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The Catholic World, Vol. 13, April to September, 1871

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Title: The Catholic World, Vol. 13, April to September, 1871

Author: Various


        
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CATHOLIC WORLD, VOL. 13, APRIL TO SEPTEMBER, 1871 ***

                    THE

              CATHOLIC WORLD.

                     A

             MONTHLY MAGAZINE

                    OF

      GENERAL LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.


                VOL. XIII.
         APRIL TO SEPTEMBER, 1871.


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

                  1871.


             JOHN ROSS & CO.,
        PRINTERS AND STEREOTYPERS,
          27 ROSE ST., NEW YORK.




CONTENTS.


      Albertus Magnus Vindicated, 712
      America's Obligation to France, 836
      Ancients, the Writing Materials of the, 126
      Animas, Las, 353
      Animals, Love for, 545

      Bishop Timon, 86
      Bordeaux, 158
      Brébeuf, Memoir of Father John, 512, 623

      Carlyle and Père Bouhours, 820
      Catholic Associations, Spirit of, 652
      Catholicity and Pantheism, 554
      Cayla, A Pilgrimage to, 595
      Cecilia, Saint, 477
      Church, The, Accredits herself, 145
      Church, What our Municipal Laws owe to the, 342
      Civilization, Origin of, 402

      Dion and the Sibyls, 56
      Doña Fortuna and Don Dinero, 130
      Döllinger, The Apostasy of, 415

      Education and Unification, 1
      Education, On Higher, 115
      Egbert Stanway, 377
      Egyptian Civilization according to the most Recent Discoveries, 804
      England, The Serial Literature of, 619
      Europe's Future, 76

      Flowers, 305
      Froude and Calvinism, 541
      France, America's Obligation to, 836
      Future, The Present and the, 452

      Galitzin, The Mother of Prince, 367
      Geneva, The Catholic Church in, 847
      Genzano and Frascati, 737
      Good Gerard of Cologne, The, 797
      Gottfried von Strassburg's Hymn to the Virgin, 240

      _Independent_, A Word to _The_, 247
      Infallibility, 577
      Ireland, Ancient Laws of, 635
      Ireland, The Lord Chancellors of, 228
      Irish Martyr, An, 433
      Italian Guarantees and the Sovereign Pontiff, 566

      Laws, Municipal, and the Church, 342
      Letter from Rome, 134
      Letter from the President of a College, 281
      Liquefaction of the Blood of St. Januarius, 772
      Locket, The Story of an Algerine, 643
      Lourdes, Our Lady of, 98, 255, 396, 527, 662, 825
      Lucas Garcia, 785

      Mary Benedicta, 207
      Mary Clifford's Promise Kept, 447
      Mexican Art and its Michael Angelo, 334

      On Higher Education, 115
      Our Lady of Guadalupe, 189
      Our Lady of Lourdes, 98, 255, 396, 527, 662, 825
      Our Northern Neighbors, 108

      Page of the Past and a Shadow of the Future, A, 764
      Pantheism, Catholicity and, 554
      Pau, 504
      Père Jacques and Mademoiselle Adrienne, 677
      Present and the Future, The, 452
      Protestantism, Statistics of, in the U. S., 195

      Reformation, The, Not Conservative, 721
      Rome, How it Looked Three Centuries Ago, 358
      Rome, Letter from, 134

      Saintship, False Views of, 424
      Santa Restituta, Legend of, 276
      Sardinia and the Holy Father, 289
      Sauntering, 35
      Sayings of the Fathers of the Desert, 274
      Scepticism of the Age, The, 391
      Secular, The, Not Supreme, 685
      Shamrock Gone West, The, 264
      Sor Juan Inez de la Cruz, 47
      Spanish America, Dramatic Moralists in, 702
      Statistics of Protestantism in the U. S., 195
      St. Januarius, Liquefaction of the Blood of, 772

      The Church Accredits Herself, 145

      Unification, Education and, 1

      What Our Municipal Laws Owe to the Church, 342
      Writing Materials of the Ancients, 126

      Yorke, The House of, 15, 169, 317, 461, 604, 746


POETRY.

      "Amen" of the Stones, The, 168
      A Pie IX., 684

      Disillusioned, 489

      Gualberto's Victory, 96

      King Cormac's Choice, 413

      On a Great Plagiarist, 206

      Rose, The, 571

      Saint John Dwarf, 357
      Sancta Dei Genitrix, 771
      Sonnet, 603
      St. Francis and St. Dominic, 745
      St. Francis of Assisi, 133
      St. Mary Magdalen, 511

      The Cross, 14
      The True Harp, 594
      To the Crucified, 352

      Vespers, 275

      Warning, The, 125


NEW PUBLICATIONS.

      Allies' St. Peter, 860
      Anderson's Historical Reader, 855
      Appleton's Annual Cyclopædia, 573

      Barker's Text-Book of Chemistry, 142
      Bret Harte's Poems, 144

      Caddell's Never Forgotten; or, The Home of the Lost Child, 853
      Catechism Illustrated, The, 854
      Clement's Hand-Book of Legendary and Mythological Art, 143
      Coleridge's Theology of the Parables, 432
      Conyngham's Sarsfield, 143
      Curtius's History of Greece, 575
      Cusack's History of Kerry, 855

      Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, 573

      Elia; or, Spain Fifty Years Ago, 141

      Fairbanks's History of Florida, 857
      Familiar Discourses to the Young, 288
      Fifty Catholic Tracts, 430
      Folia Ecclesiastica, 144

      Gaskin's Irish Varieties, 142
      Glosswood, The Countess of, 288

      Hamilton's Golden Words, 860
      Heaven, The Happiness of, 286
      Hefele on the Christian Councils, 718
      Hemenway's Vermont, 857
      Higginson's Sympathy of Religions, 286
      Holy Exercise of the Presence of God, 854
      Holmes on Mechanism in Thought and Morals, 139
      Historical Gazetteer, 857

      Illustrated Catholic Sunday-School Library, 573

      Jesus and Jerusalem, 140

      Kellogg's Arthur Brown, 143
      Keon's Dion and the Sibyls, 429

      La Grange's Thecla, 432
      Lallemant's Spiritual Doctrine, 287
      Lebon's Holy Communion, 573
      Life and Writings of De Montfort, 141
      Life of St. Gertrude, 859

      Martyrs Omitted by Foxe, 575
      Meditations on the Litany of the Most Holy Virgin, 431
      Miles's Truce of God, 574
      Moran's Life of Archbishop Plunkett, 574, 858,
      Mrs. Stowe's Pink and White Tyranny, 859
      Mulrenan's Sketch of the Church on Long Island, 854

      Natural History of New York, 432

      Oakeley's Priest on the Mission, 719

      Perrone's Divinity of Christ, 286

      Rome and Geneva, 283
      Russell's My Study Windows, 427

      Seelye on Roman Imperialism, 141
      Sestini's Manual of Geometrical Analysis, 856
      Seton's Romance of the Charter Oak, 288
      Starr's Patron Saints, 853
      Stowe's Little Pussy Willow, 144
      Sullivan's Prayers and Ceremonies of the Mass, 144
      Synchronology of Sacred and Profane History, 144

      Vaughan's Life of St. Thomas Aquin., 427

      Weiss's American Religion, 720
      West's State of the Dead, 574
      Whipple's Literature and Art, 430
      Wonders of European Art, 576
      Wonders of the Heavens, 432

      Young's Catholic Hymns and Canticles, 719

       *       *       *       *       *




      THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

      VOL. XIII., No. 73.--APRIL, 1871.[1]


UNIFICATION AND EDUCATION.[2]


The Hon. Henry Wilson, recently re-elected senator in Congress from
Massachusetts, may not be distinguished as an original thinker or
as a statesman of commanding ability, but no man is a surer index
to his party or a more trustworthy exponent of its sentiments and
tendencies, its aims and purposes. This gives to his article in
_The Atlantic Monthly_, indicating the policy to be pursued by the
Republican party, a weight it might not otherwise possess.

Mr. Wilson is a strong political partisan, but he is above all
a fervent Evangelical, and his aim, we presume, is to bring his
political party to coincide with his Evangelical party, and make each
strengthen the other. We of course, as a Catholic organ, have nothing
to say of questions in issue between different political parties so
long as they do not involve the rights and interests of our religion,
or leave untouched the fundamental principles and genius of the
American system of government, although we may have more or less to
say as American citizens; but when either party is so ill-advised
as to aim a blow either at the freedom of our religion or at our
federative system of government, we hold ourselves free, and in duty
bound, to warn our fellow-citizens and our fellow-Catholics of the
impending danger, and to do what we can to avert or arrest the blow.
We cannot, without incurring grave censure, betray by our silence the
cause of our religion or of our country, for fear that by speaking we
may cross the purposes of one or another party, and seem to favor the
views and policy of another.

Mr. Wilson's _New Departure_ is unquestionably revolutionary,
and therefore not lawful for any party in this country to adopt.
It is expressed in two words, NATIONAL UNIFICATION and NATIONAL
EDUCATION--that is, the consolidation of all the powers of
government in the general government, and the social and religious
unification of the American people by means of a system of universal
and uniform compulsory education, adopted and enforced by the
authority of the united or consolidated states, not by the states
severally each within its own jurisdiction and for its own people.
The first is decidedly revolutionary and destructive of the American
system of federative government, or the division of powers between a
general government and particular state governments; the second, in
the sense proposed, violates the rights of parents and annihilates
the religious liberty secured by the constitution and laws both of
the several states and of the United States.

The general government, in our American political system, is not the
national government, or any more national than the several state
governments. The national government with us is divided between a
general government having charge of our relations with other powers
and internal matters of a general nature and common to all the
states, and particular state governments having charge of matters
local and particular in their nature, and clothed with all the powers
of supreme national governments not expressly delegated to the
general government. In the draft of the federal constitution reported
by the committee to the convention of 1787, the word _national_ was
used, but the convention finally struck it out, and inserted wherever
it occurred the word _general_, as more appropriately designating the
character and powers of the government they were creating. It takes
under our actual system both the state governments and the general
government to make one complete national government, invested with
all the powers of government. By making the general government a
supreme national government, we make it the source of all authority,
subordinate the state governments to it, make them hold from it,
and deprive them of all independent or undivided rights. This would
completely subvert our system of government, according to which the
states hold their powers immediately from the political people, and
independently of any suzerain or overlord, and the general government
from the states or the people organized as states united in
convention. A more complete change of the government or destruction
of the federative principle, which constitutes the chief excellence
and glory of our system, it would be difficult to propose, or even to
conceive, than is set forth in Mr. Wilson's programme.

Mr. Wilson, however, is hardly justified in calling the revolution
he proposes a "New Departure." It has been the aim of a powerful
party, under one name or another, ever since 1824, if not from
the origin of the government itself. This party has been steadily
pursuing it, and with increasing numbers and influence, ever since
the anti-slavery agitation seriously commenced. At one time, and
probably at all times, it has been moved chiefly by certain business
interests which it could not advance according to its mind by state
legislation, and for which it desired federal legislation and the
whole power of a national government, but which it could not get
because the constitution and the antagonistic interests created by
slave labor were opposed to it. It then turned philanthropist and
called in philanthropy to its aid--philanthropy which makes light
of constitutions and mocks at state lines, and claims the right
to go wherever it conceives the voice of humanity calls it. Under
the pretext of philanthropy, the party turned abolitionist, and
sought to bring under the action of the general government the
question of slavery manifestly reserved to the states severally,
and which it belonged to each to settle for itself in its own way.
A civil war followed. The slaves were emancipated, and slavery
abolished, professedly under the war-power of the Union, as a
military necessity, which nobody regrets. But the party did not
stop here. Forgetful that the extraordinary war-power ceases with
the war, and military necessity can no longer be pleaded, it has,
under one pretext or another, such as protecting and providing for
the freed-men and reconstructing the states that seceded, continued
to exercise it ever since the war was over, and by constitutional
amendments of doubtful validity, since ratified in part under
military pressure by states not yet reconstructed or held to be
duly organized states in the Union, it has sought to legitimate it,
and to incorporate it into the constitution as one of the ordinary
peace-powers of the government.

The party has sometimes coincided, and sometimes has not strictly
coincided, with one or another of the great political parties
that have divided the country, but it has always struggled
for the consolidation of all the powers of government in the
general government. Whether prompted by business interests or by
philanthropy, its wishes and purposes have required it to get rid of
all co-ordinate and independent bodies that might interfere with,
arrest, or limit the power of Congress, or impose any limitation on
the action of the general government not imposed by the arbitrary
will of the majority of the people, irrespective of their state
organization.

What the distinguished senator urges we submit, therefore, is simply
the policy of consolidation or centralization which his party has
steadily pursued from the first, and which it has already in good
part consummated. It has abolished slavery, and unified the labor
system of the Union; it has contracted a public debt, whether
needlessly or not, large enough to secure to the consolidation of
the powers of a national government in the general government the
support of capitalists, bankers, railroad corporators, monopolists,
speculators, projectors, and the business world generally. Under
pretence of philanthropy, and of carrying out the abolition of
slavery, and abolishing all civil and political distinctions of
race or color, it has usurped for the general government the power
to determine the question of suffrage and eligibility, under the
constitution and by the genius of our government reserved to the
states severally, and sends the military and swarms of federal
inspectors into the states to control, or at least to look after,
the elections, in supreme contempt of state authority. It has
usurped for the general government the power of granting charters of
incorporation for private business purposes elsewhere than in the
District of Columbia, and induced it to establish national bureaus
of agriculture and education, as if it was the only and unlimited
government of the country, which it indeed is fast becoming.

The work of consolidation or unification is nearly completed, and
there remains little to do except to effect the social and religious
unification of the various religions, sects, and races that make up
the vast and diversified population of the country; and it is clear
from Mr. Wilson's programme that his party contemplate moulding the
population of European and of African origin, Indians and Asiatics,
Protestants and Catholics, Jews and pagans, into one homogeneous
people, after what may be called the New England Evangelical
type. Neither his politics nor his philanthropy can tolerate any
diversity of ranks, conditions, race, belief, or worship. A complete
unification must be effected, and under the patronage and authority
of the general government.

Mr. Wilson appears not to have recognized any distinction between
unity and union. Union implies plurality or diversity; unity excludes
both. Yet he cites, without the least apparent misgiving, the fathers
of the republic--Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, Jay, and
Madison--who were strenuous for the union of the several states, as
authorities in favor of their unity or consolidation in one supreme
national government. There were points in which these great men
differed among themselves--some of them wished to give more, some of
them less, power to the general government--some of them would give
more, some of them less, power to the executive, etc., but they all
agreed in their efforts to establish the union of the states, and not
one of them but would have opposed their unity or consolidation into
a single supreme government. Mr. Wilson is equally out in trying, as
he does, to make it appear that the strong popular sentiment of the
American people, in favor of union, is a sentiment in favor of unity
or unification.

But starting with the conception of unity or consolidation, and
resolving republicanism into the absolute supremacy of the will
of the people, irrespective of state organization, Mr. Wilson can
find no stopping-place for his party short of the removal of all
constitutional or organic limitations on the irresponsible will of
the majority for the time, which he contends should in all things
be supreme and unopposed. His republicanism, as he explains it,
is therefore incompatible with a well-ordered state, and is either
no government at all, but universal anarchy, or the unmitigated
despotism of majorities--a despotism more oppressive and crushing to
all true freedom and manly independence, than any autocracy that the
world has ever seen. The fathers of the republic never understood
republicanism in this sense. They studied to restrict the sphere of
power, and to guard against the supremacy of mere will, whether of
the monarch, the nobility, or the people.

But having reached the conclusion that true republicanism demands
unification, and the removal of all restrictions on the popular
will, Mr. Wilson relies on the attachment of the American people to
the republican idea to carry out and realize his programme, however
repugnant it may be to what they really desire and suppose they
are supporting. He knows the people well enough to know that they
do not usually discriminate with much niceness, and that they are
easily caught and led away by a few high-sounding phrases and popular
catchwords, uttered with due gravity and assurance--perhaps he does
not discriminate very nicely, and is himself deceived by the very
phrases and catchwords which deceive them. It is not impossible. At
any rate, he persuades himself unification or consolidation can be
carried forward and effected by appeals to the republican instincts
and tendencies of the American people, and secured by aid of the
colored vote and woman suffrage, soon to be adopted as an essential
element in the revolutionary movement. The colored people, it is
expected, will vote as their preachers direct, and their preachers
will direct as they are directed by the Evangelicals. The women
who will vote, if woman suffrage is adopted, are evangelicals,
philanthropists, or humanitarians, and are sure to follow their
instincts and vote for the unification or centralization of
power--the more unlimited, the better.

But the chief reliance for the permanence in power of the party of
consolidation is universal and uniform compulsory education by the
general government, which will, if adopted, complete and preserve
the work of unification. Education is the American hobby--regarded,
as uneducated or poorly educated people usually regard it, as a sort
of panacea for all the ills that flesh is heir to. We ourselves,
as Catholics, are as decidedly as any other class of American
citizens in favor of universal education, as thorough and extensive
as possible--if its quality suits us. We do not, indeed, prize so
highly as some of our countrymen appear to do the simple ability to
read, write, and cipher; nor do we believe it possible to educate
a whole people so that every one, on attaining his majority, will
understand the bearing of all political questions or comprehend the
complexities of statesmanship, the effects at large of all measures
of general or special legislation, the bearing on productive industry
and national wealth of this or that financial policy, the respective
merits of free trade and protection, or what in a given time or given
country will the best secure individual freedom and the public good.
This is more than we ourselves can understand, and we believe we are
better educated than the average American. We do not believe that
the great bulk of the people of any nation can ever be so educated
as to understand the essential political, financial, and economical
questions of government for themselves, and they will always have to
follow blindly their leaders, natural or artificial. Consequently,
the education of the leaders is of far greater importance than the
education of those who are to be led. All men have equal natural
rights, which every civil government should recognize and protect,
but equality in other respects, whether sought by levelling downward
or by levelling upward, is neither practicable nor desirable. Some
men are born to be leaders, and the rest are born to be led. Go where
we will in society, in the halls of legislation, the army, the navy,
the university, the college, the district school, the family, we
find the few lead, the many follow. It is the order of nature, and
we cannot alter it if we would. Nothing can be worse than to try to
educate all to be leaders. The most pitiable sight is a congressional
body in which there is no leader, an army without a general, but
all lead, all command--that is, nobody leads or commands. The best
ordered and administered state is that in which the few are well
educated and lead, and the many are trained to obedience, are willing
to be directed, content to follow, and do not aspire to be leaders.
In the early days of our republic, when the few were better educated
than now and the many not so well, in the ordinary sense of the term,
there was more dignity in the legislative, judicial, and executive
branches of the government, more wisdom and justice in legislation,
and more honesty, fidelity, and capacity in the administration. In
extending education and endeavoring to train all to be leaders, we
have only extended presumption, pretension, conceit, indocility, and
brought incapacity to the surface.

These, we grant, are unpopular truths, but they, nevertheless, are
truths, which it is worse than idle to deny. Everybody sees it, feels
it, but few have the courage to avow it in face of an intolerant and
tyrannical public opinion. For ourselves, we believe the peasantry
in old Catholic countries, two centuries ago, were better educated,
although for the most part unable to read or write, than are the
great body of the American people to-day. They had faith, they had
morality, they had a sense of religion, they were instructed in the
great principles and essential truths of the Gospel, were trained to
be wise unto salvation, and they had the virtues without which wise,
stable, and efficient government is impracticable. We hear it said,
or rather read in the journals, that the superiority the Prussian
troops have shown to the French is due to their superior education.
We do not believe a word of it. We have seen no evidence that the
French common soldiers are not as well educated and as intelligent as
the Prussian. The superiority is due to the fact that the Prussian
officers were better educated in their profession, were less
overweening in their confidence of victory, and maintained better
and severer discipline in their armies, than the French officers.
The Northern armies in our recent civil war had no advantage in the
superior education of the rank and file over the Southern armies,
where both were equally well officered and commanded. The _morale_
of an army is no doubt the great thing, but it does not depend on
the ability of the common soldier to read, write, and cipher; it
depends somewhat on his previous habits and pursuits--chiefly on the
officers. Under the first Napoleon, the Prussians were not superior
to the French, though as well educated. Good officers, with an able
general at their head, can make an efficient army out of almost any
materials.

It is not, therefore, for political or military reasons that we
demand universal education, whether by the general government or
under the state governments. We demand it, as far as practicable,
for other and far higher reasons. We want it for a spiritual or
religious end. We want our children to be educated as thoroughly as
they can be, but in relation to the great purpose of their existence,
so as to be fitted to gain the end for which God creates them. For
the great mass of the people, the education needed is not secular
education, which simply sharpens the intellect and generates pride
and presumption, but moral and religious education, which trains up
children in the way they should go, which teaches them to be honest
and loyal, modest and unpretending, docile and respectful to their
superiors, open and ingenuous, obedient and submissive to rightful
authority, parental or conjugal, civil or ecclesiastical; to know and
keep the commandments of God and the precepts of the church; and to
place the salvation of the soul before all else in life. This sort
of education can be given only by the church or under her direction
and control; and as there is for us Catholics only one church, there
is and can be no proper education for us not given by or under the
direction and control of the Catholic Church.

But it is precisely education by the Catholic Church that Mr. Wilson
and his party do not want, do not believe in, and wish to prevent
us from having even for our own children. It is therefore they
demand a system of universal and uniform compulsory education by
the authority and under the direction of the general government,
which shall effect and maintain the national unification proposed,
by compelling all the children of the land to be trained in national
schools, under Evangelical control and management. The end and aim
of the _New Departure_, aside from certain business interests, is
to suppress Catholic education, gradually extinguish Catholicity in
the country, and to form one homogeneous American people after the
New England Evangelical type. Of this there can be no reasonable
doubt. The Evangelicals and their humanitarian allies, as all their
organs show, are seriously alarmed at the growth of Catholicity in
the United States. They supposed, at first, that the church could
never take root in our Protestant soil, that she could not breathe
the atmosphere of freedom and enlightenment, or thrive in a land of
newspapers and free schools. They have been disappointed, and now
see that they reckoned without their host, and that, if they really
mean to prevent the American people from gradually becoming Catholic,
they must change fundamentally the American form of government,
suppress the freedom of religion hitherto enjoyed by Catholics, and
take the training of all children and youth into their own hands. If
they leave education to the wishes and judgment of parents, Catholic
parents will bring up their children Catholics; if they leave it
to the states separately, Catholics in several of them are already
a powerful minority, daily increasing in strength and numbers, and
will soon be strong enough to force the state legislatures to give
them their proportion of the public schools supported at the public
expense.

All this is clear enough. What, then, is to be done? Mr. Wilson, who
is not remarkable for his reticence, tells us, if not with perfect
frankness, yet frankly enough for all practical purposes. It is to
follow out the tendency which has been so strengthened of late,
and absorb the states in the Union, take away the independence of
the state governments, and assume the control of education for the
general government, already rendered practically the supreme national
government;--then, by appealing to the popular sentiment in favor of
education, and saying nothing of its quality, get Congress, which
the Evangelicals, through the party in power, already control, to
establish a system of compulsory education in national schools--and
the work is done; for these schools will necessarily fall into
Evangelical hands.

Such is what the distinguished Evangelical senator from Massachusetts
calls a "New Departure," but which is really only carrying out
a policy long since entered upon, and already more than half
accomplished. While we are writing, Mr. Hoar, a representative
in Congress from Massachusetts, has introduced into the House of
Representatives a bill establishing a system of national education
under the authority of the general government. Its fate is not
yet known, but no doubt will be, before we go to press. The
probabilities are that it will pass both Houses, and if it does, it
will receive the signature of the President as a matter of course.
The Evangelicals--under which name we include Congregationalists,
Presbyterians, Dutch Reformed, Baptists, and Methodists, etc.--all
the denominations united in the Evangelical Alliance--constitute,
with their political and philanthropic allies, the majority in
Congress, and the measure is advocated apparently by the whole
Evangelical press and by the larger and more influential republican
journals of the country, as any number of excerpts from them now
before us will satisfy any one who has the curiosity to read them.
We did think of selecting and publishing the more striking and
authoritative among them, but we have concluded to hold them in
reserve, to be produced in case any one should be rash enough to
question our general statement. There is a strong popular feeling in
many parts of the country in favor of the measure, which is a pet
measure also of the Evangelical ministers generally, who are sure to
exert their powerful influence in its support, and we see no reason
to doubt that the bill will pass.

But while we see ample cause for all citizens who are loyal to
the system of government which Providence enabled our fathers to
establish, and who wish to preserve it and the liberties it secures,
to be vigilant and active, we see none for alarm. The bill, if
it passes, will be manifestly unconstitutional, even counting
the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments as valid parts of the
constitution; and there may be more difficulty in carrying it into
effect than its framers anticipate. It is part and parcel of a New
England policy, and New England is not omnipotent throughout the
Union, nor very ardently loved; not all the members of the several
evangelical denominations will, when they understand it, favor the
revolution in the government Mr. Wilson would effect. There are in
those denominations many men who belong not to the dominant party,
and who will follow their political rather than their denominational
affinities; also, there are in them a large number, we should hope,
of honest men, who are not accustomed to act on the maxim, "the end
justifies the means," loyal men and patriotic, who consider it no
less disloyalty to seek to revolutionize our government against the
states than against the Union, and who will give their votes and all
their influence to preserve the fundamental principles and genius of
our federative system of government, as left us by our fathers, and
resist, if need be, to the death the disloyal policy of unification
and education proposed by Mr. Wilson.

The Southern states are reconstructed and back now in their place
in the Union, and will not be much longer represented by Northern
adventurers, or men of little ability and less character, but very
soon by genuine Southern men, who, while strictly loyal to the Union,
will speak the genuine sentiments of the Southern people. The attempt
to New-Englandize the Southern people has not succeeded, and will not
succeed. When to the Southern people, who will never acquiesce in
the policy of unification, we add the large number of people in the
Northern states who from their political convictions and affinities,
as well as from their conservative tendencies, will oppose
consolidation, we may feel pretty sure that the policy Mr. Wilson
presents as that of the Republican party will not be adopted, or if
adopted will not be permitted to stand. As not wholly inexperienced
in political matters, and looking at the present state of parties and
temper of the nation, we should say that Mr. Wilson, as a party man,
has committed a blunder, and that, if he has fancied that his _New
Departure_ is fitted to strengthen his party as a political party,
and to give it a new lease of power, he has miscalculated. Nothing
in our judgment would be more fatal to the continuance of his party
in power than for it boldly and unequivocally to accept Mr. Wilson's
programme. There is such a thing as reaction in human affairs, and
reactions are sometimes very powerful.

The educational question ought not to present any serious difficulty,
and would not if our Evangelicals and humanitarians did not wish
to make education a means of preventing the growth of the church
and unmaking the children of Catholics, as Catholics; or if they
seriously and in good faith would accept the religious equality
before the state which the constitution and laws, both of the Union
and the several states, as yet recognize and protect. No matter what
we claim for the Catholic Church in the theological order--we claim
for her in the civil order in this country only equality with the
sects, and for Catholics only equal rights with citizens who are not
Catholics. We demand the freedom of conscience and the liberty of our
church, which is our conscience, enjoyed by Evangelicals. This much
the country in its constitution and laws has promised us, and this
much it cannot deny us without breaking its faith pledged before the
world.

As American citizens, we object to the assumption of the control
of education, or of any action in regard to it, by the general
government; for it has no constitutional right to meddle with it,
and so far as civil government has any authority in relation to
it, it is, under our system of government, the authority of the
states severally, not of the states united. We deny, of course,
as Catholics, the right of the civil government to educate, for
education is a function of the spiritual society, as much so as
preaching and the administration of the sacraments; but we do not
deny to the state the right to establish and maintain public schools.
The state, if it chooses, may even endow religion, or pay the
ministers of religion a salary for their support; but its endowments
of religion, when made, are made to God, are sacred, and under the
sole control and management of the spiritual authority, and the
state has no further function in regard to them but to protect the
spirituality in the free and full possession and enjoyment of them.
If it chooses to pay the ministers of religion a salary, as has been
done in France and Spain, though accepted by the Catholic clergy
only as a small indemnification for the goods of the church seized
by revolutionary governments and appropriated to secular uses, it
acquires thereby no rights over them or liberty to supervise their
discharge of their spiritual functions. We do not deny the same or an
equal right in regard to schools and school-teachers. It may found
and endow schools and pay the teachers, but it cannot dictate or
interfere with the education or discipline of the school. That would
imply a union of church and state, or, rather, the subjection of the
spiritual order to the secular, which the Catholic Church and the
American system of government both alike repudiate.

It is said, however, that the state needs education for its own
protection, and to promote the public good or the good of the
community, both of which are legitimate ends of its institution.
What the state needs in relation to its legitimate ends, or the ends
for which it is instituted, it has the right to ordain and control.
This is the argument by which all public education by the state is
defended. But it involves an assumption which is not admissible.
The state, having no religious or spiritual function, can give only
secular education, and secular education is not enough for the
state's own protection or its promotion of the public good. Purely
secular education, or education divorced from religion, endangers
the safety of the state and the peace and security of the community,
instead of protecting and insuring them. It is not in the power of
the state to give the education it needs for its own sake, or for
the sake of secular society. The fact is, though statesmen, and
especially politicians, are slow to learn it, and still slower to
acknowledge it, the state, or secular society, does not and cannot
suffice for itself, and is unable to discharge its own proper
functions without the co-operation and aid of the spiritual society.
Purely secular education creates no civic virtues, and instead of
fitting unfits the people for the prompt and faithful discharge of
their civic duties, as we may see in Young America, and indeed in
the present active and ruling generation of the American people.
Young America is impatient of restraint, regards father and mother
as old-fogies, narrow-minded, behind the age, and disdains filial
submission or obedience to them, has no respect for dignities,
acknowledges no superior, mocks at law if he can escape the police,
is conceited, proud, self-sufficient, indocile, heedless of the
rights and interests of others--will be his own master, and follow
his own instincts, passions, or headstrong will. Are these the
characteristics of a people fitted to maintain a wise, well-ordered,
stable, and beneficent republican government? Or can such a people be
developed from such youngerlings? Yet with purely secular education,
however far you carry it, experience proves that you can get nothing
better.

The church herself, even if she had full control of the education
of all the children in the land, with ample funds at her command,
could not secure anything better, if, as the state, she educated
for a secular end alone. The virtues needed for the protection of
the state and the advancement of the public or common good, are and
can be secured only by educating or training the children and youth
of a nation not for this life as an end, but for the life to come.
Hence our Lord says, "Seek first the kingdom of God and his justice,
and all these things shall be added unto you." The church does not
educate for the secular order as an end, but for God and heaven; and
it is precisely in educating for God and heaven that she secures
those very virtues on which the welfare and security of the secular
order depend, and without which civil society tends inevitably to
dissolution, and is sustained, if sustained at all, only by armed
force, as we have seen in more than one European nation which has
taken education into its own hand, and subordinated it to secular
ends. The education needed by secular society can be obtained only
from the spiritual society, which educates not for this world, but
for the world to come. The virtues needed to secure this life are
obtained only by seeking and promoting the virtues which fit us for
eternal life.

This follows necessarily from the fact that man is created with a
spiritual nature and for an immortal destiny. If he existed for this
life only, if he were, as some sciolists pretend, merely a monkey or
a gorilla developed, or were like the beasts that perish, this indeed
would not and could not follow, and the reconciliation of the nature
and destiny of man with uniform human experience would be impossible.
We should be obliged, in order to secure the peace and good order
of society, as some unbelieving statesmen do not blush to avow, to
educate in view of a falsehood, and take care to keep up the delusion
that man has a religious nature and destiny, or look to what is false
and delusive for the virtues which can alone save us from anarchy and
utter barbarism. Yet what would serve the delusion or the falsehood,
if man differs not by nature from the dog or the pig? But if man
has really a spiritual nature and an immortal destiny, then it must
necessarily follow that his real good can in no respect be obtained
but in being educated and trained to live for a spiritual life, for
an immortal destiny. Should not man be educated according to his
spiritual nature and destiny, not as a pig or a monkey? If so, in his
education should not the secular be subordinated to the spiritual,
and the temporal to the eternal? We know well, experience proves it,
that even the secular virtues are not secured when sought as the end
of education and of life, but only in educating and living for that
which is not secular, and in securing the virtues which have the
promise of the life of the world to come.

All education, as all life, should be religious, and all education
divorced from religion is an evil, not a good, and is sure in the
long run to be ruinous to the secular order; but as a part of
religious education, and included in it, secular education has its
place, and even its necessity. Man is not all soul, nor all body,
but the union of soul and body; and therefore his education should
include in their union, not separation--for the separation of soul
and body is the death of the body--both spiritual education and
secular. It is not that we oppose secular education when given in
the religious education, and therefore referred to the ultimate end
of man, but when it is given alone and for its own sake. We deny
the competency of the state to educate even for its own order, its
right to establish purely secular schools, from which all religion
is excluded, as Mr. Webster ably contended in his argument in the
Girard will case; but we do not deny, we assert rather, its right to
establish public schools under the internal control and management of
the spiritual society, and to exact that a certain amount of secular
instruction be given along with the religious education that society
gives. This last right it has in consideration of the secular funds
for the support of the schools it furnishes, and as a condition on
which it furnishes them.

Let the state say distinctly how much secular education in the public
schools it exacts, or judges to be necessary for its own ends, and so
far as the Catholic Church has anything to do with the matter it can
have it. The church will not refuse to give it in the schools under
her control. She will not hesitate to teach along with her religion
any amount of reading, writing, arithmetic, history, geography,
music, and drawing, or the sciences and the fine arts, the state
exacts and provides for; nor will she refuse to allow it to send,
if it chooses, its own inspectors into her schools to ascertain if
she actually gives the secular education required. Let it say, then,
what amount of secular education it wants for all the children of
the land, and is willing to pay for, and, so far as Catholics are
concerned, it can have it, and of as good quality, to say the least,
as it can get in purely secular schools, and along with it the
religious education, the most essential to it as well as to the souls
of all.

But the difficulty here, it is assumed, is that the spiritual
society with us is divided into various denominations, each with its
distinctive views of religion. That, no doubt, is a damage, but can
be easily overcome by bearing in mind that the several divisions
have equal rights, and by making the public schools denominational,
as they are in Prussia, Austria, France, and to a certain extent in
England, where denominational diversities obtain as well as with
us. Where the community is divided between different religious
denominations, all standing on a footing of perfect equality before
civil society, this is the only equitable system of public schools
that is practicable. If the state does not adopt it, it must--1, let
the whole business of education alone, and make no public provision
for it; 2, establish purely secular, that is, godless schools,
from which all religion is excluded, to which no religious people
can be expected to consent, and which would ruin both public and
private virtue, and defeat the very purpose of all education; or,
3, it must practically, if not theoretically, recognize some one
of the several denominations as the state religion, and remit the
education of childhood and youth to its management and control, as
is virtually the case with our present public schools, but which
would be manifestly unjust to all the others--to non-evangelicals, if
evangelicalism is made the state religion, or to the Evangelicals,
if a non-evangelical denomination be established as the religion of
the state. The only way to be just to all is, as everybody can see,
to recognize in practice as well as in profession the equal rights
of all denominations in the civil order--make the public schools
denominational, and give to each denomination that asks it for the
sake of conscience its fair and honest proportion, to be as to their
internal economy, education, and discipline under its sole control
and management.

Mr. Wilson proposes for our admiration and imitation the Prussian
system of public schools, and though we do not know that it is
superior to the Austrian or even the French system, yet we think
highly of it. But, what the Evangelical senator does not tell us,
the Prussian system is strictly the denominational system, and each
denomination is free and expected to educate in its own schools its
own children, under the direction of its pastors and teachers,
in its own religion. The Prussian system recognizes the fact that
different communions do exist among the Prussian people, and does
not aim to suppress them or at unification by state authority. It
meets the fact as it is, without seeking to alter it. Give us the
Prussian system of denominational schools, and we shall be satisfied,
even if education is made compulsory. We, of course, protest against
any law compelling us to send our children to schools in which our
religion cannot be freely taught, in which no religion is taught, or
in which is taught in any shape or degree a religion which we hold to
be false or perilous to souls. Such a law would violate the rights
of parents and the freedom of conscience; but with denominational
schools compulsory education would violate no one's conscience and
no parental right. Parents ought, if able, to have their children
educated, and if they will not send their children to schools
provided for them by the public, and in which their religion is
respected, and made the basis of the education given, we can see no
valid reason why the law should not compel them. The state has the
right, perhaps the duty, in aid of the spiritual society and for its
own safety and the public good, to compel parents to educate their
children when public schools of their own religion, under the charge
of their own pastors, are provided for them at the public expense.
Let the public schools be denominational, give us our proportion of
them, so that no violence will be done to parental rights or to the
Catholic conscience, and we shall be quite willing to have education
made compulsory, and even if such schools are made national, though
we should object as American citizens to them, we should as Catholics
accept them. We hold state authority is the only constitutional
authority under our system to establish schools and provide for them
at the public expense; but we could manage to get along with national
denominational schools as well as others could. We could educate in
our share of the public schools our own children in our own way, and
that is all we ask. We do not ask to educate the children of others,
unless with the consent or at the request of parents and guardians.

The Prussian system of denominational schools could be introduced
and established in all the states without the least difficulty,
if it were not for Evangelicals, their Unitarian offshoots, and
their humanitarian allies. These are religious and philanthropic
busybodies, who fancy they are the Atlas who upholds the world,
and that they are deputed to take charge of everybody's affairs,
and put them to rights. But they forget that their neighbors have
rights as well as themselves, and perhaps intentions as honest and
enlightened, and as much real wisdom and practical sagacity. The
only obstacle to the introduction and establishment of a just and
equitable system of public schools comes from the intolerant zeal of
these Evangelicals, who seek to make the public schools an instrument
for securing the national, social, and religious unification they
are resolved on effecting, and for carrying out their purpose of
suppressing the church and extirpating Catholicity from American
soil. They want to use them in training our children up in the way of
Evangelicalism, and moulding the whole American population into one
homogeneous people, modelled, as we have said, after the New England
Evangelical type. Here is the difficulty, and the whole difficulty.
The denominational system would defeat their darling hope, their pet
project, and require them to live and let live. They talk much about
freedom of conscience and religious liberty and equal rights; but the
only equal rights they understand are all on their side, and they
cherish such a tender regard for religious liberty, have so profound
a respect for it, that they insist, like our Puritan forefathers, on
keeping it all to themselves, and not to suffer it to be profaned or
abused by being extended to others.

Prussia, though a Protestant country, does not dream of making the
public schools a machine either for proselytism or unification.
She is contented to recognize Catholics as an integral part of her
population, and to leave them to profess and practise their own
religion according to the law of their church. Our Evangelicals would
do well to imitate her example. We Catholics are here, and here we
intend to remain. We have as much right to be here as Evangelicals
have. We are too many to be massacred or exiled, and too important
and influential a portion of the American people to be of no account
in the settlement of public affairs. We have votes, and they will
count on whichever side we cast them; and we cannot reasonably be
expected to cast them on the side of any party that is seeking to
use its power as a political party to suppress our church and our
religion, or even to destroy our federative system of government, and
to leave all minorities at the mercy of the irresponsible majority
for the time, with no other limit to its power than it sees proper to
impose on itself; for we love liberty, and our church teaches us to
be loyal to the constitution of our country.

The wisest course, since there are different religious denominations
in the country, is to accept the situation, to recognize the fact,
acquiesce in it, and make the best of it. Any attempt to unmake,
by the direct or indirect authority of the state, Catholics of
their faith or any denomination of its belief, is sure to fail.
Each denomination is free to use Scripture and reason, logic and
tradition, all moral and intellectual weapons, against its rivals,
and with that it should be contented. Whatever may be the rightful
claims of the church in the theological order, she is contented with
the civil protection of her equal rights in the political order. She
asks--with the wealth, the fashion, the public opinion, the press,
nine-tenths of the population of the country, and the seductions
of the world against her--only "an open field and fair play." If
she does not complain, her enemies ought to be satisfied with the
advantages they have.

We have entered our protest against a party programme which threatens
alike the genius of the American government and the freedom of
religion, for so much was obviously our duty, both as Catholics and
citizens. We are aware of the odds against us, but we have confidence
in our countrymen that, though they may be momentarily deceived
or misled, they will, when the real character of the programme we
have exposed is once laid open to them, reject it with scorn and
indignation, and hasten to do us justice.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by
REV. I. T. HECKER, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at
Washington, D. C.

[2] _New Departure of the Republican Party._ By Henry Wilson. _The
Atlantic Monthly_, Boston, January, 1871.




THE CROSS.


      In weary hours to lonely heights
        When thou hast travelled sore,
      A sorrowing man hath borne his cross
        And gone thy way before.

      Thine eyes cannot escape the sign
        On every hand that is
      Of him who bore the general woe,
        Nor knew a common bliss.

      But men, remembering his face,
        Dreamed of him while they slept,
      And the mother by the cradle side
        Thought of his eye, and wept.

      Now haunts the world his ghost whose fate
        Made all men's fates his own;
      So for the wrongs of modest hearts
        A myriad hearts atone.

      Oh! deeply shall thy spirit toil
        To reach the height he trod,
      And humbly strive thy soul to know
        Its servant was its God.

      Only earth's martyr is her lord;
        Such is the gain of loss:
      And, looking in all hearts, I see
        The signal of the cross.




THE HOUSE OF YORKE.


CHAPTER I.

GENEALOGIES.

Under a thickly-branched tree in the northern part of one of the
southern counties of Maine is a certain gray rock, matted over with
dim green lichens that are spotted with dead gold. From under this
rock springs a sparkling little stream. It is no storied fountain,
rich with legends of splendor, poetry, and crime, but a dear, bright
little Yankee brook, with the world all before it. That world it
immediately proceeds to investigate. It creeps through thready
grasses and russet pine-needles; it turns aside, with great respect,
for a stone no larger than a rabbit; and when a glistening pitchy
cone drops into it, the infant river labors under the burden. When
the thirsty fawn comes there to drink, nearly the whole rivulet flows
down its throat, and the cone is stranded high and dry; what there
is left flows southward. A sunbeam pierces the scented gloom, creeps
down a tree-trunk, steals over a knoll of green-and-brown tree-moss,
which then looks like a tiny forest on fire, over yellow violets,
which dissolve in its light, over a bank of rich dark mould veined
with the golden powder of decayed pine-trees, moist and soft, and
full of glistening white roots, where the flowers push down their
pearly feet. Over the bank, into the water, goes the sunbeam, and the
two frolic together, and the stream dives under the gnarled roots,
so that its playmate would believe it lost but for that gurgle of
laughter down in the cool, fresh dark. Then it leaps up, and spreads
itself out in a mirror, and the elder-tree, leaning over to look at
the reflection of its fan-like leaves and clusters of white flowers,
gets very erroneous ideas concerning its own personal appearance;
for the palpitating rings that chase each other over the surface of
the water make the brown stems crinkle, the leaves come to pieces
and unite again, and the many flowers in each round cluster melt all
together, then twinkle out individually, only to melt again into that
bloomy full moon. Over this shimmer of flowers and water big bees
fly, buzzing terribly, dragon-flies dart, or hang, purple-mailed,
glittering creatures, with gauzy wings, and comical insects dance
there, throwing spots of sunshine instead of shadow down to the leafy
bed. Then the brook flows awhile in a green tranquil shadow, till,
reaching the interlaced roots of two immense trees that hold a bank
between them, it makes a sudden, foamy plunge the height of a stag's
front. She is a bride then, you may say--she is Undine, looking
through that white veil, and thinking new thoughts.

Now the bear comes down to drink and look at his ugly face in the
deepening wave, foxes switch their long tails about the banks, deer
come, as light-footed as shadows, drink, and fling up their short
tails, with a flit of white, and trot away with a little sniff, and
their heads thrown back, hearing the howl or the long stride of the
wolf in pursuit. Rabbits come there, and squirrels leap and nibble in
the branches above. Besides, there are shoals of pretty, slim fishes.

So through the mellow gloom and sunny sparkle of the old forest, the
clear brook wanders, growing wiser, and talking to itself about many
things.

Presently the wild creatures withdraw, sunburnt children wade across
from bank to bank, grassy clearings abound, there are farm-houses,
and cows with tinkling bells; and then comes a bridge, and boats
dance upon the water, and the stream is a river! Alas for the Indian
name it brought up out of the earth with it, and lisped and gurgled
and laughed to itself all the way down--the name spiked with _k_'s
and choky-looking _gh_'s, rough to the eye, but sweet in the mouth,
like a hazel-nut in the burr. The white settlers have changed all
that.

Now, indeed, the young river puts on state, and lets people see that
it is not to be waded through; and when they build a dam across,
it flows grandly over, in a smooth, wine-colored curve. Times are
changed, indeed, since the little gray birds with speckled breasts
looked with admiration at its first cascade, since the bear, setting
down his great paw, clumsily splashed the whole stream up over
his shaggy leg. There are farms to keep up appearances before,
mill-wheels to turn, and ships to bear up. Pine-cones, indeed!
Besides, a new and strange experience has come to it, and its bosom
pulses daily with the swelling of the tides. And here one village
street, with white houses, follows its course a mile or so, and
another street with white houses comes down to its bank from the
west, crosses over, and goes up eastward. This town, with its two
principal streets forming a cross near the mouth of the river, a
white cross at the end of a silver chain--shall we call it Seaton?
It is a good enough name. And the river shall be Seaton River, and
the bay into which it flows shall be Seaton Bay. But the ocean that
makes the bay, and drinks the river, shall be Atlantic still.

We have spoken!

We follow the road that follows the stream on its eastern bank, cross
West Street, get into a poor, dwindling neighborhood, leave the
houses nearly all behind, go over two small, ill-conditioned hills,
and find at our right a ship-yard with wharves, at our left a dingy
little cottage, shaped like a travelling-trunk, and not much larger
than some. It stands with its side toward the dusty road, a large,
low chimney rises from the roof, there is a door with a window at
each side of it. One can see at a glance from the outside how this
house is divided. It has but two rooms below, with a tiny square
entry between, and a low attic above. Each room has three windows,
one on each of the three outer walls.

The kitchen looked toward the village through its north window.
Opposite that was a large fireplace with an ill-tempered, crackling
fire of spruce-wood, throwing out sparks and splinters. It was April
weather, and not very warm yet. In the chimney-corner sat Mr. Rowan,
sulkily smoking his pipe, his eyes fixed on the chimney-back. He
was a large, slouching man, with an intelligent face brutalized by
intemperance. Drunkard was written all over him, in the scorched
black hair, not yet turning gray, in the dry lips, bloated features,
and inflamed eyes. He sat in his shirt-sleeves, waiting impatiently
while his wife put a patch in his one coat. Mrs. Rowan, a poor,
faded, little frightened woman, whom her female acquaintances called
"slack," sat near the south window, wrinkling her brows anxiously
over the said patch, which was smaller than the hole it was destined
to fill. The afternoon sunshine spread a golden carpet close to
her feet. In the light of it one could see the splinters in the
much-scoured floor, and a few fraggles in the hem of Mrs. Rowan's
calico gown.

At the eastern window sat Edith Yorke, eleven years of age, with a
large book on her knees. Over this book, some illustrated work on
natural history, she had been bending for an hour, her loose mop of
tawny hair falling each side of the page. So cloistered, her profile
was invisible; but, standing in front of her, one could see an oval
face with regular features full of calm earnestness. Bright, arched
lips, and a spirited curve in the nostrils, saved this face from the
cold look which regular features often give. The large, drooping
eyelids promised large eyes, the forehead was wide and not high, the
brows long, slightly arched, and pale-brown in color, and the whole
face, neck, hands, and wrists were tanned to a light quadroon tint.
But where the coarse sleeve had slipped up was visible an arm of
dazzling whiteness. Outside the window, and but two rods distant,
hung a crumbling clay bank, higher than the house, with a group of
frightened alder-bushes looking over the top, and holding on with all
their roots. Some day, in spite of their grip--the sooner, perhaps,
because of its stress--the last frail hold was to be loosed, and the
bushes were to come sliding down the bank, faster and faster, to
pitch headlong into the mire at the bottom, with a weak crackling of
all their poor doomed branches.

Presently the child looked up, with lights coming and going in
her agate-colored eyes. "How wonderful frogs are!" she exclaimed
involuntarily.

There was no reply.

She glanced at her two companions, scarcely conscious of them, her
mind full of something else. "But everything is wonderful, when you
come to think of it," she pursued dreamily.

Mr. Rowan took the pipe from his mouth, turned his forbidding face,
and glowered at the girl. "You're a wonderful fool!" he growled; then
resumed his pipe, feeling better, apparently, for that expression
of opinion. His wife glanced up, furtive and frightened, but said
nothing.

Edith looked at the man unmoved, saw him an instant, then, still
looking, saw him not. After a while she became aware, roused herself,
and bent again over the book. Then there was silence, broken only by
the snapping of the fire, the snip of Mrs. Rowan's scissors, and the
lame, one-sided ticking of an old-fashioned clock on the mantelpiece.

After a while, as the child read, a new thought struck up. "That's
just like! Don't you think"--addressing the company--"Major
Cleaveland said yesterday that I had lightning-bugs in my eyes!"

Without removing his pipe, Mr. Rowan darted an angry look at his
wife, whose face became still more frightened. "Dear me!" she said
feebly, "that child is an idjut!"

This time the long, fading gaze dwelt on the woman before it went
back to the book again. But the child was too closely ensphered in
her own life to be much, if at all, hurt. Besides, she was none of
theirs, nor of their kind. Her soul was no dying spark struggling
through ashes, but a fire, "alive, and alive like to be," as children
say when they wave the fire-brand, winding live ribbons in the air;
and no drop of their blood flowed in her veins.

The clock limped over ten minutes more, and the patch was got into
its place, after a fashion, botched somewhat, with the knots on the
outside. Mr. Rowan took the coat, grumbled at it, put it on, and
went out, glancing back at the child as he opened the door. She was
looking after him with an expression which he interpreted to mean
aversion and contempt. Perhaps he mistook. May be she was wondering
at him, what sort of strange being he was. Edith Yorke was very
curious regarding the world she had got into. It seemed to her a
queer place, and that she had at present not much concern in it.

Her husband out of the way, Mrs. Rowan took her knitting-work, and
stood a moment at the north window, gazing up toward the town, with a
far-away look of blunted expectancy, as if she had got in the habit
of looking for help which never came. Then she drew a long sigh,
that also a habit, and, resuming her chair, began to knit and to
rock herself, letting her mind, what there was left of it, swing to
and fro, unmeaningly and miserably, to the sound of the clock as it
ticked. "O dear! O dear!"--that was what the ticking always said to
this poor soul. As she sat, the afternoon sun, sinking lower, crept
about her feet, climbed to her lap, got hold of her knitting, and ran
in little bright flashes along the needles, and snapped off in sparks
at the ends, so that she seemed to be knitting sunshine.

This woman was what remained at forty of a pretty, flaxen-haired
girl of eighteen, who had captivated handsome Dick Rowan, for he
had been handsome. A faded rag of a woman she was, without hope or
spirit, all the color and life washed out of her in a bitter rain
of tears. The pink cheeks had faded, and only the ghost remained of
that dimple that had once seemed to give meaning to her smiles. The
curly hair was dry and thin, and had an air of chronic untidiness.
The blue-gray eyes were dim and heavy, the teeth were nearly all
gone. The pretty, chirping ways that had been captivating when youth
covered their silliness--oh! where had they gone? She was a weak,
broken-hearted, shiftless little woman, and her husband hated her. He
felt wronged and cheated by her. He was more disappointed than Ixion,
for in this cloud there had never even been a goddess. If she had
sometimes turned upon him, when he acted like a brute, and scorned
him for it, he would have liked her better; but she shrank, and
cowered, and trembled, made him feel himself ten times the brute she
dared not call him, yet gave him nothing to resent. "Gentle, is she?"
he cried out once in a rage. "She is not! She is weak and slavish. A
person cannot be gentle who cannot be something else."

So the poor woman suffered, and got neither pity nor credit from the
one who caused her suffering. It was hard; and yet, she was nobler
in her misery than she would have been in happiness. For sorrow gave
her now and then a touch of dignity; and when, stung with a sudden
perception of her own nothingness, she flung her desperate hands
upward, and called upon God to deliver her, a certain tragical power
and beauty seemed to wrap her round. Mrs. Rowan happy would have been
a trivial woman, meaning no great harm, because meaning no great
anything; but the fiery furnace of pain had scorched her up, and what
remained was pure.

When the two were alone, Edith dropped her book, and looked across
the room at her companion. Mrs. Rowan, busy with her own sad
thoughts, took no notice of her, and presently the child glanced
past her, and out the window. The view was not bad. First came
the dusty road, then the ship-yard, then the river sparkling, but
rather the worse for sawdust and lath-edgings that came down from
the lumber-mills above the village. But here all that was sordid
came to an end. The meanness and misery on the hitherward bank were
like witches, who cannot cross running water. From the opposite bank
rose a long, grassy hill, unmarred by road or fence. In summer-time
you could see from far away the pinkness of the wild-roses that had
seen fit to bind with a blooming cestus the dented waist of this
hill. Behind them was a green spray of locust and laburnum trees,
then dense round tops of maples, and elms in graceful groups,
half-hiding the roofs and gables of Major Cleaveland's house--the
great house of the village, as its owner was the great man. Behind
that was a narrow rim of pines and spruces, making the profile of
an enchanted city against the horizon, and above that a vast hollow
of unobstructed sky. In that space the sunsets used to build their
jasper walls, and calm airs stretch long lines of vapor across, till
the whole west was a stringed instrument whereon a full symphony of
colors played good-night to the sun. There the west wind blew up
bubbles of wry cloud, and the new moon put forth her gleaming sickle
to gather in the sheaf of days, a never-failing harvest, through
storm and sunshine, hoar-frost and dew. There the pearly piles of
cumuli used to slumber on summer afternoons, lightnings growing in
their bosoms to flash forth at evening; and there, when a long storm
ended with the day, rose the solid arch of cerulean blue. When it had
reached a certain height, Edith Yorke would run into the south room,
and look out to see the rainbow suspend its miraculous arch over
the retreating storm. This little girl, to whom everything was so
wonderful when she came to think of it, was a dear lover of beauty.

"O dear! O dear!" ticked the clock; and the barred sunshine turned
slowly on the floor, as if the ugly little house were the hub of a
huge, leisurely wheel of gold.

Edith dropped her book, and went to Mrs. Rowan's side, taking a stool
with her, and sitting down in the midst of the sunshine.

"I'm afraid I shall forget my story, Mrs. Jane, unless I say it over
again," she said. "And, you know, mamma told me never to forget."

Mrs. Rowan roused herself, glad of anything which could take her mind
from her own troubles. "Well, tell it all over to me now," she said.
"I haven't heard it this long time."

"Will you be sure to correct me if I am wrong?" the child asked
anxiously.

"Yes, I will. But don't begin till I have taken up the heel of this
stocking."

The stitches were counted and evened, half of them taken off on to a
thread, and the other half, with the seam-stitch in the middle, knit
backward once. Then Edith began to repeat the story confided to her
by her dead mother.

"My grandpapa and grandmamma were Polish exiles. They had to leave
Poland when Aunt Marie was only a year old, and before mamma
was born. They couldn't take their property with them, but only
jewels, and plate, and pictures. They went to Brussels, and there
my mamma was born, and the queen was her godmother, and sent the
christening-robe. Mamma kept the robe till she grew up; but when
she was in America, and was poor, and wanted to go to a party, she
cut it up to make the waist and sleeves of a dress. Poverty is no
disgrace, mamma said, but it is a great inconvenience. By-and-by,
they left Brussels, and went to England. Grandpapa wanted some way to
get money to live on, for they had sold nearly all their pictures and
things. They stayed in England not very long. Countess Poniatowski
called on grandmamma, and she had on a black velvet bonnet with red
roses in it; so I suppose it was winter. Then one day grandpapa took
mamma out to walk in a park; so I suppose that was summer. There were
some gentlemen in the park that they talked to, and one of them, a
gentleman with a hook nose, who was sitting down on a bench, took
mamma on his knees, and started to kiss her. But mamma slapped his
face. She said he had no right to kiss people who didn't want him
to, not even if he were a king. His name was the Duke of Wellington.
Then they all came to America, and people here were very polite to
them, because they were Polish exiles, and of noble birth. But they
couldn't eat nor drink nor wear politeness, mamma said, and so they
grew poorer and poorer every day, and didn't know what they would do.
Once they travelled with Henry Clay two weeks, and had quite a nice
time, and they went to Ashland and stayed all night. When they went
away the next day, Mr. Clay gave mamma and Aunt Marie the little mugs
they had had to drink out of. But they didn't care much about 'em,
and they broke 'em pretty soon. Mamma said she didn't know then that
Mr. Clay was a great man. She thought that just a mister couldn't
be great. She had always seen lords and counts, and grandpapa was a
colonel in the army--Colonel Lubomirski his name was. But she said
that in this country a man might be great, even if he wasn't anything
but a mister, and that my papa was as great as a prince. Well, then
they came to Boston, and Aunt Marie died, and they buried her, and
mamma was almost nine years old. People used to pet and notice her,
and everybody talked about her hair. It was thick and black, and
it curled down to her waist. One day Doctor Somebody, I can never
recollect his name, took her out walking on the Common, and they
went into Mr. John Quincy Adams's house. And Mr. Adams took one of
mamma's curls, and held it out, and said it was long enough and large
enough to hang the Czar with. And she said that they might have it
all if they'd hang him with it. And then poor grandpapa had to go
to Washington, and teach dancing and fencing, because that was all
he could do. And pretty soon grandmamma broke her heart and died.
And then after a little while grandpapa died. And, after that, mamma
had to go out sewing to support herself, and she went to Boston, and
sewed in Mr. Yorke's family. And Mr. Yorke's youngest brother fell in
love with her, and she fell in love with him, and they married each
other in spite of everybody. So the family were awfully angry. My
papa had been engaged ever since he was a little boy to Miss Alice
Mills, and they had put off getting married because she was rich, and
he hadn't anything, and was looking round to see how he should get a
fortune. And the Millses all turned against him, and the Yorkes all
turned against him, and he and mamma went off, and wandered about,
and came down to Maine; and papa died. Then mamma had to sew again to
support herself, and we were awfully poor. I remember that we lived
in the same house with you; but it was a better house than this, and
was up in the village. Then mamma's heart broke, and she died too.
But I don't mean to break my heart, Mrs. Jane. It's a poor thing to
do."

"Yes!" sighed the listener; "it's a poor thing to do."

"Well," resumed the child, "then you kept me. It was four years ago
when my mamma died, but I remember it all. She made me promise not to
forget who my mother was, and promise, with both my hands held up,
that I would be a Catholic, if I had to die for it. So I held up both
my hands, and promised, and she looked at me, and then shut her eyes.
It that all right?"

"Yes, dear!" Mrs. Rowan had dropped her knitting as the story went
on, and was gazing dreamily out the window, recalling to mind her
brief acquaintance with the fair young exile.

"Dick and I grew to be great friends," Edith continued rather
timidly. "He used to take care of me, and fight for me. Poor Dick!
He was mad nearly all the time, because his father drank rum, and
because people twitted him, and looked down upon him."

Mrs. Rowan took up her work again, and knit tears in with the yarn.

"And Dick gave his father an awful talking-to, one day," Edith
went on, still more timidly. "That was two years ago. He stood up
and poured out words. His eyes were so flashing that they dazzled,
and his cheeks were red, and he clinched his hands. He looked most
splendid. When I go back to Poland, he shall be a general in the
army. He will look just as he did then, if the Czar should come near
us. Well, after that day he went off to sea, and he has not been back
since."

Tears were running down the mother's cheeks as she thought of her
son, the only child left her of three.

Edith leaned and clasped both her hands around Mrs. Rowan's arm,
and laid her cheek to them. "But he is coming back rich, he said he
would; and what Dick said he'd do he always did. He is going to take
us away from here, and get a pretty house, and come and live with us."

A hysterical, half-laughing sob broke through the listener's quiet
weeping. "He always did keep his word, Edith!" she cried. "Dick was a
gallant lad. And I trust that the Lord will bring him back to me."

"Oh! he'll come back," said Edith confidently, and with a slight air
of haughtiness. "He'll come back himself."

All the Christianity the child had seen had been such as to make the
name of the Lord excite in her heart a feeling of antagonism. It is
hard to believe that God means love when man means hate; and this
child and her protectors had seen but little of the sunny side of
humanity. Christians held aloof from the drunkard and his family, or
approached them only to exhort or denounce. That they had any kinship
with that miserable man, that in his circumstances they might have
been what he was, never seemed to occur to them as possible. Dick
fought with the boys who mocked his father, therefore he was a bad
boy. Mrs. Rowan flamed up, and defended her husband, when the Rev.
Dr. Martin denounced him, therefore she was almost as bad as he.
So shallow are most judgments, arraigning effects without weighing
causes.

Nor did Edith fare better at their hands. She was to them a sort
of vagabond. Who believed the story of her mother's romantic
misfortunes? She was some foreign adventuress, most likely. Mr.
Charles Yorke, whom they respected, had married a native of Seaton,
and had two or three times honored that town with a short visit. They
knew that he had cast off his own brother for marrying this child's
mother. Therefore she had no claim on their respect.

Moreover, some of the ladies for whom young Mrs. Yorke had done
sewing had not the pleasantest of recollections connected with her.
A poor person has no right to be proud and high-spirited, and the
widowed exile was a very fiery woman. She would not sit at table with
their servants, she would not be delighted when they patronized her,
and she would not be grateful for the scanty wages they gave her.
She had even dared to break out upon Mrs. Cleaveland when that lady
had sweetly requested her to enter her house by the side door, when
she came to sew. "In Poland a person like you would scarcely have
been allowed to tie my mother's shoes!" she cried. The lady answered
suavely, "But we are not in Poland, madam;" but she never forgave the
insolence--still less because her husband laughed at it, and rather
liked Mrs. Yorke's spirit.

These were the ladies whom Edith had heard talk of religion; so she
lifted her head, dropped her eyelids, and said defiantly, "Dick will
come home himself!"

"Not unless the Lord lets him come," said the mother. "Oh! no good
will come to us except by him. '_Unless the Lord build the house,
they labor in vain that build it: unless the Lord keep the city, he
watcheth in vain that keepeth it._'"

"I don't think you have much to thank him for," remarked the child
quietly.

"I will thank him!" the woman cried out in a passion. "I will trust
him! He is all the hope I have!"

"Well, well, you may!" Edith said soothingly. "Don't let's talk about
it any more. Give me the scissors, and I'll cut the fraggles off the
hem of your gown. Suppose Dick should come home all of a sudden, and
find us looking so! I hope he will let us know, don't you? so that we
can put our best clothes on."

The best clothes in question were a black bombazine gown and shawl,
and an old-fashioned crape bonnet and veil, all sewed up and hidden
away under Edith's bed in the little dark attic, lest Mr. Rowan, in
one of his drunken frenzies, should destroy them. These articles were
the mourning which Mrs. Rowan had worn seven years before, when her
last daughter died. With them was another bag, belonging to Edith,
equally precious to its owner, but from other reasons. There was
a scarlet merino cape, lined with silk of the same color, both a
little faded, and a faded crape scarf that had once been gorgeous
with red and gold. In the innermost fold of this scarf, wrapped
in tissue-paper, and tucked inside an old kid glove of remarkable
smallness, were two locks of hair--one a short, thick wave of
yellow-brown, the other a long, serpentine tress of ebony blackness.

While they talked, the door of the room opened, and Mr. Rowan looked
in. "Aren't we going to have any supper to-night?" he demanded.

Edith fixed a look on him that made him shrink out, and bang the door
behind him. His wife started up, glanced at the clock, and went about
her work.

"Let me help you, Mrs. Jane," the child said.

"No, dear. There isn't much to do, and I'd rather do it." Mrs.
Rowan's voice had a sepulchral sound, her head being deep in the
fireplace, where she was putting one hook into another on the crane,
to let the tea-kettle down. She emerged with a smooch of soot on her
hair and forehead, and began flying round bringing a table into the
middle of the floor, putting up the leaves, spreading the cloth,
taking down the dishes, all with trembling haste. "If you want to
knit a few times across the heel of that stocking, you may. But be
careful not to knit too tightly, as you almost always do. You can
begin to narrow when it's two of your forefingers long."

Edith took the knitting, and went to her favorite chair in the back
window. The room had grown smoky in consequence of Mrs. Rowan's
piling of soft wood on to the fire, and hurrying about past the
fireplace, so she pushed up the window, and fastened it with a wooden
button fixed there for the purpose. Then she began to knit and think,
and, forgetting Mrs. Rowan's directions, pulled the yarn so tightly
over her fingers that she worked a hard, stiff strip across the heel,
into which the looser knitting puckered. The child was too much
absorbed to be aware of her mistake, and it did not matter; for that
stocking was never to be finished.

While she dreamed there, a deeper shadow than that of the clay bank
fell over her. She looked up with a start, and saw Mr. Rowan standing
outside the window. He had placed himself so as to avoid being seen
by any one in the room, and was just turning his eyes away from her
when she caught sight of him.

"Lean out here!" he said. "I want to speak to you."

She leaned out and waited.

"What makes you stare at me the way you sometimes do?" he asked
angrily, but in a low voice, that his wife might not hear. "Why don't
you say right out what you think?"

"I don't know what I do think," replied Edith, dropping her eyes.

"You think that I am a wretch!" he exclaimed. "You think I am a
drunkard! You think I abuse my wife!"

She neither answered nor looked up.

He paused a moment, then went on fiercely. "If there is anything I
hate, it is to have people look at me that way, and say nothing. If
you scold a man, it looks as if you thought there was something in
him that could tell black from white; and if you are impudent, you
put yourself a little in the wrong, and that helps him. He isn't so
much ashamed of himself. But when you just look, and say nothing, you
shut him out. It is as much as to tell him that words would be thrown
away on him."

"But," Edith objected, much at a loss, "if I answered you back, or
said what I thought, there would be a quarrel right off."

"Did I fight when Dick gave me such a hauling-over before he went
away?" the man questioned in a rough tone that did not hide how his
voice broke, and his blood-shot eyes filled up with tears. "Didn't
I hang my head, and take it like a dog? He said I had acted like a
brute, but he didn't say I was one, and he didn't say but I could be
a man yet, if I should try. Wasn't I sober for three months after he
went away? Yes; and I would have kept sober right on if I had had
some one to thorn and threaten me. But she gave up, and did nothing
but whimper, and it maddened me. When I ordered her to mix my rum for
me, she did it. I should have liked her better if she had thrown it,
tumbler and all, into my face."

"You'd better not find fault with her," said Edith. "She's a great
deal better than you are."

The child had a gentle, sincere way of saying audacious things
sometimes that made one wonder if she knew how audacious they were.

The man stared at her a moment; then, looking away, answered without
any appearance of anger, "I suppose she is; but I don't think much of
that kind of goodness when there's a hard job to be done. You can't
lift rocks with straws. I'm sorry for her; but, for all that, she
aggravates me, poor thing!"

He leaned back against the house, with his hands in his pockets, and
stared at the clay bank before him. Edith looked at him, but said
nothing. Presently he turned so suddenly that she started. "Girl," he
said, "never do you ridicule a man who has been drinking, no matter
what he does! You may hate him, or be afraid of him, but never laugh
at him! You might as well look down into hell and laugh! Do you
know what it is to be in the power of rum? It is to have serpents
twining round you, and binding you hand and foot. I've gone through
the streets up there with devils on my back, pushing me down; wild
beasts tearing my vitals; reptiles crawling round me; the earth
rising up and quaking under my feet, and a horror in my soul that no
words can describe, and the men and women and children have laughed
at me. Perhaps they were such shallow fools that they didn't know;
but I tell you, and you know now. Don't you ever dare to laugh at a
drunkard!"

"I never will!" Edith cried out, in an agony of terror and pity. "O
you poor man! I didn't know it was so awful. O you poor man!"

Mr. Rowan had stopped, gasping for breath, and, with his patched
sleeve, wiped off the perspiration that was streaming down his face.
Edith tore off her little calico apron with such haste as to break
the strings. "Here, take this!" she said, reaching it out to him.

He took it with a shaking hand, and wiped his face again; wiped his
eyes again and again, breathing heavily.

"Couldn't you be saved?" she asked, in a whisper. "Isn't there any
way for you to get out of it?"

"No!" he said, and gave her back her apron. "No; and I wish that I
were dead!"

"Don't say that!" the child entreated. "It is wicked; and perhaps you
will die if you say it."

The drunkard raised his trembling hands, and looked upward. "I wish
to God that I were dead!" he repeated.

Edith shrank back into the room. She was too much terrified to listen
to any more. But after a moment he called her name, and she leaned
out again. His face was calmer, and his voice more quiet. "Don't
tell her what I have been talking about," he said, nodding toward
the room. "I would sooner tear my tongue out by the roots than say
anything to her."

"I won't tell," Edith promised.

"Supper's ready," Mrs. Rowan announced, coming towards the window.
She had heard her husband's voice in conversation with Edith, and
wondered greatly what was going on.

Mr. Rowan turned away, with a look of irritation, at sound of her
timid voice, walked round the house, and came sulkily in to his
supper.

Their meals had always been comfortless and silent; but now Edith
tried to talk, at first with Mrs. Rowan; but when she saw that the
woman's tremulous replies, as if she did not dare to speak in her
husband's presence, were bringing an uglier frown to this face, and
that he was changing from sullen to savage, she addressed her remarks
and questions to him. Mr. Rowan was a surveyor, and a good one,
when he was sober, and he was a man of some general information and
reading. When he could be got to talk, one was surprised to find
in him the ruins of a gentleman. Now his answers were surly enough,
but they were intelligent, and the child, no longer looking at him
from the outside, questioned him fearlessly, and kept up a sort of
conversation till they rose from table.

It was Mr. Rowan's custom to go out immediately after supper, and
not come home till late in the evening, when he would stagger in,
sometimes stupid, sometimes furious with liquor. But to-night he
lingered about when he had left the table, lighted his pipe, kicked
the fire, wound up the clock, and cursed it for stopping, and
finally, as if ashamed of the proposal even while making it, said to
Edith, "Come, get the checker-board, and see if you can beat me."

She was quick-witted enough, or sensitive enough, not to show any
surprise, but quietly brought out the board, and arranged the chairs
and stand. It was a square of board, rough at the edges, planed on
one side, and marked off in checks with red chalk. The men were bits
of tanned leather, one side white, the other side black. She placed
them, smiled, and said, "Now, I'm ready!"

Mrs. Rowan's cheeks began to redden up with excitement as she went
about clearing the table, and washing the dishes, but she said
nothing. She had even tact enough to go away into the bedroom,
when her work was done, and leave the two to play out their game
unwatched. There she sat in the falling dusk, her hands clasped on
her knees, listening to every sound, expecting every moment to hear
her husband go out. The three curtains in the room were rolled up to
the very tops of the windows, and, in their places, three pictures
seemed to hang on the smoky walls, and illumine the place. One was
a high clay bank, its raw front ruddy with evening light, its top
crowned with a bush burning like that of Horeb. The second was a hill
covered with spruce-trees, nothing else, from the little cone, not
a foot high, to the towering spire that pierced the sky. Some faint
rose-reflections yet warmed their sombre shadows, and each sharp
top was silvered with the coming moonlight. The third window showed
a deserted ship-yard, with the skeleton of a bark standing on the
stocks. The shining river beyond seemed to flow through its ribs,
and all about it the ground was covered with bright yellow chips and
shavings. Above it, in the tender green of the southwestern sky, a
cloud-bark freighted with crimson light sailed off southward, losing
its treasure as it went. These strong, rich lights, meeting and
crossing in the room, showed clearly the woman's nervous face full
of suspense, the very attitude, too, showing suspense, as she only
half-sat on the side of the bed, ready to start up at a sound. After
a while she got up softly, and went to the fireplace to listen. All
was still in the other room, but she heard distinctly the crackling
of the fire. What had come over him? What did it mean?

Presently there was a slight movement, and Edith's voice spoke out
brightly: "Oh! I've got another king. Now I have a chance!"

The listener trembled with doubt and fear. Her husband was actually
sitting at home, and playing checkers with Edith, instead of going
out to get drunk! He could not mean to go, or he would have gone at
once. She longed to go and assure herself, to sit down in the room
with him, but could scarcely find courage to do so. She held her
breath as she went toward the door, and her hand faltered on the
latch. But at last she summoned resolution, and went out.

The lamp was lighted, the checker-board placed on the table beside
it, and the two were talking over the slackening game. Edith had a
good head for a child of her age, but her opponent was an excellent
player, and she could not interest him long. She was trying every
lure to keep him, though, and made a new tack as Mrs. Rowan came
in, relating an experience of her own, instead of questioning him
concerning his. "I want to tell you something I saw last night in my
chamber," she said.

Edith's chamber was the little dark attic, which was reached by a
steep stairway at one side of the fireplace.

"I was in bed, wide awake, and it was pitch dark. You know you put
the cover over the skylight when it rained, the other day, and it has
not been taken off. Well, instead of shutting my eyes, I kept them
wide open, and looked straight into the dark. I've heard that you
can see spirits so, and so I thought I might see my mamma. Pretty
soon there was a great hole in the dark, like a whirlpool, and after
a minute there was a little light down at the bottom of it. I kept
on looking, just as if I were looking down into a deep well, and
then there came colors in clouds, sailing about, just like clouds in
the sky. Some were red, others pink, others blue, and all colors.
Sometimes there would be a pattern of colors, just like figures in a
carpet, only they were blocks, not flowers. I didn't dream it. I saw
it as plainly as I see the fire this minute. What do you suppose it
was, Mr. Rowan?"

He had listened with interest, and did not appear to find anything
surprising in the recital.

"I don't know much about optics," he answered; "but I suppose
there is a scientific reason for this, whether it is known or not.
I've seen those colors--that is, I did when I was a child; and De
Quincey, in his _Opium Confessions_, tells the same story. I don't
believe that grown people are likely to see them, for the reason that
they shut their eyes, and their minds are more occupied. You have to
stare a good while into the dark, and wait what comes, and not think
much of anything."

"Yes," said Edith. "But what do you guess it is?"

Mr. Rowan leaned back in his chair, with his hands clasped behind his
head, and considered the matter a moment, some finer intelligence
than often showed there kindling behind his bloated face.

"I should guess it might be this," he said. "Though the place appears
at first to be dark, there are really some particles of light there.
And since there are too few of them to keep up a connection in their
perfect state, they divide into their colors, and make the clouds you
saw. I don't know why particles of light should not separate, when
they have a great deal to do, and not much to do it with. Air does."

"But what made them move?" Edith asked. "They were never still."

"Perhaps they were alive."

She stared, with scintillating eyes.

Mr. Rowan gave a short, silent laugh. He knew that the child was
only questioning in order to keep him. "No reason why not," he said.
"According to Sir Humphry Davy, and some other folks, I believe, heat
isn't caloric, but repulsive motion. It isn't matter, but it moves,
goes where nothing else can, passes through stone and iron, and can't
be stopped, and can't be seen. Now, a something that is not matter,
and yet is powerful enough to overcome matter, must be spirit. Heat
is the soul of light; and if heat is spirit, light is alive. _Voilà
tout!_"

He had forgotten himself a moment in the pleasure of puzzling his
questioner; but catching his wife looking at him with an expression
of astonishment, he came back to the present. The smile died out of
his face, and the frown came back.

"Don't you want to play _solitaire_?" Edith struck in desperately.

He made a slight motion of dissent, but it was not decided; so she
brought out the pack of soiled cards, and laid them before him.
There was a moment of hesitation, during which the heart of the wife
throbbed tumultuously, and the nerves of the child tingled with an
excitement that seemed to snap in sparks from her eyes. Then he
took the cards, shuffled them, and began to play. Mrs. Rowan opened
a book, and, holding it upside down, so as to hide her face, cried
quietly behind the page. Her husband saw that she was crying, cast
a savage glance at her, and seemed about to fling the cards down;
but Edith made some remark on the game, leaned toward him, and laid
her head lightly on his arm. It was the first time in all their
acquaintance that she had voluntarily touched him. At the same time
she reached her foot, and pushed Mrs. Rowan's under the table. Mrs.
Rowan dropped her book, turned her face away quickly, and said, with
an effort of self-control rare for her: "Why, it's nine o'clock! I'll
go to bed, I think; I'm tired."

Nobody answering, or objecting, she went away, and left her husband
still over his cards.

"Isn't it about your bedtime?" he said presently to Edith.

She got up slowly, unwilling to go, yet not daring to stay. Oh!
if she were but wise enough to know the best thing that could be
said--something which would strengthen his resolution, and keep him
in. It was not yet too late for him to go out; for, when every safe
and pitiful door is closed, and slumber seals all merciful eyes, the
beacon of the grog-shop shines on through the night, and tells that
the way to perdition still is open, and the eyes of the rum-seller
yet on the watch.

"How glad I shall be when Dick comes home!" she said. "Then I hope we
can all go away from here, and wipe out, and begin over."

She could not have said better, but, if she had known, she could have
done better. What he needed was not an appeal to his sentiments, but
physical help. Words make but little impression on a man while the
torments of a burning, infernal thirst are gnawing at his vitals. The
drunkard's body, already singed by the near flames of the bottomless
pit, needed attending to at once; his soul was crushed and helpless
under the ruins of it. If an older, wiser head and hand had been
there, started up the failing fire, and made some strong, bitter
draught for him to drink, it might have done good. But the child did
not know, and the sole help she could give was an appeal to his heart.

It is as true of the finest and loftiest natures, as of the
perverted, that they cannot always conquer the evil one by spiritual
means alone. Only spirits can do that. And often the tempter must
laugh to see the physical needs, which were made to play about our
feet like children, unnoticed when the soul speaks, starved till they
become demons whose clamorous voices drown the spirit's fainting
cries.

But this man's demon was indulgence, and not denial. He was not
hovering on the brink of ruin, he was at the bottom, and striving
to rise, and he could not endure that any eye should look upon his
struggles.

"D-- you! will you go to bed?" he cried out fiercely.

Edith started back, and, without another word, climbed the narrow
stair to her attic. Before closing the trap-door, she looked down
once, and saw Mr. Rowan tearing and twisting the cards he had been
playing with.

He stayed there the whole night, fighting desperately with such
weapons as he had--a will broken at the hilt, the memory of his son,
and the thought of that dear little girl's tender but ineffectual
pity. As for God, he no longer named him, save in imprecation. The
faith of his orphaned childhood had gone long ago. The glare of the
world had scorched it up before it had fairly taken root. That there
might be help and comfort in the church of his fathers never entered
his mind. "Drink! drink!" that was his sole thought. "If I only had
some opium!" he muttered, "or a cup of strong black coffee! I wonder
if I could get either of 'em anywhere?"

The day was faintly dawning when he staggered to the window, tore
down the paper curtain, and looked out for some sign of life. At the
wharf opposite lay a vessel that had come up the evening before, and
he knew by the smoke that the cook was getting breakfast there.

"I'll go over and see if I can get some coffee or opium," he
muttered, and pulled his hat on as he went out the door.

"I'll ask for nothing but coffee or opium," he protested to himself,
as he shut the door softly after him.

Alas! alas!


CHAPTER II.

WIPING OUT, AND BEGINNING ANEW.

The next morning was a gloomy one for the two who had nursed that
trembling hope overnight, but they did not say much about it.
Mrs. Rowan's face showed the lassitude of long endurance. Edith's
disappointment was poignant. She was no longer a looker-on merely,
but an actor. The man had confided in her, had tacitly asked her
sympathy, and his failure gave her a pang. She cast about in her
thoughts what she should do, having a mind to put her own young
shoulder to the wheel. Should she go in search of him, and give him
one of those scoldings which he had acknowledged his need of? Should
she lead him home, and protect him from abuse?

"Hadn't I better go up to the post-office?" she asked, after
breakfast. "I haven't been there this good while, and there might be
a letter from Dick."

Mrs. Rowan hesitated: "Well, yes." She disliked being left alone, and
she had no expectation of a letter. But it seemed like slighting her
son to make any other reply to such a request. Besides, the village
boys might be hooting her husband through the streets, and, if they
were, she would like to know it. So Edith prepared herself, and went
out.

The ship-yard was full of business at this hour, and two men were
at work close to the road, shaving a piece of timber. Edith looked
at them, and hesitated. "I've a good mind to," she thought. She had
never gone into the ship-yard when the men were there, and had never
asked any one a question concerning Mr. Rowan. But now all was
changed, and she felt responsible. "Have you seen Mr. Rowan anywhere,
this morning?" she asked, going up to the man nearest her.

He drew the shave slowly to him, slipped off a long curl of
amber-colored wood from the blade, then looked up to see who spoke.
"Mr. Rowan!" he repeated, as if he had never heard the name before.
"Oh! Dick, you mean. No, I haven't seen him, this morning. He may be
lying round behind the timbers somewhere."

The child's eyes sparkled. Child though she was, she knew that the
drunkard was more worthy of the title of gentleman than this man was,
for he was rude and harsh only when he suffered.

"Little girl," the other called out as she turned away, "your father
is over there on board of the _Annie Laurie_. I saw him lying there
half an hour ago, and I guess he hasn't stirred since."

"He isn't my father!" she flashed out.

The two burst into a rude laugh, which effectually checked the thanks
she would have given for their information. She turned hastily away,
and went up the road to the village.

Mrs. Rowan finished her work, and sat down in the west window to
watch. She was too anxious and discouraged to knit, even, and so did
not discover the tight little strip of work around the stocking-heel.
It was employment enough to look out for Edith; not that she expected
a letter, but because she wanted company. She was conscious of some
strength in the child, on which she leaned at times. As for Dick,
she had little hope of good news from him, if any. She had no part
in Edith's rose-colored expectations. Dick in peril from storm, foe,
or sin; Dick dying untended in foreign lands; Dick sinking down in
cold, salt seas--these were the mother's fancies.

After half an hour, a small figure appeared over the hills between
the house and the village. Mrs. Rowan watched it absently, and with
a slight sense of relief. But soon she noticed that the child was
running. It was not like Edith to run. She was noticeably quiet, and
even dignified in her manners. Could she have seen or heard anything
of Mr. Rowan at the village? The heart of the wife began to flutter
feebly. Was he lying in the street? or engaged in a drunken quarrel?
She leaned back in her chair, feeling sick, and tried to gather
strength for whatever might come to her.

Edith was near the house, now running a few steps, then walking, to
gather breath, and she held her arm above her head, and swung it, and
in her hand was a letter!

Away went all thought of her husband. In two minutes Mrs. Rowan had
the letter in her hand, had torn it open, and she and Edith were both
bending over it, and reading it together. It had been lying in the
post-office a week. It came from New York, and in a week from the
date of it Dick would be at home! He was on board the ship _Halcyon_,
Captain Cary, and they were to come down to Seaton, and load with
lumber as soon as their East Indian freight should be disposed of. He
had met Captain Cary in Calcutta, Dick wrote, and, having done him a
service there, had been taken on board his ship, and now was second
mate. Next voyage he would sail as first mate. The captain was his
friend, would do anything for him, and owned half the ship, Major
Cleaveland owning the other half; so Dick's fortune was made. But,
he added, they must get out of that town. He had a month to spare,
and should take them all away. Let them be ready to start on short
notice.

Having read this joyful letter through once, they began at the
first word and read it all through again, dwelling here and there
with exclamations of delight, stopped every minute by a large tear
that splashed down from Mrs. Rowan's eyes, or a yellow avalanche of
Edith's troublesome hair tumbling down as she bent eagerly over the
letter. How many times they read that letter would be hard to say;
still harder to say how many times they might have read it, had there
been no interruption.

A crowd of men were approaching their door--close upon them, and
darkening the light before they looked up. "Had Dick come, and were
the neighbors welcoming him?" was the first thought.

In her haste, Edith had left the outer door ajar, and now heavy feet
came tramping in without any leave being asked; the inner door was
pushed open, and--not Dick, but Dick's father was brought in and laid
on the floor. This was not the first time he had been brought home,
but never before had he come with such a retinue and in such silence,
and never before had these men taken off their hats to Mrs. Rowan.

"We've sent for the doctor, ma'am," one of them said; "but I guess
it's no use."

"I wouldn't have ordered him off, if I hadn't thought he was steady
enough to go," said another, who looked very pale. "The captain was
expected on board every minute, and it would be as much as my life is
worth if he found a man drunk there."

"He slipped on a plank, and fell," some one explained.

Their talk was, to the bewildered woman, like sounds heard in a
dream. So were Edith's passionate words as she ordered the men away.
The one who had refused the dead man any better title than "Dick" was
just coming in at the door, staring right and left, not too pitiful
even then to be curious regarding the place he was in. "Go out!" she
said, pushing the door in his face.

Some way, still in a dream, they were got rid of, all but two. Then
the doctor came, and looked, and nodded his decision--"All over!"

A dream! a dream!

The bedroom was set in order, the silent sleeper laid out there,
every stranger sent out of the house and locked out, and then Mrs.
Rowan woke up. It was a terrible awakening.

Madame Swetchine comments upon the fact that the thought of death is
more terrible in an arid existence than in the extremes of joy and
sorrow. It is true not only of those who die, but of the survivors.
We go out more willingly on a difficult journey when we have been
warmed and fed; we send our loved ones out with less pain when they
have been thus fortified. It is the same, in a greater degree, when
the journey is that one from which the traveller never returns. It
adds a terrible pang to bereavement when we think that our lost one
has never been happy; how much more terrible if he has never been
honored!

Of her husband's future Mrs. Rowan refused to think or to hear,
though she must have trembled in the shadow of it. It might be that
which made her so wild. She would allow no one to come near or speak
to her save Edith. Those who came with offers of help and sympathy
she ordered away. "Go!" she cried. "I want nothing of you! I and mine
have been a byword to you for years. Your help comes too late!"

She locked them out and pulled the curtains close, and, though
people continued to come to the door through the whole day, no one
gained admittance or saw a sign of life about the house. Inside sat
the widow and the child, scarcely aware of the passage of time. They
only knew that it was still day by the rays of sunlight that came in
through holes in the paper curtains, and pointed across the rooms
like long fingers. When there was a knock at the door, they started,
lifted their faces, and listened nervously till the knocking ceased,
as if afraid that some one might force an entrance. One would have
fancied, from their expression, that savages or wild beasts were
seeking to enter. They never once looked out, nor knew who came.

Still less were they aware of Major Cleaveland standing in his
cupola, spy-glass in hand, looking down the bay to see if that cloud
of canvas coming up over the horizon was the good ship _Halcyon_
coming home after her first voyage. Down-stairs he came again, three
stairs at a jump, as joyful as a boy, in spite of his forty years,
gave directions for the best dinner that the town would afford,
ordered his carriage, and drove off down the river-road.

The _Halcyon_ was the largest vessel that had ever been built at
Seaton, and as its launching had been an event in the town, so its
first arrival was an incident to take note of. When Major Cleaveland
drove down to the wharf where Mr. Rowan had that morning lost his
life, more than a hundred persons were assembled there waiting for
the ship, and others were coming. He stepped over to the Rowans'
door, and knocked twice, once with his knuckles, and again with his
whip-handle, but received no answer. "I would force the door, but
that Dick is coming," he said. "It is a shame to let the poor soul
shut herself up alone."

Soon, while the crowd watched, around the near curve of the river,
where a wooded point pushed out, appeared the tip, then the whole of
a bowsprit garlanded with green wreaths, then the leaning lady in her
gilded robes, with a bird just escaping from her hand, then the ship
rode gracefully into sight on the incoming tide.

A ringing shout welcomed her, and a shout from all hands on board
answered back.

Foremost of the little group on the deck stood a man of gigantic
stature. His hair was coarse and black, he wore an enormous black
beard, and his face, though scarcely middle-aged, was rough and
scarred by the weather. Everybody knew Captain Cary, a sailor worthy
of the old days of the Vikings, broad-shouldered, as strong as a
lion, with a laugh that made the glasses ring when he sat at table.
He was a plain, simple man, but grand in his simplicity. By his side
stood a youth of twenty, who looked slight in comparison, though
he was really manly and well grown. He had sea-blue eyes, quick,
long-lashed, and as bright as diamonds; his face was finely moulded,
ruddy, and spirited; his hair, that glistened in the sunlight, was
chestnut-brown. A gallant lad he was, the very ideal sailor-boy. But
his expression was defiant, rather than placid, and he did not join
in the hurrahs. The welcoming applause was not for him, he well knew.
They were no friends of his who crowded the wharf. He had some bitter
recollections of slight or injury connected with nearly every one of
them. But he was no longer in their power, and that gave him freedom
and ease in meeting them. The time had gone by when he could look
upon these country folks as final judges in any matter whatever, or
as of any great consequence to him. He had seen the world, had won
friends, had proved that he could do something, that he was somebody.
He was not ashamed of himself by any means, was young Dick Rowan.
Still, it was no pleasure to him to see them, for it brought back the
memory of sufferings which had not yet lost their sting.

All this shouting and rejoicing was as the idle wind to the mourners
across the way. Their fears of intrusion set at rest, since no one
had attempted to force an entrance to the house, they no longer took
notice even of the knocking at the door. Both had fallen into a sort
of stupor, induced by the exhaustion of long weeping, the silence
and semi-darkness of their rooms, and the removal of what had been
the daily tormenting fear of their lives. There was no longer any
need to tremble when a step approached, lest some one should come in
frenzied with drink, and terrify them with his ravings and violence.
Mrs. Rowan sat by her husband's side, leaning back in her chair, with
closed eyes and clasped hands, only half-alive. Edith lay on the
kitchen-floor, where she had thrown herself in a passion of weeping,
her arms above her head, her face hidden, and her long hair veiling
her. The weeping was over, and she lay silent and motionless. Neither
that shouting over on the wharf, nor Major Cleaveland's loud knocking
with his whip-handle, had made the slightest impression on her.

But at sunset came one who would not be denied. He tried the lock,
and, finding it fastened, knocked gently. There was no answer. He
knocked loudly, and still there was no reply. Then he set his knee
against the rickety panel, took the knob in a strong grasp, and
wrenched the door open. Stepping quickly into the little entry, he
looked to right and left, saw the girl lying, face down, on the
floor, and the woman sitting beside her dead, both as still as the
dead.

Something like a dream came into the half-swoon, half-sleep in which
Edith Yorke lay. She heard a slight cry, then a stifled sob, and
words hurriedly spoken in a low voice. Then there was a step that
paused near her. She put her hair back with one hand, and turned her
face listlessly. The curtain had been raised to let in the light, and
there stood a young man looking down at her. His face was pale with
the sudden shock of grief and distress, but a faint indication of a
smile shone through as she looked up at him.

Her first glance was a blank one, her second flashed with delight.
She sprang up as if electrified. "O Dick! O Dick! How glad I am!"

The world moved rightly at last! Order was coming out of chaos; for
Dick had come home!

He shook hands with her rather awkwardly, somewhat embarrassed by the
warmth of her welcome. "We're to go right off," he said. "Captain
Cary will help us."

"Yes, Dick!" she replied, and asked no questions. He knew what was
right. With him had come all help, and strength, and hope.

The next morning, long before dawn, they started. A boat was ready at
the wharf, and Captain Cary and Dick carried out the dead in a rude
coffin that had been privately made on board the _Halcyon_. "They
shall not stare at our poor funeral, captain," Dick had said; "and I
will not ask them for a coffin or a grave."

"All right!" his friend had answered heartily. "I'm your man.
Whatever you want to do, I'll help you about."

So the watch on the _Halcyon_ was conveniently deaf and blind, the
boat was ready in the dark of morning, the coffin carried out to it,
and Mrs. Rowan and Edith helped in after. When they were in their
places, and the captain seated, oars in hand, Dick went back to the
house, and stayed there a little while. No questions were asked of
him when he came away, bringing nothing with him, and he offered no
explanation, only took the oars, and silently guided their boat out
into the channel. The banks on either side were a solid blackness,
and the sky was opaque and low, so that their forms were scarcely
visible to each other as they sat there, Mrs. Rowan in the bows near
her son, Edith beside Captain Cary, who loomed above her like a
mountain of help.

Presently, as they floated around the point that stood between the
village and the bay, a faint blush of light warmed the darkness
through, and grew till the low-hung clouds sucked it up like a sponge
and showed a crimson drapery over their heads. It was too early for
morning light, too fierce, and, moreover, it came from the wrong
direction. The east was before them; this sanguinary aurora followed
in their wake. It shone angrily through the strip of woods, and sent
a long, swift beam quivering over the water. This fiery messenger
shot like an arrow into the boat, and reddened Mrs. Rowan's hands,
clasped on the edge of the coffin. By the light of it, Dick saw all
their faces turned toward him.

"The house was mine!" he said defiantly.

The captain nodded approval, and Edith leaned forward to whisper,
"Yes, Dick!" But Mrs. Rowan said not a word, only sat looking
steadily backward, the light in her face.

"I'm glad of it!" sighed Edith to herself. She had been thinking
since they left the house how people would come and wander through
it, and peer at everything, and know just how wretchedly they had
lived. Now they could not, for it would all be burnt up. She sat and
fancied the fire catching here and there in their poor little rooms,
how the clock would tick till the last minute, even when its face
was scorched and its glass shivered, and then fall with a sudden
crash; how the flames would catch at the bed on which the dead man
had lain, the mean paper curtains, the chair she had sat in, Mrs.
Rowan's little rocking-chair, at the table where they had sat through
so many dreary meals. The checker-board would go, and the cards with
which Mr. Rowan had played the night before, and the knitting-work
with the puckered heel, and her apron that the drunkard had wiped his
ghastly face with. The shelves in the little closet would heat, and
blacken, and redden, and flame, and down would come their miserable
store of dishes, rattling into the yawning cellar. Fire would gnaw at
the ceiling, bite its way into the attic, burn up her books, creep
to the bed where she had lain and seen rainbow colors in the dark,
spread a sheet of flame over the whole, rise, and burst through the
roof. She saw it all. She even fancied that each long-used article of
their scanty plenishing, worn away by human touch, constantly in the
sight of human eyes, would perish with some human feeling, and send
out a sharp cry after them. The crackling of flames was to her the
cries of burning wood. But she was glad of it, for they were going to
wipe out and begin anew. There seemed to her something very grand and
exceedingly proper in it all.

When their boat glided from the river into the bay, others besides
themselves became aware of the conflagration, and the village bells
rang out a tardy alarm. Dick laughed bitterly at the sound, but said
nothing.

"They were sorry for you, Dick," the captain said. "I heard a good
many speak of it. They would have been glad to do your family any
kindness. I don't blame you for coming off; but you mustn't think
there was no kind feeling for you among the folks there."

"Kindness may come too late, captain," the young man answered. "I
would have thanked them for it years ago, when I had nowhere to turn
to, and hadn't a friend in the world; now I don't thank them, and I
don't want their kindness. Even if I would take it at last, neither
they nor you have any right to expect that I will run to take the
hand that has struck me so many blows the first time it is held out.
I don't trust 'em. I want proofs of good-will when I've had proofs of
ill-will."

"Dick is right, captain," his mother interposed in a weary tone. "You
can't judge of such things if you haven't felt them. It's easier to
hurt a sore heart than a sound one."

Within an hour they reached one of those desolate little sandy
islands with which the bay was studded; and now the faint spring dawn
was breaking, and the heavy masses of cloud lifting and contracting,
pale reaches of sky visible between. By the cold glimmer they scooped
out a grave, and placed the coffin in it. The water washed the shore,
and a chilly, sighing wind came up from the east.

As the first shovelful of earth fell on the coffin, Mrs. Rowan
caught back the captain's arm. "Don't cover him out of sight without
some word spoken over him!" she implored. "He was once young, and
ambitious, and kind, like you. He would have been a man if he hadn't
had bad luck, and then got into bad company. He was more wretched
than we were. O sir! don't cover him out of sight as if he were a
dog."

The sailor looked both pained and embarrassed. "I'm not much used
to praying, ma'am," he said. "I'm a Methodist, but I'm not a
church-member. If there was a Bible here, I would read a chapter;
but--there isn't."

Dick walked off a little way, turned his back, and stood looking at
the water. Mrs. Rowan, kneeling on the sand-heap beside the grave,
wept loudly. "His father was a Catholic," she cried. "I don't think
much of Catholics; but, if poor Dick had stood by his religion, he
could have had a priest to say some word over him. I wouldn't have
minded having a priest here. He'd be better than nobody."

Captain Cary was a strict Methodist, and he felt that it would never
answer to have the absence of a Catholic priest regretted. Something
must be done. "I could sing a hymn, ma'am," he said hesitatingly;
and, as no one objected, he straightened himself, dropped his spade,
and sang, to the tune of the "Dead March in Saul,"

      "Unveil thy bosom, faithful tomb,
        Take this new treasure to thy trust,
      And give these sacred relics room
        To slumber in the silent dust,"

singing the hymn through.

In a confined place the sailor's voice would have been too powerful,
and, perhaps, would have sounded rough; but in open air, with no wall
nearer than the distant hills, no ceiling but the sky, and with the
complex low harmony of the ocean bearing it up and running through
all its pauses, it was magnificent. He sang slowly and solemnly, his
arms folded, his face devoutly raised, and the clouds seemed to part
before his voice.

When the hymn was ended, he remained a moment without motion or
change of face, then stooped for his shovel, and began to fill in the
grave.

While listening to him, Edith Yorke had stood in a solemn trance,
looking far off seaward; but at sound of the dropping gravel, her
quiet broke up, like ice in spring. She threw her arm, and her loose
hair with it, up over her head, and sobbed behind that veil. But her
tears were not for Mr. Rowan. Her soul had taken a wider range, and,
without herself being aware of it, she was mourning for all the dead
that ever had died or ever should die.

The first sunbeam that glanced across the water showed a feather of
smoke from a steamer that came up through the Narrows into the bay,
and the row-boat, a lessening speck, making for the wharf. Twice a
week, passengers and freight were taken and left at this wharf, three
miles below the town.

TO BE CONTINUED.




SAUNTERING.


      Saunterer (from _Sainte Terre_), a pilgrim to holy lands or
      places.--THOREAU.

"They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks are indeed mere
idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers in the
good sense, such as I mean," says Thoreau. I found the Holy Land in
Paris, the city of fashion and gaiety, and where _le suprême bonheur_
is said to be amusement. Every church is a station of the divine
Passion, and to every votary therein could I say:

                        "I behold in thee
      An image of him who died on the tree.
      Thou also hast had thy crown of thorns."

Before these churches, consecrated to some sweet mystery of the
Gospel or bearing the hallowed names of those who had put on the
sacred stole of Christ's sufferings, I always stopped. I was like
Duke Richard, in the _Roman du Rau_:

      "Whene'er an open church he found,
      He entered in with fervent means
      To offer up his orisons;
      And if the doors were closed each one,
      He knelt upon the threshold stone."

And one might well kneel upon the threshold stone of these ancient
churches, feeding mind and soul with sacred legends of the past
embodying holy truths which are depicted on the outer walls, as at
the north door of Notre Dame de Paris, the arch of which contains
in many compartments representations of a diabolic pact and of a
deliverance effected by our potent Lady, which is related in a
metrical romance composed by Ruteboef, in the time of St. Louis.
Saladin, a magician, wears a cap of pyramidal form. And what a mine
of legendary and biblical lore all over these venerable walls!
Sermons in stones come down to us from the stonen saints in their
niches and the bas-reliefs which speak louder than human tongues. The
first stone of this edifice was laid by Charlemagne, and the last
by Philip Augustus. How much this fact alone tells! And there is
the Porte Rouge, an exquisite specimen of the Gothic style of the
fifteenth century, the expiatory monument of Jean-sans-Peur after the
assassination of the Duke of Orleans. In the arch are the Duke and
Duchess of Burgundy, in the attitude of supplication, one on each
side of our Saviour and the Blessed Virgin. It is an eternal _Libera
me de sanguinibus, Deus_.

And then the Portail du Milieu, with the last judgment in the ogive,
the angels sounding the last trump, the dead issuing forth from their
graves, the separation of the righteous from the wicked, the great
Judge with the emblems of the crucifixion, the Virgin and the loved
apostle John, and, finally, a glimpse of the joys of heaven and the
horrors of hell. Yes, one could linger here for days before this
_Biblia pauperum_, were there no more powerful attractions within.
And this is not the only church the very exterior of which is full of
instruction.

In the porch of St. Germain de l'Auxerrois is the statue of a maiden
holding in one hand a breviary and in the other a lighted taper. By
her is a demon with a pair of bellows, vainly trying to blow out the
light--symbol of faith and prayer. This is the statue of one who
deserves to be ranked in history with Joan of Arc on account of her
heroism, for twice she saved Paris by her courage and her prayers.
Would that she might once more have intervened to save the capital
of fair France from the invader! St. Genevieve is placed thus at the
entrance of the church of St. Germain to remind us of his connection
with her history.

When St. Germain, Bishop of Auxerre, and St. Lupus, the learned
Bishop of Troyes and the intimate friend of Sidonius Apollinaris,
were on their way to Britain to combat the heresy of Pelagianism,
they passed through the village now called Nanterre, about two
leagues from Paris. All the inhabitants of the place poured forth
to meet them and obtain their benediction. St. Germain noticed in
the crowd a little girl with a face as radiant as an angel's. His
prophetic instinct told him she was destined to be a chosen vessel
of God's grace, and, when she expressed a wish to be the spouse of
Christ, he led her with him to the church, holding his apostolic
hands upon her head during the chanting of the vesper service. He
afterward suspended a bronze medal, on which was a cross, from
her neck, in remembrance of her consecration to God, bidding her
henceforth give up all ornaments of silver and gold. "Let them who
live for this world have these," said he. "Do thou, who art become
the spouse of Christ, desire only spiritual adorning." Dr. Newman
says it was a custom, even among the early Christians, to wear
on the neck some token of the mysteries of their religion. Long
after, in memory of this event, the Canons of St. Genevieve, at
Paris, distributed upon her festival a _pain bénit_ on which was an
impression of this coin.

Eighteen years after, St. Germain again passed through Nanterre, once
more on his way to Britain. He had not forgotten Genevieve. At the
age of fifteen, she had received the virgin's veil from the hands of
the Bishop of Paris. Her parents dying, she went to Paris to reside
with her godmother. Here she suffered that persecution so often the
lot of those who live godly lives. Those who outstrip their fellows
even on the path of piety are objects of envy, and they who leave
the beaten track of everyday religion are derided. St. Genevieve
was visited at Paris by the holy Bishop of Auxerre, who saluted her
with respect as a temple in which the divine Presence was manifest.
Her life was one of prayer and penance. She used to water her couch
with her tears, and when the adversary of our souls extinguished the
taper that lighted her vigils she rekindled it with her prayers.
When Attila, king of the Huns, threatened Paris, she besought the
inhabitants not to leave their homes, declaring that Heaven would
intervene to save them. The barbarians, in effect, were dispersed by
a storm, and betook themselves toward Orleans. In the church of St.
Germain there is a chapel dedicated to St. Genevieve, with a painting
representing her haranguing the inhabitants of Paris.

When Childeric besieged Paris, and sickness and famine were carrying
off the inhabitants, St. Genevieve laid aside her religious dress,
took command of the boats that went up the Seine for succor, and
brought back a supply of provisions. And when the city had to
surrender, the conquerer treated her with marked respect, and Clovis
loved to grant her petitions. The remains of paganism were rooted
out of Paris through her influence over him and Clotilda, and the
first church built on the spot that now bears her name, but then
dedicated under the invocation of Sts. Peter and Paul. In that
church was the shepherdess of Nanterre buried beside Clovis and
Clotilda. St. Eloi wrought a magnificent shrine for her remains,
but it was destroyed at the Revolution, and the contents publicly
burned. A portion of her relics is now enshrined at the Pantheon.
I found lights burning there, and flowers and wreaths, and votive
offerings, and the sweet-smelling incense of prayer rising from a
group of people praying around. But the magnificence of the Pantheon
is miserably depressing, as Faber says. How much more I delighted in
the interesting church of St. Etienne du Mont, where is the curious
old tomb of St. Genevieve! There too were lights and ex-votos, and an
old woman sat near the tomb to dispense tapers to those who wished to
leave a little gleam of love and prayer behind them. Once what lights
and jewels blazed around such shrines, and what crowds of devout
pilgrims! Now, a few dim tapers, a few prayerful hearts, light up the
place.

      "Now it is much if here and there
      One dreamer, by thy genial glare,
      Trace the dim Past, and slowly climb
      The steep of Faith's triumphant prime."

Now the world seems to begrudge the temple of the Most High the
silver and the gold that belong to him. And jewels are not to be
thought of. Such wealth must be kept in circulation, that is, on
Prince Esterhazy's coat, I suppose, and by ladies of fashion. The
world nowadays is like Julian the Apostate, who was displeased at
the magnificence of the chalices used in the Christian churches. For
me, I love these offerings from time to eternity, as Madame de Staël
says. Let all that is most precious be poured out at the feet of the
Saviour, and let no one murmur if such offerings are crystallized. I
took pleasure in looking at some splendid vessels of the sanctuary at
Notre Dame, and thought:

      "Never was gold or silver graced thus
                  Before.
      To bring this body and this blood to us
                  Is more
          Than to crown kings,
          Or be made rings
      For star-like diamonds to glitter in.

      When the great King offers to come to me
                  As food,
      Shall I suppose his carriages can be
                  Too good?
          No! stars to gold
          Turned never could
      Be rich enough to be employed so.

      If I might wish, then, I would have this bread,
                  This wine,
      Vesselled in what the sun might blush to shed
                  His shine
          When he should see--
          But till that be,
      I'll rest contented with it as it is."

In my saunterings I frequently lingered before the tower of St.
Jacques de la Boucherie, the highest in Paris, and the most perfect
specimen of Gothic architecture. The remainder of the church was
demolished at the Revolution. The tower was saved by the artifice
of an architect, who besought the crowd to imitate the enlightened
English revolutionists, who destroyed their churches, but preserved
the towers to be converted into shot-houses! In this church crowds
used to assemble to hear Bourdaloue thunder, as Madame de Sévigné
expresses it. I fancy I can hear that uncompromising preacher ringing
out like a trump in the presence of the Great Monarch, "Thou art
the man!" This exclamation should have appealed to the heart of the
people, and saved the church he loved from profanation.

This church was built by the alms of pious people. Nicholas Flamel
built the portal in 1388, which he covered with devout images and
devices, which were regarded, even by the antiquaries of the last
century, as symbols of alchemy. This Flamel was a benefactor to many
churches and hospitals of Paris, which he took pleasure in adorning
with carvings in which he made all things tributary, as it were, to
the worship of God. At first a simple scrivener, he became painter,
architect, chemist, philosopher, and poet. He certainly had the
fancy of a poet, and wrote in durable materials. He left by his will
nineteen chalices of silver gilt to as many churches.

These churches and religious houses are all connected with the
history of the city. Paris owed its extension on the north side of
the Seine to the school in the Abbey of St. Germain de l'Auxerrois,
which was famous at an early age. There were four great abbeys around
Paris in the time of the third dynasty--St. Lawrence, St. Genevieve,
St. Germain de l'Auxerrois, and St. Germain des Près. These were
surrounded by their dependencies, forming villages which gradually
extended till they united to enclose the city, then chiefly confined
to the island. The poor loved to live near these abbeys. St. Germain
des Près, besides providing for the poor in general, used privately
to support several destitute families who were ashamed of their
poverty. The old abbots of this monastery were both lords spiritual
and temporal in the suburbs on that side of the city. This abbey
was a monument of repentance. Digby says when it was rebuilt in the
year 1000 the great tower and the portals were left as before. The
statues of eight kings stood at the entrance, four on the right hand
and four on the left. One of them held a scroll on which was written
the tragical name of Clodomir. And another, with no beatific circle
around his head, held an open tablet on which were the first and last
letters of the name Clotaire. These were the statues of the murderer
and his victim.

The square tower of the monastery, built in the time of Charlemagne,
contributed greatly to the defence of the house against the Normans.
A stout old monk, Abbon, conducted the defence, and proved himself
on this occasion a valiant defender of the walls of Zion. Perhaps it
was his skilful hand that wrote an Homeric poem on the siege of Paris
by the Normans in the year 885. If not by him, it was by a monk of a
similar name.

The Pré aux Clercs, now the Faubourg St. Germain, took its name from
being a place of recreation for the students of this abbey. One of
the scholars, Sylvester de Sacy, so learned in the Semitic languages,
ascribed the bent of his mind to the aid and encouragement given him
by one of the monks who took his constitutional in the abbey gardens
at the same time as the boy, then only twelve years old.

The library belonging to this abbey was celebrated in the middle
ages, and there were monks of literary eminence in the house.
Dacherius was the librarian when he composed his _Spicilegium_.
Usuard compiled a martyrology. They had a printing press set up
immediately after the invention of printing, which gives one a
favorable idea of their mental activity. Most of these old monastic
libraries were accessible to all; that of the Abbey of St. Victor
was open to the public three days in the week; and there were public
libraries attached to some of the parish churches. In the time of
Charles V., rightly named the Wise, he ordered the Royal Library
of Paris to be illuminated with thirty portable lamps, and that a
silver one should be suspended in the centre for the benefit of those
students who prolonged their researches into the night. The numerous
collections of books in Paris made that city very attractive to
certain minds even in the middle ages. Richard de Bury, Bishop of
Durham, in England, who established the first public library in that
country, used to resort to Paris for fresh supplies. "O blessed God
of gods in Sion!" he exclaims, "what a flood of pleasure rejoices our
heart whenever we are at liberty to visit Paris, that paradise of the
world, where the days always seem too short and too few through the
immensity of our love! There are libraries more redolent of delight
than all the shops of aromatics; there are the flowering meadows of
all volumes that can be found anywhere. There, indeed, untying our
purse-strings, and opening our treasures, we disperse money with
a joyful heart (evidently the truth, for he paid the Abbot of St.
Albans fifty pounds weight of silver for thirty or forty volumes),
and ransom with dirt books that are beyond all price. But lo! how
good and pleasant a thing it is to gather together in one place the
arms of clerical warfare, that there may be a supply of them for us
to use in the wars against heretics, should they ever rise up against
us!"

What would this book-loving prelate have done had he foreseen that
the church would one day be accused of being a foe to progress
and to the diffusion of knowledge! This bishop, who lived in the
thirteenth century, was the Chancellor and High Treasurer of England,
and celebrated for his love and encouragement of literature. He had
libraries in all his palaces, and the apartment he commonly occupied
was so crammed with books that he was almost inaccessible. He was
said to breathe books, so fond was he of being among them. None but a
genuine lover of books would give such amusing directions for their
preservation. "Not only do we serve God," says he, "by preparing new
books, but also by preserving and treating with great care those we
have already. Truly, after the vestments and vessels dedicated to our
Lord's body, sacred books deserve to be treated with most reverence
by clerks. In opening and shutting books, they should avoid all
abruptness, not too hastily loosing the clasps, nor failing to shut
them when they have finished reading, for it is far more important to
preserve a book than a shoe." He then goes on to speak of soiling
books; of marking passages with the finger-nails, "like those of
a giant;" of swelling the junctures of the binding with straws or
flowers; and of eating over them, leaving the fragments in the book,
as if the reader had no bag for alms. Waxing warm over the idea, he
wishes such persons might have to sit over leather with a shoemaker!
And then there are impudent youths, who presume to fill up the broad
margins with their unchastened pens, noting down whatever frivolous
thing occurs to their imagination! And "there are some thieves, too,
who cut out leaves or letters, which kind of sacrilege ought to be
prohibited under the penalty of anathema." The bishop had evidently
had some sad experience with his cherished tomes. His testimony
respecting the appreciation of books by the monks of his time is
valuable. Remember the age, reader--that period of deepest darkness
just before the dawn! "The monks who are so venerable," says he in
his _Philobiblion_, "are accustomed to be solicitous in regard to
books, and to be delighted in their company, as with all riches, and
thence it is that we find in most monasteries such splendid treasures
of erudition, giving a delectable light to the path of laics. Oh!
that devout labor of their hands in writing books; how preferable
to all georgic care! All things else fail with time. Saturn ceases
not to devour his offspring, for oblivion covereth the glory of the
world. But God hath provided a remedy for us in books, without which
all that was ever great would have been without memory. Without shame
we may lay bare to books the poverty of human ignorance. They are
the masters who instruct us without rods, without anger, and without
_money_. (The bishop had evidently forgotten those fifty pounds of
silver, and many more besides!) O books! alone liberal and making
liberal, who give to all, and seek to emancipate all who serve you.
You are the tree of life and the river of Paradise, with which the
human intelligence is irrigated and made fruitful."

But I did not always linger at the doors of churches, studying the
walls and pondering on their history. The true Catholic knows that
these magnificent churches are only vast shrines enclosing the great
Object of his adoration and love. M. Olier, when travelling, never
saw the spire of a church in the distance without calling upon all
with him to repeat the Tantum Ergo. He used to say: "When I see
a place where my Master reposes, I have a feeling of unutterable
joy." This feeling comes over every one at the first glimpse of that
undying lamp before the tabernacle, "that small flame which rises and
falls like a dying pulse, flickering up and down, emblematic of our
lives, which even now thus wastes and wanes."

The very first act on stepping into a church completely changes the
current of one's thoughts. The holy water, the sign of the cross,
dispel the remembrance of material things and recall devout thoughts
of the Passion.

      "Whene'er across this sinful flesh of mine
          I draw the holy sign,
      All good thoughts stir within me, and collect
          Their slumbering strength divine."

The _bénitiers_ at St. Sulpice are two immense shells, given to
Francis the First by the Republic of Venice; but for all that, the
_eau bénite_ seemed just as holy, and I made the sign of the cross
just as devoutly.

For devotion, I prefer the largest churches, because the seclusion
is more perfect, as at Notre Dame. Behind some pillar or in the
depths of some dim chapel, one can find perfect solitude where he
can be alone with God. Alone with God! that in itself is prayer. The
world-weary soul finds it good simply to sit or kneel with clasped
hands in the divine Presence.

      "My spirit I love to compose,
      In humble trust my eyelids close
        With reverential resignation,
      No wish conceived, no thought expressed,
        Only a sense of supplication."

Joubert says the best prayers are those that have nothing distinct,
and which thus partake of simple adoration; and Hawthorne asks:
"Could I bring my heart in unison with those praying in yonder church
with a fervor of supplication but no distinct request, would not
that be the safest kind of prayer?" Surely every devout soul feels
that "prayer is not necessarily petition," and what is technically
known as the prayer of contemplation is the very inspiration of such
churches. In this temple of silence, man seems to be brought back to
his primeval relations with his Creator.

What mute eloquence in these walls! What an appeal to the imagination
in the calmness! Earthly voices die away on the threshold, and
peace, dovelike, broods over the very entrance. A daily visit to
such a temple gives life a certain elevation. The very poor who come
here to pray must acquire a certain dignity of character. How many
generations have worshipped beneath these arches! The saints have
passed over the very pavement I tread. I recall St. Louis, who, out
of respect to our Lord, had laid off his shoes and divested himself
of his royal robes, bearing solemnly into this church the holy Crown
of Thorns. And great sinners, too, are in this long procession of the
past. There is Count Raymond of Toulouse, barefoot, and clad only in
the white tunic of a penitent, coming to receive absolution from the
papal legate before the grand altar.

When one recalls the popes, cardinals, and other dignitaries of the
church, the kings and queens and knights of the olden time who have
been here, one almost shrinks from entering such a throng of the
mighty ones of the earth. It seems as if he were elbowing the Great
Monarch or the gallant Henry of Navarre.

On the galleries around the nave were formerly suspended the
flags and standards taken in war, and it was in allusion to this
custom that the Prince of Conti, after the victories of Fleurus,
Steinkerque, and La Marsaille, made an opening in the crowd around
the door of the church for the Marechal de Luxembourg, whom he held
by the hand, by crying: "Place, place, messieurs, au tapissier de
Notre Dame!"--"Room, room, gentlemen, for the upholsterer of Notre
Dame!"

It is charming to see the birds flying about in the arches of this
church, as if nature had taken its venerable walls to her bosom. It
made me think of the old hermits of the middle ages, living with
the sea-birds in their ocean caves. Like St. Francis, the canons of
Notre Dame say the divine office with their "little sisters, the
birds;" and the bird is the symbol of the soul rising heavenward on
the wings of prayer. We, like the birds, build our nests here for a
few days. Blessed are we if they are built within the influences of
the sanctuary which temper the storms and severities of life. It is
only in the clefts of the rocks that wall in the mystic garden of the
church that there is safety for the dovelike soul.

In the transept is the altar of Our Lady, starry with lamps.
Above her statue is one of her titles, appealing to every
heart--Consolatrix afflictorum! To this church M. Olier came, in
all his troubles, to the altar of Mary. There is also a fine statue
of her over the grand altar, formerly at the Carmes. No church is
complete without an altar of the Blessed Virgin. Wherever there is a
cross, Mary must be at its foot, as at Calvary, directing our eyes,
our thoughts, our hearts, to him who hangs thereon.

      "O that silent, ceaseless mourning!
      O those dim eyes! never turning
        From that wondrous, suffering Son!

      "Virgin holiest, virgin purest,
      Of that anguish thou endurest
        Make me bear with thee my part."

In traversing Paris, one passes many private residences of interest
which have a certain consecration--the consecration of wit and
genius. I cannot say I ever went so far as Horace Walpole, who never
passed the Hôtel de Carnavalet, the residence of Madame de Sévigné,
without saying his Ave before it, much as I admire her _esprit_,
and though she was the granddaughter of St. Jane de Chantal, the
foundress of the Nuns of the Visitation. Walpole thought the house
had a foreign-looking air, and said it looked like an ex-voto raised
in her honor by some of her foreign votaries. It was once an elegant
residence, with its sculptured gateway and Ionic pilasters, and
its court adorned with statues. In the day of the _spirituelle_
letter-writer, it was the resort of the learned and the refined;
now, O tempora! it is a boarding-school, and the _salon_ of Madame
de Sévigné (the temple of "Notre Dame de Livry," to quote Walpole
again, if it be not profanity) is converted into a dormitory. Truly,
as Bishop de Bury says, "all things pass away with time," but the wit
and genius she embodied in her charming letters are eternal.

In one of the upper stories of a house in the Rue St. Honoré lived
Joubert, the Coleridge of France. His keeping-room was flooded with
the light he loved, and from it, as he said, he saw a great deal of
sky and very little earth. There he passed his days among the books
he had collected. He rigorously excluded from his library all the
books he disapproved of; unwilling, as he said, to admit an unworthy
friend to his constant companionship. To this room he attracted
a brilliant circle of conspicuous authors and statesmen by his
conversational talents, and there he wrote his immortal _Pensées_. He
said he left Paris unwillingly, because then he had to part from his
friends; and he left the country unwillingly, because he had to part
from himself. Writing from that sunny room, he says: "In many things,
I am like the butterfly; like him, I love the light; like him, I
there consume my life; like him, I need, in order to spread my wings,
that there be fair weather around me in society, and that my mind
feel itself surrounded and as if penetrated by the mild temperature
of indulgence." But he wrote graver and more profound things there.
One of his friends said of him that he seemed to be a soul that by
accident had met with a body, and was trying to make the best of it.
And he, ever indulgent to the faults of others, said of his friends,
"When they are blind of one eye, I look at them in profile."

The Abbaye aux Bois is interesting from its association with Madame
Récamier and her circle. Her rooms were in the third story and
paved with tiles, and they overlooked the pleasant garden of the
monastery, and, when lit up with wit and genius, they needed no other
attraction. Among her visitors there were Sir Humphry Davy, Maria
Edgeworth, Humboldt, Lamartine, Delphine Gay, Chateaubriand, etc.
They must have been like the gods, speaking from peak to peak all
around Olympus. Lamartine read his _Méditations_ there before they
were given to the public. Chateaubriand thus speaks of the room:
"The windows overlooked the garden of the abbey, under the verdant
shade of which the nuns paced up and down, and the pupils played. The
top of an acacia was on a level with the eye, sharp spires pierced
the sky, and in the distance rose the hills of Sèvres. The rays of
the setting sun threw a golden light over the landscape and came in
through the open windows. Some birds were settling themselves for
the night on the top of the window-blinds. Here I found silence and
solitude, far above the tumult and turmoil of a great city."

To the church of the abbey, a plain, unpretending structure, Eugénie
de Guérin went every day to Mass during her first visit to Paris.
There, too, were the bans of her brother Maurice published, and there
he was married.

The house of Madame Swetchine, in the Rue St. Dominique, must be
regarded with veneration. There was no austerity about the _salon_
of this remarkable woman. It was adorned with pictures, bronzes, and
flowers, and in the evening it was illuminated with a profusion of
lamps and candles, giving it a festive air. And then the great lights
of the church, always diffusing their radiance and aroma in that
favored room, Lacordaire, De Ravignan, Dupanloup, De la Bouillerie,
etc. To have found one's self among them must have seemed like being
among the prophets on Mount Carmel. They all loved to officiate and
preach in her beautiful private chapel, which was adorned with a
multitude of precious stones from the Russian mines, gleaming around
the ineffable presence of the Divinity. Mary, too, was there. On the
base of her silver statue was her monogram in diamonds, which Madame
Swetchine had worn as maid of honor to the Empress Mary of Russia.

These circles, and many others I could recall, are now broken up for
ever. We have all heard and read so much of those who composed them
that they seem like personal friends. We linger around the places to
which they imparted a certain sacredness, and follow them in thought
to the world of mystery and eternal reunion, thanking God that the
great gulf from the finite to the infinite has been bridged over by
the Incarnation.

One morning, I went to the church of the Carmelites. A tablet on the
wall points out the spot where the heart of Monseigneur Affre was
deposited--the heart of him who gave his life for his flock. Around
it were suspended some wreaths. On one, of immortelles, was painted,
in black letters, _A mon Père_, the offering of one of his spiritual
children. Wishing to have some objects of devotion blessed, I went
into the sacristy (I remembered Eugénie de Guérin speaks of going
into that sacristy), where I found one of the monks prostrate in
prayer, making his thanksgiving after Mass. Enveloped in his habit,
his bald head covered by a cowl, he looked like a ghost from the dark
ages. Not venturing to approach the ghostly father, I made known my
errand to a good-natured-looking lay brother, who conveyed it to that
part of the cowl where the right ear of the monk might reasonably be
supposed to be, which brought back the holy man to earth, causing me
some compunction of conscience. The brother spread out my articles,
brought the ritual and the stole, and the father, throwing back
his cowl, murmured over them the prayers of holy church, and then
disappeared into the monastery. Presently I heard the voices of the
monks saying the office, which they do, like nuns, in choir and
behind a curtained grate, so they are not seen from the church.

This monastery may be compared to the Roman amphitheatre where the
early Christians were thrown to the wild beasts. Here indeed was
fought the good fight, and the victors rose to heaven with palms in
their hands. I know of nothing more sublime and thrilling in the
annals of the church than the massacre of about two hundred priests
that took place here on the second of September, 1792. I cannot
refrain from giving a condensed account of it by one of the writers
of the day: "For some weeks there had been assembled and heaped
together two hundred priests, who had refused to take the schismatic
oath, or had nobly recanted it. During the first day of their
incarceration, these loyal priests had been inhumanly imprisoned
in the church. The guards in their midst watched to prevent their
having the consolation of even speaking to each other. Their only
nourishment was bread and water. The stone floor was their bed. It
was only later that a few were permitted to have straw beds. These
priests, whom martyrdom was to render immortal, had at their head
three prelates whose virtues recall the primitive days of the church.
Their chief was the Archbishop of Arles, Monseigneur du Lau. He had
been deputed to the states-general; his piety equalled his knowledge;
and his humility even surpassed his merit. The day after the
memorable 10th of August he had been sent to the Carmelite monastery
(then converted into a prison) with sixty-two other priests.
Notwithstanding his age (he was over eighty) and his infirmities,
he refused all indulgences that were not also extended to his
brother-captives. For several days a wooden arm-chair was his bed as
well as his pontifical throne. Thence his persuasive words instilled
into those around him the sentiments of ineffable charity that filled
his own heart, and when his exhausted voice could no longer make
itself heard, his very appearance expressed a sublime resignation.

"Two other bishops, brothers, bearing the name of De la
Rochefoucauld, one the Bishop of Beauvais, and the other of Saintes,
also encouraged their companions in misfortune by their words and
by their example. The Bishop of Saintes had not been arrested, but,
wishing to join his brother, he made himself a prisoner. There were
members of every rank in the ecclesiastical hierarchy: M. Hébert, the
confessor of the king who wrote to him at the beginning of August,
'I expect nothing more from man, bring me therefore the consolations
of heaven;' the general of the Benedictines, the Abbé de Lubusac,
several of the curés of Paris, Mr. Gros, called the modern Vincent
of Paul, and priests brought from various places, holy victims whom
the God of Calvary had chosen to associate with his sufferings, and
judged worthy of the most glorious of all deaths--that of martyrdom.

"For more than two days, the wretches who hovered around their
enclosure had filled the air with cries of blood, and predicting that
the sacrifice was about to take place. One said to the Archbishop of
Arles: 'My lord, on the morrow your grace is to be killed.' These
derisive insults recalled to the holy captives the judgment-hall
of their divine Master, and like him they bore them in silence,
forgiving and praying for their enemies.

"On the second of September they could no longer doubt that their
last hour had arrived. The hurried movements of the troops, the cries
in the neighboring streets, and the alarm-guns they heard made them
somewhat aware of the sinister events that were passing without.
At the dawn of day they had gathered together in the church. They
made their confessions to each other, they blessed one another, and
partook of the Holy Eucharist. They were singing the Benediction
together at about five in the evening when the ominous cries came
nearer. Then two holy hymns succeeded the prayers for the dying.
All at once the jailers entered, and began calling the roll, which
already had been done three times that day. The prisoners were then
ordered into the garden, which they found occupied by guards armed
with pikes and wearing the _bonnet rouge_. The murderers filled
the courts, the halls, and the church, making the venerable arches
re-echo to the noise of their weapons and their blasphemies. The
priests, one hundred and eighty-five in number, were divided into
two groups. About thirty, among whom were the bishops, rushed toward
a little oratory at the extremity of the garden, where they threw
themselves upon their knees, recommending themselves to God. They
embraced each other for the last time, and began saying the vespers
for the dead, when suddenly the gates were flung open, and the
assassins rushed in from various directions.

"The sight of these holy priests upon their knees arrested their
fury for an instant. The first who fell under their blows was Father
Gerault, who was reciting his breviary regardless of their cries.
That breviary, pierced with a ball and stained with blood, was
discovered on the spot at the restoration of the Carmelites, and
it is preserved as a precious relic. Then the Archbishop of Arles
was demanded. While they were seeking him through the alleys, he
was exhorting his companions to offer to God the sacrifice of their
lives. Hearing his name called, he knelt down, and asked the most
aged of the priests to give him absolution; then, rising, he advanced
to meet the assassins. With his arms crossed upon his breast and
his eyes raised toward heaven, he uttered in a calm voice the same
words his divine Master addressed to his enemies: "I am he whom
you seek." The first stroke of the sword was upon his forehead,
but the venerable man remained standing; a second made the blood
flow in torrents, but still he did not fall; the fifth laid him on
the ground, when a pike was driven through his heart. Then he was
trampled under the feet of the assassins, who exclaimed, 'Vive la
nation!'

"The general massacre then ensued. While the unfortunate priests,
with the instinct of self-preservation, were flying at random through
the garden, some screening themselves behind the hedges and others
climbing the trees, the murderers fired at them, and, when one of
them fell, they would rush upon his body, prolong his agony, and
exult over his sufferings. About forty perished in this manner. Some
of the younger priests succeeded in scaling the walls and hiding
themselves; but, remembering they were flying from martyrdom and that
their escape might excite greater fury against their companions,
they retraced their steps and received their reward! The Bishop of
Beauvais and his brother were in the garden oratory with thirty
priests. A grating separated them from the murderers, who fired upon
them, killing the greater number. The Bishop of Beauvais was not
touched, but his brother had a leg broken by a ball.

"For an instant this horrid butchery was suspended. One of the
leaders ordered all the priests into the church, whither they were
driven--even the wounded and dying--at the sword's point. There
they gathered around the altar, offering anew to their Saviour the
sacrifice of their lives, whilst their executioners, calling them out
two by two, finished their butchery more promptly and completely. To
each one life was offered on condition of taking the revolutionary
oath. They all refused, and not one escaped. Whilst these assassins
added blasphemous shouts to their murderous strokes, whilst they
demolished the crosses and the tabernacles, the holy phalanx of
priests, which death was every moment lessening, kept praying for
their murderers and their country. The two bishops were among the
last executed. When it came to the turn of the Bishop of Beauvais, he
left the altar upon which he had been leaning, and calmly advanced to
meet his death. His brother, whose wound prevented his walking, asked
for assistance, and was carried out to his execution. It was eight
in the evening when the last execution took place. Over four hundred
priests were massacred in different parts of Paris at this period,
besides many isolated murders."

The constancy of these martyrs has made many do more than exclaim
with Horace Walpole: "Almost thou persuadest me to be a Catholic!" He
says, in a letter dated October 14, 1792: "For the French priests, I
own I honor them. They preferred beggary to perjury, and have died or
fled to preserve the integrity of their consciences. It certainly
was not the French clergy but the philosophers that have trained up
their countrymen to be the most bloody men upon earth."

In 1854, this monastery, where flowed the blood of martyrs and which
had echoed with their dying groans, resounded with the strains of _O
Salutaris Hostia!_ on the festival of Corpus Christi, and priests
bore the divine Host through the alleys of the garden where, sixty
years before, had rushed those who were swift to shed blood. An altar
had been erected under the yew-tree where the Archbishop of Arles
fell. Children scattered flowers over the place once covered with
blood. Well might the pale-lipped clergy tearfully chant in such a
spot:

      "THE WHITE-ROBED ARMY OF MARTYRS PRAISE THEE!"

Every age has its martyrs. They are the glory of the church, and
their blood is its seed. The church must ever suffer with its divine
spouse. Sometimes its head--the Vicar of Christ-is crowned with
thorns; sometimes its heart bleeds from a thrust in the very house
of its friends; and, again, its feet and hands are nailed in the
extremities of the earth.

And every follower of Christ crucified has his martyrdom--a martyrdom
of the soul, if not of the body. The sacred stigmata are imprinted
on every soul, that embraces the cross, and no one can look upon him
who hangs thereon, with the eyes of faith, without catching something
of his resemblance. Suffering is now, as when he was on earth, the
glorious penalty of those who approach the nearest to his Divine
Person.

      "Three saints of old their lips upon the Incarnate Saviour laid,
      And each with death or agony for the high rapture paid.
      His mother's holy kisses of the coming sword gave sign,
      And Simeon's hymn full closely did with his last breath entwine;
      And Magdalen's first tearful touch prepared her but to greet
      With homage of a broken heart his pierced and lifeless feet.
      The crown of thorns, the heavy cross, the nails and bleeding brows,
      The pale and dying lips, are the portion of the spouse."




SOR JUANA INES DE LA CRUZ.


So little is known of Spanish American literature that any fresh
report from its pages seems to have the nature of a revelation.
Our acquaintance with Heredia, Placido, Milanes, Mendive, Carpio,
Pesado, Galvan, Calderon, is slight or naught; yet these poets are
most interesting on account of the countries, peoples, and causes
for which they speak eloquently, even if we deny that they add
greatly to the genuine substance of our literary possession. Less
question, however, can be entertained of the importance of some older
names whose fame made for itself a refuge in the Spanish churches
and cloisters of the New World long before revolutionists took to
shooting the Muses on the wing. In the seventeenth century lived
and wrought Cabrera, Siguenza, and Sor or Sister Juana Ines. They
belonged to a country which claimed for awhile as its scholars,
though not as its natives, Doctor Valbuena, author of the very
well-known epical fantasy called _The Bernardo_, and Mateo Alaman,
who wrote the famous story of _Guzman de Alfarache_. Juan Ruiz
de Alarcon, one of the most remarkable dramatic poets of a great
dramatic age, was a native of that same country, Mexico. Siguenza, as
mathematician, historian, antiquary, and poet, has been well esteemed
by Humboldt and the scholars of his own race. It is much to say that
the land which produced an artist as great as Cabrera also gave birth
to a scholar and poet as renowned in her day and as appreciable in
ours as Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz. Among all these celebrities, who
would have been eminent in any time among any people, this Mexican
nun of the seventeenth century holds a place of her own. Looking back
upon the past with all our modern light, we cannot but regard her as
one of the most admirable characters of the New World.

Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz was born at San Miguel de Nepantla, twelve
leagues from the city of Mexico, in the year 1651, and died at the
age of forty-four. When but three years old, she was able to read,
write, and "cipher," and at eight she wrote a prologue for the feast
of the Holy Sacrament. Once she cut her hair, and would not allow it
to grow till she had acquired the learning she proposed to herself,
seeing no reason why a head should be covered with hair that was
denuded of knowledge, its best ornament. After twenty lessons, it was
said, she knew Latin, and so great was her desire to learn that she
importuned her parents to send her to the University of Mexico in
boy's clothes. When seventeen years of age, and a cherished inmate
of the Viceroy Mancera's family, she amazed a large company of
the professors and scholars of the capital by tests of her various
erudition and abilities. Notwithstanding her beauty and fortune, her
rank and accomplishments, and the life of a gallant and brilliant
court, she determined at that early age to retire to a cloister, and
in a few years became known as Sor Juana of San Geronimo, a convent
of the city of Mexico. After this appeared her poems, _The Crisis_
and _The Dream_, in the latter of which she writes much of mythology,
physics, medicine, and history, according to the scholastic manner
of her time. With these and her subsequent poetic writings, such as
her sonnets, loas, romances, and autos, she had rare fame, and won
from some of her admirers the enthusiastic titles of "The Phœnix of
Mexico," "Tenth Muse," and "Poetess of America." The writer has an
old volume before him bearing literally this title-page: "Fama, y
Obras Posthumas del Fenix de Mexico, y Dezima Musa, Poetisa de la
America, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Religiosa Professa en el Convento
de San Geronimo, de la Imperial Ciudad de Mexico. Recogidas y dadas a
luz por el Doctor Don Juan Ignacio de Castorena y Ursua, Capellan de
Honor de su Magestad, y Prebendado de la Santa Iglesia Metropolitana
de Mexico. En Barcelona: Por Rafael Figuero. Año de MDCCI. Con todas
las licencias necessarias." Thus it appears we owe to the Prebendary
Castorena the edition of the posthumous works of Sor Juana given to
the light in 1701, six years after her death.

But, whether as the sister or the mother of a convent, Juana Ines de
la Cruz was more than a mistress of vain learning or unprofitable
science. Her daily assiduous exercise was charity, which at last so
controlled her life and thoughts that she gave all her musical and
mathematical instruments, all the rich presents which her talents
had attracted from illustrious people, and all her books, excepting
those she left to her sisters, to be sold for the benefit of the
poor. Though she had evidently prized science as the handmaid of
religion, the time came when her verses upon the vanity of learning
reflected a mind more and more withdrawn from the affairs of this
world to the contemplation of the next. When an epidemic visited the
Convent of San Geronimo, and but two out of every ten invalids were
saved, the good, brave soul of Madre Juana shone transcendently.
Spite of warnings and petitions, and though all the city prayed for
her life, Madre Juana perished at her vigil of charity--the good
angel as well as muse of Mexico.

Of the enthusiasm created by her genius, we have abundant and
curious proofs. Don Alonzo Muxica, "perpetual Recorder of the City
of Salamanca," wrote a sonnet upon her having learned to read at the
age of three, when "what for all is but the break of morn in her was
as the middle of the day." Excelentissimo Sir Felix Fernandez de
Cordova Cordona y Aragon, Duke of Seffa, of Væna and Soma, Count of
Cabra, Palomas, and Olivitas, and Grand Admiral and Captain-General
of Naples, speaks of her in a lofty poetic encomium as for the third
time applauded by two admiring worlds of readers, and praises her
persuasive voice as that of a sweet siren of thought. Don Garcia
Ribadeneyra, with the grandiose wit of his day, says in a decima
that this extraordinary woman surpassed the sun, for her glorious
genius rose where the sun set, that is to say, in the West; and Don
Pedro Alfonso Moreno argues piously that St. John the Baptist's three
crowns of Virgin, Martyr, and Doctor were in measure those of Madre
Juana, who was from early years chaste, poor in spirit, and obedient,
according to the vow of religious women. Don Luis Verdejo declares
that she transferred the lyceums of the Muses to Mexico, and that
the light of her genius is poured upon two worlds. Padre Cabrera,
chaplain of the Most Excellent Duke of Arcos, asserts that the
Eternal Knowledge enlightened Juana in all learning. "Only her fame
can define her," writes one of her own sex; and when the Poetess of
the Cloister wrote with her own blood a protestation of faith, it was
said of this "Swan of erudite plume" that she wrote like the martyr
to whose ink of blood the earth was as paper. Her gift of books to
be sold in order to relieve the poor inspired Señora Catalina de
Fernandez de Cordova, nun in the Convent of the Holy Ghost in Alcara,
to say thus thoughtfully:

      "Without her books did Juana grow more wise,
      As for their loss she studied deep content.
      Know, then, that in this human school of ours,
      He only is wise who knows to love his God."

At thought of her death, Don Luis Muñoz Venegas, of Granada, wonders
that the sun shines, that ships sail, that earth is fair, that all
things do not grieve her loss, whose happy soul in its beatitudes
enjoys the riches of which death has robbed the world--sweetness,
purity, felicity. Fray Juan de Rueda, professor of theology in the
college of San Pablo; Licentiate Villalobos of San Ildefonso, and
Señor Guerra, fellow of the same college; Advocate Pimienta, of the
Royal Audience, and Bachelor Olivas, a presbyter; Syndic Torres,
Catedratico or Professor Aviles, Cavalier Ulloa, have all something
to say in Spanish or Latin on the death of our poetess. Doctor Aviles
imagines the death of Sor Juana to be like that of the rose, which,
having acquired in a brief age all its perfection, needed not to live
longer. Don Diego Martinez suggests beautifully that the profit which
other excellent minds will derive from the posthumous writings of the
poetess will be like the clearness which the stars gain by the death
of the sun. Mingled with these honest tributes of admiration is much
extravagance of comparison; but they prove at least that Sor Juana
was regarded by the learned of her day as a woman of astonishing
powers.

Amid all her studies and labors, we read that Sister Juana was
constant in her religious devotions, and faithful to the least rules
of her order. But her conscientious spirit, moved by a letter of
Bishop Fernandez of Puebla, determined her at length to renounce the
exercise of her talents for the strictest and purest ascetism. Hence,
one of her Mexican critics is led to say that we have only the echoes
of her songs, only the shades of her images, inasmuch as her sex
and state, and the reigning scholasticism, were not convenient for
the true expression of her thoughts. The noble, ascetic literature
of Spain, respecting which it is with reason boasted that the world
contains nothing of the kind more valuable, discredits in good part
this supposition. Moreover, the recognition of Sor Juana's work and
genius was, as we have seen, not inconsiderable. The world is still
in its infancy as regards religious ideality, and, spite of the
highest evidences, often refuses to believe that thoughts fed from
the divine source can fulfil the true poem of life, be it written
or acted. What the thoughts of Sor Juana were like in her ordinary
religious life we understand partly from a number of daily exercises
and meditations which have come down to us. Here are specimens of
these compositions:

    EXERCISE.

    On this day, at seeing the light come forth, bless
    its Author who made it so beautiful a creation, and
    praise him with a submissive heart; not only because
    he created it for our good, but because he made it a
    vassal to his mother and our mediatrix. Go to Mass with
    all possible devotion, and those who can, let them fast
    and give thanks to God. Thou shalt sing the canticle
    _Benedicite omnia opera Domini Domino_ and the verse
    _Benedicite lux_. Understand that not only the just
    ought to praise God, who are themselves as light, but
    the sinners who are as darkness. Consider yourselves
    such, every one of you, and mourn for having added to
    the original transgression, darkness upon darkness,
    sins upon sins. Resolve to correct thyself; and that
    Mary's purest light may reach you, recite a _Salve_,
    and nine times the _Magnificat_, face to the ground,
    and fly from all sin this day, even the shadow thereof.
    Abstain from all impatience, murmurings, repinings, and
    suffer with meekness those evils which are a repugnance
    to our nature. If it be a day of discipline of the
    community, that is enough, but if not, it shall be
    especially made so. Those who do not know how to read
    Latin shall recite nine _Salves_ mouth to the ground,
    and shall fast if they are able, and if not, they shall
    make an act of contrition, so that the Lord may give
    them light for his timely service, even as he gave them
    material light by which to live.

    MEDITATION.

    If we look at the properties of the firmament, what
    more assimilates to the miraculous constancy of Mary,
    whom neither those steeped in original sin could make
    fall, nor the combats of temptation make stumble!
    But still, amid the torrents and tempests of human
    miseries, between the troubles of her life, and the
    painful passion and death of her most holy Son and our
    most beloved Saviour; amid the waves of incredulity in
    the doubts of his disciples; among the hidden rocks
    of the perfidy of Judas, and the uncertainty of so
    many timid souls--ever was her constancy preserved.
    Not only was she firm, but beautiful as the firmament,
    which (according to the mathematicians) hath this other
    excellence, that it is bordered by innumerable stars,
    but has only seven planets which are fixed and never
    move. Thus, holiest Mary was not only most pure in her
    conception, transparent and translucent, but afterwards
    the Lord adorned her with innumerable virtues which
    she acquired, even as the stars which border that most
    beautiful firmament; and she not only had them all,
    but had them fixed, all immovable, all in order and
    admirable concert: but if in the other children of
    Adam we see some virtues, they are errant--to-day we
    have them, to-morrow they are gone--to-day is light,
    to-morrow darkness. We will rejoice in her prerogative,
    and say unto her:

    OFFERING.

    Honored Lady, and crown of our human being, divine
    firmament where the stars of virtue are fixed, give
    their benign influence to us, thy devoted ones, that
    by thy favor we may cure ourselves and acquire them;
    and that light which thou dost partake of the Sun of
    Righteousness, communicate it to our souls, and fix in
    them thy virtues, the love of thy precious Son, and
    thy sweetest and tenderest devotion, and of thy happy
    husband, our patron and advocate, St. Joseph.

These compositions doubtless give us a better idea of the interior
thought of Mexican monasticism than some yellow-covered speculations.
In that life grew the finest genius, the greatest woman, perhaps the
most remarkable character in all respects that Mexico ever produced.
Considering the time and place in which she wrote, the New World
has scarcely produced her superior among women of genius. Up to the
nineteenth century America had, doubtless, no, literary product
comparable to the poems of Sor Juana Ines. What Cabrera, was to the
art, Sor Juana seems to have been to the literature of her country;
and both these workers of genius gave their powers to the service of
religion. It is here worthy of remark that not only were the greatest
painter and poet of Mexico studious servants of the church, but that
its most celebrated scientist was the Jesuit Siguenza y Gongora,
author of a funeral eulogy of Sor Juana Ines, whom he knew and
appreciated, for he, too, was a poet. Without social helps, without
emulation, such as is ordinarily understood, such proofs of her high
intelligence as we possess have come to light. Perplexed as it was
with the mannered erudition of the schools, her poetry nevertheless
reveals noble sensibility and thought in superior forms. Thus she
sings in her verses entitled "Sentiments of Absence:"

      "Hear me with eyes,
      Now that so distant are thine ears;
      Of absence my laments;
      In echoes from my pen the groans;
      And as can reach thee not my voice so rude,
      Hear thou me deaf, since dumbly I complain."

This is like a voice of the Elizabethan age; but what _woman_ even of
that day has left us so rare a record of poetry and piety combined as
the nun of San Geronimo, she who lived in 1670 in far-off, outlandish
Mexico? What chapter of literature would seem too good to entertain
this Tenth Muse, to whom we owe such sonnets as these:

TO A PAINTER OF OUR LADY, OF MOST EXCELLENT PENCIL.

      If pencil, although grand in human wise,
      Could make a picture thus most beautiful,
      Where even clearest vision not refines
      Thy light, O admirable--yet in vain:
      How did the author of thy sovereign soul
      Proportion space to his creation fair!
      What grace he painted, and what loveliness!
      The scope more ample, greater was the hand.
      Was found within the sphere of purest light
      The pencil, schooled within the morning-star,
      When thou wert dawned, Aurora most divine?
      Yea, thus indeed it was; but verily
      The sky has not paid back thy cost to him
      Who spent in thee more light than it has now.

THE LOVERS.

      Feliciano loves me, and I hate him;
      Lizardo hates me, and I do adore him;
      For him who does not want me, do I cry,
      And him who yearns for me, I not desire.
      To him who me disdains, my soul I offer,
      And him who is my victim, I disdain.
      Him I despise who would enrich my honor,
      And him who doth contemn me, I'd enrich.
      If with offence the first I have displeased,
      The other doth displease by me offended--
      And thus I come to suffer every way;
      For both are but as torments to my feelings--
      This one with asking that which I have not,
      And that in not having what I'd ask.

THE ROSE.

      Celia beheld a rose that in the walk
      Flourished in pride of springtime loveliness,
      And whose bright hues of carmine or of red
      Bathed joyfully its delicate countenance--
      And said: Enjoy without the fear of fate
      The fleeting course of thy luxuriant age,
      Since will not death be able on the morrow.
      To take from thee what thou to-day enjoyest;
      And though he come within a little while,
      Still grieve thou not to die so young and fair:
      Hear what experience may counsel thee--
      That fortunate 'tis to die being beautiful,
      And not to see the woe of being old.

THE DECEPTION.

      This that thou seest, a deception painted,
      Which of art's excellence makes display,
      With curious counterfeit of coloring,
      Is an insidious cheating of the sense.
      This, wherewithin has flattery pretended
      To excuse the grim deformity of age,
      And vanquishing the rigor hard of time
      To triumph o'er oblivion and decay;
      Is but the shallow artifice of care,
      Is as a fragile flower within the wind;
      It is a useless guard 'gainst destiny;
      It is a foolish and an erring toil;
      'Tis labor imbecile, and, rightly scanned,
      Is death, is dust, is shadow, and is naught.

These rude translations give but a poor idea of the poet's
expression, but they allow the height and quality of her intellect to
be understood. In one of her most thoughtful poems, the _Romance on
the Vanity of Science_, she argues against self-seeking knowledge,
and the perils to which genius exposes itself by too much seeking its
own devices. This poem is so representative and remarkable that we
must give it entire quotation:

ROMANCE.

        Finjamos que soy feliz,
      Triste pensamiento un rato;
      Quizá podreis persuadirme,
      Aunque yo sé lo contrario.

          Feign we that I am happy,
            Sad thought, a little while,
          For, though 'twere but dissembling,
            Would thou couldst me beguile!

        Que, pues solo en la aprension
      Dicen que estriban los daños;
      Si os imaginais dichoso.
      No sereis tan desdichado.

          Yet since but in our terrors
            They say our miseries grow,
          If joy we can imagine,
            The less will seem our woe.

        Sirvame el entendimiento
      Alguna vez de descanso;
      Y no siempre esté el ingenio
      Con el provecho encontrado.

          Must our intelligences
            Some time of quiet find;
          Not always may our genius
            With profit rule the mind.

        Todo el mundo es opiniones,
      De paraceres tan varios,
      Que lo que el uno, que es negro,
      El otro prueba que es blanco.

          The world's full of opinions,
            And these so different quite.
          That what to one black seemeth
            Another proves is white.

        A unos sirve de atractivo
      Lo que otro concibe enfado;
      Y lo que este por alivio
      Aquel tiene por trabajo.

          To some appears attractive
            What many deem a bore;
          And that which thee delighted
            Thy fellow labors o'er.

        El que está triste, censura
      Al alegre de liviano;
      Y el que está alegre, se burla,
      De ver al triste penando.

          He who is sad condemneth
            The gay one's gleeful tones;
          He who is merry jesteth
            Whene'er the sad one groans.

        Los dos filosofos griegos
      Bien esta verdad probaron,
      Pues, lo que en el uno risa,
      Causaba, en el otro llanto.

          By two old Greek wiseacres
            This truth well proved appears;
          Since what in one caused laughter,
            The other moved to tears.

        Célebre su oposicion
      Ha sido, por siglos tantos,
      Sin que cúal acertó, esté
      Hasta agora averiguado.

          Renowned has been this contest
            For ages, without fruit,
          And what one age asserted
            Till now is in dispute.

        Antes en sus dos banderas
      El mundo todo alistado,
      Conforme el humor le dicta,
      Sigue cada cúal su bando.

          Into two lists divided
            The world's opinions stand.
          And as his humor leads him
            Follows each one his band.

        Uno dice, que de risa
      Solo es digno el mundo vario;
      Y otro, que sus infortunios
      Son solo para llorarlos.

          One says the world is worthy
            Only of merriment;
          Another, its distresses
            Call for our loud lament.

        Para todo se halla prueba
      Y razon en que fundarlo;
      Y no hay razon para nada,
      De haber razon para tanto.

          For all opinions various
            Some proof or reason's brought,
          And for so much there's reason
            That reason is for naught.

        Todos son iguales jueces
      Y siendo iguales, y varios.
      No hay quien pueda decidir
      Cúal es lo mas acertado.

          All, all are equal judges,
            And all of different view,
          And none can make decision
            Of what is best or true.

        ¿Pues sino hay quien lo sentencie,
      Por qué pensais vos, errado,
      Que os cometió Dios á vos
      La decision de los casos?

          Then since can none determine,
            Think'st thou, whose reason strays,
          To thee hath God committed
            The judgment of the case?

        ¿O por que, contra vos mismo,
      Severamente inhumano,
      Entre lo amargo, y lo dulce
      Quereis elegir lo amargo?

          O why, to thyself cruel,
            Dost thou thy peace reject?
          Between the sweet and bitter,
            The bitter dost elect?

        ¿Si es mio mi entendimiento,
      Por qué siempre he de encontrarlo
      Tan torpe para el alivio,
      Tan agudo para el daño?

          If 'tis mine my understanding,
            Why always must it be
          So dull and slow to pleasure,
            So keen for injury?

        El discurso es un acero
      Que sirve por ambos cabos;
      De dar muerte por la punta,
      Por el pomo de resguardo.

          A sharp blade is our learning
            Which serves us at both ends:
          Death by the point it giveth,
            By the handle, it defends.

        ¿Si vos sabiendo el peligro
      Quereis por la punta usarlo,
      Que culpa tiene el acero
      Del mal uso de la mano?

          And if, aware of peril,
            Its point thou wilt demand,
          How canst thou blame the weapon
            For the folly of thy hand?

        No es saber, saber hacer
      Discursos sutiles, vanos,
      Que el saber consiste solo
      En elegir lo mas sano.

          Not is true wisdom knowing
            Most subtle speech and vain;
          Best knowledge is in choosing
            That which is safe and sane.

        Especular las desdichas,
      Y examinar los presagios,
      Solo sirve de que el mal
      Crezca con anticiparlo.

          To speculate disaster,
            To seek for presages,
          Serves to increase affliction,
            Anticipates distress.

        En los trabajos futuros
      La atencion sutilizando.
      Mas formidable que el riesgo
      Suele fingir el amago.

          In the troubles of the future
            The anxious mind is lost,
          And more than any danger
            Doth danger's menace cost.

        ¡Que feliz es la ignorancia
      Del que indoctamente sabio,
      Halla de lo que podece
      En lo que ignora sagrado!

          Of him the unschooled wise man
            How happy is the chance!
          He finds from suffering refuge
            In simple ignorance.

        No siempre suben seguros
      Vuelos del ingenio osados,
      Que buscan trono en el fuego,
      Y hallan sepulcro en el llanto.

          _Not always safe aspire
            The wings that genius bears,
          Which seek a throne in fire,
            And find a grave in tears._

        Tambien es vicio el saber
      Que si no se va atajando,
      Cuanto menos se conoce
      Es mas nocivo el estrago.

          And vicious is the knowledge
            That seeking swift its end
          Is all the more unwary
            Of the woe that doth impend.

        Y si vuelo no le abaten
      En sutilezas cebado,
      Por cuidar de lo curioso
      Olvida lo necesario.

          And if its flight it stops not
            In pampered, strange deceits,
          Then for the curious searching
            The needful it defeats.

        Si culta mano no impide
      Crecer al arbol copado,
      Quitan la sustancia al fruto
      La locura de los ramos.

          If culture's hand not pruneth
            The leafage of the tree,
          Takes from the fruit's sustainment
            The rank, wild greenery.

        ¿Si andar a nave ligera,
      No estorba lastre pesado;
      Sirve el vuelo de que sea
      El precipicio mas alto?

          If all its ballast heavy
            Yon light ship not prevents,
          Will it help the flight of pinions
            From nature's battlements?

        En amenidad inutil,
      Que importa al florido campo.
      Si no halla fruto el otoño
      Que ostente flores el mayo.

          In verdant beauty useless,
            What profits the fair field
          If the blooming growths of springtime
            No autumn fruitage yield?

        ¿De que le sirve al ingenio
      El producir muchos partos,
      Si a la multitud le sigue
      El malogro de abortarlo?

          And of what use is genius
            With all its work of might,
          If are its toils rewarded
            By failure and despite?

        Yá esta desdicha, por fuerza
      Ha de seguirle el fracaso
      De quedar el que produce.
      Si no muerto, lastimado.

          And perforce to this misfortune
            Must that despair succeed,
          Which, if its arrow kills not,
            Must make the bosom bleed.

        El ingenio es como el fuego,
      Que con la materia ingrato,
      Tanto la consume mas,
      Cuanto el se ostenta mas claro.

          Like to a fire doth genius
            In thankless matter grow;
          The more that it consumeth,
            It boasts the brighter glow.

        Es de su proprio señor
      Tan rebelado vasallo,
      Que convierte en sus ofensas
      Las armas de su resguardo.

          It is of its own master
            So rebellious a slave,
          That to offence it turneth
            The weapons that should save.

        Este pesimo ejercicio,
      Este duro afan pesado,
      A los hijos de los hombres
      Dió Dios para ejercitarlos.

          Such exercise distressful,
            Such hard anxiety,
          To all the sad world's children
            God gave their souls to try.

        ¿Que loca ambicion nos lleva
      De nosotros olvidados,
      Si es para vivir tan poco,
      De que sirve saber tanto?

          What mad ambition takes us
            From self-forgetful state,
          If 'tis to live so little
            We make our knowledge great?

        Oh! si como hay de saber,
      Hubiera algun seminario,
      O escuela, donde á ignorar
      Se enseñara los trabajos!

          Oh! if we must have knowledge,
            I would there were some school
          Wherein to teach not knowing
            Life's woes, should be the rule.

        ¡Que felizmente viviera,
      El que flotamente cauto;
      Burlara las amenazas
      Del influjo de los astros!

          Happy shall be his living
            Whose life no rashness mars;
          He shall laugh at all the threatenings
            Of the magic of the stars!

        Aprendamos á ignorar
      Pensamientos, pues hallamos,
      Que cuanto añado al discurso,
      Tanto le usurpo á los años.

          Learn we the wise unknowing,
            Since it so well appears
          That what to learning's added
            Is taken from our years.

We may dispute, in some respects, the drift of Sister Juana's
philosophy; but we cannot question the poetic wisdom of many of her
reflections. How true it is that in a multitude of reasons one finds
no reason at all; that the rank overgrowth of knowledge does not
bear the best fruit; that genius, allied with base substance, grows
brighter, by a kind of self-consuming; that wisdom can sometimes
find refuge in ignorance! No one, be his fame what it may, has
stated a grand and touching truth with better force than appears in
Sor Juana's grave misgiving with regard to the genius "which seeks
a throne in fire, and finds a sepulchre in tears." Is not this the
history, at once sublime and pathetic, of so many failures of the
restless intellect? Sor Juana knew how to preach from such a text,
for she was a rare scholar, and mistress of verse, and religious
woman. The variety of her literary employments was considerable, in
comparison with the bulk of Mexican verse and prose, notwithstanding
the old-fashioned manners of her cloistered muse. She wrote, in
addition to sonnets and romances, the dramatic religious pieces
called loas and autos, among which we find dialogues and acts
entitled "The Sceptre of St. Joseph," "San Hermengildo," and "The
Divine Narciso." Her poetic moods were not, it appears, limited to
hymns and to blank-verse; indeed, she had the qualities of a ripe
poet--humor, fancy, imagination, able thought, and, if anything else
should be added, doubtless the reader will find it in the ideality of
a sonnet so superb as the one in praise of Our Lady. Of her religious
tenderness we have a fine example in the following lines from "El
Divino Narciso," which have been compared by a Mexican critic to
the best mystical songs of St. John of the Cross and other Spanish
ascetics. They convey the appeal which the Shepherd of Souls makes to
a soul which has strayed from the flock:

      O my lost lamb,
      Thy master all forgetting,
      Whither dost erring go?
      Behold how now divided
      From me, thou partest from thy life!

      In my tender kindness,
      Thou seest how always loving
      I guard thee watchfully,
      I free thee of all danger,
      And that I give my life for thee.

      Behold how that my beauty
      Is of all things beloved,
      And is of all things sought,
      And by all creatures praised.
      Still dost thou choose from me to go astray.

      I go to seek thee yet,
      Although thou art as lost;
      But for thee now my life
      I cannot still lay down
      That once I wished to lose to find my sheep.

      Do worthier than thou
      Ask these my benefits,
      The rivers flowing fair,
      The pastures and green glades
      Wherein my loving-kindness feedeth thee.

      Within a barren field,
      In desert land afar,
      I found thee, ere the wolf
      Had all thy life despoiled,
      And prized thee as the apple of mine eye.

      I led thee to the verdure
      Of my most peaceful ways,
      Where thou hast fed at will
      Upon the honey sweet
      And oil that flowed to thee from out the rock.

      With generous crops of grain,
      With marrowy substances,
      I have sustained thy life,
      Made thee most savory food,
      And given to thee the juice of fragrant grapes.

      Thou seekest other fields
      With them that did not know
      Thy fathers, honored not
      Thy elders, and in this
      Thou dost excite my own displeasure grave.

      And for that thou hast sinned
      I'll hide from thee my face,
      Before whose light the sun
      Its feeble glory pales;
      From thee, ingrate, perverse, and most unfaithful one.

      Shall my displeasure's scourge
      Thy verdant fields destroy,
      The herb that gives thee food;
      And shall my fires lay waste,
      Even from the top of highest mountains old.

      My lightning arrows shall
      Be drawn, and hunger sharp
      Shall cut the threads of life,
      And evil birds of prey
      And fiercest beasts shall lie in wait for thee.

      Shall grovelling serpents show
      The venom of their rage,
      By different ways of death
      My rigors shall be wrought;
      Without thee by the sword, within thee by thy fears.

      Behold I am thy Sovereign,
      And there is none more strong;
      That I am life and death,
      That I can slay and save,
      And nothing can escape from out my hand.

Our last quotation from Sister Juana's poems will be one of those
tributes which, in verse or prose, she so often paid to the Blessed
Virgin. It is a song taken from her villancicos, or rhymes for
festivals. The literary manners of her time seem to have obscured
the native excellence of her thought, but the buoyant style of the
following lines meets with little objection from her modern Mexican
critic:

      To her who in triumph, the beautiful queen,
      Descends from the airs of the region serene;
      To her who illumines its vaguest confine
      With auroras of gold, and of pearl and carmine;
      To her whom a myriad of voices confessed
      The lady of angels, the queen of the blest:
      Whose tresses celestial are lightly outborne
      And goldenly float in the glory of morn,
      And waving and rising would seek to o'erwhelm
      Like the gulfs of the Tibar an ivory realm:
      From whose graces the sunlight may learn how to shine,
      And the stars of the night take a brilliance divine,
      We sing thee rejoicing while praises ascend,
      O sinless, O stainless! live, live without end.

The scarcity of the poems of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, even in
her native land, is cause for wonder, but not if we first remark
that still greater marvel--the long-continued discomposure of
Mexican society. It is one hundred and seventy years since the
parchment-bound book, from which we have drawn a number of facts
in the life of the _Poetisa_, was published. Our impression of the
rarity and age of her printed works, as derived from acquaintance
with educated Mexicans in their own country, tempts us to doubt
whether they have been issued in any complete shape during the
present century. For a good portion of the extracts we have presented
we are indebted to an intelligent and scholarly review prepared in
Mexico, two years ago, by Don Francisco Prinentel, the author of a
number of books on the races and languages of Mexico. Outside of the
monastic or rich private libraries of that country, it is doubtless
a task of much difficulty to find the poems of Sor Juana. For this
reason we are disposed to excuse the able American historian of
Spanish literature for omitting everything in relation to her except
the mere mention of her name as a lyrical writer. It is hoped,
however, that this notice of her life and works, probably the first
which has appeared in the United States, will supply the omission
of what should be a chief fact in any American notice of Spanish
literature. The claim which we make for Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz,
as regards the literature of the New World, is not short of the very
highest.




DION AND THE SIBYLS.

A CLASSIC, CHRISTIAN NOVEL.

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


CHAPTER XXIV.

At the golden ga

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