Part 11 — CHAPTER XXIII.

THE TOWN-MEETING.

“Justice and reason!” he exclaimed. “Why, for what else have I been contending, Mrs. Yorke?”

“True!” she answered gently. “But may it not be possible that there is more cause than you will allow for this upheaval, and that it is not a superficial excitement which can be easily soothed or beaten down? These sailor friends of ours have told me that, when the water is dimpled and green, it has a sand bottom, and, when it is black and easily fretted into foam, there are rocks underneath. Now, this anti-Catholic excitement is dark and bitter enough to show that there is some fixed obstacle, which breath, though it be ever so wisely syllabled, will not remove.”

“So there is,” Mr. Yorke replied promptly. “The devil is there.”

“Charles, the devil, or human weakness, lurks under the surface of every side of every question,” his wife said with earnestness. “Good men are not entirely good, nor bad men utterly bad. There are men, and not ignorant ones, either, who have engaged in this movement from an honest conviction that there is need of it. They may be prejudiced and short-sighted, but they are” worthy of a patient, if not a respectful,

What man likes to be told that he is not reason personified, especially by his wife? Not Mr. Charles Yorke, certainly. But the little lady was not one to be scouted, even by her liege lord, and he heard her respectfully to the end. Manhood must be asserted, however, and he compensated himself for the mortification after a manner that is often adopted by both men and women: he first absurdly exaggerated the charge made against him, and then answered to that exaggeration.

“I am much obliged to you, my dear, for explaining the matter to me,” he said with an air of meekness. “I am afraid that I cannot stop to hear more, for it is time to go. But I will remember your warning, and try not to make a fool of myself.”

Nine women out of ten would have made the reply which such a pretence is calculated to call forth—a shocked and distressed denial of having had any such meaning, a senseless begging pardon for having been so misunderstood, and a final giving up of the point, and temporary utter humiliation and grief, followed later, on thinking the matter over, by a mental recurrence to their abandoned position, and a disenchanting conviction that men are sometimes artful creatures, after all, and only to be pleased by flattery.

Mrs. Yorke was not to be so entrapped. She accepted her husband’s submission with perfect tranquillity, as though she believed it both proper and sincere, and laughed a little as he went away. “My poor Charles!” she said, looking after him with tender indulgence.

Those little faults are so endearing!

The hall where the meeting was held was filled in every part; a dense mass of people struggled up or down the two flights of stairs leading to it, and a throng of men obstructed the street outside. Edith Yorke had been in the lane to see a sick woman, and, hearing that Miss Churchill also was in the neighborhood, had lingered longer than was prudent, hoping for her company home. Starting off alone, at last, she soon found herself in the midst of this crowd. They surged about her, muttering insults and maledictions on “that Catholic Rowan girl,” and seemed every moment on the point of stopping her. Not far in advance was Miss Churchill. An enthusiastic boy threw a stone at her, and the teacher wiped from her cheek a stain of blood where it struck. Edith held her head up, and walked straight on, looking neither to the right nor left, and, whatever ruffianly intention any one may have had, those who looked in her face stood aside, and kept silence while she passed. If the spirit that hardened her brow to the likeness of marble, shone in her eyes, and curved her red lips with a still scorn, was less Christian humility than natural loftiness, it was at least no petty pride, and it needed but the sense of actual personal danger to change it to supernatural lowliness. Her conviction, “They dare not

Humility is a flower that grows on the mountain-tops of the soul, and is reached only by striving and endeavor. That is not true humility which the mean heart plucks in the lowlands, calling on God ‘twixt swamp and slough; nor does the child’s hand bear it, nor yet does it shadow the untried maiden’s brow, over her lowered eyelids. We must come out above the belt of pines and the gentian meadows, we must scale the dizzy track where to look down is destruction, and face the bitter cold of the glacier, and, over all, we shall find that exquisite blossom, its pure blue drooped earthward under the infinite blue of heaven.

Therefore we claim not humility for Edith, for she was not wise enough for that, and she was too true and brave for its counterfeit; but she had that scorn for meanness and tyranny which is one of the first milestones on the road to humility.

While his niece was walking unprotected through the crowd without, Mr. Yorke was in the hall, seated near the platform, on which were all the ministers, and the prominent Know-Nothings, several of the latter town-officers. One after another spoke, and was loudly applauded. The excitement and enthusiasm were immense. Mindful of his wife’s charge, Mr. Yorke restrained his indignation, and listened attentively, sifting out what was essential in this commotion and common to all its participants. As he listened, the vision of a possible future of his country appeared before him, and made the hair rise on his head. He saw the anarchy and bloodshed of a religious war more terrible than any war the world had seen—a massacre of innocents, a war of extermination. This was possible, was probable, was inevitable, unless men would listen to reason. And why would they not? He weighed all that was said, carefully attending to the most revolting and worthless arguments, and under all that foam and roar saw the one rock. However different might be the principles and feelings of those anti-Catholic speakers, they all converged, consolidated, and struck fire on that one point.

It was not that they were fanatic, for fanaticism cannot exist without some strong religious conviction, and by far the largest number of them had no religious belief; while many interpreted religious freedom to mean freedom from religion. It was not that they were intolerant of any man’s simple belief. The majority were more likely to laugh at faith than to be angry with it. Indeed, their scepticism made them incapable of practising real religious toleration, for that is to bear, without any manifestation of resentment, that your neighbor shall tacitly scorn what you hold sacred; a virtue most difficult to the faithful, but comparatively easy to the sceptic. It was not that they cared for its own sake whether the Bible was read in school or not, for the larger number of them never read it at home, many quoted it only in mockery, and every one denied the truth of some of its most plainly uttered tests. In short, the rock on which this tempest rose and dashed was a deadly fear and hatred, not of the Catholic Church, but of the Catholic clergy. The only question which interested these men in connection with any Catholic dogma was, How much temporal influence will it give to the priest? The supernatural side they cared not a fig for. To their minds it was impossible that a Catholic priest should be a truthful, plain-dealing, straightforward

Let us give the Know-Nothings and their sympathizers their due. Bad as they were, slanderers and law-breakers, and absolutely irreligious for the most part, the worst fault of many of them was that they knowingly used bad means to what they believed to be a good end. There was some sincerity in the movement, though it was, at its best, irrational, inconsistent, and un-American, as alien, indeed, to our republic as it charged the church with being. They believed that the Catholic clergy acquire power by insidious means, and that, once in power, they will destroy all that makes our dear country the abode of freedom and equal rights, and the bountiful home where all the starving, shivering exiles of other lands may feed and warm themselves. Once prove that the church is friendly to the republic, and the vertebra of their opposition is broken.

Mr. Griffeth was the only one of these speakers who cleared the question from the débris of personal slander and misrepresentation of doctrine.

“You mistake, gentlemen,” he said, “if you think that the doctrines of the Catholic Church are either ridiculous or bad. Such an opinion would show you ill-informed or incapable of comprehension. On the contrary, they are glorious. But they are such as can be safely preached and enforced only by saints and angels, or by men of such exalted holiness as the world seldom sees. In the hands of weak men, they may be, and have been, perverted to base uses. The dogma of the Infallibility of the church is a crown of living gold on the head of the mystical Spouse, and a mantle of cloth of gold about her form; but the priest has drawn the shining folds about his own human shoulders, and made it a sin to criticise him. Confession, which I proclaim to be, in its essence, one of the most comforting and saving institutions that ever existed, they can and do use to learn the secret workings of society and obtain power over individuals. I need not detain you to go over the list, for all are the same. It is St. Michael’s sword in the hands of Satan.

“No, gentlemen, it is not because their theology is bad that I say, Down with the church! It is because its fair niches and shrines harbor thieves, and robbers, and tyrants—because, though the pope can sit there enthroned, with his lofty tiara, and the bishops stand with mitres, and the priests lift their haughty foreheads, the people cannot walk erect as God made them to walk, but must crawl on the pavement like worms. And therefore, though the walls of the temple were of jasper, its pillars of malachite, its ceiling of sapphires, its pavements of beaten gold, and its gates like the gates of the New Jerusalem, I still would cry, Down with the temple!

“From the time when peoples first began to crystallize upon the face of the earth, God has looked out from heaven, and asked each in turn, ‘Where shall my children find peace, and freedom, and room to grow?’ and each in turn has answered, ‘Here, Lord!’ lying to his face. And in his own time, after patient waiting, the Almighty has stretched forth his hand, and has effaced the boundaries of that perjured nation, and touched her people with blight. The kingdoms of old lied to the Lord, and they have perished; and in our own day there is a wavering and tottering in the battlements that wall the nations in.

“Brethren, when we in turn shall join that company of silent watchers, God forbid that we should hear rising from our beloved land such a lamentation as went up for that ruined city of the East: ‘Nineveh is laid waste! who will bemoan her? She is empty, and void, and waste; her nobles dwell in the dust; her people are scattered upon the mountains, and no man gathereth them.’ For the sake of humanity, may God forbid!

“There is now but one name written in living characters on the future, and that name is America. It was writ in blood by our fathers, and accepted in fire by the God of nations. Palsied be the hand that would quench one letter of that sacred legend!”

During the loud applause that followed, Mr. Yorke mounted the platform.

Had they not known that he was soon to leave them, and had not his manner been quite unlike what he had shown on former occasions of this sort, they might have refused to hear him. As it was, a reluctant and impatient silence was accorded. Some listened, doubtless because they wished to be exasperated, and hoped for another pretext for outbreak. But he looked like one who fully appreciates the strength of his opponent, and does not hope for a speedy victory.

“Gentlemen,” he said, with a certain grim emphasis on the word, “after Mr. Griffeth’s pyrotechnic display of eloquence, I cannot hope that my words will not fall with a dull sound on your ears. He has gone up like the rocket, and I must come down like the stick. I promise, however, to be brief, and to speak to the point. First, I thank him for having spoken like a gentleman, and left the subject clear enough for a gentleman to touch. On all that preceded him, I have but two comments to make. Concerning the attacks on the personal character of the Catholic clergy, I will only say, ‘Set a thief to catch a thief!’ To the misrepresentations of their creed, I would say, theologians should be better educated than to make them sincerely, and honest men should not fear to tell the truth, even of a foe.

“I come, then, to Mr. Griffeth’s argument: that these men, simply from human weakness, not from personal depravity, have always abused their power, and, being men, always will abuse it, and that, therefore, we must, in self-defence, either banish them from the country, or deny them the rights of citizenship; their doctrines all the time being perfect, or, at least, tolerable.

“I am not here to defend the character of the Catholic clergy. I know well that your deep-rooted prejudice

“This part of the question is, however, irrelevant. We stand here, if we are worthy to speak, for principle, and not for men. If the faults of partisans are to be used as an argument against an institution, no institution on earth can stand, and Protestantism and freedom must shake to their foundations.

“Assuming, though, that his assertion is true, and that the clergy have always been the enemies of freedom and enlightenment, though that would be strong circumstantial evidence against their future trustworthiness, still the conviction which he invokes is too grave and arbitrary for so just and enlightened a judge as our country promises to be. But I deny the truth of his premises, and, since proof is out of the question in this place, set my bare denial against his bare assertion.

“But if his assumption and conclusion were both true, if these men were untrustworthy, and if we had therefore the right to refuse them equality, we are still bound to give that refusal, not with the howling of wild beasts, not with mobs and threatenings, but decently, and according to law, or we are ourselves unfit to be trusted with that freedom which we deny to them.

“No, I am not here to prove that the clergy of the Catholic Church are all saints, or even all good men; but I am here to say that, hate them as you may, you cannot, in these United States, under the constitution, you cannot with impunity persecute them, nor deprive them of any of the privileges which that constitution guarantees to them as rights. ‘Work in secret,’ do they? ‘Undermine,’ do they? And from whom does this accusation come? What of that society in which this movement takes its rise?—that society which now dominates the land, stirring up riots from Maine to Louisiana, making laws and changing laws, and setting the off-scouring of the earth in our high places? What of those lodges where men assemble to concert measures for governing the country, yet where no citizen can enter without the pass-word and oath of secrecy? Josiah Quincy, Senior, of Boston, a man whose name carries as much weight as any name here in this hall, has said of these same societies, ‘The liberties of a people are never more certain in the path of destruction than when they trust themselves to the guidance of secret societies. Birds of the night are never birds of wisdom.... They are for the most part birds of prey. The fate of a republic is sealed when the bats take the lead of the eagles.’ Our atmosphere is black with these same bats!

“To Mr. Griffeth’s parting anathema, I respond, ay and amen! Palsied be the hand that would quench one

“Mr. Griffeth has uttered his war-cry, ‘Down with the church!’ and you have applauded it with enthusiasm. While I have listened to-night, there has risen before my vision the possible demolition of another edifice—a demolition which is inevitable, if such counsels are to prevail. Our fathers raised in this land a temple to civil and religious liberty, and pledged to its support their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. That was no empty pledge, for the structure was cemented with their blood from corner-stone to pinnacle. And the genius whom they enthroned in the centre was no idol of wood and stone, to be used as a puppet by the designing, but a living creature. She was strong, and pure, and generous, and she had eagle’s eyes. She opened her arms to the world. She feared no alien foe, for her strength could be shorn and her limbs manacled only by her own renegade children. It is you are her foes. These narrow and violent counsels which pretend to protect, do contradict her; the manacles which you forge for others, will fetter her; with the violence which you do to others, will her strength be shorn; and the spirit which you obey under her name will dethrone her. But do not fancy that you can blind and make sport of her with impunity. The time may come when that insulted spirit will take in her mighty arms the pillars of the nation, and pull it down in ruin on your heads. No, the foe is not the orphan she has cherished, nor the stranger within her gates, but the children she has nourished at her bosom.

“Who is here so vile that will not love his country? If any, speak; for him have I offended.”

When Mr. Yorke went home that night, though it was late, he found his wife and Betsey waiting for him at a turn of the road. He expressed no surprise nor disapprobation, but walked slowly homeward with them.

“What have they done?” Mrs. Yorke asked. She perceived that her husband’s arm trembled.

“They listened to you?” she asked.

“Yes, they were civil, and even applauded a little. But what of that? In spite of all that I could do, they have passed a resolve, passed it unanimously, that, if Father Rasle comes here again, they will give him a suit that is not to be bought at the tailor’s.”

“What does that mean?” was Mrs. Yorke’s wondering question.

“You little goose! it means tar and feathers! Well, don’t let us talk any more about it. I am done with words.”

“Edith got into the crowd to-night,” Mrs. Yorke said, “and they were impudent. She took it very quietly then, I think, but after she got home she was quite hysterical. I thought the child would sob herself to death.”

“She had no business to be out,” her uncle exclaimed. “Neither had you and Betsey. How do you know what they may do?”

“You are right, dear,” she said soothingly. “In future, we will stay in the house, and you will stay with us.”

“CELUI-LA FAIT LE CRIME A QUI LE CRIME SERT.”

Mr. Yorke was at the Seaton House when the Western mail-coach came in Saturday morning, but Father Rasle was not a passenger. The mail brought a letter from him to Edith, however, and her uncle took it home to her immediately. She read aloud to the family his thanks for their invitation, and his reasons for declining it. He would drive over in his own buggy, he wrote, and would probably reach Seaton before ten o’clock in the forenoon. Edith had better come to see him in the morning, as he would then be more at leisure.

“Why, he must be here now!” Edith exclaimed, and ran up-stairs to prepare herself for the visit.

If Mrs. Yorke and her daughters felt any sense of relief on learning that they had escaped the danger which would have threatened them had the priest been their guest, they did not express that feeling. They were quite ready, in spite of the danger, to repeat the invitation. Mr. Yorke alone sincerely regretted Father Rasle’s decision. Even Edith, who knew nothing of the action of the town-meeting, perceived that the priest’s place was with his own people.

“I have seen the sheriff and Dr. Willis, this morning,” Mr. Yorke said, after his niece had left the room, “and they both agree in thinking that Father Rasle will not be molested for coming here to stay over one Sunday. They are probably right. The great objection is to his settling here. Besides, he comes so quietly, his being here will not be widely known. Half of his own people do not know that he is coming.”

The two gentlemen named by Mr. Yorke were among the few who secretly condemned the conduct of the town, but did not publicly avow their sentiments, possibly because they knew that such a proclamation would harm themselves without doing any good to Catholics. Aside from the risk of violence to person or property, the physician would be accused of bartering his principles for an increase of practice, the politician of intriguing for the Irish vote. That any one could speak a good word for the church or the Irish from a disinterested motive, was not for a moment admitted.

The day was overcast, threatening rain; but to Edith Yorke it was as though spring and sunshine were at the door; for Mother Church, long exiled, bent once more toward her bereaved children.

“What I do not tell him voluntarily, he will ask,” she said to herself,

Edith was not breaking under her burden, but she was bending wearily, and the constant weight of it had taken away all her elasticity, not of spirits alone, but of body. While making her last examen of conscience, she felt too weak to kneel, and sank into an arm-chair instead, dropping her head back against the cushion, and closing her eyes. So seen, the change in her face was startlingly evident. Her manner was always so fresh, and her eyes and teeth lighted up her smile so brilliantly, whether she spoke or listened, or only looked, that one could not see that she was pale and thin. But the face that lay against the chair-back was very pallid, and even the hands stretched out on the arms of the chair looked sick.

“There are six sins that I am sure of, besides all the doubtful ones,” she said presently, sitting up. “That takes all my right hand, and the forefinger of my left hand. And now it is time to go.”

The shortest way to the house where Father Rasle was to stop led through the wood-path that Edith and Dick had taken when he left her after his first visit to Seaton. She recollected that walk as she passed again through the forest, and murmured a tearful “Poor Dick! where are you now?”

The trees were not, as then, bright with a prodigal splendor of color, and steeped in mellow sunshine. The gold was tarnished, the reds looked dark and angry, and the lowering sky seemed to press on the branches. That silence which, in the glory of autumn, expresses contentment with finished work and wishes fulfilled, seemed now to mean only suspense or endurance. No leaf came floating trustfully down to give its earth to earth, and free the imprisoned gold into its native air; no gray squirrel was discovered gathering its store of beech-nuts for the coming winter; no bird flitted about to take one more look at its summer haunts. All was silent and deserted.

“You poor old woods! I know just how to pity you,” Edith said, looking about. “But cheer up! These are the days in which Nature tells over the sorrowful mysteries in her long rosary. Your garments are rent away, and the thorns are on your head; but after all is ended, then comes the glorious mystery of the spring resurrection. There! now I have exhorted you, you may exhort me. If you have anything to say, please to say it!”

And then the woods answered: “Child, I know my rosary all by heart, for I have said it six thousand times—six thousand times, child, and yet man will not listen. I tell of resignation and hope, and still his ears are dull. I tell him that in obedience is wisdom, and in wisdom contentment, and he does not cease to rebel. That is a sorrowful mystery over which I grew sad many a time before the cross became the sign of salvation. My very birds are wiser than the children of men; my beasts less cruel. Do not blush, little one! It was your ignorance that spoke, and not presumption. No fairer flower has bloomed in my shadow than your loving thought. Cheer up! Hearts will find the way when heads cannot; for when true love is blind, then an angel leads it.”

“I thank you!” Edith said after

She came out into East Street, and stood a moment on the spot where she and Dick had stood to look at that exquisite bit of meadow. The violet mist that had hung over it, like a parting soul over its body, had long since dissolved, and the little incarnate song that had floated there, yellow-winged and feathered, had been loosed into the heavenly orchestra. Half-way down the hill, a footpath led off to the left of the street, passed a few back-doors of houses on High Street, and ended at the door of the house where Father Rasle was. She knew by the buggy standing in the yard that he had come. If it had not been there, the smiling face of the woman who stood in the door would have told the story.

The woman stepped out to make way, and Edith ran in through the narrow entry to the square room that was both kitchen and parlor.

“O father, father! A hundred thousand welcomes!” And then, between grief and gladness, her voice was stopped.

“Dear child!” he said affectionately. “So you needed me very much?”

Several women were in the room. Some of them had arrived before the priest came, nearly all of them had made their confession, but not one could persuade herself to go away while she was allowed to remain. They meant to stay till he should bid them go, and even then wait for a second telling. To see their beloved pastor, to hear him speak, to repeat over and over their demonstrative welcome, was a happiness which they would fain prolong.

The host and hostess were in their best attire. They had given up all other occupation to the supreme one of entertaining their priest. Their faces shone with a proud delight, their poor house was scrupulously clean, and, though Father Rasle was known to be abstemious, they had gone to the extent of their means for his entertainment.

The priest talked jestingly to the women to cheer them. “What is it that you cry about? But you need not tell me, for I know. It is because you have had nothing but hard words and the absence of your priest to bear. You cry because you were not blown up in the schoolhouse, or did not have your heads broken in the church. Or perhaps you were in hopes that I should come, and find you all strung up to the branches of trees. That is the finest fruit that a tree can bear—a martyr. The Bread of Life grew on the tree of the cross. Courage! They have not done with you yet. Make a good communion to-morrow, and afterward keep yourselves free from sin, and then, when I come again. I may have the happiness of finding all your bodies hung to trees, and all your souls in Paradise.

“Now, you two who have not been to confession will confess at once. Then I want every one of you to go home. I have to talk to that little girl.”

“That little girl” seated herself in the midst of these poor women, who smilingly made room for her—they were not jealous of her—and all turned their faces away from Father Rasle, and sat silently looking into the fire while the confessions were finished. And at last Edith found

The Catholics of Seaton could not, if they would, have concealed from their enemies that Father Rasle had come. Their joyful faces would have betrayed the secret if their lips had remained silent. All who could do so laid their work aside, and gathered in knots in the lane, or visited each other’s houses, to talk the matter over. They smiled and nodded to each other in the street with a significance which every one understood. Poor souls! to the cruel eyes that watched them their pathetic and sacred delight was a crime; their silence, treachery.

Toward evening the scattering visitors who had taken their way during the day to the house under the hill became a steady stream. It looked as though every Catholic in Seaton was going to confession. It looked, too, as though every Protestant in Seaton was willing that they should, for no one molested them, and the town was perfectly quiet. Those who had been anxious ascribed this quietude to the weather, and congratulated themselves that the threatening rain prevented any gathering of their persecutors.

At nine o’clock the crowd around the house where the priest was began to thin off. The road by which they sought their homes that night was a via sacra; for, newly shriven, and moved to the depths of their hearts, they carried with them, every one, the memory of an earnest exhortation to humility and forgiveness, and resignation to the will of God. At half-past ten only three or four women were left in the house, and the rain was beginning to fall outside. The confessions were over, Mrs. Kent had set out a late supper for Father Rasle, since he would have to fast till noon of the next day, and he was standing to say good-night to the last of his visitors, who even now seemed unwilling to leave him. While he spoke to them, some one was heard running toward the house, and the next minute a man burst into the room, breathless, and bespattered with mud.

“They are coming!” he gasped out. “Run for your life, father!”

In the midst of the outcry that rose from those present, Father Rasle stood fixed and silent. Perhaps he was startled at the sudden and unexpected announcement; perhaps his color had changed; but there was no other sign of excitement. He calmly questioned the man, and learned that a mob of fifty or more masked men were rapidly approaching the house.

“And they will kill you, father,” the messenger concluded. “They don’t put on masks and come at night to break windows. They can do that in broad daylight. For God’s sake, save yourself!”

“They shall take me where I am,” the priest said firmly. “It is the will of God. I will not resist, and I have nowhere to fly to.”

“Here is hot water. Put on more!” cried one of the women. We’ll scald them!” And instantly they took the boiling tea-kettle from the fire, and put cold water to heat.

“Run over to the lane, and rouse the people!” cried another. “They’ll kill everybody in the town in your defence, father, if you say the word.”

“My children, I command you to use no violence, and make no resistance,” the priest said with authority. “If the people rise, it will be to their own destruction. Pray! It is all that you can do.”

They fell on their knees, weeping loudly as they heard the muffled tramp of many feet outside. But one said, “The cellar! the cellar!”

Scarcely had he disappeared, before the outer door was thrust open, and the room was filled with men wearing crape masks. They came in silently and swiftly, and as swiftly their companions outside surrounded the house, and stationed themselves at each window to bar all egress.

It was not in the hearts of these poor people to utter no word of reproach to the perpetrators of such an outrage, even though the priest had commanded their silence. Mrs. Kent pointed to one man after another, calling him by name. “I know you under your mask!” she cried. “And the Almighty would find you if I didn’t.”

No one replied to her. The only one of the mob who spoke was he who seemed to be their leader. “Where is the priest?” he asked.

Of course no one told him.

The lower rooms and the attic were searched, and there remained but one place. The hearts of the Christians died within them as the leader of the mob took a candle from the table, and went toward the cellar-door. A girl who was near the door caught up a chair to defend the passage, but another took it from her, and pulled her down to her knees. The next moment Father Rasle was led out amid the sobs and prayers of his children. He was very pale, but perfectly calm, and, like his divine Master, he uttered not a word. But as the mob surrounded and led him away, he cast one glance on those who knelt and stretched their clasped hands toward him, and raised his hand in silent benediction. That he was being led to death, neither he nor they doubted. And they had no reason to doubt it. What violence, short of murder, had these men any reason to fear to do in open daylight? And might they not well believe that even the murderer could escape if he had only the law against him? This was not true only of Seaton. Many a Catholic priest in the United States, at that time, owed the preservation of his life, not to a fear of the law, but to a fear of Catholic vengeance.

They did not take their victim through the lane which Edith had followed, but through a shorter one leading to High Street. The family living in the house at the corner of this street were well-bred people, and, though Protestants, friends to Father Rasle. He had been received in that house as a guest; and now, seeing a light in one of the rooms, the instinct of preservation rose, and forced a cry from him. “Save me!” he cried out, calling the man by name.

Those nearest immediately silenced him with threats. If he spoke again, they said, they would kill him on the spot.

His voice had not been heard, and the faint hope faded as quickly as it had risen.

They avoided the thickly-settled part of the town, and took their way down one of the back streets leading to the river. Half-way down they met a man on horseback, carrying a lantern. He held the light up, and asked whom they had there.

“No one,” they replied, making haste to conceal their prisoner. “We have no one with us.”

Not till too late did Father Rasle know that he had missed another chance of escape, and that it was the sheriff who had met them.

The mob, feeling now secure of

“Will the Virgin save you?” asked another.

But enough. One does not repeat the talk of those through whose lips the arch-fiend speaks without disguise. They reviling, and he praying, disappeared in the darkness and the storm.

Edith Yorke had passed that evening in her own room. It had been her custom to keep the eve of her communions in retirement, and to-night she had more than ordinary food for reflection. It was almost eleven o’clock when she began to prepare herself for bed, but she still heard her aunt and Clara up downstairs. Mrs. Yorke had not been well, and, unwilling that her husband should lose his rest, had sent him upstairs to sleep, and kept Clara with her. Edith was just thinking that she had a mind to go down and see how her aunt was, when she heard the small gate of the avenue open, and shut again instantly, as if some one had run through.

Her window was partly raised. She threw it up, and stepped out on to the top of the portico. Her heart divined the danger at once. Already the messenger was half-way up the avenue, and, before she could see that it was a woman, she heard her panting breath and half-exhausted voice: “Help! They are killing Father Rasle!”

A faintness as of death swept over Edith. She would have spoken, but could only sink on her knees and lean over the railing. Mrs. Yorke, too, had heard the click of the gate, and had opened the sitting-room window, and Edith heard her voice and Clara’s. To them the woman told her story.

“Do not speak loudly,” Mrs. Yorke said. “Mr. Yorke and Edith must not know. They can do no good, and would only make trouble. Clara, go and wake Patrick, and do it quietly. I tell you, my poor woman, my husband could do nothing, and I shall not allow him to be called.”

Edith grew strong the moment she knew the truth. The woman had left the house before Father Rasle did, and a rescue might still be possible. She opened her door noiselessly, stepped out, and closed it after her; then fled down the back-stairs, out through the back-door, and down the avenue to the upper gate. Reaching the road, she flew over it with winged feet. At North Street, instead of going down toward the centre of the town, she crossed to a lumber-road leading to the river. The bridge was far below, but one who dared could go over here on the boom that kept the logs. Edith dared, considering the peril not worth a thought. When some bugle-toned reveille of the soul wakes up our slumbering faith, then miracles become possible.

The bank was high on the eastern side, and the descent was by two immense timbers, or masts, chained together and chained to the shore at the upper end, and to the boom at the lower. The inclination was steep, and those who walked through the air on that slippery bridge stepped warily even by day, timing their steps to the heavy vibrations of the timber. But Edith ran fleetly down, and sprang on to the swaying boom ankle-deep in water. Lumber-mills above and below sent out their long lines of red light through the misty darkness, and the noise of their saws was like the grinding of teeth. The logs knocked against each other with a dull thump as the river flowed, and here and there little

The boom did not reach straight but zigzagged across the river, the lengths chained together, but not closely, and hidden under water. In those spaces, the logs, trying to get through, pushed their bobbing ends up, and tempted the foot. More than once Edith’s foot was in that trap, but she did not sink till just as she reached the western bank. Then, as she went down, she caught an overhanging sapling, and drew herself to land, wet to the waist.

Irish Lane did not reach so far up, by about a quarter of a mile, and there was no road, the way being pasture and ledge. As Edith reached the upper end of the lane, some one else came into it from the lower end, next the bridge, and she heard a woman’s voice lamenting. She did not stop for lamentation, but ran from house to house, bidding them come out and save Father Rasle.

They gathered immediately, asking questions all in confusion, knowing not which way to go, but ready to follow her lead. Had they no rifles nor pistols? No; why should they have them? An Irishman’s weapon was his fist and a cudgel, and whatever he could catch by the way.

An Irishman, indeed, usually goes into battle first, and arms himself afterward.

But the enthusiasm which Edith’s words had kindled the other messenger soon quenched. It was too late to save him, she said. He had been carried away, they knew not whither. Of course he must be dead long before that time. And he had bid them farewell, and commanded them to use no violence—to do nothing but pray.

Edith heard no more. The hand that, in her earnestness, she had laid on some one’s arm, slipped off, and she dropped to the ground without a word.

It was more than half-past eleven o’clock, and raining quite hard, and the wind had begun to rise. Broken and dispirited, the Catholics went into their houses again, but not to sleep. In one of these houses Edith opened her eyes, and saw about twenty persons gathered, some bending over her, others praying, others walking about and wringing their hands. She got up. “I wish that you would all kneel down, and say the litany of our Lord Jesus,” she said. “I am going to find Father Rasle.”

It needed only that something should be proposed for them to do. The man of the house took his prayer-book, and they all knelt. Others came in and filled the room, frightened children cowering close to their elders, and watching the door, as if they expected to see a foe enter.

Edith went slowly out. One of the women had kindly put a shawl over her shoulders, but she was quite unconscious of the storm. The town clock was striking twelve, and as she stopped to count its strokes, the chorus of praying voices reached her through the open door:

“O Sun of Justice!” she repeated, and lifted her clasped hands.

She went on, but heard again, in a pause of the storm:

“Ah! yes, patience! It is not for us to invoke justice,” she thought.

“‘Enter not into judgment with thy servant, O Lord! for in thy sight shall no man living be justified.’”

The road was heavy with mud, and in the darkness she scarcely could find her way. Only the occasional twinkle of a lighted window told where it did not lie. She went wearily, for the spirit that had sustained her while there was hope failed now, and the storm grew every minute worse. In another lull there came again, more faintly:

At that tender petition the tears started forth, and she walked on weeping. They were indeed as sheep among wolves. The blast almost swept her off her feet, and in some sudden current snatched the sound of prayer, and brought it to her once more, clearly as if it had been cried in her very ears:

The wind went sighing off to right and left, and opened a pathway of calm before her, in which she walked firmly, wiping her tears away, and taking courage again.

At the entrance to the lane, near the bridge, she paused and looked back. All was darkness there, but out of the dakness came faintly, “Lamb of God—” It was all she heard, and it was all! It meant patience, humility, immolation, and final triumph.

The cottage where Father Rasle had been was all alight when Edith came in sight of it, and as she approached the door a man came out and almost ran against her.

“Where is he?” she asked.

“Why, Miss Edith!” exclaimed Patrick Chester.

She only repeated her question.

“He has come back,” Patrick answered, “and Dr. Willis is with him.”

“Will he die?” she whispered.

“No, Miss Edith; but he has been vilely used. He was out two hours in this storm. He found his way back more dead than alive. He has been tarred and feathered.”

She cried out in disgust: “The brutes! They were, then, too base for murder!”

“You may say that,” Patrick answered. “But now come home. You can’t see him, you know.”

But she would not go till she had heard his voice, and Patrick was obliged to go back to the entry with her. The entry was filled with men and women, all listening for any news that might reach them. The door was ajar into the kitchen, where two or three men were admitted. The priest was with the doctor in an inner room.

“You had better drink this,” they heard Dr. Willis say; and Father Rasle’s voice replied: “No, doctor. It is after twelve o’clock, and I must say Mass to-morrow.”

“But, if you do not take it, you may be very sick,” the doctor persisted.

“I cannot take it,” Father Rasle

“Thank God, it is really he!” Edith exclaimed. “Come, Patrick, we will go home now.”

Mrs. Yorke, fearing to alarm her husband, had put out the lights, and Edith, seeing the house all dark, took no precaution to conceal herself in approaching it. The first notice she had, therefore, that any of the family were awake, was her aunt’s frightened voice calling from the open window of the sitting-room, “Is it Edith? Has Edith been out?”

“Yes, but I am safe back, auntie,” she made haste to say; “and everything is right.”

Clara, Melicent, and Betsey were there. No one in the house slept but Mr. Yorke and the two Pattens, and, since the worst was probably over, it was not so much matter now if they waked. So a large fire was kindled, and Edith’s dripping garments taken off, while Patrick told his story. Then she also told where she had been, and smiled at their terror.

“But to cross the river on the logs and boom!” her aunt cried. “Why, child, your escape is a miracle! If you had fallen in, you would surely have been drowned.”

“I could not have drowned tonight,” Edith answered. “If I had fallen in, I should have set the river on fire.”

THE DUTIES OF THE RICH IN CHRISTIAN SOCIETY.

NO. II.

POLITICAL DUTIES.

Society, in the most extensive sense with which we are concerned in these essays, is political society as organized in our own republic by federal, state, and municipal constitutions and laws. We venture to assume that it may be called a Christian society. It is so, however, in a wider, more general, and less determinate sense than the church, or than a purely Catholic state. We call it a Christian society, in this sense, that its fundamental moral principles have been derived from the Christian law; that its organic life is an outcome from Christian civilization. It does not, however, exclude from itself those who are not Christians, provided they conform to its moral principles and to the laws founded upon them. A Catholic citizen has duties to a state which is pagan. He has duties to a state

The general reasons which prove this last proposition apply with equal force to all who belong to the wealthy class, even though they do not profess to be, in any sense of the term, Christians. The first of these reasons is, that the rich have succeeded in great measure to the advantages formerly possessed by the class of nobles. Even in those countries where the noble class still subsists, it is chiefly as a wealthy and educated class, and by the personal superiority of individuals belonging to it in the professions of arms and statesmanship, that it wields actual power. Moreover, the wealthy bourgeoisie has gained ground upon it and invaded its formerly exclusive sphere, winning for itself, as in England, for instance, a place in the real aristocracy. In our own country, where hereditary rank does not exist, it has a clear field. It has no special rights in the political order, and is not, therefore, strictly and completely the successor of the noble class in our ancestral British constitution. Yet, by the very fact of being a wealthy class, it does possess, and ought to possess, a certain pre-eminence, influence, and real though indirect power in public affairs. Men of superior intellectual ability, men of learning and letters, those who fill the higher professional positions, and office-holders, belong to the same class; partly because their position in many instances gives them at least a moderate share of wealth, but chiefly because they have power by their very position, and are able to influence and direct the disposition of wealth even when they do not personally possess it. By this very fact, they have duties to the commonwealth—they are not mere private persons, but public persons. They are important and distinguished members of the community, and, as such, have a greater responsibility to society and the state than others. This will not be disputed as a general statement. We do not intend to go into a minute and detailed exposition of all the particulars which it includes and comprehends. We confine ourselves, for the present, to certain specific duties of those who are rich in the literal and technical sense. And what we have to say of them is, that they ought to fulfil the duties which were annexed to the privileges of the class to which they succeeded, in so far as they have inherited those privileges.

However grossly feudal barons may have in a multitude of instances abused their privileges and their powers, the Christian idea of their state was always caste existing for itself, having no end but the selfish exaltation and enjoyment of its members, with no purpose except to live in fine houses, wear fine clothes, drink choice wines, drive about in sumptuous equipages, and finally get buried in great pomp under stately monuments, would be the most anti-Christian, the most despicable, the most odious of constitutions—and would be succeeded by Communism.

The rich have political duties: they are bound to be a bulwark and a tower of strength to the state, an ornament to the commonwealth not only bright, but useful; as a quaint epitaph of the seventeenth century designates a certain eminent citizen, “of Hartford Town the Silver Ornament.” We presuppose in those men of wealth of whom we speak, as a matter of course, honesty and probity. Swindlers, gamblers, dishonest speculators, bribe-takers, and the whole set of vampires swollen with the blood of the state and of individuals, are excluded. It is those who have inherited or acquired their wealth honestly who are able to serve the state. It is not necessary to go more into detail regarding the ways and methods in which they can do so. We are content merely to indicate their ability and obligation to do it in general terms, and pass on to other topics.

One of these other topics relates to a duty of Catholic citizens which is properly classed under the head of political duties, but which we do not consider precisely as a duty to the state as such, but as one which Catholics owe to themselves, to their own personal rights of conscience, and to religion. We call it, nevertheless, a political duty, because it has to be performed by them as citizens, and in the exercise of their political rights. This is the duty of guarding and defending their liberty of conscience against any encroachment which may be attempted by any political party, or any legislation contrary to the letter or spirit of our fundamental law. This duty, which is one of all Catholic citizens indiscriminately, devolves especially on those whose wealth, education, intellectual power, or social and political position gives them a special opportunity and ability to fulfil it. Such persons are the natural chiefs and leaders of the Catholic laity; they are in the front rank; and they are bound to give the example, encouragement, and direction to the great body which they need and justly look for.

What can be more base and cowardly than for those who have a higher place in society than their fellows, and who have ordinarily risen from the ranks of the poor, laboring class of our Catholic people, to desert or regard with apathy that sacred cause for which their ancestors suffered and died, and for the sake of which they have sought an asylum in this free country, where they have found success and prosperity? Here they have found that inestimable boon, liberty of conscience, freedom to profess and practise their religion, and to provide for their posterity the means of doing the same. They are bound to use all the power and influence

Does any one say that there is no need of vigilance or action, because there is no danger that our rights will be disregarded or infringed? We think he is in error. “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” And as one proof that Catholics in this republic have need to exercise this vigilance, we will cite an example of the disastrous consequences which have followed from the neglect of it in another republic.

The Confederation of the Swiss Cantons established and guaranteed in the most solemn and explicit manner the liberty of religion for Catholics and Protestants alike. Nevertheless, the liberty of the Catholic Church has been taken away in the most flagrant manner, even in the Catholic Cantons, by tyrannical federal and cantonal legislation. Fifty religious establishments were suppressed at one blow. Since that time,—that is, since 1848—religious houses and schools have been forcibly suppressed at Ascona, Lugano, Mendrisio, and Bellinzona, and the diocesan seminaries at Pollegio and Aargau. Nearly all the Catholic schools in most of the mixed cantons have been changed into mixed schools, and in Thurgau they have been all suppressed. No priest can be admitted to the exercise of his functions who has studied at any Jesuit college. The catechism of the bishop in whose diocese Aargau is situated, the Bible History of Schuster, and the Moral Theologies of Gury and Kenrick, have been interdicted by the civil authority. Prohibitions have been issued against missions, retreats, the publication of the Jubilee, and the devotions of the Month of Mary. In Aargau, no youth can embrace the ecclesiastical state without the leave of the cantonal assembly, before which august and holy tribunal he must pass two examinations. In the Catholic canton of Ticino, the cantonal assembly arrogates to itself the right of changing the destination of religious foundations, fixing and regulating the election, installation in benefices, and official functions of beneficiaries, erecting new parishes and abolishing existing ones. The placet of the civil authority is requisite for all ecclesiastical decrees of the bishops and the Pope under penalty of fines varying from five to five thousand francs. In several cantons civil marriage is obligatory. In short, the Catholics of Switzerland are in an enslaved and insupportable condition, as is proved by a memorial of the whole body of the Swiss Episcopate, in which these and many other particulars are given.[158]

The conclusion of all this is, that the élite of the Catholic laity are bound to understand the sound Catholic principles of public law and right which are involved in the relation of liberty of conscience and religion to the sovereignty of the state, under our American republican institutions. They are bound to instruct those who are uneducated in their rights and obligations as citizens. They are bound to set before the public the grounds and reasons of Catholic rights, as based on the natural and divine law, and the American constitution. And they are bound to exclude unprincipled, ignorant demagogues from the leadership of the Catholic people by taking it themselves, and in that position opposing with all their might every political scheme for giving the state a usurped power over conscience and religion. Those who are incapable of doing anything else in this direction can at least aid by their wealth the Catholic press in diffusing true and just ideas, and advocating Catholic rights.

TRAVELS IN THE AIR.

If our reader desires a most convincing proof of this last statement, we cannot do better than to refer him to a book bearing the title which stands at the head of this article, and imported by Lippincott & Co. We must confess to having become somewhat enthusiastic on the subject of balloons since reading this book, and hardly think any one else who even looks at it can fail to have something of the same feeling. By a mere glance at it one is introduced to quite a new world, and to read it is the next best thing to going up above the clouds one’s self. It is illustrated by six beautiful chromo-lithographs, and has a hundred and twenty other illustrations.

Mr. Glaisher, the editor, is a thoroughly scientific man, possessed of remarkable steadiness and coolness, as his name would imply, and as the accounts of his voyages sufficiently demonstrate. He is one of the best meteorologists in the world, and it is in the interests of science that his ascents have been made. But, together with the accounts of his own excursions, he gives others by three French gentlemen, also accomplished aeronauts, and whose enthusiasm on the subject almost equals our own, and practically perhaps surpasses it, for we find that M. Tissandier seems to have had no objection to starting from Calais when the wind was blowing straight out toward the German Ocean. These gentlemen, MM. Flammarion, De Fonvielle, and Tissandier, just named, often made long journeys, landing at a point quite remote from that of starting—a thing almost out of the question for Mr. Glaisher, for, as he pathetically remarks, “whatever part of England we start from, in one hour we may be over the sea.” His endeavor rather was, in the short time allotted him, to rush for the upper regions of the atmosphere, in order that he might there, as well as on the way up and down, make observations on temperature, electricity, magnetism, sound, solar radiation, the spectrum, ozone, direction of wind (for this, as before remarked, his opportunity was limited), actinic effects of the sun, density of the clouds, etc., and he consequently went up quite beleaguered with instruments, as the illustration “Mr. Glaisher in the car” clearly shows. The effects of great elevation on the human constitution naturally did not escape his attention, nor that of his companion and aeronaut, Mr. Coxwell; he says that, on one occasion, “at the height of three miles and a

But three miles and a half was a small elevation for Mr. Glaisher. In several of his ascents, he rose to the height of about five miles, on one occasion meeting with dense clouds all the way up. Certainly such clouds are not common, except in “our old home”; but such a day as that must have been even an Englishman could hardly have called “fine.” His third ascent, on September 5, 1862, was the most interesting of all; in this he rose to the astonishing height of seven miles, or 37,000 feet. Probably our readers have generally been accustomed to see in their atlases, by the side of the enormous congeries of mountains which usually forms the frontispiece, a small picture of a balloon, with “highest point ever reached by man,” or words to that effect, appended to it, at the elevation of 23,000 feet; with a reference to the name of Gay-Lussac. But this ascent, made on September 15, 1804, is entirely insignificant now, compared with this stupendous one, to a point a mile and a half above the summit of the Himalaya Mountains, into regions where only one-quarter of the atmosphere lay above the aeronauts, and where it was rarefied about in the same proportion. If their faces were blue at four miles, what were they now?

The account of this ascent is very exciting, and at the same time places Mr. Glaisher’s qualities as an observer in the most favorable light. In company with Mr. Coxwell, who was his pilot as usual, he left Wolverhampton at about one o’clock, and attained the height of five miles in about fifty minutes. Think of that, compared with the trouble of ascending an Alpine peak, where, after many hours of most exhausting labor, one can only get three miles above the sea! And Mr. Glaisher, instead of having to strain every muscle in his body, was able to sit quiet, and calmly observe the barometer, thermometer, etc. The balloon was, however, revolving so rapidly that he failed in taking photographic views. Mr. Coxwell had more exhausting work in the management of the balloon, and was panting for breath when they were three miles high. For two miles more, however, Mr. Glaisher “took observations with comfort.” But, “about 1h. 52m., or later,” he made his last reading; after this he could not see the divisions of the instruments, and asked Mr. Coxwell to help read them. They probably were beginning to think it was time to see about coming down; but in order to do so, the valve-rope had to be pulled, and it was caught in the rigging above, owing to the rotatory motion of the balloon. The thermometer was about ten degrees below zero; Mr. Glaisher was fast becoming insensible, and Mr. Coxwell’s hands were almost useless from numbness. Still, something had to be done, for they were rising a thousand feet every minute; and accordingly, Mr. Coxwell climbed into the ring of the balloon, and pulled the rope with his teeth. He has the proud distinction of having been five or six feet higher above the earth than any other man, for of course they immediately began to descend. On coming back to the car, he found his companion quite insensible; after a few minutes, Mr. Glaisher came to himself, as they sank from that terrible elevation, to which it is probably impossible for man safely to ascend. But, like a thoroughly scientific man, as he is, he had observed his sensations to the last. First, his arms and took a pencil in my hand to begin observations.” Is not this characteristic?

Perhaps it may not be clear how it can be proved that the height of seven miles was attained on this occasion. It is, of course, well known that the elevation of a balloon is determined, as that of a mountain-peak usually is, by the barometer; and this method is very accurate, though, if there be a rapid motion upward or downward, the barometer may lag a little. Still, it gives the absolute height, and also the rate of ascent or descent, with sufficient accuracy for all practical purposes. By this instrument Mr. Glaisher had found that, just before he became insensible, they were 29,000 feet high, and ascending at the rate of 1,000 feet a minute; when he recovered after the lapse of thirteen minutes, they were 26,000 feet high, and descending 2,000 feet a minute. These data are sufficient to determine the greatest height attained; but Mr. Coxwell also, on coming down from the ring, happened to glance at the aneroid barometer, and afterward remembered pretty nearly the direction of its hand; its reading confirms the conclusion got by the other method. A minimum thermometer agreed in the same result. They landed safely at about twenty minutes to three, the whole excursion having taken only a little over an hour and a half. The illustration called “Mr. Glaisher insensible at the height of seven miles” is one of the most remarkable in the book, and most readers will probable turn to it repeatedly. It represents the supreme and critical moment; Mr. Coxwell is in the ring, and is just loosening the valve-rope. His hands, his companion tells us, were black when he came down; and Mr. Glaisher generally means what he says.

It is not every one who will care to compete with these gentlemen in making lofty ascents; and it is not probable that they had any merely ambitious motives in undertaking to soar so high. Mr. Glaisher’s enthusiasm for and interest in science are perfectly genuine; and his results, which are of course only hinted at in these popular accounts which he gives of his excursions, are very valuable. It is not likely that any one else could have accomplished so much as he did. Still, though they were not led on by ambition, their achievement on the occasion just mentioned is one which must discourage others who may be; for it would be very difficult and dangerous to attempt to do purposely what they did only as it were accidentally, and which they would not have done had they known its peril. There are, it is true, some remarkable effects, such as the blackening of the sky (as well as of the hands of the aeronauts), which cannot be so well attained at lower altitudes; but still, substantially the same can be enjoyed at heights of four or five more thoroughly, and take in its various features better, in the car of our present beautiful and majestic, though somewhat unmanageable, vehicle.

And yet in all respects the balloon is not unmanageable. Its rise and fall can be regulated with great exactness; and by means of the pretty invention of the guide-rope, due to the celebrated English aeronaut, Mr. Green, its final fall to the earth, if a violent wind is not blowing, can be made very easy. This rope hangs down three or four hundred feet below the car, and as it touches the ground, and then coils up upon it, the weight and the descending power of the balloon are continually and gradually lessened. And by parting with gas or ballast, the ascent and descent can always be most carefully adjusted; so much so, indeed, that one has to be somewhat careful. Once M. Tissandier, on making a second ascent with no more ascending power at his disposal, was obliged to regret that he had not gone without his breakfast; the least little alteration of weight affects the equilibrium so much that the loss of a chicken-bone which he thoughtlessly once threw out, he says, “certainly caused us to rise from twenty to thirty yards.” One can certainly rise or fall without much difficulty; the only danger is that too much gas may escape after the ballast is exhausted, or when there is only a small supply on hand, and that the descent may be too rapid. Mr. Glaisher twice at least came down so hard as to break nearly all his instruments; but once this was in a manner intentional, for the wind had been drifting him out toward the sea, and on discovering through an opening in the clouds that it was almost directly under him, he had only the alternative of coming down with a Giant balloon in a rapid and inevitable manner, owing to the escape of gas; but records, besides the breaking of the instruments, only that “one of the travellers had his face covered with blood, another was wounded by a thermometer, and a third complained of a pain in his leg.” One curious danger there is, however, about even a quiet descent which is worth noticing. The last-named gentleman had just made a very successful excursion without an aeronaut; and, on coming down, his grapnel had caught in a tree near the edge of a forest. The sequel shall be in his own words:

“At this moment, I was deceived by an optical illusion which might have had dangerous results, and I call the attention of my readers to it in case they may ever be tempted to undertake the management of an aerostat. Let them never get out of the car till it is fairly landed upon the soil. Let them be perfectly sure that no solution of continuity exists between the car and the earth before they think of stepping out of it, for their eyes, accustomed to the immense proportions of things above the clouds, have lost their power of appreciating dimensions. Objects appear so small on the earth’s surface during a descent that great trees look like mere blades of grass. At this moment I believed we had descended upon heath bushes, and we were at the top of the high trees. I had actually got one leg out of the car, and was preparing to leap down!”

If a strong wind is blowing, it is not so easy to descend. The horizontal motion of the balloon is beyond the control of gas or ballast. MM. de Fonvielle and Tissandier set out once in a high wind; they came down on a plain, were dragged across it, and over the tops of some trees, which broke and crashed as they passed; again they rushed over some ploughed ground, where they were finally rescued by some peasants. What was their velocity during this remarkable trip? On consulting maps and watches, they found they had come forty-eight miles from Paris in thirty-five minutes, or the rate of eighty miles an hour; in the air, however, they probably travelled faster, and in the last five minutes of “dragging” not so fast.

But “dragging” is not the worst thing that can happen when there is a high wind. Let aeronauts beware how they attempt to anchor in such circumstances before coming tolerably near to the ground. The grapnel was once let out at the height of about sixty yards when they were skimming along with great velocity, and at first took no hold, but finally caught in the edge of a small pond. The wind, however, took revenge on the balloon, which now suddenly refused to obey its impulse:

“I was busily engaged,” says M. Tissandier, “in stowing away the loose bottles, that might have injured us seriously in case of bumping, when I heard a sharp cracking sound, and Duruof [their pilot] immediately cried out, ‘The balloon has burst!’ It was too true; the Neptune’s side was torn open, and transformed suddenly into a bundle of shreds, flattening down upon the opposite half. Its appearance was now that of a disc surrounded with a fringe. We came to the ground immediately. The shock was awful. Duruof disappeared, I leaped into the hoop, which at that instant fell upon me, together with the remains of the balloon and all the contents of the car. All was darkness; I felt myself rolled along the ground, and wondered if I had lost my sight, or if we were buried in some hole or cavern. An instant of quiet ensued, and then the loud voice of Duruof was heard exclaiming: ‘Now come from under there, you fellows!’ We hastened to obey the voice of the commander, and found that the car had turned over upon us, and shut us up like mice in a trap!”

What next? They had fallen

But let us get up above the clouds again. That is the place really to enjoy life. Once there, one hardly thinks about coming down or its difficulties; the earth is out of sight, and almost out of mind. We are sailing along, perhaps at a quicker rate than that of an express train; but the motion is as imperceptible as that immensely more rapid one of the magnificent planetary projectile on which we are whirling through space. For the clouds are moving with us, and, though they are breaking up and changing their forms, we cannot see that they move as a mass. Occasionally, through a break, we may see the earth, or be saluted from it, as M. Flammarion once was to his great surprise, by cries of “A balloon! a balloon!” when he was quite unaware of there being any hole through which the balloon could be seen. Sounds, by the way, will go up much better than they will come down; the reason of this is the lesser density of the air above. Of course we feel no wind, for the wind is taking us with it: so that even the cold at any ordinary height and at any season usual for ballooning is not troublesome. Sometimes, indeed, it is warmer aloft than below; on the occasion of the eighty-mile-per-hour voyage, just mentioned, the thermometer was actually at eighty-two degrees at the height of a little over half a mile, while below it stood at fifty-five. The balloon is as steady as the Rock of Gibraltar; M. Flammarion assures us that he once filled a tumbler with water till it was brimming over, so that not another drop could be added; but not a drop was spilled by the movement of their vehicle, though it was travelling with the speed of a locomotive, and alternately rising and falling to the extent of several hundred yards.

His account of a journey from Paris into Prussia, made in a beautiful moonlight summer night, gives a most delightful idea of this most agreeable of all modes of travelling. They left Paris about two hours before sunset, and had a fine afternoon sail. The weather was cloudy, and rain came on at half-past nine; but what of that? One is quite superior to rain in a balloon, or, if not, may easily become so. They throw out a little ballast, and rise above the rain-cloud. The cloud soon breaks away, finding that it cannot embarrass their movements, and the country beneath becomes visible. They see a bright light in a house, and hear the sound of dance music played by an orchestra. It is a ball. They cross the frontier at Rocroi. The lines of its fortifications are dimly seen in the moonlight. No examination of passports or luggage for them. (On another excursion, however, we are told, when they were sailing along near the ground, two gendarmes rode up in hot haste, calling out, “Vos passe-ports, messieurs!” but were dismissed with a polite request to step up and verify them, accompanied by a shower of ballast.) The moon comes out brightly as they enter Belgium. They sail over the Meuse, and M. Flammarion greets enthusiastically the home of his youth:

“Beautiful river, I welcome thee! Near thy banks, on the old mountain which overlooks thy fertile plain, I was born. Little did I think, whilst playing some childish game within sound of the murmur of thy ripple, that I should some day cross over thy stream suspended to

Certainly, it is a pity that he takes such a gloomy view of life.

The pilot, M. Godard, rouses him from his reverie.

“See, mon ami, how beautiful this is! Do not dream of days gone by. Are not those the lights of Namur, some six or eight leagues distant? And see, there is Huy, and beyond it again Liège! Here we are right over Belgium, and we may cross a corner of Holland, perhaps, before we enter Prussia!”

The Belgian blast-furnaces soon light up the landscape beneath them, and the noises of the workshops, mingled with the deep sound of the river, rise to their ears.

The dawn begins to break. In fact, through the whole night a faint gleam of twilight has been seen in the north; but now it begins to take effect on the clouds and air around them. The light increases.

“Although the air above is more or less veiled by light mists, we can distinguish the country before three o’clock as clearly as at mid-day. Our course follows the edge of some considerable forests situated on our right hand. These plains (are they plains?) have a very different aspect from those on French territory. In place of the regular patches of fields which lie upon the surface in parallel lines, the country here is composed of fields of every size and form, like the various provinces on a colored map; most of which are surrounded by hedges as they are in England.”

They are wafted along into Prussia. On the right, Luxemburg and Trèves are visible; on the left, Holland, even to the shore of the North Sea.

“The Rhine flows along with its silver ripple in the distance.... All nature is silent, save from time to time the timid chirping of some little bird; when, suddenly, a vast golden streak of light breaks forth from the east, and caresses the highest clouds of the atmosphere, clothing them in rosy and golden tints.”

The illustration representing this sunrise is magnificent, as the sight must have been in the highest degree. What could be more inspiring than to be borne along amid the glorious clouds of morning toward the rising sun—the cheering influence of whose beams the balloon itself seems to feel, as, dried and expanded by their heat, it rises proudly into the sky—with the Rhine glistening before us, and the green plains and forests of Germany inviting us to continue our voyage?

They hear the sound of church-bells, and, soon after, that of cannon.

“From minute to minute the voice of this gracious apparatus of civilization and progress growled among the clouds. It was the artillery of Mülheim preparing itself for the next war.

“The ancient city of Cologne forms beneath us a regular semicircle soldered to the left bank of the Rhine. Unless one examined it attentively, it might be taken for a moderate-sized snail sticking to the thin branch of a tree.”

Poor M. Flammarion thought he was going to enjoy his sail some time longer, perhaps all day. But his inexorable aeronaut thought differently. There was very little ballast and no breakfast; it was probable that the wind would rise, and that they would come to grief. His word was law; so the valve-rope was pulled, the French flag run up, and down they came at Solingen, near Düsseldorf, 330 miles from Paris, which distance had been accomplished in twelve hours and a half. The good-natured Germans rushed

This journey is a fair example of what balloon travelling may be in skilful hands. Of course it has its disadvantages. The principal one is obvious; that you can only go just where the wind will take you; but there is an advantage corresponding to this in the quietness and steadiness of the motion, and it is not at all improbable that, with the rapid advances which are being made continually in the science of meteorology, the laws of winds will be ascertained sufficiently to enable the aeronaut to find one which will carry him in the general direction in which he wants to go, on most occasions, by choosing a proper elevation. Certainly this can often be done, as in the case of M. Tissandier’s trip from Calais over the German Ocean. A lower breeze brought them back to land. The difficulty remaining is that of changing our elevation. On the present system, this requires a loss of gas or ballast, which cannot be kept up indefinitely. An ingenious plan has been proposed by Gen. Meusnier—to have a double balloon, one outside the other: the inner one is filled with gas, the space between the two with air; into the outer one more air is forced by an air-pump when we wish to descend, and allowed to escape when we wish to rise. The compressed air is itself heavier than the air surrounding, and the compressed gas in the inner balloon is also less buoyant than before. This is applying the principle of the bladder of the fish to aerostatics. The Giant was constructed on this plan, but it does not appear that the practicability of using it in this way was ever tested.

“Still, notwithstanding the great utility and advantages of the balloon pure and simple, we certainly shall never be able to lay out our course with it with all the accuracy that could be desired, and it is probable that we shall never be able to bring it down precisely at the point we wish to reach. To accomplish this, we must have something that will go against the wind; we must have something which takes hold on the air; we must, in short, be able to fly. It should be noticed, however, that a flying machine, when invented, will not necessarily supersede the balloon; it will have its advantages, and the balloon will have its own; probably, for mere pleasure travelling, the latter will always be preferable, or certainly would be except for the inconveniences attending its landing, especially when the wind is high.

It may be said, perhaps, as above, “a flying machine, when invented”; for it really seems as if some practical invention of this kind must before long be realized. It can hardly be doubted that the bird must be the model, to some extent, of its construction; and it would seem to be worth while to take instantaneous photographs of birds in flight, in order to discover what really are the positions which the wing successively assumes. The photographs of this kind, of men walking, which have been taken, told us a great deal which we did not know before about a movement which seems so very familiar and easy. It seems probable, with regard to flying, as M. Flammarion intimates, that the impulse is a very sudden one, at least during a part of the stroke; so that the thin resisting medium has, as it were, a certain kind of solidity and firmness.

Various machines for flying have been made, and a tolerable success attained. One is lately reported in Philadelphia. There seems to be no impossibility in taking up enough

But after all, what aspiring man really longs for is not to have a flying machine to carry him, but to have his own wings, and some power strong enough to move them. With the motive powers known at present, this seems to be beyond our reach; but who knows? Heat and motion are now understood to be convertible, and perhaps the sun’s rays may yet be found powerful enough to raise us into the air. But then—look out for clouds. The sun melted the wings of Icarus; the shade would melt ours.

Flying may yet be realized; and it is well enough to look forward to what may be in store in the future; but let us also not undervalue what we already have. The beauty of the form of the balloon necessarily implies a certain perfection in it, as the majesty of a full-rigged line-of-battle ship clearly shows a perfection which no actual results gained by cheese-box Monitors can ever gainsay. Our present air-ship is a noble product of human genius, and its resources are by no means yet exhausted.

Even a captive balloon is not a bad affair, and may be used for travelling purposes, though it may seem a contradiction to say so. A “captive” is simply one which is fastened by a rope so that it cannot ascend above a certain height. If fastened to a fixed object, it serves only as a means to take people up for a view or to make scientific observations: but if attached to a moving body, it is a very pleasant vehicle to ride in, or could easily be made so. Our French aeronauts were once pulled in this way through the streets of a town, and at another time were towed for some distance at the height of five hundred feet by a number of their excitable countrymen. But it must be acknowledged that on the whole a captive is not so pleasant to ride in as a free balloon. Besides the feeling of exultation accompanying a free ascent, it also has the advantage of being really a great deal more comfortable. The captive, being restrained by the rope, feels the full force of whatever wind there is, and is moreover apt to be tipped over considerably when the breeze is strong. Nevertheless, going up in one is a tolerably popular amusement when the opportunity is offered, though hardly enough so to make it profitable for the proprietors. This is one of the miserable difficulties about the pursuit of science, that experiments cost something, and often it is very troublesome to raise the necessary funds. Free ascensions have, however, been common enough for a good deal more to have been accomplished in the way of experiment and observation than has usually been the case, and Mr. Glaisher’s example deserves to be generally

But we must not dwell longer on his scientific results, or those of his friends on the other side of the Channel. In fact, it is time that we should come down from the clouds, and occupy ourselves with the affairs of this base and grovelling lower world. We should like to do it gradually, but, as is the case with the balloon itself, our descent must needs be accompanied by something of a shock. It is with difficulty that we can persuade ourselves to quit, even in imagination, those magnificent regions so near to us and yet practically so far away; which all of us could see even now in ten minutes if our balloon was ready—would that it were!—and which, if the art of flying progresses with due rapidity, we may yet see some time before we die.

THE LEPER OF THE CITY OF AOSTA.

BY THE COUNT XAVIER DE MAISTRE.

“Le Lépreux de la cité d’Aosta est une larme, mais une larme qui coule toujours!”—Lamartine.

Bramafan, which signifies the cry of hunger, given to this castle by the people around. This tradition, which may be disputed, gives an interest to the ruins in the eyes of people of sensibility.

A hundred steps further on is a square tower, built of the marble that once covered the antique walls beside it. It is called the Hold of Terror, because it is commonly believed to be haunted. The ancient dames of Aosta can still remember seeing a tall woman robed in white, with a lamp in her hand, issue from the tower on dark nights.

About fifteen years ago, this tower St. Maurice was ordered to supply his wants. It furnished him with some articles of furniture and the implements for cultivating a garden. Here he lived for a long time, left completely to himself, and never seeing any one, except the priest who came from time to time to administer the consolations of religion, and the man who, every week, brought him his provisions from the hospital.

During the war in the Alps in the year 1797, a soldier, who was in the city of Aosta, happened to pass by the leper’s garden. The gate was ajar, and he had the curiosity to enter. He saw a man in a simple garb, leaning against a tree, as if lost in profound meditation. At the sound of the officer’s steps, the recluse, without turning around or looking up, cried in a sad tone: “Who is there? and what do you wish?”

“Excuse a stranger,” replied the soldier, “whom the attractive appearance of your garden has induced to commit an indiscretion, but who by no means wishes to disturb you.”

“Do not come any nearer,” replied the inmate of the tower, motioning him back with his hand. “Come no nearer: you are in the presence of an unfortunate being afflicted with leprosy.”

“Whatever may be your misfortune,” replied the traveller, “I shall not go away. I have never shunned the unfortunate. But, if my presence annoys you, I am ready to withdraw.”

“You are welcome,” replied the leper, suddenly turning around. “Remain, if you have the courage after looking at me.”

The officer remained for some time motionless with astonishment at the frightful aspect of the unfortunate man so completely disfigured by leprosy.

“I willingly remain,” said he, “if you will accept the visit of a man led here by chance, but detained by a lively interest.”

“Interest!—I have never excited anything but pity.”

“I should be happy to offer you any consolation.”

“It is a great one to behold a human face and hear the sound of a human voice, for every one flies from me.”

“Allow me, then, to converse with you awhile and to visit your house.”

“Very willingly, if it can afford you any pleasure.” Saying which, the leper put on a large felt hat, the flattened brim of which covered his face. “Go to the south,” added he. “The few flowers I cultivate may please you. There are some rather rare. I have procured the seeds of every kind that grow among the Alps, and try to make them grow double and more beautiful by cultivation.”

“Look at this little rose-bush. It is a rose without thorns, which only grows on the higher Alps, but it is already losing its peculiarity, and putting forth thorns in proportion to its cultivation and growth.”

“It should be considered the emblem of ingratitude.”

“If any of these flowers please you, you can take them without any fear: you will incur no danger by gathering them. I sowed the seed. I take pleasure in watering them and looking at them, but I never touch them.”

“Why not?”

“I fear I might infect them, and should no longer dare give them to any one.”

“For whom do you raise them?”

“The people who bring me food from the hospital are not afraid to gather them. And sometimes children from the city stop before my garden-gate. I immediately ascend the tower, for fear of frightening or infecting them. They look up as they go away, and say with a smile: ‘Good-by, Leper,’ and that gives me a little pleasure.”

“You have succeeded in collecting quite a variety of plants; and you have vines yonder, and several kinds of fruit-trees.”

“The trees are still young. I set them out myself, as well as that grape-vine, which I have trained to the top of the old wall, you see: it is thick enough for me to walk on, and is my favorite resort.—Go up on these stones. I am the architect of this staircase. Hold on to the wall.”

“A charming nook! the very place for a hermit to meditate in!”

“It suits me, too. I can see the country around, the laborers in the fields, and all that is going on in the meadow, and no one can see me.”

“It is a delightfully quiet and secluded place. You are in the city, and yet might fancy yourself in a desert.”

“Forests and cliffs are not the only resorts of the solitary. The unfortunate are alone everywhere.”

“What succession of events brought you to this retreat? Are you a native of this country?”

“I was born on the sea-coast in the principality of Oneglia, and have only lived here fifteen years. As to my history, it is only one long succession of calamities.”

“Have you always lived alone?”

“I lost my parents in my infancy, and do not remember them. I had one sister who died two years ago. I never had a friend.”

“Poor man!”

“It was the will of God.”

“What is your name, pray?”

“Ah! my name is a terrible one! I call myself The Leper! No one in the wide world knows the name I derived from my family, or that which I received on the day of my baptism. I am The Leper, and this is the only title I have to human kindness. May it remain for ever unknown who I am!”

“Did the sister you lost live with you?”

“She remained five years with me in my present habitation. As unfortunate as I, she participated in my sorrows, and I endeavored to alleviate hers.”

“How do you employ yourself in such utter solitude?”

“The details of my lonely life would only be very monotonous to a man of the world who seeks happiness in the activity of social life.”

“Ah! you little know the world—it has never made me happy. I am often solitary from choice, and there

“‘The cell continually dwelt in groweth sweet,’ says The Following of Christ. I am beginning to realize the truth of these consoling words. Loneliness is also relieved by labor. A laborious man is never absolutely unhappy, as I know by experience. During the pleasant season, the cultivation of my flowers and vegetables is a sufficient occupation. In the winter I make baskets and mats. I try to make my clothes. I daily prepare my own food from the supplies brought me from the hospital, and prayer fills up the vacant hours. Thus the year passes, and, when gone, it seems short.”

“I should think it would seem a century.”

“Affliction and sorrow make the hours appear long, but the years always fly with the same rapidity. Besides, there is one enjoyment left in the lowest depths of misfortune which but few can understand, and may seem strange to you—that of living and breathing. In warm weather, I pass whole days motionless on the ramparts, enjoying the air and the beauties of nature: my thoughts are vague and fluctuating; sadness dwells in my heart without oppressing it; my eyes wander around the country, and linger on the rocks that surround us; all these objects are so imprinted on my memory that they form, as it were, a part of myself: each site is a friend I greet with pleasure every day.”

“I have often experienced something of this kind. When trouble depresses me, and I do not find in the hearts of others what my own craves, the aspect of nature and inanimate objects consoles me. I become attached to the very rocks and trees, and it seems to me that all created things are friends whom God has given me.”

“You encourage me to explain, in my turn, what passes within me. I have a genuine affection for the objects that are, so to speak, my daily companions, and every night, before going to my tower, I come here to take leave of the glaciers of Ruitorts, the dense woods of Mont St. Bernard, and the fantastic peaks that overlook the valley of the Rhine. Though the power of God is as evident in the creation of an ant as in that of the whole universe, the grand spectacle of yonder mountains fills me with greater awe. I cannot look at those lofty elevations, covered with eternal glaciers, without being filled with solemn wonder. But in the vast landscape spread out before me, I have favorite views to which I turn with special pleasure. Among these is the hermitage you see yonder on the top of Mount Charvensod. Alone in the woods, near a deserted pasture, it catches the last rays of the setting sun. Though I have never been there, I feel a peculiar pleasure in looking at it. When the daylight is fading away, seated in my garden, I turn my eyes toward that lonely hermitage, to seek rest for my imagination. I have learned to look upon it as a kind of property. It seems as if I had some confused reminiscence of once living there in happier days which I cannot fully recall. I love especially to gaze at the distant mountains, which look like a cloud on the horizon. Distance, like the future, inspires me with hope. My overburdened heart imagines there may be a far-off land where, at some future time, I may at length taste the happiness for which I sigh, and which a secret instinct is constantly assuring me is possible.”