Chapter VI

BIANCA’S FESTA.

Bianca’s birthday coming, they celebrated it by a little trip into the country. It was getting late for excursions, the weather being hot even for the last of May. But on the day before the proposed journey a few ragged clouds, scudding now and then across the sky, promised refreshment. Clouds never come to Rome for nothing; even the smallest fugitive mist is a herald; and the family, therefore, looked anxiously to see if they were to be kept at home the next day—if the herald announced a royal progress, short and splendid, or a long siege of rainy days.

They were sauntering, late in the afternoon, through a street of the Suburra, on one of those aimless walks that hit the mark of pleasure far oftener than planned pleasure-seeking does, and, seeing at their left a steep grade that ended in a stair climbing through light and shadow up the hillside, and going out under a dark arch into the light again, they followed it without asking questions, and presently found themselves in a quiet piazza surrounded by churches and convents as silent and, apparently, uninhabited as a desert. The most living thing was a single lofty palm-tree that leaned out against the sky. A wall hid the base of it, where one would not have been surprised to have found a lion sleeping.

Entering the portico of the nearest qualche cosa.

Inside the church, beside the beautiful Presence indicated by the ever-burning lamp, there was but one person, a gigantic man, all white, who sat leaning forward a little, with the fingers of his right hand tangled in his beard. They saw him gazing, almost glaring, at them across the church as they seated themselves near the door after a short adoration. The painted roof invited their eyes to glimpses of heaven, the tribune walls shone with the story of St. Peter liberated by an angel, and the antique columns told of pagan emperors whom they had served before they were raised to hold a canopy over the head of the King of kings; but through them all, becoming every moment more importunate and terrible, the stare of those motionless, stony eyes drew theirs with an uncomfortable fascination, and the figure seemed to lean more forward, as if about to stride toward them, Pg 176 and the fingers to move in the beard, as if longing to catch and toss them out of the church.

“He appears to resent our not saluting him,” Mr. Vane said. “I do not need an introduction. Suppose we go to him before he comes clattering down the nave to us!”

They rose, and, with a diffidence amounting almost to fear, went up the aisle to pay their respects to Michael Angelo’s Moses.

“O Mr. Vane!” the Signora whispered, suddenly touching his arm, “does he look as if he went up the mountain to bring down Protestantism?”

She said it impulsively, and was ashamed of herself the next moment. He was not offended, however, but smiled slightly, and, feeling the touch, drew her hand into his arm. “He doesn’t look like a man who would carry any sort of ism about long.”

He was looking at the Moses as he spoke; but he felt the dissatisfaction which the lady at his side did not indicate by word or motion, and added after a moment: “It must be owned that Protestantism has reduced the stone tables to dust, and that your church is the only one that has graven laws.”

She did not venture to press him any farther. The question with him, then, was evidently whether graven laws were necessary. He was not at all likely to write his faith in the dust of the sects.

“It is the most uncomfortable marble person in Rome,” she said of the Moses. “I always have a feeling that it is never quite still; that he has turned his face on being interrupted in something, as if he had been talking with God here alone, and were waiting for people to go and leave him to continue the conversation. He will watch us

Bianca had a rose in her belt, and, as the others walked slowly away, she slipped across the church and threw it inside the railing before the Blessed Sacrament, repeating from the Canticle of St. Francis of Assisi, which they had been reading with their Italian teacher the evening before:

“They speak of the Blessed Sacrament here as Il Santissimo,” she heard the Signora say when she joined them at the door. “It is beautiful; but I prefer the Spanish title of ‘His Majesty.’ One would like to be able to ask, on entering a church, ‘At which altar is His Majesty?’ It sounds like a live faith. Isn’t that palm beautiful? And do you see the ghost of Lucretia Borgia up in her balcony there? That is, or was, her balcony. Dear me! what an uncanny afternoon it is. I quite long to get among common people.”

In fact, a solid post of snow-white cloud showed like a motionless figure over the balcony, changing neither shape nor position while they looked at it. There was, evidently, something behind worth seeing, and they took a carriage to the Janiculum for a better view. When they reached the parapet of San Pietro in Montorio, they saw the horizon beyond the city bound by a wonderful mountain-range—not the accustomed Sabine Apennines and Monte Cimino; these had disappeared, and over their places rose a solid magnificence of cloud that Pg 177 made the earth and sky look unstable. Ruby peaks splintered here and there against the blue in sharp pinnacles, their sides cleft into gorges of fine gold, their bases wrapped about with the motionless smoke and flame of a petrified conflagration. Beneath all were rough masses of uneasy darkness, in which could be seen faintly the throb of a pulse of fire. The royal progress had begun, and promised to be a costly one to some. The poor farmers would have to pay, at least.

They leaned on the parapet, and took a new lesson in shape and color from the inexhaustible skies, and the Signora told them one of the many legends of the Janiculum.

“It is said that after the Flood Noe came here to live, held in high honor, as we may well imagine, by his descendants. As time passed, after his death, the truth became mixed with error, and the patriarch Noe became the god Janus, with two faces, because he had seen the old world and the new. So all antique truth, left to human care, became corrupted little by little. It was only when the Holy Spirit came down to stay on earth that truth could be preserved unadulterated. ‘Teaching you all truth.’ Am I preaching? Excuse me!”

Turning her face, as she spoke slowly and dreamily, she had found Mr. Vane looking at her with a steady and grave regard which did not evade, but lingered an instant, when it met hers. She recollected that he had not her faith, and thought he might be displeased a little at having alien doctrines so constantly held up before him.

On the contrary, he was admiring her fair, pale face, which the glowing west and a glowing thought were tinting with soft rose, and was

For, though we call her Signora, the Vanes’ padrona was, in fact, a signorina.

“Well, what is it?” she asked smilingly, turning again, aware of his eyes. She was one of those persons who always feel the stress of another mind brought to bear on them. “You should tell me what it is.”

The two girls had gone to a little distance, and he ventured to put the question.

“It is an impertinence,” he said hastily, “but I was wondering why you never married. You are thirty-five years old, and have had time and opportunities. If you command me to ask no more, I shall not blame you.”

“It is not an impertinence,” she replied quite easily. “There is no tragedy hidden behind my ‘maiden Pg 178 meditation.’ The simple truth is that I have never had an offer from any one whom I could willingly or possibly promise to love, honor, and obey for my whole life, though I have refused some with regret; and if I have known any person to whom I could have so devoted myself, no approach on his part and no consciousness on mine have ever revealed the fact to me. My mind and life were always full. My mother taught me to love books and nature, and said nothing about marriage. There is nothing like having plenty to think of. Are you satisfied?”

“Perfectly,” he replied, but seemed not altogether pleased. Perhaps he would have found a less self-sufficing woman more interesting and amiable. “Still, I beg your pardon for a question which, after all, no one should ask. One never knows what may have happened in a life.”

“That is true,” she replied. “And it is true that the question might be to some an embarrassing one to answer. It does not hurt me, however.”

“Papa does not allow us to ask questions,” Isabel said a little complainingly, having caught a few words of their talk. “You have no idea how sharply he will speak to us, or, at least, look at us, if he hears us asking the simplest question that can be at all personal. And yet people question us unmercifully. I think one might retort in self-defence.”

“How I wish you could have a larger number of pupils than these two, Mr. Vane!” the Signora sighed. “I would like to send some of my lady friends to school to you. The questions that some ladies, who consider themselves well bred, will ask, are astonishing. Indeed, there is, I think, more vulgarity in fine

The Signora made an impatient motion of the shoulders, as if throwing off a disagreeable burden. “How did we fall into this miserable subject? Let us walk about awhile and shake it off. We might go into the church and say a little prayer for poor Beatrice Cenci, who is buried here. One glance at Piombo’s Scourging of Christ, one thought of that girl’s terrible tragedy, will scorch out these petty thoughts, if one breath of the Lord’s presence should not blow them away.”

She hurried up the steps and ran into the church, as one soiled and Pg 179 dusty with travel rushes into a bath. Coming out again, they strolled back into the gardens, and looked off over the green sea of the luxuriant Campagna, where St. Paul’s Church floated like an ark, half swamped in verdure and flowers, and a glistening bend of the Tiber bound the fragrantly breathing groves like a girdle, the bridge across it a silver buckle. Beneath the wall that stopped their feet a grassy angle of the villa beyond was red with poppies growing on their tall stems in the shade. So everywhere in Italy the faithful soil commemorates the blood of the martyrs that has been sprinkled over it, a scarlet blossom for every precious drop, flowering century after century; to flower in centuries to come, till at last the scattered dust and dew shall draw together again into the new body, like scattered musical notes gathering into a song, and the glorified spirit shall catch and weld them into one for ever!

Looking awhile, they turned silently back into the garden. The two girls wandered among the flowers; Mr. Vane and the Signora walked silently side by side. Now and then they stopped to admire a campanile of lilies growing around a stem higher than their heads, springing from the midst of a sheaf of leaves like swords. One of these leaves, five feet long, perhaps, thrown aside by the gardener, lay in the path. It was milk-white and waxy, like a dead body, through its thickness of an inch or two. Long, purple thorns were set along its sides and at the point, and a faint tinge of gold color ran along the centre of its blade. It was not a withered leaf, but a dead one, and strong and beautiful in death.

Mr. Vane glanced over the bristling

Isabel came to them in some trepidation with her fingers full of small thorns. She had been stealing, she confessed. Seeing that, in all the crowds of great, ugly cacti about, one only had blossomed, she had been smitten by a desire to possess that unique flower.

“I called up my reasoning powers, as people do when they want to justify themselves,” she said, “and I reasoned the matter out, till it became not only excusable but a virtue in me to take the flower. I spare you the process. If only you would pick the needles out of my fingers, papa! Isn’t it a pretty blossom? It is a bell of golden crystal with a diamond heart.”

When the tiny thorns were extracted and the young culprit properly reproved for her larceny, the clouds of the west had lost all their color but one lingering blush, and were beginning to catch the light of the moon, that was sailing through mid-air, as round as a bubble. They went down the winding avenue on foot, sending the carriage to wait for them in the street below. The trees over their heads were full of blossoms like little flies with black bodies and wide-spread, whitish wings, and through the heaps of these blossoms that had fallen they could see a green lizard slip now and then; the fountains plashed softly, lulling the day to sleep. Near the foot of the hill all the lower wall of one of the houses was hidden by skeins of brilliant, gold-colored silk, hung out to dry, perhaps, making a sort of sunshine in the shady street.

It was a lovely drive home through the Ave Marias ringing all Pg 180 about, through the alternate gloom and light of narrow streets and open piazze, where they spoke no word, but only looked about them with perhaps the same feeling in all their minds:

Not only the beauty they had seen and their own personal contentment pleased them; the richness and variety of the human element through which they passed gave them a sense of freedom, a fuller breath than they were accustomed to draw in a crowd. It was not a throng of people ground and smoothed into nearly the same habits and manners, but a going and coming and elbowing of individuals, many of whom retained the angles of their characters and manners in all their original sharpness.

“The moon will be full to-morrow in honor of your festa,” Isabel said as they went into the house; “and there is a prospect that the roads may be sprinkled.”

The roads were sprinkled with a vengeance; for the delectable mountains of sunset came up in the small hours and broke over the city in a torrent. There had not been such a tempest in Rome for years. It was impossible to sleep through it, and soon became impossible to lie in bed. Not all their closing of blinds and shutters could keep out the ceaseless flashes, and the windows rattled with the loud bursts of thunder. The three ladies dressed and went into the little sala, where the Signora lighted two blessed candles and sprinkled holy water, like the old-fashioned Catholic she was; and presently Mr. Vane joined them.

“I should have expected to hear more cultivated thunders here,” he

“Speak respectfully of those honest barbarians,” exclaimed the Signora. “They were strong and brave, and some things they would not do for gain. Do you recollect that Alaric’s men, when they were sacking Rome, being told that certain vessels of silver and gold were sacred, belonging to the service of the church, took the treasure on their heads and carried it to St. Peter’s, the Romans falling into the procession, hymns mingling with their war-cries? Fancy Victor Emanuel’s people making restitution! Fancy Signor Bonghi and his associates marching in procession through the streets of Rome, bearing on their heads the libraries they have stolen from religious houses to make their grand library at the Roman College, which they have also stolen. Honor to the barbarians! There were things they respected. Ugh! what a flash. And what about cultivated thunders, Mr. Vane?”

“Do you not know that there are thunders and thunders?” he replied. “Some roll like chariot-wheels from horizon to horizon, rattling and crashing, to be sure, but following a track. Others go clumsily tumbling about, without rhyme or reason, and you feel they may break through the roof any minute.”

The rain fell in torrents, and came running in through chinks of the windows. The storm seemed to increase every moment. Bianca drew a footstool to the Signora’s side, and, seating herself on it, hid her face in her friend’s lap. Isabel sought refuge with her father, holding his arm closely, and they all became silent. Talk seems trivial in face of such a manifestation Pg 181 of the terrible strength of nature; and at night one is so much more impressed by a storm, all the little daylight securities falling off. They sat and waited, hoping that each sharp burst might be the culminating one.

While they waited, suddenly through the storm broke loudly three clear strokes of a bell.

“Oh!” cried Bianca, starting up.

“Fulgura frango,” exclaimed the Signora triumphantly. Four strokes, five, and one followed with the sweet and deliberate strength of the great bell, then the others joined and sang through the night like a band of angels.

“Brava, Maria Assunta!” exclaimed the Signora. “Where is the storm, Mr. Vane?”

He did not answer. In fact, with the ceasing of the fifteen minutes’ ringing the storm ceased, and there was left only a low growling of spent thunders about the horizon, and a flutter of pallid light now and then. It was only the next morning at the breakfast-table that Mr. Vane thought to remark that the bell-ringer of the basilica must be a pretty good meteorologist, for he knew just when to strike in after the last great clap.

“It was a most beautiful incident,” Bianca said seriously. “Please do not turn it into ridicule, papa!”

They were just rising from the table, and, in speaking, the daughter put her arm around her father’s shoulder and kissed him, as if she would assure him of her loving respect in all that was human, even while reproving him from the height of a superior spiritual wisdom.

The father had been wont to receive these soft admonitions affectionately, indeed, but somewhat lightly. Lately, however, he had

“May not the effect bell-ringing has on tempests be accounted for on natural principles?” Isabel asked, with the air of one making a philosophical discovery.

“My dear Isabel, it is said that the miracles of Christ may be so accounted for,” the Signora replied. “But who is to account for the natural principles? We have no time to spare,” she added brightly. “The train starts in fifteen minutes. Hurry, children!”

But, brightly as she spoke, a slight cloud settled over her feelings after this little incident. She was not displeased with Mr. Vane; for she had learned that no real irreverence underlay these occasional gibes, and had observed that they grew more rare, and were rather the effect of habit than of intention. She was grateful to him, indeed, for the delicacy and consideration he showed, and for the patience with which he submitted himself to a Catholic atmosphere and mode of life which did not touch his convictions, though it might not have been foreign to his tastes.

“We are frequently as unjust to Protestants as they are to us,” she constantly said to her over-zealous friends. “If they are sincere in their disbelief, it would show a lack of principle in them to be over-indulgent and complacent to us. You must recollect that many a Protestant cannot help believing us guilty of something like, at least, Pg 182 unconscious idolatry; cannot help having a sort of horror for some of our ways. Besides, we must not claim merit to ourselves for having faith. ‘Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam.’ Then, again, here is an inquiry worth making: Look about among your Catholic acquaintances, including yourself among them, and ask, from your knowledge of them and of yourself, ‘If the drama of salvation were yet to be acted, and Christ were but just come on earth, poor, humble, and despised, how many of these people would follow him? Would I follow him? What instance of a sacrifice of worldly advantages, a giving up of friends and happiness, a willingness to be despised for God’s sake, have I or any of these given?’ It is easy, it is a little flattering, indeed, to one’s vanity, and pleasing to one’s imagination, to stand in very good company, among people many of whom are our superiors in rank and reputation, and have our opponents fire their poor little arrows at us. We feel ourselves very great heroes and heroines indeed, when, in truth, we are no more than stage heroes, with tinsel crowns and tin swords, and would fly affrighted before a real trial. It is easy to talk, and those who do the least talk the most and the most positively. Some of the noblest natures in the world are outside of the fold, some of the meanest are inside. God’s ways are not our ways, and we cannot disentangle these things. Only we should not take airs to ourselves. When I see the primitive ardor and nobleness of Christianity in a person, I hold that person as independent of circumstances, and am sure that he would join the company of the fishermen to-day, if they were but just called. The

The Signora had sometimes displeased some of her friends by talking in this manner and pricking their vainglorious bubbles; and she consistently felt that, according to his light, Mr. Vane was forbearing with his daughters and with her, and that they should show some forbearance with him. She was, therefore, not displeased with him for his unintentional mocking. Her cloud came from another direction. She found herself changing a little, growing less evenly contented with her life, alternating unpleasantly between moods of happiness and depression. While she lived alone, receiving her friends for a few hours at a time, she had found her life tranquil and satisfying. Sympathy and kind services were always at hand, and there was always the equal or greater pleasure of sympathy and kind services demanded to make of friendship a double benefit. But the question had begun to glance now and then across her mind whether she had been altogether wise in taking this family into her house, having before her eyes the constant spectacle of an affection and intimacy such as she had left outside her own experience, and had no desire to invite or admit, even while she felt its charm. She, quite deprived of all family ties, felt sometimes a loneliness which she had never before experienced, in witnessing the affection of the father and his daughters; and, at the same time that she saw them as enclosed in a magic circle from which she was excluded, she looked forward with dread to the time when they should leave her, with a new void in her life, and a serenity permanently disturbed, perhaps. There Pg 183 were little moments, short and sharp, when she could have sympathized with Faust casting aside with passionate contempt his worthless gifts and learning at sight of the simple happiness of love and youth.

But these moments and moods were short and disconnected. She was scarcely aware of them, scarcely remembered that each, as it came, was not the first, and her life flowed between them always pleasantly, sometimes joyfully. She was quite gay and happy when they ran down to the carriage and hurried to the station.

The morning was delicious, everything washed clean and fresh by the plentiful shower. A light, pearly cloud covered the sky, veiling all with a delicate softness that was to sunshine as contentment is to joy. Here and there a deep shadow slept on the landscape. Our little party took possession of a first-class car, and seated, each at a corner of it, were every moment calling attention to some new beauty. Isabel glanced with delight along the great aqueduct lines and the pictures they framed, all blurred and swimming with the birds with which the stone arches were alive; Bianca watched the mountain, her eyes full of poetical fancies; and Mr. Vane presently fell in love with a square of solid green he espied in the midst of the bare Campagna, a little paradise, where the trees and flowers seemed to be bursting with luxuriance over the walls, and regarding with astonishment the dead country about them, that stretched off its low waves and undulations in strong and stubborn contrast with that redundant spot.

“Aladdin’s lamp must have done it,” he said; and after a moment added, having followed the subject a little in his own mind: “I am inclined

“But look and see what they are eating, papa,” Bianca said. “No wonder it turns them blue.”

The ground all about was deeply colored with blue flowers, in the midst of which these large, white cattle wandered, feeding lazily, as if eating were a pleasure, not a necessity. They were like people reading poetry.

“We do not often have such a day here,” the Signora said, “and to me the clouds are a luxury. I own that I have sometimes grown weary of seeing that spotless blue overhead week after week, month after month, even. Clouds are tender, and give infinite lights and shades. The first winter I spent in Rome there were a hundred days in succession of windless, cloudless, golden weather, beginning in October, and lasting till after New Year’s day. Then came a sweet three days’ rain, which enchanted me. I went out twice a day in it.”

“This reminds me,” Isabel said, “of our first visit to the White Mountains. We went there under the ‘rainy Hyades,’ apparently; for we hadn’t seen sunshine for a week. When we reached Lancaster, at evening, the fog touched our faces like a wet flannel, and there was a fine, thick rain in the morning when I awoke. About nine o’clock there was a brightening, and I looked up and saw a blue spot. The clouds melted away from it, still raining, and sunbeams shot across, but none came through. First I saw a green plain with a river winding through it, and countless little pools of water, everything a brilliant green Pg 184 and silver. A few trees stood about knee-deep in grass and yellow grain. And then, all at once, down through the rain of water came a rain of sunshine; and, lastly, the curtains parted, and there were the mountains! They are a great deal more solemn looking and impressive than these,” she said, with a depreciatory glance toward the Alban Mountains. “On the whole, I think the scene was finer and more brilliant.”

As if in answer to her criticism, a slim, swift sunbeam pierced suddenly the soft flecks of mist overhead, shot across the shadowed world, and dropped into Rome. Out blazed the marvellous dome, all golden in that light, the faint line of its distant colonnades started into vivid clearness with all their fine-wrought arches, and for a moment the city shone like a picture of a city seen by a magic-lantern in a dark room.

“Very true!” the young woman replied quite coolly, as if she had been spoken to. “We have no such city, no such towns and villages and villas set on the mountainside; but we are young and fresh and strong, and we are brave, which you are not. Your past, and the ruins left of it, are all you can boast of. We have a present and a future. And after all,” she said, turning to her audience, who were smilingly listening to this perfectly serious address, “it is ungrateful of the sun to take the part of Italy so, when we welcome him into our houses, and they shut him out. Why, the windows of the Holy Father’s rooms at the Vatican are half walled up.”

“Maybe the sun doesn’t consider it such a privilege to come into our houses,” her father suggested.

“And as for Rome,” the young woman went on, “to me it seems

The yellow-green vineyards and the blue-green canebrakes came in sight, the olive-orchards rolled their smoke-like verdure up the hills, and at length the cars slid between the rose-trees of the Frascati station, and the crowd of passengers poured out and hurried up the stairs to secure carriages to take them to the town. The family Ottant’-Otto, finding themselves in a garden, did not make haste to leave it, but stayed to gather each a nosegay, nobody interfering. More than one, indeed, of the passengers paused long enough to snatch a rosebud in passing.

Going up then to the station-yard, they found it quite deserted, except for the carriage that had been sent for them, and another drawn by a tandem of beautiful white horses, in whose ears their owner, one of the young princes living near the town, was fastening the roses he had just gathered below. The creatures seemed as vain of themselves as he evidently was proud of them, and held their heads quite still to be adorned, tossing their tails instead, which had been cut short, and tied round with a gay scarlet band.

Every traveller knows that Frascati is built up the sides of the Tusculan hills, looking toward Rome, the railway station on a level with the Campagna, the town rising above with its countless street-stairs, and, still above, the magnificent villas over which look the ruins of ancient Tusculum. On one of the lower streets of the town, in Palazzo Simonetti, lived a friend of the Signora, and there rooms had been Pg 185 provided for the family, and every preparation made for their comfort. They found a second breakfast awaiting them, laid out in a room looking up to one of the loveliest nooks in the world—the little piazza of the duomo vecchio, with its great arched doorway, and exquisite fountain overshadowed by a weeping willow. If it had been a common meal, they would have declined it; but it was a little feast for the eyes rather: a dish of long, slim strawberries from Nemi, where strawberries grow every month in the year by the shores of the beautiful lake, in a soil that has not yet forgotten that it once throbbed with volcanic fires; tiny rolls, ring-shaped and not much too large for a finger-ring, and golden shells of butter; all these laid on fresh vine-leaves and surrounded by pomegranate blossoms that shone like fire in the shaded room. The coffee-cups were after-dinner cups, and so small that no one need decline on the score of having already taken coffee; and there was no sign of cream, only a few lumps of sugar, white and shining as snow-crust.

“It is frugal, dainty, and irresistible,” Mr. Vane said. “Let us accept by all means.”

They were going up to Tusculum, and, as the day was advancing, set off after a few minutes, going on foot. They had preferred that way, being good walkers, and having, moreover, a unanimous disinclination to see themselves on donkeys.

“A gentleman on a donkey is less a gentleman than the donkey,” Mr. Vane said. “I would walk a hundred miles sooner than ride one mile on a beast which has such short legs and such long ears. The atmosphere of the ridiculous which they carry with them is of a circumference

“Poor little patient wretches! how they have to suffer,” said the Signora. “Even their outcry, while the most pitiful sound in the world, a very sob of despairing pain, is the height of the ridiculous. If you don’t cry hearing it, you must laugh, unless, indeed, you should be angry. For they sometimes make a ‘situation’ by an inopportune bray, as a few weeks ago at the Arcadia. The Academy was holding an adunanza at Palazzo Altemps, and, as the day was quite warm and the audience large, the windows into the back court were opened. The prose had been read, and a pretty, graceful poetess, the Countess G——, had recited one of her best poems, when a fine-looking monsignore rose to favor us with a sonnet. He writes and recites enthusiastically, and we prepared to listen with pleasure. He began, and, after the first line, a donkey in the court struck in with the loudest bray I ever heard. Monsignore continued, perfectly inaudible, and the donkey continued, obstreperously audible. A faint ripple of a smile touched the faces least able to control themselves. Monsignore went on with admirable perseverance, but with a somewhat heightened color. A sonnet has but fourteen lines, and the bray had thirteen. They closed simultaneously. Monsignore sat down; I don’t know what the donkey did. One only had been visible, as the other only had been audible. The audience applauded with great warmth and politeness. ‘Who are they applauding,’ asked Pg 186 my companion of me—‘the one they have heard, or the one they have not heard?’ If it had been my sonnet, I should instantly have gone out, bought that donkey, and hired somebody to throw him into the Tiber.”

“Here we are at the great piazza, and here is the cathedral. See how the people in the shops and fruit-stands water their flowers!”

In fact, all the rim of the great fountain-basin was set round with a row of flower-pots containing plants that were dripping in the spray of the falling cascades. Just out of reach of the spray were two fruit shops large enough to contain the day’s store and the chair of the person who sold it. Temporary pipes from the fountain conducted water to the counters, where a tiny fountain tossed its borrowed jet, constantly renewed from the cool cascade, and constantly returning to the basin.

“We must take excelsior for our motto,” the Signora said to the two girls, who wanted to stop and admire everything they saw. “We are for the mountain-height now. When we return, you may like to dress up with flowers two shrines on the road. I always do it when I come this way.”

They climbed the steep and rocky lane between high walls, passed on the one side the house where Cardinal Baronius wrote his famous Annals, which had an interest too dry to fascinate the two young ladies; passed the wide iron gate of a villa to left, and another to right, giving only a glance at the paradises within; passed the large painting of the Madonna embowered in trees at the foot of the Cappucini Avenue; passed under the stone portal, and the rod of verdant shadow almost as solid, that formed Via Tusculana; and presently there they were at last in the birthplace of Cato, the air-hung city that broke the pride of Rome, and that, conquered at last, died in its defeat, and remained for ever a ruin.

Not a word was spoken when they reached the summit, and stood gazing on what is, probably, the most magnificent view in the world. Only after a while, when the three new-comers began to move and come out of their first trance of admiration, the Signora named some of the chief points in the landscape and in the ruins. The old historical scenes started up, the old marvellous stories rushed back to their memories, the mountains crowded up as witnesses, and the towns, with all their teeming life and countless voices of the present hushed by distance, became voluble with voices and startling with life of the past.

After a while they seated themselves in the shade of a tree, facing the west, and silently thought, or dreamed, or merely looked, as their mood might be. Their glances shot across the bosky heights that climbed to their feet, and across the wide Campagna, to where Rome lay like a heap of lilies thrown on a green carpet, and the glittering sickle of the distant sea curved round the world.

Day deepened about them in waves. They could almost feel each wave flow over them as the sun mounted, touching degree after degree of the burning blue, as a hand touches octaves up an organ. The birds sang less, and the cicali more, and the plants sighed forth all their perfume.

Pg 187 Isabel slipped off her shoes, and set her white-stockinged feet on a tiny laurel-bush, that bent kindly under them without breaking, making a soft and fragrant cushion. All took off their hats, and drank in the faint wind that was fresh, even at noon.

“The first time I came here,” the Signora said after a while, “was on the festa of SS. Roch and Sebastian, in the heat of late summertime. That is a great day for Frascati, for these two saints are their protectors against pestilence, which has never visited the city. When, in ’69, the cholera dropped one night on Albano, just round the mountain there a few miles, and struck people dead almost like lightning, and killed them on the road as they fled to other towns, so that many died, perhaps, from fear and horror, having no other illness, none who reached Frascati in health died. The nobility died as well as the low, and the cardinal bishop died at his post taking care of his people. Whole families came to Frascati, the people told me, flying by night along the dark, lonely road, some half-starving; for all the bakers were dead, and there was no bread except what was sent from Rome. The saints they trusted did not refuse to help them. In Frascati they found safety. If any died there, certainly none sickened there. So, of course, the saints were more honored than ever. I sat here and heard the bells all ringing at noon, and the guns firing salutes, and saw the lovely blue wreaths of smoke curl away over the roofs after each salvo. In Italy they do not praise God solely with the organ, but with the timbrel and the lute. Anything that expresses joy and triumph expresses religious joy and triumph, and the artillery Morra after their frugal bread and wine. Sitting with my back to them, only faintly hearing their voices as they called the numbers, I could imagine that they were Achilles and Ajax, whom you can see on an ancient Etruscan vase in the Vatican playing the same game. The present was quite withdrawn from me. I felt like Annus Mundi looking down on Annus Domini, and seeing the whole of it, too. I could have stayed all day, but that hunger admonished me; for I had not been so provident as my guides, nor as I have been to-day. Going down, however, just below the Capuchin convent, I saw a man on a donkey coming up, with a large basket slung at each side of the saddle in front of him. No one could doubt what was under those cool vine-leaves. He was carrying fresh figs up to the Villa Tuscolana, where some college was making their villigiatura. I showed him a few soldi, and he stopped and let me lift the leaves Pg 188 myself. There they lay with soft cheek pressed to cheek, large, black figs as sweet as honey. The very skins of them would have sweetened your tea. Where we stood a little path that looked like a dry rivulet-bed led off under the wall of the convent grounds. When I asked where it went, they answered, ‘To the Madonna.’ We will go there on our way down. Meantime, has Isabel nothing hospitable to say to us?”

Miss Vane displayed immediately the luncheon she had been detailed to prepare, a bottle of Orvieto, only less delicate because richer than champagne, a basket of cianbelli, and lastly a box. “In the name of the prophet, figs!” she said, opening it. “They are dried, it is true; but then they are from Smyrna.”

They drank felicissima festa to Bianca, drank to the past and the present, to all the world; and Mr. Vane, when their little feast was ended, slipped a beautiful ring on his younger daughter’s finger. “To remember Tusculum by, my dear,” he said; and, looking at her wistfully, seeming to miss some light-heartedness even in her smiles, he added: “Is there anything you lack, child?”

She dropped her face to his arm only in time to hide a blush that covered it. “What could I lack?” she asked.

But a few minutes afterward, while the others recalled historical events connected with the place, and the Signora pointed out the cities and mountains by name, the young girl walked away to the Roman side, and stood looking off with longing eyes toward the west. She lacked a voice, a glance, and a smile too dear to lose, and her heart cried out for them. She was not unhappy,

They went down the steep way again, gathering all the flowers they could find, and, when they reached the shrine at the turn of the Cappucini road, stuck the screen so full of pink, white, and purple blossoms that the faces of Our Lady and the Child could only just be discerned peeping out. Then they turned into the pebbly path under the Cappucini wall, where the woods and briers on one side, and the wall on the other, left them room only to walk in Indian file; came out on the height above beautiful Villa Lancilotti, with another burst of the Campagna before their eyes, and the mountains with their coronets of towns still visible at the northeast over the Borghese Avenue and the solid pile of Mondragone.

Here, set so high on the wall that it had to be reached by two or three stone steps, was the picture of the Madonna, looking off from its almost inaccessible height over the surrounding country. It was visible from the villas below, and many Pg 189 a faithful soul far away had breathed a prayer to Mary at sight of it, though nothing was visible to him but the curve of high, white wall over the trees, and the square frame of the picture. Now and then a devout soul came through the lonely and thorny path to the very foot of the shrine, and left a prayer and a flower there.

The others gave their flowers to Bianca, who climbed the steps, and set a border of bloom inside the frame, and pushed a flower through the wires to touch the Madonna’s hand, and set a little ring of yellow blossoms where it might look like a crown.

As she stood on that height, visible as a speck only if one had looked up from the villa, smiling to herself happily while she performed her sweet and unaccustomed task, down in the town below, a speck like herself, stood a man leaning against the eagle-crested arch of the Borghese Villa gate, and watching her through a glass. He saw the slight, graceful form, whose every motion was so well known to him; saw the ribbon flutter in her uncovered hair, the little gray mantle dropped off the gray dress into the hands of the group at the foot of the steps; saw the arms raised to fix flower after flower; finally, when she turned

The party went home tired and satisfied, and did not go out again that day. It was pleasure enough to sit in the westward windows as the afternoon waned and watch the sun go down, and see how the mist that for ever lies over the Campagna caught his light till, when he burned on the horizon in one tangle of radiating gold, the whole wide space looked as if a steady rainbow had been straightened and drawn across it, every color in its order, glowing stratum upon stratum pressed over sea and city and vineyard, blurring all with a splendid haze, till the earth was brighter than even the cloudless sky.

“It is so beautiful that even the stars come out before their time to look,” the Signora said. “Your Madonna on the wall can see it too, Bianca. But as for the poor Madonna in her nest of trees, she can see nothing but green and flowers.”

“I wonder why I prefer the Madonna of the wall?” asked Bianca dreamily. “I feel happy thinking of it.”

TO BE CONTINUED.

Pg 190

TEXT-BOOKS IN CATHOLIC COLLEGES.

After many advances on the part of editors and correspondents towards approaching this question in a tangible form, the Rev. Dr. Engbers, a professor of the Seminary of Mount St. Mary’s of the West, Cincinnati, Ohio, has been the first to take up the subject in earnest. Often have we heard men, admirably adapted to handle this question, express the wish that some one would come forward and propose a system of improvement: we need better books, we are at the mercy of non-Catholic compilers, in every department of learning, except divinity. “Well, why do you not set to work and give us such text-books as can be safely adopted in our schools?—books of history, sacred, ecclesiastical, secular; books of mental or rational and natural philosophy; treatises on the philosophy of religion; books of geography, sadly wanted to let our boys know how wide the Catholic world is; then grammars; then Greek and Latin text-books—all and each of them fit to be placed in the hands of Catholic young men and women, for the salvation of whose souls some one will be called to an account, etc. etc.” “Oh! you see, I cannot tax my time to such an extent; I cannot afford it. Then do you think I can face the apathy, perhaps the superciliousness, of those who should encourage, but will be sure to sneer at me and pooh-pooh me down? No, no; I cannot do it.” Time and again have we heard such remarks. But, luckily, it seems as if at this propitious moment rerum nascitur ordo. All Rev. Dr. Engbers! Not only has he raised his voice and uttered words expressive of a long, painful experience, and resolutely cried out that something must be done, but has actually addressed himself to the work, and has broken ground on a road whereon we can follow him, whether pulling with him or not. That we need text-books for our schools is admitted by all who give a thought to the importance of a proper training in Catholic schools—that training which should distinguish the Catholic citizen from all others. There is no doubt but a judicious training in a properly-conducted Catholic college will stamp the pupil with a character we may dare to call indelible.

There must needs be a character imprinted on the mind of the graduate, whether he goes forth from the halls of his Alma Mater as a literary man or a philosopher, a scientist or a professional man. We cannot refrain from transcribing the beautiful sentiments uttered by the Hon. George W. Paschal, in his annual address before the Law Department of the University of Georgetown, on the 3d of June, 1875:

“You go forth from an institution long honored for its learning, its high moral character, its noble charities, which have been bestowed in the best possible way—mental enlightenment, and its watchful sympathy for its learned children spread all over the land. The fathers of that institution expect much from you, and they will be ever ready to accord to you every possible encouragement. Your immediate instructors in your profession Pg 191 cannot fail to feel for you the deepest interest.”

Surely the gist of the above is that the graduates who “stand upon the threshold of their profession, holding passes to enter the great arena”—as Mr. Daly has so happily expressed it in his valedictory on the same occasion—must bear imprinted on their brows the parting kiss of their Alma Mater.

Now, if bonum ex integrâ causâ, malum ex quocumque defectu, everything in a collegiate course must tend to give the graduate a Catholic individuality in the world of science and of letters.

And here it is that we cannot fail to admire the great wisdom of the Holy Father, who, when the question of classics in the Catholic schools began to be mooted, ex professo and in earnest, would not sanction a total and blind exclusion of the pagan classics—for that would be obscurantism—but advised the use of the classics, with a proviso that the rich wells of Christian classicism should not be passed by.

Then it cannot be gainsaid that the use of pagan classics is necessary in the curriculum of belles-lettres, just as, if we may be allowed the comparison, the study of the sacred books is indispensable to the student of divinity; although even in Holy Writ there are passages which should not be wantonly read, and much less commented upon.

And here we must differ from the admirable letter of Dr. Engbers, who certainly is at home on the subject and makes some excellent points. He avers that it is neither possible nor necessary “to prepare Catholic books for the whole extent of a college education.”

For brevity’s sake we shall not give his reasons, but shall limit

In the first place, it is necessary to prepare text-books of the classics for our schools. For, surely, we cannot trust to the scholar’s hand Horace, or Ovid, or even Virgil, as they came from their authors; and this on the score of morality. Secondly, we have no hesitation in saying that we do not possess as yet a single Latin classic (to speak of Latin alone) so prepared to meet all the requirements of the youthful student. We may almost challenge contradiction when we assert that, in all such editions as are prepared for American schools, the passages really difficult are skipped over. True, it is many years since we had an opportunity of examining such works thoroughly; but from what we knew then, and have looked into lately, we find no reason for a change of opinion. The work of such editions is perfunctorily done. The commentators, annotators, or whatsoever other name they may go by, seem to have only aimed at doing a certain amount of work somewhat à la penny-a-liner; but nothing seems to be done con amore, and much less according to thorough knowledge. Let our readers point to one annotator or editor of any poet adopted in American schools who is truly æsthetic in his labors.

Classics must, then, be prepared. Dr. Engbers avers that we can safely use what we have, no matter by whom they have been prepared; and in this we must willingly yield to his judgment, because it would be temerity in us, who are not a professor and have so far led a life of quite the reverse of classical application, to make an issue with him. But we must be allowed to differ from him in that “we have not the means to provide for all, Pg 192 and our educators are unable to satisfy the wants for the whole college course.”

Let us bear in mind that we limit our disquisition to the Latin classics for the present. What we say about them will be equally applicable to the Greek, as well as to the authors of all nations.

It seems to us abundantly easy to prepare books for this department. Let a certain number of colleges, schools, and seminaries join together, and through their faculties make choice of a competent scholar. Set him apart for one year for the purpose of preparing a neat, cheap school edition of the Latin classics for our Catholic schools. He must limit himself to the Ætas aurea, giving some of those authors in their entirety, such as Nepos; some with a little pruning, such as the Æneid; others, again, summo libandi calamo; while of Cicero and Livy we would advise only selections for a beginning. Of Cicero, e.g., give us a few letters Ad Familiares, his De Oratore, six Orations, Somnium Scipionis, De Officiis, and De Senectute. From what we are going to say it will be evident that no more will be necessary at first. Teach the above well, et satis superque satis!

Exclude from your classes the cramming system. Prof. Cram is the bane, the evil genius of our classical halls. Supporters of the “forty lines a day” rule, listen! It was our good fortune to learn the classics in a Jesuit college. We were in rhetoric. Our professor gave Monday and Wednesday afternoons to Virgil, Tuesday to Homer, and Friday to Horace. Of Virgil we read book vi., and of Horace the third book of Odes—that is, what we did read of them. The professor was a perfect scholar, an orator, magna modis tenuare parvis. One afternoon the rector suddenly put in an appearance with some of the patrassi. As they had taken their seats, the former asked what portions of the Latin classics we had been reading. “Cicero and Livy of the prose, Horace and Virgil of the poets.” “But what part?” quoth he. “Any part,” replied the master. The rector looked puzzled; the boys—well, we do not know, for we had no looking-glass, nor did we look at one another—but perfectly astounded at the coolness of the teacher. One thing, however, all who have survived will remember: the strange feeling that seized us; for “Was he going to make a fool of every one of his boys?” We were eleven in the class. It was a small college, in a provincial town, that has given some very great men to the world, but of which Lord Byron did not sing enthusiastically. There we were: on the pillory, in the stocks, billeted for better for worse, for “what not?” The rector, with ill-disguised impatience, called for one of the boys, and, opening Virgil at random, chanced on the very death of Turnus. The poor boy, pale and trembling, began to read, and on he went, while the relentless questioner seemed carried away by the beauty of the passage, unconscious of the torture to which he had doomed the unlucky pupil. But, no; we take the word back: because Pg 193 as he was advancing he seemed to become more self-possessed, and so much so that at the end he described the last victim of the Lavinian struggle with uncommon pathos, until, with a hoarse sound of his voice, he launched the soul of the upstart sub umbras, just as the teacher would himself have read to us a parallel passage. It was evident that, although he had never before read those lines, he had caught their spirit, and the recitation ended perfectly. Then, as he was requested to render the whole passage into vernacular, with a fluent diction, choice words, and not once faltering, he acquitted himself with universal applause. One or two more boys were called up, and the visitors took their leave much pleased.

Then it was our turn to ask the master why he had done that. “Well, boys,” said he, “I expected it all along. You see it now. How many times you have wondered at my keeping you so long on perhaps only three or four lines a whole afternoon! Now you understand. We have not read Virgil, but we have studied Latin poetry, and you have learned it. In future we shall skim the poets here and there, as I may choose, and at the final exhibition you shall be ready to read to the auditorium any part of the Greek and Latin authors the audience may think fit to call for.” And so we did, and did it well.

Once, being on a school committee, we asked the master of the high-school—and a learned man he was—why he hurried through so many lines. “I cannot help it,” said he; “they must have read so many lines [sic] when they present themselves for examination at Harvard”! Nor shall we omit here to note that young men have failed in the recitation. Prof. Agassiz himself told us that one of his favorite students (whom we knew well) failed because he could not repeat verbatim a certain portion of a treatise on some point of natural philosophy. However, the good professor insisted on the youth being examined as to the sense, and not, parrot-like, repeating sentence after sentence, and the candidate carried the palm.

This “recitation” system, the “forty lines” routine, is a curse. We are sure professors will bear us out in our assertion. Dr. Becker, in his excellent article in the American Catholic Quarterly, deals with this matter in a very luminous style. What use, then, of so many authors, or of the whole of any one of them, for a text-book? Non multa sed multum, and multum in parvo. The bee does not draw all that is garnered in the chalice, but just that much which is necessary to make the honey. No wonder that so few are endowed with the nescio quo sapore vernaculo, as Cicero would call it. We have treasured for the last three-and-forty years the paper on which we copied the description of the war-horse, as rendered by our professor of rhetoric, who gave two lectures on it, bringing in and commenting on parallel descriptions in prose and verse. Nearly half a century has passed away, and those two charming afternoons in that old class-room are yet fresh in our remembrance.

If some prelates have gone so far as to exclude profane classics from the schools in their seminaries altogether, the Holy Father, on the other hand, does not approve of such indiscriminate ostracism; nay, he recommends that a judicious Pg 194 adoption be made of the pagan classics, at the same time bringing before the Catholic student the great patterns of sacred writings which have been preserved for us from the Greek and Latin fathers. Surely only a senseless man would withhold from the “golden-mouthed John” that meed of praise which is allowed to the Athenian Demosthenes. Are they not both noble patterns on which the youthful aspirant to forensic or ecclesiastical eloquence should form himself?

And here it is that the necessity of preparing Catholic text-books becomes self-evident. Outsiders cannot furnish us with the materials we need for a thorough and wholesome Catholic training—even more important, in our estimation, when we take into consideration that such works in extenso are too costly and far beyond the means of the average of scholars. Hence if we are really in earnest in our desire of having perfect Catholic schools, such books must needs be prepared.

After we have carefully prepared proper editions of the pagan classics, Ætatis aureæ, for our schools, what else have we to do to furnish our arsenal with a well-appointed complement? We must look about for a choice of the best Christian Latin classics. As for Christian Latin poets of antiquity, the choice will be less difficult, because there is not an embarrassing wealth of them, yet enough to learn how to convey the holiest ideas in the phraseology of Parnassus, how to sing the praises of Our Lady with the rhythm of the Muses.

It is well known that a new departure is about to take place, nay, has taken place, in the Catholic schools of Europe. The great patristic patterns of oratory and poetry will in future be

The movement inside the Catholic world has become known, because there is no mystery about it, and the Catholic Church, faithful to her Founder’s example, does and says everything “openly.” The debate on the classics is over, and every one is satisfied of the necessity of the new arrangement. Outside the church some one stood on tiptoe, arrectis auribus; all at once a clapping of hands—presto! The chance is caught, the opportunity improved. We have used pagan classics in our schools as they came from a non-Catholic press, and we felt safe in adopting them! Moreover, it has been, so far, next to impossible to detail any one, chosen from our bands, to prepare new sets. Now a plan seems to be maturing, and a line drawn, following which one will know how to work; and it is on this line that the writer is adding his feeble efforts to aid a great cause.

But what of the Christian classics? Obstupescite, cœli! Harper & Brothers have come to the rescue. To them, then, we must suppliantly look for help to open this avenue of Christian civilization—the blended instruction, in our schools, of pagan and Christian training in belles-lettres!

“Latin Hymns, with English Notes. For use in schools and colleges. New York: Harper & Bros., Publishers, Franklin Square. 1875. pp. 333. 12mo, tinted paper, $1 75.”

The book is to be the first of a series of what may be called sacred classics. The second of the series, already printed, is The Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius; it will be followed by Tertullian and Athanagoras (surely a worse choice as regards style could not be made), Pg 195 both in press. Then, “should the series be welcomed, it will be continued with volumes of Augustine, and Cyprian, and Lactantius, and Justin Martyr, and Chrysostom, and others; in number sufficient for a complete college course.”

From a notice intended to usher the whole series before the public we learn that “for many centuries, down to what is called the pagan Renaissance, they [the writings of early Christians] were the common linguistic study of educated Christians.” A startling disclosure to us. For the future, pagan classics are to be eliminated. Is it not evident that the industrious editors have taken the clue from us?—at least for a part of their programme; for they push matters too far.

But here is the mishap. If we have to judge by the first book, their works will be unavailable, their labor bootless. Dr. Parsons closes his admirable translation of Dante’s Inferno (albeit with a little profanity, which we are willing to forgive, considering the subject and its worth) with those imploring words, Tantus labor non sit cassus! Mr. March will find them at page 155 of his book. He may as well appropriate them to himself, with a little suppression, however; nor should he scruple to alter the text, seeing that he has taken other unwarrantable liberties with the ancient fathers. What right has he to mutilate Prudentius’ beautiful hymn De Miraculis Christi, and of thirty-eight stanzas give us only eight, therewith composing, as it were, a hymn of his own, and entitling it De Nativitate Christi? Without entering into other damaging details, we assure the projectors of this new enterprise that they have undertaken a faithless job. Catholic teachers cannot adopt their e.g., that the hymn Stabat Mater is “simple Mariolatry,” to say nothing of other notes equally insulting, especially when we come to the historical department. Nor can it be said that they give proof either of knowledge or of taste when they choose Eusebius for the very first sample of patristic classicism. Ah! sutor, sutor!

But enough. We have dwelt on this new departure of Protestant zeal for the study of the fathers, to give an additional proof in favor of our opinion as to how far we can trust non-Catholic text-books. Even the most superficial reader will at once discover that we only take up side questions, and our remarks and arguments do not in the least clash with the argument and judgment of Dr. Engbers, with whom we agree in the main. We only assert that it would be better were we to strain every nerve in preparing text-books of our own, whilst we also believe it would not be so very difficult to attain the long-wished-for result. It will take some time, it will require sacrifices, yet the object can be accomplished. A beginning has been made already in two American Catholic colleges. Nor should we forget that none but Catholics can be competent to perform such a work. The fathers are our property; and the same divine Spirit that illumined their minds will not fail to guide the pens of those who, in obedience to authority, undertake this work.

As for the Christian authors, the difficulty is in the choice, as Dr. Engbers points out. For the sake of brevity we limit ourselves to the Latin fathers.

From the works of St. Augustine Pg 196 (a mine of great wealth) might be compiled a series of selections which, put together with some from the Ciceronian Jerome and a few others, would furnish an anthology of specimens of eloquence, whether sacred, historical, or descriptive, that could not be surpassed. A judicious spicilegium from the Acta Martyrum and the liturgies of the first ages should form the introductory portion. This first volume would be characteristic. We would suggest that it were so prepared as at once to rivet the attention of the scholar and enamor him with the beauties of apostolic literature.

Dr. Engbers is very anxious—and justly so, when we consider our needs—that something were done to supply our schools with works of “history, natural science, and geography.” Indeed, it is high time that we had a supply of such works. But here many will ask: “Have we resources in our own Catholic community on which to depend for such works?” Most assuredly we have. For, to quote only a few, is not Professor James Hall, of Albany, a Catholic? Indeed he is, and one of the first men in the department of natural history, acknowledged as such by all the eminent societies of the European continent.

And who is superior to S. S. Haldeman, of Pennsylvania? And is he not “one of ours”? The fact is, we do not know our own resources. Here we have two men, inferior to none in their own departments of learning, and they are totally ignored by the Catholic body, to which they nevertheless belong! Indeed, John Gilmary Shea, another of our best men, has touched a sad chord in his article in the first number of the new Catholic Quarterly. We have allowed our best opportunities

We have written under the inspiration and after the guidance of the well-known wishes, nay, commands, of our Holy Father. He insists upon education being made more Christian. His Holiness does not exclude the pagan authors; he wishes them to be so presented to our youth that no harm may result therefrom to the morals of the student; and we have no doubt that the programme we have only sketched will meet with the approval of all who are interested in the matter, and who will give us the credit of having most faithfully adhered to our Holy Father’s admonition.

Nor will the reader charge us with presumption if we dare to quote the words of our great Pope, with the pardonable assurance that no more fitting close could be given to our paper.

Monseigneur Bishop of Calvi and Teano, in the kingdom of Naples, now a cardinal, is a most determined advocate of the needed reform, and justly claims the merit of having been the first to inaugurate it in Italy. In a letter to him Pius IX. sets down the importance of the movement, and distinctly places the limits within which it should be confined in order to attain complete success.

“R. P. D. d’Avanzo, Episcopo Calven, Theanen.[45]

“Pius P.P. IX., Venerabilis Frater, Salutem et Apostolicam Benedictionem.

“Quo libentius ab orbe Catholico indicti a Nobis Jubilæi beneficium fuit exceptum, Venerabilis Frater, eo uberiorem inde fructum expectandum esse confidimus, divina favente clementia. Grati propterea sensus animi, quos hac de causa prodis, iucunde excipimus, Deoque Pg 197 exhibemus, ut emolumentum lætitiæ a te conceptæ respondens diœcesibus tuis concedere velit. Acceptissimam autem habemus eruditam epistolam a te concinnatam de mixta latinæ linguæ institutione. Scitissime namque ab ipsa vindicatur decus christianæ latinitatis, quam multi corruptionis insimularunt veteris sermonis; dum patet, linguam, utpote mentis, morum, usuum publicorum enunciationem, necessario novam induere debuisse formam post invectam a Christo legem, quæ sicuti consortium humanum extulerat et retinxerat ad spiritualia, sic indigebat nova eloquii indole ab eo discreta, quod societatis carnalis, fluxis tantum addictæ rebus, ingenium diu retulerat. Cui quidem observationi sponte suffragata sunt recensita a te solerter monumenta singulorum Ecclesiæ sæculorum; quæ dum exordia novæ formæ subjecerunt oculis, ejusque progressum et præstantiam, simul docuerunt constanter in more fuisse positum Ecclesiæ, juventutem latina erudire lingua per mixtam sacrorum et classicorum auctorum lectionem. Quæ sane lucubratio tua cum diremptam iam disceptationem clariore luce perfuderit, efficacius etiam suadebit institutoribus adolescentiæ, utrorumque scriptorum opera in eius usum esse adhibenda. Hunc Nos labori tuo successum ominamur; et interim divini favoris auspicem et præcipuæ nostræ benevolentiæ testem tibi, Venerabilis Frater, universoque Clero et populo tuo Benedictionem Apostolicam peramanter impertimus.

“Datum Romæ apud S. Petrum die 1 Aprilis anno 1875, Pontificatus Nostri anno Vigesimonono.

“Pius PP. IX.”

This very letter is an instance of the results to which a thorough and judicious mixed Latin classical education will lead the student of Latinity—the resources of the pagan Latin made classically available even to him who is secretary to the Pope ab epistolis Latinis, to which post are appointed those who, with other proper qualifications, are good Latin scholars. Some of these letters, especially XIV. and Pius VI. and VII., are truly Ciceronian in style and language.

We call the closest attention of such of our readers as are not acquainted with Latin to the following translation of the above most important document:

“To the Rev. Father Bartholomew d’Avanzo, Bishop of Calvi and Teano.

“Pius IX., Pope.

“Venerable Brother, health and Apostolic Benediction: In proportion, Venerable Brother, to the eager good-will with which our proclamation of the Jubilee has been received by the Catholic world, is the harvest of good results we expect therefrom under favor of divine mercy. Heartily, therefore, do we welcome the sentiments of gratitude which you express, and offer them to God, that he may vouchsafe to your dioceses a share in your joy. Most seasonable, moreover, do we account the learned letter you have written on the mixed teaching of the Latin language. For with great erudition have you therein vindicated the honor of Christian Latinity, which many have charged with being a corruption of the ancient tongue; whereas it is clear that speech, as the expression of ideas, manners, and public usages, must necessarily have assumed a new garb after the law introduced by Christ—a law which, while it elevated human intercourse, and refashioned it to spiritual requirements, needed a new form of conversation, distinct from that which had so long reflected the bent of a carnal society swayed only by transitory things. And truly the monuments you have skilfully gathered from the several ages of the church afford a self-evident proof of our assertion; for, while they lay before the eyes of the reader the beginnings of the new form, its progress and importance, they also aver it to have been an established practice in the church to train youth in the Latin tongue by a mixed reading of sacred with classic authors. And assuredly this your dissertation, in throwing greater light on a question already well ventilated, will the more effectually urge upon the instructors Pg 198 of youth the advisability of calling to their aid the works of authors of both kinds. Such is the result we predict for your labors; and in the meanwhile, as a pledge of divine favor and a token of our own good-will, we most affectionately bestow upon yourself, Venerable Brother, and upon all your clergy and people, the Apostolic Benediction.

“Given at Rome, at St. Peter’s, on the 1st of April, in the year 1875, the twenty-ninth of our pontificate.”

“Pius PP. IX.”

And thus Roma locuta est!

FLYWHEEL BOB.

BY THE AUTHOR OF “ROMANCE OF CHARTER OAK,” “PRIDE OF LEXINGTON,” ETC., ETC.

Down in a dismal cellar, so poorly lighted, indeed, that you could scarce distinguish his tiny figure when it came into the world, Bob was born. Our little hero began life where we all must end it—underground; and certainly many a burial-vault might have seemed a less grimy, gloomy home than his. But Bob’s wretchedness being coeval with his birth, he never knew what it was to be otherwise than wretched. He cried and crowed pretty much like other infants, and his mother declared he was the finest child ever born in this cellar. “And, O darling!” she sighed more than once, while he snugged to her bosom—“O darling! if you could stay always what you are.” It was easy to feed him, easy to care for him, now. How would he fare along the rugged road winding through the misty future?

Nothing looked so beautiful to his baby eyes as the golden streak across the floor which appeared once a day for a few minutes; and as soon as he was able to creep he moved towards it and tried to catch it, and wondered very much when the streak faded away.

Bob’s only playmate was a poodle dog, who loved the sunshine too, and was able at first to get

When Bob was four years old his mother died. This was too young an age for him to comprehend what had happened. It surprised him a little when they carried the body away; and when she breathed her last words: “I am going, dear one; I wish I could take you with me,” he answered: “Going where, mammy?” “When is mammy coming home?” he asked of several persons who lodged in the cellar with him, and stayed awake the first night a whole hour waiting for her to return. But ere long Bob ceased to think about his mother, and in the course of a month ’twas as if she had never been; there was rather more space in the underground chamber than before, and now he had all the blanket to himself.

Thus we see that the boy began early the battle of life. When he felt hungry, he would enter a baker’s shop near by, and stretch Pg 199 forth his puny hand; and sometimes he was given a morsel of bread, and sometimes he was not. But Bob was too spirited to lie down and starve. So, when the baker shook his head, saying, “You come here too often,” he watched a chance and stole peanuts from the stand on the corner. The Ten Commandments did not trouble him in the least; for he had never heard of them. Bob only knew that there was a day in the week when the baker looked more solemn than on other days, and when the streets were less crowded.

The one thing in the world Bob cherished was Pin. And the feeling was mutual; for not seldom, when the dog discovered a bone or crust of bread among the rubbish-heaps, he would let himself be deprived of the treasure without even a growl. Then, when Christmas came round, Bob and the poodle would stand by the shop-windows and admire the toys together; and the child would talk to his pet, and tell him that this was a doll and that a Noe’s ark. Once he managed to possess himself of a toy which a lady let drop on the side-walk. But he did not keep it long; for another urchin offered him a dime for it, which Bob accepted, then forthwith turned the money into gingerbread, which he shared with Pin.

Such was the orphan’s childhood. He was only one vagrant amid thousands of others. In the great beehive of humanity his faint buzz was unheard, and he was crowded out of sight by the swarm of other bees. Still, there he was, a member of the hive; moving about and struggling for existence; using his sting when he needed it, and getting what honey he could. When the boy was in his seventh year, a

It took a twelvemonth to become reconciled to this misfortune. But Time has broad wings, and on them Time bore away Bob’s grief, as it bears away all our griefs; otherwise, one sorrow would not be able to make room for another sorrow, and we should sink down and die beneath our accumulated burdens.

We have styled Bob a vagrant. Here we take the name back, if aught of bad be implied in it. It was not his fault that he was born in a cellar; and if he stole peanuts and other things, ’twas only when hunger drove him to it. Doubtless, had he first seen the light in Fifth Avenue, he would have known ere this how to spell and say his prayers; might have Pg 200 gone, perhaps, to many a children’s party, with kid gloves on his delicate hands and a perfumed handkerchief for his sensitive little nose. But Bob was not born in Fifth Avenue. He wore barely clothes enough to cover his nakedness. His feet, like his hands, had never known covering of any sort; they were used to the mud and the snow, and once a string of red drops along the icy pavement helped to track him to his den after he had been committing a theft. In this case, however, the blood which flowed from his poor foot proved a blessing in disguise, for Bob spent the coldest of the winter months in the lock-up: clean straw, a dry floor, regular meals—what a happy month!

As for not being able to read—why, if a boy in such ragged raiment as his were to show himself at a public school, other boys would jeer at him, and the pedagogue eye him askance.

But Bob proved the metal that was in him by taking, when he was just eight years of age, a place in a factory. “Yes,” he said to the man who brought him there, “I’d rather work than be idle.”

It were difficult to describe his look of wonder when he first entered the vast building. There seemed to be no end of people—old men, young men, and children like himself, all silent and busy. Around them, above them, on every side of them, huge belts of leather, and rods of iron, and wheels and cog-wheels were whirring, darting in and out of holes, clearing this fellow’s head by a few inches, grazing that one’s back so close that, if he chanced to faint or drop asleep, off in an eye’s twinkle the machinery would whirl him, rags, bones, and flesh making one ghastly pulp together. And

When Bob was an infant, we remember, he used to creep toward the sun-streak on the cellar floor, and cry when it faded away.

Now, although the building where he toiled twelve hours a day was gloomy and depressing, and the sunshine a godsend to the spirits, the boy never lifted his eyes for a single moment when it shimmered through the sooty windows. At his age one grows apace; one is likewise tender and easily moulded into well-nigh any shape.

So, like as the insect, emerging from the chrysalis, takes the color of the leaf or bark to which it clings, Bob grew more and more like unto the soulless machinery humming round him. If whispered to, he made no response. When toward evening his poor back would feel weary, no look of impatience revealed itself on his countenance. If ever he heaved a sigh, no ears heard it, not even his own; and the foreman declared that he was a model boy for all the other boys to imitate—so silent, so industrious, so heartily co-operating with the wheels and cog-wheels, boiler, valves, and steam; in fact, he was the most valuable piece in the whole complicated machinery.

Bob was really a study. There Pg 201 are children who look forward to happy days to come; who often, too, throw their mind’s eye backward on the Christmas last gone by. This Bob never did. His past had no Santa Claus, his present had none, his future had none. It were difficult to say what life did appear to him, as day after day he bent over his task. Mayhap he never indulged in thoughts about himself—what he had been, what he was, what he might become. Certainly, if we may judge by the vacant, leaden look into which his features ere long crystallized, Bob was indeed what the foreman said—a bit of the machinery. And more and more akin to it he grew as time rolled by. Bob had never beheld it except in motion; and on Sundays, when he was forced to remain idle, his arm would ever and anon start off on a wild, crazy whirl; round and round and round it would go; whereupon the other children would laugh and shout: “Hi! ho! Look at Flywheel Bob!”

The child’s fame spread. In the course of time Richard Goodman, the owner of the factory, heard of him. This gentleman, be it known, was subject to the gout; at least, he gave it that name, which sounded better than rheumatism, for it smacked of family, of gentle birth; though, verily, if such an ailment might be communicated through a proboscis, there was not enough old Madeira in his veins to have given a mosquito the gout.

When thus laid up, Mr. Goodman was wont to send for his superintendent to inquire how business was getting on; and it was upon one of these occasions that he first heard of Bob. Although not a person given to enthusiasm, not even when expressing himself on the

“I can’t say whether it would,” replied the manager. “Bob may be ten, or a little under, or a little over. I don’t think he’ll change much from what he is, not if he lives fifty years. His face looks just like something that has been hammered into a certain shape that it can’t get out of.”

“And they talk, too, of limiting the hours of work to ten per day for children between ten and sixteen years,” went on Mr. Goodman, still frowning; “and, what’s more, the bill requires three months’ day-schooling or six months’ night-schooling. I declare, if this bill becomes a law, I’ll retire from business. The public has no right to interfere with my employment of labor. It is sheer tyranny.”

Pg 202 “Well, it would throw labor considerably out of gear,” remarked the superintendent; “for there are a hundred thousand children employed in the shops and factories of this city and suburbs.”

“But, no; the bill sha’n’t pass!” exclaimed Mr. Goodman, thumping his fist on the table. “Why, what’s the use of a lobby, if such a bill can go through?”

Here the foreman smiled, whereupon his employer gave a responsive smile; then pulling the bell, “Now,” said the latter, “let us drink the model boy’s health.” In a few minutes there appeared a decanter of sherry. “Here’s to Flywheel Bob!” cried Mr. Goodman, holding up his glass.

“To Flywheel Bob!” repeated the other; and they both tossed off the wine.

“Flywheel Bob! Why, what a funny name!” spoke a low, silvery voice close by. Mr. Goodman turned hastily round, and there, at the threshold of the study, stood a little girl, with a decidedly pert air, and a pair of lustrous black eyes fixed full upon him; they seemed to say: “I know you told me not to enter here, yet here I am.” A profusion of ringlets rippled down her shoulders, and on one of her slender fingers glittered a gold ring.

“Daisy, you have disobeyed me,” said her father, trying to appear stern; “and, what is more, you glide about like a cat.”

“Do I?” said Daisy, smiling. “Well, pa, tell me who Flywheel Bob is; then I’ll go away.”

“Something down at my factory—a little toy making pennies for you. There, now, retire, darling, retire.”

“A little toy? Then give me Flywheel Bob; I want a new plaything,”

“Well, I’d like to know how many toys you want?” said Mr. Goodman impatiently. “You’ve had dear knows how many dolls since Christmas.”

“Nine, pa.”

“And pray, what has become of them all, miss?”

“Given away to girls who didn’t get any from Santa Claus.”

“I declare! she’s her poor dear mother over again,” sighed the widower. “Margaret would give away her very shoes and stockings to the poor.”

The sigh had barely escaped his lips when the foreman burst into a laugh, and presently Mr. Goodman laughed too; for, lo! peeping from behind the girl’s silk frock was the woolly head of a poodle. In his mouth was a doll with one arm broken off, hair done up in curls like Daisy’s, and a bit of yellow worsted twined around one of the fingers to take the place of a ring. “Humph! I don’t wonder you’ve had nine dolls in five months,” ejaculated Mr. Goodman after he had done laughing. “Rover, it seems, plays with them too; then tears them up.”

“Well, pa, he is tired of dolls now, and wants Flywheel Bob; and so do I.”

“I wish I hadn’t mentioned the boy’s name,” murmured Mr. Goodman. Then aloud: “Daisy dear, I am going out for a drive by and by; which way shall we go? To the Park?”

“No; to Tiffany’s to have my ears pierced.” At this he burst into another laugh.

“Why, pa, I’m almost ten, and old enough for earrings,” added Daisy, tossing her head and making Pg 203 the pretty ringlets fly about in all directions.

“Well, well, darling; then we will go to Tiffany’s.”

“And afterwards, pa, we’ll get Flywheel Bob.”

“Oh! hush, my love. You cannot have him.”

“Him! Is he a little boy, pa?” Mr. Goodman did not answer. “Well, whatever Flywheel Bob is,” she continued, “I want a new plaything. This doll Rover broke all by accident. And I scolded you hard; didn’t I, Rover?” Here she patted the dog’s head. “But, pa, he sha’n’t hurt Flywheel Bob.”

“Well, well, we’ll drive out in half an hour,” said her parent, who would fain have got the notion of Flywheel Bob out of his child’s head, yet feared it might stick there.

“In half an hour,” repeated Daisy, feeling the tips of her ears, while her eyes sparkled like the jewels which were shortly to adorn them. Then, going to the bell, she gave a ring. Mr. Goodman, of course, imagined that it was to order the carriage. But when the domestic appeared, Daisy quietly said: “Jane, I wish the boned turkey brought here.” No use to protest—to tell the child that this room was his own private business room, and not the place for luncheon.

In the boned turkey was brought, despite Mr. Goodman’s sighs. But it was well-nigh more than he could endure when presently, after carving off three slices, she bade Rover sit up and beg.

In an instant the poodle let the doll drop, then, balancing himself on his haunches, gravely opened his mouth. “He never eats anything except boned turkey,” observed Daisy in answer to her father’s look of displeasure. “Bones are

“Umph! he certainly doesn’t look at all like the creature he was when you bought him three years ago,” answered Mr. Goodman.

“Well, pa, this summer I will not go to the White Mountains. Remember!”

“Why not?” inquired Mr. Goodman, who failed to discern any possible connection between the poodle and this charming summer resort.

“Because I want surf-bathing for Rover. I love to throw your cane into the big waves, then see him rush after it and jump up and down in the foam. This season we must go to Long Branch.” Her father made no response, but turned to address a parting word to the superintendent, who presently took leave, highly amused by the child’s bold, pert speeches.

“Now, Daisy, for our drive,” said Mr. Goodman, rising stiffly out of the arm-chair.

But he had only got as far as the door when another visitor was announced. It proved to be a member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals—a society which has already done much good, and whose greatest enemy is the ill-judged zeal of some of its own members.

“What on earth can he want?” thought Mr. Goodman, motioning to the gentleman to take a seat.

“I am come, sir,” began the latter, “to inquire whether you would accept the position of president of our society? We have much to contend with, and gentlemen like yourself—gentlemen of wealth and influence in the community—are needed to assist us.”

Pg 204 Mr. Goodman, who in reality cared not a rush how animals were treated, yet was ambitious to be known as a citizen of influence, bowed and replied: “I feel highly honored, sir, and am willing to become your president.” Then, filling anew the wine-glasses, he called out:

“Here is success and prosperity to—”

“Flywheel Bob,” interrupted Daisy. “For, pa, he is a little boy, isn’t he? A little boy making pennies?”

Mr. Goodman frowned, while the child laughed and Rover barked. But presently the toast to the society was duly honored, after which the visitor proceeded to speak of several cruel sports which he hoped would soon be put a stop to. “Turkey-matches on Thanksgiving day must be legislated against, Mr. President.” Mr. President bowed and waved his hand. “And there is talk, sir, of introducing fox-chases, as in England. This sport must likewise be prevented by law.” Another bow and wave of the hand.

“Well, pa, you sha’n’t stop me killing flies; for flies plague Rover,” put in Daisy, with a malicious twinkle in her eye.

Again the poodle barked. Then, clapping her hands, off she flew to get her hat and gloves, leaving the gentlemen smiling at this childish remark.

“My darling,” said Mr. Goodman a quarter of an hour later, as they were driving down Fifth Avenue together—“my darling, I have been placed at the head of another society—a society to prevent cruelty to animals.”

“I am glad,” replied Daisy, looking up in his face. “Everybody likes you, pa; don’t they?”

Daisy, let us here observe, was

But to Daisy he did unbend. He loved to caress her, to talk to her, too, about matters and things which she could hardly understand. And she would always listen and appear very pleased and interested. Search the whole city of New York, and you would not have found another of her age with so much tact when she chose to play the little lady, nor a better child, either, considering how thoroughly she had been spoilt. If Daisy was a tyrant, she was a very loving one indeed, and none knew this better than her father and the poodle, who is now perched on the front cushion of the barouche, looking scornfully down at the curs whom he passes, and saying to himself: “What a lucky dog I am!”

“I am sure the Society to prevent Cruelty to Animals will do good,” observed Daisy, after holding up her finger a moment and telling Rover to sit straight. “But, pa, is Flywheel Bob an animal or a toy? Or is he really a little boy, as I guessed awhile ago?”

“There it comes again,” murmured Mr. Goodman. Then, with a slight gesture of impatience, he answered: “A boy, my love, a boy.”

“Well, what a funny name, pa! Oh! I’m glad we’re going to see him.”

“No, dear, we are going to Tiffany’s—to Tiffany’s, in order to have Pg 205 your darling ears pierced and elegant earrings put in them.”

“I know it, pa, but I ordered James to drive first to the factory.”

No use to protest. The coachman drove whither he was bidden. But not a little surprised was he, when they arrived, to see his young mistress alight instead of his master.

“I am too lame with gout to accompany her,” whispered Mr. Goodman to the foreman, who presently made his appearance. “It is an odd whim of hers. Don’t keep her long, and take great care about the machinery.”

“I’ll be back soon, pa,” said Daisy—“very soon.” With this she and Rover entered the big, cheerless edifice, which towered like a giant high above all the surrounding houses.

“Now, Miss Goodman, keep close to me and walk carefully,” said her guide.

“Let me hold your hand,” said the child, who already began to feel excited as the first piece of machinery came in view. Then, pausing at the threshold of floor number one, “Oh! what a noise,” she cried, “and what a host of people! Which one is Flywheel Bob?”

“Yonder he sits, miss,” replied the superintendent, pointing to the curved figure of a boy—we might better say child; for, in the two and a half years since we last met him, Bob has hardly grown a quarter of an inch. “Why doesn’t he sit straight?” asked Daisy, approaching him.

“Because, miss, Bob minds his task.”

“Well, he does indeed; for he hasn’t looked at me once, while all the rest are staring.”

“You are the first young lady that

“Am I?” exclaimed Daisy, not a little gratified to have so many eyes fastened upon her. At children’s parties, pretty as she was, she had rivals; here there were none. And now, as she moved daintily along, with her glossy curls swaying to and fro, and her sleeves not quite hiding the gold bracelets on her snowy wrists, she formed indeed a bewitching picture. Presently they arrived beside Flywheel Bob; then Daisy stopped and surveyed him attentively, wondering why he still refused to notice her. “How queerly he behaves!” she said inwardly, “and how pale he is! I wonder what he gets to eat? His fingers are like spiders’ claws. I’d rather be Rover than Bob.” While she thus soliloquized the poodle kept snuffing at the boy’s legs, and his tail, which at first had evinced no sign of emotion, was now wagging slowly from side to side, like as one who moves with doubt and deliberation. Mayhap strange thoughts were flitting through Rover’s head at this moment. Perchance dim memories were being awakened of a damp abode underground; of a baby twisting knots in his shaggy coat; of hard times, when a half-picked bone was a feast. Who knows? But while the dog poked his nose against the boy’s ragged trowsers, while his tail wagged faster and faster, while his mistress said to herself: “I’ll tell pa about poor Bob, and he shall come to Long Branch with us,” the object of her pity continued as unmoved by the attention bestowed on him as if he had been that metal rod flashing back and forth in yon cylinder.

“How many hours does Bob work?” inquired Daisy, moving Pg 206 away and drawing Rover along by the ear; for Rover seemed unwilling to depart.

“Twelve, miss,” replied the foreman.

“Twelve!” repeated Daisy, lifting her eyebrows. “Does he really? Why, I don’t work two. My governess likes to drive in the Park, and so do I; and we think two hours long enough.”