the sudden
changes of wind, and of storms, they
are as yet shrouded in mystery, and
we cannot have much expectation that
in our lifetime, at least, much will be
done to unravel the web. Meteorology
is a very young science if it deserves
214
Eugenie and Maurice de Guerin.
the title of science at all and until
observations for a long series of years
shall have been made at many stations,
we shall not be in the possession of
trustworthy facts on which to ground
our reasoning. It is merely shoving
the difficulty a step further off to as-
sign these irregular variations to at-
mospheric waves. It will be time
enough to reason accurately about the
weather and its changes when we as-
certain what these atmospheric waves
are, and what causes them. Until
the " astro-meteorologists" will tell us
the principles on which their calcula-
tions are based, we must decline to
receive their predictions as worthy of
any credence whatever.
From The Month. .
EUGENIE AND MAURICE DE GUCRIN.
THE life of Eugenie de Gue'rin
forms a great contrast with those
which are generally brought before
the notice of the world. Not only did
she not seek for fame, but the circum-
stances of her life were the very
ones which generally tend to keep a
woman in obscurity. Her life was
passed in the deepest retirement of a
country home. The society even of
a provincial town was not within her
reach. Poverty placed a bar between
her and the means for study in con-
genial society. The routine of her
life shut her out from great deeds or
unusual achievements. In fact, her
life, so far from being a deviation
from the ordinary track which women
have to tread, was a very type of the
existence which seems to be marked
out for the majority of women, and at
which they are so often wont to mur-
mur. The want of an aim in life, the
necessity of some fixed, engrossing oc-
cupation, and the ennui which follows
on the deprivation of these, forms the
staple trial of thousands of women,
especially in England, where tliere is
much intellectual vigor with so little
power for its exercise. That the re-
action from this deprivation is shown
by " fastness," or an excessive love of
dress and amusement, is acknowledged
by the most keen observers of human
nature. But to the large class of
women who, disdaining such means
of distraction, bear their burden pa-
tiently, Eugenie de Guerin's Journal
et Lettres possess an intense interest.
Her life was so uneventful that it ab-
solutely affords no materials for a biog-
raphy, but her character is so full of
interest that her name is now a fa-
miliar one in England and France.
Far away in the heart of sunny
Languedoc stands the chateau of Le
Cayla, the home of the de Gue'rins.
They were of noble blood. The old
chateau was full of reminiscences
of the deeds of their ancestors. De
Guerin, Bishop of Senlis and Chan-
cellor of France, had gone forth, with
a valor scarcely befitting his episcopal
character, to animate the troops at
the battle of Bouvines ; and from the
walls of Le Cayla looked down from
his portrait de Guerin, Grand Master
of the Knights of Malta in 1206. A
cardinal, a troubadour, and countless
gallant and noble soldiers filled up the
family rolls the best blood in France
had mingled with theirs ; but now the
family were obscure, forgotten, and
poor. But these circumstances were
no hindrances to the happiness of
Eugenie's early life.
" My childhood passed away like
one long summer-day," said she after-
Eugenie and Maurice de Guerin.
215
ward. Thirteen happy years fled by.
There was the father, cherished with
tender, self-forgetting love ; the brother
Eranbert; the sister Marie, the young-
est pet of the household ; the beauti-
ful and precocious Maurice; and the
mother, the centre of all, loving and
beloved. But a shadow suddenly fell
on the sunny landscape, and Mad-
ame de Guerin lay on her death-bed,
when, calling to her Eugenie, her eld-
est child, she gave to her especial
charge Maurice, then aged seven, and
his mother's darling. The dying lips
bade Eugenie fill a mother's place to
him, and the sensitive and enthusiastic
girl received the words into her heart,
and never forgot them.
From that day her childhood, al-
most her youth, ended ; and it is with-
out exaggeration we may say that the
depth of maternal love passed into
her heart. Henceforth Maurice was
the one object and the absorbing
thought of her heart, second only to
one other, and that no love of earth.
Sometimes, indeed, that passionate
devotion to Maurice disputed the sway
of the true Master, as we shall here-
after see, but it was never ultimately
victorious. It was not likely that
their lives should for long run side
by side. The extraordinary brilliancy
of Maurice's gifts made his father
determine upon cultivating his mind.
As soon as possible, he was sent first
to the petit seminaire at Toulouse, and
then to the college Stanislaus at Paris.
Maurice de Guerin was a singular-
ly endowed being. He possessed that
kind of personal beauty so very rare
among men, and which is so hard to
describe a spiritual beauty, which
insensibly draws the hearts of others
to its possessor. Added to this, he
had that sweetness of tone and man-
ner, that instinctive power of sym-
pathy, that sparkling brilliance which
made him idolized by those who knew
him, which rendered him literally the
darling of his friends. "7/ etait leur
vie? said those who spoke of him after
he was gone from earth.
The early and ardent aspirations of
this gifted being were turned heaven-
ward. His youthful head was de-
voutly bowed in prayer. The coun-
try people called him "lejeune saint;"
and his conduct at the petit seminaire
gave such satisfaction that the Arch-
bishop of Toulouse, and also the Arch-
bishop of Rouen, offered to take the
whole charge of his future education
on themselves ; but his father refused
both. The temptations of a college
life had left him scathless, and the
longing of his soul was for the conse-
cration of the priesthood. What he
might have been, had he fallen into
other hands, cannot now be known.
Whether there was an inherent weak-
ness and effeminacy in the character
which would have unfitted him for the
awful responsibilities of the priestly
office, we know not. At all events,
he was attracted, as many minds of
undoubted superiority were at that
time, by the extraordinary brilliancy
and commanding genius of de Lamen-
nais; and Maurice de Guerin found
himself in the solitude of La Chesnaie,
a fellow-student with Hippolyte La-
cordaire, Montalembert, Saint-Beuve,
and a group of others. Here some
years of his life were spent, divided
between prayer, study, and brilliant
conversation, led and sustained by M.
de Lamennais. Maurice, of a shy
and diffident disposition, does not seem
to have attached himself to Lamen-
nais, although he admired and looked
up to him, and although the insidious
portion of his teaching was making
havoc with his faith.
And now, it may be asked, what of
Eugenie ? Dwelling in an obscure
province, with no other living guide
than a simple parish cure, with
a natural enthusiastic reverence for
genius, and a predilection for all Mau-
rice's friends, was she not dazzled
from afar off by this great teacher of
men's minds, this earnest reformer of
abuses ? The instinct of the single in
heart w.as hers. Long ere others had
discerned the canker eating away the
fruit so fair to look on, Eugenie, with
prophetic voice, was warning Maurice.
216
Eugenie and Maurice de Guerin.
Lacordaire's noble soul was yet en-
snared. Madam Swetchine's remon-
strances had not yet prevailed ; while
this young girl in the country, whose
name no one knew, was watching and
praying for the issue of the delibera-
tions at La Chesnaie.
At length the break-up came the
memorable journey to Rome was over.
Submission had been required, and
Lacordaire had given it. " Silence is
the second power in the world," he had
said to Lamennais ; and he had with-
drawn with hmi to La Chesnaie for a
time of retreat, where he was soon
undeceived as to Lamennais' inten-
tions. And these two great men
parted one to reap the fruits of pa-
tient obedience in the success of one
of the greatest works wrought in his
century, to gain a mastery over the
men of his age, and to die at last worn
out by labors before his time, the be-
loved child of the Church, whose bor-
ders he had enlarged, whose honor he
had defended ; the other, to follow the
course of self-will, and to quench his
light in utter darkness.
The students of La Chesnaie went
away, and Maurice was thrown on the
world with no definite employment.
An unsuccessful attachment deepened
the natural melancholy of his sensitive
nature. He went to Paris, and was
soon in the midst of the literary world.
He wrote, and obtained fame ; he was
admired and sought after ; but the
beautiful faith of his youth faded away
like a flower, and the innocent pleas-
ures of his childhood, and the passion-
ate love of his sister, had no attractions
for him compared to the brilliant cir-
cles of Parisian society.
And thus was Eugenie's fate marked
out. From afar off her heart followed
him; and, partly for his amusement,
partly to relieve the outpourings of
her intensely-loving heart, she kept a
journal, intended for Maurice's eye
only. A few letters to Maurice and
one or two intimate friends make up
the rest of the volume, which was,
after her death, most fortunately given
to the world. In these pages her
character stands revealed, and no long
description of her mode of life could
have made us more thoroughly ac-
quainted with her than these words,
written sometimes in joy, sometimes
in sorrow, in weariness and depression,
in all weathers, and at all times ; for,
believing that she pleased her brother,
nothing would prevent her from keep-
ing her promise of a daily record of
her life and thoughts. Its chief beauty
lies in that she made so much out of
so little. "I have just come away
very happy from the kitchen, where I
stood a long time this evening, to per-
suade Paul, one of our servants, to go
to confession at Christmas. He has
promised me, and he is a good boy
and will keep his word. Thank God,
my evening is not lost! What a hap-
piness it would be if I could thus every
day gain a soul for God ! Walter
Scott has been neglected this evening;
but what book could have been worth
to me what Paul's promise is ? . . .
The 20th. I am so fond of the snow!
Its perfect whiteness has something
celestial about it. To-day I see nothing
but road-tracks, and the marks of the
feet of little birds. Lightly as they
rest, they leave their little traces in a
thousand forms upon the snow. It is
so pretty to see their little red feet, as
if they were all drawn with pencils of
coral. Winter has its beauties and
its enjoyments, and we find them every-
where when we know how to see them.
God spreads grace and beauty every-
where. ... I must have another
dish to-day for S. R., who is come to
see us. He does not often taste good
things that is why I wish to treat him
well ; for it is to the desolate that, it
seems to me, we should pay attentions.
No reading to-day. I have made a
cap for a little child, which has taken
up all my time. But, provided one
works, be it with the head or the fin-
gers, it is all the same in the eyes of
God, who takes account of every work
done in his name. I hope, then, that
my cap has been a charity I have
given my time, a little material, and a
thousand interesting lines that I could
Eugenie and Maurice de Guerin.
217
have read. Papa brought me yester-
day Ivankoe, and the Siecle de Louis
XIV. Here are provisions for some
of our long winter evenings."
Then she had a keen sense of en-
joyment, and a wonderful faculty of
making the best of things. Thus a
simple pleasure to her was a source of
delight. Here is her description of
Christmas night in Languedoc :
"Dec. 31. I have written nothing
for a fortnight. Do not ask me why.
There are times when we cannot speak,
things of which we can say nothing.
Christmas is come that beautiful fete
which I love the most, which brings
me as much joy as the shepherds of
Bethlehem. Truly our whole soul
sings at the coming of the Lord, which
is announced to us on all sides by
hymns and by the pretty nadalet.*
Nothing in Paris can give an idea of
what Christmas is. You have not
even midnight mass.| We all went
to it, papa at our head, on a most
charming night. There is no sky
more beautiful than that of midnight :
it was such that papa kept putting his
head out of his cloak to look at it.
The earth was white with frost, but
we were not cold, and, beside,. the air
around us was warmed by the lighted
fagots that our servants carried to
light us. It was charming, I assure
you, and I wish I could have seen you
sliding along with us toward the church
on the road, bordered with little white
shrubs, as if they were flowering. The
frost makes such pretty flowers ! We
saw one wreath so pretty that we
wanted to make it a bouquet for the
Blessed Sacrament, but it melted in our
hands ; all flowers last so short a time.
I very much regretted my bouquet ; it
was so sad to see it melt drop by drop.
I slept at the presbytery. The cure's
good sister kept me, and gave me an
excellent reveillon of hot milk." Then,
again, the grave part of her nature
prevails, and she continues :
* A particular way of ringing the bells during
the fifteen days which precede the feast of Christ-
mas, called in patois nodal.
t Since the period at which Mdlle. de Guerin
wrote, midnight maos has been resumed in Paris.
" These are, then, my last thoughts ;
for I shall write nothing more this year;
in a few hours it will be over, and we
shall have begun a new year. Oh, how
quickly time passes ! Alas, alas, can
I say that I regret it ? No, my God,
I do not regret time, or anything that
it brings ; it is not worth while to throw
our affections into its stream. But
empty, useless days, lost for heaven,
this causes me regret as I look back
on life. Dearest, where shall I be
at this day, at this hour, at this min-
ute, next year ? Will it be here, else-
where ; here below, or above ? God
only knows ; I am before the door of
the future, resigned to all that can
come forth from it. To-morrow I will
pray for your happiness, for papa,
Mimi, Eran [her other brother and sis-
ter], and all those whom I love. It is
the day for presents ; I will take mine
from heaven. I draw all from thence,
for truly there are few things which
please me on earth. The longer I live,
the less it pleases me, and I see the
years pass by without sorrow, because
they are but steps to the other world.
Do not think it is any sorrow or trouble
which makes me think this. I assure
you it is not, but a home-sickness
comes over my soul when I think of
heaven. The clock strikes ; it is the
last I shall hear when writing to
you."
The following is an account of what
she called " a happy day :" " God be
blessed for a day without sorrow.
They are rare in this life, and my soul,
more than others, is soon troubled. A
word, a memory, the sound of a voice,
a sad face, nothing, I know not what,
often troubles the serenity of my soul
a little sky, darkened by the small-
est cloud. This day I received a let-
ter from Gabriejle, the cousin whom
I love so for her sweetness and beau-
tiful mind. I was uneasy about her
health, which is so delicate, having
heard nothing of her for more than a
month. I was so pleased to see a
letter from her, that I read it before
my prayers. I was so eager to read it.
To see a letter, and not to open it, is
218
Eugenie and Maurice de Guerin.
an impossible thing. Another letter
was given to me at Cahuzac. It was
from Lili, another sweet friend, but
quite withdrawn from the world; a
pure soul a soul like snow, from its
purity so white that I am confounded
when I look at it a soul made for the
eyes of God. I was coming from
Cahuzac, very pleased with my letter,
when I saw a little boy, weeping as if
his heart were broken. He had broken
his jug, and thought his father would
beat him. I saw that with half a franc
I could make him happy, so I took
him to a shop, where we got another
jug. Charles X. could not be happier
if he regained his crown. Has it not
been a beautiful day ?"
Here is another instance of the way
she had of beautifying the most simple
incidents : " I must notice, in passing,
an excellent supper that we have had
papa, Muni, and I at the corner of
the kitchen-fire, with the servants :
soup, some boiled potatoes, and a cake
that I made yesterday with the dough
from the bread. Our only servants were
the dogs Lion, Wolf, and Tritly, who
licked up the fragments. All our peo-
ple were in church for the instruction
which is given for confirmation ;" and,
she adds, "it was a charming meal."
The daily devotions of the month
of Mary were very recently established
when Eugenie wrote ; she speaks thus
of them : on one first of May when
absent from home, she writes: "On
this day, at this moment, my holy Mi-
mi (a pet name for her sister) is on
her knees before the little altar for the
month of Mary in my room. Dear
sister, I join myself to her, and find a
chapel here also. They have given
me for this purpose a room filled with
flowers ; in it I have made a church,
and Marie, with her little girls, serv-
ants, shepherds, and all the household,
assemble together every evening be-
fore the Blessed Virgin. They came
at first only to look on, for they had
never kept the month of Mary before.
Some good will result to them of this
new devotion, if it is only one idea, a
single idea, of their Christian duties,
which these people know so little of,
and which we can teach them while
amusing them. These popular devo-
tions please me so, because they are
so attractive in their form, and thereby
offer such an easy method of instruc-
tion. By their means, salutary truths
appear most pleasing, and all hearts
are gained in the name of our Lady
and of her sweet virtues. I love the
month of Mary, and the other little
devotions which the Church permits ;
which she blesses ; which are born at
the feet of the Faith like flowers at
the mountain-foot."
Speaking of St. Teresa, to whom
she had a great devotion, she says:
" I am pleased to remember that, when
I lost my mother, I went, like St.
Teresa, to throw myself at the feet
of the Blessed Virgin, and begged her
to take me for her daughter." At an-
other time she says : " To-day, very
early, I went to Vieux, to visit the
relics of the saints, and, in particular,
those of St. Eugenie, my patron. I
love pilgrimages, remnants of the an-
cient faith ; but these are not the days
for them ; in the greater number of
people the spirit for them is dead.
However, if M. le Cure" does not have
this procession to Vieux, there will be
discontent. Credulity abounds where
faith disappears. We have, however,
many good souls, worthy to please the
saints, like Rose Drouille, who knows
how to meditate, who has learnt so
much from the rosary ; then Frangon
de Gaillard and her daughter Jacquette,
so recollected in church. This holy
escort did not accompany me ; I was
alone with my good angel and Mimi.
Mass heard, my prayers finished, I left
with one hope more. I had come to
ask something from St. Eugene ? The
saints are our brothers. If you were
all-powerful, would you not give me
all that I desired? This is what I
was thinking of while invoking St.
Eugene, who is also my patron. We
have so little in this world, at least let
us hope in the other."
Those who are not of the same faith
as Eugenie de Guerin have not failed
Eugenie and Maurice de Guerin.
219
to be attracted by the depth and ardor
of her faith and piety. A writer in
the Cornhill Magazine observes, " The
relation to the priest, the practice of
confession assume, when she speaks of
them, an aspect which is not that under
which Exeter Hall knows them."
" In my leisure time I read a work
of Leitniz, which delighted me by its
catholicity and the pious things which
I found in it like this on confession :
" t j regard a pious, grave, and pru-
dent confessor as a great instrument
of God for the salvation of souls ; for
his counsels serve to direct our affec-
tions, to enlighten us about our faults,
to make us avoid the occasions of sin,
to dissipate our doubts, to raise up our
broken spirit ; finally, to cure or to
mitigate all the maladies of the soul ;
and, if we can never find on earth any-
thing more excellent than a faithful
friend, what happiness is it not to find
one who is obliged, by the inviolable
law of a divine sacrament, to keep
faith with us and to succor souls ?'
" This celestial friend I have in M.
Bories, and therefore the news of his
departure has deeply affected me. I
am sad with a sadness which makes
the soul weep. I should not say this
to any one else ; they would not, per-
haps, understand me, and would take
it ill. In the world they know not
hat a confessor is a man who is a
d of our soul, our most intimate
fidant, our physician, our light, our
her a friend who binds us to
and is bound to us ; who gives us
e, who opens heaven to us, who
,ks to us while we, kneeling, call
, like God, our father ; and faith
ly makes him God and father.
hen I am at his feet, I see nothing
e in him than Jesus listening to
,gdalen, and pardoning much be-
cause she has loved much. Confes-
sion is but an expansion of repentance
in love."
Again she writes : " I have learnt
that M. Bories is about to leave us
this good and excellent father of my
soul. Oh, how I regret him ! What
a loss it will be to me to lose this good
guide of my conscience, of my heart,
my mind, of my whole self, which God
had confided to him, and which I had
trusted to him with such perfect free-
dom ! I am sad with the sadness
which makes the soul weep. My God,
in my desert to whom shall I have
recourse? Who will sustain me in
my spiritual weakness? who will
lead me on to great sacrifices ? It is
in this last, above all, that I regret M.
Bories. He knew what God had put
into my heart. I needed his strength
to follow it. The new cure* cannot
replace him ; he is so young ; then he
appears so inexperienced, so unde-
cided. It is necessary to be firm to
draw a soul from the midst of the
world, and to sustain it against the
assaults of flesh and blood.
" It is Saturday the day of pilgrim-
age to Cahuzac. I will go there ;
perhaps I shall come back more tran-
quil. God has always given me some
blessing in that chapel, where I have
left so many miseries ... I was
not mistaken in thinking that I should
come back more tranquil. M. Bories
is not going ! How happy I am, and
how thankful to God for this favor.
It is such a great blessing to me to
keep this good father, this good guide,
this choice of God for my soul, as St.
Francis de Sales expresses it.
" Confession is such a blessed thing,
such a happiness for the Christian
soul ; a great good, and always greater
in measure when we feel it to be so ;
and when the heart of the priest, into
which we pour our sorrow, resembles
that Divine Heart which has loved us
so much. This is what attaches me
to M. Bories ; you will understand it."
Nevertheless, when the trial of
parting with this beloved friend did
come, at length, it was borne with gen-
tle submission.
* Our pastor is come to see us. I
have not said much to you about him.
He is a simple and good man, know-
ing his duties well, and speaking bet-
ter of God than of the world, which he
knows little of. Therefore, he does
not shine in conversation. His con-
220
Eugenie and Maurice de Guerin.
versation is ordinary, and those who
do not know what the true spirit of a
priest is would think little of him. He
does good in the parish, for his gentle-
ness wins souls. He is our father
now. I find him young after M. Bor-
ies. I miss that strong and powerful
teaching which strengthened me ; but
it is God who has taken it from me.
Let us submit and walk like children,
without looking at the hand which
leads us."
Eugenie's life revolved round that
of Maurice. No length of separation
could weaken her affection, nor make
her interest in his pursuits less en-
grossing. His letters, so few and so
scanty, were treasured up and dwelt
upon in many a lonely hour. She
suffered with him, wept over his dis-
appointments, and prayed for his re-
turn to the faith of his youth with all
the earnestness of her soul. With
exquisite tact she avoided preaching
to him. It was rather by showing him
what religion was to her that she strove
to lead him back to its practice.
" Holy Thursday. I have come
back all fragrant from the chapel of
moss, in the church where the Blessed
Sacrament is reposing. It is a beau-
tiful day when God wills to rest among
the flowers and perfumes of the spring-
time. Mimi, Rose, and I made this
reposoir, aided by M. le Cure. I
thought, as we were doing it, of the
supper-room, of that chamber well
furnished, where Jesus willed to keep
the pasch with his disciples, giving
himself for the Lamb. Oh, what a
gift ! What can one say of the Euch-
arist? I know nothing to say. We
adore ; we possess ; we live ; we love.
The soul is without words, and loses
itself in a,n abyss of happiness. I
thought of you among these ecstasies,
and ardently desired to have you at
my side, at the holy table, as I liad
three years ago."
Mademoiselle de Guerin occasionally
composed ; her brother was very anx-
ious she should publish her productions,
but she shrank from the responsibility.
" St. Jean de Damas," she remarks,
" was forbidden to write to any one,
and for having composed some verses
for a friend he was expelled from the
convent. That seemed to me very
severe ; but one sees the wisdom of it,
when, after supplication and much
humility, the saint had been forgiven,
he was ordered to write and to employ
his talents in conquering the enemies
of Jesus Christ. He was found strong
enough to enter the lists when he had
been stripped of pride. He wrote
against the iconoclasts. Oh, if many
illustrious writers had begun by a les-
son of humility, they would not have
made so many errors nor so many
books. Pride has blinded them, and
thus see the fruits which they produce,
into how many errors they lead the
erring. But this chapter on the science
of evil is too wide for me. I should
prefer saying that I have sewn a sheet.
A sheet leads me to reflect, it will
cover so many people, so many differ-
ent slumbers perhaps that of the
tomb. Who knows if it will not be
my shroud, and if these stitches which
I make will not be unpicked by the
worms? While I was sewing, papa
told me that he had sent, without my
knowledge, some of my verses to
Bayssac, and I have seen the letter
where M. de Bagne speaks of them
and says they are very good. A little
vanity came to me and fell into my
sewing. Now I tell myself the thought
of death is good to keep us from sin.
It moderates joy, tempers sadness,
makes us see that all which passes by
us is transitory."
Again she writes : " Dear one, I
would that I could see you pray like
a good child of God. What would it
cost you ? Your soul is naturally lov-
ing, and prayer is nothing else but
love ; a love which spreads itself out
into the soul as the water flows from
the fountain."
******
" Ash- Wednesday. Here I am, with
ashes on my forehead and serious
thoughts in my mind. This ' Remem-
ber thou art dust !' is terrible to me.
I hear it all day long. I cannot ban-
Eugenie and Maurice de Guerin.
221
ish the thought of death, particularly
in your room, where I no longer find
you, where I saw you so ill, where I
have sad memories both of your pres-
ence and your absence. One thing
only is bright the little medal of Our
Lady, suspended over the head of your
bed. It is still untarnished and in the
same place where I put it to be your
safeguard. I wish you knew, dearest,
the pleasure I have in seeing it the
remembrances, the hopes, the secret
thoughts that are connected with that
holy image. I shall guard it as a
relic ; ana, if ever you return to sleep
in that little bed, you shall sleep again
near the medal of the Blessgd Virgm.
Take from, me this confidence and
love, not to a bit of metal, but -to tfce
image of the Mother of God. I
should like to know, if in your neT%
room I should see St. Teresa, wrho
used to hang in your other room near
the lenitier:
pu toi, necessitous
Befaillant, tu prenais 1'aumone dans ce creui.'
You will no longer, I fear, seek alms
there. Where will you seek them?
Who can tell ? Is the world in which
you live rich enough for all your neces-
sities ? Maurice, if I could but make
you understand one of these thoughts,
breathe into you what I believe, and
what I learn in pious books those
beautiful reflections of the Gospel if
I could see you a Christian, I would
give life and all for that."
******
Maurice's absence was the great
trial of Eugenie's life ; but there were
minor trials also, concerning the lit'tle
things that make up the sum of our
happiness. She suffered intensely and
constantly from ennui. Her active,
enterprising mind had not sufficient
food to sustain it, and bravely did she
fight against this constant depression
and weariness.
A duller life than hers could hardly
be found ; she had literally " nothing
to do." She had no society, for she
lived at a distance from her friends.
Sometimes the cur^ called, sometimes
a priest from a neighboring parish, and
then the monotonous days went on
without a single incident. There was
no outward sign of the struggle going
on. Speaking of her father, she says :
" A grave look makes him think there
is some trouble, so I conceal the pass-
ing clouds from him ; it is but right
that he should only see and know my
calm and serene side. A daughter
should be gentle to her father. We
ought to be to them something like
the angels are to God."
Nor would she distract her thoughts
by any means which might injure her
soul. " I have scarcely read the author
whose work you sent, though I admired
him as I do M. Hugo ; but these
geniuses have blemishes wmjKh wound
a woman's eye. I detest to meet with
wlllPt I dfc not wish to see ; and this
makes me close so many books. I
have had Notre Dame de Paris under
my hands a hundred times to-day ; and
the style, Esmeralda, and so many
pretty things in it, tempt me, and say
to me, 'Read look.' I looked; I
turned it over ; but the stains here and
there stopped me. I read no more,
and contented myself with looking at
the pictures." At another time, when
she is staying at a " deserted house,"
rather duller than her own, she writes :
" The devil tempted me just now in a
little room, where I found a number of
romances. ' Read a word,' he said to
me ; ' let us see that ; look at this ;'
but the titles of the books displeased
me. I am no longer tempted now,
and will go only to change the books
in this room, or rather to throw them
into the fire."
There was one sovereign remedy
for lier ills, and she sought for it with
fidelity, and reaped her reward.
" This morning I was suffering.
Well, at present, I am calm ; and this
I owe to faith, simply to faith, to an
act of faith. I can think of death and
eternity without trouble, without alarm.
Over a deep of sorrow there floats a
divine calm, a serenity, which is the
work of God only. In vain have I
tried other things at a time like this ;
222
Eugenie and Maurice de Guerin.
nothing human comforts the soul, noth-
ing human upholds it.
i
' A 1'enfant il faut sa mere,
A mon ame il faut mon Dieu.' "
At another time of suffering she
writes : " God only can console us
when the heart is sorrowful: human
helps are not enough ; they sink be-
neath it, it is so weighed down by sor-
row. The reed must have more than
other reeds to lean on."
******
"To distract my thoughts, I have
been turning over Lamartine, the dear
poet I love his hymn to the nighfct
ingale, and many other of his ' Har*
monies i but they are far from having
the effec\on me that his ' Meditations'
used tfr have. I was ravished and in
ecstacy with them. I was flut sixl^n,
and time changes many things. The
great poet no longer makes my heart
vibrate ; to-day he has not even power
to distract my thoughts. I must try
something else, for I must not cherish
ennui, which injures the soul. What
can I do ? It is not good for me to
write, to communicate trouble to others.
I will leave pen and ink. I know
something better, for I have tried it a
hundred times ; it is prayer prayer
which calms me when I say to my
soul before God, ' Why art thou sad,
and wherefore art thou troubled ?' I
know not what he does in answering
me, but it quiets me just like a
weeping child when it sees its mother.
The Divine compassion and tenderness
is truly maternal toward us."
******
And, further on: "Now I have
something better to do than write : I
will go and pray. Oh, how I love
prayer! I would that all the world
knew how to pray. I would that chil-
dren, and the old, and the poor, the
afflicted, the sick in soul and body
all who live and suffer could know
the balm that prayer is. But I know
not how to speak of these things. We
cannot tell what is ineffable."
She had said once, as we have seen,
that she would give life and all to see
Maurice once more serving God. She
had written to him thus, not carelessly
indeed, but as we are too wont to write
not counting the cost, because we
know not what the cost is. She wrote
thus, and God took her at her word,
and he asked from her not life, as she
then meant it, but her life's life. First
came the trial of a temporary estrange-
ment. Her journal suddenly stops;
she believed it wearied him, and, with-
out a word of reproach, she silenced
her eager pen. Maurice, however,
declared she was mistaken, and she
joyfully resumed her task with words
which would evidence, if nothing else
^gre left, us, the intense depth of her
love for her brother. " Vas in the
\-ong. So much the better; for I
had feared it had been your fault."
Then Maurice's health, which had al-
wa*^s been delicate, began to fail, and
her heart was tortured at the thought
of him suffering, away from her loving
care, unable to send her news of him.
" I have, been reading the epistle
about the child raised to life by Elias.
Oh, if I knew some prophet, some
one who would give back life and
health, I would go, like the Shunamite,
and throw myself at his feet."
And again, most touchingly, she
says: "A letter from Felicite, which
tells me nothing better about you.
When will those who know more
write ? If they knew how a woman's
heart beats, they would have more
pity."
Maurice recovered from these at-
tacks, and in the autumn of 1836 mar-
ried a young and pretty Creole lady.
He had not the violent attachment as
to the "Louise" of his early youth;
but the union seemed a suitable one
on both sides. One of Eugenie's brief
visits to Paris was made for the pur-
pose of being present at her brother's
marriage. It was a romantic scene.
It took place in the chapel of the old
and quaint Abbaye aux Bois. The
church was filled with brilliant and ad-
miring friends. The bride and bride-
groom, both so beautiful, knelt before
the altar; the Pere Bugnet, who had
Eugenie and Maurice de Guerin.
223
known Maurice as a boy, blessed the
union. The gay procession passed
from the church, and met a funeral
cortege ! It fell like an omen on
Eugenie's heart. Six short months
went by, and Eugenie was again sum-
moned to Paris, to Maurice's sick-bed
his dying-bed it indeed was, but his
sister's passionate love would not re-
linquish hope. The physicians, catch-
ing at a straw, prescribed native air,
and the invalid caught at the proposal
with feverish impatience. That eager
longing sustained him through the
long and terrible journey of twenty
days ; for, the moment he revived, he
would be laid in the salon, and see
the home-faces gathered round him.
Then he was carried to his room, and
soon the end came. At last Euge'nie
knew that he must go, and all the pow-
ers of her soul were gathered into that
one prayer, that he might die at peace
with God. Calmly she bent over him,
and kissed the forehead, damp with
the dews of death.
" Dearest, M. le Cure* is coming,
and you will confess. You have no
difficulty in speaking to M. le Cure ?"
" Not at all," he answered. " You will
prepare for confession, then?" He
asked for his prayer-book, and had
the prayers read to him.
When the priest came, he asked for
more time to prepare. At last the
cure was summoned.
" Never have I heard a confession
better made," said the priest after-
ward. As he was leaving the room,
Maurice called him back, and made
a solemn retraction of the doctrines of
M. de Lamennais. Then came the
Viaticum and the last anointing.
Life ebbed away; he pressed th
hand of the cure*, who was by him to
the last, he kissed his crucifix, and
died. Eugenie's prayer was heard.
He died, but at home ; a wanderer
come back ; an erring child, once more
forgiven, resting on his Father's breast.
And he was gone ! " king of my
heart ! my other self!" as she had
called him and Euge'nie was left
behind. She had loved him too well
for her eternal peace, and it was
necessary that she should be purified v
in the crucible of suffering. Very
gradually she parted from him; the
gates of the tomb closed not on her
love ; slowly she uprooted the fibres
of her nature which had been entwined
in his. Her journal did not end, and
she wrote still to him to Maurice in
heaven : " Oh, my beloved Maurice !
Maurice, art thou far from me ? hear-
est thou me ? Sometimes I shed tor-
rents of tears ; then the soul is dried
up. All my life Avill be a mourning
one ; my heart is desolate." Then,
reproaching herself, she turns to her
only consolation : " Do I not love thee,
my God ? only true and Eternal Love !
It seems to me that I love thee as the
fearful Peter, but not like John, who
rested on thy heart divine repose
which I so need. What do I seek in
creatures ? To make a pillow of a hu-
man breast ? Alas ! I have seen how
death can take that from us. Better
to lean, Jesus, on thy crown of thorns.
******
" Tin's day year, we went together
to St. Sulpice, to the one o'clock mass.
To-day I have been to Lentin in the
rain, with bitter memories, in solitude.
But, my soul, calm thyself with thy
God, whom thou hast received to-day,
in that little church. He is thy
brother, thy friend, the well-beloved
above all ; whom thou canst never see
die ; who can never fail thee, in this
world or the next. Let us console
ourselves with this thought, that in
God we shall find again all we have
lost."
One great desire was, however, left
to her; that of publishing the letters
and writings of Maurice, and of whi-
ning for her beloved one the fame
which she so despised for herself. A
tribute to his memory appeared the
year after his death, in the Revue des
deux Mondes, from the brilliant pen of
Madame Sand ; but it was the source
of more pain than pleasure to Eugenie.
With the want of candor which is so
often a characteristic of the class of
writers to whom Madame Sand be-
224
Eugenie and Maurice de Guerin.
longs, she represented Maurice as a
man totally without faith. Eugenie
believed that he had never actually
lost it, although it had been darkened
and obscured ; and she was certainly
far more in his confidence than any of
his friends.
For some time before his death he
had gradually been returning to relig-
ious exercises; and, as we have seen,
on his death-bed , he had most fully
retracted and repented of whatever
errors there had been in his life. But
Madame Sand was not very likely to
trouble herself about the dying mo-
ments of her friend, while it was an-
other triumph to infidelity to let the
world think this brilliant young man
lived and died in its ranks.
"Madame Sand makes Maurice a
skeptic, a great poet, like Byron, and
it afflicts me to see the name of my
brother a name which was free from
these lamentable errors 4;hus falsely
represented to the world." And again :
" Oh, Madame Sand is right when she
says that his words are like the dia-
monds linked "together, which make a
diadem; or, rather, my Maurice was
all one diamond. Blessed be those who
estimated his price; blessed be the
voice which praises him, which places
him so high, with so much respect and
enthusiasm ! But on one point this
voice is mistaken when she says he
had no faith. No; faith was not
wanting in him. I proclaim it, and
attest it by what I have seen and
heard ; by his prayers, his pious read-
ing ; by the sacraments he received ;
by all his Christian actions; by the
death which opened life unto him a
death with his crucifix."
This article of Madame Sand only
increased Eugenie's desire to vindicate
her brother, by letting the world judge
from his own writings and letters what
Maurice really was. Many projects
were set on foot for publishing this
work. Rather than leave it undone,
Eugenie would have undertaken it her-
self, though her broken spirit shrank
more than ever from any sort of noto-
riety, or communication with the busy
world outside her quiet home. But
she would greatly have preferred the
task should be accomplished by one of
his friends ; and much of her corre-
spondence was devoted to the purpose.
Time passed, and plan after plan fell
to the ground. This last satisfaction
was not to be hers. She was to see, as
she thought, the name of her beloved
one gradually fading away, and for-
gotten as years went on. To the very
last drop she was to drain the cup of
disappointment and loss. Her journal
ceased, and its last sentence was, " Tru-
ly did the saint speak who said, ' Let
us throw our hearts into eternity.' "
There are a few fragments and let-
ters, which carry us on some years
later ; and in one of the last of these
letters, dated 15th of June, 1845, we
find these consoling words : " I have
suffered ; but God teaches us thus,
and leads us to willingly place our
hearts above. You are again in mourn-
ing, and I have felt your loss deeply.
I mean the death of your poor brother.
Alas! what is life but a continual
separation? But you will meet in
heaven, and there will be no more
mourning nor tears ; and there the
society of saints will reward us for
what we have suffered in the society
of men. And, while waiting, there is
nothing else to do than to humble one's
self, as the Apostle says, 'under the
mighty hand of God, that he may
exalt you in the time of visitation ;
casting all your care upon him, for
he hath care of you.' "
These are almost her closing words ;
and thus we see God comforted her.
Three years more passed, of which
we have no record ; and we cannot
fcut deeply regret the determination of
M. Trebutien not to give any account
of her beyond her own words. As
long as they lasted, they are indeed
sufficient ; but we would have fain fol-
lowed her into the silence of those last
years, and have seen the soul grad-
ually passing to its rest. We would
have liked to know if the friends she
loved soothed her dying hours
whether M. Bories, with his "strong
The Building of Moume.
225
and powerful words," was by her side
in her last earthly struggle. But a
veil falls over it all. We feel assured,
as we close the volume, that whatever
human means were wanting, the God
she had faithfully served consoled his
child to the last, and sustained her
mortal weakness till she reposed in
him. After her death, her heart's
wish was fulfilled, and abundant honor
has been rendered to Maurice de
Gue'rin. Nay, more ; for homage is
ever given to the majesty of unselfish
love ; and from henceforth, if Maurice
the poet shall be forgotten, Maurice
the brother of Eugenie will never be.
She has embalmed his memory with
her deep and fond devotion ; and she
has left 'a living record of how, in the
midst of a wearisome, an objectless, a
monotonous life, a woman may find
work to do, and doing it, like Eugenie,
with all her might, leave behind her a
track of light by which others may fol-
low after her, encouraged and con-
soled. F.
THE BUILDING OF MOURNE.
A LEGEND OF THE BLACKWATER.
BY EGBERT D. JOYCE.
ROME, according to the old aphor-
ism, was not built in a day. Neither
was the old town of Mourne, although
it was destroyed in a day, and made
fit almost for the sowing of salt upon
its foundations, by the great Lord of
Thomond, Murrough of the Ferns, when
he gathered around it his rakehelly
kerns, as Spenser in his spleen called
them, and his fierce galloglasses and
roving hobbelers. But the present
story has naught to do with the spo-
liation and burning of towns. Far
different, indeed, was the founding of
Mourne, to the story of the disastrous
termination of its prosperity. You will
look in vain to the histories for a suc-
cinct or circumstantial account of the
building of this ancient town ; but
many a more famous city has its early
annals involved in equal obscurity
Rome, for instance. What tangible
fact can be laid hold of with regard to
its early history, save the will-o'-the-
wisp light emanating from the tradi-
tions of a more modern day ? A cim-
merian cloud of darkness overhangs
its founding and youthful progress,
through which the double-distilled mi-
15
croscopic eyes of the historian are
unable to penetrate with any degree of
certainty. Mourne, however, though
it cannot boast of a long-written his-
tory, possesses an oral one of remark-
able perspicuity and certainty. The
men are on the spot who, with a mathe-
matical precision worthy of Archi-
medes or Newton, will relate every-
thing about it, from its foundation to
its fall. The only darkness cast upon
their most circumstantial history is the
elysian cloud from their luxuriant
dudheens, as they whiff away occasion-
ally, and relate
That there was long ago a certain
Dhonal, a nobleman of the warlike race
of Mac Caurha, who ruled over Duhal-
low, and the wild mountainous terri-
tories extending downward along the
banks of the Blackwater. This noble-
man, after a long rule of prosperity
and peace, at length grew weary of
inaction, and manufactured in his pug-
nacious brain some cause of mortal
affront and complaint aginst a neigh-
boring potentate, whose territory ex-
tended in a westerly direction on the
opposite shore of the river. So he
226
The Building of Mourne.
mustered his vassals with all imagin-
able speed, and prepared to set out for
the domains of his foe on a foray of
unusual ferocity and magnitude.
Before departing from his castle,
which stood some miles above Mallow,
on the banks of the river, he held a
long and confidential parley with his
wife, in which he told her, if he were
defeated or slain, and if the foe should
cross the Blackwater to make repris-
als, that she should hold out the fort-
ress while one stone would stand upon
another, and especially that she should
guard their three young sons well,
whom, he doubted not, whatever
might happen, would one day gain
prosperity and renown. After this,
he set out on his expedition, at the
head of a formidable array of turbu-
lent kerns and marauding horsemen.
But his neighbor was not a man to be
caught sleeping ; for, at the crossing of a
ford near Kanturk, he attacked Dhonal,
slew him in single combat, and put
his followers to the sword, almost to a
man. After this he crossed the Black-
water, laid waste the territories of the
invader, and at length besieged the
castle, where the widowed lady and
her three sons had taken refuge. For
a long time she held her own bravely
against her enemy ; but in the end the
castle was taken by assault, and she
and her three young sons narrowly es-
caped with their lives out into the wild
recesses of the forest.
After wandering about for some
time, the poor lady built a little hut of
brambles on the shore of the Clydagh,
near the spot where stand the ruins of
the preceptory of Mourne, or Ballina-
mona, as it is sometimes called. Here
she dwelt with her children for a long
time, in want and misery. Her sons
, grew up without receiving any of
those accomplishments befitting their
birth, and gained their subsistence, like
the children of the common people
around, by tilling a little plot of land
before their hut, and by the products of
the chase in the surrounding forest.
One day, as Diarmid, the eldest, with
his bow and arrows ready for the chase,
was crossing a narrow valley, he met
a kern, one of the followers of the
great lord who had slain his father.
Now, neither Diarmid nor his brothers
recollected who had killed their father,
nor the high estate from which they
had fallen, for their mother kept them
carefully in ignorance of all, fearing
that they might become known, and
that their enemies would kill them
also. So the kern and himself wended
their way for some time together
along the side of the valley. At
length they started a deer from its bed
in the green ferns. Each shot his
arrow at the same moment, and each
struck the deer, which ran downward
for a short space, and at last fell dead
beside the little stream in the bottom of
the valley.
" The deer is mine !" said the
strange kern, as they stood over its
body.
"No!" answered Diarmid, "it is
not. See ! your arrow is only stickin'
in the skin of his neck, an' mine is af-
ther rattlin' into his heart, through an'
through !"
" No matther," exclaimed the kern,
with a menacing look. " I don't care
how he kem by his death, but the
deer I must have, body an' bones,
whatever comes of it ! Do you think
sich a sprissawn as you could keep me
from it, an' I wantin* its darlin' car-
kiss for the table o' my lord, the Mac
Donogh?"
Now Diarmid recollected that his
mother and brothers were at the same
time almost dying in their little hut for
want of food. So without further
parley he drew his long skian from its
sheath.
" Very well," said he, " take it, if
you're a man ; but before it goes, my
carkiss must lie stiff an' bloody in its
place !"
The kern drew his skian at the
word, and there, over the body of the
fallen deer, ensued a combat stern and
fierce, which at last resulted in Diar-
mid's plunging his skian through and
through the body of his foe into the
gritty sand beneath them.
The Building of Mourne.
227
Diarmid then took the spear and
other weapons of the dead kern, put
the deer upon his broad shoulders, and
marching off in triumph, soon gained
his mother's little hut. There, after
eating a comfortable meal, and telling
his adventure, Diarmid began to lay
down his future plans.
" Mother," he said, " the time is
come at last when this little cabin is too
small for me. I'm a man now, an'
able to meet a man, body to body, as
I met him to-day ; so I'll brighten up
my weapons, an' set off on my adven-
tures, that I may gain renown in the
wars. Donogh here, too, has the
four bones of a man," continued he,
turning to his second brother; " so let
him prepare, an' we'll thramp off to-
gether as soon as we can, an' perhaps
afther all we'd have a castle of our
own, where you could reign in glory,
as big an' grand as Queen Cleena o'
the Crag !"
" Well, then," answered his mother,
" if you must go, before you leave me,
you and your brothers must hunt in
the forest for a month, and bring in as
much food as will do me and Rory
here for a year and a day."
" But," said Rory, the youngest, or
Roreen Shouragh, or the Lively, as he
was called, inconsequence of the 'cute
and merry temperament of his mind
" but, Diarmid, you know I am now
beyant fifteen years of age, an' so, if
you go, I'll folly you to the worldt's
end!"
" You presumptious little atomy of
a barebones," answered his eldest
brother, " if I only see the size of a
thrush's ankle of you follyin' us on
the road, I'll turn back an' bate that
wiry an' freckled little carkiss o' yours
into frog's jelly ! So stay at home in
pace an' quietness, an' perhaps when
I come back I might give you a good
purse o' goold to begin your forthin
with."
" That for your mane an' ludiacrous
purse o' goold!" exclaimed Roreen
Shouragh, at the same time snapping
his fingers in the face of his brother.
"Arrah! do you hear him, mother?
But never mind. Let us be off into
the forest to-morrow, an' we'll see
who'll bring home the most food before
night !"
" Well," said his mother, whether
he stays at home or goes away, I fear
he'll come to some bad end with that
sharp tongue of his, and his wild
capers."
" With all jonteel respect, mother,"
answered Shouragh again, " I mane to
do no such thing. I think myself as
good a hairo this minnit because I
have the sowl an' heart o' one as
King Dathi, who was killed in some
furrin place that I don't recklect the
jography of, or as Con o' the Hun-
dhert Battles, or as the best man
amongst them, Fion himself an' I'll
do as great actions as any o' them yet !"
This grandiloquent boast of Roreen
Shouragh's set his mother and broth-
ers into a fit of laughter, from which
they only recovered when it was time to
retire to rest. In the morning the three
brothers betook themselves to the for-
est, and at the fall of night returned with
a great spoil of game. From morning
till night they hunted thus every day for
a month, at the end of which time
Diarmid said that they had as much
food stored in as would last his mother
and Rory for a year and a day.
On a hot summer noon the two
brothers left the little hut, with their
mother's blessing on their heads, and
set off on their adventures. After
crossing a few valleys, they came at
length to the shore of the Blackwater.
and sat down in the shade of a huge
oak-tree on the bank to rest them-
selves. Beneath them, in a clear,
shady pool, a huge pike, with his vora-
cious jaws ready for a plunge, was
watching a merry little speckled trout,
which in its turn was regarding with
most affectionate eyes a bright blue fly,
that was disporting overhead on the
surface of the water. Suddenly the
trout darted upward into the air,
catching the ill-starred fly, but, in its
return to the element beneath, unfor-
tunately plumped itself into the
Charybdis-like jaws of the villanous
228
The Building of Mourne.
pike, and was from that in one
moment quietly deposited in his stom-
ach.
" Look at that !" said Diarmid to his
brother. " That's the way with a man
that works an* watches everything
with a keen eye. He'll have all in the
end, just as the pike has both fly and
throut an' just as I have both fly, an'
throut, an' pike !" continued he, giv-
ing his spear a quick dart into the
deep pool, and then landing the luck-
less pike, transfixed through and
through, upon the green bank.
" That's the way to manage, and the
divvle a betther sign o' good luck we
could have in the beginning of our
journey, than to get a good male so
aisy !"
" Hooray !" exclaimed a voice be-
hind them. " That's the way to man-
age most galliantly. "What a nate din-
ner the thurminjous monsther will
make for the three of us !" and on
turning round, the two brothers beheld
Roreen Shouragh, accoutred like them-
selves, and dancing with most exube-
rant delight at the feat beside them on
the grass.
" An' so you have follied us afther
all my warnin', you outragious little
vagabone !" exclaimed Diarmid, mak-
ing a wrathful dart at Roreen, who,
however, eluding the grasp, ran and
doubled hither and thither with the
swiftness of a hare, around the trunks
of the huge oak-trees on the shore. In
vain Diarmid tried every ruse of the
chase to catch him. Roreen Shouragh
could not be captured. At length the
elder brother, wearied out, returned to
Donogh, who, during the chase, was
tumbling about on the grass in convul-
sions of laughter.
"'Tis no use, Donogh," he said,
" we must only let him come with us.
He'll never go back. Come here, you
aggravatin' young robber," continued
he, calling out to Roreen, who was still
dancing in defiance beneath a tree,
some distance off "come here, an'
you'll get your dinner, an' may folly us
if you wish."
Roreen knew that he might depend
on the word of his brother. " I
towld ye both," said he, coming up to
the spot, "that I'd folly ye to the
worldt's end ; so let us have pace, an' I
may do ye some service yet. But may I
supplicate to know where ye're pream-
blin' to at present ; for if ye sit down that
way in every umberagious coolin' spot,
as the song says, the divvle a much
ye'll have for yeer pains in the ind ?"
" I'll tell you then," answered Don-
ogh, now recovered from his fit of
laughing. " We're goin' off to Corrig
Cleena, to see the Queen o' the Fairies,
an' to ask her advice what to do so as
to win wealth an' renown."
" 'Tis aisier said than done," said
Roreen, "to see Queen Cleena. But
howsomdever, when we're afther de-
vourin' this vouracious thief of a pike
here, we'll peg off to the Corrig as
swift as our gambadin'-sticks will carry
us!"
After the meal the three brothers
swam across the river, and proceeded
on their way through the forest toward
Corrig Cleena. On gaining the sum-
mit of a little height, a long, straight
road extended before them.
On and on the straight road they
went, till, turning up a narrow path in
the forest, they beheld the great grey
boulders of Corrig Cleena towering
before them. They searched round its
base several times for an entrance, but
could find none. At length, as they
were turning away in despair, they
saw an extremely small, withered old
atomy of a woman, clad all in sky blue,
and sitting beside a clump of fairy
thimbles, or foxgloves, that grew on a
little knoll in front .of the rock. They
went up and accosted her :
" Could you tell us, ould woman,"
asked Diarmid, ' < how we can enter
the Corrig ? We want to speak to the
queen."
"Ould woman, inagh!" answered
the little atomy in a towering passion.
" How daar you call me an ould woman,
you vagabone? Offwid you thramp,
I say, for if you sted there till your
legs would root in the ground, you'd
get no information from me !"
The Building of Mourne.
229
" Be aisy, mother," said Donogh,
in a soothing voice ; " sure, if you can
tell us, you may as well serve us so
far, an' we'll throuble you no more."
"Ould woman an' mother, both!"
screamed the little hag, starting up
and shaking her crutch at the brothers ;
" this is worse than all. You dirty an'
insultin' spalpeens, how daar ye again,
I say call me sich names ? What for
should I be decoratin' my fingers wid
the red blossoms o' the Lusmore, if I
was as ould as you say ? Be off out
o' this, or be this an' be that, I ruinate
ye both wid a whack o' this wand o'
mine !"
" Young leedy," said Roreen Shou-
ragh, stepping up cap in hand at this
juncture, and making the old hag an
elaborately polite bow "young, an'
innocent, an' delightful creethur, p'r'aps
you'd have the kindness to exercise
that lily-white hand o' yours in pointin'
out the way for us into Queen Cleena's
palace !"
"Yes, young man," answered the
crone, greatly mollified at the hand-
some address of Roreen. " For your
sake, I'll point out the way. You at
laste know the respect that should be
paid to youth an' beauty !"
" Allow me, my sweet young dar-
lint," said Roreen at this, as he step-
ped up and offered her his arm " al-
low me to have the shuprame pleasure
of'conductin' you. I'm sure I must
have the honor an' glory of ladin' on
my arm one of the queen's maids of
honor. May those enticin' cheeks o'
yours for ever keep the bloomin' an*
ravishin' blush they have at the pres-
ent minnit, an' may those riglar ivory
teeth o' yours, that are as white as the
dhriven snow, never make their con-
jay from your purty an' delightful
mouth !"
The "delightful young creethur"
allowed herself, with many a gratified
smirk, to be conducted downward by
the gallant Roreen toward the rock,
where, striking the naked wall with
her crutch, or wand as she was
pleased to call it, a door appeared
before them, and the three brothers
were immediately conducted into the
presence of the fairy queen.
It would be long, but pleasant, to
tell the gallant compliments paid by
Roreen to the queen, and the queen's
polite and gracious acceptance of them ;
merry to relate the covert laughter of
the lovely maids of honor, as Roreen
occasionally showered down praises
on the head of the " young leedy" who
so readily gained him admittance to
the palace, and who was no other than
the vain old nurse of the queen ; but,
despite all such frivolities, this history
must have its course. At length the
queen gave them a gentle hint that
their audience had lasted the proper
time, and as they were departing she
cast her bright but love-lorn eyes upon
them with a kindly look.
" Young man," she said, " you ask
my advice how to act so as to gain
wealth and renown. I could give
you wealth, but will not, for wealth
thus acquired rarely benefits the pos-
sessor. But I will give you the advice
you seek. Always keep your senses
sharp and bright, and your bodies
strong by manly exercise. Look
sharply round you, and avail your-
selves honorably of every opportunity
that presents itself. Be brave, and
defend your rights justly ; but, above
all, let your hearts be full of honor
and kindness, and show that kindness
ever in aiding the poor, the needy, and
the defenceless. Do all this, and I
doubt not but you will yet come to
wealth, happiness, and renown. Fare-
well !"
And in a moment, they knew not how,
they found themselves sitting in the
front of the Rock of Cleena, upon the lit-
tle knoll where Roreen had so flatter-
ingly accosted the "young leedy."
Away they went again down to the
shore, swam back across the river, and
wandered away over hill and dale, till
they ascended Sliabh Luchra, and lost
themselves in the depths of the great
forest that clothed its broad back.
Here they sat down in a green glade,
and began to consider what they should
further do with themselves. At length
230
The Building of Mourne.
they agreed to build a little hut, and
remain there for a few days, in order
to look about the country. No sooner
said than done.
To work they went, finished their hut
beneath a spreading tree, and were soon
regaling themselves on a young fawn
they had killed as they descended the
mountain. Next day they went out
into the forest, killed a deer, brought
him back to the hut, in order to pre-
pare part of him for their dinner.
Diarmid undertook the cooking for
the first day, while his two younger
brothers went out along the back of
the mountain to kill more game. With
the aid of a small pot, which they had
borrowed from a forester at the north-
ern part of the mountain, and a ladle
that accompanied it, Diarmid began
to cook the dinner, stirring the pieces
of venison round and round over the
fire, in order to have some broth ready
at the return of his brothers. As he
was stirring and tasting alternately
with great industry, he heard a light
footstep behind him, and on looking
round, beheld sitting on one of the
large mossy stones they used for a
seat a little crabbed-looking boy, with
a red head almost the color of scarlet,
a red jacket, and tight-fitting trowsers
of the same hue, which, reaching a
little below the knee, left the fire-
bedizened and equally rubicund legs
and feet exposed in free luxury to the
air. His face was handsomely formed,
but brown and freckled, and he had a
pair of dark, keen eyes, which seemed
to pierce into the very soul of Diar-
mid as he sat gazing at him. There
was a wild, elfish look about him alto-
gether, as, with a vivacious twinkle of
his acute eye, he saluted Diarmid po-
litely, and asked him for a ladleful
of the broth. Diarmid, however, in
turning round from the pot, had spilt
the contents of the ladle on his hand,
burning it sorely, and was in conse-
quence not in the most amiable hu-
mor.
" Give you a ladle of broth, indeed,
you little weasel o' perdition!" ex-
claimed he. " Peg off out o' my house
this minute, or I'll catch you by one
o' them murtherin' legs o' yours, an'
bate your brains out against one o' the
stones !"
" I'm well acquainted with the cozy
an' indestructible fact, that a man's
house is his castle," said the little fel-
low, at the same time thrusting both
his hands into his pockets, inclining
his head slightly to one side, and look-
ing up coolly at Diarmid ; " but some o'
that broth I must have, for three rai-
sons. First, that all the wild-game o'
the forest are mine as well as yours ;
second, that I'm a sthranger, an' you
know that hospitality is a virthue in
ould Ireland; an', third an' best, be-
cause you darn't refuse me ! So, sit
down there an' cool me a good rich
ladleful, or, be the hole o' my coat !
there'll be wigs on the green bethune
you an' me afore you're much ouldher !"
" Ther's for your impidence, you
gabblin' little riffin !" said Diarmid,
making a furious kick at the imper-
turbable little intruder, who, however,
evaded it by a nimble jump to one
side ; and then leaping up suddenly,
before his assailant was aware, hit
him right and left two stunning blows
with his hard and diminutive fists in
the eyes. Round and round hopped red-
head, at each hop striking the luckless
Diarmid right in the face, till at length,
with one finishing blow, he brought
him to the ground, stunned and sense-
less.
" There," he said, as he took a ladle-
ful o' broth and began to cool it de-
liberately, "that's the most scientific
facer I ever planted on a man's fore-
head in my life. I think he'll not re-
fuse me the next time I ask him."
With that he drank off the broth at
a draught, laid the ladle carefully in
the pot, stuck his hands in his pockets,
and jovially whistling up, "The
cricket's rambles through the hob," he
left the hut, and strutted with a light
and cheerful heart into the forest.
When Diarmid's brothers returned,
they found him just recovering from
his swoon, with two delightful black
eyes, and a nose of unusual dimensions.
The Building of Mournc.
231
He told them the cause of his mishap,
at which they only laughed heartily,
saying that he deserved it for allowing
himself to be beaten by such an in-
significant youngster. Next day, Di-
armid and Roreen went out to hunt,
leaving Donogh within to cook the
dinner. When they returned, they
found the ill-starred Donogh lying
almost dead on the floor, with two
black eyes far surpassing in beauty
and magnitude those received on the
preceding evening by his brother.
" Let me stay within to-morrow,"
said Roreen, " for 'tis my turn ; an' if
he has the perliteness o' payin' me a
visit, I'll reward him for his conde-
scension."
"Arrah!" said both his brothers,
"is it a little traneen like you to be
able for him, when he bate the two
of us?"
"No matther," answered Roreen;
" tis my turn, an' stay I will, if my
eyes were to be oblitherated in my pur-
ricranium !"
And so, when the morrow came,
Diarmid and Donogh went out to hunt,
and Roreen Shouragh stayed within
to cook the dinner. As the pot com-
menced boiling, Roreen kept a sharp
eye around him for the expected visitor,
whom he at length descried coming up
the glade toward the door of the hut,
whistling cheerfully as he came.
" Good-morrow, youngster !" said the
chap as he entered, and made a most
hilarious bow ; " you seem to have the
odor o' charity from your handsome
face here, at laste it comes most aro-
matically from the pot, anyhow."
" Ah, then ! good-morrow kindly,
my blushin' little moss-rose !" said
Roreen, answering the salutation with
an equally ornamental inclination of
his head " welcome to the hall o' my
fathers. P'r'aps you'd do me the thur-
minjous honor o' satin' that blazin' little
earkiss o' yours on the stone foment
me there."
" With all the pleasure in the uni-
varse," answered the other, seating him-
self ; "but as the clay is most obsthrep-
orously hot an* disthressin' to the dis-
solute traveller, p'r'aps you'd have the
exthrame kindness o' givin' me a ladle-
ful o' broth to refresh myself."
" Well," said Roreen, " I was always
counted a livin' respectacle o' the hos-
pitality of ould Ireland. Yet, although
the first law is not to ask the name of
a guest, in regard to the unmerciful
way you thrated my brothers, I must
make bowld, before I grant your re-
quest, to have the honor an' glory of
hearin' your cognomen."
"With shuprame pleasure," an-
swered the visitor. " My name, accord-
in' to the orthography o' Ogham charac-
ters, is Shaneen cus na Thinne, which,
larnedly expounded, manes John with
his Feet to the Fire. But the ferlos-
ophers an' rantiquarians of ould Ire-
land, thracin' effect from cause, call me
Fieryfoot, an' by that name I shall be
proud to be addhressed by you at pres-
ent"
"Well," rejoined Roreen, "it only
shows their perfound knowlidge an'
love for truth, to be able to make out
such a knotty ploberm in derivations ;
an' so, out o' compliment to their oceans
o' larnin', you'll get the broth ; but,"
continued he, as he took up a ladleful
and held it to cool, " as there are a few
questions now and then tlirublin' my
ruminashins, p'r'aps you may be so
perlite as to throw a flash o' lightnin' on
them, while we're watin'. One is in
nathral history. I've heerd that of
late the hares sleep with one eye shut
an' th' other open. What on earth is
the raison of it ?"
"That," answered Fieryfoot, "is
aisily solvoluted. Tis on account o' the
increase o' weasels, and their love for
suckin' the blood o' hares in their sleep.
So the hares, in ordher to be on their
guard an' prevent it, sleep with only
one eye at a time, an' when that's rested
an' has slept enough, they open it an*
shut the other !"
"The other," said Roreen, "is in
asthronomy, an' thrubbles me most of
all, sleepin' an' noddin', aitin' an' dhrink-
in'. Why is it that the man in the
moon always keeps a rapin'-hook in his
hand, and never uses it ?"
232
The Building of Mourne.
" Because," answered Fieryfoot, get-
ting somewhat impatient, "because,
you poor benighted crathure, he's not
a man at all, but the image of a man
painted over the door of Brian Airach's
shebeen there, where those that set off
on a lunarian ramble go in to refresh
themselves, as I want to refresh myself
with that ladle o' broth you're delayin'
in your hand !"
" Oh ! you'll get it fresh an' fastin' !"
exclaimed Roreen, and with that he
dashed the ladleful of scalding broth
right into the face of Fieryfoot, who
started up with a wild cry, and rushed
half-blinded from the hut. Away went
Roreen in hot pursuit after him, with
the ladle in his hand, and calling out
to him, with the most endearing names
imaginable, to come back for another
supply of broth away down the glades,
till at length, on the summit of a smooth,
green little knoll, Fieryfoot suddenly
disappeared. Roreen went to the spot,
and found there a square aperture,
just large enough to admit his body.
He immediately went and cut a sap-
ling with his knife, stuck it by the side
of the aperture, and placed his cap
on it for a mark, and then returned to
the hut, and found his brothers just
after coming in. He related all that
happened, and they agreed to go to-
gether to the knoll after finishing their
dinner. When the dinner was over,
the three brothers went down to the
knoll, and easily found out the aper-
ture through which Fieryfoot had dis-
appeared.
" An' now, what's to be done ?" asked
Diarmid.
"What's to be done, is it?" said
Roreen ; " why just to have me go down,
as I'm the smallest smallest in body
I mane for, to spake shupernathrally,
my soul is larger than both of yurs
put together ; an', in the manetime, to
have ye build another hut over the spot
an' live there till I return with a power
o' gold an' dimons, and oceans o' re-
nown an' glory !"
With that he crept into the aperture,
while his brothers busied themselves
in drawing brambles and sticks to the
spot in order to build a hut as he Lad
directed. As Roreen descended, the
passage began to grow more broad and
lightsome, and at length he found him-
self on the verge of a delightful country,
far more calm and beautiful than the
one he had left. Here he took the
first way that presented itself, and trav-
elled on till he came to the crossing of
three roads. He saw a large, dark-
looking house, part of which he knew
to be a smith's forge, from the smoke,
and from the constant hammering that
resounded from the inside. Roreen
entered, and the first object that pre-
sented itself was Fieryfoot, as fresh
and blooming as a trout, and roasting
his red shins with the utmost luxuri-
ance and happiness of heart before the
blazing fire on the hob.
" Wisha, Roreen Shouragh," ex-
claimed Fieryfoot, starting from his seat,
spitting on his hand for good luck, and
then offering it with great cordiality,
" you're as welcome as the flowers o*
May ! Allow me to offer you my con-
gratulations, ad infinitum, for your su-
perior cuteness in the art of circum-
wentin' your visitors. I prizhume
you'll have no objection to be present-
ed to the three workmen I keep in the
house the smith there, the carpenter,
.an' the mason. Roreen Shouragh,
gentlemin, the only man in the world
above that was able to circumwint your
masther !"
" A cead mille failte*, young gintle-
man !" said the three workmen in a
breath.
Roreen bowed politely in acknow-
ledgment.
" Any news from the worldt above ? M
asked the smith, as he rested his pon-
derous hammer on the anvil.
"Things are morthially dull," an-
swered Roreen, giving a sly wink at
Fieryfoot. " I've heard that the Danes
are making a divarshin in Ireland;
that a shower o' dimons fell in Dublin ;
that the moon is gettin' mowldy for
want o' shinin' ; and that there's a say
in the west that is gradually becoming
transmogrified into whiskey. I hum-
bly hope that the latther intelligence
The Building of Mourne.
is unthrue, for if not, I'm afraid the
whole worldt will become drunk in the
twinklin' of a gooldfrinch's eye !"
" Mile, mile gloire !" exclaimed the
three workmen, " but that's grate an*
wondherful intirely ! P'r'aps masther,"
continued they, addressing Fieryfoot,
and smacking their lips at the thought
of whiskey, " p'r'aps you'd have the
goodness o' givin' us a few days' lave
of absence !"
" Not at present," answered Fiery-
foot ; " industry is the soul o' pleasure,
as the hawk said to the sparrow before
he transported him to his stomach, so
ye must now set to work an' make a
sword, for I want to make my frind
here a present as a compliment for his
superior wisdom."
To work they went. The smith
hammered out, tempered, and polished
the blade, the carpenter fashioned the
hilt, which the mason set with a bril-
liant row of diamonds ; and the sword
was finished instantly.
" An' now," said Fieryfoot, present-
ing the sword to Roreen, " let me have
the immorthial pleasure o' presenting
you with this. Take it and set off on
your thravels. Let valior and magna-
nimity be your guide, and you'll come
to glory without a horizintal bounds.
In the manetime I'll wait here till you
return."
" I accept it with the hottest grati-
tudinity an' gladness," said Roreen,
taking the sword and running his eye
critically along hilt and blade. " "Tis
a darlin', handy sword ; 'tis sharp,
shinin', an' killin', as the sighin' lover
said to his sweetheart's eyes, an' alto-
gether 'tis the one that matches my
experienced taste, for 'tis tough, an*
light, and lumeniferous, as Nero said
to his cimitar, whin he was preparin'
to daycapitate the univarsal worldt wid
one blow !"
Saying this, Roreen buckled the
sword to his side, bade a ceremonious
farewell to the polite Fieryfoot and his
workmen, left the house, and proceed-
ed on his adventures. He took the
west and broader road that led by the
forge, and travelled on gaily till night.
For seven days he travelled thus,
meeting various small adventures by
the way, and getting through them with
his usual light-heartedness, till at
length he saw a huge dark castle
before him, standing on a rock over a
solitary lake. He accosted an old
man by the way-side, who told him
that a huge giant of unusual size,
strength, and ferocity dwelt there, and
that he had kept there in thrall, for
the past year and a day, a beautiful
princess, expecting that in the end
she'd give her consent to marry him.
The old peasant told him also that the
giant had two brothers, who dwelt far
away in their castles, and that they
were the strangest objects ever seen
by mortal eyes ; one being a valiant
dwarf as broad as he was long, and the
other longer than he was broad, for he
was tall as the giant, but so slightly
formed that he was designated by the
inhabitants of the country round
Snohad na Dhial, or the Devil's Needle.
Roreen thanked the old man with great
urbanity, and proceeded on his way
toward the castle. When he came to
the gate, he knocked as bold as brass,
and demanded admittance. He was
quickly answered by a tremendous
voice from the inside, which demanded
what he wanted.
" Let me in, ould steeple," said Ro-
reen ; " I'm a poor disthressed boy
that's grown wary o' the worldt on ac-
count o' my fatness, an' I'm come to
offer myself as a volunthary male for
your voracious stomach !"
At this the gate flew open with a
loud clang, and Roreen found himself
in the great court-yard of the castle,
confronting the giant. The giant was
licking his lips expectantly while open-
ing the gate, but seemed now not a
little disappointed as he looked upon
the spare, wiry form standing before
him.
" If you're engaged, ould cannibal,"
said Horeen again, "in calkalatin' a
gasthernomical ploberm, as I'm aweer
you are, by the way you're lookin' at
me, allow me perlitely to help you in
hallucidatin' it. In the first place, if
234
The Building of Mourne.
you intend to put mt in a pie, I must
tell you that you'll nofc get much gravy
from my carkiss, an' in the next, if you
intend to ate me on the spot, raw, I
must inform you that you'll find me as
hard as a Kerry dimon, an' stickin* in
your throat, before you're half acquaint-
ed with the politics of your abdominal
kingdom !"
As an answer to this the giant did
precisely what Roreen Shouragh ex-
pected he would do. He stooped down,
caught him up with his monstrous
hand, intending to chop off his head
with the first bite ; but Roreen, the mo-
ment he approached his broad, hairy
chest, pulled suddenly out the sword
presented to him by Fiery foot, and
drew it across the giant's windpipe,
with as scientific a cut as ever was
given by any champion at the battle of
Gaura, Clontarf, or of any other place
on the face of the earth. The giant
did not give the usual roar given by a
giant in the act of being killed. How
could he, when his windpipe was cut ?
He only fell down simply by the gate
of his own castle, and died without a
groan. Roreen, by way of triumph,
leaped upon his carcass, and with a
light heart cut a few nimble capers
thereon, and then proceeded on his ex-
plorations into the castle. There he
found the beautiful princess sad and
forlorn, whom he soon relieved from
her apprehensions of further thraldom.
She told him that she was not the only
lady whose wrongs were unredressed
in that strange country, for that the
two remaining brothers of the giant, to
wit, the dwarf and the Devil's Needle,
had kept, during her time of thrall, her
two younger sisters in an equally cruel
bondage.
" An' now, my onrivalled daisy," said
Roteen, after some conversation had
passed between them, " allow me, while
I'm in the humor for performin* deeds
o' valior, to thramp off an' set them
free !"
" But," said the princess, " am I to
be left behind pining in this forlorn
dungeon of a castle ?"
"Refulgint leedy," answered Ro-
reen, " a pair of eyes like yours, when
purferrin' a request, are arrisistible,
but this Kerry-dimon' heart o' mine is.
at present onmovable ; and in ferloso-
phy, when an arrisistible affeer con-
glomerates against an onmovable one,
nothin' occurs, an' so I must have the
exthrame bowldness of asking you to
stay where you are till I come back,
for 'tis always the maxim of an expa-
rienced an' renowned gineral not to
oncumber himself with too much bag-
gage when settin' out on his advin-
thures !"
And so the young princess consent-
ed to stay, and Roreen, with many
bows and compliments, took his leave.
For three days he travelled, till at
length he espied the castle of the dwarf
towering on the summit of a great hill.
He climbed the hill as fast as his
nimble legs could carry him, blew the
horn at the gate, and defied the dwarf
to single combat. To work they went.
The skin of the dwarf was as hard
and tough as that of a rhinoceros, but
at length Roreen's sword found a pas-
sage through it, and the dwarf fell
dead by his own gate. Roreen went
in, brought the good news of her sis-
ter's liberation to the lady, and after
directing her to remain where she was
till his return, set forward again. For
three days more he travelled, till he
came to the shore of a sea, where he
saw the castle of Snohad na Dhial
towering high above the waves. He
climbed up the rock on which the castle
stood, found the gate open, and whis-
tling the romantic pastoral of " The
piper in the meadow straying," he jo-
vially entered the first door he met.
On he went, through room after room,
and saw no one, till at last he came
before an exceedingly lofty door, with
a narrow and perpendicular slit in it,
extending almost from threshold to
lintel. He peeped in through the open
slit, and beheld inside the most beauti-.
ful young lady his eyes ever rested
upon. She was weeping, and seemed
sorely troubled. Roreen opened the
door, presented himself before her, and
told her how he had liberated her sis- .
The Building of Mourne.
235
ters. In return she told him how that
very day she was to be married to
Snohad na Dliial, and wept, as she
further related that it was out of the
question to think of vanquishing him,
for that he was as tall as the giant, yet
so slight that the slit in the door served
him always for an entrance, but then
he was beyond all heroes strong, and
usually killed his antagonist by knot-
ting his long limbs around him and
squeezing him to death.
"No matther," said Roreen. "I'll
sing a song afther my victory, as the
gamecock said to the piper. An' now,
most delightful an' bloomin' darlint o'
the worldt, this purriliginious heart o'
mine is melted at last with the con-
shumin' flame o' love. Say, then, the
heart-sootherin' an' merlifluous word
that you'll have me, an' your thrubbles
are over in the twinklin' "
" Not over so soon !" interrupted a
loud, shrill voice behind them, and Ro-
reen, turning round, beheld Snohad na
Dhial entering at the slit, with deadly
rage and jealousy in his fiery eyes.
Snohad, however, in his haste to get
in and fall upon Roreen, got his middle
in some way or other entangled in the
slit, and in his struggles to free him-
self, his feet lilted upward, and there
he hung for a few moments, inward
and outward, like the swaying beam
of a balance. For a few moments only ;
for Roreen, running over, with one
blow of his faithful sword on the waist
cut him in two, and down fell both
halves of Snohad na Dhial as dead as
a door-nail. After this Roreen got the
heart-sootherin' answer he so gallantly
implored. He then bethought himself
of returning. After a few weeks he
found himself with the three sisters,
and with a cavalcade of horses laden
with the most precious diamonds,
pearls, and other treasures belonging
to the three castles, in front of the forge
where he had met Fieryfoot, and talk-
ing merrily to that worthy.
" An' now," said Fieryfoot, after he
had complimented the ladies on their
beauty, and Roreen on his success and
bravery, " I am about to give my three
workmen lave of absence. But they
must work seven days for you first.
Then they may go on their peregrina-
tions about ould Ireland. Farewell.
Give my ondeniable love to the ladle,
and remember me to your brothers
balligerently !"
"With that the two friends embraced,
on which Fieryfoot drew out a small
whistle and blew a tune, which set
Roreen Shouragh and the three prin-
cesses into a pleasant sleep ; on awak-
ening from which they found them-
selves by the side of the little hut on
the knoll, with the three workmen be-
neath them, holding the horses and
guarding their loads of treasure. Ro-
reen's two brothers had just returned
from the chase, and were standing
near them in mute wonderment at the
spectacle. After some brief explana-
tions, the whole cavalcade set out on
their journey home, and travelled on
till they came to the hut of the lonely
widow on the banks of the Clydagh.
It was nightfall when they reached the
place. Roreen told the three work-
men that he wanted to have a castle
built on the meadow beside the hut,
and then went in and embraced his
mother. The workmen went to the
meadow, and when the next morning
dawned, had a castle of unexampled
strength and beauty built for Roreen
and his intended bride. The two suc-
ceeding mornings saw two equally
splendid castles built for the two broth-
ers and their brides elect, for they
were about to be married to the two
elder princesses. By the next morn-
ing after that they had a castle finished
for Roreen's mother. On the second
morning afterward they had a town
built, and at length, on the seventh
morning, when Roreen went out, he
found both castles and town' enclosed
by a strong wall, with ramparts, gate-
ways, and every other necessary ap-
pliance of defence. The three work-
men then took their leave, and by the
loud smacking of their lips as they de-
parted, Roreen knew that they were
going off to the west in search of the
" say " of whiskey. After this the three
236
The Building of Mourne.
brothers were married to the three
lovely princesses, mercenary soldiers
flocked in from every quarter, and took
service under their banners ; the in-
habitants of the surrounding country
removed into the town, and matters
went on gaily and prosperously. The
name of Roreen's wife was Mourne
Blanaid, or the Blooming, and on a
great festival day got up for the pur-
pose, he called the town Mourne, in
honor of her. In a pitched battle they
defeated and killed the slayer of their
father, and drove his followers out of
their patrimony, and after that they
lived in glory and renown till their
death.
For centuries after the town of
Mourne flourished, still remaining in
possession of the race of the Mac Car-
thys. At length the Normans came
and laid their mail-clad hands upon it.
In the reign of King John, Alexander
de St. Helena founded a preceptory
for Knights Templars near it, the ruins
of which stand yet in forlorn and soli-
tary grandeur beside the little river.
Still the town flourished and throve,
though many a battle was fought with-
in it, and around its gray walls, till at
length, according to Spenser, Murrogh
na Ranagh, prince of Thomond, burst
out like a fiery flame from his fast-
nesses in Clare, overran all Munster,
burnt almost every town in it that had
fallen into the possession of the Eng-
lish, and among the rest Mourne,
whose woful burning did not content
him, for he destroyed it altogether,
scarcely leaving one stone standing
there upon another. And now only a
few mounds remain to show the spot
where Roreen Shouragh got his town
built, and where he ruled so jovially.
And so, gentle reader, if you look
with me to the history of Troy, Rome,
the battle of Ventry Harbor, the Pyra-
mids, or Tadmor hi the Desert, I think
you will say that there is none of them
so clear, so circumstantial, and so trust-
worthy as the early history of the old
town of Mourne.
Hans Euler. 237
HANS EULER.
FROM THE GERMAN OF J. G. SEIDL.
, " HARK, child again that knocking! Go, fling wide the door, I pray ;
Perchance 'tis some poor pilgrim who has wandered from his way.
Now save thee, gallant stranger! Sit thou down and share our cheer :
Our bread is white and wholesome see ! our drink is fresh and clear."
" I come not here your bread to share, nor of your drink to speak.
Your name ?" " Hans Euler." " So ! 'tis well : it is your blood I seek.
Know that through many a weary year I've sought you for a foe :
I had a goodly brother once : 'twas you who laid him low.
" And as he bit the dust, I vowed that soon or late on you
His death should be avenged ; and mark ! that oath I will keep true."
" I slew him ; but in quarrel just. I fought him hand to hand :
Yet, since you would avenge his fall, I'm ready ; take your stand.
" But I war not in my homestead, by this hearth whereon I tread ;
Not in sight of these my dear ones for whose safety I have bled.
My daughter, reach me down yon sword, the same that laid him low ;
And if I ne'er come back again, Tyrol has sons enow."
So forth they fared together, up the glorious Alpine way,
Where newly now the kindling east led on the golden day.
The sun that mounted with them, as he rose in all his pride,
Still saw the stranger toiling on, Hans Euler for his guide.
They climbed the mountain summit ; and behold ! the Alpine world
Showed clear and bright before them, 'neath the mists that upward curled.
Below them, calm and happy, lay the valley in her rest,
With the chalets in her arms, and with their dwellers on her breast.
Amidst were sparkling waters ; giant chasms, scarred and riven ;
Vast, crowning woods ; and over all, the pure, blest air of heaven :
And, sacred in the sight of God, where peace her treasures spread,
On every hearth, on every home, the soul of freedom shed !
Both gazed in solemn silence down. The stranger stayed his hand.
Hans Euler gently pointed to his own beloved land :
" 'Twas this thy brother threatened ; such a wrong might move me well.
'Twas in such a cause I struggled : 'twas for such a fault he fell."
The stranger paused : then, turning, looked Hans Euler in the face ;
The arm that would have raised the sword fell powerless in its place.
u You slew him. Was it, then, for this for home and fatherland ?
Forgive me ! 'Twas a righteous cause. Hans Euler, there's my hand !"
ELEANORA L. HERVEY.
238
The Modern Genius of the Streams.
From All the Year Round.
THE MODERN GENIUS OF THE STREAMS.
WATER to raise corn from the seed,
to clothe the meadow with its grass,
and to fill the land with fruit and
flowers ; water to lie heaped in fan-
tastic clouds, to make the fairy-land of
sunset, and to spread the arch of
mercy in the rainbow ; water that
kindles our imagination to a sense of
beauty ; water that gives us_ our meat,
and is our drink, and cleans us of dirt
and disease, and is our servant in a
thousand great and little ways it is
the very juice and essence of man's
civilization. And so, whether we
shall drag over cold water, or let hot
water drag us, is one way of putting
the question between canal and steam
communication for conveyance of our
heavy traffic. The canal-boat uses its
water cold without, the steam-engine
requires it hot within. Before hot
water appeared in its industrial char-
acter to hiss off the cold, canals had
all the glory to themselves. They are
not yet hissed off their old stages and
cat-called into contempt by the whistle
of the steam-engine, for canal commu-
nication still has advantages of its
own, and canal shares are powers in
the money market.
Little more than a century ago, not
only were there neither canals nor
railroads in this country, but the com-
mon high-roads were about the worst
in Europe. Corn and wool were sent
to market over those bad roads on
horses' or bullocks' backs, and the
only coal used in the inland southern
counties was carried on horseback in
sacks for the supply of the black-
smiths' forges. Water gave us our
over-sea commerce, that came in and
went out by way of our tidal rivers ;
and the step proposed toward the fos-
tering of our home industries was a
great one when it occurred to some-
body to imitate nature, by erecting
artificial rivers that should flow where-
ever we wished them to flow, and*
should be navigable along their whole
course for capacious, flat-bottomed
carrying-boats.
The first English canal, indeed, was
constructed as long as three hundred
years ago, at Exeter, by John Trew, a
native of Glamorganshire, who ena-
bled the traders of Exeter to cancel
the legacy of the spite of an angry
Countess of Devon, who had, nearly
three hundred years before that time,
stopped the ascent of sea-going vessels
to Exeter by forming a weir across
the Exe at Topham. Trew contrived,
to avoid the obstruction, a canal from
Exeter to Topham. three miles long,
with a lock to it. John Trew ruined
himself in the service of an ungrateful
corporation.
After this time, improvements went
no further than the clearing out of
some channels of natural water-com-
munication, until the time of James
Brindley, the father of the English
canal system.
James Brindley was born in the
year 1716, the third of the reign
of George the First, in a cottage
in the parish of Wormhill, mid-
way between the remote hamlets of
the High Peak of Derby. There his
father, more devoted to shooting, hunt-
ing, and bull-running, than to his
work as a cottier, cultivated the little
croft he rented, got into bad company
and poverty, and left his children
neglected and untaught. The idle
man had an industrious wife, who
taught the children, of whom James
was the eldest, what little she knew ;
but they must all.help to earn as soon
as they were able, and James Brind-
ley earned wages at any ordinary
laborer's work that he could get
until he was seventeen years old.
The Modern Genius of the Streams.
239
He was a lad clever with his knife,
who made little models of mills, and
set them to work in mill-streams of
his own contrivance. The machinery
of a neighboring grist-mill was his
especial delight, and had given the
first impulse to his modellings. He
and his mother agreed that he should
bind himself, whenever he could, to a
millwright ; and at the age of seventeen
he did, after a few weeks' trial, be-
come apprentice for seven years to
Abraham Bennett, wheelwright and
millwright, at the village of Sutton,
near Macclesfield, which was the
market-town of Brindley's district.
The millwrights were then the only
engineers ; they worked hy turns at
the foot-lathe, the carpenter's bench,
and the anvil ; and, in country places
where there was little support for
division of labor, they had to find skill
or invention to meet any demand on
mechanical skill. Bennett was not a
sober man, his journeymen were a
rough set, and much of the young
apprentice's time was at first occupied
in running for beer. He was taught
little, and had to find out everything
for himself, which he did but slowly ;
so that, during some time, he passed
with his master for a stupid bungler,
only fit for the farm-work from which
he had been taken. But, after two
years of this sort of pupilage, a fire
having injured some machinery in a
small silk-mill at Macclesfield, Brind-
ley was sent to bring away the dam-
aged pieces ; and, by his suggestions on
that occasion, he showed to Mr. Mil-
ner, the mill superintendent, an intel-
ligence that caused his master to be
applied to for Brindley's aid in a
certain part of the repairs. He was
unwillingly sent, worked under the
encouragement of the friendly super-
intendent with remarkable ability, and
was surprised that his master and
the other workmen seemed to be
dissatisfied with his success. When
they chaffed him, at the supper cele-
brating the completion of the work,
his friend Milner offered to wager a
gallon of the best ale that, before the
lad's apprenticeship was out, he would
be a cleverer workman than any of
them there present, master or man.
This was a joke against Brindley
among his fellow-workmen ; but in
another year they found " the young
man Brindley " specially asked for
when the neighboring millers needed
repairs of machinery, and sometimes
he was chosen in preference to the
master himself. Bennett asked " the
young man Briudley" where he had
learnt his skill in mill-work, but he
could tell no more than that it " came
natural like." He even suggested
and carried out improvements, espe-
cially in the application of the water-
power, and worked so substantially
well, that his master said to him one
day, "Jem, if thou goes on i' this
foolish way o' workin', there will
be very little trade left to be done
when thou comes oot o' thy time:
thou knaws firmness o' wark's h' ruin
o' trade."
But presently Jem's "firmness o'
wark" was the saving of his master.
Bennett got a contract to set up a
paper-mill on the river Dane, upon
the model of a mill near Manchester.
Bennett went to examine the Manches-
ter mill, brought back a confused and
beery notion of it, and, proceeding
with the job, got into the most hope-
less bewilderment. An old hand, who
had looked in on the work, reported,
over his drink at the nearest public-
house, that the job was a farce, and
that Abraham Bennett was only
throwing away his employer's money.
Next Saturday, after his work, young
Jem Brindley disappeared. He was
just of age, and it was supposed he
had taken it into his head to lea^e his
master and begin life on his own ac-
count. But on Monday morning,
there he was at his work, with his
coat off, and the whole duty to be
done clear in his head. He had taken
on Saturday night a twenty-five mile
walk to the pattern mill, near Man-
chester. On Sunday morning he
had asked leave of its proprietor to
go in and examine it. He had spent
240
The Modem Genius of the Streams.
some hours on Sunday in the study of
its machinery, and then had walked
the twenty-five miles back, to resume
his work and save his master from a
failure that would have been disas-
trous to his credit. The conduct of
the work was left to him ; he undid
what was amiss, and proceeded with
the rest so accurately, that the con-
tract was completed within the ap-
pointed time, to the complete satis-
faction of all persons concerned.
After that piece of good service,
Bennett left to James Brindley the
chief care over his business. When
Bennett died, Brindley carried on to
completion all work then in hand, and
wound up the accounts for the benefit
of his old master's family. That done,
he set up in business on his own ac-
count at the town of Leek, in Stafford-
shire ; he was then twenty-six years
old, having served seven years as an
apprentice and two years as journey-
man.
Leek was then but a small market-
town, with a few grist-mills, and Brind-
ley had no capital; but he made
himself known beyond Leek as a
reliable man, whose work was good
and durable, who had invention at the
service of his employers, and who
always finished a job within the stipu-
lated time. He did not confine him-
self to mill-work, but was ready to
undertake all sorts of machinery con-
nected with the draining of mines, the
pumping of water, the smelting of
iron and copper, for which a demand
was then rising, and became honora-
bly known to his neighbors as " the
Schemer." At first he had no jour-
neyman cfr apprentice, and he cut the
tree for his own timber. While work-
ing as an apprentice, he had taught
himself to write in a clumsy, half-illeg-
ible way he never learnt to spell
and when he had been thirteen years
in business, he would still charge an
employer his day's work at two shil-
lings for cutting a big tree, for a mill-
shaft or for other use. When he was
called to exercise his skill at a dis-
tance upon some machinery, he added
a charge of sixpence a day for extra
expenses.
When the brothers John and Thom-
as Wedgwood, potters in a small way
at the outset of their famous career,
desired to increase the supply of flint-
powder, they called " the Schemer" to
their aid, and the success of the flint-
mill Brindley then erected brought him
business in the potteries from that time
forward.
About this time, also, a Manchester
man was being married to a young
lady of mark in the potteries, and,
during the wedding festivities, conver-
sation once turned on the cleverness
of the young millwright of Leek. The
Manchester man wondered whether
he was clever enough to get the water
out of some hopelessly drowned coal
mines of his, and thought he should
like to see him. Brindley was sent
for, told the case and its hitherto insu-
perable difficulties, went into a brown
study, then suddenly brightened up,
and told in what way he thought that,
without great expense, the difficulty
might be conquered. The gist of his
plan was to use the fall of the river
Irwell, that formed one boundary of
the estate, and pump the water from
the pits by means of the greater
power of the water in the river. His
suggestion was thought good, and,
being set to work upon this job, he
drove a tunnel through six hundred
yards of solid rock, and by the tunnel
brought the river down upon the
breast of an immense water-wheel,
fixed in a chamber thirty feet below
the surface of the ground ; the water,
when it had turned the wheel, was
carried on into the lower level of the
Irwell. That wheel, with its pumps,
working night and day, soon cleared
the drowned outworkings of the mine ;
and for the invention and direction of
this valuable engineering work, he
seems only to have charged his
workman's wages of two shillings a
day.
An engineer from London had been
brought down to superintend the
building of a new silk-mill at Congle-
The Modern Genius of. the Streams.
241
ton, and Brindley was employed un-
der him to make the water-wheel and
do the common work of his trade.
The engineer from London got his
work into a mess, and at last was
obliged to confess his inability to carry
out his plan. " The Schemer " Brind-
ley was applied to by the perplexed
proprietor. Could he put the confu-
sion straight? James Brindley asked
to see the plans ; but the great engineer
refused to show them to a common
millwright. " Well, then," said Brind-
ley to the proprietor of the mill, " tell
me exactly what you want the machin-
ery to do, and I will try to contrive
what will do it. But you must leave
me free to work in my own way."
He was told the results desired, and
not only achieved them, but achieved
much more, adding new contrivances,
which afterward proved of the great-
est value.
After this achievement, Brindley
was employed by the now prospering
potters to build flint-mills of more
power upon a new plan of his own.
One of the largest was that built for
Mr. Baddely, of which work there is
record in such trade entries of his as
March 1 5, 1757. With Mr. Baddely
to Matherso about a now " (newj " flint-
mill upon a windey day 1 day 3s. 6d.
March 19 draing a plann 1 day 2s. 6d.
March 23 draing a plann and to sat
out the wheelrace 1 day 4s."
At this time Brindley is also exer-
cising his wit on an attempt at an
improved steam-engine ; but though his
ideas are good, it is hard to bring them
into continuously good working order,
and after the close of entries about it
in his memorandum-book, when it
seems to have broken down for a
second time, he underlines the item
" to Run about a Drinking Is. 6d."
But he confined his despair to the
loss of a day and the expenditure of
eighteen pence. Not long afterward
he had developed a patent of his
own, and erected, in 1763, for
the Walker Colliery at Newcastle,
a steam-engine wholly of iron, which
was pronounced the most " complete
16
and noble piece of iron- work " that had
up to that time been produced. But
the perfecting of the steam-engine was
then safe in the hands of Watt, and
Brindley had already turned into his
own path as the author of our Eng-
lish canal system.
The young Duke of Bridgewater,
vexed in love by the frailty of fair
woman, had abjured interest in their
sex, had gone down to his estate of
Worsley, on the borders of Chat Moss,
and, to give himself something more
wholesome to think about than the
sisters Gunning and their fortunes,
conferred with John Gilbert, his land
steward, as to the possibility of cutting
a canal by which the coals found
upon his Worsley estate might be
readily taken to market at Manches-
ter. Manchester then was a rising
town, of which the manufacturers
were yet unaided by the steam-engine,
and there was no coal smoke but that
which arose from household fires.
The roads out of Manchester were so
bad as to be actually closed in winter,
and in summer the coal, sold at the
pit mouth by the horse-load, was con-
veyed on horses' backs at an addition
to its cost of nine or ten shillings a
ton.
When the duke discussed with Gil-
bert old abandoned and new possible
schemes of water conveyance for his
Worsley coal, Gilbert advised the
calling in of the ingenious James
Brindley of Leek, "the Schemer."
When the duke came into contact
with Brindley, he at once put trust in
him, and gave him the direction of
the proposed work ; whereupon he
was requested to base his advice
upon what he enters in his memoran-
dum-book of jobs done, as an " ochilor,"
(ocular) " servey or a ricconitering."
Brindley examined the ground, and
formed his own plan. He was against
carrying the canal down into Irwell by
a flight of locks, and so up again on
the other side to the proposed level,
but counselled carrying the canal by
solid embankments and a stone aque-
duct right over the river upon one
242
The Modern Genius of the Streams.
level throughout. The duke accepted
his opinion, and had plans prepared
for a new application to parliament,
Brindley often staying with him at
work and in consultation for weeks to-
gether, while still travelling to and fro
in full employment upon mills, water-
wheels, cranes, fire-engines, and other
mechanical work. Small as his pay
was, he lived frugally. He had by
this time even saved a little money,
and gained