Part 11 — CHAPTER XXIII. (continued 3)

“Mr. Schuyler,” she says, “your mistake concerning that picture was more natural and more excusable than your supposing me the writer of that letter, or the giver of that picture. I think, whatever the evidence you may have supposed yourself to possess, my uniform bearing and manner toward you should have freed me from any such supposition on your part. I could not tell you whose picture you had, but I was free to tell you whose name was in my book.”

Elinor’s quick sense of justice sees this readily, and her brow clears. Hard as it has been against herself, she admits that it was an entanglement for him. So she says more graciously: “We will let it pass, Mr. Schuyler. I wish the whole matter for all parties could be disposed of as easily as I can pass out of it.” And she endeavors to leave him, with a provoking air of taking no further interest in him or his changed footing toward herself. He gently makes a motion of barring her way. She stands waiting to hear what he has further to say to her, but there is no evidence of any desire to remain.

“It is so long since we have spoken together in this friendly fashion, that I think you need not be in such haste to shorten our conversation.”

He says this in such a flattering way, implying that to talk with her is the one great delight for him, that her girl’s sense of pleasing and being pleased is quickened, but she only toys with the tassel of the curtain near which she is standing, and says nothing.

Again Mr. Frederick finds he has all the advances to make toward conversation, unaided by her.

“Miss Lennox tells me you were educated at a convent. Is that the reason you are so shy of me, or is it because I am a Protestant, Miss Lloyd?”

“My parents are Protestants, and all my relatives. It would be strange for me to be afraid of a Protestant.”

“And yet you can be of so very different a faith. May I ask, is it a matter of conscience with you, or only one of taste?”

“I do not understand religion being a matter of only taste, Mr. Schuyler,” she says simply.

“Why, don’t you think it is taste, preference only for the gorgeous and ceremonial, which makes the Ritualists of St. Alban’s and St. Mary’s do as they do?”

“I cannot decide upon their motives, Mr. Schuyler. I only know that if my conscience were not in this, I should not separate myself in my faith from that of my family.” She says this with a firm bearing and a lofty look at him which abashes him. He begins to suspect that this young convert will not swerve from her path from any regard for him. He has a full share of conceit, fed by his success with the girls of his acquaintance. He has won their smiles so readily heretofore, and he has pleased and flattered them so easily, that he is piqued at making no better impression now when he really tries.

Again Elinor moves to the door. He lets her pass with the words, “We are friends now, are we not?”

“Friends, oh! certainly,” she says, but her tone does not seem so delighted at this change in their relations as he thinks it should be.

The truth is, Elinor has thought much over Mr. Schuyler’s little flirtation with her cousin, and he has not

Therefore, when, some days after that gentleman overcomes his dislike of her religion so far as to absolutely offer his heart, hand, and fortune to her, this disdainful Catholic astonishes him with these words:

“I think, Mr. Schuyler, that these protestations are more due to my cousin Lizzie than to me. If you speak truth to me, you have spoken false to her. If it is truth to her, what am I to believe? Mr. Schuyler, ‘I must trust all in all,’ or not at all.”

OWEN ON SPIRITISM.[159]

Free Enquirer, as the author of an infamous work on moral physiology, and as an avowed atheist. He now claims to be a believer in the existence of God, and in the truth of the Christian religion; but his God has no freedom of action, being hedged in and bound hand and foot by the laws of nature, and his Christianity is a Christianity without Christ, and indistinguishable from unmitigated heathenism. How much he has gained by his conversion, through the intervention of the spirits, from atheism to demonism and gross superstition, it is not easy to say, though it is better to believe in the devil, if one does not mistake him for God, than it is to believe in nothing.

Mr. Owen makes, as do hundreds of others, a mistake in using the word spiritualism for spiritism, and spiritual for spirital or spiritalistic. Spiritualism is appropriated to designate a system of philosophy opposed to sensism or materialism, and spiritual stands opposed to sensual or carnal, and is too holy a term to be applied to spirit-rapping, table-tipping, and other antics of the spirits. Mr. Owen is unhappy in naming his books. He

Mr. Owen’s first book was mainly intended to establish the fact and to show the character of the spirit-manifestations; in his last work, his design is to show that these manifestations take place by virtue of the physical law of the universe, that they are of the same nature and origin with the Christian miracles, inspiration, and revelation, and are simply supplementary to them, or designed to continue, augment, and develop them; and to show, especially to Protestants, that, if they mean to make theology a progressive science, and win the victory over their enemy the Catholic Church, they must call in the spirits to their aid, and accept and profit by their inspirations and revelations.

This shows that the author leans to Protestantism, and seeks its triumph over Catholicity; or that he regards Protestantism as offering a more congenial soil for the seed he would sow than the old church with her hierarchy and infallibility. Certainly, he holds that, as it is, Protestantism is losing ground. In 1580 it held the vast majority of the people of Europe, but is now only a feeble minority. Even in this country, he says, if Catholics continue to increase for a third of a century to come in the same ratio that they have for the last three-fourths of a century, they will have a decided majority. As things now go, the whole world will become Catholic, and the only way to prevent it, he thinks, is to accept the aid of the spirits. We are not so sure that this aid would suffice, for Satan, their chief, has been the fast friend of Protestants ever since he persuaded Luther to give up private Masses, and has done his best for them, and it is difficult to see what more he can do for them than he has hitherto done.

Mr. Owen, since he holds the spirit-manifestations take place by a natural law, always operative, and always producing the same effects in the same or like favorable circumstances, of course cannot recognize in them anything miraculous or supernatural; and, as he holds the alleged Christian miracles, the wonderful things recorded in the Old and New Testaments, are of the same order, and produced by the same agency, he, while freely admitting them as facts, denies their miraculous or supernatural character. He thinks that the circumstances when these extraordinary events occurred were

This is the doctrine, briefly and faithfully stated, of Mr. Owen’s Debatable Land, which he sets forth with a charming naïveté, and a self-complacency little short of the sublime. There is this to be said in his favor—the devil speaks better English through him than through the majority of the mediums he seems compelled to use; yet not much better sense. But what new light have the spirits shed over the great problems of life and death, time and eternity, good and evil, or what new revelations of truth have they made? Here is the author’s summary of their teaching:

“1. This is a world governed by a God of love and mercy, in which all things work together for good to those who reverently conform to his eternal laws.

“2. In strictness there is no death. Life continues from the life which now is into that which is to come, even as it continues from one day to another; the sleep which goes by the name of death being but a brief transition-slumber, from which, for the good, the awakening is immeasurably more glorious than is the dawn of earthly morning, the brightest that ever shone. In all cases in which life is well-spent, the change which men are wont to call death is God’s last and best gift to his creatures here.

“3. The earth-phase of life is an essential preparation for the life which is to come. Its appropriate duties and callings cannot be neglected without injury to human welfare and development, both in this world and in the next. Even its enjoyments, temperately accepted, are fit preludes to the happiness of a higher state.

“4. The phase of life which follows the death-change is, in strictest sense, the supplement of that which precedes it. It has the same variety of avocations, duties, enjoyments, corresponding, in a measure, to those of earth, but far more elevated; and its denizens have the same variety of character and of intelligence; existing, too, as men do here, in a state of progress. Released from bodily earth-clog, their periscope is wider, their perceptions more acute, their spiritual knowledge much greater, their judgment clearer, their progress more rapid, than ours. Vastly wiser and more dispassionate than we, they are still, however, fallible; and they are governed by the same general laws of being, modified only by corporal disenthralment, to which they were subjected here.

“5. Our state here determines our initial state there. The habitual promptings, the pervading impulses, the lifelong yearnings, in a word the moving spirit, or what Swedenborg calls the ‘ruling loves’ of man—these decide his condition on entering the next world: not the written articles of his creed, nor yet the incidental errors of his life.

“6. We do not, either by faith or works, earn heaven, nor are we sentenced, on any day of wrath, to hell. In the next world we simply gravitate to the position for which, by life on earth, we have fitted ourselves; and we occupy that position because we are fitted for it.

“7. There is no instantaneous change of character when we pass from the present phase of life. Our virtues, our vices; our intelligence, our ignorance; our aspirations, our grovellings; our habits, propensities, prejudices even—all pass over with us: modified, doubtless (but to what extent we know not), when the spiritual body emerges, divested of its fleshly encumbrance; yet essentially the same

“8. The sufferings there, natural sequents of evil-doing and evil-thinking here, are as various in character and in degree as the enjoyments; but they are mental, not bodily. There is no escape from them, except only, as on earth, by the door of repentance. There as here, sorrow for sin committed and desire for an amended life are the in dispensable conditions-precedent of advancement to a better state of being.

“9. In the next world love ranks higher than what we call wisdom; being itself the highest wisdom. There deeds of benevolence far outweigh professions of faith. There simple goodness rates above intellectual power. There the humble are exalted. There the meek find their heritage. There the merciful obtain mercy. The better denizens of that world are charitable to frailty, and compassionate to sin far beyond the dwellers in this: they forgive the erring brethren they have left behind them, even to seventy times seven. There, is no respect of persons. There, too, self-righteousness is rebuked and pride brought low.

“10. A trustful, childlike spirit is the state of mind in which men are most receptive of beneficent spiritual impressions; and such a spirit is the best preparation for entrance into the next world.

“11. There have always existed intermundane laws, according to which men may occasionally obtain, under certain conditions, revealings from those who have passed to the next world before them. A certain proportion of human beings are more sensitive to spiritual perceptions and influences than their fellows; and it is usually in the presence, or through the medium, of one or more of these, that ultramundane intercourse occurs.

“12. When the conditions are favorable, and the sensitive through whom the manifestations come is highly gifted, these may supply important materials for thought and valuable rules of conduct. But spiritual phenomena sometimes do much more than this. In their highest phases they furnish proof, strong as that which Christ’s disciples enjoyed—proof addressed to the reason and tangible to the senses—of the reality of another life, better and happier than this, and of which our earthly pilgrimage is but the novitiate. They bring immortality to light under a blaze of evidence which outshines, as the sun the stars, all traditional or historical testimonies. For surmise they give us conviction, and assured knowledge for wavering belief.

“13. The chief motives which induce spirits to communicate with men appear to be—a benevolent desire to convince us, past doubt or denial, that there is a world to come; now and then, the attraction of unpleasant memories, such as murder or suicide; sometimes (in the worldly-minded) the earth-binding influence of cumber and trouble: but, far more frequently, the divine impulse of human affections, seeking the good of the loved ones it has left behind, and, at times, drawn down, perhaps, by their yearning cries.

“14. Under unfavorable or imperfect conditions, spiritual communications, how honestly reported soever, often prove vapid and valueless; and this chiefly happens when communications are too assiduously sought or continuously persisted in: brief volunteered messages being the most trustworthy. Imprudence, inexperience, supineness, or the idiosyncrasy of the recipient may occasionally result in arbitrary control by spirits of a low order; as men here sometimes yield to the infatuation exerted by evil associates. Or, again, there may be exerted by the inquirer, especially if dogmatic and self-willed, a dominating influence over the medium, so strong as to produce effects that might be readily mistaken for what has been called possession. As a general rule, however, any person of common intelligence and ordinary will can, in either case, cast off such mischievous control: or, if the weak or incautious give way, one who may not improperly be called an exorcist—if possessed of strong magnetic will, moved by benevolence, and it may be aided by prayer, can usually rid, or at least assist to rid, the sensitive from such abnormal influence.”—(Debatable Land, pp. 171-176.)

We have no intention of criticising this creed of the spirits as set forth by their learned medium. It is heathen, not Christian, and we have discovered in it nothing new, true or false. It denies the essential points of the Christian faith, and what few things fallible.”

Whether the spirits are wiser and more dispassionate than we or not may be questioned; they do not seem to be so in the author’s illustrative narrations, and the fact that they have undergone no essential change by throwing off their overcoat of flesh, and living the same life they lived here, and are in the sphere for which they were fitted before entering the spirit-land, renders the matter somewhat doubtful, to say the least. But it is conceded that they are fallible. Who or what, then, vouches for the fact that they are not themselves deceived, or that they do not seek to deceive us? By acknowledging the fallibility of the spirits, Mr. Owen acknowledges that their testimony, in all cases, when we can have nothing else on which to rely, is perfectly worthless. We can bring it to no crucial test, and we have no vouchers either for their knowledge or their honesty. Even supposing them to be what they profess to be, which we by no means concede, it were sheer credulity to take their word for anything not otherwise verifiable.

Mr. Owen and all the spiritists tell us that the spirit-manifestations prove undeniably the immortality of the soul; but they prove nothing of the sort. We need, in the first place, no ghost from hell to assure us that the immortality of the soul follows necessarily from the immateriality of the soul; for that is demonstrable from reason, and was generally believed by the heathen. What was not believed by the heathen, and is not provable by reason, is the Christian doctrine of the resurrection; and this, and supernatural life and immortality, the spirits do not even pretend to teach. Look through Mr. Owen’s statement of their teaching, and you will find no hint of the “resurrectionem carnis” or “vitam æternam” of the apostolic symbol. Are we to reject the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, and the life and immortality brought to light through the Gospel—which is something far different from a simple continuation of the soul’s physical existence—a doctrine so necessary to virtue, and so dear and consoling to the afflicted, on the authority of fallible spirits, whose knowledge or veracity nothing vouches for, and who prove themselves not seldom to be lying spirits?

In the second place, what proof have we that those rapping or table-tipping spirits are the spirits of men and women once in the flesh? Mr. Owen undertakes to establish their identity, but he does not do it and cannot do it; for no proof in the case is possible except by a miracle, and miracles the author rejects, and declares the argument from them in all cases a non-sequitur. The spirit-manifestations of which the spiritists make so much, and in which they fancy they have a new inspiration and revelation, are nothing new in history, and are not more frequent now than they have been at various other epochs. They were more common amongst the polished pagan Greeks and Romans Clementine Recognitions was acquainted with them, and so was St. Augustine. The trance was one of the five faculties or states of the soul recognized by the Neo-Platonists, and was the principle of the Alexandrine theurgy. The church has in every age encountered them, been obliged to deal with them, and she has uniformly ascribed them to Satan and his angels. She has had from the first, and still has, her forms of exorcism against them, to cast them out, and relieve those who are troubled by them. Every day she in some locality even now exorcises them, compels them to acknowledge the power of the name of Jesus, and sends them back discomfited to hell.

The spiritists cannot say the doctrine of the church is impossible or prove that it is not true. It certainly is a possible hypothesis, if nothing more. Then spiritists cannot say that Satan does not personify the spirits of the departed, or that it is not Satan or some one of his angels that speaks in those pretending to be the spirit of Washington, of Jefferson, of Franklin, of Shakespeare, of Milton, of Byron, or of some near and dear deceased relative? You must prove that it is not so, before you can affirm the identity claimed. The great Tichborne case now before the English courts proves that it is no easy matter to establish one’s own identity even while in the flesh, and it must be much more difficult for a ghost, which is not even visible.

The spiritists admit that the spirits are fallible; that there are among them lying, malevolent spirits. A gentleman with whom we were well acquainted, a firm believer in the spirits, and himself a medium, holding frequent communications with them, assured us that he held them to be evil spirits, and knew them to be lying spirits. “I asked them,” he said, “at an interview with them, if they could tell me where my sister then was. ‘Your sister,’ I was answered, ‘has some time since entered the spirit-world, and is now in the third circle.’ It was false: my sister was alive and well, and I knew it. I told them so, and that they lied; and they laughed at me: and then I asked whose spirit was speaking with me. I was answered, ‘Voltaire.’ ‘That is a lie, too, is it not?’ Another laugh, or chuckle rather. “I assure you,” said our friend, “one can place no confidence in what they say. In my intercourse with them, I have found them a pack of liars.”

This pretension of the spiritists that the spirits that manifest themselves through nervous, sickly, half-crazy mediums, or mediums confessedly in an abnormal or exceptional state, are really spirits who once lived in the flesh, is not sustainable; for they cannot be relied on, and nothing hinders us from holding them to be devils or evil demons, personating the spirits of deceased persons, as the church has always taught us. This, certainly, is very possible, and the character of the manifestations themselves favors such an interpretation; for only devils, and very silly devils too, dealing with very ignorant, superstitious, and credulous people, would mingle so much of the ludicrous and ridiculous in their manifestations, as the thumping, knocking, rollicking spirits, tipping over chairs and tables, and creating a sort of universal hubbub wherever they come. The spirits of the dead, if permitted at all to communicate with the living for any good purpose, we may well believe, would be permitted to do it more quietly, more gravely,

Mr. Owen places the spirit manifestations, and the Biblical miracles, and Christian inspiration and revelation, in the same category, attributes them all alike to the agency of the spirits, and thinks he has discovered a way in which one may accept the extraordinary events and doings recorded in the Old and New Testaments as historical facts, without being obliged to recognize them as miracles. This is absurd. The resemblance between the two classes of facts is far less than honest Fluellen’s resemblance of Harry of Monmouth to Alexander of Macedon, “There is a river in Macedon, so is there a river also in Wales.” The man who can detect any relation between the two classes of facts, but that of dissimilarity and contrast, is the very man to believe in the spirit-revelations, to mistake evil for good, darkness for light, and the devil for God. We find both classes of facts in the New Testament. The Christian miracles are all marked by an air of quiet power. There is no bluster, no rage, no foaming at the mouth, no fierceness of look or gesture, no falling, or rending, as in the case of the demoniacs; and no rapping, no table-tipping, no antics, no stammering, no half-utterances, no convulsions, no disturbance, as in the case of the spirit-manifestations described by Mr. Owen in his books. In the one case, all is calm and serene, pure and holy; there is no effort, no straining, but a simple, normal exercise of power. Our Lord rebukes the winds and the waves, and there comes a great calm; he speaks, the leper is cleansed, the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, the dead live. What like this is there in Mr. Owen’s ghostly or ghastly narratives of trances, thundering noises, and haunted houses? Every one of his narratives shows, so far as it shows anything not explicable by simple psychical states and powers, the marks which the church has always regarded as signs of the presence of the devil. Some of the cases he describes are clearly cases of possession, and others are as clearly cases of obsession. Unhappily, Mr. Owen, who formerly believed in no God, now takes, knowingly or not, the devil to be God.

Mr. Owen has hardly improved on the heathen Celsus, who was refuted by Origen. Celsus charged the miracles of our Lord to magic. Mr. Owen ascribes them to necromancy, and regards the apostles and saints each as a person with a familiar spirit, or, in the language of the spiritists, a medium. The Jews also ascribed the miracles of our Lord to the agency of the devil, and charged that it was by Beelzebub, the prince of devils, that he did his wonderful works. But there is a striking difference between the Jews and Celsus and our late minister to Naples. They sought to prove the satanic origin of the miracles of our Lord as a reason for rejecting him and his teaching; he

The class of facts which the spiritists call spirit-manifestations are recognized in the Bible from beginning to end, but always as the works of the devil or evil spirits, always as works to be condemned and to be avoided; and any communication with those who do them is forbidden. Necromancers, or those who consult the spirits of the dead, are mentioned and condemned in the Book of Genesis. The Mosaic law ordained that a witch or a woman with a familiar spirit—that is, a medium, whether a rapping or a clear-seeing, a talking or a writing medium—should not be suffered to live. The church has always condemned everything of the sort, and requires a candidate for baptism to renounce the devil and his works, and expels the devil from him by her exorcisms, before receiving the postulant to her communion. And yet Mr. Owen would have us believe that the Bible and the church sanction his doctrine, that the Christian miracles and the spirit-manifestations are produced by one and the same agency! Verily, Mr. Owen throws a strong light on the origin of the great Gentile apostasy, and shows us how easily men who break from the unity of divine tradition, and set up for themselves, can lose sight of God, and come step by step to worship the devil in his place. The thing seemed incredible, and we had some difficulty in taking the assertion of the Holy Scriptures literally, “All the gods of the gentiles are devils”; but since we see apostasy from the church running the same career, and actually inaugurating the worship of demons, actually exalting the devil above our Lord, the Mystery of Iniquity is explained, and the matter becomes plain and credible.

It is curious to see what has been the course of thought in the Protestant apostasy in regard to the class of facts in question. Having lost the power of exorcism with their loss of the true faith, the Protestant nations had no resource against the invasions of the spirits but to carry out the injunction of the Mosaic law, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch”—that is, a medium—“to live.” Hence we find their annals in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries blackened with accounts of the trials and cruel punishments of persons suspected of witchcraft, sorcery, or dealings with the devil, especially in England, Scotland, and the Anglo-American colonies. Having no well-defined and certain criteria, as the church has, by which to determine the presence of Satan, many persons, no doubt, were put to death who were innocent of the offences of which they were accused. This produced a reaction in the public mind against the laws and against the execution of persons for witchcraft or dealing with the devil. This reaction was followed by a denial of witchcraft, or that the devil had anything to do with matters and things on earth, and a shower of ridicule fell on all who

We must be excused from entering into any elaborate refutation of Mr. Owen’s blasphemous attempt to bring the Christian miracles under the general law, as he regards it, of spirit-manifestations. He has proved the reality of no such law, and if he had, the spirit-manifestations themselves would prove nothing more than a gale of wind, a shower of rain, a flash of lightning, or the growth of a spire of grass. Could we prove the Christian miracles to be facts in the order of nature, or show them as taking place by a general law, and not by the immediate act of God, and therefore no miracles at all, we should deprive them of all their importance. The value of the facts is not in their being facts, but in their being miraculous facts, which none but God can work. The author does not understand this, but supposes that he has won a victory for Christianity when he has proved the miracles as facts, but at the same time that they are no miracles.

It is clear from his pages that the author does not know what Christians understand by a miracle. He cites St. Augustine to prove that a miracle is something that may take place by some law of nature to us unknown, but St. Augustine, in the passage he cites, is not speaking of miracles at all; he is speaking of portents, prodigies, or extraordinary events, which the ignorant, and the superstitious ascribe to a supernatural agency; but which may, after all, however wonderful, be produced by a natural cause, as in our days not a few believe to be the case with the spirit-manifestations themselves, and no doubt is the case with most of the wonders the spiritists relate. The devil may work portents or prodigies, but not miracles, because he has no creative power, and can work only with materials created to his hand.

It is necessary also to distinguish between what is simply superhuman and what is supernatural. Whatever is creature is in the order of nature. Nature embraces the entire creation—whatever exists that is not God or distinguishable from him. Whether the created powers are above man or below him in the scale of existence, they are equally natural, and so is whatever they are capable, as second causes, of doing. The angels in heaven, the very highest as the lowest, are God’s creatures, distinguishable from him, and therefore included in nature. The same must be said of the devils in hell, or the ghosts, if the spirits of the departed, and hence whatever they do is within the natural order. The devil is superior, if you will, by nature to man—for man is made little lower than the angels, and the devil is an angel fallen; he may know many things beyond human intelligence, and do many things beyond the power of man; but what the devil does, is, if superhuman, not in any sense supernatural, but as natural as what man himself does. We agree with Mr. Owen, though not for the same reason, that there is nothing miraculous in the spirit-manifestations, even supposing them to be facts, and therefore are of no value in relation to the truth or falsehood of Christianity as a revelation of and by the supernatural.

God alone, and what he does immediately by his direct act and immediate act, is supernatural. God

Miracles do what portents, prodigies, spirit-rappings, etc., do not—they manifest the supernatural, or the existence of a real order above nature. They do not indeed directly prove the truth of the Christian mysteries, but they do accredit our Lord as a teacher sent from God. As Nicodemus said when he came by night to Jesus, “Rabbi, we know that thou art come a teacher from God, for no man can do the miracles thou doest, unless God were with him,” God in the miracles accredits the teacher, and vouches for the truth of what he in whose favor they are wrought teaches. What our Lord teaches, then, is true. If he teaches that he is perfect God and perfect man in hypostatic union, then he is so, and then is to be believed, on his own word, whatever he teaches, for “it is impossible for God to lie.” The facts, then, are of no importance if not miracles. Hence the “natural-supernaturalism” of the Sartor Resartus is not only a contradiction in terms, but utterly worthless, as are most of the admired utterances of its author, and aid us not in solving a single problem for which revelation is needed.

Deprive us of the prophecies under the Old Law and the miracles under the New, and we should be deprived of all means of proving Christianity as a supernatural religion, as supernaturally inspired and revealed, and should be reduced, as Mr. Owen is, to naked rationalism, or downright demonism. The prodigies of the devil do not carry us above nature. They are indeed Satan’s efforts to counterfeit genuine miracles, but at best they only give us the superhuman for the supernatural. If the author could prove the Christian miracles are not miracles, though credible as facts, or if he could bring them into the category of the spirit-manifestations, he would in effect divest Christianity of its supernatural character, and render it all as worthless as any man-constructed system of ethics or philosophy. His Christianity, as set forth in his pages, has not a trace of the Christianity of Christ, and is as little worthy of being called Christian as the bald Unitarianism of Channing, or the Deism of Rousseau, Tom Paine, or Voltaire, or the Free Religion of Emerson, Higginson, and Julia Ward Howe.

What Mr. Owen regards as a highly important fact, and which he urges Protestants to accept as the means of triumphing over the Catholic Church, namely, that the Christian miracles and the spirit-manifestations are worthy of precisely the same respect and confidence in a Christian point of view, is far less important than he in his profound ignorance of Christianity imagines. How far he will be successful with Protestants we know not; but his success, we imagine, will be greatest among people of his own class, who, having no settled belief in any religion, who know little of the principles of Christianity, are, as all such people are, exceedingly credulous and superstitious. These people hover on the borders of Protestantism, have certain sympathies with the Reformation, but it would be hardly just to call them in the ordinary sense of the term Protestants. Yet Protestantism, being substantially a revival in principle of the ancient Gentile apostasy which led to the worship of the devil in the place of God before our Lord’s advent, there can be no doubt that Protestants are peculiarly exposed to Satanic invasions, and there is no certainty that they may not follow Mr. Owen back to the devil-worship from which Christianity rescued the nations that embraced it. But we have said enough for the present. Perhaps we may say more hereafter.

THE ANNUNCIATION.

MARCH 27TH.

FLEURANGE.

BY MRS. CRAVEN, AUTHOR OF “A SISTER’s STORY.”

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH, WITH PERMISSION.

PART FIRST.

THE OLD MANSION.

IV.

“Thank you,” she said; “you have done me a great deal of good. I am feeble, that is all, but I did not suppose myself so much so.”

“Do not exert yourself,” replied Fleurange. “I will take care of the children.”

The mother smiled, and touched her head, showing by this gesture how fatiguing she found the noise she had not succeeded in quieting. At that very moment, the younger of the two children was standing on the seat, trying to reach the net, of painful memory, suspended like the sword of Damocles over the travellers’ heads, and which served as a receptacle for everything that could not be stowed away elsewhere. The child was not climbing without a motive. His brother had already successfully preceded him, and found means of seizing, through the meshes of the net, a small hunting-horn, on which he was now executing a flourish. Why could not he also get his drum, almost within reach? If he could only stretch a little farther—and he looked at Fleurange with a supplicating air; but the latter, instead of heeding his mute appeal, laughingly laid hold of him and drew him on her lap; then skilfully bearing off the hunting-horn from the other, she promised to relate them the most charming of stories if they would be quiet. In an instant they were both leaning beside her, and then, in a low tone, she related one story after another, keeping them silent and attentive till the hour of sleep returned.

By the end of the second day the travellers had made great progress in their acquaintance. “How can I thank you sufficiently?” said the young mother. “How fortunate I was to meet you!”

“Do not thank me: your children have done me more good than I can return.”

This reply, of course, did not at all diminish the gratitude mingled with admiration with which she had inspired her companion, and as there is only a step from attraction to confidence, the latter soon related the whole story of her uneventful life to Fleurange. She had met with a severe fall three months before, and her life was despaired of; then her husband took her to Paris to consult Dr. Leblanc, who effected a cure. Fleurange’s eyes brightened. It was such a gratification to be able to talk about her dear old friends!

“He is so skilful and kind,” she said.

“Why did you do so?”

“Because my poor Wilhelm is alone and impatiently awaiting me.”

“Your husband?”

“Yes.”

“Could he not have come for you?”

“No; he is M. Dornthal’s head clerk, and it is very difficult for him to leave his post.”

Fleurange’s heart gave a leap at this name. “Are you alluding to M. Ludwig Dornthal?” said she.

“No; to his brother, the rich banker.”

“And the other—the professor—do you know him?”

“I have never seen him, but Wilhelm is well acquainted with him, and is sometimes invited to the soirées he gives. They are not balls—they are not fond of dancing there—but réunions for conversation, reading, music, and looking at engravings. Wilhelm says they are all learned, the girls as well as the boys, and madame as much so as her husband.”

Fleurange slightly shuddered at this brief communication respecting her uncle’s family. She was very fond of study, still more so of the arts; she had a taste for reading she was often obliged to repress, but this word “learned” she did not find attractive.

“Learned!” she said to herself. “That means pedantic, grave, and tiresome. Well, I must make the best of it. Perhaps that does not prevent them from being good, which is the essential point, and I certainly should not aim at amusement in this short life.”

Another night—another long day now drawing to a close—when lights more frequent and bright, and more numerous dwellings, announced the vicinity of a large city. As each moment brought them nearer their destination, the joy of the mother and her children became more expansive.

“He will be waiting for us, will he not?” said the elder of the children.

“Yes, yes, we shall see him as soon as the carriage stops, but that will not be for an hour.” Soon the cry was: “In half an hour, now!” and at last: “Here we are!”

Poor Fleurange listened to her travelling companions, and envied them the certainty of being greeted at their journey’s end by a dear and well-known face. Sadness and a fearful timidity came over her. At last, the carriage stopped. As at their departure, there was a great uproar, a variety of cries, and vacillating lights, which illuminated everything, but nothing distinctly. Fleurange sought in vain among all the persons who crowded around the carriage, for a face that might be her uncle’s. The door opened. A tall man with flowing hair and a long blonde beard presented himself. “Was it he?” No, the joyful cries of the children at once informed Fleurange it was their father.

“Bertha, Bertha!” he exclaimed, and, even before embracing his children, he pressed both her hands and looked anxiously in her face.

“You are very pale, dear Bertha.”

“It is only with joy, Wilhelm,” replied she, weeping. “I am cured, and I behold you once more!”

He then stretched out his arms to his children, but before leaving the carriage they both cried “Adieu! adieu!” in childlike tones and threw their arms around Fleurange’s neck.

“Wilhelm,” said his wife in a low tone, “thank this kind young lady, who has been an angel of goodness to them and to me on the way.”

“Doubtless some one is waiting for you here, and I cannot have the pleasure of rendering you any service?”

“I thank you,” said Fleurange quickly. “I am, indeed, expected by my relatives.” While speaking she anxiously cast her eyes around. No one seemed to be seeking her in the crowd of unknown faces that surrounded her. Was there any mistake? Had they forgotten her? What should she do?

Meanwhile her travelling companions left the carriage, and the happy group was already at a distance. She followed them with her eyes, her heart sinking within her. At that instant a small open carriage, drawn by a fine horse, drove swiftly up. In it was a youth of eighteen or nineteen years. He threw the reins to some one standing near and sprang out. Seeing him, Bertha’s husband took off his hat, and a cap is hastily raised in return, displaying an abundance of light hair of rather a warm shade. But the new-comer did not stop. He was in a great hurry and out of breath. He ran up to the diligence and said inquiringly:

“Mademoiselle Gabrielle!”

“That is my name,” said Fleurange, at first struck dumb at hearing herself so-called, and especially at the sight of him who had come to meet her.

“Very well,” said he, “let me help you descend.”

Fleurange silently prepared to obey, but after another glance at him as he held out a firm hand, she said: “There is no mistake, is there? It is my uncle, M. Ludwig Dornthal, who has sent for me?”

The only reply she received was an affirmative nod of the head; a moment after, a concise order, promptly obeyed, brought down from the heights of the imperial the modest luggage belonging to Fleurange. In an instant it was fastened behind the light carriage which he afterward assisted her in entering, then, carefully and silently wrapping around her a large fur cloak which he had brought, he took his seat, and the horse set off, as he came, at a fast trot.

Fleurange at first felt giddy with the rapid motion of the carriage, but it soon became agreeable, contrasted with the heavy movements and violent jolting of the diligence. The weather was sharp, but the warm cloak that covered her prevented her from feeling it, and, thus protected, the keen air, so far from being unpleasant, gave her, on the contrary, an unaccustomed animation which was like a fresh infusion of youth and life. The sky above was sparkling with stars. It was one of those brilliant winter nights which we love to imagine like that which witnessed the coming of Christ, and saw angels hovering over the heights that surround Bethlehem, to convey the glad tidings to the shepherds, and sing on earth their divine hymn.

In about twenty minutes the horse slackened his pace a little, and the young coachman turned around and seemed to make some attempt at an explanation which Fleurange tried her best to comprehend, but the rattling over the pavements rendered this nearly impossible, and she only seized the words “My father” and “Christ Kindchen!” after which his head, turned around for an instant, resumed its former position, and the horse his usual pace.

But Fleurange gathered from this that the youth was one of M. Dornthal’s sons, and her uncle had not

After this short interruption, they kept on their way without slackening an instant, notwithstanding more than one turn through the winding streets, and at length arrived at a place planted with trees, where the carriage stopped before a flight of steps leading to an oaken door adorned with a massive brass knocker.

Some one was evidently watching for them, for the door instantly flew open. Fleurange caught the glimpse of a bright light and many forms! Her cousin hastened to aid her in alighting. Confused voices were audible, all having a cordial accent of welcome. A strong hand supported Fleurange as she ascended the six stone steps and entered the passage. A tall woman dressed in gray, and wearing a cap trimmed with flowers, approached and embraced her. “It is my turn now!” said a deep and sonorous voice, “for I am her uncle.” Fleurange raised her eyes toward a noble countenance which had too young a look to be crowned with such white hair, and her uncle embraced her, murmuring in a softened tone the name of Margaret. Beside him stood a lovely young girl, grave and blonde, while another, fair as her sister but younger, divested Fleurange of the heavy fur cloak and untied her bonnet. A boy of seven years ran out into the street to aid his brother, and a little girl of four or five clung to her mother’s skirts, looking curiously, but with delight, at the strange visitor.

Fleurange, dazzled by the lights, and confused by the very cordiality of her reception, was incapable of uttering a word, but her large eyes, full of tears, were more expressive than any words, and the unusual brilliancy of her complexion, owing to the keen night air, and her long tresses falling over her shoulders when her bonnet was removed, gave her an unusually striking appearance which would have conciliated the most malevolent. How, then, must she have been regarded by those so ready to welcome her heartily?

They led her, triumphantly, as it were, into a spacious drawing-room which was still more dazzling. In the centre of the apartment stood a tree brilliantly illuminated and hung with toys, flowers, jewels, and fruit of all kinds. Two chandeliers added their light to that of the illuminated tree, under one of which half a dozen children were gathered around a table loaded with cakes. Several young ladies, as well as others who were older, were grouped here and there.

In short, Fleurange suddenly found herself, and for the first time in her life, in the midst of what seemed to her a very brilliant reunion, in which all the faces, even those of her hosts, were strange. The least timid would have been disconcerted, and Fleurange was completely abashed. The lady in gray with a cap trimmed with flowers, whom she supposed to be her aunt, took her by the hand, and hastily led her back into the passage, and thence into a small parlor lighted by a single lamp. In crossing the hall, they met Fleurange’s young guide.

“Is she ill? Does she need anything?” he asked in a kind and eager tone.

“Yes, she needs rest,” and with this reply Madame Dornthal shut the door in her son’s face.

She raised her head, and looked at her aunt, who stood silently regarding her. The latter was decidedly ugly—astonishingly so, yet even before she spoke or smiled there was an expression more desirable than beauty visibly imprinted on her face, otherwise devoid of all charm—an expression of intelligence and kindness.

“Remain here perfectly quiet, will you?” said Madame Dornthal, tutoyant Fleurange as if she had known her from childhood.[160]

“There, look at the clock; a quarter of an hour will be sufficient. Do not try to talk, only listen to me. You are at home, you must understand: remember that. No thanks are necessary. You are one of our children. We had five: now we have six. It was Clement, my oldest son, who went to meet you, because his father could not leave the children this evening. You saw Hilda and Clara at your arrival, as well as the two little ones, Fritz and Frida, who were also there to receive you. There is Gabrielle besides: that is all. Your uncle has mourned so much for his poor sister Margaret! Now he has found her again, it is a happy day for us all!”

Fleurange quietly wiped away her tears without replying. Just then some one knocked at the door.

“Who is there?”

“It is I.”

It was Clement with a cup of coffee, which, at her aunt’s injunction, Fleurange drank with docility.

“Will you now go up to your room for the night, or will you return to the drawing-room among the others?”

Fleurange replied without any hesitation: “I prefer to go back to the drawing-room and see them all, at once.”

A pleasant smile lighted up Madame Dornthal’s face. “I like you very much, Gabrielle, not because you are handsome, that has nothing to do with it; I should love you quite as much were it otherwise; but because there is so much simplicity about you—which is quite to my taste. Now, let me see: it is eleven o’clock, our friends are going to take their children home, and our youngest are going to bed. As to the rest of us, we shall presently go to the Midnight Mass, and not sup till our return. Make your own choice—to follow the children’s example, or go with us.”

“Oh! with you, with you!” cried

“And yet you are fatigued,” replied Madame Dornthal, “only you do not yet feel it. But as it will do you no harm, you shall do as you wish. So save your strength, and do not return now to the drawing-room. You can remain here and wait for me.”

She left the room, and Fleurange remained where she was, happy to obey such kind orders without any resistance. Five minutes after, the door opened. It was Clement again, holding his little brother by the hand, and carrying his young sister in his arms.

“Fritz and Frida wish to bid you good-night,” he said. The little boy timidly approached. Fleurange immediately spoke to him in that language which all children understand, and which can only be learned and spoken by those who love them: he was speedily reassured. She then took Frida, and kissed her blue eyes, which, while looking at her with surprise, began to close. When she gave the child back to her brother, she was asleep, and he bore her away without awakening her, holding her with an ease that showed how accustomed he was to the care. His little brother followed him out of the room.

Half an hour of silent repose succeeded this interruption. It was more beneficial to Fleurange than sleep, which strong excitement kept her from feeling the need of. At the end of that time, Madame Dornthal reappeared with her two daughters. Clement and his father were waiting for them in the passage. They set off by starlight on foot, for the church was near. They were all silent and thoughtful, for the children’s festival had not made them forgetful of the solemnity of this great night.

In church, once more in church, Fleurange felt, as she knelt down, that her overburdened heart could now find relief, and when solemn, harmonious, and accordant voices made the magnificent arches resound with unearthly chants, which seemed to be the spontaneous expression of universal prayer, the young girl bowed her head still lower: all the joy and gratitude of her heart overflowed in sweet tears and fervent prayers of thanksgiving. When Mass was over, one voice, which surpassed the rest—a voice sweet and manly—intoned beside her the Psalm Laudate Dominum. She involuntarily joined in the strain, and the two voices seemed for an instant to form but one.

When she turned around, she saw that this singer was her cousin, Clement Dornthal.

V.

Her aunt, in assuring her the previous evening she was among her own—that is, at home—seemed to have constituted her, as by magic, a child of the house. Everything around her was new and somewhat strange, but everything pleased her as if naturally conformed to her tastes; and yet the walls of her room, hung with sombre colors, the old press of carved wood, which easily contained her limited wardrobe, the high-backed chairs ranged around, the antique bureau in one corner, and in the other a great monumental stove, the spectral aspect of which alone was surprising—all this might easily have offended an eye accustomed to the smiling magnificence of Italy, but not an object in the house seemed capable of imparting any sad impressions. The word welcome appeared inscribed on every side, as on all faces, and in this sweet atmosphere she instinctively felt that the material comfort was only a type of the mental freedom much more necessary than the other to the happiness of life.

“You must not dress in black today, Gabrielle,” said her two fair cousins, as they entered her chamber for the third time since she rose an hour before, bearing a basket which contained garments similar to their own.

“Why not?” said Fleurange, somewhat astonished.

“Do you not know that, in Germany, mourning is laid aside on great festivals?” replied Clara, the younger of the two. “You must dress like us to-day, as you will always do when the time for this sad mourning is over.”

The elder of the two sisters noticed that her cousin made no reply: she approached her and said affectionately:

“Excuse Clara if she has distressed you. She is so gay and happy herself, that she cannot comprehend misfortune and sadness.”

“I do not wish to remind her of them to-day,” said Fleurange, “and will do as she requests. But you, dear Hilda,” continued she—looking with admiration at her cousin’s golden locks and grave brow, which a queen’s diadem would have suited, or the aureola of a saint—“are you not as gay and happy as your sister?”

“Yes, as happy,” said Hilda, “but not as gay.”

After some explanations, Fleurange conformed to her cousins’ wishes. But when, before dinner, the beautiful Hilda, clothed in white, brought a garland like that she wore herself and wished to place it on her head, she objected: “As to this garland, Hilda, you must excuse me from wearing it.”

“Why so?”

“Because I have never worn any ornament of the kind: because, after all, I cannot and do not wish to forget I am a poor orphan, who should not dream of adorning herself, or mingling in the world.”

“But, Gabrielle, you must know we only adorn ourselves to celebrate

“Never? But then, why wear flowers without any reason?”

“It is not without a reason. My father likes us to wear the flowers of the season at every feast. This poor wreath you have refused, Gabrielle, look at it: it is, like mine, of holly, reflecting the brightness of Christmas, with its shining leaves and berries red as coral. There, see if it is not becoming in your raven hair?” As she spoke, Hilda held the wreath over her cousin’s head: at that instant Clara appeared, and hesitation was no longer possible. She instantly took her sister’s place: the bright leaves and red berries were placed like a crown on Fleurange’s brow, who laughed and only made a feeble resistance, while the mirror reflected the forms of the three young girls—as graceful a picture as ever haunted an artist’s dreams.

“There,” cried Clara, “you are both beautiful—one fair as the day and the other brilliant as night. And I,” continued she, arranging her long curls, among which holly leaves were also twined—“let me see what I resemble myself.”

“A flower, a star, dear Clara: everything that is best worth gazing at by day or night,” said Fleurange affectionately.

She preferred the elder of the two sisters, but there was an irresistible grace about the other, whom she could not help caressing with her eyes and tones, as if she were a child.

“Ah! that is charming, poetic, and very applicable! Thank you, Cousin Gabrielle. I will presently ask our poet to divine my emblems. We shall see if he agrees with you.”

“If our poet is in a fit of abstraction, you must ask some one else who certainly will not be,” said Hilda.

Clara blushed. “Come, come!” said she, “let us talk no longer about me, but go down. There is Frida coming for us. They have doubtless all arrived.” And taking her little sister by the hand, she ran off, scarcely touching the massive balustrade as she flew down the stairs.

“You did not tell me you were expecting visitors,” said Fleurange.

“Only some friends and relatives. Since my Uncle Heinrich lost his wife, he and his son have taken their Christmas dinner with us. The family formerly assembled at his house. You are going to make his acquaintance, and that of our fine cousin Felix. The rest are our friends, and will soon be yours.” Hilda paused. “You doubtless know that Hansfelt is my father’s friend, and was the companion of his youth?” she continued at length.

“Hansfelt!” exclaimed Fleurange. “What! Karl Hansfelt, the great poet?”

We have already remarked that Fleurange perfectly understood her mother’s native tongue. The poems of the person just mentioned were sufficiently celebrated at that time for her to be familiar with them, and even know some of them by heart.

“And he is your friend? And shall I see him?”

“Yes,” replied Hilda, “you will see him often. And you will also see,” she added, as if eager to change the subject, “a young artist who is beginnings be quite popular. His name is Julian Steinberg, and he is a friend of Overbeck’s. I will leave Clara to introduce him to you.” A significant smile accompanied the last words, and Fleurange, comprehending, or nearly so, the state of affairs, descended with her cousin into the large drawing-room, which, as well as the dining-room, was on the ground floor.

Old Mansion—the name, par excellence, by which it was known in the city. But, as it was spacious and commodious, its situation quiet and retired, and it had a large garden which all the windows on one side overlooked, it was admirably adapted to the professor’s studious habits. The picturesque color it had acquired with age was also quite to his taste, and, above all, as it was here Ludwig Dornthal passed the first years of his married life, and where his children were born, nothing in the world would have induced him to leave it, and on this point they were all agreed. The Old Mansion was dear to those who inhabited it, as well as to all who frequented it, and every one, like Fleurange, uttered more or less fervently these words, which are always vainly repeated in this world when our faculties are all for an instant in a state of happy equilibrium: “It is good for us to be here: let us set up our tabernacle, and here remain.” This impression, it may be supposed, was not wholly owing to the exterior aspect of the Old Mansion. There was a harmony between it and its occupants; and, with various results, this effect is produced almost everywhere. Inanimate objects seem to imbibe and communicate something of the life that passes around them, and this language, though silent, is, to those who heed it, a source of genuine revelation.

When Fleurange entered the drawing-room, she perceived her Uncle Ludwig was rather impatiently awaiting her, for the moment she appeared he advanced, and, taking her by the hand, led her to the other end of the apartment, where stood a gentleman whose features bore some resemblance to his own; but with so different an expression, that the likeness, which at first was apparent, grew less and less as the two brothers were better known.

“This is our sister Margaret’s daughter,” said Ludwig to the banker. “She is doubly your niece now, for I have adopted her as my child.”

M. Heinrich Dornthal bowed and cordially embraced the young girl, but he could not resist saying: “Another daughter, when you have three already, is a great addition.”

This cool and unpleasant remark disconcerted Fleurange, and she had not recovered from her painful sensation of embarrassment when a young man of rather a fine figure approached and offered her his arm. Fleurange looked at him with an air of astonishment. She had never been to a large dinner-party, and knew nothing of the usages common to all countries on such an occasion. She slightly retreated, and, opening her large eyes, said: “Who are you, monsieur, and where do you wish to conduct me?”

This question and movement caused a general smile around her, in which she saw her Uncle Ludwig join, and with that simplicity which was her greatest charm she began to laugh herself, and so innocently, that he who had involuntarily caused this little scene exclaimed half aloud: “This is truly the most charming piece of rusticity I ever met with;” and then, bowing to her with mock gravity, and an air at once gallant and bantering, he said:

Fleurange, blushing and smiling, accepted the arm offered her, and, once seated at table beside this new cousin, and freed from the embarrassment of this little incident, she looked around and began to enjoy her novel position.

Was it really her own self, who recently felt so isolated? She who had stood face to face with want and abandonment? Could she be the same person now, surrounded by numerous relatives, a member of a large family, feeling herself beloved by all, and loving all in return—yes, all, excepting the cousin seated beside her, who caused her involuntary confusion; and yet he had just said some words to her in Italian, pronounced with so pure an accent that she experienced a lively sensation of surprise and joy, for Italy was her native land—her own country almost, left only a few months previous for the first time. But her cousin’s words embodied a compliment to which she did not know how to reply, and when she raised her eyes toward him she met a look that disconcerted her still more. She therefore only uttered a few words in return, and then silently resumed her examination of the company, beginning with her Uncle Ludwig. As to him, she thought she had never seen a nobler and sweeter face. It was impossible not to be struck by the contrast in this respect between him and his wife, which must have been even more striking in their youth than now. While she was dwelling on this thought, she met her aunt’s eye resting on her for a moment, and saw her smile. That look and smile seemed to answer her, and give a clue to the mystery, for they revealed the traits that constitute the indestructible bond of genuine sympathy. Beauty adds nothing to such characteristics, or at least only a charm the heart disregards, and which even the eye soon ceases to dwell on, for they who are capable of loving a soul soon love the form, whatever it may be, in which it is clothed.

The only one of the children who had not inherited the beauty of the Dornthals was Clement, who looked more like his mother than the rest. He had the same ugliness and the same smile, and yet, as he was tall, slender, active, and robust, his form, without being elegant, was not devoid of grace, and when his thick hair was thrown back, the shape of his forehead gave a marked character to his face, and his look was, in flashes, expressive, decided, and intelligent. It was astonishing, therefore, to find young Dornthal so apparently incapable of self-assertion: the more so because he possessed great aptitude for the arts and sciences, and as a student he stood in the highest rank. But it seemed to be an effort for him to converse, and he was so absolutely silent in the drawing-room that his friends habitually avoided speaking to him. Elsewhere it was different. His father found it difficult to conceal the secret preference he felt for his eldest son, and the affectionate pride with which he regarded him was manifest in his looks on all occasions, in spite of himself. And Clement’s mother showed a confidence in him almost strange, considering his youth, and often seemed more disposed to consult than direct him. As to his brothers and sisters, they idolized him and were constantly recurring to

“Karl Hansfelt!” she repeated for the second time; “is it he?—what! is that he?”

“Yes, my fair cousin, he himself,” replied Felix in a mocking tone. “In truth, I ought to consider myself fortunate in having at length found a subject of conversation that can interest you, but I did not think of being under obligations to old Hansfelt!”

“But is it not natural to regard a celebrated man with interest, and one so justly celebrated as he?” said she, turning her eyes once more toward her cousin. But she lowered them immediately, for the look fastened on her was more displeasing than any she had yet met—a look expressing at once impertinent admiration and entire want of kindness. She wished, nevertheless, to continue the conversation, and timidly said: “No one can deny that he is a poet whose name is familiar to every one, and whose songs are in every memory.”

“As for me,” replied Felix Dornthal, “I am not fond of rhymsters; this one is particularly disagreeable to me; and his approaching departure does not at all afflict me.”

“Is he going away?” said Fleurange.

“Yes, it seems he has been offered a place at the court of ——, I hardly know what position, but one that will allow him to fully gratify his taste for old books, and at the same time—a thing by no means to be disdained, even by a poet—give him ample means of livelihood. He has suffered sweet violence, and in a short time we shall be deprived of the honor of receiving him within our walls—for ever deprived, it seems, for the kind prince, who is taking him away, insists on his not quitting his post.”

Fleurange made no reply: her glance had just fallen on her cousin Hilda, who was sufficiently near to hear the conversation, but not enough so to be able to take any part in it. She saw her suddenly stoop down to pick up a flower just fallen from her hand, and when she rose up there was a lively color in her face. This was a natural consequence of the movement she had just made, but what was less so was the paleness which gradually succeeded, and the trembling of her hand when she endeavored to raise a glass of water to her lips. Fleurange was observing this with a vague uneasiness, when her attention was suddenly called away by a question her Uncle Ludwig addressed to a young man seated at Clara’s side.

This question led to a reply which momentarily deprived Fleurange of the power of thinking of anything else.

The young artist turned toward Fleurange, and looked at her with an attention that, till now, had been exclusively absorbed by his fair neighbor. All at once he exclaimed: “Yes, certainly; I remember, and I see Count George was right. That is truly Cordelia herself before us!”

Every eye was turned toward Fleurange, and it was her turn to blush. But why did she thus tremble from head to foot? What were the mingled remembrances, sweet and poignant, that were suddenly recalled by the name of Cordelia? Of course it was natural that she should be affected by hearing her father’s last work mentioned—that picture connected with so many painful associations. On the other hand, it was that same picture which enabled her uncle to find her, and now, appreciating more than ever the extent of this happiness, it was perhaps natural that the name of her unknown benefactor, suddenly pronounced in her presence, should inspire this lively and inexpressible emotion—but was this all?

However that might be, she remained the rest of the evening troubled and absorbed in the same thought. She had not, then, been deceived. It was really the stranger she had seen in the studio who now owned the picture, for he not only knew she served her father as a model, but said the likeness was perfect. And his name was Count George! Count? Then he was a man of high rank? What was his other name? Where did he reside? And was he still in this city?

Fleurange wished to give utterance to these questions, but an invincible embarrassment restrained her, and the evening passed without being able to bring the conversation back to this subject. This curiosity aroused, but only imperfectly satisfied, left a kind of uneasiness which she reproached herself for as a fault and a want of gratitude, when, before falling asleep that night, she recalled all that had signalized the day when for the first time she celebrated in the midst of her own relatives the great and memorable festival of Christmas.

VI.

“If I were a poet,” said the voice, “or if I only knew some of their effusions, it would be a suitable time to quote Shakespeare:

‘Oh! that I were a glove upon that hand!’

These words were addressed to her by her cousin Felix Dornthal, who was in the garden with Clement, and had stopped beneath her balcony. The latter had his head cast down, but Felix, as usual, gazed at her with the admiration he had displayed from the very, first day—which was the only disagreeable and annoying thing she had known beneath her uncle’s roof. But then, she seldom saw Felix. The company that assembled two or three times a month in the professor’s drawing-room was not much to the taste of his nephew, and if he had come oftener since Fleurange’s arrival, he seldom had an opportunity of conversing with her, for she avoided him with a care in proportion to the increasing aversion she felt for him. Felix had, nevertheless, all the advantage a fine figure and the manners of the world confer, with sufficient knowledge on various subjects to appear well-informed, and coolness and assurance enough to direct a conversation so as to shine in it. It might, therefore, seem surprising that he inspired such a degree of antipathy, especially when, for the first time in his life, he seriously endeavored to produce the contrary impression.

Sympathy and antipathy are in part instinctive and uncontrollable, and sometimes they are wholly inexplicable. They are both experienced without always knowing the cause, and sometimes, later, they are transformed and modified to such a degree as to efface the first impulse they inspired. Perhaps it would not be impossible to prove that upright souls are less rarely deceived in this respect than others. However it may be, and independent of this instinctive repulsion, the antipathy Fleurange felt was owing, among other good reasons, to the constant irony which was so strong an ingredient in Felix’s nature, as to wither every feeling of kindly impulse or flow of reason around him. Goodness found no attraction in his nature, and those who conversed with him almost ceased to believe in it themselves. He had not discernment enough to see that Fleurange was one of those persons who may be wounded by a compliment as well as by an insult, and more than one flash of her large eyes was necessary to make him comprehend it. And when he suddenly stopped, his silence excited anxiety to know the cause of his sudden preoccupation and what sombre cloud enwrapped him. Some insinuated with a nod of the head that M. Heinrich Dornthal’s only son should yield with more reserve to his love for play, and his father had repeatedly remonstrated with him on this point. But as, apart from his whims and irregularities, Felix had a remarkable capacity for commercial affairs, the banker was blindly indulgent to him, and often remarked that being “perfectly satisfied, and sure of his son in matters of serious import (meaning thereby his aptitude for business), he did not trouble himself much about the rest, and only patiently awaited the epoch when the marriage of his choice would lead him back to a more regular life.”

It should be added that, for several months, the health of the head

We left Felix beneath his cousin’s balcony, his riding-whip in hand: “Away with poetry, which is not in my line,” he soon said, “and deign to listen, fair cousin, to the petition I am about to address you in humble prose.”

Fleurange, still leaning on the balcony, replied: “I am listening.”

“See what a lovely spring day! My horse stands yonder: will you not have yours saddled, and allow me to ride in your company?”

Fleurange drew herself up with an air of surprise, and shook her head without otherwise answering.

“No?” said Felix.

“No, certainly not. How could you think of such a thing? And what claim have you to become my mentor?”

“Your mentor!” repeated Felix with a frown. “I am your cousin, that is all. Clement often has the honor of accompanying you in this way, and I should have a share in his privileges.”

“You are mistaken,” said Fleurange tranquilly: “Clement is my brother, and you are not.”

The smile habitual to Felix—a smile at once impertinent and satirical, hovered on his lips:

“Assuredly not,” he said; “that is a title I am by no means ambitious of, and am far from claiming of you.”

Fleurange blushed, and made no reply, but, at a sign from her cousins who were in the room, she almost immediately left the balcony and went down into the garden.

Clement remained motionless during the preceding dialogue, with his head bent down, making flourishes on the sand with the stick in his hand.

“Her brother!” repeated Felix in a mocking tone, as soon as Fleurange disappeared. “Well, I have no reason to be offended. She looks upon you as a boy, that is quite clear. It is for you to complain, if this does not suit you.”

“It does suit me, on the contrary;” said Clement in a decided tone. “I accept the title she gives me, and I know, when occasion requires it, how to fulfil the obligations it imposes, and when to claim my rights.”

“Rights! What rights?”

“The right, certainly, of protecting her! You see, boy as I am, she has conferred it on me. It is one which I will never surrender, and would quite willingly maintain against you, Felix, if necessary.”

“What source of inspiration have you drawn from to-day, my fine

Clement did not look up; he neither blushed nor was vexed.

“Felix,” said he, “I am only nineteen years old, it is true, and you are ten years older; but I have one advantage which the younger does not generally possess: you do not know me. But I,” continued he, looking him full in the face, “as you are aware, I know you well.”

At these words a black look came over Felix’s face, he bit his lips, and would perhaps have made some angry reply had not the three girls appeared at the end of the alley. At the sight of them Felix abruptly turned around, and, leaping on his horse, galloped off, slightly waving his hand to Julian Steinberg, whom he met at the garden gate.

Fleurange and her two cousins approached to meet Clara’s betrothed. “I am late,” said he to Clara, “but you must not think it is my fault. I have been detained by an unexpected meeting. Count George is here.”

“Count George de Walden?” said Clement, “the same one who visited the gallery about a year ago?”

“The very one,” replied Julian; “and it was he who showed us the beautiful Cordelia that resembles you so much, mademoiselle,” he added, turning to Fleurange.

“And the source of our good luck in finding her,” said Hilda.

“But, since he has seen you, Gabrielle,” said Clara, “you must know him.”

Fleurange, strangely surprised, moved, and confused, nevertheless replied in a tolerably calm tone: “I did not know who purchased the picture until I came here.”

“But,” persisted Clara, “you saw him, however?”

“Yes, once, but without speaking to him.”

“In that case, you must remember him, for Julian pretends his face is the most remarkable one he ever saw.”

“Yes, his features are not only fine,” said Julian, “but there is in his physiognomy and his whole appearance something—something—”

“Striking and noble,” said Clement.

“Yes, that is true.”

“Assuredly,” replied Julian; “but that is not all. There is something extraordinary about him—how shall I express it? heroic—yes, that is the word, he looks like a hero.”

“Of romance?” said Clara.

“No, of history: if I had to paint a celebrated soldier, or the leader of some famous exploit, I should choose him for the original.”

“And then, he is a great lover of art,” said Clement.

“Yes,” responded Julian, “he seems, indeed, gifted in every way.”

“And is he going to remain here?” said Clara.

“Unfortunately he will not, for in that case he would be at our wedding, but he is obliged to go to St. Petersburg without any delay.”

“What! is he a Russian?” said Clara.

“No, not wholly.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean he is a Livonian or a native of Courland, I do not know exactly which. But he is one of the emperor’s subjects, and cannot trifle with his orders, which obliged him to leave Florence suddenly, where he was, and now forces him to keep swiftly on his way.”

The conversation took another turn, of which Fleurange did not hear a word. As soon as she had an excuse for leaving her cousins, she returned to her chamber, where she took a small note-book from her pocket, and carefully inscribed therein the name of Count George de Walden.

THE MARTYRDOM OF ST. AGNES.

“Sancta Agnes! ora pro nobis.”

CATHOLICITY AND PANTHEISM.

NO. XIII.

THE COSMOS IN TIME AND SPACE—CONTINUED.

The Theanthropos present in the cosmos through the sacraments, and through them incorporating into himself human persons in time and space, raising them to a higher similitude of and communication with the three personalities of the infinite, and thus not only realizing the highest initial perfection of the cosmos, but also unfolding and developing that initial perfection, and bringing it to its ultimate completion in palingenesia.

The Theanthropos, therefore, has placed himself in the very centre of the cosmos by his sacramental and substantial presence, as became his great office and prerogative of mediator. By those moments of his gnosis respecting God, and the cosmos which he came to reveal to men. By the sacramental moment of regeneration, he infuses into human persons the term of the supernatural order in its essence and faculties, and thus raises them to a higher state of being, and to a closer communication with the Trinity, but all this in an initial and inchoative state. By the sacramental moment, called confirmation, he brings that essence and its faculties to a definite and determinate growth. When human persons are thus fitted and prepared, he by his substantial presence incorporates them into himself, and enables their supernatural being to live and develop itself by being put in real, actual communication with all the proper objects of its faculties. Thus, the cosmos of personalities, perfected in its initial supernatural state, can act and develop itself—the Theanthropos himself, through his moral agents, organically constituted, governing and directing its action to the safest and speediest acquirement of its last perfection.

From this metaphysical idea of the church, derived and resulting from its very essence, it follows:

First, That, next to the Theanthropos, the Catholic Church is the end of all the exterior works of the infinite. The supreme end of the exterior works was the highest possible communication of the infinite to the finite. This was primarily realized in the hypostatic union which bound all created natures to the infinite, and is realized next in the union of all personalities with the Theanthropos, and through him with the Trinity. Now, the very essence of the Catholic Church consists in this union. Consequently, as such it is the last supreme imperative law of the cosmos. The last, because with it closes the cycle of the creative act, and begins the cycle of the return of the terms to their principle and cause. Supreme, because no higher initial perfection of the cosmos can be realized after supposing its existence. Imperative, because it is a necessary complement of the plan of the cosmos.

Hence, without the Catholic Church the cosmos of personalities would have no aim or object. It would stand alone, and unconnected with the other parts of the cosmos, the particular end of each personality could never be attained, and the whole would present a confused mass of elements, without order, harmony, or completion.

It follows, in the second place, that the Catholic Church is fashioned after the hypostatic moment, and is its most lively representation. For as that moment implies the bringing together of a human and divine element, finite and infinite, absolute and relative, necessary and contingent, independent and subject, visible and invisible, in the unity of one divine personality, so the Catholic Church is the result of a double element,

But that union, as the last supreme imperative law of the cosmos, is such a strict consequence of the plan, is so connected and linked with all the other moments of God’s action ad extra, depends so entirely upon the identical principle which originates the others, that once we deny it we are obliged to yield up all the other truths, and take refuge in nihilism, and proclaim the death of our intelligence. For once we admit the impossibility of the union of the attributes or substance of the Theanthropos with the sacramental element, on the plea that the attributes of each are opposite and contradictory, for the self-same reason we must admit the impossibility of the union of the Word of God with the human nature, and sweep the hypostatic moment clean away; because, if it is impossible to bring together opposite attributes in one sacramental being, it is much more impossible, so to speak, to bring not only attributes but two natures quite opposite together, into one subsistence and personality, and entirely exchange attribution and names, and call man God, and God man, and attribute exclusively divine acts to human nature, and vice versa. But, having denied the hypostatic moment in consequence of that pretended impossibility, we cannot logically stop here. We must generalize the question, and deny all possible union between the finite and the infinite. For what can there be more opposite and more contradictory than these terms, absolute and relative, necessary and contingent, immense and limited, eternal and successive, immutable and changeable, universal and particular, self-existing and made, infinite and finite? And could they possibly be brought together into any kind of union? Nay, we must go further, and deny the very coexistence of both terms, because one certainly seems to exclude the other—the universal being, for instance, including all possible being, must necessarily imply the impossibility of the coexistence of any particular, circumscribed, limited being. Arrived at this, we must conclude that all finite things which come under our observation, not being able to coexist with the universal being, must be only modifications and developments of that same, and throw ourselves into pantheism. But once pantheism is admitted, we must, to be logical, suppose the existence of a universal something impelled by an interior instinct of nature to unfold and develop itself by a succession of efforts, one more distinct, marked, and perfect than the other. Now, taking this substance at one determinate something, at the idea-being of Hegel—that is, at nihilism.

Nihilism is consequently the logical product of the denial of the union of the infinite attributes of the Theanthropos with the sacramental element, the very essence of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church, therefore—or nihilism.

And we beg the reader to observe that this logical conclusion which we have drawn is simply the history of the errors of the last three hundred years, and consequently our conclusions receive all the support which the gradual unfolding of error for three hundred years is able to afford.

The impossibility of the union of the infinite attributes and substantial presence of the Theanthropos in the sacramental element was proclaimed in the sixteenth century by Protestantism, when on one side it denied the authority and infallibility of the church, and consequently denied the union of these Theanthropic attributes with the moral instrument, the hierarchy, and on the other side denied the real presence, and thus refused to allow a union of the substance of the Theanthropos with the sacramental elements of bread and wine. It did not then see the full meaning of its denial, but yet established the principle of the impossibility of the union of the Theanthropos in action or substance with the sacramental elements. Deism followed, and, making the Protestant principle its own, added a logical application to it, and asked: How can the uncreated, infinite, and absolute being be united to a nature created, finite, and relative? or, in other words: How could the finite and the infinite be united so as to form the God-man? And then, like Protestantism, in reference to sacramental union, not being able to conceive that possibility, deism denied the hypostatic moment. But the question did not stop here. Pantheism followed, and, being gifted with as much logical acumen as deism, generalized the question, and asked: How can the finite coexist with the infinite, which comprehends all? And not being able to see the possibility of such coexistence, it refused all existence to the finite, and admitted the identity of all things and the unity of substance, allowing the finite no other existence but one ephemeral and phenomenal. This was the pantheism of Spinoza and others. But Hegel, with more acumen than all the rest, saw clearly that it was impossible to admit an infinite substance subject to modification and development, unless it was supposed to be, previously to any development, altogether abstract, and shorn of all determination and concreteness, among which determinations must be ranked existence also; because development implies limit, definiteness, determination, circumscription; hence, that primitive something could not be supposed infinite, except it was shorn of everything, even existence. Consequently, he proclaimed nihilism as the principle of all things. And nihilism, and along with it the death of the intelligence, we repeat, must be admitted, or the Catholic Church—all truth or no truth.

We conclude: Deny the Catholic Church, or the union of the attributes and substance of the Theanthropos with the sacramental elements, because those opposite things cannot be brought together, and you must deny the union between human nature and the eternal Word for the same reason. Deny the hypostatic

We defy any one to find a flaw in the logical connection of these conclusions, or to prove that we have misstated the genesis and development of error for the last three hundred years.

From the essence of the Catholic Church, it follows that she is necessarily divided into two moments—the active moment, and the passive moment.

The first is the Theanthropos acting through his moral instruments, proposing and expounding to all human persons, in time and space, the gnosis of the whole cosmos, in its cause, term, effect, and destiny, actualizing through the same moral instruments all the other sacramental moments in human persons, and through the same moral instruments governing and directing the whole elevated cosmos. This moment is called in theological language ecclesia docens, or teaching church. The second are all human persons to whom the doctrine is taught, and who are the recipients of all the sacraments and the subjects of the government of the church. This moment is called ecclesia audiens, or hearing church.

The first is essentially active, the other passive; the one communicates, the other receives—though some members, in different relations, belong to the one or the other.

Though in demonstrating the essence of the Catholic Church, as we flatter ourselves, quite in a novel aspect, we have at the same time demonstrated all the Theanthropic attributes belonging to and resulting from that essence, yet, for the sake of those who cannot see all the consequences included in a general principle, we shall dilate at some length upon all the essential attributes of the church, and those characteristic marks which constitute her what she is, and point her out from any other body pretending to the same name.

The first attribute, which evidently emanates from the essence of the church, is its externation, and capacity of coming under the observation of men. For, if the essence of the church consists in being the Theanthropos, incorporating his power, as well as his substantial presence, in physical as well as personal instruments, and through them incorporating all human persons unto himself, who can fail to perceive that church must be visible, outward, able to come under the observation of men, in that double relation of sacramental extension of Christ and of having men as objects of incorporation with him?

An invisible church would imply a denial of any sacramental agency, and would be absolutely unfit for men, who are incarnate spirits. Hence, those sects which hold that the saints alone belong to the church have not the least idea of its essence. Holiness being altogether a spiritual and invisible quality, the saints could not know each other, nor, consequently, hold any communication with each other; the sinners could not find out where the saints are to be heard of; and therefore there could not be any possibility of discovering the church or any moral obligation of joining it.

The next attribute essentially belonging to the church is its permanence, in theological language called indefectibility, which implies not only duration in time and space, but also immutability in all its essential elements,

The reason of this attribute is so evident and palpable that we are at a loss to understand how it could enter men’s minds that the church could and did fail or change in its essential elements. When Protestantism, to cloak over its rebellion in breaking loose from allegiance to the church of the living God, alleged as reason that it had failed and changed in its essential elements—when Protestantism repeats daily the same assertion, it exposed and exposes itself to an absurdity at which the merest tyro in logic would laugh. It is one of the first axioms of ontology that the essences of things are immutable and eternal: immutable, inasmuch as they can never change; eternal, inasmuch as they must be conceived as possible from eternity, whether they have any subjective existence or not. Essences are like number. Add to it, or subtract from it, and you can never have the same number; likewise add to the essence of a thing, or subtract from it, and you may have another thing, but never the same essence.

Now, what is the essence of the church? It consists in the Theanthropos incorporating his infinite power and his substantial presence in physical and personal instruments, and through them uniting to himself human persons, elevating them to a supernatural state, and enabling them to develop and unfold their supernatural faculties until they arrive at their ultimate perfection, and all this in time and space.

Now, how can we suppose the church to fail when its very essence is founded on the union of the Theanthropos with the sacraments? The only possible failure we can suppose is if the presence of the Theanthropos were to be withdrawn from the sacraments; and this could happen either because the Theanthropos may be supposed powerless to continue that presence or unwilling; in both cases, the divinity of the Theanthropos is denied; because the first would argue want of power, the second a senseless change. Protestantism would do much better to deny at once the divinity of its founder, instead of admitting the failure of the church he founded. It would be by far more honest and logical. We can respect error when it is logical and consistent, but we must despise obstinate nonsense and absurdity. The same attribute is claimed by the end of the church—which is, to communicate to human persons in time and space the term of the supernatural moment. As long, then, as there are men on earth, so long must the church continue to possess invariable and unchangeable those elements with which it was endowed by its divine founder. Should it fail or change, how could men after the failure be incorporated into the Theanthropos? Should it fail or change, how could men believe in the possibility of their attaining their end? Should it fail once and at one period only, men would no longer possess any means of knowing when, and how, and where it might not fail again, and therefore they could not but look upon the whole thing with utter contempt.