Chapter VII · (continued 3)

As he retired, Richard Southwell appeared.

Audley immediately began to interrogate him.

“Your name?”

“Richard Southwell.”

“Your age?”

“Twenty-four years.”

“Your profession?”

“The king’s clerk.”

“You swear,” said the chancellor to the witness, “that the testimony you are about to render before the court, and before the jury interposed between our sovereign lord the king and the prisoner at the bar, will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God.”

“I have no testimony to offer,” said Richard.

“What!” exclaimed Audley. “Here is Master Rich, who cites you as having been present at a conversation he had in the Tower prison with Sir Thomas More.”

“Master Rich says just what it suits him to say. The truth is, I went with Master Palmer to remove the books of Sir Thomas because I was obliged to do it. I found Master Rich there, whereat I was surprised. Everybody knows what Rich is, and what confidence should be placed in anything he asserts. I will swear, then, to nothing, nor take any oath on a matter of business in which he is mixed up, being well assured in advance that it can only be something bad.”

Rich’s face became purple.

“My lord chancellor,” cried the new solicitor-general, “the witness insults the court.”

“Master Rich, yes; but the court, no,” growled Audley. He answered nothing, and had not VIII. each day surrounded himself, in order to serve his frenzies, abhorred him and sought only his destruction, or to elevate themselves one above another by crushing each other. “You refuse to swear, then?” said he to the witness, without deigning to listen to the recriminations of Rich.

“Yes, my lord,” replied Southwell.

“The witness will pay a fine.”

“Very well, my lord! I know that I owe it.”

And Southwell retired. Then a profound silence reigned throughout the assembly, because the decisive moment approached.

Meanwhile, the lord chief-justice, the timid Fitz-James, arose at a sign given him by Audley, and in a trembling voice propounded the following questions to the jury:

“Has Sir Thomas More rendered himself guilty of the crime of high treason towards our lord the king in refusing, through a spirit of malice, treachery, and obstinacy, the oath which he demands of him as supreme head of the church on earth? Is Sir Thomas More guilty of resisting the statute of Parliament which has conferred this dignity on our lord and master, King Henry VIII.?”

The court officers struck a blow with their maces.

The judges all arose, and the court marched out majestically, while the jury retired into another room.

“Now we shall see if Rich is sure of his jury,” said Cromwell to himself, following them with his eyes; and not looking before him, he trod Pg 365 on the train of the chancellor’s robe, who turned round, impatiently saying that he had offended his dignity. Cromwell began to laugh; for he cared little for the dignity of this chancellor of recent date and mediocre worth—and he continued to look behind him.

“Well! this will soon be ended,” said Sir Thomas; and he asked the yeomen who guarded him permission to approach one of the windows looking out on the courtyard.

More humane than the tigers who had just gone out, these rude men granted his request.

Sir Thomas looked out, but a broad, sculptured cornice extending around the gallery prevented him from seeing if his daughter was still below, and his eyes rested only on the magnificent view to be enjoyed from the apartments of Lambeth Palace. The sun was reflected upon the surface of the river, and he could see even the smallest boat that glided on the water.

“Is she still there?” thought Sir Thomas, as he leaned his head against the window. “Well, it is all over.” He stepped back, and gazed out into the distance. “This whole city,” he said, “comes, goes, stirs, agitates itself. What matters it to them that a man is condemned in a corner? Had they need of my services, they would run—‘Sir Thomas! there is Sir Thomas!’ They would follow; they would call me. Now the crowd forgets us in two days! An immense abyss, an entire chaos, almost a generation, separates the evening from the morrow! My friends are afraid—those, at least, who remain to me. They grieve in secret. The tears will be wiped from their eyes in obscurity; but my daughter, who will dry hers? She will pass away

He wiped his forehead; for it was damp and hot.

“It is impossible for them not to condemn me!” And he leaned against the window-sill, scarcely able to stand on his feet; he experienced a sort of faintness for which he could not account, and which obliged him to change his posture every moment. “Nothing! There is no word from them. My God! they are a long time. And for what purpose, when all was decided in advance? O Rochester! where art thou? It is this that lowers my courage. Well! they do not return. What can this jury be doing? It seems to me that it is already two hours since they went out.” He looked around him, and saw that the two guards had commenced a game of cards.

“How much a game?” said the bigger of the two.

“A penny.”

“A penny!” cried the other. “Of what are you dreaming, Scotchman? The profit of a week! A half-penny now, and more on trust if—You understand me?” And he made a gesture as if drinking.

“Always drinking, always drinking!” replied his adversary.

They were dealing the cards, when the maces of the court officers resounded on the floor, announcing that the deliberations were ended and the court was returning.

“What!” cried the two gamesters, “they have finished already? How they have hurried over this business! Ordinarily they take an hour, at least.”

They hastened to gather up their cards and conceal them under their jackets.

At a signal given by the officers Pg 366 Sir Thomas came hurriedly out from the deep embrasure of the window where he was leaning. He then observed a man and a young girl, who, alone in the midst of this vast enclosure, were gazing in every direction, astonished at the solitude in which they found themselves, and seeking him whom their hearts loved.

“Margaret!” cried Sir Thomas—“Margaret here at this fatal moment! No grief must, then, be spared me!”

At the voice of More his daughter rushed toward him. She covered his face with kisses and tears. Pierre Gilles was at her side.

“Pierre Gilles here!” cried More.

Meanwhile, the heavy doors rolled on their hinges, and the judges approached.

“O More! O my friend! is the trial ended, that I see you alone and at liberty here?”

“Yes! it is over,” said More; “but not as you think,” he added, lowering his voice. “My friend, in the name of our tender friendship, take Margaret away! I will see you again in a moment. I pray you, one minute, one minute only, go, take her out, if you love me, if you have loved me! Ah! Pierre Gilles, thou here? I confide her to thee!” And Sir Thomas cast on him a glance so imploring, and an expression so deep, that the heart of one father was immediately comprehended by the other.

Pierre Gilles made a rapid movement to lead the young girl out. He was too late; the court had entered, and the judges had taken their places. The chancellor remained standing in the midst of them, and, turning to the foreman of the jury, who advanced, he put the terrible question:

“Is the accused guilty?”

“Upon all the counts!” repeated Pierre Gilles.

“What did he say?” cried Margaret, transfixed with expectation and terror. “My father guilty? No, never! Pierre Gilles, what did he say? Guilty? Oh! no, no. My father!”

The young girl pronounced this word so tenderly, with a cry so piercing, an accent of despair so heartrending, that Sir Thomas trembled from head to foot, and it seemed his soul was shaken to its very depths.

“In mercy take her away!” he said in a faint voice.

“Guilty!” repeated Margaret—“guilty! They have dared say it. Guilty! Then all is finished! He is lost, condemned! O cowardice! O horror! Guilty!”

And a change so horrible came over her features that Margaret was unrecognizable.

“Sir Thomas More guilty before God and before man!” she pursued with a smile of frightful bitterness, while her eyes remained dry. “Pierre Gilles, you have heard it; have I not told you? O ignoble creatures! Behold them, these bloody judges—this Cromwell, with his livid face, and envy corroding his heart; this Audley, vender of consciences; this Cranmer, renegade archbishop! No, you do not know them! There they are before your eyes, and they invoke the name of Almighty God! One day, yes, one day, we also will see them before the tribunal of the Sovereign Judge—before that tribunal without appeal and without mercy—to receive the reward of perjury and of murder. May Heaven hear my cry; may my tears mount to the skies, and fall Pg 367 back upon them to add new strength to the remorse which they have so long sought to tear from their hearts!”

“What woman is this,” said Cromwell, “who dares to disturb the court?”

“Nay, Master Cromwell,” replied More in a stifled voice, “pardon her! She is a child. Alas! you know her well.”

“Bear her away,” said Audley instantly.

“Officer, lead that woman out!” exclaimed Cromwell in a voice of thunder.

“My daughter, my cherished daughter, follow Pierre Gilles! My friend, take her out!” cried Sir Thomas.

“I will not go!” exclaimed Margaret, bracing her feeble feet against the long stone slabs.

“Will you suffer a varlet to lay his hands on you, Margaret?” said Pierre Gilles, whose tears streamed down his cheeks and stifled his voice.

“Yes, anything! If I leave him, they will let me see him no more.”

“Sheriff, do you hear?” cried Cromwell.

“O Master Cromwell!” exclaimed Margaret, falling on her knees and raising her suppliant hands toward him. “But, no,” she said, immediately rising again, “I will not descend so low! Implore him? You may annihilate but never demean me!” And casting a withering glance upon Cromwell, she seized the arm of Pierre Gilles, and, dragging him away, left the place without even looking toward her father.

This scene created some disturbance in the horrible assembly, and a moment of silence and hesitation followed, when Cromwell made a sign to the lord chancellor not to let it be prolonged.

“My lord chancellor,” he said, “when I had the honor of being at the head of justice, the custom was to demand of the prisoner, before pronouncing sentence, if he had anything to say that might arrest the judgment about to be rendered against him. I ask, then, to say a few words.”

“And what can you have to say?” asked Audley brusquely.

“Much, my lord,” answered Sir Thomas; “for, now that I have been condemned, and it can no more seem like presuming on my own strength in exposing myself to death, I can discharge my conscience, and speak freely and without restriction. I therefore declare, in the presence of your lordships here present, that I regard the statute of Parliament as entirely illegal and contrary to all laws, divine and human, and my accusation, consequently, as being completely null. Parliament has no right, and cannot in any manner have the power, to give the church a temporal head. In conferring the spiritual government of one portion of Christendom on another than the Bishop of Rome, whose universal supremacy has been established in the person of St. Peter, chief of the apostles, by the mouth of our Lord Jesus Christ himself when he was present and visible on earth, Parliament has exceeded the limits of its authority. There are not, therefore, and there cannot be, among Catholic Christians, laws sufficient to oblige a Christian to obey a power which might have been usurped in order to prove this assertion. I will say, moreover, that the Parliament of this kingdom can no more bind all Christendom by such an act Pg 368 than one small portion of the church can make a law in opposition to the general law of the church universal; or than the city of London, which is only a member in comparison with the body of the state, can make a law against an act of Parliament which would bind the whole kingdom. I will add, furthermore, that this law is contrary to all the statutes and to all the laws in force until this day, and any yet reported, especially to these words written in the great charter: ‘The English Church is free, her rights shall remain untouched, and none of her liberties shall be cut off’; finally, that it is contrary to the oath taken by the king at his consecration, in presence of all the assembled people. And I say that there is far more ingratitude in the English Parliament refusing to acknowledge the authority and spiritual supremacy of the pope than there would be in a child refusing to obey its father; because it is to Pope St. Gregory that we are indebted for the knowledge of the Holy Gospel; it is he who regenerated us—a heritage richer and more desirable than that which any father according to the flesh can bequeath to his children. Yes, noble lords, I confess before you that, since this question has been raised among us, I have spent days and nights in examining it, and I have been unable to find in the centuries passed, or in the works of any doctors, a single example, or even a sentiment, which may authorize a temporal king to usurp the spiritual government of the church. And consider: this divine authority, necessary to the unity and the purity of the Christian faith, would then be committed, in the course of time, in following the order of succession established in this kingdom, to the feeble hands

“Then,” said Audley, interrupting him with a smile of mockery and disdain, “you esteem yourself wiser than, and believe you possess a knowledge and degree of enlightenment far above that of, the bishops, the reverend doctors, the nobility, and the people of the kingdom generally!”

“I doubt, my lord,” replied Sir Thomas firmly, “of there having been this unanimity between them in which your lordship appears to believe; but, supposing it existed, if we are to judge by the number, it must be very much less even than that of the Christians who are spread throughout the whole world, and of those who, having gone before them in life, are now among the glorious saints in heaven.”

“Sir Thomas,” cried the Duke of Norfolk, reddening, “you show clearly how far your malice and obstinacy extend.”

“Noble duke,” replied More, “you are mistaken: it is neither malice nor obstinacy which makes me speak thus, but rather the desire and the necessity of clearing my conscience; and I call upon God, who sees and hears us, to witness that this is the only sentiment inspiring my heart!”

Cromwell, in the meantime, grew very impatient at this debate, and made signals in vain to Audley that he should impose silence on Sir Thomas; but the former hesitated, stammered, and delayed pronouncing his sentence, resolving in his mind not to take upon himself the responsibility of the proceeding. Pg 369 All at once he turned toward the lord chief-justice, Fitz-James.

“Why,” said he, “Sir John, do you not assist me with your opinion? Could it be true that our sentence were unlawful? Speak! Are you not the lord chief-justice?”

At this question a frightful apprehension arose in the soul of the weak judge; he was conscious of the adroit snare into which he had been drawn. They questioned him directly; they placed in the hollow of his hand the weights which were to turn the balance and decide the fate of Sir Thomas, his benefactor and friend. He paled visibly and answered nothing.

“Well!” said Cromwell, “the chancellor interrogates you, my lord, and it seems you hesitate in your reply!”

If he had had courage, he might, perhaps, have saved More; it failed him. “I think,” he answered in an evasive way, less odious perhaps, but none the less criminal, “that if the statute of Parliament was illegal, the process of law would be equally so.”

“Assuredly,” said Cromwell with a bitter smile, “this is very judicious. If there was no law, there could be no criminal; and if there was no day, there would be no night—there are some things which reason themselves so naturally that we cannot but concede them.” As he said these words, he passed to the chancellor the sentence of condemnation.

Audley read it in a very loud tone, which he lowered, however, when he came to the details of the execution, which set forth that Sir Thomas, after having been carried back to the Tower by Lieutenant Kingston, should be dragged through the streets of the city on a hurdle; led afterward to Tyburn,

While the sentence was being read the face of Sir Thomas More remained impassible. At the end only a slight start seemed to denote some feeling. He lowered his head, and it was seen, by an almost imperceptible movement of his lips, that he prayed.

A profound silence reigned around him, and it seemed that no human voice or respiration dared be raised in the presence of such cool atrocity.

After a moment a slight sigh was heard.

“A death of infamy may not be,” murmured the Duke of Norfolk; “he has been lord chancellor!”

He leaned over toward Cromwell. “You have deceived me,” he said. “Decapitation is the only punishment which can be inflicted on him. He has been lord chancellor! Have you thought of that?”

“But,” replied Cromwell, “the law is positive; such is the penalty that follows the refusal of the oath.”

“The king will dispense with the gibbet,” said Norfolk angrily, “or I am not chief of his council!”

“We will see,” said Cromwell. “That will matter nothing, provided he dies,” he added to himself.

Lord Fitz-James had heard Norfolk’s remark, and, unable to restrain his tears, addressed him. “My lord,” he said in an oppressed voice, “the king might be willing to grant his pardon. Ask Sir Thomas Pg 370 if he have not yet something to say. Perhaps, alas! perhaps he may be induced to make some act of submission.”

Norfolk made a sign of approval. “Sir Thomas,” he said, “you have heard what are the rigors of the law, and the penalty that your inconceivable obstinacy calls down upon your head. Speak, then; have you nothing to reply that may give us the means of mitigating it?”

Sir Thomas raised his head, and looked at him for a moment with an expression of calmness, of gentleness, benevolence, and dignity which it is impossible for any human pen to describe. “Noble duke,” he answered, “no, I have nothing more to say; I have only to submit to the sentence you have passed on me. There was a time when you honored me with the name of friend; I dare believe that I still remain worthy of it. I regard the words you have addressed to me as a souvenir of that good-will, old and proven, which you have felt for me. I would thank you for it at this last moment; for I hope that we may meet again in a better world, where all these dissensions shall have St. Stephen, is now united with him in heaven, where they love with an eternal love, so I hope also that your lordships, who have been my judges here on earth, and all those who have participated in any way in my death, may be eternally reunited and happy in possession of the salvation which our divine Saviour Jesus Christ has merited for us on the cross. To this end I will pray from my heart for your lordships, and above all for my lord the king, that God may accord him faithful counsellors, and that the truth may no longer remain hidden from him.”

And saying these words with much sweetness and fulness of heart, Sir Thomas was silent.

As soon as he had ceased speaking the guards, by Cromwell’s order, pressed around him. An axe was raised, the edge of which was turned toward the condemned by a man who walked before him. And so he was led back on foot, through the streets, to the Tower, there to wait until the hour of execution should be appointed by the king, after he had affixed his signature to the death-warrant.

Pg 371

TESTIMONY OF THE CATACOMBS TO PRAYERS FOR THE DEAD AND THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS.[110]

Mr. Withrow claims to have produced the only English book on the Catacombs in which the latest results of exploration are fully given and interpreted from a Protestant point of view. We must decline to acknowledge the justice of his claim. His book is very far indeed from giving the latest results of exploration, and he certainly is not the first who has attempted to interpret them from a Protestant point of view. He is, however, as far as we know, the last; and as he has pretty faithfully repeated all the misstatements and mistakes of his various predecessors in the same subject, only adding a few more of his own, it will be worth while to set before our readers a short refutation of some of them. Indeed, this work of refutation is the more necessary because “the testimony of the Catacombs relative to primitive Christianity” is daily increasing in value, as our knowledge of the Catacombs is becoming more exact and scientific. Some years ago, and to some intelligences even now, a painting or an inscription from the Catacombs was “a monument of ancient Christianity,” and one such monument was as good evidence as another of primitive Christian doctrine. It has been reserved to the labors of De Rossi to introduce light and order into this chaos; and those who profess to publish the fruits p. 431). But of the inscriptions which he proceeds to quote, one is spurious (Alexander mortuus non est, etc.); others belong to the years 449, 544, etc., long after the practice of burial in the Catacombs had ceased. And we shall presently have occasion to notice other sins, scarcely less flagrant, against every canon of chronology belonging to the subject Pg 372 which he professes to handle. But first let us say a few words as to what those canons are, and how they have been established.

It is only in our own day that the study of inscriptions generally, and especially of Christian inscriptions, has received that development which entitles it to a place among real sciences. It has now acquired a light and a solidity which constitute it one of the most trustworthy founts of ancient history. To confine ourselves, however, strictly within the limits of our present argument, we will speak only of the method which has been followed by De Rossi during the thirty years he has devoted so assiduously to this subject, and whereby he has been enabled to discover the laws which regulated the gradual development of Christian epigraphy. If we must summarize his method in a single word, we should say that his secret consists in a minute study of the topography of all inscriptions. In every fresh excavation—i.e., in every reopening of the galleries and chambers of the Catacombs, and clearing away the débris with which they have been so long encumbered—he has carefully marked and registered every stone, and even every fragment of every stone, bearing so much as a single letter or symbol engraved upon it, and taken note of the precise spot where it has been found. When a sufficient space has been cleared to enable him to make a study of its contents, he collects all the stones that have been discovered within this area; carefully eliminates all those which have evidently fallen through the luminaria, or in other ways have been introduced from the upper world; next, makes a separate class of those whose place of origin is doubtful—those in situ, still closing the graves to which they were originally attached—and these, of course, are cardinal points in his system of arrangement; of many others he knows the chamber or gallery whence they came; and of all he minutely examines the language, the symbols, monograms or other ornaments, the form of the letters, the names, and, finally, the style and epigraphic formulæ; and the minute study of the inscriptions of innumerable areæ of various cemeteries according to this strict topographical system has led to wonderfully interesting and important discoveries, both as to their history and chronology. This process of examination, it need hardly be said, is laborious and wearisome in the extreme; even the material difficulties which surround it are not slight. It sometimes happens that within the limits of a single area—e.g., in that of St. Eusebio’s monument in the cemetery of San Callisto—there are upwards of a thousand fragments of epitaphs to be sifted and classified. De Rossi, therefore, occasionally gives utterance to a pathetic lament as to the dry and tedious character of the task he has imposed upon himself. Nevertheless, he has persevered in it with the most conscientious fidelity, even when at times the attempt at arrangement seemed almost desperate, and the results have in the end abundantly rewarded his labors. It is with these results that we are at present concerned; and it Pg 373 is obvious that in these pages we can only reproduce them: we cannot enter into an examination of the evidence upon which they rest. This is the less necessary, however, since even the most bitter of Protestant controversialists admit that “De Rossi has the rare merit of stating his facts exactly and impartially, precisely as he finds them,” and that “his assiduous researches have been conducted with a sincere zeal for truth.”

Let us proceed, then, to state some of the conclusions to which De Rossi’s researches have led him—first, upon the general subject of the chronology of the inscriptions which have come to us from the Catacombs, and next as to the dogmatic allusions contained in them. And first, as to the inscriptions, it is patent that not one in ten bears its date on the face of it. Are the other nine (speaking generally) older or more recent? De Rossi pronounces quite positively in favor of their greater antiquity. He says that the most ancient Christian epitaphs make no mention either of the day or year of decease; that during the time of the first emperors there are very few exceptions to this rule; that in the third century the mention of the day and month of the decease was not uncommon, though the year was still passed over in silence; finally, that in the fourth century this also was added.[111] But he says that there are other tokens, such as the number and character of the names or of the symbols employed, the style of diction, the form of the letters, etc., which, if carefully examined and compared with one another, enable us not unfrequently to make a very probable statement as probabili non raro sententiâ definies); if, in addition to this, we know the place where the inscription was found, and have had the opportunity of examining other inscriptions found in the same neighborhood, then it will rarely happen that there is any doubt at all about the age to which it belongs. It is not, of course, meant that it is possible to fix the year, or even the decade or score of years, perhaps, to which it belongs; but De Rossi would certainly fix its chronology within the limits of half a century or less (tum de ætate latè saltem sumptâ vix unquam grave dubium supererit); he certainly would never be in doubt with reference to any particular inscription, still less with reference to a whole class of inscriptions, whether it belongs to the ages of persecution or to the end of the fourth century.

Now, Mr. Withrow is either aware of these canons whereby the chronology of the inscriptions from the Catacombs is fixed, or he is not. If he is not, he is quite incompetent to follow by their means (as he professes to do, p. 415) “the development of Christian thought from century to century, and to trace the successive changes of doctrine and discipline.” If he is aware of them, his reasoning is most disingenuous when he first seeks to settle a disputed question by the testimony of the dated inscriptions of the first three centuries (p. 426)—which are not more than thirty in number altogether—and then proceeds to argue that “if those inscriptions which apparently favor Romish dogmas, of which we know the date, are all of a late period, we may assume that those of a similar character which are undated are of the same relative age, and therefore valueless as evidence of the antiquity of such Pg 374 dogmas” (p. 446). There is no necessity, and indeed no room, for “assumption” at all. The question can be decided by scientific rules whether such and such inscriptions belong to the third century or the fifth, and he ought honestly to have told his readers as much, and to have stated what that decision is. As he has failed to do so, we must supply the omission.

First, however, let the limits of our task be clearly defined. We are not undertaking to establish any point of Christian doctrine by the unaided evidence of inscriptions or paintings from the cemeteries, though we are far from saying that there are none which might be so established. But at present we are only concerned to refute Mr. Withrow’s Protestant interpretation of these monuments, and to show that they at least favor, if they do not demand, a Catholic interpretation. We know that not even the writings of the Fathers present a complete picture of the whole doctrinal system of the age to which they belong, but must be studied by the light reflected upon them from the more developed and systematic expositions of those who came after them. Still less do we think it reasonable to look in a collection of epitaphs for a clear statement of the articles of faith professed by those who wrote them; the utmost that can be expected is that they should contain what De Rossi calls “dogmatic allusions”—more or less distinct, if you will, but always, or at least generally, merely indirect and casual. And as to drawing any trustworthy conclusions with reference to the antiquity of this or that Christian doctrine from the supposed absence of all allusion to it in the dated tombstones of the first three centuries, the mere enunciation of

Yet we are sorry to say that Mr. Withrow has been guilty of even worse absurdity than this, if it ought not rather to be called dishonesty. It is certainly worse than mere literary or dialectic trifling—it looks like a wilful throwing of dust in the reader’s eyes—to assert in the text (p. 517) that the order of acolytes, “discontinued in the Protestant communion,” was “probably the offspring of the increasing pomp and dignity of the bishops to whom they acted as personal attendants, especially in public processions and religious festivals,” and that “the only dated epitaphs of acolytes are of a comparatively late period,” whilst forced to acknowledge in a note that “Cornelius, Bishop of Rome in the third century” (A.D. 250)—i.e., at a time when “the pomp and dignity of bishops” consisted in their being the special objects of imperial persecution, and the only “public processions” in which they can have taken part were those in which they were led forth to public execution—that Cornelius, Bishop of Rome in the middle of the third century, “says there were in that church forty-two acolytes.” What does Mr. Withrow mean by placing these two statements together in the way we have described? Does he really wish to insinuate that the absence of an ancient dated epitaph of a deceased acolyte ought to counterbalance the testimony of the bishop to the existence of forty-two living ones? or does he think that the Protestant public, for whose tastes he so unscrupulously caters, will read his text and overlook his notes? or, finally, that, reading the notes, they will nevertheless give greater weight to the uncharitable suggestion of a Protestant clergyman Pg 375 in the nineteenth century than to the testimony of an eye-witness, who was also pope, in the third? Had the order of acolytes been retained instead of being rejected by the Protestant communion, doubtless Mr. Withrow would have recognized the conclusiveness of the evidence of Pope Cornelius; he would have seen that the forty-two acolytes who were alive in A.D. 250 must sooner or later have died, and been buried in Christian cemeteries, and consequently that the non-discovery there of any dated epitaphs recording their decease is “valueless as evidence” against the antiquity of their order.

But we will not detain our readers any longer by pointing out the curiosities with which Mr. Withrow’s volume abounds, but proceed at once to redeem our promise of setting before them the real state of “the testimony of the Catacombs relative to primitive Christianity” on one or two of the more prominent doctrines of the Catholic faith. We have said that it is unreasonable to look for a profession of faith in an epitaph. But there is one point on which we should be disposed to make an exception to this remark. We think it is quite natural to expect from a large collection of sepulchral inscriptions considerable information as to the belief of those to whom they belonged with reference to the present condition or future prospects of the dead, and their relations with the survivors; and in this expectation the inscriptions from the Catacombs do not disappoint us. Let us call them into court, and hear what evidence they can give.

Mr. Withrow shall open the pleadings, and it must be allowed that he does so with a very loud blast of his trumpet, and one which “gives p. 418). “There is not a single inscription,” he says, “nor painting, nor sculpture, before the middle of the fourth century, that lends the least countenance to the erroneous dogmas of the Church of Rome. All previous to this date are remarkable for their evangelical character, and it is only after that period that the distinctive peculiarities of Romanism begin to appear.” Presently he quotes what he calls “the first dated inscription possessing any doctrinal character.” It belongs to the year 217, and states of the deceased that he was “received to God” (receptus ad Deum) on such a day; whereupon our author exclaims: “We have here the earliest indication of doctrinal belief as to the condition of the departed. It is not, however, a dark and gloomy apprehension of purgatorial fires, but, on the contrary, the joyous confidence of immediate reception into the presence of God.” Twenty pages later, however, he is obliged to acknowledge that “there occur in the Catacombs frequent examples of acclamations addressed to the departed, expressive of a desire for their happiness and peace; and these acclamations have been quoted by Romanist writers as indicating a belief in the doctrine of purgatory and in the efficacy of prayers on behalf of the dead”; and he proceeds to give a score of examples, such as these: Vivas in Deo, in Deo Christo—Mayest thou live in God, in God Christ; Vivas inter sanctos—Mayest thou live among the saints; Deus tibi refrigeret, spiritum tuum refrigeret—God refresh thee, or refresh thy spirit; Pax tibi—Peace be to thee, etc. But, he says, “it will be perceived that these are not intercessions for the dead, but mere apostrophes addressed to them; they were no more prayers for the Pg 376 souls of the departed than is Byron’s verse, ‘Bright be the place of thy rest.’” Mr. Withrow continues, and is presently obliged to make a still further concession—viz., that “the wish does sometimes take the form of a prayer for the beloved one,” and he gives half a dozen examples, one of which he curiously misunderstands, and another we do not recognize as belonging to the Catacombs. However, five at least are genuine, and we could have furnished him with a score or two of others, all containing distinct prayers “to God,” “to the Lord,” “to the Lord Jesus,” “to remember the deceased,” “to remember him for ever,” “to refresh his spirit,” “not to suffer his spirit to be brought into darkness,” etc. How is such evidence as this to be withstood? Mr. Withrow shows himself quite equal to the occasion: “They are intense expressions of affection of the ardent Italian nature, that would fain follow the loved object beyond the barrier of a tomb” (p. 443). “They are the only witnesses that keen Roman Catholics can adduce from the Christian inscriptions of the first six centuries,” but “no accumulation of such evidence affords the slightest warrant for the corrupt practice of the Church of Rome.”

We need hardly say that Mr. Withrow is not the first who has thus “interpreted” these epitaphs “from a Protestant point of view.” Mr. Burgon had long since given the same explanation, and even quoted the same poetical illustration from Byron. But we must confine ourselves to Mr. Withrow, and follow him through his graduated scale of confessions. They may be cast in this form: the earliest inscription bearing on the subject of prayers for the dead discountenances formulæ. He says: “There are two distinct classes of epitaphs to be found in the Catacombs; the one, brief and simple, written apparently without a thought of handing down anything to the memory of posterity, but designed by the survivors mainly as a means of identifying, amid so many thousands of graves of the same outward form, those in which they were specially interested.[112] These are the more ancient, and most of them contain nothing beyond the name of the deceased and some of those short acclamations or prayers of which we have just given examples. Inscriptions of the second class record the age of the deceased, the day of his death, or more specially of his burial, and, in fact, omit nothing which is wont to be found on sepulchral monuments. They are also often defaced by bombastic exaggerations of praise and flattery; and the pious acclamations or prayers we have spoken of are rarely or never found.” It appears, then, according to the evidence of De Rossi—which on this question is surely of supreme authority—that the presence on a tombstone of acclamations Pg 377 or prayers for the dead, so far from being evidence of the corruption of a later age, is an actual test or token of primitive antiquity. Some indication of this may be gathered, by a careful observer, even from an inspection of the volume of dated inscriptions already published. “May you live among the saints” is engraved on a tombstone of the year 249, and “Refresh thyself, or Be thou refreshed, with the holy souls,” on another of 291; that is to say, there are two distinct examples out of the 32 dated inscriptions prior to the conversion of Constantine. Among the 1,340 dated inscriptions subsequent to that event you will scarcely find another.

And next, as to the relative numbers of the epitaphs which speak positively (in the indicative mood) of the present happiness of the deceased, and of those which speak only optatively and breathe the language of prayer. We cannot, indeed, give any exact statement of figures until De Rossi’s great work on the inscriptions shall have been completed and the whole number brought together in print. But wherever we have had an opportunity of instituting a comparison, we have always found the optative or deprecatory form in the ascendant. It is so in the epitaphs collected in the Lapidarian Gallery of the Christian Museum at the Lateran in Rome; it is so in the inscriptions of each separate area of the great cemetery of San Callisto, so minutely registered by De Rossi in his Roma Sotterranea; and he himself writes as follows: “Some of these acclamations are affirmative, and these may be considered as salutations to the deceased, full of faith and Christian hope, substituted for the cold, hopeless dreariness vale;[113] but for the most part they are optative, and ask for the deceased life in God, peace, and refreshment. We should inquire whether these have not often a real deprecative value, and were not uttered or written with the intention of praying to God for the peace and refreshment of the departed souls.” A full and satisfactory answer to this question, he says, cannot be given till all the inscriptions of this class have been brought together, so that they may mutually explain and illustrate one another. Nevertheless, he refers to what he had said in another place[114] on the same subject; and there we read: “These auguries or good wishes are not mere apostrophes, giving vent to the feelings of natural affection (sfoghi d’affetto); some of them express confidence that the soul received into the heavenly peace of God and his saints is already in the enjoyment of a life of bliss, and these speak positively—vives; others, again, are equivalent to real prayers to obtain that peace, and are expressed in another mood—vivas.”

Mr. Withrow, however, and his co-religionists, may plead that, though constrained to yield to De Rossi’s statement of facts, they are not bound by his interpretation of them. Waiving, therefore, all dispute as to the number and antiquity of the inscriptions which seem to favor the practice of prayers for the dead, they may still persist that they should be taken, not as the voice of the church, but the errors of individuals; or, as Mr. Withrow himself expresses it, “they are not a formulated and authoritative creed formed by learned theologians, but the untutored utterances of humble Pg 378 peasantry, many of whom were recent converts from paganism or Judaism, in which religions such expressions were a customary sepulchral formula.” If Mr. Withrow merely means to say that Christian epigraphy was the spontaneous growth of the natural feelings and supernatural faith of the people, rather than the result of any written or traditional law devised and imposed by ecclesiastical authority, we are heartily at one with him. We do not doubt that it was the natural fruit of the religious feeling which pervaded all classes of the new society, that was reflected in their epigraphy as in a mirror. But Mr. Withrow clearly meant something different from this; he intended to insinuate that these inscriptions which are distasteful to himself would have been disapproved of also by all well-instructed members of the church, especially by her pastors and doctors. Yet Tertullian, at least, could hardly have disapproved, who takes for granted in one of his treatises, and uses it as the foundation of an argument, that every Christian widow will be continually praying for the soul of her departed husband, and asking for him refreshment (refrigerium), and offering sacrifice for him on the anniversary of his decease. Neither could such prayers have been deemed either objectionable or useless by St. Cyprian and his predecessors in the see of Carthage, who decreed the loss of them as a fitting punishment for any man who should presume to leave the care of his children or of his property after his decease to a cleric, because “he does not deserve to be named in the prayer of the priest at the altar of God who has done what he could to withdraw a priest from the service [115] However, it is not worth while, easy as the task would be, to justify the inscriptions in question by a catena of venerable authorities from among the bishops and teachers of the primitive church; we will only mention one fact about them which seems to us conclusive—viz., that they are in exact accordance, not to say in verbal and literal agreement, with the most authoritative formularies that have come down to us from ancient days; we mean the ancient liturgies. The language of the public offices of the church—if not an apostolic tradition, which Mr. Withrow would not easily admit—was surely formulated by somebody and formulated according to the dogmas of the faith, and not in a spirit of weak indulgence to any poetical fancies or excess of passionate feeling, whether of affection or of grief. We turn, then, to the oldest sacramentaries,[116] and the prayers we find there run as follows: “We pray that thou wilt grant to all who rest in Christ a place of refreshment, light, and peace”; “Grant to our dear ones who sleep in Christ refreshment in the land of the living”; “Refresh, O Lord! the spirits of the deceased in peace”; “Cause them to be united with thy saints and chosen ones”—the very words and phrases which we have read on the ancient tombstones, and which we still hear from the lips of all devout Catholics when they pray, either in public or in private, for those who are gone before them.

Not without reason, then, does De Rossi describe these prayers for the dead, which are of such frequent recurrence Pg 379 in the Catacombs, as a faithful echo of the prayers of the liturgy. Of such an inscription as this, In pace Spiritus Silvani, amen, he says very truly that one seems to hear in it the last words of the solemn burial rite, just as the tomb is being closed and the sorrowing survivors bid farewell to the grave.[117]

But Mr. Withrow would have us look for the original of these prayers, not to the Christian liturgy, but to the monuments of “paganism and Judaism, in which religions such expressions were a customary sepulchral formula.” No doubt there was in many pagan epitaphs an address, or acclamation, or apostrophe—call it what you will—to the deceased. But it was either a brief and sad farewell—an “everlasting farewell,” as they mournfully felt it to be—or it was an idle wish “that his bones might rest well,” or (far more commonly) “that the earth might lie lightly upon him”; or there was a still more unmeaning and unnatural interchange of salutations between the living and the dead. The passer-by was exhorted to salute the deceased with the customary Ave or Salve, and the imaginary response of the dead man stood engraven on the stone, ready for all comers. Surely it is impossible that anybody (εἰ μὴ ζέσιν διαφυλάττων, as old Aristotle has it) can be so blind as to confound this empty trifling of the pagan with the hearty yet simple and touching prayers of the Christian. Between the Christian epitaphs and those of the ancient Jews we might naturally have expected a somewhat closer degree of affinity; and so there is. Yet even here the closest point of resemblance prayed for, neither does Mr. Withrow produce one, though it has suited his purpose to give a deprecatory form to his translation of Dormitio in bonis. The Christian epitaphs, then, have this in common with Jewish epitaphs: that they speak of the dead as sleeping in peace; it still remains as peculiar to themselves that they supplicate for the deceased life—life in God, life everlasting, life with the saints—light, and refreshment.

But we must pass on to another point of doctrine connected with the dead, on which inscriptions in the Catacombs might reasonably be expected to throw some light, and on which the testimony they give is sometimes disputed. Mr. Withrow shall again be permitted to make his own statement of the case: “Associated with the Romish practice of praying for the dead is that of praying to them. For this there is still less authority in the testimony of the Catacombs than for the former. There are, indeed, indications that this custom was not unknown, but they are very rare and exceptional. In all the dated inscriptions of the first six centuries there is only one invocation of the departed.” It is of the year 380, and by an orphan. “But the yearning cry of an orphaned heart for the prayers of a departed mother is a slight foundation for the Romish practice of the invocation of the saints. Previous to this date we have found not the slightest indication of Romish doctrine.… The few undated inscriptions Pg 380 of a similar character are probably of as late, or it may be of a much later, date than this.”

We have already had occasion to expose the fallacy of this favorite argument of Mr. Withrow’s founded on the paucity and relative antiquity of dated inscriptions. We have pointed out its direct contradiction to all the canons of chronology so laboriously and conscientiously established by De Rossi. Here, however, we must be allowed again to quote his testimony, given precisely upon this particular subject: “Invocations of the deceased,” he says, “asking them to pray for the survivors, are found only in the subterranean cemeteries, not in those made above ground; always in epitaphs without dates, never in those bearing dates of the fourth and fifth centuries. They belong to the period before peace was given to the church, and the new style inspired by the changed conditions of the times sent them quickly into disuse.” The simple and natural character of earlier Christian epigraphy gave place to colder and more artificial announcements. But whilst the more ancient and more religious style prevailed the following are fair specimens of the epitaphs that were written: Vivas in pace et pete pro nobis. Christus spiritum tuum in pace et pete pro nobis. Bene refrigera et roga pro nos. Spiritus tuus bene requiescat in Deo petas pro sorore tuâ. Vincentia in Christo petas pro Phœbe et pro Virginio ejus. Vivas in Deo et roga. Spiritus tuus in bono, ora pro parentibus tuis. In orationis tuis roges pro nobis quia scimus te in Christo—“Mayest thou live in peace, and pray for us. May Christ refresh thy spirit in peace, and pray for us. Mayest thou be well refreshed, and pray for us. May thy spirit rest well in

In all these instances—and many more might easily be given, in Greek as well as in Latin, some edited, others still inedited—it is clear that the survivors had a firm hope that their departed friends had been called by the ministry of angels to the enjoyment of the promised bliss and heavenly peace, and this faith was the foundation of these fervid petitions for their prayers. But, objects our author, “these invocations are almost invariably uttered by some relative of the deceased, as if prompted by natural affection rather than by religious feeling.” No doubt the invocations that have been quoted are the utterances of loving and sorrowing relatives; for to them it usually belongs to bury their dead and to write the epitaphs on their tombstones. But does it therefore follow that they were extravagant, unwarranted, and out of harmony with the teaching of the church? First, their very number and antiquity is primâ facie evidence against so unjust a suspicion; and, next, they in no way go beyond the eloquent invocations of the martyrs, whether in the graffiti on the walls near their tombs or in the more formal inscriptions of the bishops themselves—e.g., of Pope Damasus at the tomb of St. Agnes; but, lastly and above all, these again are in exact agreement with the public liturgy of the church. In a fragment of a very ancient liturgy, only published in our own day, and bearing internal evidence of having been used during the days of persecution, the Pg 381 priest is instructed to pray “for grace to worship God truly in times of peace, and not to fall away from him in times of trial,” and then, after the accustomed reading of the diptychs—i.e., reading the names of the martyrs, the bishops, and the dead for whom the Holy Sacrifice was being offered—he proceeds as follows: “May the glorious merits of the saints excuse us or plead for us, that we may not come into punishment; may the souls of the faithful departed who are already in the enjoyment of bliss assist us, and may those which need consolation be absolved by the prayers of the church.” The different gradation of ranks and the different sense of the liturgical commemoration of the saints, the faithful who are dead and those who are still living, could hardly be defined with greater distinctness in “a formulated and authoritative creed formed by learned theologians.” We need hardly add that the same doctrine is to be found more or less explicitly in all the old liturgies—e.g., in a prayer that “Christ will, through the intercession of his holy martyrs, grant to our dear ones who sleep in him refreshment in the abode of the living”; “that the prayers of the blessed martyrs will so commend us to Christ that he will grant eternal refreshment to our dear ones who sleep in him,” and several other petitions to the same effect. But we are already exceeding the limits of space assigned to us, and we must be content with a general reference to the old sacramentaries; neither can we find room for the passages which are at hand from St. Cyril, St. Chrysostom, and other patristic authorities containing the same doctrine.

We must not, however, altogether omit another branch of evidence St. Gregory Nazianzen, Paulinus of Nola, or other Christian poets may use the language of mere poetical fancy when they talk of the blood of the martyrs penetrating the adjacent sepulchres; but the spiritual meaning that underlies their words is plain—viz., that the merit of the martyrs’ pains and sufferings, and the intercession of their prayers thus sought by the living, were believed to profit the souls of the deceased. In a recently-discovered fresco in the cemetery of SS. Nereus and Achilleus, a deceased matron, Veneranda, is manifestly commended to the patronage of St. Petronilla, who is represented standing at her side; and there are not wanting inscriptions in which the survivors distinctly commend the souls of their children or others whom they have buried to the care of that particular martyr in whose cemetery they have been laid. We do not quote them at length, not only from want of space, but also Pg 382 because this class of monuments belongs, generally speaking, to the fourth century, when no one doubts that invocation of the saints was in common use; and we have already quoted a large class of inscriptions, more ancient and quite as conclusive to all minds of ordinary candor. We mention them, however, because they are links in the chain of evidence we have been inquiring about—evidence given by the Catacombs—and yet more especially because they remind us of the beautiful language of our ritual, which none can forget who have ever heard it sung to the solemn chant of the church: In Paradisum deducant te angeli; in tuo adventu suscipiant te martyres, et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Jerusalem. We cannot help suspecting that these prayers or acclamations are as old as the monuments which they so faithfully interpret. The invocation of the martyrs, and of them only amongst “the spirits of the just made perfect” who have already “come to Mount Sion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to the company of many thousands of angels,” seems to point to such a conclusion; it has a flavor of quite primitive times about it, certainly of the age of persecution. It may well have been contemporary with the following inscription, at present in a private museum, but originally taken from the Catacombs: “Paulo filio merenti in pacem te suscipiant omnium ispirita sanctorum.”

ON OUR LADY’S DEATH

I.

“And didst thou die, dear Mother of our Life?

Sin had no part in thee: then how should death?

Methinks, if aught the great tradition saith

Could wake in loving hearts a moment’s strife”

(I said—my own with Her new image rife),

“’Twere this.” And yet ’tis certain, next to faith,

Thou didst lie down to render up thy breath:

Though after the Seventh Sword no meaner knife

Could pierce that bosom. No, nor did. No sting

Of pain was there, but only joy. The love,

So long thy life ecstatic, and restrained

From setting free thy soul, now gave it wing:

Thy body, soon to reign with it above,

Radiant and fragrant, as in trance, remained.

Pg 383 II.

III.

Pg 384

AMID IRISH SCENES.

The very thought of a journey to distant lands is invigorating. We throw off the dust of old habits, quit the routine of daily life, shut out the customary thoughts of business, and, with hearts that in some mysterious way seem suddenly to have grown younger, turn towards other worlds. Even the uncertainty which is incident to travel has a peculiar charm. The love we bear our country and friends grows warmer and assumes unwonted tenderness when we leave them, not knowing whether it will be given us to look upon them again; and as the distance widens, the bonds of affection are drawn closer. Amid strange faces we reflect how sweet it is to dwell with those who love us; a thousand thoughts of home and friends come back to us, the heart is humanized, and we resolve to become more worthy of blessings for which we have been so little grateful. Indeed, I think that the chiefest pleasure of travel is in the thought and hope of communicating to others our own impressions of all the lovely things we see.

Who would care to look on blue mountains, or ocean sunset, or green isles, if he might never speak of their beauty, never utter the deep feelings which they awaken? All strong emotion, whether of joy or sorrow, seeks to express itself. Nature is beautiful only when we associate it with God or man. No greater torment can be imagined than to think and feel, and yet to live alone for ever with that which

And now, with the liberty and quickness of thought, passing the vast expanse of ocean, I shall place myself at Oban, on the western coast of Scotland, opposite the island of Mull; for though we are not here on Irish soil, yet this whole region is so full of Irish memories and Irish glories that we may not pass it in silence. The scenery is sombre, bleak, and wild. It is not lovely nor yet sublime, though there is about it a kind of gloomy and desolate grandeur; and, indeed, this is the general character of all scenery in the Scotch Highlands. It is rugged, harsh, and waste. It does not invite to repose. Amid these barren moors and fog-covered hills we are chilled, driven back upon ourselves. We involuntarily move on, content with a passing glance at dark glens and lochs from Pg 385 whose waters crags and peaks lift their heads and frown in stern defiance. The gloomy tales of murder and treachery, of war and strife, and the ruined castles which tell of battles of other days, deepen the impressions made by nature’s harsh aspect. Even in summer the air is heavy with mist and fog. A day rarely passes without rain, and in the middle of August the traveller finds himself in an atmosphere as damp, cold, and dreary as that of London in November. Before us is the dark sea of the Hebrides, from whose sullen waters a hundred naked and desert islands rise in rough and jagged outlines. As we sail through the narrow straits of this archipelago, we see nothing but barren rocks, covered with black fog. There is no grass, there are no pleasant landscapes, no cultivated fields. We hear only the moaning of the waves, the howling wind, and the hoarse cry of the sea-bird. Nothing could be less beautiful or less attractive; and yet it is in this wild sea and among these rocky islands that we find the sacred spot from which Scotland and northern England received religion and civilization. During the summer a boat leaves Oban every morning to make the tour of the island of Mull, taking Staffa and Iona in the route. The steamer stops at Staffa to permit tourists to visit the Cave of Fingal, of which so much has been written. This cave, which is about seventy feet high and forty feet in width, with a depth of two hundred and thirty feet, opens into the ocean on the southern coast of the little island of Staffa. Its front and sides are formed of innumerable columns of basaltic rock, precisely similar to those which are found in the Giant’s Causeway. They are perfectly symmetrical, and

Nine miles south of Staffa lies Iona, St. Columba’s blessed isle. “We were now,” wrote Dr. Johnson one hundred years ago, “treading that illustrious island which was once the luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and roving barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge and the blessings of religion. To abstract the mind from all local emotion would be impossible if it were endeavored, and would be foolish if it were possible. Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses, whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. Far from me and from my friends be such frigid philosophy as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona.”

It was in 563, more than thirteen hundred years ago, that Columkille, a voluntary exile from Erin, Pg 386 which he loved with more than woman’s tenderness, landed upon this island. Twelve of his Irish monks had accompanied him, resolved to share his exile. Others soon followed, drawn by the fame of his sanctity, and in a little while Columkille and his apostles issued forth from Iona to carry the religion of Christ to the pagans who dwelt on the surrounding islands and on the mainland of Scotland; and from this little island the light of faith spread throughout the Caledonian regions. All the churches of Scotland looked to it as the source whence they had received God’s choicest gifts, and for two hundred years the abbots who succeeded St. Columba held spiritual dominion over the whole country. The Scottish kings chose Iona as their burial-place, in the hope of escaping the doom foretold in the prophecy:

In an age of ferocious manners and continual war this holy and peaceful isle, far removed from scenes of strife and blood, might well be regarded not only as the fit resting-place of the dead, but as the happiest home of the living.

Even to-day, in its loneliness and desolation, there is a calm, sweet look about it that makes one linger as loath to quit so sacred a spot. But the simple, great ones of old are gone; their bones lie buried beneath our feet.

As late as 1594 the three great mausoleums of the kings were to be seen, with the following inscriptions:

But these have also disappeared, and nothing remains but the site. Here were buried forty-eight kings of Scotland, four kings of Ireland, and eight kings of Norway; and it is even said that one of the kings of France found here a last resting-place. Macbeth closes the line of Scottish kings who were buried in Iona. His successor, Malcolm Canmore, chose the Abbey of Dunfermline as the royal cemetery. Shakspere does not fail to send Duncan’s body to Iona:

There are still many tombs in this cemetery, most of which are covered with slabs of blue stone upon which figures are sculptured in relief. Here a bishop or an abbot, in cope and mitre, holds the pastoral staff of authority, and by his side lies some famous chieftain Pg 387 in full armor. On one of these slabs the traveller may behold the effigy of Angus MacDonald, Scott’s Lord of the Isles, and the contemporary of Robert Bruce.

In the centre of the graveyard stands the ruin of a chapel which was built at the close of the eleventh century by St. Margaret of Scotland, and dedicated to St. Oran, the first Irish monk who died in Iona after the landing of St. Columba. Near by is the ancient Irish cross which is said to mark the spot where St. Columba rested on the eve of his death, when he had walked forth to take a last view of his well-beloved island. A little farther north lies the cathedral, ruined and roofless, with its square tower, which is the first object to attract the eye of the pilgrim as he approaches the sacred isle. Iona is but three miles in length and about two miles wide. Unlike the islands by which it is surrounded, it has a sandy beach, which slopes to the water’s edge, and its highest point is but little over three hundred feet above the level of the sea. The ruins all lie on the eastern shore, and are but a few paces from one another. Some little care is taken of them, now that the facilities of travel have turned the attention of travellers to this former home of learning and religion. The chapel of the nunnery is no longer used as a cow-house, nor the cathedral as a stable, as in the time of Dr. Johnson’s visit. Nevertheless, many interesting relics which he saw have since disappeared. Still, enough remains to awaken emotion in the breasts of those whom the thought of noble deeds and heroic lives can move. In treading this sacred soil, and walking among the graves of kings and princes of the church, surrounded by broken walls and St. Columba and his grand old monks are not wholly dead. To them more than to the poet belongs the non omnis moriar. Their spirit lives even in us, if we are Christians and trust the larger hope. What heavenly privilege, like them, to be free, and in the desert and ocean’s waste to find the possibility of the diviner life; like them, to be strong, leaning upon God only! The very rocks they looked upon seem to have gained a human sense; in the air is the presence of unseen spirits, and the waves approach gently as in reverence for the shore pressed by their feet. To have stood, though but for a moment and almost as in a dream, amid these sacred shrines, is good for the soul. It is as if we had gone to the house of one who loved us, and found that he was dead. The world seems less beautiful, but God is nearer and heaven more real.

We have lingered too long among the ruins of Iona. Our ship puffs her sail, and we must go; but our faces are still turned towards the Pg 388 blessed isle; the cathedral tower rises sadly over the bleak shore, and in a little while the rough and rock-bound coast of the Ross of Mull takes the vision from our eyes. And now I am in Ireland. Landing at Belfast, I went south to Dublin; thence to Wicklow, where I took a jaunting-car and drove through the Devil’s Glen, to Glendalough, through Glenmalure and the Vale of Avoca, and back to Wicklow.

Returning to Dublin, I went southwest to the Lakes of Killarney, passing through nearly the entire extent of the island from east and west. Having made the tour of the lakes and visited Muckross Abbey and Ross Castle, I went to Cork, where I took the train for Youghal, on the Blackwater. I sailed up this beautiful river to Cappoquin, near Lismore. From this point I visited the Trappist monastery of Mt. Melleray. Again taking a jaunting-car, I drove over the Knockmeledown Mountains into Tipperary, along the lovely banks of the river Suir, into Clonmel, thence to Cashel, to Holy Cross Abbey and to Thurles. Returning to Cork, I of course visited Blarney Castle, and then, sailing down the noble sea-avenue that leads to Queenstown, went aboard the steamer which was to bring me home again.

In Rome, it has been said, none are strangers. So much of what is greatest and best in the history of the human race centres there that all men instinctively identify themselves with her life and are at home. In Ireland a Catholic, no matter whence he come, forgets that he is in a foreign land; and in proportion to the love with which he cherishes his faith is the sympathy that draws him to the people who

They live in the past and in the future; cling to memories and cherish dreams. The ideal is to them more than the real. Their thoughts are on religion, on liberty, honor, justice, rather than upon gold. They fear sin more than poverty or sickness. When the mother hears of the death of her son, in some distant land, her first thought is not of him, but of his soul. Did he die as a Catholic should die, confessing his sins, trusting in God, strengthened by the sacraments? When he left her weeping, her great trouble was the fear lest, in the far-off world to which he was going, he should forget the God of his fathers, the God of Ireland’s hope; and when in her dreams she saw him back again, her heart leaped for joy, not that he was rich or famous, but that the simple faith of other days was with him still.

The life that is to be is more than that which is. The coldest heart is warmed by this strong faith. In the midst of this simple and pure-hearted people, so poor and so content, so wronged and so patient, so despised and so noble, one realizes the divine power of religion. Whithersoever our little Pg 389 systems of thought may lead us, whatsoever mysteries of nature they may reveal, nothing that they can give us could compensate for the loss of honest faith and child-like trust in God. Whatever may be, this is the best. Better to die in a hovel, yearning for God and trusting to him, than without hope “to walk all day, like the sultan of old, in a garden of spice.” The first and deepest impression made upon me in travelling through Ireland was that it is a country consecrated by unutterable suffering. The shadow of an almost divine sorrow is still upon the land. Each spot is sacred to some sad memory. Ruined castles tell how her proudest families were driven into exile or reduced to beggary; roofless cathedrals and crumbling abbeys proclaim the long martyrdom of her bishops and priests; tenantless cottages and deserted villages speak of the multitudes turned upon the road to die, or, with weary step, to seek shelter in a foreign land. We pass through desolate miles of waste lands that might be reclaimed, through whole counties that have been turned into sheep and cattle pastures, through towns once busy, now dead; and John Mitchel’s cry of anguish, when last year, in triumphal funeral march, he went to meet the electors of Tipperary, strikes upon the ear: “My God, my God, where are my people?”

Go to the abandoned ports of Wexford, of Youghal, of Waterford, of Galway, and you will be told of ships, freighted with human souls, that sailed away and never returned. It seemed to me on those silent shores that I could still hear the wail of countless mothers, wringing their hands and weeping for the loss of children whom a

I stood in Glendalough, by the lake

The sun was just sinking to rest behind St. Kevin’s Hill, covered with the purple heather-bloom. There was not a sound in the air, but all the mountains and the valley held their breath, as if the spirits of the monks of old were felt by them in this hour, in which, in the ages gone, the song of prayer and praise rose up to God from the hearts of believing men, and all the plain and the hillsides Pg 390 were vocal with sweet psalmody. Here, a thousand years ago and more, a city grew up, raised by the power of holiness. To St. Kevin flocked men who sought the better way, and the Irish people, eternally drawn to religion and to their priests, gathered round, and Glendalough was filled with the multitude of believers. Those were the days which St. Columba sang when in far-off Iona he remembered his own sweet land: “From the high prow I look over the sea, and great tears are in my gray eye when I turn to Erin—to Erin, where the songs of the birds are so sweet, and where the monks sing like the birds; where the young are so gentle and the old so wise; where the great men are so noble to look at, and the women so fair to wed.”

From St. Kevin to St. Lawrence O’Toole, Glendalough was the home of saints. When the Norman came, in the twelfth century, there was a bishop there. The hills were dotted with the hermitages of anchorets, and above the seven churches rose the round tower in imperishable strength. To-day there is left only the dreariness and loneliness of the desert. The hills that once were covered with rich forests of oak are bare and bleak; the cathedral is in ruins; the churches are crumbling walls and heaps of stones; the ground is strewn with fragments of sculptured crosses and broken pillars; and amid this wreck of a world are mingled in strange confusion the tombs of saints and princes and the graves of peasants. Still stands the round tower in lonely majesty, like a sentinel of heaven, to watch for ever over the graves of God’s people. What a weight of awe falls upon us amid these sacred monuments! We speak not, and scarcely breathe. An unknown

But why stop we here? Is not Ireland covered with ruins as reverend and as sad as these? Throughout the land they stand

What need of history’s blood-stained page to tell the sad story of Ireland’s wrongs and Ireland’s woes? O’Connell never spoke as speak these roofless cathedrals, these broken walls and crumbling arches, these fallen columns and shattered crosses. The traveller who in Jerusalem beholds the weary and worn children of Israel sitting in helpless grief amid the scattered stones of Solomon’s Temple, need not be told how the enemies of the Holy City compassed her about; how the sword and famine and the devouring flame swallowed up the people; how her walls were broken down, her holy of holies profaned, her priests slaughtered, her streets made desolate, until not a stone was left upon a stone.

The massacres of Wexford and Drogheda; the confiscation in a single day of half the land of Ireland; the driving her people into the ports of Munster to be shipped to regions of pestilence and death; the expulsion of every Catholic from the rich fields of Ulster; the exile of the whole nation beyond the Shannon; the violated treaty of Limerick, are but episodes in this Pg 391 tragedy of centuries. Even the Penal Code, the most hideous and inhuman ever enacted by Christian or pagan people, tells but half the story.

That the Irish Catholic had for centuries been held in bondage by a law which violated every good and generous sentiment of the human heart, I knew. He could not vote, he could not bear witness, he could not bring suit, he could not sit on a jury, he could not go to school, he could not teach school, he could not practise law or medicine, he could not travel five miles from his home; he could own nothing which he might not be forced to give up or renounce his faith; he could not keep or use any kind of weapon, even in self-defence; his children were offered bribes to betray him; he could not hear Mass, he could not receive the sacraments; in his death-agony the priest might not be near to console him. All this I knew, and yet I had never realized the condition to which such inhuman legislation must reduce a people. That this Code, which Montesquieu said must have been contrived by devils, and which Burke declared to be the fittest instrument ever invented by man to degrade and destroy a nation, had failed to accomplish its fiendish purpose, I also knew. The Irish people, deprived of everything, and almost of the hope of ever having anything in this world, remained superior to fate. With a fidelity to religious conviction without example in the history of the world, they retained the chastity, the unbroken courage, the cheerful temper and generous love which had always distinguished them; and that in travelling among them I should find it more and more impossible to doubt of this was but

There is not in the civilized world another country where the evils of tyranny and misrule are so manifest. One cannot help but feel that Ireland does not belong to the Irish. It is not governed in their interest; it is not made to contribute to their welfare or happiness. They are not taken into account by its rulers; their existence is considered accidental; a fact which cannot be ignored, but which it is hoped time, with famine, poverty, and petty persecution such as the age allows, will eliminate. The country belongs to a few men who have no sympathy with the mass of the people, who do not even desire to have any. They are for the most part the descendants of needy adventurers who, under Elizabeth, Cromwell, and William of Orange, obtained as a reward of their servility or brutality the confiscated lands of Ireland; or if they belong to the ancient families, they inherit their wealth from ancestors who owed it to a double apostasy from God and their country. It was these men, and not England, who enacted the Irish Penal Code. They are the traditional enemies of Ireland, sucking out her lifeblood and trampling in contempt upon her people. They have filled the land with mourning and death, with the wail of the widow and the cry of the orphan; they have freighted the ships which have borne the Irish exiles to every land under heaven; they have within our own memory crowded her highways with homeless and starving Pg 392 multitudes; have pushed out her people to make room for sheep and cattle; in ten years have taken from her three millions of her children. My heart grew sick of asking to whom the domains through which I was passing belonged. It seemed to me that the people owned nothing, that the paucis vivitur humanum genus was truer here than ever in ancient Rome. The very houses in which the Irish peasantry live tell the sad tale that in their own country they are homeless. Like the Israelites in Egypt, they must stand with loins girt and staff in hand, ready to move at a moment’s warning. If the little hut shelter them for a season, it is enough; for another year may find them where rolls the Oregon or on the bitter plains of Australia. Ask them why they build not better houses, plant not trees and flowers, to surround with freshness and beauty that family-life which to them is so pure and so sweet; they will answer you that they may not, they dare not. The slightest evidence of comfort would attract the greedy eye of the landlord; the rent would be raised, and he who should presume to give such ill-example would soon be turned adrift. The great lord wants cabins which he can knock down in a day to make room for his sheep and cattle; he wants arguments to prove that the Irish people are indolent, improvident, an inferior race, unfit for liberty. I know that there are landlords who are not heartless. The people will tell you more than you wish to hear of the goodness of Lord Nincompoop, of the charity of Lord Fiddlefaddle. The intolerable evil is that the happiness or misery of a whole people should be left to the chance of an Irish landlord not being a fool and yet having lasciati ogni speranza voi ch’entrate, of Dante. Mr. Herbert has taken possession of half the Pg 393 Lakes of Killarney, and exacts a fixed toll from all who wish to see what ought to be as free to all as the air of heaven. If ten thousand dollars added to his annual income be a compensation for such meanness, he is no doubt content. It is on the demesne of this gentleman that lies the celebrated ruin of Muckross Abbey. It stands embosomed in trees on a green slope, overlooking the Lower Lake, and commanding one of the loveliest views to be had anywhere. The taste of “the monks of old” in selecting sites for their monasteries was certainly admirable. A church was erected on this spot at a very early date, but was consumed by fire in 1192. The abbey and church, the ruins of which are now standing, were built in 1340, by one of the MacCarthys, Princes of Desmond, for Franciscan monks, who still retained possession of them at the time of Cromwell’s invasion. A Latin inscription on the north wall of the choir asks the reader’s prayers for Brother Thadeus Holen, who had the convent repaired in the year of our Lord 1626. That such a place should have remained in the possession of the monks for more than a century after the introduction of Protestantism is of itself enough to show to what extent the Catholic monuments of Ireland had escaped the destroyer’s hand previous to the incursion of the Cromwellian vandals. The ruins of Muckross Abbey have successfully withstood the power of Time’s effacing finger. The walls, which seem to have been built to stand for ever, are as strong to-day as they were five hundred years ago; and to render the monastery habitable nothing would be required but to replace the roof.

The library, the dormitories, the St. Francis; and in the corridors the silence, so loved of religious souls, is felt like the presence of holy spirits. In the centre of the court-yard there is a noble yew-tree, planted by the monks centuries ago. Its boughs droop lovingly over the roofless walls to shelter them from the storm. In the church the dead are sleeping, and among them some of Ireland’s princes. In the centre of the choir a modern tomb covers the vault where in ancient times the MacCarthys Mor, and later the O’Donoghue Mor of the Glens, were interred. These are the opening lines of the lengthy epitaph:

This abbey, like most of the other sacred ruins of Ireland, is now used as a Catholic cemetery. No Protestant is buried here. Mr. Herbert, however, has got possession of it, and has secured the entrance with iron gates, which open only to golden keys. The living who enter here pay this needy gentleman a shilling, the dead half a crown. Elsewhere we find the same state of things. Even the most sacred relics of Ireland are in the hands of Protestants. It is not easy to find a more interesting collection of antiquities than that of the museum of the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin; but the pleasure which we experience in contemplating these evidences of the ancient civilization of the Irish people is mingled with pain when we see that even their holiest relics have been taken from them and given to those who have no sympathy with the struggles and Pg 394 triumphs with which these objects are associated. We have here, for instance, the “Sweet-sounding” bell of St. Patrick, together with its cover or shrine, which is a fine specimen of the art of the goldsmith as it flourished in Ireland before the Norman invasion. Here, too, is preserved the famous “Cross of Cong,” upon which is inscribed the name of the artist by whom it was made for Turlough O’Conor, father of Roderick, the last native king of Ireland. No finer piece of work in gold is to be found in any country of Western Europe. Those who examine it will be able to form an opinion of the state of the metallurgic and decorative arts in Ireland before she had been blessed by English civilization. Another object of even greater interest is a casket of bronze and silver which formerly enclosed a copy of the Gospels that belonged to St. Patrick. The leaves of this, the most ancient Irish manuscript, have become agglutinated through age, so that they now form a solid mass. Another manuscript, almost as ancient and not less famous, is a Latin version of the Psalms which belonged to St. Columba. This is the copy which is said to have led to the exile of the saint and to the founding of his monastery. This was the battle-book of the O’Donnells, who in war always bore it with them as their standard.

One cannot contemplate the exquisite workmanship and precious material of these book-shrines without being struck by the extraordinary care with which the ancient Irish preserved their manuscripts. These sacred relics bear testimony at once to their religious zeal and to their love of learning. They carry us back to the time when Ireland was the home of saints and

The great schools of Lismore and Armagh are no more. No more in the streets of her cities are heard all the tongues of Europe, which at matin hymn and vesper song lose themselves in the unity and harmony of the one language of the church. They who were eager to teach all men were forbidden to learn. Knowledge was made impossible, and they were reproached with ignorance. But the end is not yet. In contemplating the past we must not forget the present, nor the future which also belongs to Ireland. The dark clouds which so long have wrapped her like a shroud are breaking. In the veins of her children the full tide of life is flowing, warm and strong, as in the day when Columba in his wicker-boat dared the fury of the waves, or Brian drove the Dane into the sea, or Malachi wore the collar of gold. They are old and yet young; crowned with the glories of two thousand years, they look with eyes bright with youthful hope to a future whose splendor shall make the past seem as darkness.

Pg 395

LETTERS OF A YOUNG IRISHWOMAN TO HER SISTER.

FROM THE FRENCH.

June 1, 1868.

What a beautiful Whitsuntide, carissima! Only a minute ago Marcella was singing to me the Tarantella della Madonna, “Pie di Grotta.” Do you recollect the pretty child in rags who used to make such long trills and quavers as she tossed back her dark tresses? How far off now, dear Kate, seems our time at Naples!

Margaret sends me a summons to go to her. I answer by telling her how it is that we are detained in Brittany until July. You can understand what the family journey will then be. Oh! it is so sweet and good a thing to be together that it costs much to each one of us to absent ourselves from the rest even for a day.

We have had High Mass and Vespers worthy of a cathedral. On leaving the chapel Anna, whose musical organization leaves nothing to desire, threw herself into my arms, exclaiming: “It must be like that in Paradise!” We all had the same impression. What worldly festivities are worth ours?

This morning a walk with René in the woods, among the thyme and early dew. Made a resolution to go out in this way every day, quietly, before a single shutter is opened. We pray and meditate. René draws me on to heights of faith and love. If you heard him when he walks out with the twins! And how they listen to him, with their large eyes fixed on his!

Would you like to have news of

God keep you, my dear Kate!

La Tarantella della Madonna, Pie di Grotta.

(Neapolitan Ballad.)

Dearest, the French is not equal to the naive language of the brown little Neapolitan girl.

June 12, 1868.

I have been ill, my beloved sister. What trouble they have all been giving themselves on my account! Happily, it was nothing—fever, headache, and general indisposition. The doctor orders much exercise, and from to-morrow we organize a cavalcade. Adrien has had some superb horses brought here; what riding parties we shall have!

But sadness mingles with joy. Lucy’s mother is very ill. They have just set out; will they arrive too late? Oh! this journey, how full it will be of anxiety and apprehension.

why? There is more true wisdom in a fiat than in curious researches. On Whitsunday, at the “drawing” of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, my lot was the Gift of Piety—love of God and of all that belongs to his service; and the Fruit of Patience—generous acceptance of the crosses God sends us. Must I own to you that this gift made me afraid? Oh! if my happiness were to be destroyed. You will be scolding me for this dreaming, and you will say to me with Mgr. Landriot: “If you would keep mind and body in a healthy condition, avoid with extreme care these states of reverie—the habit of taking aerial flights in which the heart and understanding exhaust themselves on emptiness.” Dear Kate, my dreams speak but of heaven.