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The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864

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Title: The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2,  August, 1864

Author: Various


        
Release date: February 11, 2007 [eBook #20565]

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY, VOL. 6, NO 2,  AUGUST, 1864 ***




Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Janet Blenkinship and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
(This file was produced from images generously made
available by Cornell University Digital Collections)







THE

CONTINENTAL MONTHLY:

DEVOTED TO

LITERATURE AND NATIONAL POLICY:

VOL. VI.--AUGUST, 1864.--No. II.




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|Transcriber's note: Obvious printer errors have been corrected. All |
|other inconsistencies are as in the original.                       |
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AMERICAN CIVILIZATION.

SECOND PAPER.


As a nation we are fast losing that reverence for the powers that be
which is enjoined by Holy Writ, and without which no form of government
can be lasting, no political system can take a firm hold upon the
affections of the people. The opposition press teems with vituperation
and personal abuse of those whom the people themselves have chosen to
control the public policy and administer the public affairs. The
incumbent of the Presidential chair, so far from receiving that respect
and deference to which his position entitles him, becomes the victim of
slander and vilification, from one portion of the country to another, on
the part of those who chance to differ with him in political sentiments.
Even beardless boys, taking their cue from those who, being older,
should know better, are unsparing in the use of such terms as
'scoundrel,' 'fool,' 'tyrant,' as applied to those whom the people have
delighted to honor, either unconscious or utterly heedless of the
disgust with which their language inspires the older and more
thoughtful. And thus it has become a recognized fact that no man's
reputation can withstand the trial of a four years' term of service in
the Presidential office. While this is in a great measure the reaction
from the king worship of the Old World, it is nevertheless a blot upon
our civilization, a departure from those lofty and noble sentiments
which characterize every advanced stage of human intellect, in which the
supremacy and inviolability of the law is acknowledged, and in which the
ruler is reverenced as the representative and impersonation of the law.
And as, in such a stage, respect for the magistrate and the law mutually
react upon each other, so in the present state of affairs the tendency
is, in the course of time, to reach from the ruler to the edict which he
administers, and thus to beget a disrespect and disregard of law itself,
paving the way to that violence and mob rule which, in the present state
of humanity, must inevitably attend the establishment of the democratic
principle.

The remedy is to be found in reform in the education of our youth,
whereby the utmost respect for the law and for those by whom it is
administered shall be inculcated as the groundwork of all patriotism and
national progress, while at the same time cultivating a loftier
appreciation of the blessings of social order and harmony, and of
well-regulated liberty of thought, speech, and action, and a purer
standard of right. Yet even this will be of little avail except in
connection with the abatement, through the strong good sense of a
thinking and upright people, of that national nuisance of bitter and
unmerciful political partisanship of which we have spoken, all of whose
tendencies are to evil, and so removing from the eyes of our youth a
low, unworthy, and degrading example, which they are too prone to
follow. The child will tread, to a great degree, in the steps of the
father, and the whole course of his intellectual life be governed, more
or less, by the principles and prejudices which he is accustomed every
day to hear from the lips of a parent, who is necessarily the teacher
and, in a great measure, the moulder of his infant mind. How careful,
then, ought every parent to be of the principles which he inculcates and
the examples which he sets in his conversation, especially when that
conversation is directed to a condemnation of the motives or the acts of
the ruling powers!--lest the child be some time inclined to enlarge upon
his views, and carry his deductions farther than he himself ever
dreamed, till he shall finally be led into a contempt of the
institutions as well as of the rulers of his native land, through a
father's teaching, and so grow up an embryo traitor, ready at the first
signal to embark in any revolutionary scheme or wild enterprise of
visionary reform, such as have been and are still the disturbers of our
national prosperity. For an example of such a result in our day we have
but to look at the youth of the Southern States, whose fiery treason,
far exceeding that of their elders, is nothing more than the outgrowth,
the legitimate extension and development of that bitter denunciation of
rulers who chanced to be unpopular with their fathers, of that
unrestrained license of speech which left nothing untouched, however
sacred, however holy it might be, which chanced to stand in the way of
gross and sordid interest. The ideas of the hot-blooded, fire-eating
Southern youth of to-day, the recklessness and the treason, the
denationalizing spirit of revolution and blood which so readily
manifests itself in contempt of the old flag, and the direst hatred of
all that their fathers held sacred and laid down their lives to
sustain--all this is but the idea, intensified and developed, of the
Southerner of a bygone generation; it is but the natural deduction from
his conversation and life, pondered over by the child, fixed deeply in
his heart as the teaching of a revered tutor, and carried out, by a
natural course of reasoning, to its extreme in the parricidal rebellion
of to-day. And yet that idea was, in its inception, apparently harmless
enough, being nothing more than that denunciation and vituperation of
the political leaders and the ruling powers which chanced to be in the
opposition, whereby the child was in due course of time weaned from his
country, and taught to look lightly upon and speak lightly of that which
of old time was only mentioned with love and reverent awe.

Nor is this the only reform which is needed in the education of our
youth. The phrase 'completing one's education' is used to-day with utter
looseness, and applied to that period when the youth leaves the school
or college for the busy walks of life. How much of error is contained in
such an application of the term he well knows who, after some years of
world life, can look back upon his college days and see what a mere
smattering of knowledge he gained within the 'classic shades,' and how
poorly _educated_ he was, in any and every sense of the word, how ill
fitted for the realities of work-day life, when first he emerged in
self-sufficient pride from the sacred walls, and launched boldly out
upon the world. At the time when, according to the popular acceptation
of the term, the education is completed, it is in truth but just begun;
and he who, upon the slender capital of college lore, should set himself
up for a finished man, one competent to take upon himself the duties,
responsibilities, and labors of active life, would soon find to his
sorrow that he was yet but a babe in wisdom, and yet needed a long and
severe discipline ere he could be considered one of the world's workers.
In the few years devoted, in our country, to the education of youth,
little more can be done than to teach them the value of knowledge and
the proper method and system of its acquisition, leaving to the
exertions of the after years that education of the mind and development
of the intellectual powers which constitute the finished man. And this
should be the object of all our schools, for females as well as for
males, to inculcate the truth that the true education begins where the
schools leave off, and depends entirely upon the scholar himself, aided
only by that groundwork of preparation, that systematizing of effort,
imparted by the tutor in the tender years. This end should be ever
before the teacher's eyes, and the whole course of study adjusted with a
view thereto. And the instruction imparted should be of such a character
as most thoroughly to fit the student for future study, giving him a
firm foothold upon the most essential branches of knowledge, from which
he may advance steadily and securely when left to himself; frequently
warning him that this is but the beginning of great things, and that the
abstrusities of wisdom, wherein is all its æsthetic beauty and its
holiness--all its moral good--lies far beyond, where it can only be
reached by the most patient, persevering, and unremitting toil; not
forgetting, at the same time, to point out the glorious reward which
awaits the seeker of truth. The effect of such a system would soon be
felt, not only in our national life, but in our very civilization. For
thus would be thrown out upon our society, year after year, a class of
thinkers, of earnest, working, strong-minded men and women, searchers
after truth and disciples of the highest good, instead of the crowd of
half-fledged intellectual idlers who yearly emerge from our schools with
the conceited idea that the course of study is finished, the paths of
investigation fully explored, and that life is henceforth a holiday from
study. Under such a giant impulse our society could not but advance with
enormous strides in all that pertains to true civilization, since
thinkers would then be the rule instead of the exception, and talent
almost universal, which is now, like angels' visits, comparatively 'few
and far between.' This is no Utopian vision: it is a reality within the
scope of human exertion and the capacity of our people of to-day, if men
would but exert themselves to such an end, and properly apply the energy
and labor which is now too often excited upon unworthy and trifling
objects. The realm of knowledge is so boundless that a lifetime is
little enough and short enough to give to mortals even a smattering of
that sea of wisdom which swells around the universe, and he alone can
claim to be a seer who devotes the whole of a long existence to the
investigation of truth; and only when this fact is impressed upon the
minds of youth can they be made to appreciate their true position in
existence, and made efficient workers in the great cause of humanity.

Yet all education is vain, all intellectual development is of little
benefit, all civilization hollow in its nature and ephemeral in its
duration which lacks the moral element. And by the word _moral_ in this
connection is intended to be understood not only what is usually
conveyed in the term morality, but also all religion. It is a
well-established fact, more particularly exemplified in our own history,
that all political parties founded upon an ephemeral issue, inevitably
disappear with the final adjustment of the questions upon which they are
based, having nothing left to rest upon, so it is in the affairs of
nations. In the weakness of human nature and the fallibility of all
human prescience, no system or theory can be devised which shall endure
through all time, which shall not become effete, useless, and even
erroneous in the progress of human development, and in the ever-shifting
condition of human society. Hence any government and society founded
upon a system of merely human devising, must, in the progress of events,
fall to pieces, and give place to the results of a new and younger
development. The law of God, as contained in Divine revelation, is alone
unchangeable, unmodifiable. It is adapted to meet the requirements of
all lands and all ages, to answer all the necessities of which human
nature is capable, even to its extremest verge of development. Hence all
political systems are durable only in proportion as they, in their
organization, conform to the precepts of Divine law.

We have used the term 'moral element' as necessarily comprehending all
religion, for the reason that upon religion is necessarily based all
true morality. There is nothing in the physical, and more especially in
the intellectual world, without a final cause; and that so-called
morality which exists entirely separate and distinct from religion, can
be based upon nothing other than self-interest, which, under different
conditions and circumstances, would as unhesitatingly lead to evil. The
'moral man' without religion could as easily be evil minded and
dissolute in a community purely evil as he is upright and honorable in a
civilized and enlightened community of to-day, for the reason that his
morality is nothing more than deference to a certain standard of
honor--in other words, to the _tone_ of the society by which he is
surrounded, bringing with it all the benefits of high public estimation
and a lofty position in society, which tone it must follow, be it good
or bad: it is founded and built up in self-interest. Yet this very tone
of society, and all these standards of honor and uprightness, when
traced to their origin, are found to arise from the precepts of
revelation. We are all, physically and intellectually, the creatures of
circumstance. Experience moulds and develops the intellect. Our moral
natures are not innate, but solely and entirely the result of the
influences by which we are surrounded. There is in the soul no absolute
standard of right; if there were, uprightness would be the same the
world over. But the right of the heathen is a different thing from that
of the Christian; the right of the Chinese or the Japanese is a
different thing from that of more enlightened nations; the right of one
Christian community is different from that of another; and this because
right, considered distinct from religion, is relative, and subject to
all the modifications of different conditions of society. The 'Evil, be
thou my good' of Milton's Satan is a delicate recognition of this fact.
But absolute right is a thing unknown to human _nature_; it can never be
innate, but comes from without. It can only be apprehended by the
intellect as a thing of God, a part of His nature, given to us as a law,
a rule of action, which we can accept or not, taking upon ourselves the
consequences of its rejection. There can be no standard of absolute
right other than the law of God; there can be no other invariable and
eternal rule of human action.

And if this position be true of individuals, most assuredly is it true
of nations, which are but individuals in the concrete, subject to the
same vicissitudes, governed by the same laws, physical and moral, and
following the same path of development. Only that form of government
which recognizes the Supreme Being as the chief of rulers, and His law
as the source and model of all human law, can be sure of truth and
justice on its side, both in its dealings with other nations and in its
regulation of its own internal affairs. Only such a form can work
steadily for the advancement of its people, both by leading them forward
and by smoothing the rugged path to perfection, and removing every
obstacle which impedes the national progress. However near the
principles of our Government may approach to those of the Divine law,
there is still room and urgent necessity for reform. Yet, in the
universal disfavor into which theocracies have fallen, and in the
intense desire which pervades our people to avoid the complicated evils
of a union between church and state, every attempt to unite religious
principles with those of government is looked upon with positive alarm;
and justly so, since the experience of past centuries proves that both
thrive best in separate spheres, however near they may approach each
other in the abstract, and that when united, the one is apt to prove a
hamper on the other, through the introduction of error and corruption;
while, separated, they act as a mutual restraint, each tending to
control the abnormal development of the other. For these reasons reform
in this particular must move from the people to the government, not from
the government to the people.

And here we come to the root of the whole matter, to the field where
reform is most needed, that is, in the moral condition of our society.
While there are few nations in which there is such a diversity of
religious views and multiplicity of religious sects, there are few
peoples which are so proverbially irreligious as our own. Yet our
condition in this respect is rather a neutral one than otherwise, for
while we are without any positive immorality which should make us
preëminent above other nations for vice, there is, nevertheless, in our
midst, little of that simple, trusting, unquestioning faith, which is
the 'substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not
seen'--little of that all-pervading and all-powerful reverence for
sacred things, that deep religious feeling which forms a portion of the
very life of most of the nations of the Old World. This is nothing more
than the reaction of the stern Puritan tenets of the colonial times. It
is the logical result of those dark and gloomy theories which aimed to
make religion not only unpalatable but absolutely repelling to the young
and the ardent, causing them to fly to the opposite extreme of throwing
aside religion to 'a more convenient season,' when the pleasures of life
should have lost their charm, and they themselves should be drawing near
the close of their pilgrimage. That theory which made a deadly sin of
that which was at worst but a pardonable misdemeanor and perhaps wholly
innocent in its nature, could not fail in time to react violently, first
through the process of disgust, then through that of inquiry, and
finally to the carrying of speculation to extremes, and practically
pronouncing harmless and innocent that which was really vice. The
popular mind, rebounding from the Puritan ideas, did not pause to
discriminate between the truth and error which were so intimately
mingled in their system, but, sweepingly denouncing all the theories
whose most prominent characteristics were revolting, involved in the
denunciation and rejection much of pure and simple truth, and ran
rapidly along the path of revolution, heedless of every warning,
unchecked by the obstacles which Truth threw in its way, down to the
present time of almost universal looseness.

Another effect of this rebellion of the national mind against the
Puritan theories is seen in the almost yearly inauguration of some new
sect in religion, in a land which is already so crowded with diverse and
antagonistic religious organizations that it might be termed the land of
sects. However right or wrong in a religious point of view, the Puritans
committed the great _social_ mistake of establishing a new church,
instead of working earnestly to reform the old in those respects in
which it seemed to them to have fallen into error, thereby destroying
the unity of the Christian world. Had the movement stopped here, less
harm would have been done; but it was not of the nature of things that
it should be so. The establishment of the principle that purity of
worship and of belief was to be sought, and diversity of religious
opinion to be gratified in separation and the erection of new
organizations, rather than in the endeavor to purify the old and
established form, at once threw wide open the door of schism, and with
it, in the end, that of scepticism. The movement once begun could
neither be checked nor controlled by any human effort. Others claimed
the right which they themselves had exercised, and the result was soon
seen in the separation of one after another denomination from the
Puritan Church, each, in its turn, to be divided into a score of sects,
according as circumstances should alter religious views. Were the
principles of true religion in themselves progressive, were the
teachings, of the gospel inadequate to or unfitting for all possible
stages of human progress, or were they capable of development, the world
might then have been the gainer. Or, again, were reason infallible, the
separation of the churches would be an incalculable blessing, by
securing to all minds a free investigation upon religious subjects. But
infidelity desires no more powerful coadjutor than human reason in its
freest exercise, because it is so liable to be led away by sophistry,
and its invariable tendency is to reject as myths and fables all things
which it cannot comprehend or for which it cannot see a material cause.
Perfect reason is the twin brother and strongest supporter of faith; but
reason as it exists in the present development of humanity is its most
deadly antagonist. The age of reason has fallen upon us, and its result
is seen in a practical scepticism pervading the whole of our society,
which in its extent and its injurious effects put to the blush the
wildest speculations of the most radical German metaphysicians. Every
day we see around us men of no religious profession, and little if any
religious feeling, calmly facing death without a tremor, without a
thought of the awful beyond. And though the application of the term
infidel to such a man would not fail to arouse his fiercest indignation,
his indifference to the events and the fate of the great hereafter can
arise from nothing else than an utter disbelief in the teachings of Holy
Writ, in the truths of Christianity. Such men are but types of a class,
and that class a very large portion of our population.

The evils of religious divisions are plain to be seen, even if they
consisted in nothing more than the division and consequent weakening of
Christian effort. The church of God, torn by internal dissensions,
becomes almost powerless for the spread of the gospel, the greater
portion of its strength and energy being exhausted in bolstering up its
different branches as against each other, and in proselytizing within
itself. Where, if united, a small portion of its wealth and energy would
suffice to support in a nourishing condition the worship of a great
people, leaving an immense surplus to be directed to the evangelization
of the heathen world, now, in its divided state, its power and immense
material resources are squandered in the support of innumerable
fragments, each one of which costs as much in labor and in means as
would suffice to sustain the religion of the whole country if united.

Worse than even this, the incessant bickerings of the Christian world
tend to invalidate, in the minds of the unbelievers, not only among the
heathen, but among ourselves, the teachings of that Word which is its
professed guide. The 'See how these Christians hate each other!' is to
reflecting minds outside the church's pale, an almost unconquerable
argument against that religion which professes to be founded upon love.
Hence arises a great portion of that practical infidelity of which we
have spoken, and which is the bane of our civilization. No nation can be
truly great or noble or progressive without religion, and by as much as
we are departing, in our every-day life, from the pure teachings of the
gospel, by so much are we tending to our inevitable downfall. The people
must have some high standard of moral excellence, something to elevate
and purify the tone of society, to lead their aspirations upward away
from the petty toils and cares and vexations, from the sordid desires
and the animal propensities of life, in order to prevent them from
falling into that decay which is inevitably the result of corruption,
following hard upon a devotion to mere self-interest. We are, in a great
measure, a nation of materialists, too much devoted to the pursuit of
selfish and so-called practical aims, too little to the spiritual and
the ethereal. Reform must come, else the soul will become gross and
grovelling, and the nobler part of our natures, the more delicate and
refined sympathies of the heart, the finer faculties of the intellect,
will rust away with disuse, and the whole race become sensual, and
finally effete, however brilliant may be its individual exceptions. From
what direction the needed reform is to come it is not for us to say.
That Almighty Providence which overrules an erring world will doubtless
provide a way for the regeneration of His people. The first great step
is to awaken the people to a sense of the necessity of such a change,
and some more powerful means must be employed to the accomplishment of
that end than have ever yet been applied to our civilization. And the
apostle who, in the hands of God, shall be the means of arousing the
slumbering faith of our people, of awakening them to a full sense of the
danger, and of imparting new energy to the recuperative powers of the
race, will win for himself a loftier position in the world's
appreciation than has yet been conceded to any mere mortal.

Another great and manifest evil in our society, and one closely
connected with that of which we have just spoken, is the inordinate love
of wealth, and the elevation of the money god to the highest seat in our
temple of worship. Human nature craves distinction. The divisions and
castes in the society of the Old World, from the present day back to the
remotest ages, is not only an evidence, but a practical exemplification
of this fact. The abolition of all these distinctions consequent upon
the establishment of our republican government upon the ground of
political equality, swept away from our ancestors almost the only means
of gratifying this innate propensity. A hard-working, practical,
agricultural people, with no literature, and little if any cultivation
of the fine arts, there was but one road to distinction open to the mass
of the population, and that lay through the avenues of wealth. Hence it
was but natural that affluence should take the place of the hereditary
honors of the olden times, and that the people should bow to the only
distinction, however spurious it might be, which elevated any portion of
themselves above their fellows. With all the evils connected with a
hereditary aristocracy, the distinction which attends upon a nobility is
in a great measure an ideal one. It is not either its wealth or power
which constitutes its charm, but a certain nameless something pertaining
to the ideal, which affects not only the tenants and retainers, but even
our republican selves. It may well be questioned whether we have been
the gainers by substituting for such distinctions a gross and material
one, affecting the bodily senses alone--the animal part of our
nature--and which contains little either to expand the mind or exalt the
aspirations. With us but comparatively few can become distinguished in
the ranks of literature or of art, or, indeed, in any of the higher or
intellectual branches of human attainment; hence for the great mass
there is but one road to distinction, one object to claim every
exertion--the pursuit of wealth. And as a natural consequence, we see
every art, every profession hinging upon this motive. Most of the evils
connected with the administration of our public affairs, the fraud and
corruption which are so prominent, the quadrennial scramble for place,
with its consequent degrading of those positions which should be those
of the highest honor, may be traced to this one source. More than this,
we find the so-called aristocracy of our great cities--a moneyed one
purely--excluding from its ranks those who earn their livelihood in the
pursuit of literature and art, and who, if true to their professions,
are entitled to the very highest rank in society. There are of course
exceptions, but not more than sufficient to prove the rule. A striking
exemplification of the power of wealth among us is seen in these days of
shoddy, when those who have hitherto moved in the humblest circles
suddenly take their positions among the 'upper ten thousand,' and are
treated with a deference to which they have all their lives been
strangers, by virtue of a successful contract or a towering speculation.
The effect of such a state of things upon our civilization is easy to be
seen. A low motive is sure to bring down its followers to its own level.
A people without a lofty and ennobling object is sure to fall into
decay. The grasping spirit which everywhere pervades our society is fast
lowering our people to the level of a race of mercenary jobbers. Truth,
justice, honor, purity, and even religion, are in a great measure lost
sight of in the general scramble for gold, until the strictest
integrity, the most self-sacrificing honesty, are beginning to be looked
upon as marvels, and we have won for ourselves among the nations of the
world the unenviable title of worshippers of the 'almighty dollar.'
Religion itself is twisted and distorted into every imaginable shape to
bring it into harmony with our all-absorbing pursuit: all our ideas of
public policy and of social progress are made to depend upon and
modified by this unworthy motive. We mean not to include those
individuals who, with loftier motives and a true appreciation of man's
spiritual capabilities, are prominent among us, battling earnestly in
the cause of true progress; we are speaking of the mass of our
population. Those few are the goodly leaven who are yet to prove the
regeneration of our race. Bad as is the state of affairs in this
respect, it will, if left to itself, become infinitely worse as each
succeeding year rolls around, for the spirit of greed is progressive in
its nature, growing fatter and fatter upon its success.

Yet, in another point of view, this same strife for wealth is one great
secret of American prosperity and progress. It is the motive power to
that energy which has peopled the wilderness, erected as if by magic a
mighty republic among the savage wilds, and, above all, spread American
ideas, and with them the germ of human liberty, over the whole broad
earth. To this spirit of greed upon our shores the Old World owes much
of its advancement and most of those useful inventions which are fast
revolutionizing humanity itself. But we are not considering it in this
light; we are viewing it in its moral aspect, that respect in which it
most strongly affects true civilization, which must soon fall away and
lapse into the condition of the ages long past, if it be not sustained
by an enduring moral and religious element. The moral advancement must
keep pace with the intellectual, else the latter will some day reach
that point where extremes meet, and have its weary journey to commence
again.

It is to be hoped that this evil is already on the wane. It is to be
hoped that the present stirring up of our society from its uttermost
depths, with its consequent exploding of worn-out theories, which have
hitherto held their places only through our national lethargy--with its
sweeping away of old-time prejudices, and mingling together of elements
which have hitherto existed distinct and aloof from each other, will
result in bringing true merit to the surface, in awakening our people to
a loftier appreciation of the good and the true, thereby establishing a
higher moral standard among us; that purer motives will henceforth
actuate our society. The fears which are entertained by some that the
present war will prove a severe shock to our civilization, are not
sustained by the facts which are everywhere appearing around us. The
frequent demands upon the generosity and forbearance of a great people,
the constant calls for the exercise of the noblest qualities, the most
self-sacrificing devotion, and that too in support of a great principle
rather than of any present material interest, the very necessity for an
exalted civilization and intellectual development on the part of the
masses, which shall enable them to see in that principle the groundwork
of all their future well-being, both as regards material prosperity and
political position, are constantly bringing before the people, in a
clearer light than ever before, the blessings of honor and uprightness,
the necessity of national purity, and developing a moral element in our
midst, whose good effects will far outbalance the ephemeral and
spasmodic immorality and vice which a state of war usually engenders.
Our people are _becoming acquainted_ with those blessings of individual
well-doing and those principles of philanthropy to which they have for
so long been comparative strangers. And it is this, together with the
unveiling, through the present convulsion, of those errors, both in our
political system and in our society, which have so nearly proved our
ruin, which will make this war in very truth the greatest blessing that
has ever befallen us. And if this moral progress shall be such and so
great as to throw down the golden calf from his throne and make the
place of honor the reward of true merit alone, then shall we have cause,
for the remotest generations, to thank God for this seeming calamity
which has fallen upon us.

And these same facts, standing out as shining lights in the darkness,
tend to show that we are, after all, not quite so sordid as we seem;
that, with all our worship of the money god, there is yet, away down in
the great American heart, a wealth of strong, true, generous feeling,
ready at the first call of sorrow and of suffering to spring forth and
scatter its golden blessings even beyond the seas. It is not alone that,
years ago, when we were at peace and at the height of prosperity, many
ships left our shores laden down with food, the voluntary contributions
of the American citizen to his starving brethren of the Emerald Isle;
though this of itself was enough to place our civilization on a level
with that of the most polished nation of the Old World. But even now,
when we are struggling for our very existence, when every energy and
every material resource is being exerted to stem the tide of internal
dissensions and crush out the hydra of internal treason; at a time when
the mother country has gone to every length short of open war to aid and
assist those who are striving for our downfall, and her press is
exhausting every epithet of vituperation and scurrilous abuse of us, who
are battling so earnestly in our own defence, and who are entitled by
every truth of human nature to her warmest sympathy--a press which,
adopting the phraseology of its Secession friends and allies, scruples
not to place the civilization of the slaveholding States far in advance
of that of the 'Northern mudsills'--even now, when the cry of the
starving operatives of the English mills comes to us across the water,
forgetting for the time all the abuse and maltreatment we have received,
all the enmity and bitter hostility which the traitorous perfidy of
England has engendered, more than one full-freighted vessel has left our
ports bearing grain to those whom their own proud aristocracy is either
powerless or too niggardly to sustain. Is this not evidence of a
civilization considerably advanced beyond any which history has yet
recorded?--a civilization based upon the golden rule of Christianity,
and upon that still more precious command: 'Love those that hate you,
and do good to those that persecute you.' For it is in its moral aspect
that every civilization must in the end be judged; and that society
which develops such noble principles and feelings as these, which
manifests itself in this higher region of spiritual excellence, in the
exercise of these finer feelings of the heart, is certainly nearest to
perfection, in that it follows most closely the law of God, the truths
of divine revelation. When instances such as these occur on the part of
any of the older nations of the world, it will do for them to boast of a
civilization superior to ours; but until their faith is shown by their
works, suffering humanity the world over will accord to us the palm. Nor
will it answer to ascribe to us an unworthy motive in this matter--a
desire to win credit in the eyes of the world. An individual might, with
some degree of plausibility, fall under such an imputation, but a great
people does not move spontaneously and unitedly in one direction from
such a motive, since none but a pure and just principle can produce
unity in the masses. Such an unworthy and degrading motive is the
property of individuals, not of nations, even if it were possible for
such an idea to be conceived at one and the same time by a multitude of
minds. No! it was the spontaneous expression of a deep and pervading
principle of American society--of American humanity--a free outpouring
of the American heart; and as such it will stand upon the page of
history as the evidence of a civilization behind none of its age.

Nor is this the only mark of the moral awakening of our people.
Instances are every day appearing in our midst of this truest of
charity, not the least of which are the 'wood processions' of the
Western cities and towns; those long lines of wagons laden with fuel and
provisions for the families of the absent soldiers, whose sole object
and motive is the comfort of those whose protectors and supporters are
sustaining the country's honor in the field; evidences more striking
than the founding of charitable institutions or benevolent societies,
since the latter may, and too often does, arise from the most selfish
and vainglorious motive, while in the former the individual is lost in
the many who press eagerly to bear their part in a noble work, in this
spontaneous outpouring of true and heartfelt benevolence. From this same
spirit arises the wonderful success which attends the efforts of
sanitary commissions and soldiers' aid associations in alleviating the
sufferings and softening the privations of our soldiers in the field.
With such evidences constantly appearing before our eyes of the deep and
noble feelings of the American heart, who can doubt that our
civilization is a progressive one, our enlightenment equal? Who can
doubt the capacity of the American people for good, or look with
foreboding upon our future?

Another important sign of the times, as evincing our advancing
civilization, is the revival of art in our midst. In the midst of all
our bustle and toil and eager strife for gain, there has ever been a
something wanting to the completeness of our life, a something to fill
and satisfy that yearning of the soul for æsthetic beauty, which is at
once an evidence of its progress and its capacity for diviner things.
Too long have we been absorbed by the desires of our animal nature, in
whose pursuit there is little gratification to that finer portion of our
inner selves which will not be silenced by anything short of the deepest
degradation. The people--the great people--need something--something
higher, more ennobling, more tender--to fill the vacant spot in their
hearts and homes, to preserve the balance between the animal and the
spiritual part of their lives, and to clothe their surroundings with a
higher and holier significance than can arise from the events and
associations of the work-day life. In art the missing link is found, and
whether it be the simple ballad in the evening circle or the modest
print that graces the humble cottage walls--and the humbler the
habitation the deeper the manifestation, because the more touching--it
is but the expression of the people's appreciation of the needs, the
capacities, and the holier aspirations of the better part of humanity.
Hence the revival of art has a deep significance; it is something more
than a forced, an exotic, and hence ephemeral growth; it is the
manifestation of the awakening of the people to the æsthetic sentiment;
it is the actual result of the intellectual and moral needs of society;
it is in itself the striving of a great people for the beautiful and
true. And as such it has a broad and deep foundation in the godlike in
human nature, which shall insure not only its permanence but its
progress as long as the good and the true have any influence whatever
upon our society. That we have had, until a comparatively late period,
no art among us, is the result not of a lack of capacity to comprehend
the beautiful, but of the intense and all-absorbing passion for gain
which has so nearly proved the bane of our society by shutting out the
consideration of better things: that art has so suddenly revived in our
midst is a proof that, so far from having our humanity, our political
position, our very civilization itself swallowed up in the love of the
almighty dollar, as has been predicted of us by foreign wiseacres, we
have been aroused to our danger and to a true appreciation of the better
part of existence; which is itself an evidence of the elasticity and the
recuperative energy of our social system.

In literature our progress is not so flattering. In its effects upon
civilization a literature can only be judged by that portion of it which
touches the popular heart, which descends to the humblest fireside, and
is most eagerly sought after by the ploughboy and the operative. All
other, however brilliant it may be--and the more brilliant or profound
the farther it is generally removed from the minds of the masses--is to
them but as the stars of a winter night, cold and distant, radiating
little warmth to the longing soul, too far away to awaken more than a
faintly reflected admiration. He who said, 'Give me to write the songs
of a people, and I care not who makes their laws,' touched the tender
spot in the great heart of humanity; he was a sage in that truest of
philosophy, the study of human nature. Though we have our princes in
every branch of literature, who are the result of and an honor to our
civilization, yet for their own results in moulding the tastes, the
habits, and the intellects of the common people, in contributing to
their advancement, they fall far below the efforts of the veriest
penny-a-liner. It is a lamentable fact of our society that while the
more solid literature scarcely pays, the flashiest of so-called 'flash
literature' brings down the golden shower. The writer of the lowest
possible order of literary productions is enriched, and his name is
familiar in the remotest corners of the land, while our monarchs of
literature are oftentimes poverty stricken and comparatively obscure;
and that because the latter is confined to a comparatively small
audience and patronage, while the former speaks to and for the masses;
and, as a natural consequence, the former controls the tastes of the
greater portion of the reading community, and that too for anything but
good, since he reaps his golden harvest by pandering to the basest of
appetites, the lowest of sensibilities and sympathies; thus retarding
rather than accelerating the intellectual advancement of the people,
this being his material interest.

And how great is the responsibility of those who thus speak to the ear
of the simple and the unlearned! how terrible the retribution they are
heaping up for themselves in the great hereafter, for thus prostituting
talent which might be made eminently useful in leading the minds of the
common people to the highest and noblest of truths; in making purer and
better in every sense of the word! The idea that the province of
literature, even of fiction, is simply to amuse, is exploded in the
light of advancing civilization. Every writer has a higher mission, and
accordingly as he discharges the duty which his faculty lays upon him,
is he true or false to the true end of his existence, a success or a
failure in the world of intellect and morality. The mission of all
literature is to make mankind both wiser and _better_, and the writer
who fails to appreciate and act upon this truth is worse than a useless
cumberer of society; he is a curse to his age, and, however great his
present fame, will most assuredly be forgotten with the passing away of
his generation. For does not _all_ human effort resolve itself into this
one thing? Is there any work which we call good or great, or even
important, which is not intended in some way to benefit mankind? Else we
were but butterflies, and our works but mists. In the past ages the
world has not seen and appreciated this fact; but the world of to-day
does appreciate it, and will certainly set every worker upon his proper
pedestal, high or low, according as his efforts have conduced or not to
the welfare of humanity.

Present reform in this particular is not to be looked for; it must be
external rather than internal. Could the whole mass of light literature
be at once and forever swept out of existence, the people would soon
acquire a love of solid reading as ardent as that which now pervades the
lower stratum of our society for 'yellow-covered' trash. For the love of
knowledge is innate, and the people would necessarily seek for and find
amusement in such reading as could not fail to instruct and educate, to
revive this love of knowledge, and fan it into an ardent flame. But this
cannot be done. The people will ever seek that reading which is most
congenial to their present tastes and habits, and there will ever be
found a legion of those who are eager to supply this sort of mental
pabulum--if it can be so called--for the sake of the golden equivalent.
For these reasons, the literature of the common people must ever follow,
not lead, their civilization; it must continue to be the outward and
visible sign of their progress, instead of the inward and spiritual
grace by which it is pervaded and sustained; and reform must be
inaugurated and consummated in those other influences which tend to
mould the moral man, and which must be so guided as to destroy all these
low and grovelling tastes, by lifting the man into a higher plane of
being, in which the animal shall be wholly subservient to the spiritual.
Hence the province of the true philanthropist lies in those other paths
which we have pointed out, rather than in this, since in them lies the
prospect of success whose _fruits_ will in this most clearly appear.

It is a significant fact that the foreign view points to but two blots
upon our society, and that foreign detractors harp continually upon
these, and these alone, as evidences of the backwardness of our
civilization--the institution of slavery and the riots which
occasionally disgrace our large cities. For in the light of the facts
and experience of to-day, such a position is simply a yielding of the
whole question. When it is considered that the few riots with which we
are afflicted--few in comparison with those which so often convulse
European society--are almost invariably incited and sustained by our
foreign population, and that portion of it, too, latest arrived upon our
shores, it will be seen with what injustice the evil is laid at the door
of American society. It is, in fact, nothing else than the outbreak of
the long-accumulated and long-suppressed discontent and misery of
European lands, which, for the first time for centuries, finds vent upon
the shores of a land of political and social liberty--a reaction of the
springs long held down by the iron hand of tyranny--a violent
restoration of that natural elasticity which had so nearly been
destroyed by ages of social degradation. The mob law, the frequent
resort to the pistol and the bowie knife, and the universal social
recklessness of our own citizens of the Southern States, is the effect
of the institution of slavery, and falls within the discussion of that
question, with the disappearance of which they must inevitably depart.

Were African slavery a permanent feature in our midst, the argument
against our civilization would be unanswerable. But it has maintained
its ground in spite of, rather than as the result of or in connection
with the spirit of our institutions. It has hitherto been suffered to
exist as an acknowledged evil, solely because the disastrous results
attending its sudden abolition have been justly feared as greater than
any which could at present arise from its continuance. Yet at no period
has the American people ceased to look forward to some future time when
it might safely be rooted out. Our faith has ever been strong, and our
confidence in the ultimate triumph of the right unshaken. That time has
come. The present war, from whose inauguration the question of slavery
abolition was--on our part, at least--entirely absent, has given the
opportunity which our people have not failed to seize. To crush out the
rebellion without meddling with the institutions of the South was at
first the main spring of the war; _fiat justitia, ruat coelum_, is now
the voice of the whole people; and the very fact that the nation has so
earnestly taken hold of the work, so sternly determined to sacrifice
everything but its existence to the demolition of this bloody god, is of
itself an evidence of the purity of our civilization. We have not been
dead to the principles of truth and justice involved in this question;
we have been but biding our time, plainly seeing and carefully noting
the direful effects of slavery upon our social organization, and
'heaping up wrath against the day of wrath.' And now, with the blessing
of God upon our efforts, the present war will not cease until the death
blow is given to the accursed institution with all its attendant evils.
We, as a people, are fully aroused and sternly determined henceforth to
let nothing stand in the way of our social advancement, however
time-honored and cherished may have been the obstacle. And when these
evils have all been swept away, as they assuredly will be, we shall
stand forth among the nations in all the glory of a pure and enlightened
civilization, and challenge the world to produce a nobler record, to
point out a happier, more prosperous, more truly progressive people.

With the close of the present war will arise another important question,
bearing not less strongly than that of slavery upon our ultimate
civilization. The slaveholding States are to be, in a measure,
repeopled. The tide of immigration which has so long and so steadily
streamed toward the West will be for some time diverted to the fertile
plantations of the South. Not only the soldiers of the North, to whom
the war has opened what has hitherto been to them almost a _terra
incognita_, will seek new homes within the sunny climes; but the flood
of foreign immigration, which, upon the vindication of our national
integrity and power, will quickly double itself in comparison with that
of former years, and sweep toward this new and inviting field; and the
distinctive feature of Southern society--of so-called 'Southern
chivalry'--will soon be swallowed up in the torrent. And what then shall
we have to fill its place? The crude ideas of foreign tyros in the
school of freedom, the conflicting religious, social, and political
theories of European revolutionists, the antagonistic policies of a
hundred different nationalities. All this, in connection with the
difficulties arising from the freeing of so large an African population,
will prove a severe trial to our national civilization, and call for the
exercise of the profoundest wisdom, the most careful discrimination, and
the most patient forbearance on the part of our rulers and statesmen.
And most assuredly the times will themselves produce the men most fitted
for the care of such interests and the decision of such questions.
Though there is need of the firm hand, the utmost watchfulness, and the
strongest exertion on the part of every citizen as well as statesman, it
is not to be feared that the result will in the end be disastrous to our
progress. For the genius of the American people was never yet at fault.
We have handled similar questions before; we are handling a more
important one now, and our capabilities and our power of development are
such that we need not fear but that we shall be enabled to cope with the
exigencies of the future. That genius which has built up a powerful
nation here in the wilderness, which has developed to such a degree the
resources of the laud and the capacities of the people, which has
conceived and executed in so short a time such a social and moral
revolution, has in it too much of the godlike to suffer the work to fall
through from any incapacity to deal with the legitimate consequences of
its action. The power to inaugurate and carry through the work
necessarily implies the capacity to establish and render permanent its
results, to guide the ship when the storm is past. It will find the ways
and means; the times themselves will develop new truths, which will make
the task less difficult than it seems to us of to-day. Such is the
feeling of the people; and this same noble faith and confidence in our
own capacities, this turning a deaf ear to all the possibilities of
failure, and looking with a never-failing trust, a soul-felt faith, to
the triumph of our cause and of our civilization, is our greatest
strength, while it is, at the same time, a conclusive evidence that we
are on the high road of true progress, that our civilization is not a
thing of yesterday, to-day, or to-morrow, but of the eternal ages.




APHORISM.--NO. X.


'It is a frequent result of poverty to make men rich--a common curse of
wealth to make them poor.' Poverty, making us feel our dependence upon
God, almost compels us to an acquaintance with Him--this leads us to
accept Him as the one Infinite Benefactor; and so gives us wealth that
can never fail: but riches, by encouraging our natural love of
independence, is too apt to keep us away from our Heavenly Father, and
thus plunge us into such poverty as admits of no actual relief. In this
view there is something to hope for in the present distresses of our
country. Rarely have so many people felt that their dependence must be
upon the mercy of God; and rarely, if ever, have so many, with such
earnestness, appealed to the Father of all on the occasion of a
widespread calamity. This must result in a closer union with the
Infinite Giver, and thus in a great increase of true riches.




THE ENGLISH PRESS.

V.


How had _The Times_ been getting on all these years? Slowly but surely.
At first, as has been already stated, feeling its way with difficulty
amid a host of obstacles, long-established and successful rivals,
Government prosecutions abroad, and personal crotchets and peculiarities
at home. John Walter, its founder, retired from the management of the
paper in 1803, and died in 1812, having lived to see his literary
offspring grow up into a strong young giant, with thews and sinews
growing fuller and firmer every day, tossing his weighty arms in every
direction, but never aimlessly; and with his vigorous feet firmly
planted, expanded chest, and head boldly erect, fearlessly standing
forward in the very first rank of the champions of freedom. Mr. Walter's
son John succeeded him in the management in 1803; and, under his abler
and more enlightened administration, the paper rapidly increased in
importance. He opened his columns to all comers, and whenever any
communication appeared to possess more than average ability he
endeavored to engage the writer of it as a regular contributor. He
perfected the system of reporting, and the reports in _The Times_ soon
began to be fuller and more exact perhaps even than Perry's in _The
Chronicle_. He especially turned his attention to the foreign department
of his journal, and no trouble or expense was spared in obtaining
intelligence from abroad. This had been one of the strong points with
the elder Walter, and he had always striven to be the first to
communicate important foreign news to the world--thus, for instance,
_The Times_ was the first newspaper which announced the execution of
Marie Antoinette. This element was now greatly strengthened and
developed, correspondents were engaged in all the chief cities of
Europe, and, as time progressed, in other quarters of the world as well,
letters from whom appeared as regularly and as early as the post-office
authorities would allow; and a regular system of expresses from the
Continent was organized. But the Government, who saw and felt the
growing greatness of _The Times_, placed every possible hinderance in
the way--it was not then the custom for the Premier to invite the editor
to dinner--and the letters and foreign packages were delayed in every
possible manner--the machinery of the custom house being even employed
for that purpose--in order that the Government organs might at least get
the start. But fair means and foul alike failed to win over the young
journalistic athlete to the ministerial side, and this illiberal and
selfish policy was at length compelled to give in, beaten at all points.
But there was one thing which was destined to give _The Times_
supremacy, at which the younger Walter began to work soon after the
reins of power fell into his hands--and that was steam. Great strides
had been made in the art of printing. The first metal types ever cast in
England were those of Caxton, in 1720. Stereotype printing had been
first suggested by William Ged, of Edinburgh, in 1735, and was perfected
and brought into general use by Tillock, in 1779. The printing machine
had been originated by Nicholson, in 1790, and an improved form of it,
made of iron, the invention of Earl Stanhope, was in general use in
1806. Thomas Martyn, a compositor of _The Times_, invented some further
modifications, and was aided by the younger Walter. Owing, however, to
the violent opposition of his fellow workmen, the experiments were
carried on under the greatest secrecy; but the elder Walter could not be
induced to countenance them, and consequently nothing came of them. In
1814, Koenig and Bauer, two German printers, conceived the idea of
printing by steam, and the younger Walter, now by his father's death
permitted to do as he liked, entered warmly into their project. The
greatest silence and mystery was observed, but the employés of _The
Times_ somehow or other obtained an inkling of what was going on, and,
foreseeing a reduction in their numbers, vowed the most terrible
vengeance upon everybody connected with the newfangled invention. Spite
of their threats, however, the necessary machinery was quietly prepared
and erected, and one morning, before day had broken, Mr. Walter called
his printers together, and informed them that that day's issue was
struck off by steam. This ever-memorable day in the history of
journalism was Monday, the 28th of November, 1814. Loud murmurs and
threats were heard among the workmen, and burning down the whole affair
was the least thing suggested; but Mr. Walter had taken precautions,
and, showing his work people that he was prepared to meet any outbreak
on their part, no violence was attempted. Since then _The Times_ has
been regularly printed by steam. Various improvements in steam machinery
have from time to time been patented, and Hoe's gigantic machines--the
production of that country the most prolific of all the world in useful
inventions, America--seemed to show that the limit of the application of
steam to printing had been reached. But a machine still more
wonderful--a machine that possessed all the skill of human intelligence
and ten times the quickness of human fingers--a machine for composing by
steam, was shown at the International Exhibition in London, in 1862.
Printing by steam at once raised the circulation of _The Times_
enormously, as was but natural, from the facilities which it afforded of
a rapid multiplication of copies; and under the editorship of Thomas
Barnes it soon reached the first place in journalism. But Walter himself
was not idle, and was always on the lookout for fresh and rising talent.
On one occasion, being at a church in the neighborhood of his country
seat in Berkshire, he was very much struck by the sermon which was
preached by a new curate. After the service he went into the vestry, and
had a long conversation with the preacher, the result of which was that
he told him that a curacy was not a very enviable position, and that he
would do much better to go to London, and write for _The Times_ at a
salary of £1,000 a year. It is needless to add that the offer was not
declined.

In 1817, _The Literary Gazette_ was brought out by William Jordan, as an
organ of literature and the fine arts, and, until The _Athenæum_ was
established, it was without a rival of any consequence. But its
circulation declined, and, after Jordan's death, dwindled down to a very
small number. In 1862 its name was changed to _The Parthenon_, or
rather, to speak more correctly, _The Parthenon_ arose as a new
publication from the ashes of _The Literary Gazette_. But change of name
did not produce change of circumstances, and, before many numbers had
appeared, _The Parthenon_ was privately offered for sale at the low sum
of £100, but, failing to meet with a purchaser, it gave up the ghost
early in 1863. In 1817, Lord Sidmouth made a terrific onslaught upon the
press. He issued a circular to the different lord lieutenants of the
counties, to the effect that any justice of the peace might issue a
warrant for the apprehension of any person charged with printing a
libel. One result of this circular and the vigorous prosecutions which
ensued was that William Cobbett for a while gave up printing his
_Political Register_, and went away to America, from whence he did not
return for two years. He stated his reasons for adopting this course in
his paper, as follows:

     'I do not retire from a combat with the attorney-general, but from
     a combat with a dungeon, deprived of pen, ink, and paper. A combat
     with the attorney-general is quite unequal enough; that, however, I
     would have encountered. I know too well what a trial by special
     jury is; yet that or any sort of trial I would have stayed to face.
     But against the absolute power of imprisonment, without even a
     hearing, for time unlimited'--an act had been passed which gave the
     secretary of state power to suspend the _habeas corpus_ act--'in
     any jail in the kingdom, without the use of pen, ink, and paper,
     and without communication with any soul but the keepers--against
     such a power it would have been worse than madness to attempt to
     strive.'

But the Government met with a notable check in the case of William Howe,
the bookseller. Howe was thrice tried for libel, and, despite the
exertions of Lord Ellenborough, who descended from the judicial bench to
the barrister's table, was thrice acquitted. Persecution after this
languished for a while, but in 1819 were passed those stringent measures
which are known as the Six Acts. One of these gave the judges the power,
upon the conviction of any person a second time of the publication of a
seditious libel, to punish him with fine, imprisonment, banishment, or
transportation. But such monstrous enactments were not suffered to pass
unchallenged, and the result of several animated debates was that the
obnoxious words banishment--a novelty in English jurisprudence--and
transportation were withdrawn, but the remaining provisions of the Six
Acts were carried in all their rigor. But amid much harm, some good was
doubtless effected, for certain provisions were introduced into the act
which declared certain inferior newspapers, which had hitherto evaded
the stamp act, by calling themselves pamphlets and not newspapers,
because they only commented upon the news of the day, to be henceforth
liable to the stamp duties. This really did good service to the better
class of journals, by sweeping away a swarm of newspapers which, by the
quibble above mentioned, were enabled to undersell them.

_John Bull_ was started in 1820, with the avowed object of espousing the
King's side, and covering the Queen and her friends with obloquy.
Theodore Hook was the editor, but very few persons were in the secret.
Every man or woman who was conspicuous as a friend of the Queen was duly
gibbeted, and any tittle-tattle gossip or scandal that could be ferreted
out against them was boldly printed in the most unmistakable terms.
Trial for libel failed to discover the real proprietors, editor, and
writers, and the men who stood their trial as printer, publisher,
proprietor, etc., were manifestly mere shams, men who would swear to
anything and undergo any amount of imprisonment for the consideration of
the smallest coin of the realm. The scandalous details in _John Bull_
attracted the public at once, and by the time it reached its sixth
number, the circulation had risen to ten thousand, while the first five
numbers were reprinted over and over again, and the first and second
were actually stereotyped. But it began to be whispered about that Hook
was the editor, whereupon he printed and signed a letter denying the
rumor in the most indignant terms. This letter was supplemented by an
editorial, from which the following is an extract:

     'The conceit of some people is amusing, and it has not unfrequently
     been remarked that conceit is in abundance where talent is most
     scarce. Our readers will see that we have received a letter from
     Mr. Hook, disowning and disavowing all connection with this
     paper.... We are free to confess that two things surprise us in
     this business. The first, that anything which we have thought
     worthy of giving to the public should have been mistaken for Mr.
     Hook's; and secondly, that such a person as Mr. Hook should think
     himself disgraced by a connection with _John Bull_.'

After the death of the Queen, Hook devoted himself to the demolition of
the Whigs and Radicals. Joseph Hume was his especial target, and was
dished up week after week with a decidedly original Latin garnish: '_Ex
humili potens_--From a surgeon to a member of Parliament;' '_Humili modi
loqui_--To talk Scotch like Hume;' '_Nequis humasse velit_--Let no one
call Hume an ass,' etc., etc. _John Bull_ sustained a great many
convictions for libel, and its dummies were frequently imprisoned, but
they never betrayed Hook, who retained the editorship until his death in
1841. Somewhere about this time _The Britannia_, a Conservative journal,
of a few years' standing, was incorporated with it. It had meanwhile
considerably moderated its tone, and at the present day enjoys a fair
circulation among steady-going people--chiefly country gentlemen, old
ladies, and parsons--who obstinately cling to Tory principles.

_John Bull_ was not the only newspaper which was prolific in libels, and
perhaps at no time were scandalous attacks upon public and private
persons more common. Mr. Freemantle, writing to the Marquis of
Buckingham, in 1820, says:

     'The press is completely open to treason, sedition, blasphemy, and
     falsehood, with impunity.... I do not know whether you see
     Cobbett's _Independent Whig_, and many other papers now circulating
     most extensively, and which are dangerous much beyond anything I
     can describe.'

This is a sweeping censure, but, allowing for a little personal
irritation, natural enough under the circumstances--he had been
lampooned himself--is true of a great portion of the press. The supply
was regulated by the demand, and the character of the wares purveyed
depended upon the wants of the market. Editors found that scandal was
eagerly devoured by their subscribers, and they did not therefore
hesitate or scruple to gratify the prevailing tastes of the day. But the
better class of papers were not able to keep clear of the law of libel,
even though they did not condescend to pander to the vitiated tastes of
the multitude. Many of them had to sustain actions for merely reporting
proceedings before the police magistrates and in the law courts, and
many a rascal solaced himself for the disagreeables attending a
preliminary examination at the police court for a criminal offence, by a
verdict in his behalf in a civil action against any newspaper that had
been bold enough to print a report of the proceedings. This kind of
action originated from a ruling of Lord Ellenborough, that it was
'libellous to publish the preliminary examination before a magistrate
previously to committing a man for trial or holding him to bail for any
offence with which he is charged, the tendency of such a publication
being to prejudice the minds of the jurymen against the accused, and to
deprive him of a fair trial.' This monstrous and at the same time absurd
doctrine remained in force for many years, but is now happily no longer
the law of the land.

_The Times_ had now reached the pinnacle of prosperity, and its claims
to be considered the foremost of journals were no longer disputed. The
circulation of _The Morning Chronicle_ had dwindled during the latter
years of Perry's life, and after his death did not revive very much
under Black, his successor. Brougham, Talfourd, and Alderson were among
the writers in _The Times_, and Captain Sterling, whose vigorous,
slashing articles first gained for _The Times_ the title of the
'Thunderer,' was regularly engaged upon the staff at a salary of £2,000
a year and a small share in the profits. But the Government still
steadily set its face against it, and in 1821 Mr. Hume loudly inveighed
against the ministry in the House of Commons for not sending Government
advertisements to _The Times_, instead of to other journals, which did
not enjoy a tithe of its circulation. The arrangements of the post
office were a great hinderance to the diffusion of newspapers, since the
charge for the carriage of a daily journal was £12 14_s._, and for a
weekly £2 4_s._ a year. The number, therefore, that was sent abroad by
this channel, either to the Continent or our own colonies, was very
small. In 1810 the whole number thus despatched was but three hundred
and eighty-three, and in 1817 it had fallen to two hundred and
seventy-one, owing to the increase in the charges demanded by the
post-office authorities, who were actually allowed to put the money in
their own pockets; and in 1821 it was only two hundred and six. The
circulation through the kingdom of Great Britain itself was not entirely
free, inasmuch as every newspaper sent through the post office was
charged for by weight, at an exorbitant rate, unless it was franked by a
member of Parliament. This regulation continued in force until 1825,
when an act was passed which provided that newspapers should be sent
through the post free, on condition that they were open at both ends,
and had no other writing upon the cover than the necessary address. At
the same time the ridiculous acts which limited the size of newspapers
were done away with, and every printer was henceforth permitted to print
his journal upon any sized sheet he pleased. Two important concessions
were also made to the press at this date, one in the House of Commons,
and the other in the House of Lords. In the former, a portion of the
strangers' gallery was set apart for the exclusive use of the reporters;
and in the latter, reporters were permitted to be present for the first
time. Previously to this, if any one had been rash enough to attempt to
take any notes, an official would pounce upon him, and, with an air of
offended dignity well befitting that august assembly, strike the
offending pencil from his grasp!

In 1825, Joseph Hume attempted to get the stamp duty reduced on
newspapers to twopence, and the advertisement duty to one shilling; and
in 1827 he tried to gain an exemption from the stamp act for political
pamphlets; but he was defeated on each occasion. In 1827, _The Standard_
was started as a Tory organ, under the auspices of a knot of able
writers, the chief of whom were Dr. Giffard, the editor, Alaric Attila
Watts, and Dr. Maginn. It has always possessed a good connection among
the Conservative party, but has never been a very profitable concern.
After the abolition of the stamp duty its price was reduced to twopence,
and in 1858 to one penny, and it was the first of the daily journals to
offer a double sheet at that price. In recent times the Letters of
'Manhattan' have given an impulse to its circulation, from their novelty
of style--an impulse which was probably further aided by the ridiculous
but widely believed assertion that those letters had never crossed the
Atlantic, but were penned beneath the shadow of St. Paul's.

The following statistics of newspapers in the chief countries of Europe
in 1827, will probably prove interesting: France, with a population
of--in round numbers--thirty-two millions, possessed 490 journals; the
Germanic Confederation, with a population of thirteen millions, 305;
Prussia, with a population of twelve millions, 288; Bavaria, with a
population of four millions, 48; the Netherlands, with a population of
six millions, 150; Sweden and Norway, with a population of four
millions, 82; and Denmark, with a population of two millions, 80. Great
Britain, with a population of twenty-three millions, far outstripped
them all, for she boasted 483 newspapers; but was yet compelled to yield
the palm to her Transatlantic kinsmen, for the United States, at the
same date, with a population of twelve millions, circulated the
unequalled number of 800. In looking at these figures, one cannot help
being struck with the enormous disproportion between the journals of
Roman Catholic and Protestant countries--a disproportion which is so
significant that comment upon it is unnecessary. But the difference is
still more plainly shown if we take two capitals. Rome, with a
population of one hundred and fifty-four thousand, possessed only 3
newspapers, while Copenhagen, with a population of one hundred and nine
thousand, enjoyed the advantage of having 53. The London papers were
100, the English provincial papers 225, the Irish papers 85, the Scotch
63, and the Welsh 10. The number of stamps issued was more than
twenty-seven millions, of which London alone consumed more than fifteen
millions; the number of advertisements was seven hundred and seventy
thousand, of which London supplied nearly a half; and the amount of
advertisement duty was £56,000, of which London contributed £22,000.

The year 1829 is remarkable for the first appearance of _The Times_ with
a double sheet, consisting of eight pages, or forty-eight columns. This
great step in advance must have quite answered the expectations of its
spirited proprietor, for in 1830 _The Times_ paid to Government for
stamps and advertisement duty no less than £70,000. The day of perfect
freedom was beginning to dawn upon the press, although it took a quarter
of a century to remove the last fetter, the stamp, and still longer, if
we take into consideration the paper duty, which was removed in 1862.
First came the abolition of the most oppressive portion of Lord
Castlereagh's Six Acts, next the advertisement duties, and finally the
stamp. The high price of the stamp, fourpence, kept the better journals
at sevenpence, but a numerous class of unstamped journals at twopence
sprang up in defiance of the law, and were allowed for a time to go on
unchecked. They had a large circulation, one of them, _The London
Dispatch_, attaining to twenty-five thousand a week. Growing bolder with
their impunity, they indulged in the most abominable trash and the most
frantic sedition and treason. They were of course prosecuted and
punished, but they were never finally destroyed until the reduction of
the stamp duty. They did good indirectly, for they formed one of the
strongest arguments in favor of the abolition of that obnoxious impost.

In 1833 a battle royal raged between Daniel O'Connell and the press;
but, as might have been expected, Dan was no match for the hydra-headed
antagonist he had been rash enough to provoke. The quarrel originated in
a complaint made by the Liberator of a misrepresentation of a speech of
his, and he did this in so intemperate a manner that the reporters
published a letter in _The Times_, in which they expressed their
determination never again to report a speech of O'Connell's until he had
apologized for the insults he had levelled at them. O'Connell vainly
attempted to put the machinery of the House of Commons in motion against
them, but, after repeated efforts, was obliged to give in. His attacks
were principally levelled at _The Times_--which then counted among its
contributors the brilliant names of Macaulay, Thackeray, and
Disraeli--for he and John Walter were bitter foes. But he evoked several
powerful defenders of the press, first and foremost among whom was Sir
Robert Peel.

In 1834 the system of condensing the speeches in Parliament, and placing
the summary before the leading articles, was first introduced into _The
Times_ by Horace Twiss. At this date there occurred a great schism
between the proprietors and writers of _The Sun_, some of whom seceded,
and brought out _The True Sun_, in opposition to that eccentric planet
which always rises in the evening despite the general conviction of
mankind that the sun is the luminary of the day. Douglas Jerrold, Laman
Blanchard, and, greatest of all, Charles Dickens, commenced their
apprenticeship to literature in this journal, which enjoyed, however,
but a fleeting existence. Jerrold afterward started a paper of his own,
which failed, and then became editor of Lloyd's _Weekly London
Newspaper_, a post which he retained until his death, and which has
since been ably filled by his son Blanchard Jerrold. Laman Blanchard
became the editor of _The Courier_, but resigned it when it became a
Tory organ, and was one of the original writers in and proprietors of
_Punch_. Dickens transferred his services to _The Morning Chronicle_, in
the columns of which the Sketches by Boz first appeared. Several acts of
Parliament relating to newspapers were passed at this period. In 1833
the advertisement duty was reduced from three shillings and sixpence to
one shilling and sixpence in England, and one shilling in Ireland. In
1834 an act was passed by which the newspapers of those foreign
countries in which English journals were admitted free of postage, were
allowed to enter Great Britain on the same terms. In 1835 a bill was
passed to relieve the press from the action of common informers, and
placed them under the jurisdiction of the attorney-general alone; and
another, which forbade newspapers to publish lectures delivered at
literary and scientific institutions, without the permission of the
lecturer.

The time was now fast approaching for the reduction of the stamp duty.
Government was getting wearied of the war with the hydra-headed
unstamped monster, and at last adopted the only expedient likely to be
successful in putting it down, which was to place the higher-class
journals in a position to rival them. From 1831 to 1835 there had been
no less than seven hundred and twenty-eight prosecutions, of which the
year 1835 alone had produced two hundred and nineteen. This fact, joined
to the influential agitation which was now being made for the repeal,
caused the Government to decide upon bringing in a measure of relief. It
took six months and an immense deal of speechifying to bring this
measure to maturity; but at last, in 1836, the stamp duty was reduced
from fourpence to one penny, being one halfpenny less than it had been
originally fixed at in 1760. The Tories were the great friends of this
reduction, and Lord Lyndhurst, who had been instrumental in abolishing
many of the most oppressive enactments with which the measure had been
clogged, wished to do away with the duty altogether. There was of course
a loss to the revenue at first. In the first half year of the new duty,
the number of stamps issued was 21,362,148, realizing £88,502. In the
corresponding previous half year, under the old scale, the number of
stamps had been 14,874,652, and the amount paid, £196,909, so that in
six months the number of stamped newspapers had increased by about one
half.

In 1837, _The Economist_ was started by John Wilson, and attracted great
attention by its statistical and politico-economical articles, Wilson
afterward became secretary of the treasury, and, having been sent to
India, died there, to add one more to the many illustrious victims that
our Indian empire has exacted. In 1838 a most amusing hoax was
perpetrated upon _The Morning Post_ and _Morning Chronicle_, which
announced the death of Lord Brougham, and published a most elaborate
biography of him. But the next day there came a letter from Lord
Brougham, declaring that he was still alive and hearty. The joke,
however, did not end here--for people were ill natured enough to assert
that he had been the author of the rumor himself, in order to learn what
the world would say about him; and so widespread had this second rumor
become, that Lord Brougham was compelled to write another letter
contradicting it.

The next great event in the history of journalism is the commercial
libel case, Boyle _versus_ Lawson, the printer of _The Times_. Barnes
had died, and had been succeeded by John T. Delane, a nephew of Mr.
Walter, as editor, who still continues to occupy that responsible post.
The matter originated thus: In May, 1841, _The Times_ published a letter
from the Paris correspondent, containing the particulars of an organized
system of forgery on a gigantic scale, which had been agreed on by
certain persons, whose names were published in full. The plan was to
present simultaneously at the chief Continental cities letters of credit
purporting to emanate from Glynn & Co., the London bankers. The
confederates had fixed the sum they meant to realize at one million, and
had actually secured more than £10,000 before the plot was discovered.
One of them was Boyle, a banker, of good position, at Florence, and he
brought an action for libel and defamation. He pressed on the trial, but
_The Times_ maintained its ground, and at an enormous expense despatched
agents all over the Continent to collect evidence. _The Times_
triumphantly succeeded in proving the truth of what it--_The Times_ is
always spoken and written of as an individual--had printed; but as the
old law--the greater the truth the greater the libel--still existed, the
jury were compelled to find a verdict for the plaintiff, which they did,
with one farthing damages, and the judge clinched the matter by refusing
the plaintiff his costs. Universal joy was expressed at the result of
the trial, and public meetings were called together in London and the
chief Continental cities for the purpose of making a subscription to
defray the expenses of _The Times_ in defending the action. The
proprietors, however, declined this, but said that, at the same time,
they should feel much gratified if a sum of money were raised for some
public object in commemoration of the event. Accordingly it was decided
to found two scholarships in perpetuity for Christ's Hospital and the
City of London School at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, to be
called the Times' Scholarships, and the nomination to them to be placed
in the hands of the proprietors of _The Times_ in perpetuity. Two marble
tablets were also voted, at the cost of a hundred and fifty guineas
each, with commemorative inscriptions, one to be placed in _The Times_
office and the other in the Royal Exchange. Two somewhat similar tablets
were also placed in Christ's Hospital and the City of London School. For
these purposes the sum of £2,700 was very quickly subscribed, the lord
mayor leading off with ten guineas. If anything had been wanting to
place _The Times_ upon the pinnacle of preëminence among journals, this
famous trial firmly established it there, and ever since it has been
looked up to as an oracle of the commercial world. But _The Times_ was
not contented to rest quietly on its oars. It was ambitious, and looked
farther afield. In 1845, its vigor, enterprise, and disregard of expense
were exemplified in a remarkable manner. _The Times_ had been in the
habit of sending a special courier to Marseilles, to bring its Indian
despatches, and thus anticipate the regular course of the mail. The
French Government threw every possible obstacle in the courier's way,
and _The Times_ took Lieutenant Waghorn, the originator of the Overland
Route, into its pay. In October, 1845, a special messenger met the mail
on its arrival at Suez on the 19th. Mounted on a dromedary, he made his
way, without stopping, to Alexandria, where Waghorn awaited him with a
steamer. Waghorn came _viâ_ Trieste--special post horses and steamers
and trains being ready for him at the various points of the route--and
he reached London on the morning of the 31st, in time for his despatches
to appear in the morning's issue of the paper. The result of this was
that _The Times_ reached Paris with the Indian news from London before
the regular mail had reached that city from Marseilles. The next
noticeable enterprise of _The Times_ was the sending out commissioners
to investigate the condition of the poor and laboring population of
London in 1847, an enterprise which was crowned with the moat
satisfactory results. _The Times_ has always been the firm friend of the
poor, and its columns are always open to the tale of distress. No case
is advocated until it has been thoroughly investigated; but when once it
has been mentioned in _The Times_, subscriptions pour in on all sides.
At the commencement of each year especially, _The Times_ publishes
gratuitously appeals from public charities, and during last January the
sums received through those appeals reached the large amount of £12,000.
The last great exploit of _The Times_ was the sending forth a special
correspondent with the English army to the Crimea, a precedent which it
has followed up since in China, India, Italy, America, and
Schleswig-Holstein. But this was not the first occasion that reporters
had accompanied our armies, for Canning despatched reporters with the
troops sent to Portugal in 1826. The tactics of _The Times_ are very
generally misunderstood and misrepresented. Whatever objections
cavillers and opponents may urge, and with truth too--for the course
taken by _The Times_ is not to be praised on all occasions--it cannot be
denied that _The Times_ is the first journal in the world, a position
which it has reached by its enterprise, vigor, and ability. It has
frequently proved its disinterestedness, and during the great railway
mania of 1845, while it was receiving no less a sum than £6,000 weekly
for advertisements, constantly cautioned its readers against the
prevailing madness, and persistently predicted the crash that was
certain to follow. _The Times_, while it appears to lead, in reality
waits upon public opinion, and hence the accusations of inconsistency
and tergiversation so freely lavished upon it. _The Times_ is the
printed breath of public opinion. It throws out a feeler, perhaps,
though not quite at first, accompanied by some decided expression of
opinion, and carefully watches the effect upon the public mind. Should
that effect be different to what was expected, _The Times_ knows how to
veer round with the _popularis aura_. This is not always, however, done
so skilfully but that the act is apparent. It is not the most dignified
course that a journal which aspires to be--and which is--the leading
journal of Europe ought to pursue; but _The Times_ knows human nature,
and knows, too, that were it to adopt any other course, it would fall
from its high estate, and become a mere party organ. Moreover, _The
Times_ possesses an enormous prestige--deservedly won, as this article
has endeavored to show--and that, in a conservative country like
England, is considerably more than half the battle.

In 1842 appeared the first pictorial newspaper, _The Illustrated London
News_. It was started by Herbert Ingram, who began life as a provincial
newsboy, and died, in the vigor of his age, member of Parliament for his
native town. It was a success from the first, so great that numerous
competitors sprang up and endeavored to undersell it. But these were all
vastly inferior, and one by one withered away, the most persistent of
them at last passing into the hands of _The Illustrated London News_,
which now enjoys a larger circulation than any other weekly newspaper,
amounting to about six millions a year!

There was a satirical paper at this time, called _The Age_, which, being
of a strongly libellous character, was continually feeling the weight of
the law. It did not improve in character as it grew older, and its
editor, Tommy Holt, was proved upon a trial to have received bribes to
suppress a slander that he had threatened should appear in his paper.
This same Tommy Holt was very successful in inventing 'sensation'
headings for his columns, and by no means either delicate or scrupulous
in so doing. There was another rascally paper of the same description,
called _The Satirist_, which was at last finally crushed by the Duke of
Brunswick, the result of several actions for libel. Among other new
literary oddities at this time may be mentioned _The Fonetic Nuz_,
the organ of those enthusiastic reformers who were endeavoring to
accomplish a revolution in our orthography. It lasted, however, but a
very short time.

The year 1850 saw the initiation of the final campaign directed against
the only remaining burdens of the press. Mr. Ewart and Mr. Milner Gibson
brought forward a motion for the repeal of the advertisement duty, but
were defeated by two hundred and eight votes to thirty-nine. But they
were not cast down by their want of success, but manfully returned to
the charge. In 1851, they procured the appointment of a committee to
inquire into the question, and in 1852, gathering strength, like William
of Orange, from each successive defeat, they brought forward a triple
set of resolutions, one for the abolition of the advertisement duty,
another levelled at the stamp, and the third for the repeal of the paper
duties. They carried the first, but lost the others. In 1854, Mr. Gibson
made a fresh motion concerning the laws affecting the press, and
received a promise that the subject should receive the early attention
of the House; and in 1855, Sir G.C. Lewis, then chancellor of the
exchequer, who had hitherto opposed the repeal of the duty, brought in a
bill for its abolition. After a struggle in both Houses the measure
passed, and received the royal assent on the 15th of June.

In following up this final struggle, we have passed over one important
period, the railway mania in 1845, which gave birth to no less than
twenty-nine newspapers, entirely occupied with railway intelligence, in
London, besides many others in the provinces. Only two of these have
survived, for the other two railway newspapers which still exist were
established before that memorable madness fell upon the nation. Of
these, Herapath's _Journal_ is the oldest and best, and is the oracle of
the Stock Exchange on railway matters. There are some slight symptoms of
the madness returning in the present year, as far at least as the
metropolis is concerned, and one new railway journal has just been
started in consequence. There are many amusing anecdotes told of
newspapers at this epoch, of which we will quote one. One of these
railway organs had published and paid for, from time to time, lengthy
and elaborate reports of the meetings of a certain company, supplied by
one of the staff of reporters. At length the editor told the reporter
that he thought it was high time for the company to give the paper an
advertisement, after all the favorable notices that bad been given to
the undertaking in question. The reporter acquiesced, and promised to
get the order for an advertisement, but putting it off from time to
time, the editor was induced to make inquiries for himself; whereupon he
had the extreme satisfaction of learning that no such company had ever
existed, and that the elaborate reports of meetings, speeches, etc., had
been entirely fabricated by his ingenious employé! An endeavor was made
last year to resuscitate one of these defunct daily journals, _The Iron
Times_, and Tommy Holt was the editor. It lingered for some weeks, and
then smashed utterly. The editor called the contributors together, and
told them that there was nothing to pay them with--nothing in fact
remained but the office furniture. 'Take that, my boys,' said he, 'and
divide it among you.' This was accordingly done, and one man marched off
with a table, another with a chair, a third with a desk, a fourth with
an inkstand, and so on!

When the stamp duty was abolished as a tax, it remained optional with
the publishers to have any number of their issue stamped they pleased
for transmission through the poet. The number of stamps thus issued in
the first six months after the repeal was 21,646,688, whereas the number
in the corresponding period of 1854, when the tax still existed, was
55,732,499. The number of stamps issued in the year 1854 to the
principal newspapers was as follows: _Times_, 15,975,739; _Morning
Advertiser_, 2,392,780; _Daily News_, 1,485,099; _Morning Herald_,
1,158,000; _Morning Chronicle_, 873,500; _The Globe_, 850,000; and _The
Morning Post_, 832,500. Of the weeklies, _The Illustrated London News_
was then the second, 5,627,866; _The News of the World_, a Liberal,
unillustrated journal, started in 1843, standing first, with 5,673,525
(the price of this paper is now reduced to twopence, and it is an
admirably conducted journal); Lloyd's _Weekly Newspaper_, 5,572,897;
_The Weekly Times_, price one penny, 3,902,169; Reynolds's _Weekly
Newspaper_, also a penny journal, which is best described by the epithet
'rabid,' 2,496,256; _The Weekly Dispatch_, price fivepence, an advanced
Liberal journal, which is emphatically the workingman's newspaper, and
originally started in 1801, 1,982,933; Bell's _Life in London_,
1,161,000. Of the provincial newspapers, _The Manchester Guardian_ heads
the list with 1,066,575, followed by _The Liverpool Mercury_, with
912,000, and _The Leeds Mercury_, with 735,000. Foremost among the
Scotch newspapers stands _The North British Advertiser_, with 808,002;
and the Irish paper with the largest circulation was _The Telegraph_,
with 959,000. Of the London literary papers the chief was _The
Examiner_, with 248,560. With one or two exceptions, the circulation of
these journals may be considered to have increased enormously. There are
now published in Great Britain 1,350 different newspapers, of which 240
are London papers, 20 being dailies, 776 English provincial papers, 143
Irish, 140 Scotch, 37 Welsh, and 14 are published in the British Isles.
Many of these enjoy but a limited circulation, as naturally follows from
the narrow limit they assign to themselves. Thus several trades have
their special organs, as for instance, the grocers, the bakers, and even
the hairdressers among others.

Before concluding this article it will be well to notice a few of the
leading journals which have not been mentioned. _The Daily Telegraph_
was originally started at twopence, in 1855, by Colonel Sleigh, but he,
getting behindhand with his printers to the amount of £1,000, sold them
the paper for another £1,000, and in their hands it has since remained.
The price was reduced to a penny, and, under the new management, its
circulation rapidly increased. _The Standard_ dealt a heavy blow at it
in 1858, by coming out suddenly one morning, without any previous
warning, as a double sheet. This first number was given away in the
streets, in vast quantities, thrown into omnibuses and cabs, pitched
into shops and public houses, and so on. The sale of _The Telegraph_ so
decreased that it was found necessary to enlarge it to the same size as
_The Standard_, when its circulation rose again immediately. It has now
the largest circulation in the world, more than 100,000 daily, a much
larger London circulation than _The Times_, though a smaller provincial
and foreign sale; and its clear profits are variously stated by persons
who profess to be well informed, at different sums, the least of which
is £20,000 a year. The chief causes of its success are its independent
and uncompromising tone, the great pains it takes to gain early
intelligence--it has frequently anticipated _The Times_ itself in
foreign news--and the vigorous and able social articles of Mr. George
Augustus Sala. _The Daily News_ was started as a Liberal and Reform
journal in 1846. An enormous sum of money was sunk in establishing it,
for it was not at first successful. Charles Dickens was the first
editor, but politics were not much in the line of the genial and
unrivalled novelist, and he was soon succeeded by John Forster and
Charles Wentworth Dilke, whose connection with the South Kensington
Museum and the great Exhibition has made him a knight, a C. B., and a
very important personage. _The Daily News_ is now one of the ablest and
most successful of London journals, and has had and still enjoys the
assistance of the best writers of the day in every department. The line
which this journal has always maintained toward America will forever
earn it the admiration and gratitude of the United States. Another firm
friend of the great republic is _The Morning Star_, the organ of Mr.
Bright and the Manchester school, started in 1856. In addition to its
political claims, it has a great hold upon the public as a family
newspaper, by the careful manner in which everything objectionable is
excluded from its columns. Its twin sister, born at the same time, is
called _The Evening Star_. _Bell's Life in London_, a weekly journal,
was originally brought out in 1820, and, although it has more than one
successful rival to contend against, it still maintains its preëminence
as the first English sporting paper. It is very carefully edited, each
department being placed under a separate editor, and is the great oracle
in all matters relating to sports and games. The history of one of the
ablest contributors to this journal, who wrote some most charming
articles on fly-fishing and other kindred topics, under the signature of
'Ephemera'--though he was said never to have thrown a fly in his
life--is a very sad one. His name was Fitzgerald, a man of good family
and connections, married to a lady with £1,200 a year, and living in a
good house at the West End. But the alcoholic demon had got hold of him.
He would disappear for days together, and then suddenly present himself
at the office of the paper with nothing on but a shirt and trousers. He
would then sit down and write an article, receive his pay, go away and
purchase decent clothes, return home, and live quietly perhaps for a
month, when he would--to use a prison phrase--break out again as before.
He was last seen, in the streets of London, in a state of complete
intoxication, being carried upon a stretcher by two policemen to the
police cell, where he died the same night.

At the head of the Sunday papers stands _The Observer_, founded in 1792.
Like _The Globe_, it is extremely well informed upon all political
matters, for very good reasons. It spares no expense in obtaining early
news, and is an especial favorite with the clubs. _The Era_ is the great
organ of the theatrical world, but joins to that _specialité_ the
general attributes of an ordinary weekly journal. It was established in
1837. _The Field_, which calls itself the country gentleman's newspaper,
is all that it professes to be, and a most admirable publication,
treating of games, sports, natural history, and rural matters generally.
It was started by Mr. Benjamin Webster, the accomplished actor manager,
in 1853. But to particularize the principal papers, even in a short
separate notice of a few lines, would far transgress the limits at our
disposal. All the professions are well supplied with journals devoted to
their interests, and it is impossible here to dwell upon them or those
which represent literature and the fine arts. With regard to religious
papers, their name is legion, and they would require a separate article
to be fairly and honestly considered. _Punch_, too, and his rivals, dead
and living, are in the same category, and must, however reluctantly, be
passed over. Two curiosities, however, of the press must be mentioned.
_Public Opinion_ was started about two years and a half ago. It
consisted of weekly extracts from the leading articles of English and
foreign journals, and scraps of news, and other odds and ends. It has
succeeded mainly from its cost of production being so slight, owing to
its paste-and-scissors character, and also because it freely opens its
columns to correspondents _de rebus omnibus_, who are willing to buy any
number of copies for the pleasure of seeing themselves in print. _The
Literary Times_, in addition to reviews of books, professed to criticize
the leading articles in the various papers, but, after an existence of
some six months or so, one Saturday morning _The Literary Times_ was
_non est inventus_.

In concluding this series of articles, which has run to a much greater
length than he originally intended, the writer is conscious of many
shortcomings and omissions, which he trusts will be pardoned and
overlooked when his principal object is borne in mind. That object has
been to give a general outline of the history of the press, and
especially of its struggles against 'the powers which be;' and, though
tempted now and again--he fears too often for the patience of his
readers--to wander away into particularities, he has always endeavored
to keep that object in view. Above all, he hopes he has at least been
successful in showing the truth of that sentiment which was first
publicly expressed as a toast at a Whig dinner, at the Crown and Anchor
tavern, in 1795: 'The liberty of the press--it is like the air we
breathe--if we have it not, we die!'




OUR MARTYRS.


  Lightly the river runs between
  Hanging cliffs and meadows green.

  Blackly the prison, looking down,
  Frowns at its shadow's answering frown.

  Shut from life in his life's fresh morn,
  Crouches a soldier, wounded and worn.

  Chained and starved in the dungeon grim,
  Day and night are alike to him;

  Save that the murmurous twilight air
  Stings his soul with a deeper despair.

  Day by day, as the taunting breeze
  Wafts him the breath of orange trees,

  He fancies in meadows far away
  The level lines of odorous hay;

  And sees the scythes of the mowers run
  In and out of the steady sun.

  Night by night, as the mounting moon
  Climbs from his eager gaze too soon,

  The gleams that across the gratings fall,
  Broken and bright, on the prison wall,

  Seem the tangles of Northern rills,
  Like threads of silver winding the hills.

  When, sinking into the western skies,
  The sun aslant on the window lies;

  And motes that hovered dusty and dim,
  Golden-winged through the glory swim:

  He drops his head on his fettered hands,
  And thinks of the fruitful Northern lands.

  Between his fingers' wasted lines,
  Tear after tear into sunlight shines,

  As, wandering in a dream, he treads
  The ripened honey of clover heads;

  Or watches the sea of yellow grain
  Break into waves on the windy plain;

  Or sees the orchard's grassy gloom
  Spotted with globes of rosy bloom.

  Through the shimmer of shadowy haze
  Redden the hills with their autumn blaze.

  The oxen stand in the loaded teams;
  The cider bubbles in amber streams;

  And child-like laughter and girlish song
  Float with the reaper's shout along.

  He stirs his hands, and the jealous chain
  Wakes him once more to his tyrant pain--

  To festered wounds, and to dungeon taint,
  And hunger's agony, fierce and faint.

  The sunset vision fades and flits,
  And alone in his dark'ning cell he sits:

  Alone with only the jailers grim,
  Hunger and Pain, that clutch at him;

  And, tight'ning his fetters, link by link,
  Drag him near to a ghastly brink;

  Where, in the blackness that yawns beneath,
  Stalks the skeleton form of Death.

  Starved, and tortured, and worn with strife;
  Robbed of the hopes of his fresh, young life;--

  Shall one pang of his martyr pain
  Cry to a sleepless God in vain?




ÆNONE:

A TALE OF SLAVE LIFE IN ROME.


CHAPTER X.

But though Ænone's sanguinely conceived plan for Cleotos's happiness had
so cruelly failed, it was not in her heart to yield to his passionate,
unreflecting demand, and send him away from her, even to a kinder home
than he would have found at the house of the captain Polidorus. It would
but increase his ill fortune, by enforcing still greater isolation from
every fount of human sympathy. Though the affection of the wily Leta had
been withdrawn from him, her own secret friendship yet remained, and
could be a protection to him as long as he was at her side; and in many
ways she could yet extend her care and favor to him, until such time as
an outward-bound vessel might be found in which to restore him to his
native country.

Whether there was any instinct at the bottom of her heart, telling her
that in the possibility of trying events to come his friendship might be
equally serviceable to her, and that, even in the mere distant
companionship of a slave with his mistress, she might feel a certain
protecting influence, she did not stop to ask. Neither did she inquire
whether she wished to retain him for his own benefit alone, and without
thought of any happiness or comfort to be derived by her from his
presence. Had she been accustomed closely to analyze her feelings, she
might have perceived, perhaps, that, in her growing isolation, it was no
unpleasant thing to look upon the features and listen to the tones which
carried her memory back to her early days of poverty, when, except for a
short interval, her life had been at its happiest. But had she known and
acknowledged all this, it would not have startled her, for she would
have felt that, in her heart, there was not the slightest accompanying
shade of disloyalty. Her nature was not one to admit of sudden transfers
of allegiance. It was rather one in which a real love would last
forever. When the first romantic liking for Cleotos had consumed itself,
from the ashes there had sprung no new passion for him, but merely the
flowers of earnest, true-hearted friendship. And it was her misfortune,
perhaps, that the real love for another which had succeeded would not in
turn consume itself, but would continue to flourish green and perennial,
though now seemingly fated to bask no longer in the sunshine of kindly
words and actions, but only to cower beneath the chill of harsh and
wanton neglect.

Cleotos therefore remained--at first passing weary days of bitter,
heartbreaking despondency. His lost liberty he had borne without much
complaint, for it was merely the fortune of war, and hundreds of his
countrymen were sharing the same fate with him. But to lose that love
upon which he had believed all the happiness of his life depended, was a
blow to which, for a time, no philosophy could reconcile him--the more
particularly as the manner in which that loss had been forced upon him
seemed, to his sensitive nature, to be marked by peculiar severity. To
have had her torn from him in any ordinary way--to part with her in some
quarrel in which either side might be partially right, and thenceforth
never to see her again--or to be obliged to yield her up to the superior
claims of an open, generous rivalry--any of these things would, in
itself, have been sufficient affliction. But it was far worse than all
this to be obliged to meet her at every turn, holding out her hand to
him in pleasant greeting, and uttering words of welcoming import; and
all with an unblushing appearance of friendly interest, as though his
relations with her had never been other than those of a fraternal
character, and as though, upon being allowed her mere friendship, there
could be nothing of which he had a right to complain.

At first, in the agony of his heart, he had no strength to rise above
the weight which crushed him, and to obey the counsels of his pride so
far as to play before her a part of equally assumed indifference. To her
smiling greetings he could return only looks of bitter despair or
passionate entreaty--vainly hoping that he might thereby arouse her
better nature, and bring her in repentance back to him. And at first
sight it seemed not impossible that such a thing might take place; for,
in the midst of all her change of conduct and wilful avoidance of
allusion to the past, she felt no dislike of him. It was merely her love
for him that she had suppressed, and in its place there still remained a
warm regard. If he could have been content with her friendship alone,
she would have granted it all, and would have rejoiced, for the sake of
olden times, to use her influence with others in aid of his upward
progress. Perhaps there were even times when, as she looked upon his
misery and thought of the days not so very far back, in which he had
been all in all to her, her heart may have been melted into something of
its former affection. But if so, it was only for a moment, nor did she
ever allow the weakness to be seen. Her path had been taken, and nothing
now could make her swerve from it. Before her enraptured fancy gleamed
the state and rank belonging to a patrician's wife; and as she wove her
toils with all the resources of her cunning, the prize seemed to
approach her nearer and nearer. Now having advanced so far, she must not
allow a momentary weakness to imperil all. And therefore unwaveringly
she daily met her former lover with the open smile of friendly greeting,
inviting confidence, mingled with the same indescribable glance,
forbidding any renewal of love.

And so days passed by, and Cleotos, arousing from his apathetic despair,
felt more strongly that, if the lapse of love into mere friendship is a
misfortune, the offer of friendship as a substitute for promised love is
a mockery and an insult: his soul rebelled at being made a passive party
to such a bargain; and he began himself to play the retaliatory part
which a wronged nature naturally suggests to itself. Like Leta, he
learned to hold out the limpid hand in careless greeting, or to mutter
meaningless and cold compliments, and, in any communication with her, to
assume all the appearances of indifferent acquaintanceship. At first,
indeed, it was with an aching heart struggling in his breast, and an
agony of wounded spirit tempting him to cast away all such studied
pretences, and to throw himself upon her mercy, and meanly beg for even
the slightest return of her former affection. But gradually, as he
perceived how vain would be such self-abasement, and how its display
would rather tend to add contempt to her indifference, his pride came to
rescue him from such a course; and he began more and more to tune the
temper of his mind to his actions, and to feel something of the same
coldness which he outwardly displayed.

Not but that for a while such a disposition was forced and unnatural;
and however steadily composed he felt, and strongly fortified in his
stubborn pride, a look or a word from her would have brought him again a
willing slave to her feet. But that look or word was not given. Perhaps,
in her eager struggle after the glittering prize which she had held out
before herself, she disdained the love which had once delighted her;
perhaps, actuated by a purer and less selfish motive, her friendship
for Cleotos forbade her, in mere wanton pride, to keep open the wound
which she had made. Whatever the reason, the withdrawal of the
fascinations which had once attracted him, gave his mind leisure and
opportunity to reason with itself in more quietude and composure than
could have been expected. And, as he more and more began to realize how
closely she was wrapped up in her ambition, to the exclusion of any
gentler feeling, and how, under the stimulant of her infatuated hopes,
she was allowing herself each day to act with less guarded resolution,
there were times when he found himself asking whether she had indeed
changed from what she had been, or whether, on the contrary, she had not
always, at heart, been the same as now, and his conception, of her true
character been at fault.

But, in proportion as the veil of error seemed lifted from his soul,
letting calm content once more shine in upon him, so, on the other hand,
did a night of despair slowly settle upon Ænone. By no reasoning could
she longer urge upon herself the belief that the neglect with which her
lord treated her could be traced to any inoffensive cause. Claims of
court--urgency of military duties--exactions of business might easily
account for transitory slights, but not for long-sustained periods of
indifference, unbroken by a single word of kindness. And as days passed
by and this indifference continued, until at times seeming ready to give
place to openly expressed dislike, and her ears became more and more
accustomed to words of hasty petulance, and Sergius grew still deeper
absorbed in the infatuation which possessed him, and less careful to
conceal its influences from her, and the Greek girl glided hither and
thither, ever less anxious, as she believed her triumph more nearly
assured, to maintain the humble guise which she had at first assumed,
Ænone felt that there had indeed come upon her a sorrow from which there
could be no escape. There were a hundred methods of relief from it which
hourly occurred to her agitated mind, but one after another was in turn
laid aside, as she felt that it would but aggravate the evil, or as the
opportunity to employ it was not given her. To make open complaint of
her wrongs and try to drive Leta from the house--to humble herself
before her, and thereby strive to move her pity--to reproach Sergius for
his neglect, and demand that, since he no longer loved her, he would
send her back to her native place, away from the hollow world of
Rome--to assume toward him, by a strong effort of will, a like
indifference--to watch until she could find some season when his better
nature appeared more impressible, and then to throw herself before him,
as she had once before done, and plead for a return of his love--these
and like expedients fruitlessly passed in review before her. All in turn
failed in promise of relief; and at times it seemed as though the only
course left to her was to lie down in her sorrow and die.

It was no uncommon thing then, as now, for the husband to neglect his
wife. All Rome rang with the frequent story of marital wrong. But those
were days in which the matron did not generally accept her desertion
with meekness. Brought up in a fevered, unscrupulous society, she had
her own retaliatory resources; and if no efforts were sufficient to
bring back the wandering affection, she could recompense herself
elsewhere for its loss, secure that her wrongs would be held as a
justification, and that her associates, equally aggrieved and avenged,
would applaud her course. But with Ænone, brought up in a provincial
town, under the shelter of her own native purity and innocence, no such
idea could find countenance. Even the thought which sometimes dimly
presented itself, that by some harmless coquetry she might perhaps
excite her husband's jealousy, and thereby chance to win back his love,
was one which she always stifled in its beginning as weak and unworthy.

But the recompenses of friendship were still left to her, and it was
surely doing no wrong to accept them. Therefore the more she realized
that her source of real happiness was becoming estranged from her, so
much the more did she feel naturally drawn toward the society of
Cleotos. To her, of course, he was not a mere slave, but rather a person
of equal birth with herself, who had been beaten down by the same fate
which had elevated her. And in conversation with him, it was easy to
carry her mind back to her early home, and for a little while forget her
present misery. And he, in turn, having been repulsed where he had
placed his highest hopes of happiness, and imbittered with the
disappointment, was not at all loth to transfer, in all innocence, his
devotion to one who extended such kindly condescension toward him. It
therefore happened that the two were naturally drawn much together, and,
for a time, without attracting invidious notice. Those were days in
which the association between master and slave was often of an intimate
character. To the lower class of slaves, indeed, there could be no
familiar approach. It was sufficient for them that at times they could
look upon the faces of their owners from a distance. But above these,
were converging circles, each rising in rank and responsibility, until
there were those who stood at their owners' right hands, more in the
position of friends and confidants than of menials. Of these was
Cleotos, whose winning face and graceful mien, joined to his natural
abilities and his valued accomplishments, would have insured him a
higher position than that of most captives, even if he had not been
assisted by the partiality of his mistress.

It was his duty to announce her guests, to trim the lamps at which she
read, to read to her when she felt indisposed to do so for herself; to
indite her correspondence--and generally to superintend all those little
elegancies and demands of social life which require grace or mental
ability in their execution. These offices naturally kept him near her
during much of each day--and when Ænone and he were alone, and no task
was before him requiring immediate completion, it was but to be expected
that a mingling of curiosity and friendly interest should lead her to
question him upon his past life, his home, his associates, even his
thoughts. And often it as naturally happened that, while he spoke, the
music of his voice lulled her into forgetfulness of all but the past,
and she would find herself unconsciously relaxing from the somewhat
frigid dignity which she felt called upon to assume, until her features
must have glowed with some expression of her former familiar kindness.
For she would be suddenly startled back into her forced propriety by a
strange and troubled look of puzzled thought flitting across his face--a
look which she could read and analyze better than he could; for it told
her that, without any real suspicion of the truth, he was wondering at
the likeness of that beaming face which bent over him to something which
he had seen elsewhere in the past.

There was one morning that he sat before her by a little table where he
had been writing a letter at her dictation. The letter was folded and
sealed, and then ensued one of those vacant intervals when each, having
no pressing task at hand, remains for a few moments listlessly thinking
what shall be done next. At that instant Leta passed through the
room--bowing low as she moved before her mistress, and throwing out
toward Cleotos from the corner of her dark eye one of those aggravating
looks in which friendly interest in him and pleasure at his sight were
mingled with a certain cruel warning against any renewal of past
memories. Cleotos retorted with a similar careless greeting, expressive
of simple friendliness, unconscious of any warmer emotion. But he had
not yet perfectly learned his part; for, as Leta passed out of the room,
the quiver of his lip showed how difficult had been the task of
mastering his forced smile even for that moment.

'Poor boy!' said, Ænone, as she witnessed the effort. 'You have not yet
learned not to love her.'

'Not yet, indeed, my mistress,' he responded. 'But it seems as though I
knew the task better than last week, and would know it still better a
week hence. What can I say? It is not to be thought that I should lapse
in a moment into real indifference, even though I may find out that she
is unworthy of love. There cannot but be an interval during which the
heart will struggle against the judgment, and lead to foolish longings
after what has passed.'

'True, indeed,' said Ænone.

'And still, in my heart, I sometimes almost think that I have never
loved her,' he continued in a reflective, dreamy tone; 'that I have been
under a spell--have been made the slave of certain outward fascinations,
which have fettered my judgment. Can it be that one will think he loves
and yet does not?'

'It is indeed hard to answer, I suppose.'

'It must be hard; for wherein, after all, is the difference between
being and thinking to be? But yet it seems as though there were times,
even long past and before this captivity, when, being in our own land,
and with nothing to disturb us or make us doubtful of the future, I
looked upon her with a strange kind of fear--wondering whether, though I
loved her with so strong a passion, it might not rather be the passion
of an unlasting, unsatisfying slavery of thought, than of a calm,
lifelong trustfulness. And now it seems to me that if I ever had this
feeling--for I cannot certainly tell whether I ever had or only now
imagine it--it seems to me as though it were an inner instinct warning
me against evil; for day by day I see more clearly that there has been
some veil over my soul, hiding it from a clear perception of what was
suitable for it.'

'And you begin to dislike her?' inquired Ænone.

'Not so,' he said. 'Nor do I know whether I ought to do so, if I could.
I believe now that she does not, and perhaps never has loved me, but I
must forgive her for all that. She may have tried to do so, and for a
time have thought that she did, and the true blame may all the while
have rested with me alone. With her strong, unbending temperament,
fearless of correction, and jealous of all control, how, indeed, could
she long cling to one of such a tranquil and yielding nature as myself?
That she loved me not, proves not that she could love no one; and though
she now seems so coldly heartless and so rashly heedless of her fame,
yet who knows what she might have been if fettered by the love of a
spirit more imperious than her own? Who can tell how the great good that
is within her might then have conquered the evil, and her soul have
spurned its present headstrong course, and gloriously aroused itself to
its sole great duty of love and innocent trustfulness?'

'These, indeed, are very far from being words of dislike,' said Ænone;
'and they only prove that you still love her, or you would not so
readily excuse her.'

'Neither have I denied that I love her yet,' he said. 'But it is not
with as blind an affection as before. Her touch, her words, her
smile--if given with real love--would still please me as of old; and yet
I should feel that there was something gone from me forever. Even if we
were restored to our own isle, with no enemy near or rival to interrupt
us, I could not but henceforth feel that destiny had not meant her for
me, so much would her stronger nature be ill assorted with my own. And
sometimes--'

'Well?'

'Sometimes--now that this thraldom of my spirit is passing off--there
comes back to me the memory of another face, a gentle, loving
face--which, if it were possible ever to see it again, I have too long
forgotten, but which, if I may not see it more, I should, for my own
sake, have forgotten long ago. But all this, honored mistress, can be of
no interest to you, and therefore it were foolish to mention it.'

'Nay, speak to me of it,' murmured Ænone; and, struggle as she would,
the telltale blood began to flow up into her face. 'Is there any woman
who does not care to listen to a love story?' she added, as though in
excuse for her curiosity.

'It is but a common love tale,' he said, 'and the more so that nothing
came of it. A few stolen interviews--a few promises exchanged--and then
a parting forever. That is all.'

'But where and when was this?'

'Six years ago, at Ostia. For, though a Greek, I have been in this land
before now. I was a sailor then, and in that port I met her. Met her and
loved her, and promised to return again. And for a while I meant to do
so; but on our passage back our ship was wrecked. I could not at once
find place upon another, and so took employment on the shore--none the
less, however, intending some day to come back and claim her. What shall
I say? It is the old story. The sea is wide, and I could interchange no
tidings with her. Ill success followed me, and I could not return to
Ostia. Then, little by little, as the months drifted past, and I
believed her lost to me, her image began to fade from my memory. And
then I saw Leta; and under the spell of that new charm, it seemed to me
as though the other one had lost all grasp upon my mind. Not altogether,
though, for even at the height of my later love, I have always borne
about me the last keepsake that she had given me.'

'Let me see it, what it is like,' said Ænone, faintly; and in obedience
to her command, and perhaps wondering a little that she should take such
interest in so simple a story, Cleotos drew from beneath his tunic a
thread with a coin dangling at the end.

The tears struggled into Ænone's eyes as she gazed upon the token. It
was a poor little silver coin of the time of the first Cæsars--one of
the few curiosities of her father's family--and which she had given to
her lover as the most precious thing belonging to her. She remembered
that when, in that last stroll by the shore, she had hung it about his
neck with her own hands, and had made him promise always to keep it, she
had received from him a similar token--a bright silver piece of
Vespasian, and had placed it near her heart, while murmuring similar
vows. He had kept his word, and she had not kept hers. For the moment,
she felt even guilty of bad faith, forgetting that when she afterward
gave her more mature affection to Sergius, it was only her duty to lay
aside all that even whispered of past promises.

'I could not bear to part with it,' he said; 'for it still spoke to me
of her friendship, if not of her love. And a superstitions thought came
into my mind that I might some day see her again, and that, though we
should not meet as lovers, yet she might, perhaps, be pleased to learn
that I had not entirely forgotten her. Would she not, noble lady, do you
think?'

'She does--that is, it surely should so move her,' said Ænone.

'So have I still worn it,' he continued. 'And somehow each day brings
back the recollection of her more faithfully to me. Whether it is
because this other absorbing love is passing from my heart, and leaving
to me greater freedom of thought--or whether it is that Ostia is now so
near to me that I daily hear of it and see its costumes in the streets,
and thus my recollection of the place is kindled anew--or whether it
is--'

'Is what?' said Ænone, encouragingly.

'I know not how to dare say it,' he stammered. 'It is a presumption,
indeed, but I mean it not for such. I would say that there is something
in your face, most noble mistress--a look--a flash of thought--a glance
of the eye--a something I know not what, which reminds me of her whom I
knew so many years ago. So that sometimes, were it not for the
difference of dress and all else around you, so much at variance with
what had been her state, I could almost forget the lapse of years, and
imagine that--Pardon, most noble lady! I meant not to offend!'

For she had arisen; and now, drawn to her full height, was looking down
upon him with all the coldness of patrician dignity that she could
summon to her aid. He, too, arose, and stood trembling opposite her. For
a moment they remained gazing upon each other; he aghast at the apparent
consequences of his remark, reproaching himself for having so
inconsiderately raised her anger by daring to compare, even in feature,
a lowly country girl with her, and despairingly asking himself what he
should do to restore himself to her favor--she more and more wrapping
herself in a disguise of outward pride and haughty bearing, lest by some
chance his unsuspecting eyes might detect the truth, and yet inwardly
bleeding at the heart to think that she could not reveal herself to him
and promise him her friendship, in full confidence that his love for her
would not return and bring new distress upon them. Then suddenly, while
each stood wondering what course to take, a light step was heard in the
outer hall, and the poet Emilius entered.


CHAPTER XI.

At the interruption, Ænone hastily reseated herself; while Cleotos, in
obedience to a quick and significant motion of her finger, remained in
the room, and, resuming his position at the table, prepared to continue
his writing. The poet Emilius could not, of course, fail to notice this
somewhat confused alteration of posture, but no suspicion of having
intruded upon an embarrassing scene crossed his mind. He merely saw a
proudly erect mistress and a cowering slave; and it was no unusual thing
to interrupt a Roman lady in the act of giving even corporeal correction
to her attendant, nor did the stranger's entrance always cause the
punishment to cease.

'Has the caitiff been insolent?' he exclaimed, in gallant tone, as he
approached and seated himself before her. 'Has he dared to look too
rebelliously upon so charming a mistress? If so, permit that I may
chastise him for you. It is not fit that such fair hands should be
obliged to wield the rod.'

'Nay, it is nothing,' she said. 'Nothing, indeed, needing much reproof;
and it is all past now. And wherefore have we lately seen so little of
you?'

'Commands of court--the claims of Parnassus--all these, fair lady, have
withheld me from heretofore giving to beauty its proper meed of
admiration and worship. To speak more plainly, I have undertaken, by
order of our emperor, the not ungrateful task of weaving a few poetical
sentiments to be recited at the opening of our new amphitheatre. And in
order that the results of my labor might not lessen my already acquired
fame, I judged it most prudent to seclude myself for the past few days
from the gayeties of the world, and give myself up to study and
meditation. Though, after all, I could not deny, if closely questioned,
that my seclusion was but little productive of results; for, upon being
tempted out one evening, sorely against my judgment, to a feast at the
house of the comedian Bassus, the true poetic inspiration overtook me
at the end of my third goblet, and, calling for parchment, I there
accomplished, in one short hour, the greater portion of my task.'

'Then, I presume that your ode, unlike your other works, will be of a
cheerful and lively character, more especially as it is written for such
a festive occasion.'

'Scarcely, perhaps, what the world would call altogether lively, though
here and there a thread of playful thought may gleam upon the more sober
texture of the basis. I have rather judged it proper that, for the due
celebration of an event of such wondrous magnificence, I should give
utterance to deeper and more lasting sentiments, so as to fit the minds
of the spectators for a higher comprehension of its true significance.
But, if you wish, I will read aloud a few of my thoughts; and be assured
that so far no eye has seen the scroll, not even the august eye of the
emperor Titus himself.'

Ænone inclined her head in assent, and he drew from the breast of his
tunic a small roll of parchment, carefully wrapped in a covering of
embroidered silk.

'I commence, of course, by an address to the emperor, whom I call the
most illustrious of all the Cæsars, and liken unto Jove. I then
congratulate the spectators not only upon living in his time, but also
upon being there to bask in the effulgence of his majesty; his
countenance being the sight most to be desired, and the games and
combats being merely accessory thereto. After which, I speak to the
gladiators and captives; and prove to them how grateful they should be
to the gods for allowing them the privilege of dying in such an august
presence.'

'Is it such a privilege, do you think?' inquired Ænone.

'Perhaps not a privilege, but certainly no great hardship. The trained
gladiators surely cannot complain, for they have voluntarily assumed the
risks; and as for the captives, the most of them will some day die a
violent death of some kind or another, and, therefore, why not now,
attended by the decent observances of the games and the applause of all
the Roman people? But to proceed. From thence I speak of death--its
pleasures and its recompenses; showing that, if there be a future life,
the gods have done wisely to withhold its exact nature from us, and
that, whatever uncertainties may exist in other respects, nothing can be
more true than that those who now die in the arena will, in another
world, find their highest felicity in the privilege of looking up from a
distance at the loved emperor in whose honor they perished, and
beholding him enjoying, through adoption, the society of the inhabitants
of Olympus. I then--but it is useless to detail all the argument. I will
read the poem itself; or rather, if you so permit, I will let this
scribe of yours read it for me. Perhaps, upon hearing it from another's
mouth, I may be led to make still further corrections.'

Handing the manuscript with all care to Cleotos, the poet leaned back
with eyes closed in delicious revery, now and then arousing himself to
correct some defective emphasis or unsatisfactory intonation, the
tolerance of which, he imagined, would mar the proper effect of the
production, or, with persistent desire for praise, momentarily calling
closer attention to such passages as appeared to him deserving of
especial commendation--and generally omitting no opportunity of exacting
that entire admiration to which he believed his genius entitled him.
Apart from a somewhat extravagant display of high-strained metaphor, the
poem had merit, being bold in scope, sonorous and well rounded in tone,
and here and there gracefully decked with original and pleasing
thoughts. Throughout the whole, however, the singular propensity of the
author for indulgence in morbid and gloomy reflection found its usual
development, while every line was laden with lofty maxims of moral
philosophy, mingled with urgent incentives to the adoption of a virtuous
career;--all, in themselves, both unexceptionable and praiseworthy, but,
nevertheless, having a strange sound in the ears of those who recognized
them as the utterances of one whose conversation was always flippant and
puerile, and whose daily life, in the enormity and uninterrupted
persistency of its profligacy, rendered him the acknowledged leader of
all that was most disreputable and contaminating in Roman society.

At length, the reading having been fully completed, and the listener's
powers of flattery exhausted, the author carefully rewrapped his poem in
its silken cover and carried it away, to read it, in turn, to other
noble ladies, with the same transparent pretence of giving exclusive
hearing of it to each. For a few moments Ænone remained in thoughtful
silence, with her head bowed upon her hand; recalling the scattered
fragments of the sonorous verses, and wondering why it was that, when
each line had seemed so perfect in itself, and every thought so pure and
noble in its purport and conception, the whole should have left upon her
mind such an undefinable impress of dissatisfaction.

Cleotos, with unobtrusive scrutiny, seemed to read her thoughts, for, at
the first intimation of her perplexity, he said:

'It is because the author of those verses has not sincerely felt the
full meaning of what he has there written. For, with whatsoever display
of ingenious and artistic skill fair sounding maxims of morality may be
expressed, yet, if they come not from the heart, their utterance must
seem hollow and unreal. I do not know this author--how or where he
lives. It may be that in his daily life he is outwardly all that could
be desired. But I know this--that he has written about virtue and death,
not because he loves the one and fears not the other, but simply
because, by a display of well-toned periods, he may more surely hope to
gain the applause of the arena and the smiles of the court.'

'But why should not these sentiments, though called into being by
personal ambition alone, give equal pleasure as if springing directly
from the heart? Are they not, after all, as true?'

'Nay, honored mistress, neither are they true. This is again where they
fail to please; for in your soul there is an instinct, though you may
not know of it, which forbids that such cold and unsatisfactory
reasoning should bring you comfort. He speaks of death: is it cheering
to be told that, though the gods have appointed death to every person,
they have given it, not as a veiled mercy, but rather as a dreadful
fate--that there is no certainty about our future condition, but that,
if we are destined to live again, it may be with the same evils
encompassing us which bind us now--and that the slave may then still be
a slave, destined forever to look up to and worship the high and mighty
ones who trampled on him here?'

'That is, in truth, no comfort,' said Ænone. And she bowed her head upon
her hands, and sadly thought how worthless to her would be the gift of
eternal life, if her present sorrows were to follow her. 'But what can
we do? If it were possible to discover and believe in some other fate,
telling us that death, instead of being a dreaded pang, is a boon and
relief to the sick and weary and oppressed--'

'There is a book,' said Cleotos--and for a moment he hesitated, as
though fearful of proceeding--'there is a book which I have read, and
which tells us all this. It says that death is not merely a fate, but is
a source of blessing; since it leads to a world where the sufferings of
this life shall be recompensed with abundant joy, not to the rich
merely, but more especially to the poor and lowly.'

'Where is that book?' cried Ænone, with sudden energy, as the wondrous
depth and power of the sentiment flashed upon her. 'Where can I see and
read it? He who can talk like that, must surely have said still more?'

'I have not that book,' answered Cleotos. 'I have only this little copy
of a small portion of it;' and he hesitatingly drew from beneath his
tunic a single small leaf of discolored parchment, closely filled with
Greek characters. 'But being at Corinth, a year ago, I was permitted to
see the book itself, and to hear portions of it read. It was written to
a Christian church there, by one Paul, a leader of that sect.'

At the word 'Christian' the first impulse of Ænone was to shrink back,
not knowing but that even the presence of one who had ever come into
contact with any of that despised sect might be injurious to her. For at
once she began to recall many of the tales which she had heard to its
discredit--its members hiding as outcasts in the caves and dens of the
earth--their repeated insults to the gods--their proud and unaccountable
worship of a malefactor--their sacrifice of infants--and other
exaggerations and calumnies, begotten in malice or ignorance, and thence
widely spread, making it not hard to believe that the only fate fit for
those to whom they related was a life of persecution and a cruel death
in the arena.

But only for a moment did this instinctive horror control her. The
single doctrine which she had just heard advanced already began to bear
its fruits. It seemed, indeed, not unlikely that one who could write
such truths, and those, his disciples, who could so gratefully treasure
them up, might not, after all, be wantonly wicked, but, at the worst,
might be merely victims of mistaken zeal. And then, in turn, she thought
of much that had been related to her in their favor. During her life at
Rome, indeed, she had heard no mention of the Christian sect, unless
accompanied with sneers or contempt. But she remembered how that in
Ostia, while she was yet a very young girl, she had heard it sometimes
whispered that the Christians were kind and loving to all the world, and
free from many sins in which other men openly exulted, and that, through
their great love for their founder, they organized charities which had
never before been even thought of--and how that once, when she had been
very sick, a strange woman had nursed her into health and refused all
payment for it, alleging that her religion bade her give herself up to
such tasks--and how that she had once seen pass by, one who was pointed
out to her as a holy man among the sect--whose name indeed she could not
remember, but whose mild and serene expression yet lived in her
recollection. It was hardly possible that one whose face was so radiant
with universal love and benevolence as to impress itself thus lastingly
upon the heart of a young child could have been very wicked. Nor did it
seem likely that Cleotos, whose greatest weakness was that his life had
been almost too innocent and trusting, could speak well of a sect which
worthily ought to be persecuted. And then again she thought upon that
little book to the sect at Corinth, and she bade Cleotos to read a verse
or two. He did so. At another time she might have listened as she had
listened to the moral maxims of the poet Emilius--judging well of it,
perhaps, for the beauty of its words, but, beyond that, regarding it
simply as some new and more original expression of long-accepted
philosophy. But now, in her trouble, she felt that there was something
in it beyond all known philosophy--a new development of faith, appealing
to the heart, and speaking comfort to all who were in misery. It surely
could not be that such words were the emanations of an evil influence.

'Art thou--answer me, Cleotos--art thou one of the sect of Christians?'
she inquired.

'How can I tell?' he responded. 'I have so often asked that question of
my heart, and yet have not been able to understand what it has said to
me. There are times when I think that I must pray only to the gods of
Olympus, and that all I have heard or read about other gods must be
untrue. And again, when I read this little parchment of mine, and
remember other like things that have been told to me, and see how they
all speak of death as a relief to the sorrowing, and of another life in
which the down trodden and the captive shall be recompensed for what
they have suffered here, and know that I am one of those who need such
recompense--then I think that perhaps the only true God is the God of
the Christians. But I can learn so little about it all, that I cannot,
from my own judgment, determine which must be right.'

'Perhaps,' thoughtfully responded Ænone, 'it may be that if you tell me
all you know about it, I may be able to assist your conclusions. Who
knows what light I myself need, or how much of good we may borrow from
this new religion? It cannot be wrong to examine for one's self, and the
gods will not be angry if we gain good doctrine even from wrong sources,
so long as it may make us better. To-morrow, therefore, let us begin.'

Upon the morrow, therefore, and for many succeeding days, the mistress
and the slave spent stolen moments in groping after the truth of that
faith which makes the high and the low equal. It was a blind search, for
neither of them had any definite comprehension of the history and
doctrine upon which the new religion had been founded. Cleotos had
enjoyed the best opportunities of acquainting himself with it, having
naturally, in his wanderings about the East, and in his contact with the
poor and enslaved of many lands, heard much respecting the Christian
churches and their belief; but having had no instructor, a great portion
of what he had thus received came to him in but distorted and puzzling
array. And Ænone could not comprehend how, when the gods ruled Rome, and
Rome had scattered the Jews, one whom the Jews had had the power to slay
could be greater than all. But between them, for their study, lay the
leaf of parchment, closely covered with writing, beside which the
proudest and choicest philosophy of Rome seemed mockery; and though they
could not understand its full meaning, they knew that it spoke such good
words that, at the least, though it may have come from erring men, it
was no less worthy to have come from a God. Whatever the real nature of
the faith itself, here was certainly a proof that among its attributes
were mercy and peace and brotherly love toward all.

What might have been the consequences if Ænone had been free to pursue
the investigation as far as she wished--to send for other books to aid
her--to consult more learned teachers, who, though perhaps hiding in
secret shelter, were yet attainable with proper search, cannot be known.
It is not improbable that, in the end, one more might have been added to
the list of those few Roman women of high degree who even then gave up
all their rank and state in order to share the persecutions of the
Nazarenes. But it was otherwise ordered. Already indications, each
slight in itself, but altogether of important bearing, began to present
themselves before her, warning her that jealous eyes were watching her,
and that, if she would avoid the consequences of misconstruction, she
must bring her feeble investigations to a close.

Until now, Leta, in her struggle to alienate the husband from the wife,
had been actuated simply by the exigencies of her ambitious policy.
Bearing in her heart no especial hatred toward her mistress, she would
willingly have spared her, had not the circumstances of the case seemed
to require the ruin of the one preliminary to the exaltation of the
other. But now, other incentives to her efforts were added. First in her
mind came jealousy of Cleotos; for though she had cast him off, and bade
him stifle the yearnings of his heart, and, by the cool exercise of
intellect and craft alone, seek a better fortune for himself, it was
hardly natural that she should feel pleased to have him so soon appear
to take her at her word. She would have better liked to see him display
more prolonged sorrow for her loss. Then came jealousy of Ænone, who had
apparently been able to console him so early. And mingled with all this,
there began to press upon her a startling thought--one which she at
first contemned as unlikely and absurd--but which, though continually
driven away, so obstinately returned and commended itself to her
attention with newer plausibility, that at last she began to give bitter
and anxious heed to it. What if this constant communication between
Ænone and Cleotos were to result in a mutual love? It was no uncommon
thing in those days for the high-born lady to cast her eyes upon the
slave. How mortifying to herself, then, if, while she had been exerting
all her powers of fascination, taxing the utmost resources of her
intellect, and making of her whole existence one labored study for the
purpose of gaining an undue influence over the lord, Cleotos, without
art or disguise or apparent effort, or any advantage other than that
afforded by his simple-hearted, trusting nature, should have quietly won
from the other side of the house a victory of almost equal importance?
And further than this--what if the lord were to perish in some brawl or
by the hired assassin of a rival house; and Ænone, released from her
thraldom, and despising conventional scruples--as again was not uncommon
among the Roman ladies of that day--were to exalt her favorite with
legal honors, and thus make herself, Leta, his slave? This, to be sure,
was an improbable chance; but a mind as active as her own did not
disdain to foresee and provide against all contingencies.

Then, in addition to everything else, she became absorbed in the one
overwhelming and bitter reflection, that after all her sacrifice and
labor, the anticipated success might be escaping her. It is true that,
thanks to her efforts, the distance between Sergius and Ænone had
widened, until it seemed that there could never be a perfect reunion;
but all this, if the state of partial neglect which had existed in the
beginning could be relied upon as an indication, was a consequence which
might easily, in time, have come of itself. It is true that Sergius had
yielded himself a willing victim to the unlawful fascinations thrown
around him; but yet Leta could not avoid seeing that he regarded her not
with the deep, earnest love which she had hoped to inspire, but rather
with the trifling carelessness of one giving himself up to the plaything
of the hour. Not having, from the very first, been chary of the sidelong
glance and the winning smile, and whatever grace of style or manner
could tempt him to pursuit, as an illusive appearance of success seemed
to beckon her onward, her heart at times grew desperate with the
apprehension that all had been in vain. For Sergius, content that the
wife whom he neglected did not disturb his repose with idle complaints,
had no thought of inflicting any deeper injury upon her, being well
satisfied to have her remain and confer honor upon him by the grace with
which she maintained the dignity of his house. And though well pleased
to sun himself in Leta's smile, there never came to him the thought that
the slave could be worthy of any exaltation, or that her highest
ambition could prompt her to desire more than a continuance of the
companionship with which he honored her. All this Leta began to dimly
see; and there were times when, strive to hide it from her heart as she
would, it seemed as though he might be even growing weary of her.

Thus tormented with doubt and jealousy and the constantly increasing
suspicion of baffled ambition, how was she to act? To accept her
situation as a decree of fate, to fawn upon the mistress like a patient
slave, and, if the lord were to tire of her in the end and give himself
up to other captivations, to submit unmurmuringly to the unavoidable
necessity? All this some might consent to do; but surely not one like
herself, gifted with indomitable will, and stung to desperation with the
sense of great and irreparable sacrifices. To her there could be but one
course. She must abandon her slow and cautious policy, and seek the
earliest opportunity to urge the matter to its crisis. If, by sparing no
watchfulness or ingenuity, or by the exercise of bold and vigorous
manoeuvring, she could produce a quarrel and final separation between
Sergius and his wife, it might not be impossible for her to impress upon
him how much she was necessary to his happiness, and thereby elevate
herself into the vacant place. And if unsuccessful, at the least she
would be but sharing a ruin which would fall like an avalanche upon all
alike.




THE FIRST CHRISTIAN EMPEROR.


The last great imperial persecution of the Christians under Diocletian
and Galerius, which was aimed at the entire uprooting of the new
religion, ended with the edict of toleration of 311 and the tragical
ruin of the persecutors. Galerius died soon after of a disgusting and
terrible disease (_morbus pedicularis_), described with great minuteness
by Eusebius and Lactantius. 'His body,' says Gibbon, 'swelled by an
intemperate course of life to an unwieldy corpulence, was covered with
ulcers and devoured by innumerable swarms of those insects which have
given their name to a most loathsome disease.' Diocletian had withdrawn
from the throne in 305, and in 313 put an end to his imbittered life by
suicide. In his retirement he found more pleasure in raising cabbage
than he had found in ruling the empire; a confession we may readily
believe. (President Lincoln, of the United States, during the dark days
of the civil war, in December, 1862, declared that he would gladly
exchange his position with any common soldier in the tented field.)
Maximin, who kept up the persecution in the East, even after the
toleration edict, as long as he could, died likewise a violent death by
poison, in 313. In this tragical end of their last three imperial
persecutors the Christians saw a palpable judgment of God. The edict of
toleration was an involuntary and irresistible concession of the
incurable impotence of heathenism and the indestructible power of
Christianity. It left but a step to the downfall of the one and the
supremacy of the other in the empire of the Cæsars.

This great epoch is marked by the reign of Constantine I. He understood
the signs of the time, and acted accordingly. He was the man for the
times, as the times were prepared for him by that Providence which
controls both and fits them for each other. He placed himself at the
head of true progress, while his nephew, Julian the Apostate, opposed
it, and was left behind. He was the chief instrument for raising the
church from the low estate of oppression and persecution to
well-deserved honor and power. For this service a thankful posterity has
given him the surname of the Great, to which he was entitled, though not
by his moral character, yet doubtless by his military and administrative
ability, his judicious policy, his appreciation and protection of
Christianity, and the far-reaching consequences of his reign. His
greatness was not indeed of the first, but of the second order, and is
to be measured more by what he _did_ than by what he _was_. To the Greek
Church, which honors him even as a canonized saint, he has the same
significance as Charlemagne to the Latin.

Constantine, the first Christian Cæsar, the founder of Constantinople
and the Byzantine empire, and one of the most gifted, energetic, and
successful of the Roman emperors, was the first representative of the
imposing idea of a Christian theocracy, or of that system of policy
which assumes all subjects to be Christians, connects civil and
religious rights, and regards church and state as the two arms of one
and the same divine government on earth. This was more fully developed
by his successors, it animated the whole Middle Age, and is yet working
under various forms in these latest times; though it has never been
fully realized, whether in the Byzantine, the German, or the Russian
empire, the Roman church-state, the Calvinistic republic of Geneva, or
the early Puritanic colonies of New England. At the same time, however,
Constantine stands also as the type of an undiscriminating and harmful
conjunction of Christianity with politics, of the holy symbol of peace
with the horrors of war, of the spiritual interests of the kingdom of
heaven with the earthly interests of the state.

In judging of this remarkable man and his reign, we must by all means
keep to the great historical principle, that all representative
characters act consciously or unconsciously as the free and responsible
organs of the spirit of their age, which moulds them first before they
can mould it in turn, and that the spirit of the age itself, whether
good or bad or mixed, is but an instrument in the hands of Divine
Providence, which rules and overrules all the actions and motives of
men.

Through a history of three centuries Christianity had already overcome
the world, and thus rendered such an outward revolution, as has attached
itself to the name of this prince, both possible and unavoidable. It
were extremely superficial to refer so thorough and momentous a change
to the personal motives of an individual, be they motives of policy, of
piety, or of superstition. But unquestionably every age produces and
shapes its own organs, as its own purposes require. So in the case of
Constantine. He was distinguished by that genuine political wisdom,
which, putting itself at the head of the age, clearly saw that idolatry
had outlived itself in the Roman empire, and that Christianity alone
could breathe new vigor into it and furnish its moral support.
Especially on the point of the external catholic unity, his monarchical
politics accorded with the hierarchical episcopacy of the church. Hence
from the year 313 he placed himself in close connection with the
bishops, made peace and harmony his first object in the Donatist and
Arian controversies, and gave the predicate 'catholic' to the church in
all official documents. And as his predecessors were supreme pontiffs of
the heathen religion of the empire, so he desired to be looked upon as a
sort of bishop, as universal bishop of the eternal affairs of the
church. All this by no means from mere self-interest, but for the good
of the empire, which, now shaken to its foundations and threatened by
barbarians on every side, could only by some new bond of unity be
consolidated and upheld until at least the seeds of Christianity and
civilization should be planted among the barbarians themselves, the
representatives of the future. His personal policy thus coincided with
the interests of the state. Christianity appeared to him, as it proved
in fact, the only efficient power for a political reformation of the
empire, from which the ancient spirit of Rome was fast departing, while
internal civil and religious dissensions and the outward pressure of the
barbarians threatened a gradual dissolution of society.

But with the political he united also a religious motive, not clear and
deep, indeed, yet honest, and strongly infused with the superstitious
disposition to judge of a religion by its outward success, and to
ascribe a magical virtue to signs and ceremonies. His whole family was
swayed by religious sentiment, which manifested itself in very different
forms, in the devout pilgrimages of his Helena, the fanatical Arianism
of Constantia and Constantius, and the fanatical paganism of Julian.
Constantine adopted Christianity first as a superstition, and put it by
the side of his heathen superstition, till finally in his conviction the
Christian vanquished the pagan, though without itself developing into a
pure and enlightened faith.

At first Constantine, like his father, in the spirit of the Neo-Platonic
syncretism of dying heathendom, reverenced all the gods as mysterious
powers; especially Apollo, the god of the sun, to whom in the year 308
he presented munificent gifts. Nay, so late as the year 321 he enjoined
regular consultation of the soothsayers in public misfortunes, according
to ancient heathen usage; even later, he placed his new residence,
Byzantium, under the protection of the God of the Martyrs and the
heathen goddess of Fortune; and down to the end of his life he retained
the title and the dignity of a _Pontifex Maximus_, or high priest of the
heathen hierarchy. His coins bore on the one side the letters of the
name of Christ, on the other the figure of the sun-god, and the
inscription _Sol invictus_. Of course these inconsistencies may be
referred also to policy and accommodation to the toleration edict of
313. Nor is it difficult to adduce parallels of persons who in passing
from Judaism to Christianity, or from Romanism to Protestantism, have
honestly so wavered between their old and their new position, that they
might be claimed by both. With his every victory over his pagan rivals,
Galerius, Maxentius, and Licinius, his personal leaning to Christianity
and his confidence in the magic power of the sign of the cross
increased; yet he did not formally renounce heathenism, and did not
receive baptism until, in 337, he was laid upon the bed of death.

He had an imposing and winning person, and was compared by flatterers
with Apollo. He was tall, broad shouldered, handsome, and of a
remarkably vigorous and healthy constitution, but given to excessive
vanity in his dress and outward demeanor, always wearing an oriental
diadem, a helmet studded with jewels, and a purple mantle of silk richly
embroidered with pearls and flowers worked in gold. His mind was not
highly cultivated, but naturally clear, strong, and shrewd, and seldom
thrown off its guard. He is said to have combined a cynical contempt of
mankind with an inordinate love of praise. He possessed a good knowledge
of human nature and administrative energy and tact.

His moral character was not without noble traits, among which a chastity
rare for the time, and a liberality and beneficence bordering on
wastefulness were prominent. Many of his laws and regulations breathed
the spirit of Christian justice and humanity, promoted the elevation of
the female sex, improved the condition of slaves and of unfortunates,
and gave free play to the efficiency of the church throughout the whole
empire. Altogether he was one of the best, the most fortunate, and the
most influential of the Roman emperors, Christian and pagan.

Yet he had great faults. He was far from being so pure and so venerable
as Eusebius, blinded by his favor to the church, depicts him, in his
bombastic and almost dishonestly eulogistic biography, with the evident
intention of setting him up as a model for all future Christian princes.
It must, with all regret, be conceded, that his progress in the
knowledge of Christianity was not a progress in the practice of its
virtues. His love of display and his prodigality, his suspiciousness and
his despotism, increased with his power.

The very brightest period of his reign is stained with gross crimes,
which even the spirit of the age and the policy of an absolute monarch
cannot excuse. After having reached, upon the bloody path of war, the
goal of his ambition, the sole possession of the empire, yea, in the
very year in which he summoned the great council of Nicæa, he ordered
the execution of his conquered rival and brother-in-law, Licinius, in
breach of a solemn promise of mercy (324). Not satisfied with this, he
caused soon afterward, from political suspicion, the death of the young
Licinius, his nephew, a boy of hardly eleven years. But the worst of all
is the murder of his eldest son, Crispus, in 326, who had incurred
suspicion of political conspiracy, and of adulterous and incestuous
purposes toward his stepmother Fausta, but is generally regarded as
innocent. This domestic and political tragedy emerged from a vortex of
mutual suspicion and rivalry, and calls to mind the conduct of Philip
II. toward Don Carlos, of Peter the Great toward his son Alexis, and of
Soliman the Great toward his son Mustapha. Later authors assert, though
gratuitously, that the emperor, like David, bitterly repented of this
sin. He has been frequently charged besides, though it would seem
altogether unjustly, with the death of his second wife Fausta (326?),
who, after twenty years of happy wedlock, is said to have been convicted
of slandering her stepson Crispus, and of adultery with a slave or one
of the imperial guards, and then to have been suffocated in the vapor of
an overheated bath. But the accounts of the cause and manner of her
death are so late and discordant as to make Constantine's part in it at
least very doubtful.

At all events Christianity did not produce in Constantine a thorough
moral transformation. He was concerned more to advance the outward
social position of the Christian religion, than to further its inward
mission. He was praised and censured in turn by the Christians and
pagans, the orthodox and the Arians, as they successively experienced
his favor or dislike. He bears some resemblance to Peter the Great, both
in his public acts and his private character, by combining great virtues
and merits with monstrous crimes, and he probably died with the same
consolation as Peter, whose last words were: 'I trust that in respect of
the good I have striven to do my people (the church), God will pardon my
sins.' It is quite characteristic of his piety that he turned the sacred
nails of the Saviour's cross, which Helena brought from Jerusalem, the
one into the bit of his war horse, the other into an ornament of his
helmet. Not a decided, pure, and consistent character, he stands on the
line of transition between two ages and two religions; and his life
bears plain marks of both. When at last on his deathbed he submitted to
baptism, with the remark, 'Now let us cast away all _duplicity_,' he
honestly admitted the conflict of two antagonistic principles which
swayed his private character and public life.

From these general remarks we turn to the leading features of
Constantine's life and reign, so far as they bear upon the history of
the church. We shall consider in order his youth and training, the
vision of the cross, the edict of toleration, his legislation in favor
of Christianity, his baptism and death.

Constantine, son of the co-emperor Constantius Chlorus, who reigned over
Gaul, Spain, and Britain till his death in 306, was born probably in the
year 272, either in Britain or at Naissus (now called Nissa), a town of
Dardania, in Illyricum. His mother was Helena, daughter of an innkeeper,
the first wife of Constantius, afterward divorced, when Constantius, for
political reasons, married a daughter of Maximian. She is described by
Christian writers as a discreet and devout woman, and has been honored
with a place in the catalogue of saints. Her name is identified with the
discovery of the cross and the pious superstitions of the holy places.
She lived to a very advanced age, and died in the year 326 or 327, in or
near the city of Rome. Rising by her beauty and good fortune from
obscurity to the splendor of the court, then meeting the fate of
Josephine, but restored to imperial dignity by her son, and ending as a
saint of the Catholic church: Helena would form an interesting subject
for a historical novel illustrating the leading events of the Nicene age
and the triumph of Christianity in the Roman empire.

Constantine first distinguished himself in the service of Diocletian in
the Egyptian and Persian wars; went afterward to Gaul and Britain, and
in the Prætorium at York was proclaimed emperor by his dying father and
by the Roman troops. His father before him held a favorable opinion of
the Christians as peaceable and honorable citizens, and protected them
in the West during the Diocletian persecution in the East. This
respectful, tolerant regard descended to Constantine, and the good
effects of it, compared with the evil results of the opposite course of
his antagonist Galerius, could but encourage him to pursue it. He
reasoned, as Eusebius reports from his own mouth, in the following
manner: 'My father revered the Christian God, and uniformly prospered,
while the emperors who worshipped the heathen gods, died a miserable
death; therefore, that I may enjoy a happy life and reign, I will
imitate the example of my father and join myself to the cause of the
Christians, who are growing daily, while the heathen are diminishing.'
This low utilitarian consideration weighed heavily in the mind of an
ambitious captain, who looked forward to the highest seat of power
within the gift of his age. Whether his mother, whom he always revered,
and who made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in her eightieth year (A. D.
325), planted the germ of the Christian faith in her son, as Theodoret
supposes, or herself became a Christian through his influence, as
Eusebius asserts, must remain undecided. According to the heathen
Zosimus, whose statement is unquestionably false and malicious, an
Egyptian, who came out of Spain (probably the bishop Hosius of Cordova,
a native of Egypt, is intended), persuaded him, after the murder of
Crispus (which did not occur before 326), that by converting to
Christianity he might obtain forgiveness of his sins.

The first public evidence of a positive leaning toward the Christian
religion he gave in his contest with the pagan Maxentius, who had
usurped the government of Italy and Africa, and is universally
represented as a cruel, dissolute tyrant, hated by heathens and
Christians alike. Called by the Roman people to their aid, Constantine
marched from Gaul across the Alps with an army of ninety-eight thousand
soldiers of every nationality, and defeated Maxentius in three battles;
the last in October, 312, at the Milvian bridge, near Rome, where
Maxentius found a disgraceful death in the waters of the Tiber.

Here belongs the familiar story of the miraculous cross. The precise day
and place cannot be fixed, but the event must have occurred shortly
before the final victory over Maxentius in the neighborhood of Rome. As
this vision is one of the most noted miracles in church history, and has
a representative significance, it deserves a closer examination. It
marks for us on the one hand the victory of Christianity over paganism
in the Roman empire, and on the other the ominous admixture of foreign,
political, and military interests with it. We need not be surprised that
in the Nicene age so great a revolution and transition should have been
clothed with a supernatural character.

The occurrence is variously described, and is not without serious
difficulties. Lactantius, the earliest witness, some three years after
the battle, speaks only of a dream by night, in which the emperor was
directed (it is not stated by whom, whether by Christ, or by an angel)
to stamp on the shields of his soldiers 'the heavenly sign of God,' that
is, the cross with the name of Christ, and thus to go forth against his
enemy. Eusebius, on the contrary, gives a more minute account, on the
authority of a subsequent private communication of the aged Constantine
himself under oath--not, however, till the year 338, a year after the
death of the emperor, his only witness, and twenty-six years after the
event. On his march from Gaul to Italy (the spot and date are not
specified), the emperor, while earnestly praying to the true God for
light and help at this critical time, saw, together with his army, in
clear daylight toward evening, a shining cross in the heavens above the
sun, with the inscription: '_By this conquer;_' and in the following
night Christ himself appeared to him while he slept, and directed him to
have a standard prepared in the form of this sign of the cross, and with
that to proceed against Maxentius and all other enemies. This account of
Eusebius, or rather of Constantine himself, adds to the night dream of
Lactantius the preceding vision of the day, and the direction concerning
the standard, while Lactantius speaks of the inscription of the initial
letters of Christ's name on the shields of the soldiers. According to
Rufinus, a later historian, who elsewhere depends entirely on Eusebius,
and can therefore not be regarded as a proper witness in the case, the
sign of the cross appeared to Constantine in a dream (which agrees with
the account of Lactantius), and upon his awaking in terror, an angel
(not Christ) exclaimed to him: '_Hoc vince._' Lactantius, Eusebius, and
Rufinus are the only Christian writers of the fourth century, who
mention the apparition. But we have besides one or two heathen
testimonies, which, though vague and obscure, still serve to strengthen
the evidence in favor of some actual occurrence. The contemporaneous
orator Nazarius, in a panegyric upon the emperor, pronounced March 1,
321, apparently at Rome, speaks of an army of divine warriors and a
divine assistance which Constantine received in the engagement with
Maxentius; but he converts it to the service of heathenism by recurring
to old prodigies, such as the appearance of Castor and Pollux.

This famous tradition may be explained either as a real miracle implying
a personal appearance of Christ, or as a pious fraud, or as a natural
phenomenon in the clouds and an optical illusion, or finally as a
prophetic dream.

The propriety of a miracle, parallel to the signs in heaven which
preceded the destruction of Jerusalem, might be justified by the
significance of the victory as marking a great epoch in history, namely,
the downfall of paganism and the establishment of Christianity in the
empire. But even if we waive the purely critical objections to the
Eusebian narrative, the assumed connection, in this case, of the gentle
Prince of peace with the god of battle, and the subserviency of the
sacred symbol of redemption to military ambition, is repugnant to the
genius of the gospel and to sound Christian feeling, unless we stretch
the theory of divine accommodation to the spirit of the age and the
passions and interests of individuals beyond the ordinary limits. We
should suppose, moreover, that Christ, if he had really appeared to
Constantine either in person (according to Eusebius) or through angels
(as Rufinus and Sozomen modify it), would have exhorted him to repent
and be baptized rather than to construct a military ensign for a bloody
battle. In no case can we ascribe to this occurrence, with Eusebius,
Theodoret, and older writers, the character of a sudden and genuine
conversion, as to Paul's vision of Christ on the way to Damascus; for,
on the one hand, Constantine was never hostile to Christianity, but most
probably friendly to it from his early youth, according to the example
of his father, and, on the other, he put off his baptism quite five and
twenty years, almost to the hour of his death.

The opposite hypothesis of a mere military stratagem or intentional
fraud is still more objectionable, and would compel us either to impute
to the first Christian emperor, at a venerable age, the double crime of
falsehood and perjury, or, if Eusebius invented the story, to deny to
the 'father of church history' all claim to credibility and common
respectability. Besides, it should be remembered that the older
testimony of Lactantius, or whoever was the author of the work on the
Deaths of Persecutors, is quite independent of that of Eusebius, and
derives additional force from the vague heathen rumors of the time.
Finally the _Hoc vince_, which has passed into proverbial significance
as a most appropriate motto of the invincible religion of the cross, is
too good to be traced to sheer falsehood. Some actual fact, therefore,
must be supposed to underlie the tradition, and the question only is
this, whether it was an external, viable phenomenon or an internal
experience.

The hypothesis of a natural formation of the clouds, which Constantine
by an optical illusion mistook for a supernatural sign of the cross,
besides smacking of the exploded rationalistic explanation of the New
Testament miracles, and deriving an important event from a mere
accident, leaves the figure of Christ and the Greek or Latin
inscription, '_By this sign thou shalt conquer!_' altogether
unexplained.

We are shut up, therefore, to the theory of a dream or vision, and an
experience within the mind of Constantine. This is supported by the
oldest testimony of Lactantius, as well as by the report of Rufinus and
Sozomen, and we do not hesitate to regard the Eusebian cross in the
skies as originally a part of the dream, which only subsequently assumed
the character of an outward objective apparition, either in the
imagination of Constantine or by a mistake of the memory of the
historian, but in either case without intentional fraud. That the vision
was traced to supernatural origin, especially after the happy success,
is quite natural and in perfect keeping with the prevailing ideas of the
age. Tertullian and other ante-Nicene and Nicene fathers attributed many
conversions to nocturnal dreams and visions. Constantine and his friends
referred the most important facts of his life, as the knowledge of the
approach of hostile armies, the discovery of the holy sepulchre, the
founding of Constantinople, to divine revelation through visions and
dreams. Nor are we disposed in the least to deny the connection of the
vision of the cross with the agency of Divine Providence, which
controlled this remarkable turning point of history. We may go farther
and admit a special providence, or what the old divines call a
_providentia specialissima_; but this does not necessarily imply a
violation of the order of nature or an actual miracle in the shape of an
objective personal appearance of the Saviour. We may refer to a somewhat
similar, though far less important, vision in the life of the pious
English Colonel James Gardiner. The Bible itself sanctions the general
theory of providential or prophetic dreams and nocturnal visions through
which divine revelations and admonitions are communicated to men.

The facts, therefore, may have been these: Before the battle,
Constantine, leaning already toward Christianity as probably the beat
and most hopeful of the various religions, seriously sought in prayer,
as he related to Eusebius, the assistance of the God of the Christians,
while his heathen antagonist, Maxentius, according to Zosimus, was
consulting the sibylline books and offering sacrifice to the idols.
Filled with mingled fears and hopes about the issue of the conflict, he
fell asleep, and saw in a dream the sign of the cross of Christ with a
significant inscription and promise of victory. Being already familiar
with the general use of this sign among the numerous Christians of the
empire, many of whom no doubt were in his own army, he constructed the
_labarum_,[A] afterward so called, that is, the sacred standard of the
Christian cross with the Greek monogram of Christ,[B] which he had also
put upon the shields of the soldiers. To this cross-standard, which now
took the place of the Roman eagles, he attributed the decisive victory
over the heathen Maxentius.

Accordingly, after his triumphal entrance into Rome, he had his statue
erected upon the forum with the labarum in his right hand, and the
inscription beneath: 'By this saving sign, the true token of bravery, I
have delivered your city from the yoke of the tyrant.' Three years
afterward the senate erected to him a triumphal arch of marble, which to
this day, within sight of the sublime ruins of the pagan Colosseum,
indicates at once the decay of ancient art and the downfall of
heathenism; as the neighboring arch of Titus commemorates the downfall
of Judaism and the destruction of the temple. The inscription on this
arch of Constantine, however, ascribes his victory over the hated
tyrant, not only to his master mind, but indefinitely also to the
impulse of Deity; by which a Christian would naturally understand the
true God, while a heathen, like the orator Nazarius, in his eulogy on
Constantine, might take it for the celestial guardian power of the _urbs
æterna_.

At all events the victory of Constantine over Maxentius was a military
and political victory of Christianity over heathenism; the intellectual
and moral victory having been already accomplished by the literature and
life of the church in the preceding period. The emblem of ignominy and
oppression[C] became thenceforward the badge of honor and dominion, and
was invested in the emperor's view, according to the spirit of the
church of his day, with a magic virtue. It now took the place of the
eagle and other field badges, under which the heathen Romans had
conquered the world. It was stamped on the imperial coin, and on the
standards, helmets, and shields of the soldiers. Above all military
representations of the cross the original imperial labarum shone in the
richest decorations of gold and gems; was intrusted to the truest and
bravest fifty of the body guard; filled the Christians with the spirit
of victory, and spread fear and terror among their enemies; until, under
the weak successors of Theodosius II., it fell out of use, and was
lodged as a venerable relic in the imperial palace at Constantinople.

Before this victory at Rome (which occurred October 27, 312), either in
the spring or summer of 312, Constantine, in conjunction with his
Eastern colleague, Licinius, had published an edict of religious
toleration, now not extant, but probably a step beyond the edict of the
still anti-Christian Galerius in 311, which was likewise subscribed by
Constantine and Licinius as co-regents. Soon after, in January, 313, the
two emperors issued from Milan a new edict (the third) on religion,
still extant both in Latin and Greek, in which, in the spirit of
religious eclecticism, they granted full freedom to all existing forms
of worship, with special reference to the Christian. This religion the
edict not only recognized in its existing limits, but also--what neither
the first nor perhaps the second edict had done--allowed every heathen
subject to adopt it with impunity. At the same time the church buildings
and property confiscated in the Diocletian persecution were ordered to
be restored, and private property-owners to be indemnified from the
imperial treasury.

In this notable edict, however, we should look in vain for the modern
Protestant and Anglo-American theory of religious liberty as one of the
universal and inalienable rights of man. Sundry voices, it is true, in
the Christian church itself, at that time and even before, declared
firmly against all compulsion in religion. But the spirit of the Roman
empire was too absolutistic to abandon the prerogative of a supervision
of public worship. The Constantinian toleration was a temporary measure
of state policy, which, as indeed the edict expressly states the motive,
promised the greatest security to the public peace and the protection of
all divine and heavenly powers, for emperor and empire. It was, as the
result teaches, but the necessary transition step to a new order of
things. It opened the door to the elevation of Christianity, and
specifically of Catholic hierarchical Christianity, with its
exclusiveness toward heretical and schismatic sects, to be the religion
of the state. For, once put on an equal footing with heathenism, it must
soon, in spite of numerical minority, bear away the victory from a
religion which had already inwardly outlived itself.

From this time Constantine decidedly favored the church, though without
persecuting or forbidding the pagan religions. He always mentions the
Christian church with reverence in his imperial edicts, and uniformly
applies to it, as we have already observed, the predicate of catholic.
For only as a catholic, thoroughly organized, firmly compacted, and
conservative institution did it meet his rigid monarchical interest, and
afford the splendid state and court dress he wished for his empire. So
early as the year 313 we find the bishop Hosius of Cordova among his
counsellors, and heathen writers ascribe to the bishop even a magical
influence over the emperor. Lactantius, also, and Eusebius of Cæsarea
belonged to his confidential circle. He exempted the Christian clergy
from military and municipal duty (March, 313); abolished various customs
and ordinances offensive to the Christians (315); facilitated the
emancipation of Christian slaves (before 316); legalized bequests to
catholic churches (321); enjoined the civil observance of Sunday, though
not as _dies Domini_, but as _dies Solis_, in conformity to his worship
of Apollo, and in company with an ordinance for the regular consulting
of the haruspex (321); contributed liberally to the building of churches
and the support of the clergy; erased the heathen symbols of Jupiter and
Apollo, Mars and Hercules from the imperial coins (323); and gave his
sons a Christian education. This mighty example was followed, as might
be expected, by a general transition of those subjects who were more
influenced in their conduct by outward circumstances than by inward
conviction and principle. The story, that in one year (324) twelve
thousand men, with women and children in proportion, were baptized in
Rome, and that the emperor had promised to each convert a white garment
and twenty pieces of gold, is at least in accordance with the spirit of
that reign, though the fact itself, in all probability, is greatly
exaggerated.

Constantine came out with still greater decision, when, by his victory
over his Eastern colleague and brother-in-law, Licinius, he became sole
head of the whole Roman empire. To strengthen his position, Licinius had
gradually placed himself at the head of the heathen party, still very
numerous, and had vexed the Christians first with wanton ridicule, then
with exclusion from civil and military office, with banishment, and in
some instances perhaps even with bloody persecution. This gave the
political strife for the monarchy between himself and Constantine the
character also of a war of religions; and the defeat of Licinius in the
battle of Adrianople, in July, 321, and at Chalcedon, in September, was
a new triumph of the standard of the cross over the sacrifices of the
gods; save that Constantine dishonored himself and his cause by the
execution of Licinius and his son.

The emperor now issued a general exhortation to his subjects to embrace
the Christian religion, still leaving them, however, to their own free
conviction. In the year 325, as patron of the church, he summoned the
council of Nice, and himself attended it; banished the Arians, though he
afterward recalled them; and, in his monarchical spirit of uniformity,
showed great zeal for the settlement of all theological disputes, while
he was blind to their deep significance. He first introduced the
practice of subscription to the articles of a written creed and of the
infliction of civil punishments for non-conformity. In the years
325-329, in connection with his mother, Helena, he erected magnificent
churches on the sacred spots in Jerusalem.

As heathenism had still the preponderance in Rome, where it was hallowed
by its great traditions, Constantine, by divine command as he supposed,
in the year 330, transferred the seat of his government to Byzantium,
and thus fixed the policy, already initiated by Domitian, or
orientalizing and dividing the empire. In the selection of the
unrivalled locality he showed more taste and genius than the founders of
Madrid, Vienna, Berlin, St. Petersburg, or Washington. With incredible
rapidity, and by all the means within reach of an absolute monarch, he
turned this nobly situated town, connecting two seas and two continents,
into a splendid residence and a new Christian Rome, 'for which now,' as
Gregory of Nazianzen expresses it, 'sea and land emulate each other, to
load it with their treasures, and crown it queen of cities.' Here,
instead of idol temples and altars, churches and crucifixes rose; though
among them the statues of patron deities from all over Greece, mutilated
by all sorts of tasteless adaptations, were also gathered in the new
metropolis. The main hall in the palace was adorned with representations
of the crucifixion and other Biblical scenes. The gladiatorial shows, so
popular in Rome, were forbidden here, though theatres, amphitheatres,
and hippodromes kept their place. It could nowhere be mistaken, that the
new imperial residence was, as to all outward appearance, a Christian
city. The smoke of heathen sacrifices never rose from the seven hills of
New Rome, except during the short reign of Julian the Apostate. It
became the residence of a bishop, who not only claimed the authority of
the apostolic see of neighboring Ephesus, but soon outshone the
patriarchate of Alexandria, and rivalled for centuries the papal power
in ancient Rome.

The emperor diligently attended divine worship, and is portrayed upon
medals in the posture of prayer. He kept the Easter vigils with great
devotion. He would stand during the longest sermons of his bishops, who
always surrounded him, and unfortunately flattered him only too much.
And he even himself composed and delivered discourses to his court, in
the Latin language, from which they were translated into Greek by
interpreters appointed for the purpose. General invitations were issued,
and the citizens flocked in great crowds to the palace to hear the
imperial preacher, who would in vain try to prevent their loud applause
by pointing to heaven as the source of his wisdom. He dwelt mainly on
the truth of Christianity, the folly of idolatry, the unity and
providence of God, the coming of Christ, and the judgment. At times he
would severely rebuke the avarice and rapacity of his courtiers, who
would loudly applaud him with their mouths and belie his exhortations by
their works. One of these productions is still extant, in which he
recommends Christianity in a characteristic strain, and in proof of its
divine origin cites especially the fulfilment of prophecy, including the
sibylline books and the Fourth Eclogue of Virgil, with the contrast
between his own happy and brilliant reign and the tragical fate of his
persecuting predecessors and colleagues.

Nevertheless he continued in his later years true, upon the whole, to
the toleration principles of the edict of 313, protected the pagan
priests and temples in their privileges, and wisely abstained from all
violent measures against heathenism, in the persuasion that it would in
time die out. He retained many heathens at court and in public office,
although he loved to promote Christians to honorable positions. In
several cases, however, he prohibited idolatry, where it sanctioned
scandalous immorality, as in the obscene worship of Venus in Phenicia;
or in places which were especially sacred to the Christians, as the
sepulchre of Christ and the grove of Mamre; and he caused a number of
deserted temples and images to be destroyed or turned into Christian
churches. Eusebius relates several such instances with evident
approbation, and praises also his later edicts against various heretics
and schismatics, but without mentioning the Arians. In his later years
he seems, indeed, to have issued a general prohibition of idolatrous
sacrifice; Eusebius speaks of it, and his sons in 341 refer to an edict
to that effect; but the repetition of it by his successors proves that,
if issued, it was not carried into general execution under his reign.

With this shrewd, cautious, and moderate policy of Constantine, which
contrasts well with the violent fanaticism of his sons, accords the
postponement of his own baptism to his last sickness. For this he had
the further motives of a superstitious desire, which he himself
expresses, to be baptized in the Jordan, whose waters had been
sanctified by the Saviour's baptism, and no doubt also a fear that he
might by relapse forfeit the sacramental remission of sins. He wished to
secure all the benefit of baptism as a complete expiation of past sins,
with as little risk as possible, and thus to make the best of both
worlds. Deathbed baptisms then were to half Christians of that age what
deathbed conversions and deathbed communions are now. But he presumed to
preach the gospel, he called himself the bishop of bishops, he convened
the first general council, and made Christianity the religion of the
empire, long before his baptism! Strange as this inconsistency appears
to us, what shall we think of the court bishops who, from false
prudence, relaxed in his favor the otherwise strict discipline of the
church, and admitted him, at least tacitly, to the enjoyment of nearly
all the privileges of believers, before he had taken upon himself even a
single obligation of a catechumen?

When, after a life of almost uninterrupted health, he felt the approach
of death, he was received into the number of catechumens by laying on of
hands, and then formally admitted by baptism into the full communion of
the church in the year 337, the sixty-fifth year of his age, by the
Arian (or properly Semi-Arian) bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia, whom he had
shortly before recalled from exile together with Arius! His dying
testimony then was, as to form, in favor of heretical rather than
orthodox Christianity, but merely from accident, not from intention. He
meant the Christian as against the heathen religion, and whatever of
Arianism may have polluted his baptism, was for the Greek Church fully
neutralized by the orthodox canonization. After the solemn ceremony, he
promised to live thenceforth worthily of a disciple of Jesus; refused to
wear again the imperial mantle of cunningly woven silk, richly
ornamented with gold; retained the white baptismal robe; and died a few
days after, on Pentecost, May 32, 337, trusting in the mercy of God, and
leaving a long, a fortunate, and a brilliant reign, such as none but
Augustus, of all his predecessors, had enjoyed. 'So passed away the
first Christian emperor, the first defender of the faith, the first
imperial patron of the papal see, and of the whole Eastern Church, the
first founder of the holy places, pagan and Christian, orthodox and
heretical, liberal and fanatical, not to be imitated or admired, but
much to be remembered, and deeply to be studied.'

His remains were removed in a golden coffin by a procession of
distinguished civilians and the whole army, from Nicomedia to
Constantinople, and deposited, with the highest Christian honors, in the
Church of the Apostles, while the Roman senate, after its ancient
custom, proudly ignoring the great religious revolution of the age,
enrolled him among the gods of the heathen Olympus. Soon after his
death, Eusebius set him above the greatest princes of all times; from
the fifth century he began to be recognized in the East as a saint; and
the Greek and Russian Church to this day celebrates his memory under the
extravagant title of _Isapostolos_, the 'Equal of the Apostles.' The
Latin Church, on the contrary, with truer tact, has never placed him
among the saints, but has been content with naming him 'the Great,' in
just and grateful remembrance of his services to the cause of
Christianity and civilization.

Constantine marks the beginning of the downfall of ancient and classical
paganism. Still it dragged out a sickly old age for about two hundred
years longer, until at last it died of incurable consumption, without
the hope of a resurrection.

The final dissolution of heathenism in the Eastern empire may be dated
from the middle of the fifth century. In the year 435, Theodosius II.
commanded the temples to be destroyed or turned into churches. There
still appear some heathens in civil office and at court so late as the
beginning of the reign of Justinian I. (527-567). But this despotic
emperor prohibited heathenism as a form of worship in the empire on pain
of death, and in 529 abolished the last intellectual seminary of it, the
philosophical school of Athens, which had stood nine hundred years. At
that time just seven philosophers were teaching in that school, the
shades of the ancient seven sages of Greece--a striking play of history,
like the name of the last West-Roman emperor, Romulus Augustus, or, in
contemptuous diminutive, Augustulus, combining the names of the founder
of the city and the founder of the empire.

In the West, heathenism maintained itself until near the middle of the
sixth century, and even later, partly as a private religious conviction
among many cultivated and aristocratic families in Rome, partly even in
the full form of worship in the remote provinces and on the mountains of
Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica, and partly in heathen customs and popular
usages, like the gladiatorial shows still extant in Rome in 404, and the
wanton Lupercalia, a sort of heathen carnival, the feast of Lupercus,
the god of herds, still celebrated with all its excesses in February,
495. But, in general, it may be said that the Græco-Roman heathenism, as
a system of worship, was buried under the ruins of the Western empire,
which sank under the storms of the great migration. It is remarkable
that the northern barbarians labored with the same zeal in the
destruction of idolatry as in the destruction of the empire, and really
promoted the victory of the Christian religion. The Gothic king Alaric,
on entering Rome, expressly ordered that the churches of the apostles
Peter and Paul should be spared, as inviolable sanctuaries; and he
showed a humanity, which Augustin justly attributes to the influence of
Christianity (even perverted Arian Christianity) on these barbarous
people. The Christian name, he says, which the heathens blaspheme, has
effected not the destruction, but the salvation of the city. Odoacer,
who put an end to the Western Roman empire in 476, was incited to his
expedition into Italy by St. Severin, and, though himself an Arian,
showed great regard to the catholic bishops. The same is true of his
conqueror and successor, Theodoric the Ostrogoth, who was recognized by
the East-Roman emperor Anastasius as king of Italy (A.D. 500), and was
likewise an Arian. Thus between the barbarians and the Romans, as
between the Romans and the Greeks, and in a measure also the Jews, the
conquered gave laws to the conquerors. Christianity triumphed over both.

This is the end of Græco-Roman heathenism, with its power, wisdom, and
beauty. It fell a victim to a slow but steady process of incurable
consumption. Its downfall is a sublime tragedy which, with all our
abhorrence of idolatry, we cannot witness without a certain sadness. At
the first appearance of Christianity it comprised all the wisdom,
literature, art, and political power of the civilized world, and led all
into the field against the weaponless religion of the crucified
Nazarene. After a conflict of four or five centuries it lay prostrate in
the dust without hope of resurrection. With the outward protection of
the state, it lost all power, and had not even the courage of martyrdom;
while the Christian church showed countless hosts of confessors and
blood-witnesses, and Judaism lives to-day in spite of all persecution.
The expectation that Christianity would fall about the year 398, after
an existence of three hundred and sixty-five years, turned out in the
fulfilment to relate to heathenism itself.

The last glimmer of life in the old religion was its pitiable prayer
for toleration and its lamentation over the ruin of the empire. Its best
elements took refuge in the church, and became converted, or at least
took Christian names. Now the gods were dethroned, oracles and prodigies
ceased, sibylline books were burned, temples were destroyed, or
transformed into churches, or still stand as memorials of the victory of
Christianity.

But although ancient Greece and Rome have fallen forever, the spirit of
Græco-Roman paganism is not extinct. It still lives in the natural heart
of man, which at this day as much as ever needs regeneration by the
spirit of God. It lives also in many idolatrous and superstitious usages
of the Greek and Roman Churches, against which the pure spirit of
Christianity has instinctively protested from the beginning, and will
protest, till all remains of gross and refined idolatry shall be
outwardly as well as inwardly overcome, and baptized and sanctified not
only with water, but also with the spirit and fire of the gospel.

Finally, the better genius of ancient Greece and Rome still lives in the
immortal productions of their poets, philosophers, historians, and
orators--yet no longer an enemy, but a friend and servant of Christ.
What is truly great and noble and beautiful can never perish. The
classic literature had prepared the way for the gospel, in the sphere of
natural culture, and was to be turned thenceforth into a weapon for its
defence. It passed, like the Old Testament, as a rightful inheritance,
into the possession of the Christian church, which saved those precious
works of genius through the ravages of the migration of nations and the
darkness of the Middle Ages, and used them as material in the rearing of
the temple of modern civilization. The word of the great apostle of the
Gentiles was here f

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