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The Catholic World, Vol. 11, April, 1870 to September, 1870

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Title: The Catholic World, Vol. 11, April, 1870 to September, 1870

Author: Various


        
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CATHOLIC WORLD, VOL. 11, APRIL, 1870 TO SEPTEMBER, 1870 ***

Transcriber's Note:

    ^ indicates superscript of the letter that follows.

    _Underscores_ indicate italicized text.

    This volume included the entire text of the Dogmatic Decree on
    Catholic Faith with its English translation. The Decree was not
    in the original contents list, but appeared—out of normal
    pagination—after the New Publications section at the end
    of the June 1870 issue.

    Remaining notes are at the end of the text.

       *       *       *       *       *




    THE
    CATHOLIC WORLD.

    A
    MONTHLY MAGAZINE
    OF
    GENERAL LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.

    VOL. XI.
    APRIL, 1870, TO SEPTEMBER, 1870.


    NEW YORK:
    THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION HOUSE,
    9 Warren Street.

    1870.


    S. W. GREEN,
    PRINTER,
    16 and 18 Jacob St., N. Y.




CONTENTS.


    Adam of Andreini, The, 602.

    Brigand's God-child, The, 52.
    Bridemaid's Story, A, 232.
    Books, Old, 260.
    Brittany; its People and its Poems, 390.
    Boys, Reformatories for, 696.
    Blanchard, Claude, Journal and Campaign of, 787.

    Council of the Vatican, The First Œcumenical, 115, 270, 412, 546,
        701, 838.
    Church and State, 145.
    Children, The Association for Befriending, 250.
    Catholicity and Pantheism, 377.
    Catholicity of the Nineteenth Century, The, 433.
    Copernicus, Nicolaus, 806.
    Church beyond the Rocky Mountains, The, 812.
    Church of Christ, Dogmatic Decree on, 848.

    Dion and the Sibyls, 15, 160, 306, 446, 623, 733.
    Development of Religious Belief, Gould's, 70.
    Dogmatic Decree on the Church of Christ, 848.

    Emerson's Prose Works, 202.
    England, Froude's History of, 289, 577.
    Education, Religion in, 782.
    Emigrant, The, 800.

    Fénelon, 613.

    Gould's Origin and Development of Religious Belief, 70.
    Gordian Knots, Untying, 77.
    Griffin, Gerald, 398, 667.
    Greenwood, In the, 589.
    Griffin, Gerald, The works of, 398, 667.
    Genius, Hereditary, 721.
    Girls, The Willian, 775.

    Havana, Holy Week in, 58, 212.

    Iron Mask, The, 87.
    Ireland's Mission, 193.
    Irish Farmers and Mr. Gladstone, 242.
    Irish Churches, The Ancient, 472.
    Invitation Heeded, The, 542.

    Literary Notes, Foreign, 130, 424, 714.
    Lothair, 537.
    Lourdes, Our Lady of, 752.

    Mary, Queen of Scots, 32, 221.
    Mechanics, Molecular, 54.
    "Moral Results of the Romish System," The _New Englander_ on the,
        106.
    Maundeville, Sir John, 175.
    Mary Stuart, 32, 221.
    Matter and Spirit in the Light of Modern Science, 642.

    _New Englander_, The, On the Moral Results of the Romish System,
        106.
    New England, Home Scenes in, 183.
    Nazareth, 653.

    Ochino, Fra Bernardino, 253.

    Pope and the Council, by Janus, 327, 520, 680.
    Pole, Cardinal, 346.
    Protestantism, Phases of English, 482.
    Paradise Lost of St. Avitus, The, 771.
    Plutarch, 826.

    Religious Liberty, 1.
    Rome, Ten Years in, 518.

    School Question, The, 91.
    Science, Matter and Spirit in the Light of Modern, 642.
    St. Francis, Miracle of, 834.

    Unbelief, The Superstition of, 691.
    Untying Gordian Knots, 77.

    Vatican Council, The, 115, 270, 546, 701, 838.
    Vermonters, The Young, 364, 509, 658.

    Wooden Shoe, The Little, 343.
    Wig, The Sagacious, 495.


POETRY.

    A May Carol, 174, 376.

    Exultent, Sion Filiæ, 241.

    Hymn of St. Paul's Christian Doctrine Society, 536.

    Lines, 397.
    Legend of the Infant Jesus, A, 480.

    Mary, 201.

    Our Lady's Nativity, 825.

    Prayer, The Unfinished, 411.
    Plange, Filia Sion, 76.

    Rainbow, To the, 115.
    Reading Homer, 666.

    Stabat Mater, 49.
    Sonnet, 193.

    Thorns, 220.


NEW PUBLICATIONS.

    Alger's End of the World, 136.
    Assent, Grammar of, 144, 283, 426.
    Arithmetics, Felter's, 575.
    Architecture, Wonders of, 700.

    Brownson's Conversations on Liberalism and the Church, 135.
    Borromeo, St. Charles, Life of, 430.
    Botany, Youman's First Book of, 431.
    Beech Bluff, 720.

    Catholic Church, Rhodes's Visible Unity of, 140.
    Charlestown Convent, The, 429.
    Cæsar's Commentaries, 572.
    Criminal Abortion, 574.
    Catholic Church, History of, 860.
    Clymer's Notes on the Nervous System, 859.

    Dickens, Dialogues from, 288.
    Day Sanctified, The, 572.
    Dall's Alaska, 719.

    Eclipse of 1869, Sands's Reports on, 142.
    Economy, Bowen's American Political, 571.
    Earth, Paradise of, 720.

    Ferryman of the Tiber, The, 144.
    Flemmings, The, Mrs. Dorsey's, 431.
    Fasciculus Rerum, 576.

    Geology and Revelation, Molloy's, 142.
    Grammar of Assent, Newman's, 144, 283, 426.
    Geographical Series, Guyot's, 286.
    Glass-Making, 288.
    Goodwin's Out of the Past, 860.

    Health and Good Living, Hall's, 143.
    Holy Influence, 432.
    Home Communion, Reflections and Prayers for, 572.
    Hawthorne's Note-Books, Passages from, 718.
    Hidden Saints, 718.

    Italian Art, Wonders of, 432.

    Liberalism and the Church, Brownson, 135.
    Lindsay's Evidence for the Papacy, 141.
    Lacordaire's Conferences, 574.
    Lifting the Veil, 718.

    Marcy's Life Duties, 139.
    Molloy's Geology and Revelation, 142.
    Medicine, Niemeyer's Book of, 143.
    Modern Europe, Shea's History of, 143.
    Missale Romanum, 432.
    Marriage, Evans's Treatise of the Christian Doctrine of, 573.
    Marion, 719.
    Meagher, Thomas F., Life of, 719.
    Miles's Loretto, 720.

    Nature, The Sublime in, 288.
    Natural History of Animals, Tenney's, 283.
    Noble Lady, A, 574.
    Noethen's History of the Catholic Church, 860.

    Papacy, Lindsay's Evidence for the, 141.
    Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Veith's Life Pictures of, 143.
    Paradise, Morris's Earthly, 144.
    Pilgrimages in the Pyrenees and Landes, 575.

    Rhodes's Visible Unity of the Catholic Church, 140.
    Ramière's De l'Unité dans l'Enseignement de la Philosophie, etc.,
        284.

    Sacrifice, the Double, 144.
    Statutes of the Second Synod of Albany, 287.
    Stanislas Kostka, Life of, 575.
    Stations of the Cross, Album of, 576.
    Sacred Heart, Devotion to, 720.

    The Sun, 288.

    Visible Unity of the Church, 140.
    Visitation, History of the Order of, 719.
    Vénard, Théophane, Life of, 858.

    Waldenses, Melia on the, 428.
    Wise Men, and who they were, Upham's, 431.




THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XI., No. 61.--APRIL, 1870.


RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.[1]

LAST ARTICLE.


In our third article on the Abbé Martin's exhaustive work on
the future of Protestantism and Catholicity, we disposed of the
pretension of Protestants that the Reformation created and has
sustained civil and political liberty in modern society. We proceed
in the present and concluding article to dispose, as far as we
can, of the pretension that it has founded and sustained religious
liberty, or the freedom of conscience.

No fact is more certain than that the Reformation has the credit
with non-Catholics, if not even with some half-instructed Catholics
themselves, of having originated religious liberty and vindicated
the freedom of the mind. Here as elsewhere the formula of the age,
or what claims to be enlightened in it, is, Protestantism and
freedom, or Catholicity and slavery; and it is to its _prestige_ of
having founded and sustained religious liberty that Protestantism
owes its chief ability in our times to carry on its war against the
church. Protestantism, like all false religions or systems, having
no foundation in truth and no vital energy of its own, lives and
prospers only by availing itself of the so-called spirit of the
age, or by appealing to the dominant public opinion of the time and
the place. In the sixteenth century, the age tended to the revival
of imperialism or cæsarism, and Protestantism favored monarchical
absolutism, and drew from it its life, its force, and its sustenance.

The spirit or dominant tendency of our age, dating from the middle of
the last century, has been and is the revival of the pagan republic,
or, as we call it, democratic cæsarism, which asserts for the people
as the state the supremacy which under imperialism is asserted for
the emperor. Protestantism lives and sustains itself now only by
appealing to and representing this tendency, as we may see in the
contemporary objections to the church, that she is "behind the age,"
"does not conform to the age," "is hostile to the spirit of the
age," "opposed to the spirit of the nineteenth century."

Every age, nation, or community understands by liberty, freedom to
follow unrestrained its own dominant tendency; we might say, its own
dominant passion. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, liberty
meant the freedom of temporal sovereigns to govern according to their
own good pleasure, unrestrained by the church, on the one hand, and
estates, diets, or parliaments, on the other. Liberty means now the
freedom of the people, unrestrained either by the rights of God or
the rights of princes, to govern as they or the demagogues, their
masters, judge proper. Hence, liberty, as the world understands it,
varies in its meaning from age to age, and from nation to nation,
and, indeed, from individual to individual. Whatever favors or is in
accordance with the dominant tendency or passion of an age, nation,
community, or individual, favors or is in accordance with liberty;
and whatever opposes or impedes it is opposed to liberty--is civil,
political, or spiritual despotism. Protestantism never resists, but
always follows, and encourages and echoes the dominant tendency of
the age or nation. The church, having a life and force derived from
a source independent of the age or nation, seeks not support in that
dominant passion or tendency, does not yield or conform to it, but
labors unceasingly and with all her energy to conform it to herself.
Hence, in the estimation of the world, Protestantism is always on the
side of liberty, and the church on the side of despotism and slavery.

The attempt to deny this, and to prove that the church favors
liberty in this sense, is perfectly idle; and to seek to modify her
position and action, so as to force her to accept and conform to the
dominant or popular tendency or passion of the age or nation, is to
mistake her essential character and office, and to forget that her
precise mission is to govern all men and nations, kings and peoples,
sovereigns and subjects, and to conform them to the invariable and
inflexible law of God, which she is appointed by God himself to
declare and apply, and therefore to resist with all her might every
passion or tendency of every age, nation, community, or individual,
whenever and wherever it deviates from that law of which she is the
guardian and judge. The church is instituted, as every Catholic who
understands his religion believes, to guard and defend the rights of
God on earth against any and every enemy, at all times and in all
places. She therefore does not and cannot accept, or in any degree
favor, liberty in the Protestant sense of liberty, and if liberty in
that sense be the true sense, the Protestant pretension cannot be
successfully denied.

But we have already seen that liberty in the Protestant sense is
no liberty at all, or a liberty that in the civil and political
order is identified with cæsarism--the absolutism of the prince in
a monarchy, the absolutism of the people or of the ruling majority
for the time in a democracy. This last might be inferred from the
ostracism practised in democratic Athens, and is asserted and
defended, or rather taken for granted, by almost the entire secular
press in democratic America. The most conservative politicians
among us recognize the justice of no restrictions on the will of
the people but such as are imposed by written constitutions, and
which a majority or three fourths of the voters may alter at will
and as they will. It is the boast of our popular orators and writers
that there are with us no restrictions on the absolute will of the
people but such as the people voluntarily impose on themselves,
which, as self-imposed, are simply no restrictions at all. It is
evident, then, if liberty means any thing, if there is any difference
between liberty and despotism, freedom and slavery, the Protestant
understanding of liberty is not the true one.

Nor is the Protestant understanding of _religious_ liberty a whit
more true. We have found that the basis or principle of all civil
and political liberty is religious liberty, or the freedom and
independence of religion--that is to say, the spiritual order;
but from the point of view of Protestantism there is no religion,
no spiritual order, to be free and independent. According to
Protestantism, religion is a function, not a substantive existence
or an objective reality. It is, as we have seen, on Protestant
principles, a function of the state, of the community, or of the
individual, and whatever liberty there may be in the case, must
be predicated of one or another of these, not of religion, or the
spiritual order. With Protestants the freedom and independence of
religion or the spiritual order would be an absurdity, for it is
precisely that which they began by protesting against. It is of the
very essence of Protestantism to deny and make unrelenting war on the
freedom and independence of religion, and the only liberty in the
case it can assert is the freedom of the state, the community, or the
individual from religion as law, and the right of one or another of
them to adopt or reject any religion or none at all as they choose,
which is irreligious or infidel, not religious liberty.

Protestantism, under its most favorable aspect, is not, even in the
estimation of Protestants themselves, religion, or a religion; but
the view of religion which the reformers took, or which men take
or may take of religion. At best it is not the objective truth or
reality, but a human doctrine or theory of it, which has no existence
out of the mind that forms or entertains it. Hence, Protestants
assert, as their cardinal doctrine, justification by faith alone; and
which faith is not the truth, but the mind's view of it. Hence, too,
they deny that the sacraments are efficacious _ex opere operato_,
and maintain that, if efficacious at all, they are so _ex opere
suscipientis_. They reject the Real Presence as a "fond imagination,"
and make every thing in religion depend on the subjective faith,
conviction, or persuasion of the recipient. The church they recognize
or assert is no living organism, no kingdom of God on earth, founded
to teach and govern all men and nations in all things pertaining to
eternal life or the spiritual end of man, but a simple association of
individuals, with no life or authority except what it derives from
the individuals associated, and which is not hers, but theirs.

Some Protestants go so far as to doubt or deny that there is any
truth or reality independent of the mind, and hold that man is
himself his own teacher and his own law-giver; but all concede,
nay, maintain, that what is known or is present to the mind is
never the reality, the truth, or the divine law itself, but the
mind's own representation of it. Hence their Protestantism is not
something fixed and invariable, the same in all times and places, but
varies as the mind of Protestants itself varies, or as their views,
convictions, or feelings change, and they change ever with the spirit
of the age or country. One of their gravest objections to the church
was, in the sixteenth century, that she had altered the faith; and
in the nineteenth century is, that she does not alter it, that she
remains inflexibly the same, and absolutely refuses to change her
faith to suit the times. They hold their own faith and doctrine
alterable at will, and are continually changing it. Evidently, then,
they do not hold it to be the truth; for truth never changes: nor to
be the law of God, which they are bound to obey; for if the law of
God is alterable at all, it can be so only by God himself, never by
man, any body of men, or any creature of God. There is no Protestant
ignorant or conceited enough to maintain the contrary.

This fact that Protestantism is a theory, a doctrine, or a view of
religion, not the objective reality itself, not the recognition and
assertion of the rights of God, but a human view or theory of them,
proves sufficiently that it is incompatible with the assertion of
_religious_ liberty. All it can do is to assert the right or liberty
of the state to adopt and ordain any view of religion it may take;
of the community to form and enforce its own views, convictions, or
opinions; or of the individual to make a religion to suit himself, or
to go without any religion at all, as he pleases. In none of these
cases is there any religious liberty; and in them all religion is
subjected to a purely human authority--the authority of the state,
of the community, or of the individual, one as human as another.
Protestantism is really in its very nature and essence an earnest and
solemn protest against religious liberty, and for it to assert the
freedom and independence of religion, or the spiritual order--that
is, of religion as law to which all men are bound to conform--would
be to commit suicide. Even the supremacy of the spiritual order,
which our old Puritans asserted, was only the assertion of the
authority of their interpretation of the written word against the
divine authority to interpret it claimed by the church, and against
the human authority of the civil magistrate claimed by Anglicanism,
from which they separated, while it subjected it to the congregation,
the brotherhood, or to the ministers and elders, no more spiritual
than the civil magistrate himself.

In the beginning Protestantism made religion in nearly all Protestant
nations a function of the state, as it is still in Great Britain,
Prussia, the several Protestant German states, in Norway, Denmark,
Sweden, Holland, and the Protestant cantons of Switzerland. The
progress of events, and the changes of opinion, have produced a
revolt among Protestant nations against this order, and Protestants
now make, or are struggling to make, it a function of the community
or the sect, and the more advanced party of them demand that it
be made a function of the individual. This advanced party do not
demand the freedom of religion, but the freedom of the individual
from all religious restraints, from all obligations of obedience to
any religious law, and indeed of any law at all, except the law he
imposes on himself. Dr. Bellows, of this city, a champion of this
party, proves that it is not the freedom of religion, nor the freedom
of the individual to be of any religion he chooses; for he denies
that he is free to be a Catholic, though he is free to be any thing
else. He tells Catholics they are only tolerated; and threatens them
with extermination by the sword, if they dare claim equal rights with
Protestants, and insist on having their proportion of the public
schools under their own control, or on not being taxed to support
schools to which they cannot with a good conscience send their
children.

Evidently, then, the pretension that the Reformation has founded
or favored religious liberty is as worthless as we have seen is
the pretension that it has founded or favored civil and political
liberty. It has, on the contrary, uniformly opposed it, and asserted
only the liberty of its contradiction. To assert the liberty of the
state, the people, or the individual to control religion, or to
assert the liberty of infidelity or no-religion, surely is not to
assert the liberty of religion. Protestantism yields always to the
spirit of the age, and asserts the right of that spirit to modify,
alter, or subject religion to itself. There can be no religious
liberty where religion must follow the spirit of the times, and
change as it changes. Religion, if any thing, is the supreme law
of conscience, and conscience is a mere name if obliged to obey
as its supreme law the dominant passion or tendency of the age or
nation. The freedom of conscience is not in the emancipation of
conscience from all law, for that were its destruction; but in its
being subjected to no law but the law of God, promulgated by divine
authority, and declared to the understanding by God himself, or a
court appointed, enlightened, and assisted by the Holy Spirit. Under
Protestantism there is and can be no freedom of conscience; for under
it conscience is either destroyed by being subjected to no law, or
enslaved by being subjected to another law than the law of God.

This conclusion, which we obtain by a simple analysis of
Protestantism, is confirmed by all the facts in the case. Every
student of the history of Protestantism knows that the reformers
never made the pretension now put forth in their name. No man was
ever farther from proposing the emancipation of the mind from what is
called spiritual thraldom than Martin Luther, and no man ever showed
less respect for human reason. His aim was to emancipate the church
from the authority of the pope; and in this laudable work he engaged
the princes of the empire, who were ready to assist him, because
in doing so they could also emancipate themselves, make themselves
pontiffs as well as princes, and enrich themselves with the spoils
of the church. But Luther substituted for the authority of the pope
and councils that of the written word, as amended and interpreted
by himself. He never recognized the so-called right of private
judgement, and never asserted the right of every man to interpret
the written word for himself. The Bible as interpreted by himself,
Martin Luther, was to be taken in all cases as the supreme and only
authority, and he would tolerate no dissent from his interpretation.
He assumed for himself more than papal authority; for he confessedly
assumed authority to alter the written word, which assuredly no pope
ever did. He never admitted any right of dissent from his dicta, and
wherever he could, he suppressed it by the strong arm of power.

John Calvin was not more tolerant, as the burning of Michael Servetus
over a slow fire made of green wood, and his pamphlet justifying
the burning of heretics, amply prove. Henry VIII. of England put
to death Catholics and Lollards, beheaded Cardinal Fisher and Sir
Thomas More, because they refused to take the oath of the royal
supremacy, except with the qualification, "as far as the law of
Christ permits." In Sweden, the peasants were entrapped into the
support of the Reformation by the infamous Gustavus Vasa, under
pretence of recovering and reëstablishing the national independence;
and after the prince had regained by their aid his throne and been
crowned king, were massacred by thousands because they wished still
to adhere to the Catholic Church, and resisted its abolition. In
Geneva, Protestantism gained a footing in much the same way.
Protestants came from Berne and other places to assist the citizens
in a political rebellion against their prince, who was also their
bishop, and afterward drove out the Catholics who could not be forced
to accept the Reformation.

We need not pursue the history of the establishment of Protestantism,
which is written in blood. Suffice it to say, that in no country was
the Reformation introduced but by the aid of the civil power, and in
no state in which it gained the mastery did it fail to be established
as the religion of the state, and to obtain the suppression by force
or civil pains and penalties of the old religion, and of all forms
even of Protestant dissent. The state religion was bound hand and
foot, and could move only by permission of the temporal sovereign,
and no other religion was tolerated. We all know the penal laws
against Catholics in England, Ireland, and Scotland, reënacted with
additional severity under William and Mary, almost in the eighteenth
century. James II., it is equally well known, lost the crown of his
three kingdoms by an edict of toleration, which, as it tolerated
Catholics, was denounced as an act of outrageous tyranny. The penal
laws against Catholics were adopted by the Episcopalian colony of
Virginia, and the Puritan colony of Massachusetts made it an offence
punishable with banishment from the colony for a citizen to harbor a
Catholic priest for a single night, or to give him a single meal of
victuals. It was only in 1788 that the Presbyterian Assembly of the
United States expunged from their confession of faith the article
which declares it the duty of the civil magistrate to extirpate
heretics and idolaters--an article still retained by their brethren
in Scotland, and by the United Presbyterians in this country.

Indeed, toleration is quite a recent discovery. Old John Cotton, the
first minister of Boston, took care to warn his hearers or readers
that he did not defend "that _devil's_ doctrine, toleration."
Toleration to a limited extent first began to be practised among
Protestants on the acquisition of provinces whose religion was
different from that of the state making the acquisition. The example
was followed of the pagan Romans, who tolerated the national religion
of every conquered, tributary, or allied nation, though they
tolerated no religion which was not national, and for three hundred
years martyred Christians because their religion was not national,
but Catholic. It is only since Voltaire and the Encyclopædists
preached toleration as the most effective weapon in their arsenal,
as they supposed, against Christianity, or the beginnings of the
French Revolution of 1789, that Protestants have taken up the strain,
professed toleration, and claimed to be, and, in the face and eyes of
all history, always to have been, the champions of religious liberty
and the freedom of conscience. It was not till 1829 that the very
imperfect Catholic Relief Bill passed in the British parliament,
and the complete disestablishment of Congregationalism as the state
religion in Massachusetts did not take place till 1835, though
dissenters had for some time previous been tolerated.

Yet in no Protestant state has complete liberty been extended to
Catholics. The French Revolution, with its high-flown phrases of
liberty, equality, brotherhood, and religious freedom, suppressed
the Catholic religion, and imprisoned, deported, or massacred the
bishops and priests who would not abandon it for the civil church
it ordained. We ourselves, though very young at the time, remember
the exultation of our Protestant neighbors when the first Napoleon
dragged the venerable and saintly Pius VII. from his throne and held
him a prisoner, first at Savona, and afterward at Fontainebleau.
"Babylon is fallen," they cried; "the man-child has slain the beast
with seven heads and ten horns." The revolutions, ostensibly social
and political, which have been going on in the Catholic nations of
Europe, and are still in process, and which everywhere are hostile to
the church, have the warm sympathy of Protestants of every nation,
and in Italy and Spain have been aided and abetted by Protestant
associations and contributions, as part and parcel of the Protestant
programme for the abolition of the papacy and the destruction of our
holy religion.

Protestants now tolerate Protestant dissenters, and allow Jews and
infidels equal rights with themselves; but they find great difficulty
in regarding any outrage on the freedom of the church as an outrage
on religious liberty. She is Catholic, not national, over all
nations, and subject to none; therefore no nation should tolerate
her. Even in this country Protestants very reluctantly suffer her
presence, and the liberal Dr. Bellows, a Protestant of Protestants,
warns, as we have seen, Catholics not to attempt to act as if they
stood on an equality with Protestants. It is only a few years since
the whole country was agitated by the Know-Nothing movement, got up
in secret lodges, for the purpose, if not of outlawing or banishing
Catholics, at least of depriving them of civil and political
citizenship. The movement professed to be a movement in part
against naturalizing persons of foreign birth, but really for the
exclusion of such persons only in so far as they were Catholics. The
controversy now raging on the school question proves that Protestants
are very far from feeling that Catholics have equal rights with
themselves, or that the Catholic conscience is entitled to any
respect or consideration from the state. Public opinion proscribes
us, and no Catholic could be chosen to represent a purely Protestant
constituency in any legislative body, if known to be such and to be
devoted to his religion. Our only protection, under God, is the fact
that we have votes which the leaders of all parties want; yet there
is a movement now going on for female suffrage, which, if successful,
will, it is hoped, swamp our votes by bringing to the polls swarms
of fanatical women, the creatures of fanatical preachers, together
with other swarms of infidel, lewd, or shameless women, who detest
Catholic marriage and wish to be relieved of its restraints, as
well as of their duties as mothers. This may turn the scale against
us; for Catholic women have too much delicacy, and too much of that
retiring modesty that becomes the sex, to be seen at the polls.

But the imperfect toleration practised by Protestants is by no
means due to their Protestantism, but to their growing indifference
to religion, and to the conviction of Protestant and non-Catholic
governments, that their supremacy over the spiritual order is so
well established, their victory so complete, that all danger of its
renewing the struggle to bring them again under its law is past.
Let come what may, the spiritual order can never regain its former
supremacy, or Cæsar tremble again at the bar of Peter. Cæsar fancies
that he has shorn the church so completely of her Catholicity, except
as an empty name, and so fully subjected her to his own or the
national authority, that he has no longer any need to be intolerant.
Why not, indeed, amnesty the poor Catholics, who can no longer be
dangerous to the national sovereign, or interfere with the policy of
the state?

For ourselves, we do not pretend that the church is or ever has been
tolerant. She is undeniably intolerant in her own order, as the law,
as truth is intolerant, though she does not necessarily require
the state to be intolerant. She certainly is opposed to what the
nineteenth century calls religious liberty, which, we have seen, is
simply the liberty of infidelity or irreligion. She does not teach
views or opinions, but presents the independent truth, the reality
itself; proclaims, declares, and applies the law of God, always and
everywhere one and the same. She cannot, then, while faithful to
her trust, allow the truth to be denied without censuring those who
knowingly deny it, or the law to be disobeyed without condemning
those who disobey it. But always and everywhere does the church
assert, and, as far as she can, maintain the full and perfect liberty
of religion, the entire freedom and independence of the spiritual
order, to be itself and to act according to its own laws--that is,
religious liberty in her sense, and, if the words mean any thing,
religious liberty in its only true and legitimate sense.

The nineteenth century may not be able to understand it, or, if
understanding it, to accept it; yet it is true that the spiritual
is the superior, and the law of the temporal. The supremacy belongs
in all things of right to God, represented on earth by the church
or the spiritual order. The temporal has no rights, no legitimacy
save as subordinated to the spiritual--that is, to the end for which
man is created and exists. The end for which all creatures are made
and exist is not temporal, but spiritual and eternal; for it is
God himself who is the final cause as well as the first cause of
creation. The end, or God as final cause, prescribes the law which
all men must obey, or fail of attaining their end, which is their
supreme good. This law all men and nations, kings and peoples,
sovereigns and subjects, are alike bound to obey; it is for all men,
for states and empires, no less than for individuals, the supreme
law, the law and the only law that binds the conscience.

Now, religion is this law, and includes all that it commands to
be done, all that it forbids to be done, and all the means and
conditions of its fulfilment. The church, as all Catholics hold, is
the embodiment of this law, and is therefore in her very nature and
constitution teleological. She speaks always and everywhere with
the authority of God, as the final cause of creation, and therefore
her words are law, her commands are the commands of God. Christ,
who is God as well as man, is her personality, and therefore she
lives, teaches, and governs in him, and he in her. This being so,
it is clear that religious liberty must consist in the unrestrained
freedom and independence of the church to teach and govern all men
and nations, princes and people, rulers and ruled, in all things
enjoined by the teleological law of man's existence, and therefore in
the recognition and maintenance for the church of that very supreme
authority which the popes have always claimed, and against which
the Reformation protested, and which secular princes are generally
disposed to resist when it crosses their pride, their policy, their
ambition, or their love of power. Manifestly, then, religious liberty
and Protestantism are mutually antagonistic, each warring against the
other.

The church asserts and vindicates the rights of God in the
government of men, and hence is she called the kingdom of God on
earth. The rights of God are the foundation of all human rights; for
man cannot create or originate rights, since he is a creature, not
his own, and belongs, all he is and all he has, to his Creator. God's
rights being perfect and absolute, extend to all his creatures; and
he has therefore the right that no one of his creatures oppress or
wrong another, and that justice be done alike by all men to all men.
We can wrong no man, deprive no man of life, liberty, or the pursuit
of happiness, without violating the rights of God and offending our
Maker. "Inasmuch as ye did it to the least of my brethren, ye did it
unto me." Hence, the church in asserting and vindicating the rights
of God, asserts and protects in the fullest manner possible the
so-called inalienable rights of man, opposes with divine authority
all tyranny, all despotism, all arbitrary power, all wrong, all
oppression, every species of slavery, and asserts the fullest
liberty, political, civil, social, and individual, that is possible
without confounding liberty with license. The liberty she sustains is
true liberty; for it is that of which our Lord speaks when he says,
"If the Son makes you free, ye shall be free indeed." The church
keeps, guards, declares, and applies the divine law, of which human
laws must be transcripts in order to have the force or vigor of laws.
Man has in his own right no power to legislate for man, and the state
can rightfully govern only by virtue of authority from God. Hence,
St. Paul says, _Non est potestas nisi a Deo_. "There is no power
except from God."

The church in asserting the supremacy of the law of God or of the
spiritual order, asserts not only religious liberty, but all true
liberty, civil, political, social, and individual; and we have
seen that liberty, the basis and condition of civilization, was
steadily advancing in all these respects during the middle ages till
interrupted by the revival of paganism in the fifteenth century and
the outbreak of Protestantism in the sixteenth. The Reformation
did not emancipate society from spiritual thraldom, but raised it
up in revolt against legitimate authority, and deprived it of all
protection, on the one hand, against arbitrary power, and, on the
other, against anarchy and unbounded lawlessness, as the experience
of more than three centuries has proved. There is not a government
in Europe that is not daily conspired against, and it requires five
millions of armed soldiers even in time of peace to maintain internal
order, and give some little security to property and life. To pretend
that the authority of the church, as the organ of the spiritual
order, is despotic, is to use words without understanding their
meaning. Her authority is only that of the law of God, and she uses
it only to maintain the rights of God, the basis and condition of the
rights of individuals and of society. Man's rights, whether social
or individual, civil or political, are the rights of God in and over
man, and they can be maintained only by maintaining the rights of
God, or, what is the same thing, the authority of the church of God
in the government of human affairs. Atheism is the denial of liberty,
as also is pantheism, which denies God as creator.

There is no liberty where there is no authority competent to assert
and maintain it, or where there is no authority derived from God,
who only hath dominion. The men who seek to get rid of authority as
the condition of asserting liberty are bereft of reason, and more
in need of physic and good regimen than of argument. Liberty is not
in being exempt from obedience, but in being held to obey only the
rightful or legitimate authority. God's right to govern his creatures
is full and perfect, and any authority he delegates or authorizes to
be exercised in his name, is legitimate, and in no sense abridges
or interferes with liberty--unless by liberty you mean license--but
is the sole condition of its maintenance. God's dominion over man
is absolute, but is not despotic or tyrannical, since it is only
his absolute right. The authority of the church, however extended
it may be, and she is the judge of its extent and its limitations,
as the court is the judge of its own jurisdiction, is not despotic,
tyrannical, or oppressive, because it is the authority of God
exercised through her.

The pretension of Protestants that Protestantism favors liberty, and
the church despotism, is based on the supposition that authority
negatives liberty and liberty negatives authority, that whatever is
given to the one is taken from the other; a supposition refuted some
time since, in the magazine for October last, in an article entitled
_An Imaginary Contradiction_, and need detain us no longer at
present. Just or legitimate authority, founded on the rights of God,
and instituted to assert and maintain them in human affairs, confirms
and protects liberty instead of impairing it.

Yet there is no doubt that the church condemns liberty in the sense
of the Reformation, and especially in that of the nineteenth century.
Protestantism denies infallibility to the church and assumes it for
the age, for the state, for public opinion--that is, for the world.
The most shocking blasphemy in its eyes is to assert that the age
is fallible and cannot be relied on as a safe or sure guide. We
differ from the Protestant; we attribute infallibility to the church,
and deny it to the age, even though the age be this enlightened
nineteenth century. We do not believe it is always wise or prudent
to suffer one's self to be carried away by the dominant tendency or
passion of this or any other age. It is characteristic of every age
to fix upon one special object or class of objects, and to pursue
them with an exclusiveness and a concentrated passion and energy that
render them practically evil, even though good when taken in their
place and wisely pursued. Even maternal affection becomes evil and
destructive, if not guided or restrained by wisdom and prudence.
Philanthropy is a noble sentiment; yet men and women in our own age,
carried away, dazzled, and blinded by it, only produce evils they
would avoid, defeat the very good they would effect. The spirit of
our age is that of the production, accumulation, and possession of
material goods. Material goods in their proper measure and place
are needed; but when their production and accumulation become with
an individual or an age an engrossing passion that excludes the
spiritual and the eternal, they are evil, and lead only to ruin, both
spiritual and material, as daily experience proves.

The church, then, instituted to teach the truth and to secure
obedience to the law of God, directed always by her divine ideal,
is forced to resist always and everywhere the age, that is, the
world, instead of following its spirit, and to labor for its
correction, not for its encouragement. Hence always is there more
or less opposition between the church and what is called the spirit
of the age, and their mutual concordance is never to be looked for
so long as the world stands. Hence the church in this world is the
church militant, and her normal life one of never-ending struggle
with the world--spirit of the age, _der Welt-Geist_--the flesh, and
the devil. It is only by this struggle that she makes conquests
for heaven, and prevents civil governments from degenerating into
intolerable tyrannies, and society from lapsing into pagan darkness
and superstition.

We have, we think, sufficiently disposed of the Protestant
pretension, and if any of our readers think we have not fully done
it, we refer them to the work before us. There is no doubt that the
boldness, not to say impudence, with which the Protestant pretension
is urged, and the support it receives from the rationalistic
journalism and literature which form contemporary public opinion
in Catholic nations, coupled with the general ignorance of history
and the shortness of men's memories, accounts for the chief success
of Protestant missions in unmaking Catholics, which, though very
limited, is yet much greater than it is pleasant to think. Yet
gradually the truth will find its way to the public; even Protestants
themselves will by and by tell it, piece by piece, as they are now
doing. They have already refuted many of the falsehoods and calumnies
they began by inventing and publishing against the church, and in due
time they will refute the rest.

The abbé shows very clearly that the toleration now accepted and to
some extent practised, and the liberty now allowed to the various
sects, will most likely have a disastrous effect on the future of
Protestantism. It must sooner or later, he thinks, lead to the
demolition of the Protestant national establishments. National
churches cannot coexist with unlimited freedom of dissent. The
English Church must soon follow the fate of the Anglican Church in
Ireland. Its disestablishment is only a question of time. So it
will be before long in all Protestant nations that have a national
church. The doctrine of toleration and freedom for all sects and
opinions not only tends to produce indifference to dogmatic theology,
but is itself a result of that indifference; and indifference
to dogmatic truth is a more formidable enemy to deal with than
out-and-out disbelief or positive infidelity. A soul breathing
forth threatenings, and filled with rage against Christians, can be
converted, and became Paul the apostle and doctor of the Gentiles;
but the conversion of a Gallio, who cares for none of these things,
is a rare event.

With the several sects, doctrinal differences are daily becoming
matters of less and less importance. Who hears now of controversies
between Calvinists and Arminians? Even the New School and the Old
School Presbyterians, though separated by grave dogmatic differences,
unite and form one and the same ecclesiastical body; Presbyterians
and Methodists work together in harmony; Orthodox Congregationalists
show signs of fraternizing with Unitarians, and Unitarians fraternize
with Radicals who reject the very name of Christian, and can hardly
be said to believe even in God. One need not any longer believe any
thing, except that Catholicity is a gross superstition, and the
church a spiritual despotism, the grand enemy of the human race,
in order to be a good and acceptable Protestant. A certain inward
sentiment, emotion, or affection, which even a pantheist or an
atheist may experience, suffices. The dread presence of the church,
hatred of Catholicity, the zeal inspired by party attachment, and
the hope of finally arriving at some solid footing, may keep up
appearances for some time to come; the eloquence, the polished
manners, the personal influence, and the demagogic arts and address
of the preacher may continue for a while to fill a few fashionable
meeting-houses; but when success depends on the personal character
and address of the minister, as is rapidly becoming the fact in all
Protestant sects, we may take it for granted that Protestantism has
seen its best days, is going the way of all the earth, and soon the
place that has known it shall know it no more for ever.

Protestantism, with all deference to our author, who pronounces it
imperishable, we venture to say, has well-nigh run its course. It
began by divorcing the church from the papacy and subjecting religion
to the national authority, subordinating the spiritual to the
temporal, the priest to the magistrate, the representative of heaven
to the representative of earth. It constituted the national sovereign
the supreme head and governor, the pontifex maximus, after the manner
of the Gentiles, of the national religion, or the national church,
and punished dissent as treason against the prince. It was at first,
and for over two centuries, bitterly intolerant, especially against
Catholics, whom it persecuted with a refined cruelty which recalled,
if it did not surpass, that practised by paganism on Christians in
the martyr ages.

Tired of persecution, or finding it impotent to prevent dissent,
Protestantism tried after a while its hand at civil toleration.
The state tolerated, to a greater or less extent, at first only
Protestant dissenters from the established church; but at last,
though with many restrictions, and with the sword ever suspended over
their heads, even Catholics themselves. From civil toleration, from
ceasing to cut the throats and confiscate the goods of Catholics, and
of Protestant recusants, it is passing now to theological tolerance,
or what it calls complete religious liberty, though as yet only its
advanced-guard have reached it.

The state, unless in the American republic, does not, indeed,
disclaim its supremacy over the church; but it leaves religion to
take care of itself, as a thing beneath the notice of the civil
magistrate, so long as it abstains from interfering with state
policy, or meddling with politics. To-day Protestantism divorces,
or is seeking to divorce, the church from the state, as it began
by divorcing both her and the state from the papacy; it divorces
religion from the church and from morality, Christianity from
Christ, faith from dogma, piety from reason, and it resolves into an
affection of man's emotional or sentimental nature. We find persons
calling themselves Christians who do not believe in Christ, or regard
him as a myth, and godly, who do not even believe in God. We have
men, and women too, who demand the disruption of the marriage tie in
the name of morality, and free love in the name of purity. Words lose
their meaning. The churl is called liberal, things bitter are called
sweet, and things profane are called holy. Not many years since,
there was published in England, and republished here, an earnest
and ingenious poem, designed to rehabilitate Satan, and chanting
his merits as man's noblest, best, and truest friend. In the mean
time, every thing regarded as religion loses its hold on the new
generations; moral corruption of all sorts in public, domestic, and
private life is making fearful progress throughout the Anglo-Saxon
world, the mainstay of Protestantism; and society seems tottering on
the verge of dissolution. Such is the career Protestantism has run,
is running, or, by the merciless logic to which it is subjected,
will be forced to run. What hope, then, can Protestants have for its
future?

As to the future of Catholicity, we are under no apprehensions.
We know that never can the church be in this world the church
triumphant, and that she and the world will always be in a state of
mutual hostility; but the hostility can never harm her, though it
may cause the spiritual ruin of the individuals and nations that
war against her. The Protestant world have for over three hundred
years been trying to get on without her, and have succeeded but
indifferently. Sensible and earnest-minded men among Protestants
themselves boldly pronounce that the experiment has failed, which
most Protestants inwardly feel, and sadly deplore; but like the poor
man in Balzac's novel, who has spent his own patrimony, his wife's
dower, the portion of his daughter, with all he could borrow, beg,
or steal, and reduced his wife, his children, and himself to utter
destitution, in the _recherche d'absolu_, they are buoyed up by the
feeling that they are just a-going to succeed. But even this feeling
cannot last always. Hope too long "deferred maketh the heart sick."
It may be long yet, and many souls for whom Christ has died be
lost, before the nations that have apostatized learn wisdom enough
to abandon the delusive hope, and turn again to Him whom they have
rejected, or look again, weeping, on the face of Him whom they have
crucified. But the church will stand, whether they return or not; for
she is founded on a rock that cannot be shaken, on the eternal truth
of God, that cannot fail.

The Protestant experiment has demonstrated beyond question that
the very things in the Catholic Church which are most offensive to
this age, and for which it wages unrelenting war against her, are
precisely those things it most needs for its own protection and
safety. It needs, first of all, the Catholic Church--nay, the papacy
itself--to declare and apply the law of God to states and empires,
to sovereigns and subjects, kings and peoples, that politics may no
longer be divorced from religion, but be rendered subsidiary to the
spiritual, the eternal end of man, for which both individuals and
society exist and civil governments are instituted. It needs the
church to declare and enforce the law, by such means as she judges
proper, that should govern the relation of the sexes; to hallow
and protect marriage, the basis of the family, as the family is of
society, that great sacrament or mysterious union, typical of the
union of Christ with the church, which is indissoluble; to take
charge of education, and to train up, or cause to be trained up, the
young in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, or in the way they
should go, that when old they shall not depart from it; to teach
maidens modesty and reserve, and wives and mothers due submission
to their husbands and proper care of their children; to assert and
protect the rights of women; to train them to be contented to be
women, and not to aspire to be men, or to usurp the functions of men,
and to bid them stay at home, and not be gadding abroad, running over
the country and spouting nonsense, free love, infidelity, impiety,
and blasphemy, at suffrage conventions and other gatherings, at which
it is a shame for a woman to open her mouth, or even to be present;
and, most of all, to exercise a vigilant censorship over ideas,
whether vented in books, journals, or lectures, and to keep from the
public those which tend to mislead the mind or corrupt the heart, as
a prudent father strives to keep them from his children.

The age needs for this the _Catholic_ Church. A national church
cannot do it; far less can the sects do it. These all depend on the
public opinion of the age, the nation, or the sect, and have no
power to withstand that opinion. This is perhaps better understood
here than elsewhere. The sects, being creatures of opinion, have
no power to control it, and their tendency is invariably to seize
upon every opinion, excitement, or movement that is, or is likely
to be, popular, and help it on as the means of swelling, when it
is at flood-tide, their own respective numbers. A national church
has undoubtedly more stability, and is not so easily wrested from
its moorings. But it has only the stability of the government that
ordains it, and the most absolute government must sooner or later
yield to the force of opinion. Opinion has disestablished and
disendowed the state church in Ireland, and will, as is most likely,
do it ere long in both England and Scotland. The Protestant sects
have no alternative; they must either yield to the dominant opinion,
tendency, or passion of the times and move on with it, or be swept
away by it.

It is only a church truly catholic, that depends on no nation, that
extends to all, and is over all, that derives not its being or its
strength from the opinion of courts or of peoples, but rests on
God for her being, her law, and her support, that can maintain her
integrity, or have the courage to stand before an age or a nation,
denounce its errors, and condemn its dominant passion or tendency, or
that would be heeded, if she did. It was only the visible head of the
Catholic Church, the vicar of Christ, that could perform the heroic
act of publishing in this century the Syllabus; and if, as we are
confident they have, the prelates assembled in the Council of the
Vatican have some share of the courage of their chief, their decrees
will not only draw the attention of the world anew to the church, but
go far to prove to apostate nations and truculent governments that
she takes counsel of God, not of the weakness and timidity of men.

A few more such acts as the publication of the Syllabus and the
convocation of the council now sitting at Rome, joined to the
manifest failure of Protestantism, will serve to open the eyes of the
people, disabuse non-Catholics of the delusions under which they are
led away to their own destruction. The very freedom, though false in
principle, which is suffered in Protestant nations, while it removes
all restraints from infidelity, immorality, and blasphemy, aids the
victory of the church over her enemies. It ruins them by suffering
them to run into all manner of excesses; but she can use it without
danger and with advantage where there are minds to be convinced or
hearts to be won; for she can abide the freest examination, the most
rigid investigation and scrutiny, while the indwelling Holy Ghost
cannot fail to protect her from all error on either side. The present
delusions of the loud-boasting nineteenth century must give way
before her as she once more stands forth in her true light, and her
present enemies be vanquished.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] _De l'Avenir du Protestantisme et du Catholicisme._ Par M. l'Abbé
F. Martin. Paris: Tobra et Haton. 1869. 8vo, pp. 608.




DION AND THE SIBYLS.

A CLASSIC, CHRISTIAN NOVEL.

BY MILES GERALD KEON, COLONIAL SECRETARY, BERMUDA, AUTHOR OF "HARDING,
THE MONEY-SPINNER," ETC.


DEDICATION.

I dedicate the following work to Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton, not
only in appreciation of one of the most searching, comprehensive,
independent, and indefatigable thinkers, and one of the truest and
highest men of genius, of whom it has ever been the lot of his own
country and of the English-speaking races to be proud, and the fate
of contemporary nations to feel honorably jealous; not only in
admiration of a mind which nature made great, and which study has to
the last degree cultivated, whose influence and authority have been
steadily rising since he first began to labor in literary fields more
varied than almost any into which ONE person had previously dared to
carry the efforts of the intellect; but still more as an humble token
of the grateful love which I feel in return for the faithful and
consistent friendship and the innumerable services with which a great
genius and a great man has honored me during twenty years.

                                          MILES GERALD KEON.
    PARIS, Jan. 18, 1870.


INTRODUCTION.

The historical romance of Mr. Keon, now republished with the author's
most cordial permission and his latest corrections, was first printed
in London, in 1866, by Mr. Bentley, publisher in ordinary to the
Queen. The edition was brought out in a very handsome style, and
sold at the high price of a guinea. Notwithstanding the heavy price
at which the work was furnished to our transpontine kinsfolk, (or at
least to the "upper ten thousand" of them,) it is at this moment out
of print, and an effort made about two years ago to procure copies
for sale in this country was unsuccessful. The copy kindly sent
us by the author was accidentally mislaid for several months, and
this circumstance, together with the desire to give our readers the
opportunity of perusing the work as soon as their attention should be
directed to it by a notice such as its high merit demands, caused
us to delay the proper public acknowledgment to the author until the
present moment. Its success in England, in spite of the nationality
and religion of the writer, is no slight proof of its intrinsic
excellence, especially when we consider that he ventured into a field
which the subject-matter of the book would turn into the very home
and headquarters of English prejudice.

To every effect adequate cause; and, in this instance, to those who
take up the story of _Dion_, one cause of its success will, before
they have gone half way through its events and adventures, speak for
itself. Yet, however light to read, the work has, we feel convinced,
been in the last degree laborious both to plan and to execute.
"Easy writing," said Thomas Moore, "very often makes fearfully hard
reading." We believe the converse has often proved equally true.

We are glad to learn that Mr. Keon has recently received a far more
gratifying recognition of his distinguished merit than any other to
which a Catholic author can aspire. At a private audience granted
him by Pius IX., His Holiness complimented him on his services to
literature and religion, and gave him a beautiful rosary of pearl as
a token of his august favor.

One word more, and we shall let the story itself begin to be heard.
The epoch of _Dion_ was the turning-point of all human history--the
hinge of the fateful gates, the moment of the mightiest and most
stupendous transition our world has ever known, the transition
of transitions; the moment on this earth of a superplanetary,
supercosmic drama. There were two suns in the heavens; one rising,
never to set; the other going down to rise no more. At no epoch had
human genius blazed so luminous, or human pride poised itself on
wings so wide, in a sphere so sublime; but this genius was for the
first time confronted in its own sphere by divine inspiration and a
supernatural authority. The setting of a classic though pagan day
saw the dawning day of Christianity. There were two suns in one sky
at the same moment. The doubtful cross-lights of two civilizations
over-arched the world with a vault of shifting, contending, contrary,
and awful splendors--those of one order in the utmost intensity
of their radiance, those of the other in their first, glimmering
beginnings; a seeming confusion; an internecine war; a hazy mingling
of embattled glories as full of meaning as it was of mystery.

                                            ED. CATH. WORLD.


CHAPTER I.

It was a fair evening in autumn, toward the end of the year eleven
of our Lord. Augustus Cæsar was a white-haired, olive-complexioned,
and somewhat frail-featured, though stately man of more than
seventy-three. At the beginning of the century in which this was
written, the face of the first Napoleon recalled to the minds of
antiquaries and students of numismatic remains the lineaments,
engraved upon the extant coins of Augustus. Indeed, at this moment
there is in the Vatican a beautiful marble bust in excellent
preservation, representing one of these two emperors as he was while
yet young; and this bust almost invariably produces a curious effect
upon the stranger who contemplates it for the first time. "That is
certainly a beautiful artistic work," he says, "but the likeness is
hardly perfect."

"Likeness of whom?" replies some Italian friend. "Of the emperor,"
says the stranger. "_Sicuro!_ But which emperor?" asks the Italian,
smiling. "Of course, the first," says the visitor; "_not this_ one."
"But that represents Augustus Cæsar, not Napoleon Bonaparte," is
the answer. Whereupon the stranger, who, a moment before had very
justly pronounced the resemblance to Bonaparte to be hardly perfect,
exclaims, not less justly, What an amazing likeness to Napoleon!
That sort of admiring surprise is intelligible. Had the bust been
designed as an image of the great modern conqueror, there had been
something to censure. But the work which, at one and the same time,
delineates the second Cæsar, and yet now after 1800 years recalls to
mind the first Napoleon, has become a curious monument indeed.

The second Roman emperor, however, had not a forehead so broad
and commanding nor so marble smooth as Napoleon's, and the whole
countenance, at the time when our narrative begins, offered a more
decisively aquiline curve, with more numerous and much thinner lines
about the mouth. Still, even at the age which he had then reached--in
the year eleven of our Lord--he showed traces of that amazing beauty
which had enchanted the whole classic world in the days of his youth.
Three years more, and his reign and life were to go down in a great,
broad, calm, treacherous sunset together.

After the senate had rewarded the histrionic and purely make-believe
moderation of its master--and in truth its destroyer--by giving to
one who had named himself _Princeps_ the greater name of Augustus,
the former title, like a left-off robe, too good to be thrown away,
was carefully picked up, brushed into all its gloss, and appropriated
by a second performer. We allude, of course, to Drusus Tiberius
Claudius Nero, the future emperor, best known by his second name
of Tiberius. The first and third names had belonged to his brother
also. Tiberius was then "Prince and Cæsar," as the new slang of
flattery termed him; he was stepson of Augustus and already adopted
heir, solemnly _designatus_. He was verging upon the close of his
fifty-third year of cautious profligacy, clandestine vindictiveness,
and strictly-regulated vices. History has not accused him of
murdering Agrippa Vespasianus; but had Agrippa survived, he would
have held all Tiberius's present offices. Ælius Sejanus, commander of
the prætorian guards, was occupied in watching the monthly, watching
even the daily, decay of strength in the living emperor, and was
pandering to the passions of his probable successor. Up to this time
Sejanus had been, and still was, thus employed. More dangerous hopes
had not arisen in his bosom; he had not yet indulged in the vision
of becoming master of the known world--a dream which, some twenty
years afterward, consigned him to cruel and sudden destruction.
No conspirator, perhaps, ever exercised more craft and patience
in preparing, or betrayed more stupidity at last in executing, an
attempt at treason on so great a scale. It was forty-six years since
Sallust had expired amid the luxuries which cruelty and rapine
accumulated, after profligacy had first brought him acquainted with
want.

Ovid had just been sent into exile at Temesvar in Turkey--then
called Tomos in Scythia. Cornelius Nepos was ending his days in the
personal privacy and literary notoriety in which he had lived. Virgil
had been dead a whole generation; so had Tibullus; Catullus, half a
century; Propertius, some twenty years; Horace and Mæcenas, about
as long. The grateful master of the _curiosa felicitas verborum_
had followed in three weeks to--not the grave, indeed, but--the
urn, the patron whom he had immortalized in the first of his odes,
the first of his epodes, the first of his satires, and the first of
his epistles; and the mighty sovereign upon whose youthful court
those three characters--a wise, mild, clement, yet firm minister, a
glorious epic poet, and an unsurpassed lyrist--have reflected so much
and such enduring lustre, had faithfully and unceasingly lamented
their irreparable loss. Lucius Varius was the fashionable poet,
the laureate of the day; and Mæcenas being removed, Tiberius sought
to govern indirectly, as minister, all those matters which he did
not control directly and immediately, as one of the two Cæsars whom
Augustus had appointed. Velleius Paterculus, the cavalry colonel,
or military tribune, (chiliarch,) a prosperous and accomplished
patrician, was beginning to shine at once in letters and at the
court. The grandson of Livia, grandson also of Augustus by his
marriage with her, but really grand-nephew of that emperor--we mean
the son of Antonia, the celebrated _Germanicus_, second and more
worthy bearer of that surname--a youth full of fire and genius, and
tingling with noble blood--was preparing to atone for the disgraces
and to repair the disasters which Quintilius Varus, one year before,
amidst the uncleared forests of Germany, had brought upon the
imperial arms and the Roman name. Germanicus, indeed, was about to
fulfil the more important part of a celebrated classic injunction;
he was going to do things worthy to be written, "while the supple
courtier of all Cæsars, Paterculus, was endeavoring to _write
something worthy to be read_." Strabo had not long before commenced
his system of geography, which, for about thirty years yet to come,
was to engage his attention and dictate his travels. Livy, of the
"pictured page," who doubtless may be called, next to Tacitus, the
most eloquent without being set down as quite the most credulous
of classic historians--I venture to say so, _pace Niebuhr_--was
over sixty-eight years of age, but scarcely looked sixty. He was
even then thoroughly and universally appreciated. No man living had
received more genuine marks of honor--not even the emperor. His
hundred and forty-two books of Roman history had filled the known
world with his praises, a glory which length of days allowed him
fully to enjoy. Modern readers appreciate and admire the thirty-five
books which alone are left, and linger over the beauties, _quasi
stellis_, with which they shine. Yet who knows but these may be
among the poorest productions of Livy's genius? A very simple sum in
arithmetic would satisfy an actuary that we must have lost the most
valuable emanations of the Paduan's great mind. Given a salvage of
five-and-thirty out of a hundred and forty-two, and yet the whole of
this wreck so marvellous in beauty! surely that which is gone for
ever must have included much that is equal, probably something far
superior to what time has spared.

There is a curious fact recorded by Pliny the younger, which speaks
for itself. A Spaniard of Cadiz had, only some five months before
the date of our story, journeyed from the ends of the earth to Rome
merely to obtain a sight of Livy. There were imperial shows in the
forum and hippodrome and circus at the time; there were races on
foot, and on horseback, and in chariots; fights there were of all
kinds--men against wild animals, men against each other; with the
sword, with the deadly cestus; wrestling matches, and the dreadful
battles of gladiators, five hundred a side; in short, all the glitter
and the glories and the horrors of the old classic arena in its
culminating days. There was also a strange new Greek fence, since
inherited by Naples, and preserved all through the middle ages down
to this hour, with the straight, pliant, three-edged rapier, to
witness which even ladies thronged with interest and partisanship.
But the Spaniard from Gades (Cervantes might surely have had such an
ancestor) asked only to be shown Titus Livius. Which in yonder group
is Livy? The wayfarer cared for nothing else that Roman civilization
or Roman vanity could show him. The great writer was pointed out, and
then the traveller, having satisfied the motive which had brought
him to Rome, went back to Ostia, where his lugger, if I may so call
it, lay, (I picture it a kind of "wing-and-wing" rigged vessel;)
and, refusing to profane his eyes with any meaner spectacle, set
sail again for Spain, where his youth had been illumined with the
visions presented to a sympathetic imagination by the most charming
of classical historians. The Spaniards from an immemorial age are
deemed to have been heroes and appreciators of heroes; and no doubt
this literary pilgrim, once more at home, recurred many a time, long
pondering, to the glorious deeds of the _Fabia Gens_.

How many other similar examples Livy may have recorded for him we
moderns cannot say. Before his gaze arose the finished column from
the fragments whereof we have gathered up some scattered bricks and
marbles. Niebuhr had to deal with a ruin, and he who ought to have
guessed at and reconstructed the plan of it, has contented himself
with trying to demolish its form.

Long previously to the date of our tale, Augustus, trembling
under the despotism of his wife Livia, had begun to repeat those
lamentations (with which scholars are familiar) for the times
when Mæcenas had guided his active day, and Virgil and Horace had
beguiled his lettered evenings. Virgil, as is well known, had been
tormented with asthma, and ought possibly to have lived much longer
but for some unrecorded imprudence. Horace, as is likewise well
known, had been tormented with sore eyelids--and with wine; he was
"blear-eyed," (_lippus_.) Augustus, therefore, used to say wittily,
as he placed them on each hand of him at the _symposium_, which had
been recently borrowed in Italy from the Greeks, but had not yet
degenerated into the debauchery and extravagance into which they
afterward sank more and more deeply during successive reigns, "I sit
between sighs and tears." _In suspiriis sedeo et in lachrymis._ But
he had long lost these so-called sighs and tears at either hand of
him. The sighs and tears were now his own.


CHAPTER II.

Our chronicle commences in Campania, with the Tyrrhenian Sea (now the
southerly waters of the Gulf of Genoa) on a traveller's left hand if
he looks north. It was a fair evening in autumn, as we have remarked,
during that age and state of the world the broad outlines of which we
have briefly given. Along the Appian, or, as it long afterward came
to be also called, the Trajan Way, the queen of roads, a conveyance
drawn by two horses, a carriage of the common hackney description,
not unlike one species of the _vettura_ used by the modern Italians,
was rolling swiftly northward between the stage of Minturnæ and
the next stage, which was a lonely post-house a few miles south of
the interesting town of Formiæ--not _Forum Appii_, or the _Three
Taverns_, a place more than fifty miles away in the direction of
Rome, and upon the same road.

Inside the carriage were a lady in middle life, whose face, once
lovely, was still sweet and charming, and a very pale, beautiful
female child, each dressed in a black _ricinium_,[2] or mourning
robe, drawn over the top of the head. The girl was about twelve
years old, or a little more, and seemed to be suffering much and
grievously. She faced the horses, and on her side sat the lady
fanning her and watching her with a look which always spoke love,
and now and again anguish. Opposite to them, with his back to the
horses, wearing a sort of dark _lacerna_, or thin, light great-coat,
of costly material, but of a fashion which was deemed in Italy at
that day either foreign or vulgar, as the case might be, sat a youth
of about eighteen. The child was leaning back with her eyes closed.
The youth, as he watched her, sighed now and then. At last he put
both hands to his face, and, leaning his head forward, suffered tears
to flow silently through his fingers. The _lacerna_ which he wore was
fastened at the breast by two _fibulæ_, or clasps of silver, and girt
round his waist with a broad, brown, sheeny leather belt, stamped
and traced after some Asiatic mode. In a loop of this belt, at his
left side, was secured within its black scabbard an unfamiliar,
outlandish-looking, long, straight, three-edged sword, which he had
pulled round so as to rest the point before his feet, bringing the
blade between his knees, and the hilt, which was gay with emeralds,
in front of his chest.

The Romans still very generally went bare-headed,[3] even out of
doors, except that those who continued to wear the toga drew it over
their heads as the weather needed, and those who wore the _penula_
used the hood of it in the same way. But upon the hilt of the sword
we have described the youth had flung a sort of _petasus_, or
deep-rimmed hat, with a flat top, and one black feather at the side,
not stuck perpendicularly into the band, but so trained half round
it as to produce a reckless, rakish effect, of which the owner was
unconscious.

"Agatha," said the lady, in a low, tender voice, the delicate Greek
ring of which was full of persuasion, "look up, beloved child!
Your brother and I, at least, are left. Think no more of the past.
The gods have taken your father, after men had taken his and your
inheritance. But our part in life is not yet over. Did not your
parents too, in times past--did not we too, I say, lose ours? Did you
not know you were probably to live longer than your poor father? Are
you not to survive me also? Perhaps soon."

With a cry of dismay the young girl threw her arms round the lady's
neck and sobbed. The other, while she shed tears, exclaimed:

"I thank that unknown power, of whom Dionysius the Athenian, my
young countryman, so sublimely speaks, that the child weeps at last!
Weep, Agatha, weep; but mourn not mute in the cowardice of despair!
Mourn not for your father in a way unbecoming of his child and mine.
Mourn not as though indeed you were not ours. My husband is gone
for ever, but he went in honor. The courageless grief, that canker
without voice or tears, which would slay his child, will not bring
back to me the partner of my days, nor to you your father. We must
not dishearten but cheer your brother Paulus for the battle which is
before him."

"I wish to do so, my mother," said Agatha.

"When I recover my rights," broke in the youth at this point, "my
father will come and sit among the _lares_, round the ever-burning
fire in the _atrium_ of our hereditary house, Agatha; and therefore
courage! You are ill; but Charicles, the great physician of Tiberius
Cæsar, is our countryman, and he will attend you. He can cure almost
any thing, they say. And if you feel fatigued, no wonder, so help me!
_Minime mirum mehercle!_ Have we not travelled without intermission,
by land and by sea, all the way from Thrace? But now, one more change
of horses brings us to Formiæ, and then we shall be at our journey's
end. Meantime, dear child, look up; see yonder woods, and the
garden-like shore."

And having first tried in vain to brighten the horn window at the
side of the vehicle, _specular corneum_, (glass was used only in the
private carriages of the rich,) he stood up, and calling over the
hide roof of the carriage, which was open in front--the horses being
driven from behind--he ordered the _rhedarius_, or coachman, to open
the panels. The man, evidently a former slave of the family, now
their freedman, quickly obeyed, and descending from his bench, pushed
back into grooves contrived to receive them the coarsely-figured and
gaudily colored sides of the travelling _carruca_.

"Is _parvula_ better?" he then cried, with the privileged
freedom of an old and attached domestic, or of one who, in the
far more endearing parlance of classic times, was a faithful
_familiaris_--that is, a member of the family. "Is the little one
better? The dust is laid now, little one; the evening comes; the
light slants; the sun smiles not higher than yourself, instead of
burning overhead. See, the beautiful country! See, the sweet land!
Let the breeze bring a bloom to your cheeks, as it brings the
perfumes to your mouth. Ah! the _parvula_ smiles. Fate is not always
angry!"

"Dear old Philip!" said the child; and then, turning to her mother,
she added,

"Just now, mother, you waked me from a frightful dream. I thought
that the man who has our father's estates was dead; but he came from
the dead, and was trying to kill Paulus, my brother there; and for
that purpose was striving to wrest the sword from Paulus's hand;
and that the man, or _lar_, laughed in a hideous manner, and cried
out, 'It is with his own sword we will slay him! Nothing but his own
sword!'"

The old freedman turned pale, and muttered something to himself, as
he stood by the side of the vehicle; and while he kept the horses
steady, with the long reins in his left hand, glanced awfully toward
Paulus.

"Brother," continued the child, "I forget that man's name. What _is_
the name?"

"Never mind the name now," said Paulus; "a dead person cannot kill a
living one; and that man is not in Italy who will kill me with my own
sword, if I be not asleep. Look at the beautiful land! See, as Philip
tells you, the beautiful land where you are going to be so happy."

The river Liris, now the Garigliano, flowed all gold in the western
sun; some dozen of meadows behind them, between rows of linden-trees,
oleanders, and pomegranates, with laurel, bay, and long bamboo-like
reeds of the _arundo donax_, varying the rich beauty of its banks:
"_Daphrones, platanones, et aëriæ cyparissi._" A thin and irregular
forest of great contemplative trees; flowerless and sad beech,
cornel, alder, ash, hornbeam, and yew towered over savannahs of
scented herbs, and glades of many-tinted grasses. Some clumps of
chestnut-trees, hereafter to spread into forests, but then rare,
and cultivated as we cultivate oranges and citrons, stood proudly
apart. A vegetation, which has partly vanished, gave its own physical
aspect to an Italy the social conditions of which have vanished
altogether; and were even then passing, and about to pass, through
their last appearances. But much also that we in our days have seen,
both there and elsewhere, was there then. The flower or blossom of
the pomegranate lifted its scarlet light amidst vines and olives;
miles of oleander trees waved their masses of flame under the tender
green filigree of almond groves, and seemed to laugh in scorn at the
mourning groups of yew, and the bowed head of the dark, widow-like,
and inconsolable cypress. All over the leaves of the woods autumn
had strewn its innumerable hues. In the west, the sky was hung with
those glories which no painter ever reproduced and no poet ever sang;
it was one of the sunsets which make all persons of sensibility who
contemplate them dumb, by making all that can be said of them worse
than useless. A magnificent and enormous villa, or _castellum_, or
country mansion--palace it seemed--showed parts of its walls, glass
windows, and Ionic columns, through the woods on the banks of the
Liris; and upon the roof of this palace a great company of gilt,
tinted, and white statues, much larger than life, in various groups
and attitudes, as they conversed, lifted their arms, knelt, prayed,
stooped, stood up, threatened, and acted, were glittering above the
tree-tops in the many-colored lights of the setting sun.

"Ah! let us stop; let us rest a few moments," cried the child,
smiling through her tears at the smiles of nature and the enchanting
beauty of the scene; "only a few moments under the great trees,
mother."

It was a group of chestnuts, a few yards from the side of the road;
and beneath them came to join the highway through the meadows, and
vineyards, and forest-land, a broad beaten track from the direction
of the splendid villa that stood on the Liris.

Paulus instantly sprang from the _carruca_, and, having first helped
his mother to alight, took his sister in his arms and placed her
sitting under the green shade. A Thracian woman, a slave, descended
meantime from the box, and the driver drew his vehicle to the side of
the highway.

While they thus reposed, with no sound about them, as they thought,
save the rustle of the leaves, the distant ripple of the waters, and
the vehement shrill call of the cicala, hidden in the grass somewhere
near, their destinies were coming. The freedman suddenly held up his
hand, and drew their attention by that peculiar sound through the
teeth, (_st_,) which in all nations signifies _listen!_

And, indeed, a distant, dull, vague noise was now heard southward,
and seemed to increase and approach along the Appian road. Every
eye in our little group of travellers was turned in the direction
mentioned, and they could see a white cloud of dust coming swiftly
northward. Soon they distinguished the tramp of many horses at the
trot. Then, over the top of a hill which had intercepted the view,
came the gleam of arms, filling the whole width of the way, and
advancing like a torrent of light. The ground trembled; and, headed
by a troop or two of Numidian riders, and then a couple of troops
or _turmæ_ of Batavian cavalry, a thousand horse, at least, of the
Prætorian Guards, arrayed, as usual, magnificently, swept along in
a column two hundred deep, with a rattle and ring of metal rising
treble upon the ear over the continuous bass of the beating hoofs, as
the foam floats above the roll of the waves.

The young girl was at once startled from the sense of sickness and
grief, and gazed with big eyes at the pageant. Six hundred yards
further on a trumpet-note, clear and long, gave some sudden signal,
and the whole body instantly halted. From a detached group in the
rear an officer now rode toward the front; a loud word or two of
command was heard, a slight movement followed, and then, as if the
column were some monstrous yellow-scaled serpent with an elastic
neck and a black head, the swarthy troops which had led the advance
wheeled slowly backward, two instead of five abreast, while the main
column simultaneously stretched itself forward on a narrower face,
and with a deeper file, occupying thus less than half the width of
the road, which they had before nearly filled, and extending much
further onward. Meantime the squadrons which had led it continued
to defile to the rear; and when their last rank had passed the last
of those fronting in the opposite direction, they suddenly faced to
their own right, and, standing like statues, lined the way on the
side opposite to that where our travellers were reposing, but some
forty or fifty yards higher up the road, or more north.

In front of the line of horsemen, who, after wheeling back, had been
thus faced to their own right, or the proper left of the line of
march, was now collected a small group of mounted officers. One of
them wore a steel corselet, a casque of the same metal, with a few
short black feathers in its crest, and the _chlamys_, or a better
sort of _sagum_, the scarlet mantle of a military tribune, over
a black tunic, upon which two broad red stripes or ribbons were
diagonally sewn. This costume denoted him one of the _Laticlavii_, or
broad-ribboned tribunes; in other words--although, to judge by the
massive gold ring which glittered on the forefinger of his bridle
hand, he might have been originally and personally only a knight--he
had received either from the emperor, or from one of the two Cæsars
then governing with and under Augustus, the senatorial rank.

The chlamys was fastened across the top of his chest with a silver
clasp, and the tunic a little lower down with another, both being
open below as far as the waist, and disclosing a tight-fitting
chain-mail corselet, or shirt of steel rings. The chlamys was
otherwise thrown loose over his shoulders, but the tunic was belted
round the corselet at his waist by a buff girdle, wherein hung the
intricately-figured brass scabbard of a straight, flat, not very
long cut-and-thrust sword, which he now held drawn in his right
hand. In his belt were stuck a pair of _manicæ_ or _chirothecæ_, as
gloves were called, which seemed to be made of the same material as
the girdle; buffalo-skin greaves on his legs and half-boots (the
_calcei_, not the _soleæ_ or sandals) completed his dress. He was a
handsome man, about five-and-thirty years old, brown hair, an open
but thoughtful face, and an observant eye. He it was who had ridden
to the front, and given those orders the execution of which we have
noticed. He had now returned, and kept his horse a neck or so behind
that of an officer far more splendidly attired, who seemed to pay no
attention whatever to the little operation that had occurred, but,
shading his eyes with one hand from the rays of the setting sun,
gazed over the fields toward the villa or mansion on the Liris.

He was clad in the _paludamentum_, the long scarlet cloak of
a _legatus_ or general, the borders being deeply fringed with
twice-dyed Tyrian purple, (_Tyria bis tincta_, or _dibapha_, as it is
called by Pliny;) the long folds of which flowed over his charger's
haunches. This magnificent mantle was buckled round the wearer's neck
with a jewel. His corselet, unlike that of the colonel or tribune
already mentioned, was of plate-steel, (instead of rings,) and shone
like a looking-glass, except where it was inlaid with broad lines of
gold. He wore a chain of twisted gold round his neck, and his belt
as well as the hilt of his sword, which remained undrawn by his side
in a silver scabbard, glittered with sardonyx and jasper stones. He
had no tunic. His gloves happening, like those of his subordinate,
to be thrust into the belt round his waist, left visible a pair of
hands so white and delicate as to be almost effeminate. His helmet
was thin steel, and the crest was surmounted by a profuse plume of
scarlet cock's feathers. But perhaps the most curious particular of
his costume was a pair of shoes or half-boots of red leather, the
points of the toes turned upward. These boots were encrusted with
gems, which formed the patrician crescent, or letter C, on the top of
each foot, and then wandered into a fanciful tracery of sparkles up
the leg. The _stapedæ_, or stirrups, in which his feet rested, were
either of gold or gilt.

The countenance of the evidently important personage whose dress
has been stated was remarkable. He had regular features, a handsome
straight nose, eyes half closed with what seemed at first a languid
look, but yet a look which, if observed more closely, was almost
startling from the extreme attention it evinced, and from the
contrast between such an expression and the indolent indifference
or superciliousness upon the surface, if I may so say, of the
physiognomy. There was something sinister and cruel about the
mouth. He wore no whiskers or beard, but a black, carefully-trimmed
moustache.

After a steady gaze across the fields in the direction we have
already more than once mentioned, he half turned his head toward
the tribune, and at the same time, pointing to our travellers, said
something. The tribune, in his turn, addressed the first centurion,
(_dux legionis_,) an officer whose sword, like that of the legatus,
was undrawn, but who carried in his right hand a thin wand made
of vine-wood. In an instant this officer turned his horse's head
and trotted smartly toward our travellers, upon reaching whom he
addressed Paulus thus:

"Tell me, I pray you, have you been long here?"

"Not a quarter of an hour," answered Paulus, wondering why such a
question was asked.

"And have any persons passed into the road by this pathway?" the
centurion then inquired.

"Not since we came," said Paulus.

The officer thanked him and trotted back.

Meanwhile, Paulus and his mother and the freedman Philip had not
been so absorbed in watching the occurrence and scene just described
as to remove their eyes for more than a moment at a time from their
dearly-loved charge, the interesting little mourner who had begged
to be allowed to rest under the chestnut-trees. It was not so with
Agatha herself. The child was at once astonished, bewildered, and
enraptured. Had the spectacle and review before her been commanded
by some monarch, or rather some magician, on purpose to snatch
her from the possibility of dwelling longer amidst the gloom, the
regrets, and the terrors under which she had appeared to be sinking,
neither the wonder of the spectacle, nor the amenity of the evening
when it occurred, nor the loveliness of the landscape which formed
its theatre, could have been more opportunely combined. She had not
only never beheld any thing so magnificent, but her curiosity was
violently aroused.

Paulus exchanged with his mother and the old freedman a glance of
intelligence and of intense satisfaction, as they both noted the
parted lips and dilated eyes with which the child, half an hour
ago so alarmingly ill, contemplated the drama at which she was
accidentally assisting.

"_That's a rare doctor_," whispered Philip, pointing to the general
of the Prætorian Guards.

"No doctor," replied Paulus in the same low tones, "could have
prescribed for our darling better."

"Paulus," said Agatha, "what are these mighty beings? Are these the
genii, and the demons of the mistress-land, the gods of Italy?"

"They are a handful of Italy's troops, dear," he said.

She looked from her brother to the lady, and then to the freedman,
and this last, with a healing instinct which would have done honor
to Hippocrates, began to stimulate her interest by the agency of
suspense and mystery.

"Master Paulus, and Lady Aglais, and my little one too," he said, in
a most impressive and solemn voice, "these be the genii and these be
the demons indeed; but I tell you that you have not yet seen all the
secret. _Something is going to happen._ Attend to me well! You behold
a most singular thing! Are you aware of what you behold? Yonder,
Master Paulus, is the allotted portion of horse for more than three
legions: the _justus equitatus_, I say, for a Roman army of twenty
thousand men. Yes, I attest all the gods," continued Philip in a low
voice, but with great earnestness, and glancing from the brother to
the sister as if his prospects in life were contingent upon his being
believed in this. "I was at the battle of Philippi, and I aver that
yonder is more than the right allotment of horse for three legions.
Observe the squadrons, the _turmæ_; they do not consist of the same
arm; and instead of being distributed in bodies of three or four
hundred each to a legion, they are all together before you without
their legions. Why is that, Master Paulus?"

"I know not," said Paulus.

"Ah!" resumed the freedman, "you know not, but you _will_ know
presently. Mark that, little Mistress Agatha, and bear in mind that
Philip the freedman has said to your brother that he will know all
presently."

The child gazed wonderingly at the troops as she heard these
mysterious words. "Who are those?" asked she, pointing to the
squadrons of those still in column. "Who are those in leather
jerkins, covered with the iron scales, and riding the large, heavy
horses?"

"Batavians from the mouths of the Rhine and the Scheldt," answered
the freedman, with a mysterious shake of the head.

"And those," pursued she, with increasing interest; "who are those
whose faces shine like dusky copper, and whose eyes glitter like the
eyes of the wild animals in the arena, when the proconsul of Greece
gives the shows? I mean those who ride the small, long-tailed horses
without any _ephippia_ (saddle-cloths,) and even without bridles--the
soldiers in flowing dress, with rolls of linen round their heads?"

"They are the Numidians," replied Philip. "Ah! Rome dreaded those
horsemen once, when Hannibal the Carthaginian and his motley hordes
had their will in these fair plains."

As he spoke, a strange movement occurred. The general or _legatus_
dismounted, and, giving the bridle of his horse to a soldier, began
to walk slowly up and down the side of the road. No sooner had his
foot touched the ground than the whole of the Numidian squadron
seemed to rise like a covey out of a stubble field; with little clang
of arms, but with one short, sharp cry, or whoop, it burst from
the high road into the meadow land. There the evolutions which they
performed seemed at first to be all confusion, only for the fact
that, although the horsemen had the air of riding capriciously in
every direction, crossing, intermingling, separating, galloping upon
opposite curves, and tracing every figure which the whim and fancy
of each might dictate, yet no two of them ever came into collision.
Indeed, fantastic and wild as that rhapsody of manœuvres into
which they had broken appeared to be, some principle which was
thoroughly understood by every one of them governed their mazy
gallop. It was as accurate and exact as some stately dance of slaves
at the imperial court. It was, in short, itself a wild dance of
the Numidian cavalry, in which their reinless horses, guided only
by the flashing blades and the voices of their riders, manifested
the most vehement spirit and a sort of sympathetic frenzy. These
steeds, which never knew the bridle, and went thus mouth-free even
into battle--these horses, which their masters turned loose at night
into the fields, and which came back bounding and neighing at the
first call, were now madly plunging, wheeling, racing, and charging,
like gigantic dogs at sport. Presently they began to play a strange
species of leap-frog. A Numidian boy, who carried a trumpet and rode
a pony, or at least a horse smaller and lower than the rest of the
barbs, ("Berber horses,") suddenly halted upon the outside of the
mad cavalry whirlpool which had been formed, and flung himself flat
at full length upon the back of the diminutive animal. Instantly the
whirl, as it circled toward him, straightened itself into a column,
and every horseman rode full upon the stationary pony, and cleared
both steed and rider at a bound, a torrent of cavalry rushing over
the obstruction with wild shouts.

"That is Numidian sport, Master Paulus," said the freedman; "but
there is not a rider among them to be compared to yourself."

"Certainly I can ride," said the youth; "but I pretend not to be
superior to these Centaurs."

"Be these, then, the Centaurs I have heard of?" asked Agatha; "be
these the wild powers?"

The hubbub had prevented her, and all with her, from noticing
something. Before an answer could be given, the Numidians had
returned to the highway as suddenly as they had quitted it, and the
noise of their dance was succeeded by a pause of attention. The
general was again on horseback, and our travellers perceived that
two litters, one of carved ivory and gold, the other of sculptured
bronze, borne on the shoulders of slaves, were beside them.

Two gentlemen on foot had arrived with the litters along the broad
pathway already noticed, and a group of attendants at a little
distance were following.

This new party were now halting with our travellers beneath the
far-spreading shade of the same trees. In the ivory litter reclined
a girl of about seventeen, dressed in a long _palla_ of blue silk,
a material then only just introduced from India, through Arabia
and Egypt, and so expensive as to be beyond the reach of any but
the richest class. Her hair, which was of a bright gold color,
was dressed in the fashionable form of a helmet, (_galerus_,) and
was inclosed behind in a gauze net. She wore large _inaures_, or
ear-rings, of some jewel, a gold chain, in every ring of which was
set a gem, and scarlet shoes embroidered with pearls. The lady in
the bronze litter was attired in the _stola_ of a matron, with a
_cyclas_, or circular robe, thrown back from the neck, and a tunic
of dark purple which descended to her feet. Her brown hair was
restrained by bands, _vittæ_, which had an honorable significance
among the Roman ladies, ("_Nil mihi cum vitta_," says the profligate
author of the _Ars Amandi_.) She seemed somewhat past thirty years of
age; she had a very sweet, calm, and matronly air; her countenance
was as beautiful in features and general effect as it was modest in
its tone and character.

Her companion,[4] in the litter of ivory and gold, was not more
than half her age, was even more beautiful, with an immense wreath
of golden hair, and with large blue eyes, darkening to the likeness
of black as she gazed earnestly upon any object. But she had a
less gentle physiognomical expression. Frequently her look was
penetrating, brief, impatient, sarcastic, disdainful. She had a
bewitching smile, however, and her numerous admirers made Italy echo
with their ravings.

Lucius Varius, said the fashionable world, was at that very time
engaged upon a kind of sapphic ode, of which she was to be the
subject.

Scarcely had these litters or palanquins arrived and halted, when
the general officer dismounted once more, and walked quickly toward
the spot with his helmet in his hand. At a few yards' distance he
stopped, and first bowed low to the elder of the two gentlemen who
had accompanied the litters on foot, and then, almost entirely
disregarding the other gentleman, made an obeisance not quite so long
or so deep to the ladies. The man whom so splendid a personage as the
legatus, wearing his flaming paludamentum, and at the head of his
troops, thus treated with so obsequious a veneration, did not return
the salute except by a slight nod and a momentary, absent-minded
smile. His gaze had been riveted upon our travellers, and chiefly
upon the youth and his young, suffering sister, upon both of whom,
after it had quickly taken in Philip the freedman, the Thracian
woman, and the Athenian lady, it rested long--longest and last upon
Agatha.

"Sejanus," said he finally, "who are these?"

"I never saw them until just now, my commander and Cæsar; they were
here when we halted, and while we waited for our master, the favorite
of the gods, these travellers seemed to be resting where you behold
them."

"As those gods favor me," said the other, "this is a fine youth.
Can we not _edit_[5] him? And yonder girl--have you ever seen, my
Sejanus, such eyes? But she is deadly pale. Are you always thus pale,
pretty one, or are you merely ill? If but ill, as I guess, Charicles,
my Greek physician, shall cure you."

Before this man had even spoken, the moment, indeed, when first his
eyes fell upon her, Agatha had sidled close to her mother; and while
he was expressing himself in that way to Sejanus, she returned his
gaze with panic-stricken, dilated eyes, as the South American bird
returns that of the reptile; but when he directly questioned her,
she, reaching out her hand to Paulus, clutched his arm with a woman's
grasp, and said in an affrighted voice,

"My brother, let us go."

Paulus, in a manner naturally easy, and marked by the elegance and
grace which the athletic training of Athens had given to one so
well endowed physically, first, merely saying to the stranger, "I
crave your pardon," (_veniam posco_,) lifted Agatha with one arm,
and placed her in the travelling carriage. Then, while the freedman
and the Thracian slave mounted to their bench, he returned to where
his mother stood, signed to her to follow Agatha, and, seeing her
move calmly but quickly toward the vehicle, he took the broad-rimmed
_petasus_ from his head, and bowing slowly and lowly to the stranger,
said,

"Powerful sir, for I observe you are a man of great authority, my
sister is too ill to converse. You rightly guessed this; permit us to
take her to her destination."

The man whom he had thus balked, and to whom he now thus spoke,
merits a word of description. He appeared to be more than fifty years
old. The mask of his face and the frame of his head were large, but
not fat. His complexion was vivid brick-red all over the cheeks, with
a deeper flush in one spot on each side, just below the outer corners
of the eyes. The eyes were bloodshot, large, rather prominent, and
were closely set together. The nose was large, long, bony, somewhat
aquiline. The forehead was not high, not low; it was much developed
above the eyes, and it was broad. A deep and perpetual dint just over
the nose reached half-way up the forehead. His hair was grizzled and
close cut. His lips were full and fleshy, and the mouth was wide; the
jaws were large and massive. His face was shaven of all hair. The
chin was very handsome and large, and the whole head was set upon a
thick, strong throat, not stunted, however, of its proper length.
In person this man was far from ungainly, nor yet was he handsome.
In carriage and bearing, without much majesty, he had nevertheless
something steadfast, weighty, unshrinking, and commanding. His
outer garment, not a toga, was all one color and material; it was a
long, thick wadded silk mantle, of that purple dye which is nearly
black--the hue, indeed, of clotted gore under a strong light. He wore
gloves, and instead of the usual short sword of the Romans, had a
long steel stylus[6] for writing on wax thrust into a black leathern
belt. This instrument seemed to show that he lived much in Rome,
where it was not the custom, when otherwise in civilian dress, to go
armed.

As the reader will have guessed, this man was to be the next emperor
of the Roman world.

"Permit you to take her to her destination?" he repeated slowly. "My
Greek physician, I tell you, shall cure her. I will give directions
about your destination." A slight pause; then, "Are you a Roman
citizen?"

"I am a Roman knight as well as citizen," answered Paulus proudly;
"and my family is not only equestrian, but patrician."

"What is your name?"

"Paulus Æmilius Lepidus."

The man in the black or gore-colored purple glanced at Sejanus, who,
still unconcerned, stood with his splendid helmet in the left hand,
while he smoothed his moustache with the right; otherwise perfectly
still, his handsome face, cruel mouth, and intelligent eyes all alive
with the keenest attention.

"And the destination to which you allude is--?" pursued the man in
black purple.

"Formiæ," said Paulus.

"What relation or kinship exists between you and Marcus Æmilius
Lepidus, formerly the triumvir, who still enjoys the life which he
owes to the clemency of Augustus?"

Paulus hesitated. When he had given his name, the younger of the
two ladies had raised herself suddenly in the litter of ivory and
gold, and fastened upon him a searching gaze, which she had not
since removed. The other lady had also at that instant looked at
him fixedly. We have already stated that, when Sejanus approached
the group, he had not deigned in any very cordial manner to salute
or notice the second of the two gentlemen who had accompanied the
litters on foot. This gentleman was very sallow, had hollow eyes, and
a habit of gnawing his under lip between his teeth. He had unbuckled
his sword, and had given it, calling out, "_Lygdus, carry this_," to
a man with an exceedingly sinister and repulsive countenance. The man
in question had now taken a step or two forward, and was standing on
the left of Paulus, fronting the Cæsar, his shoulders stooping, his
neck bent forward, his eyes without any motion of the head rolling
incessantly from person to person, and face to face, but at once
falling before and avoiding any glance which happened to meet his. He
looked askant and furtively at every object with an eager, unhappy,
and malign expression. Paulus did not need to turn his head to feel
that this man was now intently peering at him. Behind the two courtly
palanquins, and beyond the shade of the trees, was a third litter
still more costly, being covered in parts with plate gold. Here sat
a woman with a face as white as alabaster, and large prominent black
eyes, watching the scene, and apparently trying to catch every word
that was said.

Paulus, as we have observed, hesitated. The training of youth in
the days of classic antiquity soon obliterated the inferiority of
unreasoning, nervous shyness. But the strange catechism which Paulus
was now undergoing, with all this gaze upon him from so many eyes,
began to be a nuisance, and to tell upon a spirit singularly high.

"Have you heard my question?" inquired Tiberius.

"I have heard it," replied Paulus; "and have heard and answered
several others, without knowing who he is that asks them. However,
the former triumvir, now living at Circæi, about forty thousand paces
from here, is my father's brother." (Circæi, as the reader knows, is
now called Monte Circello, a promontory just opposite Gaeta.)

When Paulus had given his last answer, the ladies glanced at each
other, and the younger looked long and hard at Tiberius. Getting some
momentary signal from him, she threw herself back in her palanquin
and smiled meaningly at the stooping, sinister-faced man, who had
stationed himself in the manner already mentioned near Paulus's left
hand.

"Your father," rejoined Tiberius, after a pause, "was a very
distinguished soldier, and, as I always heard when a boy, he
contributed eminently to the victory of Philippi. But I knew not that
he had children; and, moreover, was he not slain, pray, at Philippi,
toward the end of the battle, which he certainly helped to gain?"

"I hope," said Paulus, somewhat softened by the praise of his father,
"I hope that Augustus supposed him to have died of his wounds, and
that it was only under this delusion he gave our estates--which were
situated somewhere in this very province of Campania, with a noble
mansion like the castellum upon the river yonder--to that brave and
able soldier Agrippa Vespasianus."

At this name a deep red flush over-spread the brow of Tiberius, and
Paulus innocently proceeded.

"Certainly, the noble Agrippa, who was to have been Cæsar, had he
lived, never would have accepted so unfair a bounty had he known that
my father really survived his wounds, but that--despairing of the
generosity, or rather despairing of the equity of Augustus--he was
living a melancholy, exheridated exile, near that very battle-field
of Philippi, in Thrace, where he had fought so well and had been left
for dead."

"You dare to term the act of Augustus," slowly said the man in the
gore-colored purple cloak, "_so unfair a bounty_, and Augustus
himself _ungenerous, or rather unjust_?"

At this terrible rejoinder from such a man, the down-looking person
whom we have mentioned passed his right hand stealthily to the hilt
of the sword which he was carrying for his master, and half drew it.
Paulus, who for some time had had this person standing at his left,
could observe the action without turning his head. He was perfectly
aware, moreover, that, should the other draw his weapon upon him,
the very act of drawing it would itself become a blow, on account
of their respective places, whereas to escape it required more
distance between them, and to parry it in a regular way would demand
quite a different position, besides the needful moment or two for
disengaging his own rather long blade. Yet the youth stood completely
still; he never even turned his head. However, he just shifted the
wide-rimmed hat from his left to his right hand (the hand for the
sword) and thereby seemed to be only more encumbered, unprepared, and
defenceless than before. His left hand, with the back inward, fell
also meantime in an easy and natural way upon the emerald haft of the
outlandish-looking three-edged rapier, which, as he played with it,
became loose in the scabbard, and _came and went_ some fraction of an
inch.

"I never termed him so," said Paulus. "I said not this of Augustus. I
am at this moment on my way to Augustus himself, who is, I am told,
to be at Formiæ with his court for a week or two. I must, therefore,
again ask your leave, mighty office-bearer, to continue my journey. I
know not so much as who you are."

"I am Tiberius Cæsar," said the other, bending upon him those
closely-set, prominent, bloodshot eyes with no very assuring
expression. "I am Tiberius Cæsar, and you will be pleased to wait one
moment before you continue the journey in question. The accusation
against your father was this: that, after Philippi, he labored for
the interests first of Sextus, the son of Pompey, and afterward of
Mark Antony, in their respective impious and parricidal struggles;
and the answer to this charge (a charge to which witnesses neither
were nor are wanting) has always been, that it was simply impossible,
seeing that Paulus Lepidus, your father, perished at Philippi before
the alleged treasons had occurred. Wherefore, as your father had
done good service, especially in the great battle where he was thus
supposed to have fallen, not only was his innocence declared certain,
but, for his memory's sake, Marcus Lepidus, the triumvir, your uncle,
was forgiven. Yet now we learn from you, the son of the accused,
that the only defence ever made for him is positively false; that
your father, were he still living, would probably merit to be put to
death; and that your uncle, at the same time, is stripped of the one
protecting circumstance which has preserved his head. I must order
your arrest, and that of all your party, in order that these things
may be at least fully investigated."

As this was said, the lady in the litter of ivory and gold
contemplated Paulus with that bewitching smile which she was
accustomed to bestow upon dying gladiators in the hippodrome; while
the other lady gazed at him with a compassionate, forecasting and
muse-like look.

"I mean no disrespect whatever to so great a man as you, sir; but I
will," said Paulus, "appeal from Tiberius Cæsar to Cæsar Augustus; to
whom, I again remind you, I am on my way."

No sooner had he uttered the words, "I appeal from Tiberius," than,
before he could finish the sentence, the malign-faced man on his left
with great suddenness drew the sword hew as carrying for Cneius Piso,
and, availing himself of the first natural sweep of the weapon as it
left the scabbard, sought to bring the edge of it backward across
the face of Paulus, exclaiming, while he did so, "_Speak you thus to
Cæsar?_"

Had this man, who was the future assassin of Drusus, and slave to
Cneius Piso, who was the future assassin of Germanicus, succeeded in
delivering that well-meant stroke, the sentence which our hero was
addressing to Tiberius could never have been said out; but said out,
as we see, it was, and said, too, with due propriety of emphasis,
although with a singular accompanying delivery. In fact, though not
deigning to look round toward this man, Paulus had been vividly
aware of his movements, and, swift as was the attack, the defence
was truly electrical. Paulus's rapier, the hilt of which, as we have
remarked, had been for some time in his left hand, leapt from its
sheath, and being first held almost perpendicularly for one moment,
the point down and the hilt a little higher than his forehead, met
the murderous blow at right angles; after which the delicate long
blade flashed upward, with graceful ease but irresistible violence,
bearing the assassin's weapon backward upon a small semi-circle, and
remaining inside of it, or, in other words, nearer to Lygdus's body
than Piso's own sword, which he carried, was. It looked like a mere
continuation of this dazzling parry, but was, in truth, a vigorous
deviation from it, which none but a very pliant and powerful wrist
could have executed; when the emerald pommel fell like a hammer upon
the forehead of Lygdus the slave, whom that disdainful blow stretched
at his length upon the ground, motionless, and to all appearance
dead. As Piso was standing close, the steel guard of the hilt, in
passing, tore open his brow and cheek.

The whole occurrence occupied only five or seven seconds, and
meanwhile the youth finished his sentence with the words already
recorded, "From Tiberius Cæsar to Cæsar Augustus, to whom, I again
remind you, I am on my way."

An exclamation of astonishment, and perhaps some other feeling,
escaped from Tiberius. Sejanus smiled; the woman with the pale face
and black eyes, who sat in the unadorned plate-of-gold palanquin,
screamed; and the other ladies laughed loudly. Among the prætorian
guards, who from the road were watching with attention the group
where they saw their general and the Cæsar, a long, low murmur of
approbation ran. At this, Tiberius turned and looked steadily and
musingly toward them. Paulus, instantly sheathing his weapon, said,

"I ask Cæsar's pardon, but there was no time to obtain his permission
for what I have just done. My head must have been in two pieces had I
waited but one moment."

"Just half a moment for each piece," said Tiberius; "but your left
hand seems well able to keep your head. Are you left-handed?"

"No, great Cæsar," said Paulus; "I am what my Greek teacher of fence
used to call two-handed, _dimachærus_; he tried to make all his
pupils so, but my right remains far better than my left."

"Then I should like to see your right thoroughly exercised," said
Tiberius.

Paulus heard a sweet voice here say, "As a favor to me, do not
order the arrest of this brave youth;" and, turning, he beheld the
beautiful creature in the litter of ivory and gold plead for him with
Tiberius. The large blue eyes, darkening as she supplicated, smote
the youth, and he could hardly take away his gaze.

"Young man, go forward with your mother and sister to Formiæ, under
the charge of Velleius Paterculus, the military tribune whom you see
yonder upon the road. Remain in Formiæ till I give you leave to quit
it. Report your place of residence to the tribune. Go!"

The last word was pronounced harshly. Tiberius made a signal with his
hand to Paterculus. Then passing his arm through that of Sejanus,
and speaking to him in a low tone, he led the general aside into
the fields to a little distance; while--with the exception of two
mounted troopers, (each leading a horse,) who remained behind, but
considerably out of hearing--the prætorian guards, the three litters,
and the travelling _biga_ began to move toward Formiæ, leaving the
road to silence, and the evening landscape to peace.

    TO BE CONTINUED.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Cicero, Legg. ii. 23.

[3] Plutarch in Pompey. Seneca, Epis. 64.

[4] Mother of Caligula, and grandmother of Nero, by her daughter
Agrippina Julia.

[5] To produce a gladiator in the arena was to _edit_ him.

[6] Pliny, Epis. iii. 21.




MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.[7]


There is, after all, but slight exaggeration in the old saying, that
a lie travels leagues while truth is putting on boots to pursue and
overtake it. And even when overtaken, caught, and choked, how hard
it dies! In our daily experience, how often does truthful exposure
utterly extinguish false and evil report? Certainly not always, and
probably but very seldom. In the intercourse of society, one may
partially crush out a calumny by going straight to those who should
know the truth and compelling them to listen to it.

But the lie historical cannot be so met. People in this busy world
have no time to spend in reading long documents in vindication of men
or women long since dead. But they have read the calumny? Certainly.
The calumny is not so long as the refutation, and is more readable.
It is attractive; it is piquant. Mary Stuart as an adulteress and a
murderess is an interesting character. People never tire of hearing
of her. But Mary Stuart, the upright queen, the noble and true
woman, the faithful spouse and affectionate mother, has but slight
attractions for the mass of readers. To hear her so proven must be
dull reading. Nevertheless, with time comes truth; for although

    "The mills of the gods grind slowly,
    They grind exceedingly fine;"

which we take to be only a modern, heathenish way of saying, as we
chant every Sunday at vespers,

    "_Et justitia ejus manet in seculum seculi._"

Look at the Galileo story. Galileo died more than two hundred years
ago. Yet it is only within a lifetime that the truth concerning him
began to dawn upon the English mind.

Mary Queen of Scots surrendered her soul to God and her head
to Elizabeth nearly three centuries ago, and the combat over
her reputation to-day rages as hot as ever. In the case of the
Florentine astronomer, there has been no strongly decided hereditary
transmission of the falsehood. In that of the Queen of Scotland every
inch of ground is obstinately fought, because her innocence means
the shame of England, the disgrace of Knox, the condemnation of the
ornaments of the Anglican and Puritan churches, and the infamy of
Elizabeth.

These enemies of Mary yet live in transmitted prejudices and powerful
hereditary interests. The very existence of all the boasting, pride,
false reputation, hypocritical piety, and national vanity represented
by the familiar catchwords of "Our Noble Harry," "Glorious Queen
Bess," "The Virgin Queen," "Our Sainted Reformers," has its
inspiration and life-breath in the maintenance of every calumny
against Mary Stuart and the Catholic Church of that day; and we must
do these supporters the credit of admitting that they are instant in
season and out of season, and never weary in their work.

But their case was long since made up. They have said their last
word, and shot all the arrows of their quiver. With each succeeding
year Elizabeth's reputation fails, and is rapidly passing into
disgrace. With the same rapidity Mary's fame grows brighter.

The books and pamphlets written in attack or defence of Mary would
of themselves form a library. For the attack, the key-note is to
be found in Cecil's avowed principle concerning the treatment of
the dethroned queen, that _their purpose could not be obtained
without disgracing her_. Hence, the silver-casket letters, and the
so-called confessions of Paris. Hence, the issue, during every year
of her long imprisonment of eighteen years, of some vile pamphlet,
under Cecil's instructions, calculated to blast her character. Two
men in particular powerfully contributed to defame the Queen of
Scots--John Knox and George Buchanan. Knox by his sermons, in which,
says Russel, (_History of the Reformation_, vol. i. p. 292,) "lying
strives with rage;" Buchanan, by his writings, which have been
made by Mary's enemies one of the sources of history. Buchanan was
an apostate monk, saved from the gallows by Mary, and loaded with
her favors. An eye-witness of her dignity, her goodness, and her
purity, he afterward described her as the vilest of women. He sold
his pen to Elizabeth, and has been properly described as "unrivalled
in baseness, peerless in falsehood, supreme in ingratitude."
His _Detection_ was published (1570) in Latin, and copies were
immediately sent by Cecil to Elizabeth's ambassador in Paris with
instructions to circulate them; "_for they will come to good effect
to disgrace her, which must be done before other purposes can be
obtained_."

This shameful work has been the inspiration of most of the portraits
drawn of Mary. De Thou in France, Spotiswoode, Jebb, and many others
in England, have all followed him. Holinshed too was deceived by
Buchanan; but it is doubtful if he dared write otherwise than he did,
between the terrors of Cecil's spies and Elizabeth's mace.

An English translation of Buchanan was first published in 1690, being
called forth by the revolution of 1688. Jebb's two folio volumes
appeared in 1725.

Two additional lives of Mary, by Heywood (1725) and Freebairn, were
little more than translations from the French. In 1726, Edward
Simmons published Mary's forged letters as genuine. Anderson's
voluminous collection of papers (four large volumes) appeared in
1727 and 1728. Meantime, from the accession of a new dynasty and the
rebellion of 1715, there arose in Edinburgh a sort of society having
for its principal object the work of supporting Buchanan's credit and
vilifying the Scottish queen. Later came the well-known and widely
published histories of Scotland and of England by Robertson and Hume,
which, read wherever the English language was known, may be said to
have popularized the culpability of Mary. Until within comparatively
few years, Hume's work was the only history of England generally read
in the United States. Then came Malcolm Laing, who imagined he had
closed the controversy against Mary in his bitter _Dissertation_.
Mignet, in France, went further than Laing, while Froude, in his
history of England, distancing all previous writers, portrays Mary
in the blackest colors as one of the most criminal and devilish of
women. For his material there is no statement so absurd, no invention
so gross, no lie so palpable, no calumny so vile, provided only that
it be to the prejudice of Mary Stuart, that does not find favor in
his eyes. In his blind hatred of the Catholic queen, forgetting all
historic dignity and even personal decency, he showers upon her such
epithets as "panther," "ferocious animal," "wild-cat," "brute;" her
persecutors being white-robed saints, such as "the pious Cecil,"
and "the noble and stainless Murray," and the virgin Queen Elizabeth
appearing "as a beneficent fairy coming out of the clouds to rescue
an erring sister."

But Mary's cause has not wanted defenders. Among the best known
are, John Leslie, Bishop of Ross; Camden and Carte, the English
historians; Herrera, the Spanish bishop; Robert Keith; Goodall,
(1754,) who made the first searching analysis of the silver-casket
letters, showing that the French text of the pretended Bothwell
love-letters, until then supposed to be original, was a poor
translation from the Latin or Scotch. William Tytler (1759) and
John Whitaker (1788) proved that the letters were forged by those
who produced them. Stuart, in his history of Scotland, (1762,) and
Mademoiselle Keraglio, in her _Life of Elizabeth_, (1786,) both
protested against the conclusions of Hume and Robertson. In 1818,
George Chalmers took up Laing's book, and proved conclusively, with
a mass of newly-discovered testimony, that the accusers of Mary were
themselves the murderers of Darnley. Then followed the learned Dr.
Lingard, Guthrie, and H. Glassford Bell. But all these works were
either too heavy and cumbrous for popular reading, or too narrow
in their scope; most of them being better prepared for reference
than for reading, and of but slight effective service in the field
occupied by Hume and Robertson. Miss Strickland's work is well known
to all our readers, and has done much good. In 1866, Mr. McNeel
Caird published _Mary Stuart, her Guilt or Innocence_, in which he
effectively defends Mary and seriously damages Mr. Froude's veracity.

A most valuable historical contribution is the late work (1869) of
M. Jules Gauthier. The first volume is out and the second will be
issued in a few months. M. Gauthier says that after reading the
work of M. Mignet, he had no doubt that Queen Mary had assassinated
her husband in order to avenge the death of Riccio. "I was,
therefore, surprised," he continues, "on arriving at Edinburgh, in
1861, to hear Mary warmly defended, and reference made to documents
recently discovered that were strongly in her favor. I then formed
the resolution to study for myself this historical problem and to
discover the truth. I had no idea of writing a book, and no motive
but that of satisfying my own curiosity. I have devoted several
years solely to this object in Scotland, England, and Spain." M.
Gauthier then gives a formidable list of authorities and manuscripts
not usually quoted, acknowledges the aid of the librarians of the
legal library at Edinburgh, the learned Mr. Robertson of the Register
House, Robert Chambers, and the archivist of Simancas, Don Emanuel
Gonzalez, and announces the result to be a complete change of
opinion. He goes on to say that, before examining all the documents
of the trial, he had no doubt of the guilt of Mary Stuart; but after
having scrutinized and compared them, he remained and still remains
convinced that it was solely to assure the fruit of their shameful
victory that the barons, who had dethroned their queen with England's
help, sought to throw upon her the crimes of which they themselves
were the authors or the accomplices, and in which their auxiliaries
were Elizabeth and her ministers.

But what is of far greater importance, M. Gauthier announces the
discovery among the Simancas MSS. of documents that prove beyond
all question that the silver-casket letters were forgeries. This
important revelation he promises for the second volume. Preceding
M. Gauthier in time, M. Wiesener, another French writer, had, in an
admirable _critique_, demolished the foundations on which rest most
of the calumnies against Mary Stuart.

And now we have Mr. Hosack's work. There is a beautiful poetic
justice in the fact that the most effective defences of Mary
Stuart, in the English language, come from Protestant pens, and
that in Scotland among the sons of the Puritans are found her most
enthusiastic advocates. Mr. Hosack is an Edinburgh lawyer, and a
Protestant.

His book, written in a tone of legal calmness and dignity, stands
in refreshing contrast with Mr. Froude's savage bitterness and
repulsive violence, and seriously damages any credit that may be
claimed for the latter as a historian. Entirely at home in the
customs, localities, laws, and history of Scotland, he throws
unexpected light on a hundred interesting points heretofore left in
obscurity by foreign, and even English historians. Mr. Hosack also
produces many valuable documents never before published. Among these
are the specific charges preferred against Mary at the conference
at Westminster in 1568. The "Articles" produced by Mary's accusers
before they exhibited their proofs to the commissioners of Queen
Elizabeth, although constantly referred to by historians, are nowhere
to be found among all the voluminous collections heretofore published
on the subject. Mr. Hosack discovered this valuable paper in the
collection known as the Hopetoun Manuscripts, which are now in the
custody of the lord clerk register. Another most interesting document
presented by Mr. Hosack is one long supposed to be lost, namely,
the journal of the proceedings at Westminster on the day upon which
the silver casket containing the alleged letters of Queen Mary to
Bothwell was produced. Then comes the inventory of the jewels of the
Queen of Scots, attached to her last will and testament, made in
1566, when Mary was supposed to be dying. This paper has been but
recently discovered in the Register House, Edinburgh. It is of high
importance, as throwing light on a disputed point concerning Darnley.
Finally, with the aid of Professor Schiern, of Copenhagen, Mr. Hosack
has succeeded in ascertaining the date of the capture of Nicholas
Hubert, commonly called "French Paris." This point is also weighty in
connection with the question of the authenticity of the deposition
ascribed to him. The English critics of Mr. Hosack's book--many of
them partisans of Froude, and armed in the triple steel of their
national prejudice--are unanimous in praise of his research, and the
able presentation of his argument. Mr. Hosack distinctly charges Mr.
Froude with "inventing fictions," and, moreover, sustains the charge.
The aim of Mr. Hosack's work is not so much to write the life of Mary
Stuart as to demonstrate that her accusers were guilty of the very
crime (the murder of Darnley) of which they charge her, and that she
was innocent, not only of that, but of any intrigue with Bothwell.
Passing over in silence the period of Mary's residence in France, our
author rapidly glances at the salient points in the administration of
Mary of Lorraine, the mother of Mary Stuart, an admirable character,
whose energy, integrity, resolution, and fortitude would have adorned
the character of the greatest sovereign that ever reigned. Mr. Hosack
thus speaks of her death:

    "The words of the dying princess, at once so magnanimous and
    gentle, were listened to with deep emotion by the Protestant
    chiefs, who, though in arms against her authority, all
    acknowledged and admired her private virtues. Amidst the tears
    of her enemies, thus died the best and wisest woman of the age."

Knox alone, adds Mr. Hosack, sought by means of the most loathsome
slanders to vilify the character of this excellent princess; and it
was no doubt at his instigation that the rites of Christian burial
were denied to her remains in Scotland. Mr. Hosack then takes up the
history of Mary from the period of her arrival in Scotland, and ends
with the commencement of her imprisonment in England.

Mary came to reign over a country virtually in the power of a band of
violent and rapacious lords, long in rebellion against their king.
Of the five royal Jameses, three had perished, victims of their
aristocratic anarchy. The personal piety of these rebellious lords
was infinitesimal; but they had an enormous appreciation of Henry
VIII.'s plunder of the monasteries and division of the church lands
among the nobles, and desired to see Scotland submitted to the same
regimen--they, of course, becoming ardent reformers. The young queen
soon won the hearts of the people of Edinburgh by her sweetness and
grace. One of her first experiences was the remarkable interview with
Knox, in which he bore himself as properly became "the ruffian of
the Reformation," while Mary, a girl of nineteen, utterly overcame
him in self-possession, logic, and command of citation from the Old
Testament. The man was brimful of vanity. The wound rankled, and from
that moment he was Mary Stuart's personal enemy.

Long before Mary's arrival, Knox and his friends had obtained full
sway. The reformers had destroyed the monastic establishments in the
central counties, and, under the influence of Knox, had an "act"
passed for the total destruction of what they called "monuments
of superstition;" the monuments of superstition in question being
all that Scotland possessed of what was most valuable in art and
venerable in architecture.

"The registers of the church, and the libraries," says Spotiswoode,
"were cast into the fire. In a word, all was ruined; and what had
escaped in the time of the first tumult, did now undergo the common
calamity." In his sermons, Knox openly denounced Mary, not only as
an incorrigible idolatress, but as an enemy whose death would be
a public boon. In equally savage style he fulminated against the
amusements of the court, and dwelt especially on the deadly sin of
dancing. And yet Knox--we must in candor admit it--was not totally
indifferent to some social amenities, for he was then paying his
addresses to a young girl of sixteen, whom he afterward married.
Mary had freely accorded to her Protestant subjects the privilege
of worshipping God according to their own creed; but it did not
enter into the views of Knox and his co-religionists that the same
privilege should be accorded to Mary in the land of which she was
sovereign, and with great difficulty could she obtain the right
to a private chapel at Holyrood--even this being interfered with,
and the officiating priest afterward insulted, beaten, and driven
away. And these Christian gentlemen did not stop here. They had the
insolence and inhumanity to present to the queen what they called a
"supplication," in which they declared that the practice of idolatry
could not be tolerated in the sovereign any more than in the subject,
and that the "papistical and blasphemous mass" should be wholly
abolished. To this, Mary's reply was that, answering for herself,
she was noways persuaded that there was any impiety in the mass,
and trusted her subjects would not press her to act against her
conscience; for, not to dissemble, but to deal plainly with them, she
neither might nor would forsake the religion wherein she had been
educated and brought up, believing the same to be the true religion,
and grounded on the word of God. She further advised her "loving
subjects" that she, "neither in times past nor yet in time coming,
did intend to force the conscience of any person; but to permit every
one to serve God in such a manner as they are persuaded to be the
best." On this, Mr. Hosack remarks, "Nothing could exceed the savage
rudeness of the language of the assembly. Nothing could exceed the
dignity and moderation of the queen's reply."

The enemies of Mary Stuart always seek to find excuse for the
rebellious outrages of the lords and the kirk in the design
attributed to Mary Stuart of introducing Catholicity to the
exclusion of Protestantism. Mr. Hosack handles this portion of
his subject with great ease and success, showing conclusively the
admirable spirit of toleration that animated Mary throughout. Then
follow the marriage of Mary with Darnley; the rebellion of Murray,
Argyll, and others to deprive the queen of her crown; the energy,
ability, and admirable judgment of Mary in dealing with them, and
the consummate hypocrisy and falsehood of Elizabeth in feigning
good-will to Mary while furnishing the rebels money and assistance.
The French ambassador in London had discovered that six thousand
crowns had been sent from the English treasury to the Scotch rebels.
The fact was positive. He mentioned it to Elizabeth in person; but
she solemnly assured him, with an oath, (_elle nia avec serment_,)
that he was misinformed. There were strong reasons why Elizabeth
would not have it believed that she had lent the rebel lords any
countenance, and she therefore got up a remarkable scene for the
purpose. The French and Spanish ambassadors had charged her in plain
terms with stirring up dissensions in Scotland, and she desired to
reply to the imputation in the most public and emphatic manner.
Murray and Hamilton were summoned to appear, and in presence of the
ambassadors and her own ministers she asked them whether she had ever
encouraged them in their rebellion. Murray began to reply in Scotch,
when Elizabeth stopped him, bidding him speak in French, which she
better understood. The scene was arranged beforehand. Murray fell
on his knees and declared "that her majesty had never moved them to
any opposition or resistance against the queen's marriage." "Now,"
exclaimed Elizabeth in her most triumphant tone, "you have told the
truth; for neither did I, nor any one in my name, stir you up against
your queen; for your abominable treason may serve for example to
my own subjects to rebel against me. Therefore get you out of my
presence; ye are but unworthy traitors." This astounding exhibition
of meanness, and falsehood, and folly, which it is certain, says Mr.
Hosack, imposed upon no one who witnessed it, is without a parallel
in history.

Mary's energy and prudence in suppressing this dangerous rebellion
sufficiently refute a prevalent notion that she was indebted to the
counsels of Murray for the previous success of her administration.
Even Robertson admits that at no period of her career were her
abilities and address more conspicuous. And more remarkable than her
ability in gaining success was the moderation with which she used it.
Not one of the rebels suffered death, and her speedy pardon of the
Duke of Chatelherault, a conspirator against her crown, of which he
was the presumptive heir, was an instance of generosity unexampled in
the history of princes.

The accusation against Mary of having signed the Catholic League,
put forward by so many historians--Froude, of course, among them--is
clearly shown by Mr. Hosack to be utterly untrue. She never joined
it. By this refusal she maintained her solemn promises to her
Protestant subjects--the chief of whom remained her staunchest friend
in the days of her misfortune. She averted religious discord from
her dominions, and posterity will applaud the wisdom as well as the
magnitude of the sacrifice which she made at this momentous crisis.

Then comes the murder of Riccio, which is generally attributed to
the jealousy of Darnley and the personal hatred of the nobles. These
motives, if they ever existed at all, were but secondary with the
conspirators who contrived Riccio's death.

Their main objects were the restoration of the rebel lords, the
deposition of the queen, and the elevation of Darnley to the vacant
throne, on which he would have been their puppet.

Mr. Hosack traces, step by step, the progress of the conspiracy, and
the bargaining and traffic among the conspirators for their several
rewards. There was a bond of the conspirators among themselves, a
bond with Darnley, and one with the rebel leaders who waited events
at Newcastle. Elizabeth's ministers in Scotland were taken into their
confidence and counsels, as was also John Knox, while Elizabeth was
advised of and approved it. Many years ago, a Catholic convent was
burned in Boston--with what circumstances of atrocity we do not
now desire to recall. On the Sunday preceding the outrage, exciting
sermons were delivered on the horrors of popery from more than one
Protestant pulpit. So, also, on the Sunday preceding the murder of
Riccio, the denunciations of idolatry from the pulpits of Edinburgh
were more than usually violent, and the texts were chosen from
those portions of Scripture which describe the vengeance incurred
by the persecutors of God's people. The 12th of March was the day
fixed for the parliament before which the rebel lords were cited to
appear, under pain of the forfeiture of their titles and estates.
This forfeiture the conspirators were resolved to prevent, and chose
the 9th of March to kill Riccio. They could have assassinated him
at any time on the street, in the grounds, in his own room; but the
lords selected the hour just after supper when Riccio would be in
attendance upon the queen, in order to kill him in her presence,
doubtless with hope of the result of her death and that of her unborn
babe from the agitation and affright that must ensue from such a
scene. _The contingency of Mary's death was provided for in the
bond._ We need not here repeat the horrible details of the scene in
which, while a ruffian (Ker of Faudonside) pressed a cocked pistol
to her breast until she felt the cold iron through her dress, the
hapless victim of brutal prejudice and bigotry, whose only crime was
fidelity to his queen, was dragged from her presence and instantly
butchered. Nor need we describe the fiendish exultation and savage
conduct of the assassins toward a sick, defenceless woman.

    "Machiavelli," remarks Mr. Hosack, "never conceived--he has
    certainly not described--a plot more devilish in its designs
    than that which was devised ostensibly for the death of Riccio,
    but in reality for the destruction both of Mary Stuart and her
    husband."

For two days the noble assassins appeared to have been entirely
successful. Riccio was killed, the parliament was dissolved, the
banished lords recalled, and the queen a prisoner. But her amazing
spirit and resolution scattered all their plans to the winds. The
poor fool Darnley began to see the treachery of the men who had made
him their tool, and Mary fully opened his eyes to his danger. At
midnight on the Tuesday after the murder, the queen and Darnley crept
down through a secret passage to the cemetery of the royal chapel
of Holyrood and made their way "through the charnel house, among
the bones and skulls of the ancient kings," to where horses and a
small escort stood waiting for them. Twenty miles away Mary galloped
to Dunbar, where, within three days, eight thousand border spears
assembled to defend her.

The assassins, Morton, Ruthven, and their associates, fled to
England, where, under Elizabeth's wing, they were of course safe.
Maitland went to the Highlands, and Knox, grieving deeply over the
discomfiture of his friends, took his departure for the west.

The complicity of Murray,

    "The head of many a felon plot,
    But never once the arm,"

was not known, and he was pardoned his rebellion, and again received
by Mary into her confidence. This is the Murray constantly referred
to by Mr. Froude in his History of England as "the noble Murray,"
"the stainless Murray"--a man who, for systematic, thorough-going
villainy and treachery has not his superior in history.

Darnley, with an audacity and recklessness of consequences which
seem hardly compatible with sanity, made a solemn declaration to the
effect that he was wholly innocent of the late murderous plot.

The indignation of his associates in the crime knew no bounds. He
alone, they said, had caused the failure of the enterprise; he had
deserted them, and now sought to purchase his safety in their ruin.
From that moment his fate was sealed.

Buchanan's famous lie concerning Mary's visit to the Castle of Alloa,
which, to his shame, Mr. Froude substantially repeats, is disposed of
effectually in a few words by Mr. Hosack.

The ride from Jedburg, too, as recounted by Buchanan in his own
peculiar style, repeated by Robertson and by Froude, as far as he
dares, in the teeth of the testimony on the subject, also receives
its _quietus_ at Mr. Hosack's hands.

Then follow the dangerous illness of Mary, the aggravating and fatal
misconduct of Darnley, the poor queen's mental suffering and anxiety,
the preliminary plotting by Murray, Maitland, Argyll, and Huntly to
put Darnley out of the way, the signing of the bond among them for
the murder of the "young fool and tyrant," and the insidious attempt
by these scoundrels to entrap the poor heart-broken Mary into some
such expression of impatience or violence against Darnley as would
enable them to set up the charge of guilty knowledge against her. The
conspirators themselves have put on record the noble and Christian
reply of Mary Stuart, "I will that ye do nothing through which any
spot may be laid on my honor or conscience; and therefore, I pray
you, rather let the matter be in the state that it is, abiding till
God of his goodness put remedy thereto."

Following upon the baptism of the infant prince, who afterward
became James VI. of Scotland, came the unfortunately too successful
endeavors of Murray, Maitland, Bothwell, and Queen Elizabeth to
obtain the pardon of the Riccio murderers.

Poor Mary's political success would have been assured if she had
possessed but a small share of Elizabeth's hardness of heart and
vindictiveness. Always generous, always noble, always forgiving,
she allowed herself to be persuaded to grant a pardon to these
villains--seventy-six in number--excepting only George Douglas, who
stabbed Riccio in presence of the queen, and Ker of Faudonside, who
held his pistol at her breast during the perpetration of the murder.
This ruffian remained safely in England until Mary's downfall, when
he returned to Scotland and married the widow of John Knox.

It was about this period that Buchanan was extolling to the skies, in
such Latin verses as those beginning

    "Virtute ingenio, regina, et munere formæ
    Felicibus felicior majoribus,"

the virtues of a sovereign whom he afterward told us every one knew
at the time to be a monster of lust and cruelty! His libel was
written when Mary was a fugitive in England, to serve the purposes
of his employers, who had driven her from her native kingdom. The
most assiduous of her flatterers as long as she was on the throne,
he pursued her with the malice of a demon when she became a helpless
prisoner. His slanders were addressed not to his own countrymen, for
whom they would have been too gross, but to Englishmen, for the great
majority of whom Scotland was a _terra incognita_. His monstrous
fictions were copied by Knox and De Thou, and later by Robertson,
Laing, and Mignet, who, while using his material, carefully abstained
from quoting him as authority. Mr. Froude, the author of that popular
serial novel which he strangely entitles _The History of England_,
with delicious _naïveté_ declares his belief in the truth of
Buchanan's _Detection_, and makes its transparent mendacity a leading
feature of his work.

According to Buchanan, the Queen of Scots was, at the period above
referred to, leading a life of the most notorious profligacy. Mr.
Hosack, in his calm, lawyer-like manner, shows conclusively that
at that very time she never stood higher in the estimation both
of her own subjects and of her partisans in England. Considering
the difficulties of her position, he adds, Mary had conducted the
government of Scotland with remarkable prudence and success; and her
moderation in matters of religion induced even the most powerful of
the Protestant nobility to regard her claims with favor.

And still the plotting went on. Motives enough, for them, had
Murray, Morton, Maitland, and the rest to seek the destruction of
Darnley--revenge and greed of gain. These men had imposed upon the
generous nature of the queen in the disposal of the crown lands, and
they well knew that Darnley had made no secret of his disapproval of
the improvident bounty of his wife. These grants of the crown lands,
under the law of Scotland, could be revoked at any time before the
queen attained the age of twenty-five. That period was now at hand,
and the danger of their losing their spoils under the influence of
Darnley was imminent.

He had just been taken down with the small-pox at Glasgow, and the
conspirators, well knowing Mary's forgiving temper, feared, as well
they might, that his illness would lead to a reconciliation between
them.

Although Bothwell had shared less in the bounty of the queen than
the others, his motive was no less powerful for seeking the death of
Darnley. He aspired to Darnley's place as the queen's husband, and
his ambition was no secret to Murray and the others. Full willingly
they lent themselves to aid him, knowing that, if successful, his
plans would be fatal both to the queen and to himself.

Queen Mary went from Edinburgh to Glasgow, to visit Darnley on his
sick-bed. On this visit hinges a mass of accusations against Mary
by her enemies. We regret that the passages of Mr. Hosack's book in
which he dissects and analyzes all the evidence covering the period
from the journey to Glasgow down to the explosion at Kirk-a-field are
too long to be copied here. They are masterly, and more thoroughly
dispose of the slanders than any statement we have seen. He moreover
demonstrates that the queen's journey to Glasgow, heretofore
relied on as a proof of her duplicity because she went uninvited,
was undertaken at Darnley's own urgent request. It is during this
visit to Glasgow that Mary is charged with having written the two
casket letters, which, if genuine, certainly would prove her to be
accessory to the murder of her husband. With thorough knowledge of
Scotch localities, language, customs, and peculiarities, and with a
perfect mastery of all the details of testimony, _pro_ and _con_,
in existence on the subject--a mastery which Mr. Froude is far
from possessing--Mr. Hosack makes the examination of this question
of the genuineness of the Glasgow letters with an application of
the laws of evidence that enables him--if we may be permitted the
homely phrase--to turn them inside out. Contrasted with the sweet,
trusting, child-like confidence with which the letters are received
by Mr. Froude, Mr. Hosack's treatment of them is shockingly cool. In
commenting upon Hume's opinion that the style of the second Glasgow
letter was inelegant but "natural," Mr. Hosack remarks that human
depravity surely has its limits, and the most hardened wretches
do not boast, and least of all in writing, of their treachery and
cruelty. Even in the realm of fiction we find no such revolting
picture.

Of the third letter, the historian Robertson long since remarked
that, "if Mary's adversaries forged her letters, they were certainly
employed very idly when they produced this." And this remark may
correctly be applied to the fourth letter. The difference between
the two first and the two last is the most striking. The Glasgow
letters breathe only lust and murder; but these are written, to all
appearance, by a wife to her husband, in very modest and becoming
language. She gently reproaches him with his forgetfulness, and
with the coldness of his writings, sends him a gift in testimony of
her unchangeable affection, and finally describes herself as his
obedient, lawful wife. This is not the language of a murderess, and
these simple and tender thoughts were not traced by the same hand
that composed the Glasgow letters. They are the genuine letters of
Mary, not to Bothwell, but to her husband Darnley, and they are here
by result of an ingenious device to mix up a few genuine letters
of Mary with those intended to prove her guilty of the murder. The
only letters of importance as testimony against the queen are the
two first, and they were conclusively proven by Goodall, more than a
century ago, to have been written originally in Scotch.

Concerning Paris, whose testimony is strongly relied on by Mary's
enemies, Mr. Hosack has made a very important discovery. According
to a letter of Murray to Queen Elizabeth, Paris arrived in Leith (a
prisoner) about the middle of June, 1569. But Professor Schiern, of
Copenhagen, in compliance with a request made by Mr. Hosack to search
the Danish archives for any papers relating to Scotland, found the
receipt of Clark, Murray's agent, acknowledging the delivery to him
of the prisoner Paris on the 30th of October, 1568. So that Paris
was delivered up nearly a year before his so-called deposition was
produced. The authenticity of his deposition, monstrous though it be,
has been stoutly maintained by several of Mary's enemies. Even Hume
remarks upon it,

    "It is in vain at present to seek improbabilities in Nicolas
    Hubert's dying confession, and to magnify the smallest
    difficulty into a contradiction. It was certainly a regular
    judicial paper, given in regularly and judicially, and ought
    to have been canvassed at the time, if the persons whom it
    concerned had been assured of their own innocence."

Mr. Hume is an attractive writer, but as a historian it is long since
people ceased to rely upon him for facts. The passage here quoted is
a characteristic exemplification of his extraordinary carelessness.
According to Mr. Hosack, the short sentence cited contains three
distinct and palpable mistakes. In the first place, the paper
containing the depositions of Paris was authenticated by no judicial
authority. Secondly, it was not given in regularly and judicially;
for it was secretly sent to London in October, 1569, many months
after the termination of the Westminster conferences. Lastly, it was
impossible that it could have been canvassed at the time by those
whom it concerned; for it was not only kept a profound secret from
the queen and her friends during her life, but it was not made public
for nearly a century and a half after her death. The depositions of
Paris were first given to the world in the collections of Anderson in
1725.

It did not at all suit Murray's purpose to produce Paris in open
court. So, after being tortured, he was executed, and in place of
a witness who might have told what he saw and heard, was produced
a so-called deposition professedly written by a servant of Murray,
and attested by two of his creatures, Buchanan and Wood, both
pensioners of Cecil, and both enemies of the Queen of Scotland.
Buchanan, of course, had full cognizance of the Paris deposition,
for he subscribed it as a witness; and yet we have the singular fact
that, although he appended to his _Detectio_ the depositions of Hay,
Hepburn, and Dalgleish, that of Paris is omitted. Again, in his
_History of Scotland_, published subsequently, although he refers to
Paris in several passages, he is still silent as to his deposition.
The solution of this seeming singularity is simple. He rejected
it for its manifest extravagance and absurdity, which, he wisely
concluded, could not impose on the worst enemies of the queen.

Fable and fiction answering Mr. Froude's purpose just as well
as authentic history, he of course accepts the "Paris" paper as
perfectly true. A successful writer of the romance of history, Mr.
Froude deserves great credit for his industry in gathering every
variety of material for his novel without any absurd sentimental
squeamishness as to its origin.

And now, little by little, the truth begins to come out. For full
two years after the murder of Darnley, no one was publicly charged
with the crime but Bothwell and the queen. And this because it was
the interest of the ruling faction in Scotland, (themselves the
murderers,) to confine the accusation to these two persons. But as in
time events develop, we find the leaders of this faction, quarrelling
among themselves, begin to accuse each other of the crime, until the
principal nobility of Scotland are implicated in it. Mr. Hosack's
conclusion, from a searching analysis of all the evidence on record,
is, that the mysterious assassination of Darnley was not a domestic
but a political crime; and it was one which for many a day secured
political power to that faction which from the first had opposed
his marriage, and had never ceased from the time of his arrival in
Scotland to lay plots for his destruction.

As might be expected, Mary's enemies accuse her of a criminal degree
of inactivity after the death of her husband. But what could she do?
Who were the murderers? No one could tell. The whole affair was then
involved in impenetrable mystery. Her chief officers of justice,
Huntly the chancellor, and Argyll the lord-justice, were both in the
plot; Bothwell, the sheriff of the county, on whom should devolve
the pursuit and arrest of the criminal, had taken an active share in
the perpetration of the murder, and Maitland, the secretary, who had
first proposed to get rid of Darnley, was probably the most guilty
of all. In a memorial afterward addressed by Mary to the different
European courts, she thus describes the situation: "Her majesty could
not but marvel at the little diligence they used, and that they
looked at one another as men who wist not what they say or do."

And now calumny ran riot. Slanderous tongues and pens were busy.
Since Mary had dismissed the insolent Randolph from her court,
Elizabeth had maintained no ambassador there, so that the usual
official _espionage_ could not be carried on. Instead thereof, Sir
William Drury, stationed on the Scotch border, transmitted day by
day a current of scandalous stories. Mary was a woman, and her
enemies might effect by slander what they could not accomplish by
force. Then, too, a bigoted religious prejudice made the work easy.
No matter, says our author, what was the nature of the accusation
against a Catholic queen; so long as it was boldly made and
frequently repeated, it was sure to gain a certain amount of credit
in the end. Here follows, in Mr. Hosack's pages, an able presentation
of contemporary testimony going to show the falsehood of the
accusations that the queen was at this time on a footing of intimate
understanding with Bothwell. Under the circumstances his trial was,
of course, a farce.

The most powerful men in Scotland were his associates in guilt.
One of his noble accomplices in the murder rode by his side to
the Talbooth. Another accomplice, the Earl of Argyll, hereditary
lord-justice, presided at the trial; and the Earl of Caithness, a
near connection of Bothwell by marriage, was foreman of the jury.
The parliament which met soon after did little, besides passing the
Act of Toleration, but enact statutes confirming Maitland, Huntly,
Morton, and Murray in their titles and estates. As we have seen, this
was precisely the main object sought by these men in the murder of
Darnley, an object passed over in silence by most historians, and
not understood by others. Their common interest in his death was the
strongest bond of union among the noble assassins. If Darnley had
lived, he would have prevented the confirmation of these grants; for
he had made significant threats on that subject, especially as to the
gifts to Murray. Murray and the others wanted the lands and titles.
They obtained them. Bothwell had his own designs, and these were
insolent in their ambition. He wanted the queen's hand in marriage
as a step to the throne. It was but just that his companions should
help him as he had aided them. On the evening of the day on which
parliament rose, (April 19th,) Both well gave an entertainment at
a tavern in Edinburgh to a large party of the nobility. After wine
had circulated freely, he laid before his guests a bond for their
signatures. This document recited that it was prejudicial to the
realm that the queen should remain a widow; and it recommended
him, (Bothwell,) a married man, as the fittest husband she could
obtain among her subjects. With a solitary exception--the Earl of
Eglinton--all the lords present signed this infamous bond, and
thereby bound themselves to "further advance and set forward the
said marriage," and to risk their lives and goods against all who
should seek to hinder or oppose it. It is claimed by Mr. Froude that
his special saint, "the noble and stainless Murray," did not sign
this bond; but it is now made plain that he did. Meantime calumny
had free scope, and no invention was too gross for belief by many,
if it but carried with it some injury to Mary's reputation. Thus,
she is accused of journeying to Stirling for the express purpose
of poisoning her infant son. Poor Marie Antoinette in after years,
as we know, was accused of something worse than taking the life
of her child. The answer of these two Catholic queens, great in
their sufferings, and grand in their resignation, was, in each
case, an eloquent burst of nature and queenly dignity. "The natural
love," said Mary Stuart, "which the mother bears to her only bairn
is sufficient to confound them, and needs no other answer." She
afterward added, that all the world knew that the very men who now
charged her with this atrocious crime had wronged her son even before
his birth; for they would have slain him in her womb, although they
now pretended in his name to exercise their usurped authority.

On the 23d of April, while travelling from Linlithgow to Edinburgh,
with a few attendants, the queen was stopped by Bothwell, at the head
of one thousand horse. Bothwell rode up, caught her bridle-rein,
and assured her that "she was in the greatest possible danger," and
forthwith escorted her to one of her own castles, Dunbar. Here she
was kept a prisoner. Melville, who accompanied her, was sent away,
having heard Bothwell boast that he would marry the queen, even
"whether she would herself or not." No woman was allowed near her but
Bothwell's sister.

Although our readers are familiar with the horrible story, the best
account of it is, after all, Mary's own simple and modest narrative
of the abominable outrage. It is found in Keith, vol. ii. p. 599,
and in Hosack, p. 313. After referring to the great services and
unshaken loyalty of Bothwell, she says that, previous to her visit to
Stirling, he had made certain advances, "to which her answer was in
no degree correspondent to his desire;" but that, having previously
obtained the consent of the nobility to the marriage, he did not
hesitate to carry her off to the castle of Dunbar; that when she
reproached him for his audacity, he implored her to attribute his
conduct to the ardor of his affection, and to condescend to accept
him as her husband, in accordance with the wishes of his brother
nobles; that he then, to her amazement, laid before her the bond
of the nobility, declaring that it was essential to the peace and
welfare of the kingdom that she should choose another husband, and
that, of all her subjects, Bothwell was best deserving of that honor;
that she still, notwithstanding, refused to listen to his proposals,
believing that, as on her former visit to Dunbar, an army of loyal
subjects would speedily appear for her deliverance; but that, as day
after day passed without a sword being drawn in her defence, she was
forced to conclude that the bond was genuine, and that her chief
nobility were all in league with Bothwell; and finally, that, finding
her a helpless captive, he assumed a bolder tone, and "so ceased he
never till, by persuasion and importunate suit, _accompanied not the
less by force_, he has finally driven us to end the work begun."
Forced to marry Bothwell Mary was, to all who saw her, an utterly
wretched woman, and longed only for death. The testimony on this
point is very ample, and her behavior at this crisis of her history,
concludes Mr. Hosack, can only be explained by her rooted aversion
to a marriage which was forced upon her by the daring ambition of
Bothwell and the matchless perfidy of his brother nobles.

But already a fresh plot was on foot. Melville wrote to Cecil
concerning it, on the 7th of May; and on the following day, Kirkaldy
of Grange sent to the Earl of Bedford a letter intended for
Elizabeth's eye. Kirkaldy, the Laird of Grange, an ardent Protestant,
who, at the age of nineteen, was one of the men who murdered Cardinal
Beaton, enjoyed among his fellow-nobles the reputation of being
a man of honor, and the best and bravest soldier in Scotland. He
advised Bedford of the signing of a "bond" by "the most part of the
nobility," one head of which was, "to seek the liberty of the queen,
who is ravished and detained by the Earl of Bothwell;" another, "to
pursue them that murdered the king." The letter concludes by asking
Elizabeth's aid and support for "suppressing of the cruel murtherer
Bothwell." But Elizabeth had lost not only much money, but all credit
for veracity, by her last interference in Scottish affairs, and
refused to have any thing to do with this plot.

For three weeks after her marriage the queen remained at Holyrood;
the prisoner, to all appearance, rather than the wife of Bothwell.
She was continually surrounded with guards; and the description of
her situation given by Melville, who was at court at the time, agrees
entirely with that of the French ambassador. Not a day passed, he
says, in which she did not shed tears; and he adds that many, even of
Bothwell's followers, "believed that her majesty would fain have been
quit of him." The insurgent leaders--Morton, Maitland, and Hume--were
busy, and soon in the field with their forces. Bothwell raised a
small levy to oppose them, and the two armies met at Carberry Hill on
the 15th of June, 1567, exactly one month after the marriage. There
was no fighting. Dangerous as it was, Mary preferred to trust herself
to the rebel lords than to remain with Bothwell. She received their
pledge--that, in case she would separate herself from Bothwell, they
were ready "to serve her upon their knees, as her most humble and
obedient subjects and servants"--through Kirkaldy of Grange, the only
man among them whose word she would take. They kept their pledge as
they usually observed such obligations. What followed is too horrible
to dwell upon. It is wonderful that any human being could have
lived through the physical exhaustion, the insults, and the brutal
treatment this poor woman was subjected to during the next two days.
The people of Edinburgh grew indignant; and Kirkaldy of Grange swore
the lords should not violate their promises. But they quieted him
by showing a forged letter of the queen to Bothwell. It was not the
first time some among them had forged Mary's signature. With every
circumstance of force and brutality, Mary was then imprisoned in
Lochleven, whose guardian was the mother of the bastard Murray.

And now, while the friends of Mary, numerous as they were, remained
irresolute and inactive, the dominant faction made the most strenuous
efforts to strengthen itself. In the towns, where its strength
chiefly lay, and especially in Edinburgh, says Mr. Hosack, the
Protestant preachers rendered the most valuable aid. By indulging
in furious invectives against the queen, and charging her directly
with the murder, they prepared their hearers for the prospect of her
speedy deposition, and the _establishment of a regency in the name of
the infant prince_. It is clear that Murray was not forgotten by his
friends the preachers.

Strange as it may appear, there can be but little doubt that
Elizabeth was sincerely indignant on hearing of the outrageous
treatment of Mary by the lords. In her whole history, she never
appeared to so much advantage as a woman and a queen. She would
not stand tamely by, she said, and see her cousin murdered; and if
remonstrances proved ineffectual, she would send an army to chastise
and reduce them to obedience. Such conduct, and her messages to
Mary while a prisoner at Lochleven, no doubt inspired the Scottish
queen with the fatal confidence which induced her, a few months
afterward, to seek refuge in England. Unfortunately for Elizabeth,
and perhaps more unfortunately for Mary, the Queen of England's
reputation for duplicity was now so well established that no one but
her own ministers believed she was now sincere. Maitland, for the
Scotch nobles, plainly told Elizabeth's ambassador that, after what
had occurred in times past, "they could place no reliance on his
mistress;" and the King of France said to Sir Henry Norris, "I do not
greatly trust her." Meantime, the ministers daily denounced Mary as a
murderess in their sermons, and demanded that she should be brought
to justice like an ordinary criminal. Elizabeth's ambassador tried
to induce the confederate lords to restrain the savage license of
the preachers; but we cannot doubt, says Mr. Hosack, that they were
secretly encouraged by their noble patrons to prepare the minds of
the people for the deposition, if not for the murder, of the queen.
Throgmorton's opinion was that, but for his presence in Scotland, she
would have been sacrificed to the ambition and the bigotry of her
subjects.

Still a prisoner at Lochleven, Mary had to suffer the brutality of
the ruffian Lindsay, and the infamous hypocrisy of Mr. Froude's
"stainless Murray," who, with money in both pockets from France and
England, now came, with characteristic deceit, to defraud his sister
of her crown. Mr. Hosack thus estimates his performance:

    "First, to terrify his sister with the prospect of immediate
    death, then to soothe her with false promises of safety, and
    finally, with well-feigned reluctance, to accept the dignity
    he was longing to grasp, displayed a mixture of brutality and
    cunning of which he alone was capable."

Murray was proclaimed regent on the 22d of August. Soon afterward
began the machinations for accusing Mary of Darnley's murder; and
Murray's first care was to put out of the way every witness whose
testimony could be of any importance. Hay, Hepburn, and Powrie and
Dalgleish, on whom the queen's letters were said to have been found,
were all tried, convicted, and executed on the same day. It was
remarked that the proceedings were conducted with extraordinary and
indecent haste. Hay and Hepburn, from the scaffold, denounced the
nobles who had "made a bond for the king's murder." Public confidence
was shaken in the regent, and the discontent of the people was
expressed in plain speech and satirical ballads. Murray began to feel
the need of Elizabeth's assistance. Mary, in her trusting confidence,
had voluntarily placed all her valuable jewels in Murray's hands, for
safe keeping. From among them he selected a set of rare pearls, the
most valuable in Europe, which he sent by an agent to Elizabeth, who
agreed to purchase what she well knew he had no right to sell. Under
such circumstances, as is the custom among thieves and receivers, she
expected a bargain, and got it. It was a very pretty transaction.
In May, 1568, Mary escaped from Lochleven castle, and in a few days
found herself at the head of an army of six thousand men. Of the ten
earls and lords who flew to her support, nine were Protestants; and
our Puritan historian finds it remarkable that, in spite of all the
efforts of Murray and his faction, and in spite of all the violence
of the preachers, she--the Catholic Queen of Scotland, the daughter
of the hated house of Guise, the reputed mortal enemy of their
religion--should now, after being maligned as the most abandoned of
her sex, find her best friends among her own Protestant subjects,
appears at first sight inexplicable. A phenomenon so strange, he
adds, admits of only one explanation. If, throughout her reign, she
had not loyally kept her promises of security and toleration to her
Protestant subjects, they assuredly would not, in her hour of need,
have risked their lives and fortunes in her defence.

Against her better judgment, Mary was induced to fight the battle
of Langside, and lost the field. And now the queen made the great
mistake of her life. Instead of trusting to the loyalty of the Scotch
borderers, she determined to throw herself on the hospitality of the
Queen of England. In vain did her trusty counsellors and strongest
supporters seek to dissuade her. The warm professions of friendship
and attachment made to her by Elizabeth, when she was a prisoner
at Lochleven, had completely captivated her; and, insisting on her
project, she crossed the Solway, in an open boat, to the English
shore. She was received by Mr. Lowther, deputy warden, with all the
respect due to her rank and misfortunes. Although she did not yet
know it, Mary was from this moment a prisoner. Here Mr. Hosack, in
a few eloquent passages, sets forth the reasons why the forcible
detention of Mary, independently of all considerations of morality
and justice, was a political blunder of the first magnitude. As
the inmate of an English prison, she proved a far more formidable
enemy to Elizabeth than when she wore the crowns both of France
and Scotland. Never did a political crime entail a heavier measure
of retribution than the captivity and murder of the Queen of Scots
entailed on England.

Mary was first taken to the castle of Carlisle. Here Queen Elizabeth
was represented by Lord Scrope, the warden of the marches, and Sir
Francis Knollys, the queen's vice-chamberlain. These noblemen appear
to have been more impressed with the mental and moral qualities of
the Scottish queen than with her external graces. They describe her,
after their first interview, as possessing "an eloquent tongue and a
discreet head, with stout courage and a liberal heart;" and, in a
subsequent letter, Knollys says, "Surely, she is a rare woman; for
as no flattery can abuse her, so no plain speech seems to offend
her, if she thinks the speaker an honest man." All this was written
to Elizabeth, to whom, of course, it was gall and wormwood. A more
remarkable passage of their letter is that in which, speaking in
simple candor as English gentlemen and men of honor, they ask their
royal mistress whether

    "it were not honorable for you, in the sight of your own
    subjects and of all foreign princes, to put her grace to the
    choice, whether she will depart freely back into her country
    without your highness's impeachment, or whether she will remain
    at your highness's devotion within your realm here, with her
    necessary servants only to attend her?"

To a sovereign whose policy was synonymous with fraud, the
unconscious sarcasm of this honorable advice must have been biting.

Elizabeth pledged her word to Mary that she should be restored to her
throne. She at the same time pledged her word to Murray that Mary
should never be permitted to return to Scotland. Then began the long
nineteen years' martyrdom of Mary. The conference at York and the
commission at Westminster were mockeries of justice. It was pretended
there were two parties present before them--Murray and his associates
on one side, Mary on the other. Mary was kept a prisoner in a distant
castle, while Murray, received with honor at court, held private
and secret consultations with members of both these quasi-judicial
bodies, showed them the testimony he intended to produce, and
obtained their judgment as to the sufficiency of his proofs before
he publicly produced them; these proofs being the forged letters of
the silver casket. These letters were never seen by Mary Stuart, and
even copies of them were repeatedly and persistently refused her.
Mr. Froude makes a lame attempt to show that _some one_ secretly
furnished her copies; but even if his attempt were successful, it
does not affect the fact that the copies were officially refused her.
By the time the scales had fallen from Mary's eyes, Elizabeth's art
and duplicity had woven a web from which she could not be extricated.
Her remaining years of life were one long, heart-sickening struggle
against treachery, spies, insult to her person, her reputation,
and her faith; confinement, cold, sickness, neuralgic agony, want;
deprivation of all luxuries, of medical attendance, and of the
consolations of religion. At every fresh spasm of alarm on the
part of Elizabeth, Mary's prison was changed; frequently in dead
of winter, and generally without any provision for the commonest
conveniences of life. More than once, taken into a naked, cold
castle, Mary's jailers had to rely on the charity of the neighbors
for even a bed for their royal prisoner. At Tutbury, her rooms were
so dark and comfortless, and the surroundings so filthy--there is
no other word for it--that the English physician refused to charge
himself with her health. But enough. We all know the sad story, and
we trustingly believe the poor martyred queen has her recompense in
heaven.

Mr. Hosack's treatment of the question of the authenticity of the
silver-casket letters is exhaustive. More than a century ago, Goodall
fully exposed the forgery, and he has never been satisfactorily
answered. Mr. Froude, of course, accepts them without discussion.
The conferences at York and the proceedings at Westminster are
presented as only a lawyer can present them. Mary's cause gains by
the most rigid scrutiny. Mr. Froude does not know enough to analyze
and intelligibly present serious matters like these. He prefers a
series of sensational _tableaux_ and highly-colored dissolving views,
producing for authorities garbled citations and his own fictions. Mr.
Hosack's testimony, independently of its great intrinsic merit, is
valuable because of his nationality and of his religion, and we hope
to see his work republished in the United States. His closing page
concludes thus:

    "In the darkest hours of her existence--even when she hailed
    the prospect of a scaffold as a blessed relief from her
    protracted sufferings--she never once expressed a doubt as
    to the verdict that would be finally pronounced between her
    and her enemies. 'The theatre of the world,' she calmly
    reminded her judges at Fotheringay, 'is wider than the realm
    of England.' She appealed from the tyranny of her persecutors
    to the whole human race; and she has not appealed in vain. The
    history of no woman that ever lived approaches in interest
    to that of Mary Stuart; and so long as beauty and intellect,
    a kindly spirit in prosperity, and matchless heroism in
    misfortune attract the sympathies of men, this illustrious
    victim of sectarian violence and barbarous statecraft will ever
    occupy the most prominent place in the annals of her sex."

FOOTNOTE:

[7] _Mary Queen of Scots and her Accusers._ Embracing a Narrative of
Events from the Death of James V., in 1542, until the Death of the
Regent Murray, in 1570. By John Hosack, Barrister-at law. William
Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh and London. 1869.

_Histoire de Marie Stuart._ Par Jules Gauthier. Vol. i. Paris. 1869.




STABAT MATER.


    Stabat Mater dolorosa,
    Juxta crucem lacrymosa,
      Dum pendebat Filius:
    Cujus animam gementem,
    Contristatam et dolentem,
      Pertransivit gladius.

            ENGLISH TRANSLATION[8]

            Broken-hearted, lo, and tearful,
            Bowed before that Cross so fearful,
              Stands the Mother by the Son!
            Through her bosom sympathizing
            In his mortal agonizing
              Deep and keen the steel has gone.

                    GREEK TRANSLATION.[9]

                    Ἵστη Μήτηρ ἀλγέουσα
                    παρὰ σταυρῷ δακρύουσα,
                      ἐκρημνᾶτο ὡς Τέκνον·
                    ἧς τὴν ψυχὴν στενάχουσαν,
                    πολύστονον, πενθέουσαν
                      διέπειρε φάσγανον.

    O quam tristis et afflicta
    Fuit illa benedicta
      Mater Unigeniti!
    Quæ mœrebat et dolebat,
    Pia Mater, dum videbat
      Nati pœnas inclyti.

            How afflicted, how distressed,
            Stands she now, that Virgin blessed,
              By that tree of woe and scorn;
            Mark her tremble, droop, and languish,
            Gazing on that awful anguish
              Of her Child, her Only-Born!

                    Φεῦ τοῦ ἄχθους τῆς τε λύπης
                    εὐλογημένης ἐκείνης
                      Μήτρος τοῦ Μονογένους·
                    ἣ ἤλγει καὶ ἠνιᾶτο,
                    θεοσεβὴς, ὡς ὡρᾶτο
                      Υἱοῦ τ' ἄλγη εὐκλεοῦς.

    Quis est homo qui non fleret,
    Matrem Christi si videret
      In tanto supplicio?
    Quis non posset contristari,
    Christi Matrem contemplari
      Dolentem cum Filio?

            Who may see, nor share her weeping,
            Christ the Saviour's mother keeping
              Grief's wild watch, so sad and lone?
            Who behold her bosom sharing
            Every pang his soul is bearing,
              Nor receive them in his own?

                    Τίς ἀνθρώπων οὐκ ἂν κλαίοι,
                    εἰ τὴν Χριστοῦ Μήτερ' ἴδοι
                      τοιαῦτ' ἀνεχομένην;
                    τίς δύναιτ' ἂν οὐκ ἄχθεσθαι
                    τῷ τὴν Χριστοῦ Μήτερ' ἴδεσθαι
                      σὺν Υἱῷ λυπουμένην;

    Pro peccatis suæ gentis,
    Vidit Jesum in tormentis,
      Et flagellis subditum.
    Vidit suum dulcem Natum
    Moriendo desolatum,
      Dum emisit spiritum.

            Ransom for a world's offending,
            Lo, her Son and God is bending
              That dear head to wounds and blows;
            'Mid the body's laceration,
            And the spirit's desolation,
              As his life-blood darkly flows.

                    Πρὸ τῶν κακῶν οἵο γένους
                    'φαν' αὐτῇ ὑβρισθεὶς Ἰησοῦς
                      καὶ μάστιξιν ἔκδοτος·
                    εἶδεν ἕον γλυκὺν παῖδα
                    ἐκθνήσκοντα, μονωθέντα,
                      ὡς ἐξέπνει ἄθλιος.

    Eia Mater, fons amoris,
    Me sentire vim doloris
      Fac ut tecum lugeam;
    Fac ut ardeat cor meum
    In amando Christum Deum,
      Ut sibi complaceam.

            Fount of love, in that dread hour,
            Teach me all thy sorrow's power,
              Bid me share its grievous load;
            O'er my heart thy spirit pouring,
            Bid it burn in meet adoring
              Of its martyred Christ and God!

                    Ὦ συ Μήτερ, πήγη ἔρωτος,
                    τῆς λύπης με πάθειν ἄχθος
                      δός, σοι ἵνα συμπαθῶ·
                    δὸς φλέγεσθαι κῆρ τὸ ἐμόν
                    τῷ φιλεῖν τὸν Χριστὸν Θεόν,
                      ὅπως οἱ εὐδοκέω.

    Sancta Mater! istud agas,
    Crucifixi fige plagas
      Cordi meo valide.
    Tui Nati vulnerati,
    Tam dignati pro me pati,
      Pœnas mecum divide.

            Be my prayer, O Mother! granted,
            And within my heart implanted
              Every gash whose crimson tide,
            From that spotless victim streaming,
            Deigns to flow for my redeeming,
              Mother of the crucified!

                    Ἅγνη Μήτερ, τόδε δράσον·
                    Σταυρωθέντος πλήγας πήξον
                      μοι ἐν κῆρι κρατερῶς·
                    σοίο τοῦ τρωθέντος Τέκνου,
                    ὃς πρὸ ἐμοῦ πάσχειν ἤξιου,
                      μέρος ποινῶν μοι διδούς.

    Fac me tecum pie flere,
    Crucifixo condolere,
      Donec ego vixero.
    Juxta crucem tecum stare,
    Et me tibi sociare
      In planctu desidero.

            Every sigh of thy affliction,
            Every pang of crucifixion--
              Teach me all their agony!
            At his cross for ever bending,
            In thy grief for ever blending,
              Mother, let me live and die!

                    Δός σοί μ' εὐσεβῶς συλλυπεῖν,
                    Σταυρωθέντι δὸς συναλγεῖν,
                      ἕως μοι βιώσεται·
                    πρὸς σταυρῷ σοι συνίστασθαι,
                    σοί τε μοίρας μετέχεσθαι
                      τοῦ πενθεῖν ὀρέγομαι.

    Virgo virginum præclara,
    Mihi jam non sis amara,
      Fac me tecum plangere.
    Fac ut portem Christi mortem,
    Passionis fac consortem,
      Et plagas recolere.

            Virgin of all virgins highest,
            Humble prayer who ne'er deniest,
              Teach me how to share thy woe!
            All Christ's Passion's depth revealing,
            Quicken every quivering feeling
              All its bitterness to know!

                    Παρθένε, τῶν κόρων λαμπρά,
                    ἤδη μή μοι ἴσθι πικρά,
                      δός μέ σοι συναλγέειν·
                    δὸς βαστάζειν Χριστοῦ πότμον,
                    τοῦ πάθους ποίει με μέτοχον,
                      τάς τε πλήγας ἐννοεῖν.

    Fac me plagis vulnerari,
    Cruce hac inebriari,
      Et cruore Filii.
    Flammis ne urar succensus,
    Per te, Virgo, sim defensus,
      In die judicii.

            Bid me drink that heavenly madness,
            Mingled bliss of grief and gladness,
              Of the Cross of thy dear Son!
            With his love my soul inflaming,
            Plead for it, O Virgin! claiming
              Mercy at his judgment throne!

                    Δὸς ταῖς πλήγαις με τρωθῆναι,
                    τῷδε σταυρῷ μεθυσθῆναι
                      καὶ τοῦ Υἱοῦ αἵματι.
                    πυρὶ ἀφθέντα μὴ καυθῆναι,
                    ἀλλὰ διὰ σοῦ σωθῆναι
                      κρίσεως ἐφ' ἥματι.

    Christe, cum sit hinc exire,
    Da per matrem me venire
      Ad palmam victoriæ.[10]
    Quando corpus morietur,
    Fac ut animæ donetur
      Paradisi gloria.

            Shelter at that Cross, oh! yield me!
            By the death of Christ, oh! shield me!
              Comfort with thy grace and aid!
            And, O Mother! bid my spirit
            Joys of Paradise inherit,
              When its clay to rest is laid!

                    Ὁπόθ' ὥρα μ' ἀπέρχεσθαι,
                    διὰ Μήτρος δὸς φέρεσθαι,
                      Χριστὲ, νικητήρια·
                    τεθνέωτος χρωτὸς ἐμοῦ,
                    εὔχομαί μοι ψυχῇ δίδου
                      οὐρανοῦ τὰ χάρματα.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] This translation, which first appeared in the _Democratic
Magazine_ thirty years ago, is now republished at the request of the
author, G. J. G.

[9] By the late Otto George Mayer, student of the Congregation of St.
Paul.

[10] Instead of these three lines we sometimes find the following:

    Fac me cruce custodiri,
    Morte Christi præmuniri,
      Confoveri gratia.

The former version of the Latin is followed in the Greek, the latter
in the English translation.




THE BRIGAND'S GOD-CHILD.

A LEGEND OF SPAIN.


Once upon a time, as the legends say, there lived in good old Spain a
poor workman, to whom destiny had given twelve children, and nothing
for them to live upon. Now his wife was expecting a thirteenth, and
perhaps with it would appear a fourteenth also, to run about loved
but unclothed and unfed, as the others had before them. The bread was
almost gone, work not to be had, and the poor man, to hide his sighs
and his misery from the patient partner of his misfortunes, wandered
far from home and into the woods, calling upon paradise to assist
him, until he came to the ill-reputed cavern and stronghold of the
bandits.

He almost fell over their captain, and came very near receiving a
sabre-thrust for his pains; but his extreme misery made him no object
for a robbery, so he was simply catechised as to his condition.

He told his story, moved even the brigand heart to pity, and was
invited to supper; a bag of gold and a fine horse were given him,
and he was sent home with the assurance that, be the new-comer
boy or girl, the robber-chief would stand as god-father. The poor
man, in ecstasy at such good fortune, flew rather than rode to his
well-filled dwelling, and arrived there just in time to welcome
number thirteen.

A boy! He gave his wife the money and a caress, and, although the
night was far advanced, mounted his charger and galloped back to the
cave. The brigand was astonished at his speedy return; but true to
his word, appeared with him in the neighboring church in disguise
of a rich old gossip, made every requisite promise for the new-born
babe, and disappeared, leaving a bag of golden crowns and another
purse of gold.

The angels, however, claimed the baby, and the brigand's
god-child flew to paradise on golden wings, and in the splendid
swaddling-clothes that his charity had provided for it.

St. Peter, porter at the gates celestial, stirred himself to welcome
the little fellow to heaven; but no! he would not enter unless
accompanied by his god-father.

"And who may he be?" asked St. Peter.

"Who?" responded the god-child; "The chief of the brigands."

"My poor little innocent," said the saint, "you know not what you
ask! Come in yourself; but heaven was not made for such as he."

The child sat down by the door resolved not to enter, and planning in
his little head all sorts of schemes to accomplish his purpose, when
the Blessed Mary passed that way.

"Why do you not enter, my angel?" she said.

"I would be ungrateful," he answered, "to partake of heavenly joys if
my good god-father did not share them with me."

St. Peter interposed, and appealed to the Holy Mother, saying,

"If he had only been a wax-carrier! but this man, Satan's own
emissary--impossible! An incarnate demon; a robber, healthy and
robust, who has taken every opportunity to do mischief! Holy Mother!
could such a thing be thought of?"

But the god-child insisted, bent his pretty blonde head, joined his
little hands, fell on his knees, prayed and wept. The Virgin had
compassion on him and bringing a golden chalice from the heavenly
inclosure, said,

"Take this; go and seek your god-father; tell him that he may come
with you to heaven; but he must first fill this cup with repentant
tears."

Just then, by the clear moonlight, reposing on a rock, and fully
armed, lay the brigand. In his dream his dagger trembled in his
hands. As he awoke, he saw near his couch a beautiful winged infant.
With no fear of the savage man, it approached and presented the
golden chalice. He rubbed his eyes, and thought he still dreamed; but
the infant angel reassured him, saying,

"No; it is not a fancy. I have come to invite thee to go with me.
Leave this earth. I am thy god-child, and I will conduct thy steps."

Then the little fellow related his marvellous story: his arrival at
heaven's gate, St. Peter's refusal, and how the Blessed Mother, ever
merciful, had come to his assistance and granted his request. The
bandit listened, and breathed with difficulty, while, bewildered he
gazed on the angelic figure, and held out his hand for the golden
chalice.

Suddenly his heart seemed to burst, two fountains of tears gushed
from his eyes. The cup was filled, and the radiant infant mounted
with him to the skies.

Into heaven the little one entered, carrying the well-filled cup to
St. Peter--who was astonished to see who followed him--and proceeded
to offer it at the feet of the beautiful Queen.

She smiled on the sinner who through her compassion had been saved,
while he threw himself in reverence at her feet. God himself had
acquitted the debt of the child. Besides, we know that to the
repentant there is always grace--and the infant had declared it would
not enter alone.




MOLECULAR MECHANICS.


Among the theories proposed to explain the constitution of material
substance, and to account for the facts relative to it disclosed by
modern science, one developed in a recent work with the above title,
by Rev. Joseph Bayma, of Stonyhurst, is specially worthy of notice
for its ingenuity and the field which it opens to the mathematician.
Whether it be true or not, it is at any rate such that its truth can
be tested; and though this may be somewhat difficult, on account of
the complexity of the necessary formulas and calculations, still the
difficulty can probably be overcome in course of time, should the
undertaking seem promising enough.

It is briefly as follows. Matter is not continuous, even in very
small parts of its volume, but is composed of a definite number of
ultimate elements, each of which occupies a mere point, and may
be considered simply as a centre of force. This force is actually
exerted by each of them following the law of gravitation as to its
change of intensity with the distance; but is attractive for some
elements and repulsive for others, which is obviously necessary to
preserve equilibrium. These elements are arranged in regularly formed
groups, in which the balance of the attractive and repulsive forces
is such that each group, as well as the whole mass, is preserved
from collapse or indefinite expansion; these are what are known
chemically as molecules; and in the simple substances they probably
have the shape of one of the five regular polyhedrons.

The simplest possible construction of a molecule would be one of
the polyhedrons, with an element at each vertex, and one at the
centre, whose action must be of an opposite character to that of
those at the vertices; for these last must all exert the same kind
of action, attractive or repulsive, for any kind of equilibrium to
be maintained, and the centre must act in the opposite direction to
prevent collapse or expansion of the mass. Furthermore, the absolute
attractive power, or that which the molecule would have if all
collected at one point, must exceed the repulsive, slightly at any
rate, since the force exerted at distances compared with which its
dimensions are insignificant is known to have this former character.

This system admits of two varieties, according as the centre is
attractive or repulsive. In either case, for the maintenance of
equilibrium the force of the centre must always be less than half
that of the vertices combined, as the author shows, (giving the
values for each polyhedron;) and it would seem that the first
supposition would therefore be untenable, since the attractive force
in each molecule, as just stated, necessarily exceeds the repulsive.
Equilibrium certainly cannot be maintained in this case; but this
will not involve the permanent collapse of the molecule, but merely
a continual vibration of its elements back and forward through the
centre.

The second hypothesis, on the other hand, requires either a centre so
weak as to produce very little repulsion outside of the molecule, or
else a continual tendency to expand under a central power too great
for equilibrium. Both will tend to bring the molecular envelopes near
to each other, and produce adhesion or mixing among them; also, it
may perhaps be added, that the envelopes themselves will, on account
of the mutual attraction of their elements, be unstable.

Of these two constructions, then, the first would seem most probable;
but both are open to objection on account of there being no internal
resistance in the individual molecules to a change of diameter
proportional to a change produced by external action in that of a
mass of them; and if such a change should take place, the mass would
be in just the same statical conditions as before, only differing in
the relative dimensions of its parts, and the resistance to pressure
which is exhibited more or less by all matter would not be accounted
for. But it does not seem quite certain that pressure or traction of
the mass would operate upon the separate molecules in the same sense.

We are not, however, restricted to such a simple structure; for there
may be several envelopes instead of only one, and of these some may
be attractive and others repulsive; the centre also may be repulsive.
There would have to be an absolute predominance of attractivity, of
course, as in the previous more simple supposition. It seems probable
that in this supposition the envelopes would be all tetrahedric, or
that either the cube and octahedron, or the other two, which are
similarly counterparts of each other, would alternate. Many of these
forms are examined mathematically by the author, as to their internal
action.

The exact discussion of their external action, however, would
be exceedingly intricate, and would not be worth undertaking
without a more definite idea than we yet have of the actual shapes
presented by the molecules of the various known substances. The
forms of crystallization may throw some light upon this, and they
seem to indicate, as the author acknowledges, that the elements
are not always grouped in regular polyhedrons; if they are not,
they must have unequal powers, and this may be sometimes the
case. But irregular crystalline forms are not impossible, or even
improbable, with regular molecules. He also suggests and applies a
method for obtaining the forms of the simple chemical substances
by considering what combinations with others each polyhedron is
capable of, and comparing these results with the actual combinations
into which these various substances are known to enter, and deduces
the shapes, with some plausibility, of the molecules of oxygen,
nitrogen, carbon, hydrogen, phosphorus, chlorine, sulphur, arsenic,
and iodine. Whether we shall ever be able to obtain more positive
proof of these interesting conclusions remains to be seen; but if
any molecules have really the number of envelopes that would be
indicated by their chemical equivalents, the perfect determination of
their exact mechanical conditions of combination, and even of their
separate construction, will probably, as F. Bayma remarks, be a
problem always above the power of the human mind. If mathematicians
are at all inclined to plume themselves on having unravelled the
complications of the solar system, they can find sufficient matter
for humiliation in not being able to understand the status of a
material particle less than the hundred millionth of an inch in
diameter; for to this extent subdivision has actually been carried.

One of the most remarkable points in this theory is that part of
it which relates to the ethereal medium which seems to pervade all
space, if the undulatory theory of light is true, as is now perhaps
universally believed. Instead of assuming it to be extremely rare,
as is usually done without hesitation, the author regards it as
excessively dense; "immensely denser than atmospheric air," to
use his own words. Of course this seems absurd at first sight, as
such a medium apparently would exert an immense resistance to the
movements of the heavenly bodies, and in fact to all movements on
their surfaces or elsewhere. This would certainly be the case if it
were similar to ordinary matter; and to avoid this difficulty, it
is assumed to be entirely attractive. The reason for supposing a
great density for this substance is its immense elasticity and power
of transmitting vibrations; which seems incompatible with great
distances between its particles, unless these particles are extremely
energetic in their action, which comes to the same thing; and this
argument has considerable force.

But it does not seem evident that an attractive medium would not
also interfere with the passage of bodies through it, though not
in the same way as a repulsive one; and the oscillation through
its centre necessary for its preservation complicates the theory
somewhat. Also, any marked accumulation of a powerfully acting
medium round the various celestial bodies would cause, if varied
in any way by their changes of relative position, perturbations in
their movements. The very fact, however, that its own action was so
energetic might make the disturbance in its arrangement produced by
other masses small, especially if it penetrates those masses, as is
probably generally maintained. The subject is, of course, one of
great difficulty, and objections readily suggest themselves to any
hypothesis regarding it; still, it would appear that on some accounts
it might be better, instead of assuming the medium to be wholly or
predominantly attractive or repulsive, to suppose it to have the two
forces equally balanced in its constitution; and if it be, like other
matter, grouped in molecules, the balance would naturally exist in
each molecule, making it inert at any but very small distances, and
exerting at these very small distances a force the character of which
would vary according to the direction.

We have said that the discussion of the exterior action of the
molecules--that is, of their action on each other, or on exterior
points in general--would be exceedingly complicated. The only way
in which it seems practicable is that in which the mutual actions
of the planets have been investigated, namely, a development of the
force in the form of a series; but this cannot be done advantageously
unless the distances between the molecules are considerably greater
than the molecular diameters. If, however, we make the development of
the ratio of the attraction (or repulsion) exerted by the vertices
of a regular polyhedron in the direction of its centre, to what it
would exert if concentrated at that centre, in a series of the powers
of the ratio of the molecular radius to the distance of the point
acted on from the centre, it will be found that the coefficients
of the first and second powers vanish in all cases; and that in
all, except that of the tetrahedron, those of all the odd powers
also disappear, as well as that of the fourth in the dodecahedron
and icosahedron. If, then, the absolute attractive or repulsive
power of any envelope is very nearly compensated by that of an
opposite character prevailing in the rest of the molecule, (as seems
probable,) the whole series can be reduced, at any distance which is
very great compared with the molecular diameter, to two terms--one
a constant with a very small value, and the other containing the
third, fourth, or sixth power of the small quantity which the ratio
of the diameter to the distance has now become. This should have a
negative multiplier, in order that the force should become zero; and
this it will have for a considerable distance around the vertices
of all the polyhedrons, the negative value always covering as much
as two fifths of the spherical surface about the centre of the
molecule, and compensating even in

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