Volume 22 / Part 2 — PART II. (continued 3)

At a large school in Tiverton, Devonshire, nine-tenths of the boys presented the most exaggerated Gaelic physiognomy; while at another, near Chichester, the girls were all of the most unmistakable Saxon type. We need not go further in this classification, and only introduced it to show that massing together all British types in Wales and Cornwall is a fallacy, such as all hasty generalizations are. It is not so certain, therefore, that there exists no indigenous element in the old songs that have survived, though in many an altered form, in some of the rural districts of England. Then, again, how is the word “national” used—in the sense of indigenous, or of popular, or of exclusively belonging to one given country? English music was, before the Commonwealth, at least as indigenous as the English language, as that gradually grew up and welded itself together. As to popularity, there was a style of song—some specimens of which we shall give—which was known and used by the poorest and humblest, and a style, too, far removed from the plebeian, though it may have been rather sentimental. Then glees and catches are, though of no very great antiquity, essentially English, and are scarcely known in any other country. If “national” stands for “political,” as many people at this day seem to take for granted, then, indeed, England has not much to boast of. That music is born rather of oppression and defeat, and loves to commemorate a people’s undying devotion to their own race, laws, customs, and rulers. Irish and Welsh and Jacobite songs exhibit that style best, though only the first of the three have any present significance, the two other kinds having long ago become more valuable for their intrinsic or historical merit than for their political meaning. Certain modern English songs, such as “Ye Mariners of England,” “Rule Britannia,” “The Death of Nelson,” might be called national songs in the political sense; but “God Save the King,” though patriotic and loyal, is thoroughly German in style and composition, and therefore hardly deserves the title national.

The Welsh have kept their musical taste pure. Mr. Mackintosh, in his paper on the Comparative Anthropology of England and Wales, says of the quiet and thoughtful villagers of Glan Ogwen, near the great Penrhyn slate quarries, that “their appreciation of the compositions of Handel and other great musicians is remarkable; and they perform the most difficult oratorios with a precision of time and intonation unknown in any part of England, except the West Riding of Yorkshire, Lancashire, Worcester, Gloucester, and Hereford.” The three latter are towns where the musical festivals are so frequent that the taste of the people cannot help being educated up to a good standard. Hereford, too, is very near the Welsh border. “The musical ear of the Welsh is extremely accurate. I was once present in a village church belonging to the late Dean of Bangor, when the choir sang an anthem composed by their leader, and repeated an unaccompanied hymn-tune five or six times without the slightest lowering of pitch. The works of Handel, Haydn, Beethoven, and Mozart are republished with Welsh words at Ruthin and several other towns, and their circulation is almost incredible. At book and music shops of a rank where in England negro melodies would form the staple compositions, Handel is the great favorite; and such tunes as ‘Pop goes the Weasel’ would not be tolerated. The native airs are in general very elegant and melodious. Some of them, composed long before Handel, are in the Handelian style; others are remarkably similar to some of Corelli’s compositions. The less classical Welsh airs, in 3-8 time, such as ‘Jenny Jones’ are well known. Those in 2-4 time are often characterized by a sudden stop in the middle or at the close of a measure, and a repetition of pathetic slides or slurs.”

Much of this eulogium might be equally applied to the people of Lancashire, especially the men, who know the great oratorios by heart, and sing the choruses faultlessly among themselves, not only at large gatherings, but in casual reunions, whenever three or four happen to meet. Their part-singing, too, in glees, both ancient and modern, is admirable, and they have scarcely any taste for the low songs which are only too popular in many parts of England.

The songs of chivalry were another graft on the stock of English music, and the honor paid to the bards and minstrels was a mingling of the love of a national institution at least as old as the Druids—some say much older—and of the enthusiasm produced by the metrical relation of heroic feats of arms. The Crusades gave a great impulse to the troubadours’ songs, while the ancient British custom of commemorating the national history by the oral tradition and the music of the harpers, seemed to merge into and strengthen the new order of minstrels. Long before the bagpipe became the peculiar—almost national—instrument of Scotland, the harp held that position, as it has not yet ceased to do, in Ireland and Wales. The oldest harp now in Great Britain is an Irish one, which was already old in 1064. It is now in the museum of Trinity College, Dublin. These ancient instruments were very different from the modern ones on which our grandmothers used to display their skill before the pianoforte became, to its detriment, the fashionable instrument for young ladies; and even now the Irish and Welsh harps are made exactly on the old models, and have no pedals. But the use of the harp was not confined to the Welsh, and in the reign of King John, in the XIIth century, on the occasion of an attack made on the old town of Chester by the Welsh during the great yearly fair, it is recorded in the town annals that the commandant assembled all the minstrels who had come to the place upon that occasion, and marched them in the night, with their instruments playing, against the enemy, who, upon hearing so vast a sound, were filled with such terror and surprise that they instantly fled. In memory of this famous exploit, no doubt suggested by the Biblical narrative of Gideon’s successful stratagem, a meeting of minstrels is annually kept up to this day, with one of the Dutton family at their head, to whom certain privileges are granted. In the reign of Henry I. the minstrels were formed into corporate bodies, and enjoyed certain immunities in various parts of the kingdom. Gardiner[162] says that “the most accomplished became the companions and favorites of kings, and attended the court in all its expeditions.” Perhaps we may refer the still extant office of poet-laureate to this custom of retaining a court minstrel near the person of the sovereign. In the time of Elizabeth the profession of a harper had become a degraded one, only embraced by idle, low, and dissolute characters; and so it has remained ever since, through the various stages of ballad-monger, street-singer and fiddler, in which the memory of the once noble office has been merged or lost. In Scotland the piper, a personage of importance, has taken the place of the harper since the time of Mary, Queen of Scots, who introduced the pipes from France; but in Wales the minstrel, with his harp, upheld his respectability much longer, and even now most of the old families, jealous and proud of their national customs, retain their bard as an officer of the household. The writer has seen and heard one of these ancient minstrels, in the service of a family living near Llanarth, the mistress (a widow) making it her special business to promote the keeping up of all old national customs. She was an excellent farmer, too, and had a pet breed of small black Welsh sheep, whose wool she prepared for the loom herself, and with which she clothed her family and household. In the neighboring town she had got up an annual competition of harpers and choirs for the performance of Welsh music exclusively. The concert was always the occasion of a regular country festivity, ending with a ball, and medals and other prizes were given by her own hand to the best instrumental and vocal artists.

In Percy’s Reliques a description is given of the dress and appearance of a mediæval bard, as personated at a pageant given at Kenilworth in honor of Queen Elizabeth. The glory of the brotherhood was already so much a thing of the past that it was thought worth while to introduce this figure into a mock procession. This very circumstance is enough to mark the decline of the art in those days, but already a new sort of popular song had sprung up to replace the romances of chivalry. “A person,” says Percy, “very meet for the purpose, … his cap off; his head seemly rounded tonsure-wise, fair-kembed [combed], that with a sponge daintily dipt in a little capon’s grease was finely smoothed, to make it shine like a mallard’s wing. His beard smugly shaven; and yet his shirt, after the new trink, with ruffs fair starched, sleeked and glittering like a pair of new shoes; marshalled in good order with a setting stick and strut, that every ruff stood up like a wafer.[163] A long gown of Kendal-green gathered at the neck with a narrow gorget, fastened afore with a white clasp and a keeper close up to the chin, but easily, for heat, to undo when he list. Seemly begirt in a red caddis girdle; from that a pair of capped Sheffield knives hanging at two sides. Out of his bosom was drawn forth a lappet of his napkin [handkerchief] edged with a blue lace, and marked with a true-love, a heart, and D for Damain; for he was but a bachelor yet. His gown had long sleeves down to mid-leg, lined with white cotton. His doublet-sleeves of black worsted; upon them a pair of poynets [wristlets, from poignet] of tawny chamlet, laced along the wrist with blue threaden points; a wealt towards the hand of fustian-a-napes. A pair of red neather stocks, a pair of pumps [shoes] on his feet, with a cross cut at the toes for corns; not new, indeed, yet cleanly blackt with soot, and shining as a shoeing-horn. About his neck a red riband suitable to his girdle. His harp in good grace dependent before him. His wrest [tuning-key] tyed to a green lace, and hanging by. Under the gorget of his gown, a fair chain of silver as a squire minstrel of Middlesex, that travelled the country this summer season, unto fairs and worshipful men’s houses. From his chain hung a scutcheon, with metal and color, resplendent upon his breast, of the ancient arms of Islington.” The peculiarities marking his shoes no doubt referred to the long pedestrian tours of the early minstrels.

Chaucer, in the XIVth century, makes frequent mention of music, both vocal and instrumental. Of his twenty-nine Canterbury Pilgrims, six could either play or sing, and two, the Squire and the Mendicant Friar, could do both. Of the Prioress he quaintly says:

Dr. Burney thinks that part-singing was already known and practised in Chaucer’s time, and draws this inference from the notice the poet takes in his “Dream” of the singing of birds:

and it is certain that this kind of music was a great favorite with the English people at a very early period, and was indebted to them for many improvements. The same writer says that the English, in their secular music and in part-singing, rather preceded than followed the European nations, and that, though he could find no music in parts, except church music, in foreign countries before the middle of the XVIth century, yet in England he found Masses in four, five, and six parts, as well as secular songs in the vulgar tongue in two or three parts, in the XVth and early part of the XVIth centuries. Ritson, it is true, in his Ancient Songs from the Time of King Henry III. to the Revolution, disputes this, but Hawkins is of the same opinion as Burney. Mr. Stafford Smith, at the end of the last century, made a collection of old English songs written in score for three or four voices; but though the oldest music to such songs is scarcely intelligible, the number collected proves how popular that sort of music was in early times. (Perhaps the illegibility of the music is due to the old notation, in use before the perfected stave of four lines became general—the pneumatic notation, supposed by Coussemaker, Schubiger, Ambros, and other writers on music to have been developed out of the system of accents of speech represented by signs, such as are still used in French.)

Landini, an Italian writer of the XVth century, in his Commentary on Dante, speaks of “many most excellent musicians” as coming from England to Italy to hear and study under Antonio degli organi (a name denoting his profession); while another writer, the choir-master of the royal chapel of Ferdinand, King of Naples, mentions the excellence of the English vocal music in parts, and even (incorrectly) calls John of Dunstable (a musician of the middle of the XVth century) the “inventor of counterpoint.”

One of the oldest compositions of this kind is a manuscript score in the British Museum, a canon in unison for four voices, with the addition of two more voices for the pes, as it is called, which is a kind of ground, and is the basis of the harmony. The words, partially modernized, are as follows (they are much older than the music, which is only four hundred years old):

Dr. Burney says of this song that the modulation is monotonous, but that the chief merit lies in “the airy, pastoral correspondence of the melody with the words”—a merit which many modern compositions of the “popular” type are very far from possessing. Under the Tudors music made rapid strides. Dr. Robert Fairfax was well known as a composer in those days, and a collection of old English songs with their music (often in parts), made by him, has been preserved to this day. Besides himself, such writers as Cornyshe, Syr Thomas Phelyppes, Davy, Brown, Banister, Tudor, Turges, Sheryngham, and William of Newark are represented. Of these, Cornyshe was the best, and Purcell, two hundred years later, imitated much of his rondeau style, most of these composers being entirely secular. Henry VIII. himself wrote music for two Masses, and had them sung in his chapel; and to be able to take a part in madrigals, and sing at sight in any piece of concerted music, was reckoned a part of a gentleman’s education in those days. The invention of printing gave a great impulse to song-writing and composing, though for some time after the words were printed the music was probably still copied by hand over the words; for the printing of notes was of course a further and subsequent development of the new art. A musician and poet of the name of Gray became a favorite of Henry VIII. and of the Protector Somerset “for making certain merry ballades, whereof one chiefly was ‘The hunt is up—the hunt is up.’”[164]

“A popular species of harmony,” says Ritson, “arose in this reign; it was called ‘King Henry’s Mirth,’ or ‘Freemen’s Songs,’ that monarch being a great admirer of vocal music. ‘Freemen’s Songs’ is a corruption of ‘Three-men’s Songs,’ from their being generally for three voices.” Very few songs were written for one voice.

Ballads were very popular, and formed one of the great attractions at fairs. An old pamphlet, published in the reign of Elizabeth, mentions with astonishment that “Out-roaring Dick and Wat Winbars” got twenty shillings a day by singing at Braintree Fair, in Essex. It does seem a good deal, considering that the sum was equal to five pounds of the present money, which again is equivalent to about thirty dollars currency. These wandering singers, the lowly successors of the proud minstrels, were in their way quite as successful; but, what is more wonderful, their songs were for the most part neither coarse nor vulgar. Good poets wrote for music in those days; now, as a general rule, it is only rhymers who avowedly write that their words may be set to music. As quack-doctors, fortune-tellers, pedlers, etc., mounted benches and barrel-heads to harangue the people, and thus gained the now ill-sounding name of mountebanks, so too did these singers call over their songs and sing those chosen by their audience; and they are frequently called by the writers of those times cantabanchi, an Italian compound of cantare (to sing) and banchi (benches). Among the headings given of these popular songs are the following: “The Three Ravens: a dirge”; “By a bank as I lay”; “So woe is me, begone”; “Three merry men we be”; “But now he is dead and gone”; “Now, Robin, lend me thy Bow”; “Bonny Lass upon a green”; “He is dead and gone, Lady,” etc. There is a quaint grace and sadness about the titles which speaks well for the manners of those who listened and applauded. Popular taste has certainly degenerated in many parts of England; for such titles now would only provoke a sneer among an average London or Midland county audience of the lower classes. Gardiner says: “The most ancient of our English songs are of a grave cast, and commonly written in the key of G minor.”

Among the composers of the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. was Birde, who wrote a still popular canon on the Latin words “Non nobis, Domine,” and set to music the celebrated song ascribed to Sir Edward Dyer, a friend of Sir Philip Sidney, “My Mind to me a Kingdom is.”

Birde’s scholar, Morley, produced a great number of canzonets, or short songs for three or more voices; and Ford, who was an original genius, published some pieces for four voices, with an accompaniment for lutes and viols, besides other pieces, especially catches of an humorous character. George Kirbye was another canzonet composer, and Thomas Weelkes has been immortalized by the good-fortune which threw him in Shakspere’s way, so that the latter often wrote words for his music. Yet doubtless the fame of the one, as that of the other, was chiefly posthumous; and poet and musician, on a par in those days, may have starved in company, unknowing that a MS. of theirs would fetch its weight in gold a hundred years after they were in their graves.

“The musical reputation of England,” says a writer in an old review of 1834, “must mainly rest on the songs in parts of the period between 1560 and 1625.” And Gardiner says: “If we can set up any claim to originality, it is in our glees and anthems.” The gleemen, who were at first a class of the minstrels, are supposed to have been the first who performed vocal music in parts, according to set rules and by notes, though the custom must have existed long before it was thus technically sanctioned. The earliest pieces of the kind upon record are by the madrigal writers, and were, perhaps, founded upon the taste of the Italian school; but there soon grew up a distinction sufficient to mark English glee-music as a separate species of the art. It is said that glee-singing did not become generally popular till about the year 1770, when glees formed a prominent part of the private concerts of the nobility; but their being adopted into fashionable circles only at that date is scarcely a proof of their late origin. The canzonets for three or four voices must have been closely allied to glees, and a family likeness existed between these and the madrigals for four or five voices, the ballets, or fa-las, for five, and the songs for six and seven parts, which are so prodigally mentioned in a list of works by Morley within the short space of only four years—1593 to 1597. The number of these songs proves their wonderful popularity, and we incline to think, with the writer we have quoted, that the English, in the catches and glees, the works of the composers of the days of Elizabeth and James I., and those of Purcell, Tallis, Croft, Bull, Blow, Boyce, etc., at a later period, possess a music essentially national and original—not imitative, as is the modern English school, and not more indebted to foreign sources than any other progressive and liberal art is to the lessons given it by its practisers in other civilized communities. For if national is to mean isolated and petrified, by all means let us forswear nationalism.

Shakspere’s songs are scattered throughout his works, and were evidently written for music. Both old and new composers have set them to music, and of the latter none so happily as Bishop Weelkes and John Dowland, his contemporaries and friends; the latter, the composer of Shakspere’s favorite song (not his own), “Awake, sweet Love,” often wrote music for his words. In his plays Shakspere has introduced many fragments of old songs and ballads; but Ritson says of him: “This admirable writer composed the most beautiful and excellent songs, which no one, so far as we know, can be said to have done before him, nor has any one excelled him since.” This statement is qualified by an exception in favor of Marlowe, a predecessor of Shakspere, and the author of the “Passionate Shepherd to his Love”; and besides, it means that he was the first great poet among the song-writers, who, in comparison with him, might be called mere ballad-mongers. Shakspere’s love for the old, simple, touching music of his native land, shown on many occasions throughout his works, is most exquisitely expressed in the following passage from Twelfth Night:

Though Shakspere’s plays were marked with the coarseness of speech common in his time, and therefore not, as some have thought, chargeable to him in particular, his songs, on the contrary, are of singular daintiness. They are too well known to be quoted here, but they breathe the very spirit of music, being evidently intended to be sung and popularly known. The chorus, or rather refrain, of one, beginning, “Blow, blow, thou winter wind,” runs thus:

The “Serenade to Sylvia” is lovely, chaste and delicate in speech as it is playful in form; and the fairy song “Over hill, over dale,” is like the song of a chorus of animated flowers. The description of the cowslips is very poetic:

Bishop Hall, in 1597, published a satirical poem in which he complains that madrigals and ballads were “sung to the wheel, and sung unto the pail”—that is, by maids spinning and milking, or fetching water; and Lord Surrey, in one of his poems, says (not satirically, however):

Now, we gather what was the style of these songs of peasant girls and laborers from the writings of good old Izaak Walton, who mentions, as a common occurrence, that he often met, in the fields bordering the river Lee, a handsome milkmaid who sang like a nightingale, her voice being good and the ditties fitted for it. “She sang the smooth song which was made by Kit Marlowe, now at least fifty years ago, and the milkmaid’s mother sang the answer to it which was made by Sir Walter Raleigh in his younger days.… They were old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good; I think much better than that now in fashion in this critical age.”[166] He wrote in the reign of Charles I., and already deplored the influx of more pretentious songs; but those he mentions with such commendation were the famous “Passionate Shepherd to his Love” and the song beginning “If all the world and love were young,” two exquisite lyrics of an elegance much above what is now termed the taste of the vulgar.

Izaak Walton was as fond of music as of angling, and quotes many of the popular songs of his day. He was a quiet man, and only describes the pastimes of humble life. He used to rest from his labors in an “honest ale-house” and a “cleanly room,” where he and his fellow-fishermen, and sometimes the milkmaid, whiled away the evenings by singing ballads and duets. Any casual dropper-in was expected to take his part; and among the music mentioned as common in these gatherings are numbers of “ketches,” or, as we should say, catches. The music of one of his favorite duets, “Man’s life is but vain, for ’tis subject to pain,” is given in the old editions of his book. It is simple and pretty; the composer was Mr. H. Lawes. Other songs, favorites of his, were “Come, shepherds, deck your heads”; “As at noon Dulcina rested”; “Phillida flouts me”; and that touching elegy, “Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,” by George Herbert. This is as full of meaning as it is short:

Sir Henry Wotton’s song for the poor countryman, beginning—

and some verses of Dr. Donne (both these writers being contemporaries of James I.), are also mentioned by Walton as popular among the lower classes in his day. Here is another instance of the power of song over the peasantry in the early part of the XVIIth century. In the spring of 1613, on the occasion of Queen Anne of Denmark’s return from Bath, where she had gone for her health, she was met on Salisbury Plain by the Rev. George Fereby, vicar of some obscure country parish, who entreated that her majesty would be pleased to listen to a concert performed by his people. “When the queen signified her assent, there rose out of the ravine a handsome company, dressed as Druids and as British shepherds and shepherdesses, who sang a greeting, beginning with these words, to a melody which greatly pleased the musical taste of her majesty:

We should suppose, from the commencing words, that this poem had originally been a Nativity hymn pertaining to the ancient church; and it is possible that the melody might be traced to the same source.… The music, the voices, and the romantic dresses, so well corresponding with the mysterious spot where this pastoral concert was stationed, greatly captivated the imagination of the queen.”[168] Anne of Denmark admired and patronized the genius of Ben Jonson, the writer of several musical masques often performed at court by the queen and her noble attendants. The really classical time of English poetry and music was before the Commonwealth, and popular music certainly received a blow during the Puritan rule. Songs and ballads were forbidden as profane; and in 1656 Cromwell enacted that “if any of the persons commonly called fiddlers or minstrels shall at any time be taken playing, fiddling, and making music in any inn, ale-house, or tavern, or shall be taken proffering themselves, or designing or entreating any to hear them play or make music in any of the places aforesaid,” they should be “adjudged and declared to be rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars.” Fines and imprisonments were often the penalties attached to a disregard of these ordinances; but this opposition only turned the course of popular song into political channels, and it became a point of honor among the Royalists to listen to, applaud, and protect the veriest scamp who called himself a minstrel. Songs were written with no poetical merit, but full of political allusions, bitter taunts and sneers; and it was the delight of the Cavaliers to sing these doggerel rhymes and make the wandering fiddlers sing them. Many a brawl owed its origin to this. Even certain tunes, without any words, were considered as identified with political principle, and led to dangerous ebullitions of feeling, or kept alive party prejudices in those who heard them. Popular music has always been a powerful engine for good or bad, in a political sense. Half the loyalty of the Jacobites of Scotland in the XVIIIth century was due to inflammatory songs; Körner’s lyrics fired German patriotism against Napoleon; and there has never been a party of any kind that did not speedily adopt some representative melody to fan the ardor of its adherents.

But if music and poetry were proscribed by the over-rigorous Puritans, a worse excess was fostered by the immoral reign of Charles II. The Restoration polluted the stream which the Commonwealth had attempted to dam up. Just as, in a spirit of bravado and contradiction, the Cavaliers had ostentatiously made cursing and swearing a badge of their party, to spite the sanctimoniousness of the Roundheads, so they affected to oppose to the latter’s psalm-singing roaring and immodest songs. Ritson says that Charles II. tried his hand at song-writing, and quotes a piece by him, beginning:

“Though by no means remarkable for poetical merit,” says the critic, “it has certainly enough for the composition of a king.” Molière was not more severe on the attempts of Louis XIV. But though the general spirit of the age was licentious, many good songs were still written. Sedley, Rochester, Dorset, Sheffield, and others wrote unexceptionable ones, and the great Dryden flourished in this reign. One of his odes, “On S. Cecilia’s Day,” is thoroughly musical in its rhythm, the refrains at the end of each stanza having the ring of some of the old German Minnesongs of the XIIth and XIIIth centuries. But his verses were scarcely simple or flowing enough to become popular in the widest sense, which honor rather belonged to the less celebrated poets of his day. Lord Dorset, for instance, was the author of a sea-song said to have been written the night before an engagement with the Dutch in 1665, and which, from its admirable ease, flow, and tenderness, became at once popular with all classes. The circumstances under which it was supposed to be written had, no doubt, something to do with its popularity; but Dr. Johnson says: “Seldom any splendid story is wholly true. I have heard from the late Earl of Orrery, who was likely to have good hereditary intelligence, that Lord Dorset had been a week employed upon it, and only retouched or finished it on the memorable evening. But even this, whatever it may subtract from his facility, leaves him his courage.” The anonymous writer to whom we have referred[169] tells us that “the shorter pieces of most of the poets of the time of Charles II. had a rhythm and cadence particularly well suited to music. They were, in short, what the Italians call cantabile, or fit to be sung.… In the succeeding reigns, with the growth of our literature, there was a considerable increase in song-writing; most of our poets of eminence, and some who had no eminence except what they obtained in that way, devoting themselves occasionally to the composition of lyrical pieces. Prior, Rowe, Steele, Philips, Parnell, Gay, and others contributed a stock which might advantageously be referred to by the composers of our own times.” Prior was a friend and protégé of Lord Dorset, who sent him to Cambridge and paid for his education there. Parnell was an Irishman. His “Hymn to Contentment” is a sort of counterpart to the old song “My Mind to me a Kingdom is”:

Gay, the elegant, the humorous, and the pathetic, shows to most advantage in this group. He it was who wrote the famous ballad “Black-eyed Susan,” and many others which, though less known at present, are equally admirable. One of them was afterwards set to music by Handel, and later on by Jackson of Exeter. But music did not keep pace with poetry; and though Purcell, Carey, and one or two other composers flourished in the latter part of the XVIIth and beginning of the XVIIIth centuries, they kept mostly to sacred music, and the new songs of the day were generally set to old tunes. Gay’s Beggar’s Opera, a collection of seventy-two songs, could not boast of a single air composed for the purpose. The music was all old, but the stage, says Dr. Burney, ruined the simplicity of the old airs, as it invariably does all music adapted to dramatic purposes. Indeed, we, in our own day, sometimes have the opportunity of verifying this fact, when old airs or ballads are introduced into operas to which they are unfitted. The “Last Rose of Summer” put into the opera of Martha is an instance in point; but, worse than that, the writer once heard “Home, Sweet Home” sung during the music-lesson scene in the Barbier de Seville. Adelina Patti was the prima donna, and any one who has seen and heard her can imagine the contrast between the simple, pathetic air and words, and the kittenish, coquettish, Dresden-china style of the singer! Add to this the costume of a Spanish señorita and the stage finery of Rosina’s boudoir, not to mention the absurd anachronism involved in a girl of the XVIIth century singing Paine’s touching song. Of course the audience applauded vigorously; for an English audience at the opera goes into action in the spirit of Nelson’s words, “England expects every man to do his duty,” and the incongruousness of the scene never troubles its mind.

Carey tried to stem the downfall of really good popular music by writing both the words and music of the well-known ballad of “Sally in our Alley,” which attained a popularity (using the word in its proper sense) that it has never lost and never will lose. The song was soon known from one end of the country to the other, and, like the old songs, was “whistled o’er the furrowed land” and “sung to the wheel, and sung unto the pail.” Addison was no less fond of it than the common people; but the song was an exception in its time, and the poetry of the day never again made its way among the great body of the people, as it had done under the Tudors and the early Stuarts. Music and poetry both grew artificial under the Hanoverian dynasty, and the mannerisms and affectations of rhymers and would-be musical critics were sharply satirized by Pope and Swift. In the reign of Queen Anne the Italian opera was introduced into London, and the silly rage for foreign music, because it was foreign, soon worked its way among all classes. Handel brought about the first salutary return to natural and simple musical expression, and, setting many national and pastoral pieces to music, diffused the taste for good music through the intermediate orders of the people, especially the country gentry, but the masses still clung to interminable ballads, with monotonous tunes and no individuality either of sense or of form. Although England could boast of some good native composers and poets in the XVIIIth century—for instance, among the former, Boyce, Arne, Linley, Jackson, Shield, Arnold, etc.—still no good music penetrated into the lower strata of society; for these musicians mostly confined themselves to pieces of greater pretension than anything which was likely to become popular. Wales and the North of England still kept up a better standard, but the general taste of the nation was decidedly vitiated. Dibdin’s sea-songs broke the spell and reached the heart of the people; but this was rather a momentary flash than a permanent resurrection of good taste and discernment. The custom of writing the majority of songs for one voice, we think, had had much to do with destroying the genuine love of music among the people. It seemed to shift the burden of entertainment upon one member of a social gathering, instead of assuming that music was the welcome occupation and pastime of the greater number; and besides this, it no doubt fostered an undue rage for melody, or, as it is vulgarly called, tune. We have often had occasion to notice how bald and meagre—trivial, indeed—a mere thread of melody can sound when sung by one voice, which, if sung in parts, acquires a majestic and full tone. The fashion of solo-singing, which obtains so much in our day, has another disadvantage: it encourages affectation and self-complacency in the singer. The solo-singer is very apt to arrogate to him or herself the merit and effect of the piece; to think more of the individual performance than of the music performed; and to spoil a good piece by interpolating runs and shakes to show off his or her powers of vocal gymnastics. All this was impossible in the old part-songs, where attention and precision were indispensable.

There are hopeful indications at present that England is not utterly sunk into musical indifference, but, strange to say, wherever the good leaven does work, it does so from below upwards. The lower classes in the North of England have mainly given the impulse; the higher are still, on the whole, superficial in their tastes and trivial and mediocre in their performances. Even as far back as 1834, the writer in the Penny Magazine already quoted gives an interesting account of a surprise he met with at a small village in Sussex. (This, be it remembered, is an almost exclusively Saxon district of the country.) Being tired of the solitude of the little inn and the dulness of a country newspaper, he walked down the street of the village, and, in so doing, was brought to a pause before a small cottage, nowise distinguished from the other humble homesteads of the place, from which proceeded sounds of sweet music. The performance within consisted, not of voices, but of instruments; and the piece was one of great pathos and beauty, and not devoid of musical difficulty. When it was finished, and the performers had rested a few seconds, they executed a German quartet of some pretensions in very good style. This was followed by variations on a popular air by Stephen Storace, which they played in excellent time and with considerable elegance and expression. Several other pieces, chosen with equal good taste, succeeded this, and the stranger enjoyed a musical treat where he little expected one. On making inquiries at the inn, he found that the performers were all young men of the village, humble mechanics and agricultural laborers, who, for some considerable time, had been in the habit of meeting at each other’s houses in the evening, and playing and practising together. The taste had originated with a young man of the place who had acquired a little knowledge of music at Brighton. He had taught some of his comrades, and by degrees they had so increased in number and improved in the art that now, to use the words of the informant, “there were eight or ten that could play by book and in public.”

At that time, and in that part of the country, this was an unusual and remarkable proof of refinement and good taste; but at present, though still the exception, it is no longer quite so rare to find uneducated people able to a certain degree to appreciate good music. Much has been written to vindicate English musical taste within the last thirty or forty years; but still the fact can scarcely be overlooked that, notwithstanding all efforts to the contrary, the standard of taste among the masses is lower than it was in Tudor days.

Every one is familiar with the choral unions, the glee-clubs, the carol-singing, Leslie’s choir, and Hullah’s methods, which all go far to raise the taste of the people and enlist the vocal powers of many who otherwise would have been tempted to leave singing to the “mounseers” and other “furriners,” as the only thing those benighted individuals could be good for. There is, as there has been for many generations, the Chapel Royal, a sort of informal school of music; there is the Academy of Music; there are “Crystal Palace” and “Monday Popular Concerts”; musical festivals every year in the various cathedrals, oratorios in Exeter Hall; and there soon will be a “National School of Music,” which is to be a climax in musical education, the pride of the representative bodies of wealthy and noble England (for princes and corporations have vied with each other in founding scholarships); but with all this, the palmy days of the Tudors are dead and gone beyond the power of man to galvanize them into new activity. True, every young woman plays the pianoforte; you see that instrument in the grocer’s best parlor and the farmer’s keeping-room; but the sort of music played upon it is trivial and foreign, an exotic in the life of the performer, a boarding-school accomplishment, not a labor of love. You can hear “Beautiful Star,” and “Home, Sweet Home,” and Mozart’s “Agnus Dei” sung one after the other, with the same expression, the same “strumminess,” the same stolidity, or the same affected languor, and you will perceive that, though the singer may know them, she neither feels nor understands them. Moore’s melodies, too, you hear ad nauseam, murdered and slurred over anyhow; but both the delicacy of the poetry and the pathos of the music are a dead-letter to the performer. But though a few songs by good writers are popular in the middle classes—for instance, Tennyson’s “Brook” and “Come into the garden, Maud,” the immortal and almost unspoilable “Home, Sweet Home”—yet there is also a dark side to the picture in the prevalence of comic songs, low, slangy ballads, sham negro melodies (utterly unlike the real old pathetic plantation-song), and other degrading entertainments classed under the title of “popular music.” The higher classes give little countenance or aid to the upward movement in music, and still look upon the art as an adjunct of fashion. With such disadvantages, it is a wonder that England has struggled back into the ranks of music-lovers at all, even though, as yet, she can take but a subordinate place among them.

PIOUS PICTURES.

A great deterioration having been observable for some time past in the multitudinous little pictures published in Paris, ostensibly with a religious object, some of the more thoughtful writers in Catholic periodicals have on several recent occasions earnestly protested against the form these representations are taking. Their remonstrances are, however, as yet unsuccessful. The “article” continues to be produced on an increasing scale, and is daily transmitted in immense quantities, not only to the farthest extremities of the territory, but far beyond, especially to England and America, to ruin taste, sentimentalize piety, and “give occasion to the enemy to” deride if not to “blaspheme.”

The bishops of France have already turned their attention to this unhealthy state of things in what may be called pictorial literature for the pious, and efforts are being made in the higher regions of ecclesiastical authority to arrest its deterioration. In the synod lately held at Lyons severe censure was passed on the objectionable treatment of sacred things so much in vogue in certain quarters; and, still more recently, Father Matignon, in his conference on “The Artist,” condemned these “grotesque interpretations of religious truths, which render them ridiculous in the eyes of unbelievers, and corrupt the taste of the faithful.” The eloquent preacher at the same time recommended the Catholic journalists to denounce a species of commerce as ignorant as it is mercenary, and counselled the members of the priesthood to “declare unrelenting war against this school of pettiness, which is daily gaining ground in France, and which gives a trivial and vulgar aspect to things the most sacred.”

This appeal has not been without effect. There appears in the Monde, from the pen of M. Léon Gautier, the author of several pious and learned works, a Letter “Against Certain Pictures,” addressed “to the president of the Conference of T——,” in which the absurdity of these silly compositions is attacked with much spirit and good sense. The Semaine Religieuse de Paris reproduces this letter, with an entreaty to its readers to enroll themselves in the crusade therein preached by the eminent writer—a crusade the opportuneness of which must be only too evident to every thoughtful and religious mind. M. Léon Gautier writes as follows:

You have requested me, dear friend, to purchase for you a “gross” of little pictures for distribution among your poor and their children.…

As to the selection of these pictures I must own myself greatly perplexed, and must beg to submit to you very humbly my difficulties, and not only my difficulties, but also my distress, and, to say the truth, my indignation. I have before my eyes at this moment four or five hundred pictures which have been sold to me as “pious,” but which I consider as in reality among the most detestable and irreverent of any kind of merchandise. A great political journal the other day gave to one of its leaders the title of L’Ecœurement.[170] I cannot give a title to my letter, but, were it possible to do so, I should choose this one in preference to any other. I am in the unfortunate state of a man who has swallowed several kilograms of adulterated honey. I am suffering from an indigestion of sugar; and what sugar! Whilst in the act of buying these little horrors, I beheld numberless purchasers succeed each other with feverish eagerness in the shops, which I will not specify. Yes, I had the pain of meeting there with Christian Brothers and with Sisters of Charity, who made me sigh by their simple avidity and ingenuous delight at the sight of these frightful little black or rose-colored prints. They bought them by hundreds, by thousands, by ten thousands; for schools, for orphanages, for missions. Ah! my dear friend, how many souls are going to be well treacled in our hapless world! It is the triumph of confectionery. “Why are you choosing such machines as these?” I asked of the good Brother Theodore, whom, to my great astonishment, I found among the purchasers; “they are disagreeable.” “Agreed.” “They are stupid.” “I know it.” “They are dear.” “My purse is only too well aware of the fact.” “Then why do you buy them?” “Because I find that these only are acceptable.” And thereupon the worthy man told me that he had the other day distributed among his children pictures taken from the fine head of our Saviour attributed to Morales—a chef-d’œuvre. The children, however, perceiving that there was no gilding upon them, had thrown them aside, gaping. Decidedly, the evil is greater than I had supposed, and it is time to consider what is to be done.

In spite of all this, I have bought your provision of pictures; but do not be uneasy—I am keeping them myself, and will proceed to describe them to you. I do not wish that the taste of your beloved poor should be vitiated by the sight of these mawkish designs; but I will take upon myself to analyze them for your benefit, and then see if you are not very soon as indignant as myself.

In the first place we have the “symbolical” pictures, and these are the most numerous of all. I do not want to say too much against them. You know in what high estimation I hold true symbolism, and we have many a time exchanged our thoughts on this admirable form of the activity of the human mind. A symbol is a comparison between things belonging to the physical and things belonging to the immaterial world. Now, these two worlds are in perfect harmony with each other. To each phenomenon of the moral order there corresponds exactly a phenomenon of the visible order. If we compare these two facts with each other, we have a symbol. There is a life, a breath, a whiteness, which are material. Figurative language is nothing else than a vast and wonderful symbolism, and you remember the marvellous things written on this subject by the lamented M. Landriot. In the supernatural order it is the same, and all Christian generations have made use of symbolism to express the most sacred objects of their adoration. There has been the symbolism of the Catacombs; there has been also that of the Middle Ages. The two, although not resembling, nevertheless complete, each other, and eloquently attest the fact that the Christian race has never been without the use of symbols.

Thus it is not symbolism which I condemn, but this particular symbolism of which I am about to speak, and which is so odiously silly. I write to you with the proofs before me. I am not inventing, but, mirror-wise, merely reflecting. I am not an author, but a photographer.

Firstly, here we have a ladder, which represents “the way of the soul towards God.” This is very well, although moderately ideal; but then who is mounting this ladder? You would never guess. It is a dove! Yes; the poor bird is painfully climbing up the rounds as if she were a hen getting back to roost, and apparently forgetting that she owns a pair of wings. But we shall find this dove elsewhere; for our pictures are full of the species, and are in fact a very plentifully-stocked dove-cote. I perceive down there another animal; it is a roe with her fawn, and with amazement I read this legend: “The fecundity of the breast of the roe is the image of the abundance and sweetness of grace.” Why was the roe selected, and why roe’s milk? Strange! But here again we have a singular collection. On a heart crowned with roses is placed a candlestick (a candlestick on a heart!), and this candelabrum, price twenty-nine sous, is surmounted by a lighted candle, around which angels are pressing. This, we are told underneath, is “good example.” Does it mean that we are to set one for the blessed angels to follow? Next, what do I see here? A guitar; and this at the foot of the cross. Let us see what can be the reason of this mysterious assemblage; the text furnishes it: Je me délasserai à l’abri de la Croix—“I will refresh myself in the shelter of the cross”—from whence it follows that one can play the guitar upon Golgotha. Touching emblem! And what do you say of this other, in which our Saviour Jesus, the Word, and, as Bossuet says, the Reason and Interior Discourse of the Eternal Father, is represented as occupied in killing I know not what little insects on the leaves of a rose-bush? “The divine Gardener destroys the caterpillars which make havoc in his garden,” says the legend. I imagine nothing, but merely transcribe, and for my part would gladly turn insecticide to this collection of imagerie.

This hand issuing out of a cloud I recognize as the hand of my Lord God, the Creator and Father of all, who is at the same time their comforter, their stay, and their life. I admit this symbol, which is ancient and truly Christian; but this divine hand, which the Middle Ages would most carefully have guarded against charging with any kind of burden; this hand, which represents Eternal Justice and Eternal Goodness—can you imagine what it is here made to hold? [Not even the fiery bolt which the heathen of old times represented in the grasp of their Jupiter Tonans, but] a horrible and stupid little watering-pot, from the spout of which trickles a driblet of water upon the cup of a lily. Further on I see the said watering-pot is replaced by a sort of jug, which the Eternal is emptying upon souls in the shape of doves; and this, the legend kindly informs me, is “the heavenly dew.” Heavenly dew trickling out of a jug! And there are individuals who can imagine and depict a thing like this when the beneficent Creator daily causes to descend from his beautiful sky those milliards of little pearly drops which sparkle in the morning sunshine on the fair mantle of our earth! Water, it must be owned, is scarcely a successful subject under any form with our picture-factors. Here is a poor and miserably-painted thread lifting itself up above a basin, while I am informed underneath that “the jet of water is the image of the soul lifting itself towards God by meditation.”

I also need to be enlightened as to how “a river turned aside from its course is an image of the good use and of the abuse of grace.” It is obscure, but still it does not vulgarize and debase a beautiful and Scriptural image, like the next I will mention, in which, over the motto, “Care of the lamp: image of the cultivation of grace in our hearts,” we have a servant-maid taking her great oily scissors and cutting the wick, of which she scatters the blackened fragments no matter where.

The quantity of ribbon and string used up by these symbol-manufacturers is something incalculable. Here lines of string unite all the hearts of the faithful (doves again!) to the heart of Our Blessed Lady; there Mary herself, the Immaculate One and our own incomparable Mother, from the height of heaven holds in leash, by an interminable length of string, a certain little dove, around the neck of which there hangs a scapular. This, we are told, means that “Mary is the directress of the obedient soul.” Elsewhere the string is replaced by pretty rose-colored or pale-blue ribbons, which have doubtless a delicious effect to those who can appreciate it. Here is a young girl walking along cheerfully enough, notwithstanding that her heart is tied by one of these elegant ribbons to that of the Blessed Mother of God, apparently without causing her the slightest inconvenience. Her situation, however, is, I think, less painful than that of this other young person, who is occupied in carving her own heart into a shape resembling that of Mary. Another young female has hoisted this much-tormented organ (her own) on an easel, and is painting it after the same pattern. But let us hasten out of this atelier to breathe the open air among these trees. Alas! we there find, under the form and features of an effeminate child of eight years old, “the divine Gardener putting a prop to a sapling tree,” or “grafting on the wild stock the germ of good fruits.” This is all pretty well; but what can be said of this ciborium which has been energetically stuck into a lily, with the legend, “I seek a pure heart”? These gentlemen, indeed, treat you to the Most Holy Eucharist with a free-and-easyness that is by no means fitting or reverent. It is forbidden to the hands of laics to touch the Sacred Vessels, and it is only just that the same prohibition should apply to picture-makers. They are entreated not to handle thus lightly and irreverently that which is the object of our faith, our hope, and our love.

Hitherto I have refrained from touching upon that very delicate subject which it is nevertheless necessary that I should approach—namely, the representation of the Sacred Heart. And here I feel myself at ease, having beforehand submitted to all the decisions of the church, and having for long past made it my great aim to be penetrated with her spirit. Like yourself, I have a real devotion to the Sacred Heart, nor do I wish to conceal it. When any devotion takes so wide a development in the Holy Church, it is because it is willed by God, who watches unceasingly over her destinies and the forms of worship which she renders to him. All Catholics are agreed upon this point. It is true that certain among them regard the Sacred Heart as the symbol of Divine Love, and that others consider it under the aspect of a very adorable part of the Body of the God-Man, and, if I may so express it, as a kind of centralized Eucharist. Well, I hold that to be accurate one ought to admit and harmonize the two systems, and therefore I do so. You are aware that it is my belief that physiology does not yet sufficiently understand the mechanism of our material heart, and I await discoveries on that subject which shall establish the fact of its necessity to our life. The other day, at Baillère’s, I remained a long time carefully examining a fine engraving representing the circulation of the blood through the veins and arteries, and I especially contemplated the heart the source and receptacle of this double movement, and said to myself, “The worship of the Sacred Heart will be one day justified by physiology.” But why do I say this, when it is so already? Behold me, then, on my knees before the Sacred Heart of my God, in which I behold at the same time an admirable symbol and a yet more admirable reality. But is this a reason for representing the Sacred Heart in a manner alike ridiculous and odious? I will not here enter upon the question as to whether it is allowable to represent the Sacred Heart of Jesus otherwise than in his Sacred Breast, and I only seek to know in order to accept unhesitatingly whatever with regard to this may be the thought of the church. But that which to my mind is utterly revolting is the sight of the profanations of which these fortieth-rate picture-manufacturers are guilty. What right have they, and how do they dare, to represent hundreds of consecrated Hosts issuing from the Sacred Heart, and a dove pecking at them as they are dropping down? What right have they to make the Heart of our Lord God a pigeon-house, a roosting-place for these everlasting doves, or into a vase out of which they are drinking? What right have they to insert a little heart (ours) into the Divine Heart of Jesus? What right have they to represent to us [a Pelion, Ossa, and Olympus on a small scale] three hearts, the one piled upon the other, and cascades of blood pouring from the topmost, which is that of Our Lord; upon the second, which is that of his Blessed Mother; and thence upon the third, which is our own? What right have they to make the Sacred Heart shed showers of roses, or to give its form to their “mystic garden”? Lastly, what right have they to lodge it in the middle of a full-blown flower, and make the latter address to it the scented question, “What would you desire me to do in order that I may be agreeable to you?” Ye well-meaning picture-makers! beware of asking me the same question; for both you and I very well know what would be the answer.

The truth is that these clumsy persons manage to spoil everything they touch, and they have dishonored the symbolism of the dove, as they have compromised the representations of the Sacred Heart. The dove is undoubtedly one of the most ancient and evangelical of all the Christian symbols; but a certain discretion is nevertheless necessary in the employment of this emblem of the Holy Spirit of God. This discretion never failed our forefathers, who scarcely ever depicted the dove, except only in the scene of Our Lord’s baptism and in representations of the Blessed Trinity. In the latter the Eternal Father, vested in pontifical or imperial robes, holds between his arms the cross, whereon hangs his Son, while the Holy Dove passes from the Father to the Son as the eternal love which unites them. This is well, simple, and even fine. But there is a vast difference between this and the present abuse and vulgarization of the dove as an emblem, where it is made use of to represent the faithful soul. No, truly, one is weary of all this. Do you see this flight of young pigeons hovering about with hearts in their beaks? The beaks are very small and the hearts very large, but you are intended to understand by this that “fervent souls rise rapidly to great perfection.” These other doves, lower down, give themselves less trouble and fatigue; they are quietly pecking into a heart, and I read this legend: “The heart of Love is inexhaustible; let us go to it in all our wants.” The pigeon that I see a little farther off is not without his difficulties; he is carrying a stout stick in his delicate beak, and—would you believe it?—the explanation of this remarkable symbol is, “Thy rod and thy staff have comforted me.” Here again are carrier-pigeons, bringing us in their beaks nicely-folded letters in charming envelopes. One of these birds [who possibly may belong to the variety knows as tumbler pigeons] has evidently fallen into the water; for he is shown to us standing to recover himself on what appears to be a heap of mud in the middle of the ocean, with the motto, “Saved! he is saved!” Next I come upon a party of doves again—always doves!—whose occupation is certainly no sinecure. Oars have been fitted to their feeble claws, and these hapless creatures are rowing. Here is another unfortunate pigeon. She is in prison with a thick chain fastened to her left foot, and we are told that she is “reposing on the damp straw of the dungeon.” Further on appears another of this luckless species, on its back with its claws in the air. It is dead. So much the better. It is not I who will encourage it to be so unwise as to return to life. True, in default of doves, other symbols will not be found lacking. Here are some of the tender kind—little souvenirs to be exchanged between friend and friend, wherein one finds I know not what indescribable conglomerations of religious sentiment and natural friendship. Flowers, on all sides flowers: forget-me-nots, pansies, lilies, and underneath all the treasures of literature: “It is a friend who offers you these”; “Near or far away, yours ever”; “These will pass; friendship will remain.” “C’est la fleur de Marie Que je vous ai choisie.” (N.B.—This last is in verse.)

I know not, my dear friend, whether you feel with me on this point. While persuading myself that all these playfulnesses are very innocent, I yet find in them a certain something which strikes me as interloping, and I do not like mixtures.

We have also the politico-religious pictures. Heaven forbid that I should speak evil of the fleurs-de-lys which embalmed with their perfume all the dear Middle Ages to which I have devoted so much of my life; but we have in these pictures of which I am speaking mixtures which are, to my mind, detestable, and I cannot endure this pretty little boat, of which the sails are covered with fleurs-de-lys, its mast is the Pontifical Cross, and its pilot the Sacred Heart. Is another allusion to legitimacy intended in this cross surrounded with flowers and bearing the legend, “My Beloved delights himself among the lilies”? I cannot tell; but if we let each political party have free access to our religious picture-stores, we shall see strange things, and then Gare aux abeilles!—“Beware of the bees.”

One characteristic common to all these wretched picturelings is their insipidity and petty childishness. They are a literature of nurses and nursery-maids. The designers must surely belong to the female portion of humanity; for one is conscious everywhere of the invisible hand of woman. One is unwilling to conceive it possible that any one with a beard on the chin could bring himself to invent similar meagrenesses. These persons are afraid of man, and have wisely adopted the plan of never painting him, and of making everybody under the age of ten years. Never have they had any clear or serious idea of the Word, the God made man—of him, the mighty and terrible One, who pronounced anathema on the Pharisees and the sellers in the Temple. They can but represent a little Jesus in wax, or sugar, or treacle; and alarmed at the loftiness of Divinity, and being incapable of hewing his human form in marble, they have kneaded it in gingerbread.

And yet our greatest present want is manliness. Truly, truly, in France we have well-nigh no more men! Let us, then, have no more of these childishnesses, but let us behold in the divine splendor and perfect manhood of the Word made flesh the eternal type of regenerated humanity.

SUMMER STORMS.

THE KING OF METALS FROM THE FRENCH.

There once lived a widow named Mary Jane, who had a beautiful daughter called Flora. The widow was a sensible, humble woman; the daughter, on the contrary, was very haughty. Many young persons desired her in marriage, but she found none to please her; the greater the number of her suitors, the more disdainful she became. One night the mother awoke, and, being unable to compose herself again to sleep, she began to say her rosary for Flora, whose pride gave her a great deal of disquietude. Flora was asleep near her, and she smiled in her sleep.

The next day Mary Jane inquired:

“What beautiful dream had you that caused you to smile in your sleep?”

“I dreamed that a great lord conducted me to church in a copper coach, and gave me a ring composed of precious stones that shone like stars; and when I entered the church, the people in the church looked only at the Mother of God and at me.”

“Ah! what a proud dream,” cried the widow, humbly drooping her head.

Flora began to sing. That same day a young peasant of good reputation asked her to marry him. This offer her mother approved, but Flora said to him:

“Even were you to seek me in a coach of copper, and wed me with a ring brilliant as the stars, I would not accept you.”

The following night Mary Jane, being wakeful, began to pray, and, looking at Flora, saw her smile.

“What dream did you have last night?” she asked Flora.

“I dreamed that a great lord came for me in a coach of silver, gave me a coronet of gold, and when I entered the church those present were more occupied in looking at me than at the Mother of God.”

“O poor child!” exclaimed the widow, “what an impious dream. Pray, pray earnestly that you may be preserved from temptation.”

Flora abruptly left her mother, that she might not hear her remonstrances.

That day a young gentleman came to ask her in marriage. Her mother regarded this proposal as a great honor, but Flora said to this new aspirant:

“Were you to seek me in a coach of silver and offer me a coronet of gold, I would not wed you.”

“Unfortunate girl!” cried Mary Jane, “renounce your pride. Pride leads to destruction.”

Flora laughed.

The third night the watchful mother saw an extraordinary expression on her child’s countenance, and she prayed fervently for her.

In the morning Flora told her of her dream.

“I dreamed,” she said, “that a great lord came to seek me in a coach of gold, gave me a robe of gold, and when I entered the church all there assembled looked only at me.”

The poor widow wept bitterly. The girl left her to escape seeing her distress.

That day in the court-yard of the house there stood three equipages, one of copper, the other of silver, and the third of gold. The first was drawn by two horses, the second by four, the third by eight. From the first two descended pages clothed in red, with green caps; from the third descended a nobleman whose garments were of gold. He asked to marry Flora. She immediately accepted him, and ran to her chamber to decorate herself with the golden robe which he presented to her.

The good Mary Jane was sorrowful and anxious, but Flora’s countenance was radiant with delight. She left her home without asking the maternal benediction, and entered the church with a haughty air. Her mother remained on the threshold praying and weeping.

After the ceremony, Flora entered the golden equipage with her husband, and they departed, followed by the two other equipages.

They drove a long, a very long distance. At last they arrived at a rock where there was a large entrance like the gate of a city. They entered through this door, which soon closed with a terrible noise, and they were in midnight darkness. Flora was trembling with fear, but her husband said:

“Reassure yourself; you will soon see the light.” In truth, from every side appeared little creatures in red clothes and green caps—the dwarfs who dwell in the cavities of the mountains. They carried flaming torches, and advanced to meet their master, the King of Metals.

They ranged themselves around, and escorted him through long valleys and subterranean forests. But—a very singular thing—all the trees of these forests were of lead.

At last the cortége reached a magnificent prairie or meadow; in the midst of this meadow was a château of gold studded with diamonds. “This,” said the King of Metals, “is your domain.” Flora was much fatigued and very hungry. The dwarfs prepared dinner, and her husband led her to a table of gold. But all the meats and all the food presented to her were of this metal. Flora, not being able to partake of this food, was reduced to ask humbly for a piece of bread. The waiters brought her bread of copper, of silver, and of gold. She could not bite either of them. “I cannot give you,” her husband said, “the bread that you wish; here we have no other kind of bread.”

The young woman wept, and the king said to her:

“Your tears cannot change your fate. This is the destiny you have yourself chosen.”

The miserable Flora was compelled to remain in this subterranean abode, suffering with hunger, through her passion for wealth. Only once a year, at Easter, she is allowed to ascend for three days to the upper earth, and then she goes from village to village, begging from door to door a morsel of bread.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

An Exposition of the Church in View of Recent Difficulties and Controversies, and the Present Needs of the Age. London: Basil Montagu Pickering, 196 Piccadilly. 1875. New York: The Catholic World, April, 1875.

(From Le Contemporain.)

I. Renewed Working of the Holy Spirit in the World.—We are, in a religious, social, and political point of view, in times of transition which we are not able to understand, for the same reason that no one can follow the movements of the battle-field who is in the midst of the engagement.

To judge from appearances, especially those which are nearest at hand, we are on the brink of an abyss. The Catholic religion, openly persecuted in Germany, prostrated now for several years in Italy and Spain by the suppression of the religious congregations, attacked in all countries, abandoned by all sovereigns, appears, humanly speaking, to be on the brink of destruction. There are not wanting prophets who predict the collapse of Christianity and the end of the world. There are, however, manly souls who do not allow themselves to be discouraged, and who see grounds for hope in the very events which fill ordinary hearts with terror and consternation.

Of this number is an American religious, Father Hecker, who has just issued a pamphlet in English, wherein, without concealing the difficulties of the present, he avows his expectation of the approaching triumph of religion.

His motives are drawn from the deep faith he professes in the action of the Holy Spirit in the church, outside of which he does not see any real Christianity. It is the Holy Spirit whom we must first invoke; it is the Holy Spirit of whom we have need, and who will cure all our ills by sending us his gifts.

“The age,” he says, “is superficial; it needs the gift of wisdom, which enables the soul to contemplate truth in its ultimate causes. The age is materialistic; it needs the gift of intelligence, by the light of which the intellect penetrates into the essence of things. The age is captured by a false and one-sided science; it needs the gift of science, by the light of which is seen each order of truth in its true relations to other orders and in a divine unity. The age is in disorder, and is ignorant of the ways to true progress; it needs the gift of counsel, which teaches how to choose the proper means to attain an object. The age is impious; it needs the gift of piety, which leads the soul to look up to God as the heavenly Father, and to adore him with feelings of filial affection and love. The age is sensual and effeminate; it needs the gift of force, which imparts to the will the strength to endure the greatest burdens, and to prosecute the greatest enterprises with ease and heroism. The age has lost and almost forgotten God; it needs the gift of fear to bring the soul again to God, and make it feel conscious of its great responsibility and of its destiny.”

The men to whom these gifts have been accorded are those of whose services our age has need. A single man with these gifts could do more than ten thousand who possessed them not. It is to such men, if they correspond with the graces which have been heaped upon them, that our age will owe its universal restoration and its universal progress. This being admitted, since, on the other hand, it is of faith that the Holy Spirit does not allow the church to err, ought we not now to expect that he will direct her on to a new path?

Since the XVIth century, the errors of Protestantism, and the attacks upon the Catholic religion of which it gave the signal, have compelled the church to change, to a certain extent, the normal orbit of her movement. Now that she has completed in this direction her line of defence,[171] it is to be expected that she will resume her primitive career, and enter on a new phase, by devoting herself to more vigorous action. It is impossible to dispute the fresh strength which the definition lately promulgated by the Council of the Vatican has bestowed upon the church. It is the axis on which now revolves the church’s career—the renewal of religion in souls, and the entire restoration of society.

Do we not see an extraordinary divine working in those numerous pilgrimages to authorized sanctuaries, in those multiplied novenas, and those new associations of prayer? And do they not give evidence of the increasing influence of the Holy Spirit on souls?

What matter persecutions? It is they which purify what remains of the too human in the church. It is by the cross we come to the light—Per crucem ad lucem.

A little farther on the author explains in what the twofold action of the Holy Spirit consists.

He acts at one and the same time in an intimate manner upon hearts, and in a manner quite external on the church herself.

An indefinite field of action conceded to the sentiments of the heart, without a sufficient knowledge of the end and object of the church, would open the way for illusions, for heresies of every kind, and would invite an individual mysticism which would be merely one of the forms of Protestantism.

On the other hand, the exclusive point of view of the external authority of the church, without a corresponding comprehension of the nature of the operations of the Holy Spirit within the heart of every one of the faithful, would make the practice of religion a pure formalism, and would render obedience servile, and the action of the church sterile.

Moreover, the action of the Holy Spirit made visible in the authority of the church, and of the Holy Spirit dwelling invisibly in the heart, form an inseparable synthesis; and he who has not a clear conception of this double action of the Holy Spirit runs the risk of losing himself in one or other of the extremes which would involve the destruction and end of the church.

In the external authority of the church the Holy Spirit acts as the infallible interpreter and the criterion of the divine revelation. He acts in the heart as giving divine life and sanctification.

The Holy Spirit, who, by means of the teachings of the church, communicates divine truth, is the same Spirit which teaches the heart to receive rightly the divine truth which he deigns to teach. The measure of our love for the Holy Spirit is the measure of our obedience to the authority of the church; and the measure of our obedience to the authority of the church is the measure of our love for the Holy Spirit. Whence the saying of S. Augustine: Quantum quisque amat ecclesiam Dei, tantum habet Spiritum Sanctum.

It is remarkable that no pope has done so much for the despised rights of human reason as Pope Pius IX.; that no council has done better service to science than that of the Vatican, none has better regulated its relations to the faith; that none has better defined in their fundamental principles the relations of the natural and the supernatural; and the work of the pontiff and of the council is not yet finished.

Every apology for Christianity must henceforth make great account of the intrinsic proofs of religion, without which people of the world would be more and more drawn to see the church only on her human side.

The Holy Spirit, by means of the sacraments, consummates the union of the soul of the believer with God. It is this end which true religion should pursue. The placing in relief the internal life, and the constitution of the church, and the intelligible side of the mysteries of the church—in short, the intrinsic reasons of the truths of the divine revelation combined with the external motive of credibility—will complete the demonstration of Christianity. Such an exposition of Christianity, founded on the union of these two categories of proofs, will have the effect of producing a more enlightened and intense conviction of religion in the souls of the faithful, and of stimulating them to more energetic action; and it will have, as its last result, the opening of the door to their wandering brethren, and gathering them back into the bosom of the church. With the vigorous co-operation of the faithful, the ever-augmenting action of the Holy Spirit will raise the human personality to such an intensity of strength and greatness that there will result from it a new era for the church and for society—an admirable era, which it would be difficult to describe in human expressions, without having recourse to the prophetic language of the inspired Scriptures.

II. The Mission of Races.—In pursuing his study upon the action of the Holy Spirit in the world, the author says that a wider and more explicit exposition of the dogmatic and moral verities of the church, with a view to the characteristic gifts of every race, is the means to employ in order to realize the hopes he has conceived.

God is the author of the different races of men. For known reasons of his providence, he has impressed on them certain characteristic traits, and has assigned to them from the beginning the places which they should occupy in his church.

In a matter in which delicate susceptibilities have to be carefully handled, it is important not to exaggerate the special gifts of every race, and, on the other hand, not to depreciate them or exaggerate their vices.

It would, however, be a serious error, in speaking of the providential mission of the races, to suppose that they were destined to mark with their imprint religion, Christianity, or the church. It is, on the contrary, God who makes the gifts and qualities with which he has endowed them co-operate in the expression and development of the truths which he created for them.

Nevertheless, no one can deny the mission of the Latin and Celtic races throughout the greater part of the history of Christianity. The first fact which manifested their mission and established the influence they were to exercise was the establishment of the chair of S. Peter at Rome, the centre of the Latin race. To Rome appertained the idea of the administrative and governmental organization of the whole world. Rome was regarded as the geographical centre of the world.

The Greeks having abandoned the church for schism, and the Saxons having revolted against her by heresy in the XVIth century, the predominance which the Latin race, united later on to the Celtic race, assumed in her bosom, became more and more marked.

This absence of the Greeks and of a considerable part of the Saxons—nations whose prejudices and tendencies are in many respects similar—left the ground more free for the church to complete her action, whether by her ordinary or normal development, or by the way of councils, as that of Trent and that of the Vatican.

That which characterizes the Latin and Celtic races, according to our author, is their hierarchical, traditional, and emotional tendencies.

He means, doubtless, by this latter expression, that those races are very susceptible to sensible impressions—to those which come from without.

As to the hierarchical sentiment of the Celtic and Latin races, it appears to us that for upwards of a century it has been much weakened, if it be not completely extinct.

In the following passage the author is not afraid to say of the Saxon race:

“It is precisely the importance given to the external constitution and to the accessories of the church which excited the antipathies of the Saxons, which culminated in the so-called Reformation. For the Saxon races and the mixed Saxons, the English and their descendants, predominate in the rational element, in an energetic individuality, and in great practical activity in the material order.”

One might have feared, perhaps, a kind of hardihood arising from a certain national partiality in regard to which the author would find it difficult to defend himself against his half-brethren of Germany, if he had not added:

“One of the chief defects of the Saxon mind lay in not fully understanding the constitution of the church, or sufficiently appreciating the essential necessity of her external organization. Hence their misinterpretation of the providential action of the Latin-Celts, and their charges against the church of formalism, superstition, and popery. They wrongfully identified the excesses of those races with the church of God. They failed to take into sufficient consideration the great and constant efforts the church had made in her national and general councils to correct the abuses and extirpate the vices which formed the staple of their complaints.

“Conscious, also, of a certain feeling of repression of their natural instincts, while this work of the Latin-Celts was being perfected, they at the same time felt a great aversion to the increase of externals in outward worship, and to the minute regulations in discipline, as well as to the growth of papal authority and the outward grandeur of the papal court. The Saxon leaders in heresy of the XVIth century, as well as those of our own day, cunningly taking advantage of those antipathies, united with selfish political considerations, succeeded in making a large number believe that the question in controversy was not what it really was—a question; namely, between Christianity and infidelity—but a question between Romanism and Germanism!

“It is easy to foresee the result of such a false issue; for it is impossible, humanly speaking, that a religion can maintain itself among a people when once they are led to believe it wrongs their natural instincts, is hostile to their national development, or is unsympathetic with their genius.

“With misunderstandings, weaknesses, and jealousies on both sides, these, with various other causes, led thousands and millions of Saxons and Anglo-Saxons to resistance, hatred, and, finally, open revolt against the authority of the church.

“The same causes which mainly produced the religious rebellion of the XVIth century are still at work among the Saxons, and are the exciting motives of their present persecutions against the church.

“Looking through the distorted medium of their Saxon prejudices, grown stronger with time, and freshly stimulated by the recent definition of Papal Infallibility, they have worked themselves into the belief—seeing the church only on the outside, as they do—that she is purely a human institution, grown slowly, by the controlling action of the Latin-Celtic instincts, through centuries, to the present formidable proportions. The doctrines, the sacraments, the devotions, the worship of the Catholic Church, are, for the most part, from their stand-point, corruptions of Christianity, having their source in the characteristics of the Latin-Celtic races. The papal authority, to their sight, is nothing else than the concentration of the sacerdotal tendencies of these races, carried to their culminating point by the recent Vatican definition, which was due, in the main, to the efforts and the influence exerted by the Jesuits. This despotic ecclesiastical authority, which commands a superstitious reverence and servile submission to all its decrees, teaches doctrines inimical to the autonomy of the German Empire, and has fourteen millions or more of its subjects under its sway, ready at any moment to obey, at all hazards, its decisions. What is to hinder this Ultramontane power from issuing a decree, in a critical moment, which will disturb the peace and involve, perhaps, the overthrow of that empire, the fruit of so great sacrifices, and the realization of the ardent aspirations of the Germanic races? Is it not a dictate of self-preservation and political prudence to remove so dangerous an element, and that at all costs, from the state? Is it not a duty to free so many millions of our German brethren from this superstitious yoke and slavish subjection? Has not divine Providence bestowed the empire of Europe upon the Saxons, and placed us Prussians at its head, in order to accomplish, with all the means at our disposal, this great work? Is not this a duty which we owe to ourselves, to our brother Germans, and, above all, to God? This supreme effort is our divine mission!”

It would be impossible to enter into the idea of the Bismarckian policy in a manner more ingenious, more exact, and more striking.

It is by presenting to Germany this monstrous counterfeit of the church that they have succeeded in provoking its hatred of her, and the new empire proposes to be itself the resolution of a problem which can be only formulated thus: “Either adapt Latin Christianity, the Romish Church, to the Germanic type of character and to the exigences of the empire, or we will employ all the forces and all the means at our disposal to stamp out Catholicity within our dominions, and to exterminate its existence as far as our authority and influence extend.”

This war against the Catholic religion is formidable, and ought not to leave us without alarm and without terror.

Truth is powerful, it is said, and it will prevail. But truth has no power of itself, in so far as it is an abstraction. It has none, except on the condition of coming forth and showing itself living in minds and hearts.

What is to be done, then?

No thought can be entertained for a moment of modifying Catholic dogmas, of altering the constitution of the church, or of entering, to ever so small an extent, on the path of concessions. What is needed is to present religious truth to minds in such a manner as that they shall be able to see that it is divine. It is to prove to them that our religion alone is in harmony with the profoundest instincts of their hearts, and can alone realize their secret aspirations, which Protestantism has no power to satisfy. For that, the Holy Spirit must be invoked in order that he may develop the interior life of the church, and that this development may be rendered visible to the persecutors themselves, who hitherto see nothing in her but what is terrestrial and human. Already a certain ideal conception of Christianity exists amongst non-Catholics of England and of the United States, and puts them in the way of a more complete conversion. As to the Saxons, who, in these days, precipitate themselves upon an opposite course, we should try to enlighten their blindness. Already we have seen the persecutors, whether Roman or German, become themselves Christian in their turn. We shall see the Germans of our days exhibiting the same spectacle. It is a great race, that German race. Now, “the church is a divine queen, and her aim has always been to win to her bosom the imperial races. She has never failed to do it, too.”

Already we can perceive a very marked return movement amongst the demi-Saxons, or Anglo-Saxons. It is a great sign of the times.

At different epochs there have been movements of this kind in England. But none exhibited features so serious as that of which we are witnesses in these days. Conversions to the church multiply without number, above all amongst the most intelligent and influential classes of the nation; and that in spite of the violent cry of alarm raised by Lord John Russell, and in spite of the attacks of the ex-minister Gladstone, who has the reputation of being the most eloquent man in England.

The gravitation towards the Catholic Church exhibits itself in a manner still more general and more clear in the bosom of the United States.

The Catholics in that country amounted to scarcely a few hundreds at the commencement of this century. They form now a sixth of the population of the United States. They number about 7,000,000. And the Catholic is the only religion which makes any real progress.

It is, then, true “that the Catholic religion flourishes and prospers wherever human nature has its due liberty. Let them but give to the church rights only equal to those of other confessions, and freedom of action, and we should see her regain Europe, and, with Europe, the world.”

Now, might we not conclude that these two demi-Saxon nations, England and the United States, are predestined by Providence to lead the Saxons themselves in a vast movement of return towards the Catholic Church?

Before concluding, the author returns to the Latin and Celtic nations, and directs towards them a sorrowful glance.

As for France, he regrets that a violent reaction against the abuses of the ancient régime, of which he gives a somewhat exaggerated picture, has brought about an irreligious revolution and a political situation which oscillates ceaselessly between anarchy and despotism, and despotism and anarchy. He deplores still more that the progressive movement has been diverted from its course in Spain and in Italy by the evil principles imported from France.

“At this moment,” says the author, “Christianity is in danger, on the one hand, of being exterminated by the persecution of the Saxon races; on the other, of being betrayed by the apostasy of the Celto-Latins. This is the great tribulation of the church at the present time. Between these two perils she labors painfully.”

According to human probabilities, the divine bark should be on the point of perishing. But perish it cannot. God cannot abandon the earth to the spirit of evil. “Jesus Christ came to establish the kingdom of God on the earth, as a means of conducting men to the kingdom of God in heaven.”