Chapter XIV

THE EPISODE EXPLAINED.

The night closed in—night, that is so cruel, yet so merciful; intensifying every pain in the long dark watch, or lulling it in blessed sleep.

There was very little sleep for Raymond that night, and none at all for his two nurses. They sat by his bed while the slow hours dragged on, watching his feverish restlessness, that was occasionally soothed by broken snatches of rest, thanks to a potion that was administered at intervals. Franceline’s anxiety gradually returned as she sat there observing every sound and symptom. She could not but see that there was something far more serious in this sudden attack than an ordinary fainting fit. Raymond was so troubled and excited in his sleep that she almost wished him to awake; and then again she longed for unconsciousness to soothe his feverish terrors. He clutched her hand; he could not bear her to move from him. At last the dawn came, and like a bright-winged angel scattered the darkness and scared away the ghostly phantoms of the night, and Raymond fell into a slumber long and deep enough to be refreshing.

Some days passed without bringing any change; but he was no worse, which, the doctor said, meant that he was better. His condition, however, continued extremely critical.

It was wonderful both to Angélique and to herself how Franceline

The few neighbors who were intimate were kind and sympathizing. Lady Anwyll had driven over and made anxious inquiries, and would gladly be of use in any way, if she could. Miss Bulpit also came to offer her services in any way they could be available. Miss Merrywig called every day. So far Franceline had seen none of them; she was always with her father when they called, and Angélique would not disturb her for visitors.

Father Henwick came constantly to inquire, but did not always ask to see the young girl. Franceline wondered why her father had not before this expressed a wish to see him; it seemed so natural that such a wish should have manifested itself the moment Raymond was able to receive any one. She dared not take the initiative and suggest it, but she could not help feeling that it would be an immense relief to the sufferer if he could disburden his mind of the weight that was upon it, and speak to Father Henwick as to a tried and affectionate friend, if even he did not as yet seek spiritual help and guidance from him. It had long since been borne in on Franceline that the horrible suspicion which had so mysteriously fallen on Raymond was in some way or other connected with his sudden illness; she brooded over the thought until it became a fixed idea and haunted her day and night. How was it that he did not instinctively turn for comfort to the Source where he was sure to find it? Father Henwick himself must feel pained and surprised at not having been summoned to the sick-room before this. Franceline was thinking over it all one morning, sitting near Raymond’s bedside, when Angélique put in her head and announced in a loud whisper that M. le Curé, as she dubbed Father Henwick, was down-stairs, and would be glad if she could speak to him a moment. Franceline rose softly, and was leaving the room, when her father, who was not dozing, as she fancied, said:

“Why does he not come up and see me? I should be glad to see him; it would do me good.”

Father Henwick came up without delay, and Franceline soon made a pretext for leaving him alone with the invalid. It was with a beating heart that she closed the door on them and went down-stairs to wait till she was recalled. She could hear only the full, clear tones of Father Henwick’s voice at first; after a while these grew lower, and then she heard the murmur of Raymond’s voice; then there seemed to follow a silence. She was too agitated to pray in words, but her heart prayed silently with intense fervor. The conference lasted a full half-hour, and then Father Henwick’s cheerful voice sounded on the stairs.

“How do you think he looks, father?” she said, meeting him at

“Much better than I expected!” he answered promptly and with a heartiness of conviction that was music to her ears; “and you will find that from this out he will improve steadily, and rapidly, I hope, too.”

A stifled “Thank God!” was Franceline’s answer.

“And now how about you?” said the priest, with something of the old blunt grumble that was so much more reassuring than the tenderness called forth by pity. “I heard a very bad account of you this morning—no sleep, and no food, and no air; you mean to fret yourself into an illness before your father is up and able to attend on you, do you? That would be one way of showing your dutiful affection for him. Humph! Are those the eyes for a young lady to have in her head on a fine sunny morning like this? Did you go to bed at all last night?”

“Yes, but I could not sleep; I was too anxious, too unhappy.”

“Too unbelieving, too mistrustful. Go up-stairs this minute, you child of little faith, and lie down and lay your head upon the pillow of divine Providence, and be asleep in five minutes!”

He left her with this peremptory injunction, and Franceline, with a lightened heart, went up-stairs determined to obey it. It was as yet, of course, a matter of pure conjecture what had passed between the priest and her father; but when, an hour later, after obediently taking that refreshing sleep on the pillow of divine Providence which had been commanded her, she came into Raymond’s room, there was a marked change in his whole demeanor. He had not passed the interval in the listless apathy that had now become habitual to him. He had made Angélique bring over a little celestial globe and set it on the bed for him, and had amused himself with it awhile; and then he had taken up the book Franceline had left on the chair beside him when she stole out of the room. It was The Imitation of Christ. He was reading it when she entered, and there was an expression on his features that made her happier than she had been for a long time. He looked more peaceful, more life-like than she had seen him for weeks even before he had fallen ill.

“You are feeling better, petit père?” she said, kissing him, and taking the dear face between her hands to look into it more closely.

“Yes, my clair de lune, much better,” he replied, with a smile that had all its wonted sweetness and something of the old brightness. “I think I shall be able to get down-stairs in a day or two.”

“I see you have been at your old tricks again,” she said, shaking her finger at him and pointing to the globe; “you know you are forbidden to do anything that gives you the least fatigue.”

“It was not a fatigue, my little one—it amused me; but I will not do it again, if you don’t wish it.”

Franceline hugged his head to her cheek, and said she would let him do anything so long as it amused him.

“I was thinking of you last night, petit père,” she said, making the globe revolve slowly on its axis; “the sky was so beautiful at twelve o’clock when I happened to look out of my window that I longed for you to see it.”

“Ha! Then probably it will be

“Yes; and let the moon keep you awake whether you will or not! I should like to hear what Angélique would say to that proposal! No; but I will tell you what we’ll do: I will be on the watch to-night, and if the stars are like last night I will steal in and see if you are awake, and if you are I will draw the curtain so that you may see them from your bed. We shall be like two savants making our ‘observations’ in the night-time, shall we not? And—who knows?—we may discover a new star!”

Raymond pinched her cheek and laughed gently. His hopes in this respect were limited by facts—or rather negatives—that Franceline did not stop to inquire into; she had not gone deeply into the science of astronomy.

“There is no saying what I might not discover with those bright eyes of thine for a telescope,” said M. de la Bourbonais.

Angélique rejoiced in her own fashion at the decided turn for the better that her master had suddenly taken. She saw that he spoke a good deal during the evening, and ate with a nearer approach to appetite than he had yet shown; so she settled him for the night, and went to bed with a lighter heart than for many past nights, and soon slept soundly.

Franceline did not follow her example. It was not anxiety that kept her awake, but happiness; she could not bring herself to part with it so quickly, and lose it for a time in unconsciousness. There was a presence, too, in the ecstatic silence of the night, that answered to this sense of joy and appealed to her for responsive watch. Joys are more intense when we dwell on them in the night-time, because they are more separate, farther lifted from the jarring discord of our daily lives, where pain cries around us in so many multiform tongues. It is as if the world grew wider in spiritual space, and that senses and fibres, too delicate to vibrate in the glare of daylight, woke up in the solemn hush when the world of man is out of sight and God comes nearer to us.

Franceline stood at the window and gazed at the beautiful scene that spread itself before her. The moon was at her full; the landscape, diluted in the moonlight, floated in mystic, illimitable space, still and hushed as if the world were holding its breath to hear the stars tingling in the sapphire dome; every tree and blade of grass were listening to the silence; the river sped stealthily along like a silver snake between its banks where the gray poplars stood looking down, frighted by the vibration of their own shadows, dyeing themselves black in the water.

“If he were awake, how he would enjoy this!” murmured Franceline to herself; and then, unable to resist the temptation, she stole softly through Angélique’s room and across the landing into Raymond’s. The doors were all open, partly to admit more air, partly that they might hear the least tinkle of his little hand-bell, if he sounded it.

“Is that my Franceline?” asked a voice from the bed. The night light threw her shadow on the floor, and Raymond, who was not asleep, saw it.

“Yes, petit père,” she answered in a whisper; “the sky is so lovely I thought I must come and see if

“Yes.”

She did so, and then crept back and knelt down beside him. Raymond laid his cheek against her head, and clasped her hand in his, and they remained for some moments gazing at the beauty of the heavens in silence. Then he said, making long pauses, as if he were thinking aloud rather than speaking to her:

“How wonderful is the splendor of God as he reveals it to us in his works!… Who can measure his power, his glory?… Think what it means, the creation of one of those stars! And there are myriads and myriads of them spangling millions of miles of blue sky! There are no steppes, no barren spots, there where the stars cannot grow. They are not like flowers, those stars of our world; they never perish or fade—they only draw behind the light for a while; always harmonious, moving in their appointed places like the notes of a divine symphony; they make no discord. The great stars are not scornful of the little ones; the little stars are not jealous of the great; each is content to be as it is and where it is, and to stay where the great Star-Maker has fixed it.… My clair de lune, let us try and be content like the stars.”

Franceline raised his hand to her lips, and murmured the strophe of her favorite hymn of S. Francis: “Praised be my Lord for our sister the moon, and for the stars, which he has set clear and lovely in the heavens.…”

The next morning Father Henwick came and was once more closeted with Raymond. Nothing had been said about it, but, when the door-bell sounded, M. de la Bourbonais glanced quickly at the clock, and exclaimed in a tone of surprise: “Already half-past twelve! I did not think it was so late. Thou wilt show him up at once, my child, and then leave us alone for a little.”

No further explanation was necessary. Franceline kissed him in silence, placed a chair close by his pillow, and then, in a happy flutter, went down to meet Father Henwick.

Two days after this there was great joy at The Lilies. The little cottage was decked out as for a bridal. Franceline had stayed up late to have it all finished for the early morning; she would do everything with her own hands. The stairs were wreathed with garlands of green leaves and ferns; every vase and cup she could find was filled with the sweet spring flowers—cowslips, primroses, anemones, and wild violets—and placed in the tiny entrance and on the landing opposite Raymond’s room. The room itself was transformed into a chapel. At the foot of the bed stood a small table covered with Franceline’s snowiest muslin, joyously sacrificed for the occasion. Lights were burning on either side of a large crucifix; there were lights and flowers on the mantelpiece, where she had placed her statue of the Madonna and other precious ornaments; the thin curtains were drawn and filled the little room with a soft golden twilight. Franceline was kneeling beside the bed, reciting some litany aloud, which Raymond answered from a book in timid, reverential under-tones.

But now a sudden hush falls upon the faintly-broken silence. There is a sound of footsteps without; a dear and awful Presence is

* * * * *

The sudden improvement in Raymond’s state was not followed by a proportionately rapid progress. He still continued extremely weak, and was not able to come down-stairs until several days later. Dr. Blink was puzzled; he had been very sanguine when the rally took place, and now he hardly knew what to think. He was convinced from the first that the attack had been in a great measure caused by some mental shock; but that seemed at one moment to have righted itself, and he thought his patient was safe. This was apparently a mistake. The pressure may have been unexpectedly lightened, but it was clearly not removed; and until this was done medicine could do very little.

“There is something on his mind,” said the doctor to Mr. Langrove one morning, on coming out from his daily visit; “there is some trouble weighing on him, and he will not recover until something is done toward removing it.”

The vicar understood perfectly the drift of this remark. It was an appeal from the medical man to the friend of the patient for help or light. Mr. Langrove could give neither. He observed that the count had been seriously anxious about Franceline’s health; but Dr. Blink shook his head. He knew how to discriminate between the effect of heartache and a pressure on the mind. In this case the mind was oppressed by some secret burden, or he was very much mistaken; it might be some painful apprehension in the future, or something distressing in the past; but whatever the cause was, past or future, the present effect was unmistakable, and, unless some friend who had the full confidence of the patient could afford some relief, the worst might still be apprehended. Mr. Langrove answered by some irrelevant expression of sympathy and regret, but volunteered no opinion of his own. He went home and sat down and wrote to Sir Simon Harness. This was all he could think of. If Sir Simon could not help, he believed no one else could.

It so happened that the baronet was just now absent in the South of Italy, in dutiful attendance on Lady Rebecca; and as he had been called off suddenly, and left no orders about his letters being sent after him, those directed to his bankers lay there unopened. There was another besides Mr. Langrove’s lying there, which, if it had reached him, would have rejoiced the baronet’s heart and provoked a quick response.

The fears which Raymond’s tardy progress raised in the mind of his medical man were not shared by Franceline. Hope still triumphed over alarm, and she felt confident that, since the great weight on her father’s mind had been removed, his complete recovery must ultimately follow. This certainty made the delay easy to bear. It was wonderful how her own strength bore up. She had quite lost her cough—a fact which confirmed the doctor’s previous opinion that the nerves had more to do with this symptom than the lungs—she kept well, and was altogether in better health than for some months previously. Her spirits raised to elation

The moment M. de la Bourbonais was able to get down-stairs Angélique insisted on Franceline going every day for a walk while the sun was shining. One morning, when he had come down and was comfortably established on the sofa in his study, propped up so that he could see out of the window, Franceline said she was going to gather him a bouquet. She smoothed and changed the cushions, put another shawl over his feet, moved the sofa a little bit nearer the window, and then back again a little bit nearer the fire, until, finding there was absolutely nothing more to fuss over, except to kiss him for the tenth time with “Au revoir, petit père!” as if they were separating for a journey, she sallied forth for her constitutional.

The weather was mild and beautiful; spring was intoning the first bars of its idyl, striking bright emerald notes from the tips of the trees, and drawing low, pink whispers from the blackthorn in the hedges; the birds were beginning to tune their lutes and make ready for the great concert that was at hand. Franceline’s heart bounded in unison with the pulse of joy and universal awakening; she began to warble a duet with the skylark as she went along, stopping every now and then to make a nosegay of the pink and white anemones and violets and torch-like king-cups that grew in wild luxuriance in the woods and fields. Dullerton was famous for its wild flowers. Half an hour passed quickly while thus engaged, and then she turned homewards. The doves were on the watch for her, “sunning their milk-white bosoms on the thatch,” as she came in sight, and swelling the sweet harmony of earth and sky with a tender, well-contented coo. But hark! Could that be the cuckoo that was already calling from the woods? She paused with her hand on the latch to listen. No: it was only the voice of the sunshine echoing through her own happy heart. She pushed open the gate and walked quickly on; but again her step was arrested. Some one was coming round by the park entrance. It was no doubt Mr. Langrove; no one else came that way—no one but Sir Simon Harness, and there he stood. Franceline had nearly uttered a cry, when a quick sign from the baronet checked it and made her walk leisurely on without doing anything to attract attention. She cast a furtive glance towards the casement, to see if by chance her father had changed his place and come to sit by the window; but he was still on the sofa where she had left him.

Sir Simon opened his arms and clasped her with a warmth of emotion that did not surprise Franceline.

“You heard that he was ill! You are come to see him!” she exclaimed.

“I have only heard it this minute from my people at the house. Why did you not write to me, child? Ah! he would not let you, I suppose? My poor Raymond! And now how is he? Can I see him? Will he see me?”

“Why should he not see you, dear Sir Simon?” said Franceline, raising her large, soft glance to him, full of wondering reproach.

“Of course, of course,” said the baronet; “but is he strong enough to see me? They tell me he has been terribly shaken by this illness. It might cause him a shock if he saw me too suddenly.”

Before Sir Simon could decide for either alternative, fate, in the shape of Angélique, decided for him. She had seen Franceline enter the garden, and wondered why she loitered outside instead of coming in; so she came out to see, and, on beholding Sir Simon, threw up her arms with a shout of astonishment.

Franceline cried out “Hush!” and shook her hand at the old woman, but it was too late; Raymond had seen and heard her from his sofa.

“Go in at once,” said Sir Simon, much excited—“go and tell him I am come to kiss his feet; to ask his forgiveness on my knees. Tell him I know everything.” And he pushed her gently from him. Franceline did not stop to ask what the strange message could mean, but ran in, thinking only how best she could deliver it so as to avoid too sudden a shock to her father.

Raymond was sitting up on the sofa, his face slightly flushed.

“What is the matter? Who is there?” he cried.

“Dear father, nothing is the matter; only something you will be glad to hear,…” she began.

“Ha! it is Simon! What has he come for? What does he want?”

“He wants to embrace you; and, father, he bade me say that he knows everything, and has come to ask you to forgive him and let him kiss your feet. He is waiting; may he come in?”

But Raymond did not answer; he was murmuring some words to himself, with hands lifted reverently as in prayer, while a smile of unearthly joy diffused itself on his whole countenance. The emotion was too much for him; he fell back exhausted on his pillow.

Franceline thought he had fainted and screamed out for help. Sir Simon was beside her in an instant.

“Raymond! my friend, my brother, can you ever forgive me?” he cried, kneeling beside M. de la Bourbonais and taking his hand in both his.

“You know the truth, then? You got his letter?”

“Whose letter? I got no letter; but I found the ring. Look at it!”

He drew an enamelled snuff-box from his pocket, opened it, and held up the diamond, that flashed in the sun like a little star.

“Thank Heaven! I shall now be justified before all men!” exclaimed M. de la Bourbonais with trembling emotion. “This is more than I dared to hope. My God! I give thee thanks for this great mercy.”

No one spoke for a moment. Franceline had signed to Angélique to leave the room, but remained herself, a silent spectator of the strange scene.

“Who had it? How was it found?” said M. de la Bourbonais, taking the ring and examining it with an expression of mistrust, as if it were some uncanny thing that he half expected to see melt in his fingers.

“It has been in my possession, locked up at the Court, all this time!” replied Sir Simon. “You may remember I used this snuff-box that night, and sent it round the table. Someone dropped the ring into it unawares; it was not opened afterwards, and it never entered into my stupid brain to think of looking into it. I went away in a great hurry next morning, and

“Mon Dieu!” murmured Raymond, after hearing this simple explanation of the mistake that had very nearly cost him his life.

“Bourbonais, can you ever forgive me?” said Sir Simon.

Raymond opened his arms without speaking. Sir Simon flung himself with a sob upon his breast, and the two clung together and wept.

Franceline felt as if even she had no right to be present; that she was intruding in a sacred place where some mystery, not intended for her eyes, was being unfolded. She was moving softly toward the door when her father called her back.

“Come hither, my child; come and embrace me. I can have no happiness that thou dost not share.”

“Franceline,” said Sir Simon, rising from his knees and taking her hand with an expression of humility that was very touching in the grand, white-haired gentleman, “I have been guilty of a great act of disloyalty towards your father. I cannot tell you what it was; perhaps he will. Meantime, he has forgiven me for the sake of our long friendship, and because his soul is too noble, too generous, to bear malice, even against an unfaithful friend. Will you do as he has done, and say you forgive me too?”

His voice was full of trembling, his eyes were still moist. Franceline did as he had done to her father: she flung her arms round his neck and wept.

TO BE CONTINUED.

A SEQUEL OF THE GLADSTONE CONTROVERSY.

III.

The keen relish which we all have for other people’s sins is proverbial. As those who think with us are right, so are they virtuous who have only our own vices. Prodigality, which, to the miser’s thinking, is the worst of sins, is, in the eyes of the spendthrift, merely an evidence of a generous nature. Men who wish to be thought gentlemen have a weakness for what are called gentlemanly vices; but from the coarser though less depraved wickedness of the vulgar they turn with loathing. This bias of our common nature is not confined in its action to individuals; it affects classes, nations, races. The rich are shocked by the vices of the poor, and the poor, in turn, no less by those of the rich; masters hate the sins of servants, and are repaid in their own coin.

When the free-born Briton sings, “England, with all thy faults, I love thee still,” he means that faults, if only they be English, are after all not so bad. Wrapt up in the precious bundle of our self-love are all our pet sins and weaknesses. The universal hatred which existed between the nations of antiquity must be attributed in great part to the fact that their vices were unlike, and therefore repellant. The national contempt for foreigners is, in Christian times, strong in proportion to the barbarism of the people by whom it is felt; but in Greece and Rome such civilization as was then possible seemed to have no power over this prejudice. Not to be a Greek was to have been created for vile uses, and not to be a Roman was to be nobody. M. Louis Veuillot was somewhat under the influence of national prejudice when he wrote that, if we were sunk in the bottom of the ocean, civilization would have lost nothing. Our form of government, it is true, does not lead us to look for salvation, either in church or state, from a king by divine right; still, he might just as well have let us alone, especially as he is at no loss for quarrels at home. Nor can we think that the Germans who have raised such a storm of indignation over the crime in Bremerhaven, committed, as it is supposed, by an American, would have held the whole German people and their civilization responsible for the offence had they known its author to be native there and to the manner born.

As no passion takes hold of the human heart with such sovereign power as that of religion, it follows that no bias of judgment is more fatal to truth than religious prejudice; and now let us gently descend again to M. Emile de Laveleye and his pamphlet:

“It is agreed on all sides,” he says (p. 25), “that the power of nations depends on their morality. Everywhere is found the maxim, which is almost become an axiom of political science, that where morals are corrupted the state is lost. Now, it appears to be an established fact that the moral level is higher among Protestant than among Catholic populations. Religious writers confess this themselves, and explain it by the fact that the former remain more faithful to their religion than the latter, which explanation I believe to be the true one.”

Here is fairness surely. The soft impeachment could not have been made in a more moderate or subdued tone. Catholics are notoriously more immoral than Protestants; but the subject is a painful one, and M. de Laveleye does not wish to emphasize the unpleasant truth by giving proof—which, indeed, would be superfluous, since M. de Laveleye and the Catholics shake hands and the dispute is at an end.

The position of Protestants with regard to this question is peculiar. The very life of their religion is intimately associated with a fixed belief in the preternatural wickedness of popes, priests, nuns, and Catholics generally. The sole justification of Protestantism was found in the abominable corruptions of Rome, and its only defence is that it is a purer worship, capable of creating a higher morality. The history of the Reformation, as written by Protestants, traces its origin to an awful and heaven-inspired indignation at the sight of papal iniquity, which resulted in a divine Protest against sin. It is this feeling, indeed, which is the living human magnetism in the words of Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and Knox. They all felt that in so far as they protested against open and patent evil they were right, and therefore strong. Leo X., with God’s eternal truth, but encircled by all the Graces and Muses, was at a disadvantage with those strong and plain-spoken men. In fact, the eternal ally of human error is human truth. It is because men who are right do wrong that men who are wrong seem right; and if men in general were fit to be priests of God, there would be on earth no power to oppose the Catholic Church. St. Paul had protested, St. John Chrysostom had protested, St. Peter Damian had protested, St. Bernard had protested, St. Catherine of Sienna had protested, and yet there was no Protestantism. To protest was well and is well, but to seek to found a religion upon a protest is madness; and this is Protestantism. With Protestants purity of dogma is out of the question; and nothing, therefore, remains to them but purity of morals. To this they must cling like drowning men to straws. Protestantism, if considered from a doctrinal point of view, is nihilism. Gather up the hundred sects which, taken collectively, are called Protestantism, and we will find every positive religious dogma excluded; not even the personal existence of God remains. Mr. Matthew Arnold is a true Bible-Protestant, who has a little sect of his own, and all that he holds is that there is “a Power in us, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness”; and this he has discovered to be the sum and substance of all Scripture teaching. Doctrinal Protestantism is like the wrong side of a piece of tapestry with its fag-ends hanging in patches, twisted and jumbled; and yet they are the very substance out of which has been wrought a work of divine beauty. The dogmatic weakness of Protestantism throws its whole energy upon the moral side of religion. Its utter falseness, when we accept the fact that Christ has established a divine system of faith, is so manifest that no impartial thinker would hesitate to give his full assent to the sentiment of Rousseau: “Show me that in religious matters I must accept authority, and I shall become a Catholic at once.” Supposing the Christian religion to be what it is commonly held to be by both Catholics and Protestants, it necessarily follows that the Catholic Church is the only logical as it is the only historical Christianity. This, we believe, is the almost universally-received opinion of non-Christian Culturists.

Macaulay was struck and puzzled by what his keen eye could not fail to perceive to be so universal a phenomenon as to have the force of a law of history.

“It is surely remarkable,” says this brilliant writer, “that neither the moral revolution of the eighteenth century nor the moral counter-revolution of the nineteenth should have in any perceptible degree added to the domain of Protestantism. During the former period whatever was lost to Catholicism was lost also to Christianity; during the latter whatever was regained by Christianity in Catholic countries was regained also by Catholicism. We should naturally have expected that many minds, on the way from superstition to infidelity, or on the way back from infidelity to superstition, would have stopped at an intermediate point. Between the doctrines taught in the schools of the Jesuits, and those which were maintained at the little supper-parties of the Baron Holbach, there is a vast interval in which the human mind, it should seem, might find for itself some resting-place more satisfactory than either of the two extremes; and at the time of the Reformation millions found such a resting-place. Whole nations then renounced popery without ceasing to believe in a First Cause, in a future life, or in the divine authority of Christianity. In the last century, on the contrary, when a Catholic renounced his belief in the Real Presence, it was a thousand to one that he renounced his belief in the Gospel too; and when the reaction took place, with belief in the Gospel came back belief in the Real Presence. We by no means venture to deduce from these phenomena any general law; but we think it a most remarkable fact that no Christian nation which did not adopt the principles of the Reformation before the end of the sixteenth century should ever have adopted them. Catholic communities have since that time become infidel and become Catholic again, but none has become Protestant.”

There could not be a more satisfactory proof of the transitional and accidental nature of Protestantism. Like all human revolutions, it grew out of antecedent circumstances; and these were primarily political and social and only incidentally religious. The faith in the divine authority of the Christian religion was at that time absolute, and not at all affected by the tendency to scepticism observable among a few of the Humanists. The political power of the pope, however, together with his peculiar temporal relations to the German Empire, had gradually created throughout Germany a very strong national prejudice against his authority, which, upon the slightest provocation, was ready to break out of so purgative and drastic a nature that, in the general process of sloughing of religious thought which it brings on, it is itself finally carried away into the vacuum of nihilism.

This became evident as soon as the attempt was made to agree upon articles of belief. New heresies sprang up day after day, and complete chaos would have ensued from the beginning had not the different states taken hold of one or other of the sects and “established” it, thus, by the aid of the temporal power, giving to it a kind of consistency, but at the same time depriving it of vitality. Thus what Macaulay regarded as so remarkable—that no Christian nation which did not adopt the principles of the Reformation before the end of the sixteenth century should ever have adopted them—and he might as well have made the proposition universal, since there was no reason why he should limit it to Christian nations, since it is well known that in nothing has Protestantism given more striking proof of its impotence than in its utter failure to convert the heathen,—this, we say, far from surprising us, seems so natural that we cannot understand how an observant mind should think it strange.

Protestantism was, in the main, the product of the peculiar political and social condition of Europe during the last period of the middle ages, and to expect Catholic nations, or indeed individual Catholics of any intellectual or moral character, to become Protestant in our day argues a total want of power to grasp this subject. As well might one hope to see the pterodactyls and ichthyosauri of a past geologic era swimming in our rivers. Catholics there are, indeed, now, as in the eighteenth century, who become sceptics, who abandon all belief in

Turning to view the present condition of Protestantism, we are struck by the contrast. The very word “Protestant” is without meaning when applied to two-thirds of the non-Catholics of Germany, England, and the United States. Their mental state is one of disbelief in, or indifference to, all forms of positive religion; and if occasionally they are roused to some feeling against the church, it is through an association of ideas, traditional with them, which places her in antagonism with their political theories and national prejudices. Among earnest and reflecting Protestants who are united with one or other of the sects, there are two opposite currents of religious thought of a strongly-marked and well-defined character. Those who are borne on the one are being carried farther and farther away from the historic teachings of Christ, and are busied in trying to dress out in Biblical phraseology some of the various cosmic or pantheistic philosophies of the day. They very generally assume that religion has nothing to do with theology, nor, consequently, with doctrines and dogmas. As its home is the heart, its realm is the world of sentiment; and so it matters not what we believe, provided only we feel good. Opposed to this current, which is bearing with it all the distinctive landmarks of the Christian religion, is another which is carrying men back to the church. In fact, all great minds among Protestants who have been strongly impressed by the objective character of Christian truth have been drawn towards the Catholic Church. Who can have failed to perceive, for instance—to mention only the three greatest who have occupied themselves with religious questions—how Leibnitz, Bacon, and Bishop Butler, in their intellectual apprehension of the Christian system, were, in spite of themselves, attracted to the church? Or who that is acquainted with the English Catholic literature of our own day is ignorant of the divine illumination which many of the most intellectual and reverent natures from the sects of Protestantism have found in the teachings of the one Catholic Church? In this way, by a process of supernatural or natural selection, the fragments of Protestantism are being assimilated to the church or are disappearing in the sea of unbelief in which even now they are seen only as barren islands in the wild waste of waters.

These considerations must be borne in mind by whoever would take a comprehensive view of the question which we propose now to discuss. In the first place, by reflecting upon them we shall find no difficulty in accounting for the marked difference in tone and character between Catholic and Protestant controversy, by which no attentive observer can have failed to be struck. Taking for granted the existence

As a consequence, Catholic controversialists, assured of the absolute coherence of their whole system with the fundamental dogma of the divine mission of Christ, have been chiefly concerned with showing the logical viciousness of the essential principles of Protestantism. They have, indeed, not omitted to remark upon the moral unfitness of such men as Henry VIII., Luther, Knox, and Zwingli to be the divinely-chosen agents of a reformation in the religion of Christ; but such observations have been incidental to the main course of the argument, and this is alike true of our more learned discussions and of our popular controversies.

Catholic writers—allowing for individual exceptions—have not felt that, to show the falsity of Protestantism, it was necessary to denounce Protestants or to stamp upon them any mark of infamy. They have treated them as men who were wrong, not as men who were wicked. Protestant controversy, on the other hand, presents for our consideration characteristics of a very different nature. In the consciousness of their inability to settle upon a fixed creed, which has been shown by history, and from the necessarily feeble manner in which articles of faith could be held by them, on account of the disagreement and conflict of opinion among themselves, Protestant writers were forced to treat their religion, not as a doctrine, but as a tendency; and for this reason, together with the natural hatred which men entertain for a church or government against which they have rebelled, they were led to draw contrasts between the results of Protestantism and Catholicity; so that it became customary to attribute all the enlightenment, morality, progress, and liberty of the world to Protestantism, and to represent Catholics as cruel, ignorant, corrupt, and in every way depraved. Luther, as we should naturally expect, led the way in this style of controversy.

“The Papists,” he said, “are for the most part mere gross blockheads.… The pope and his crew are mere worshippers of idols and servants of the devil.… Pope, cardinals, bishops, not a soul of them has read the Bible; ‘tis a book unknown to them. They are a pack of guzzling, stuffing wretches, rich, wallowing in wealth and laziness.… Seeing the pope is Antichrist, I believe him to be a devil incarnate.… The pope is the last blaze in the lamp which will go out and ere long be extinguished—the last instrument of the devil, that thunders and lightens with sword and bull;… but the Spirit of God’s mouth has seized upon that shameless strumpet.… Antichrist is the Pope and the Turk together.… The pope is not God’s image, but his ape.… Popedom is founded on mere lies and fables.… A friar is evil every way; the preaching friars are proud buzzards; all who serve the pope are damned; the Papists are devoid of shame and Christianity.”[3]

This is the style of Protestant controversy which, except in form, still lingers in this nineteenth century. Protestant devotion, it may be said

No evidence, therefore, is needed to show that Catholics are immoral, depraved, thoroughly corrupt. To doubt it would be to question the truth of Protestantism and to believe that something good might come out of Nazareth. In good sooth, do not the Catholics, as M. de Laveleye says, admit the fact themselves?

We often hear persons express surprise that intelligent and honest Protestants should still, after such sad experience, be so eager to believe the “awful disclosures” of “escaped nuns,” and to patronize that kind of lecture—of which, thank God! Protestants have the monopoly—delivered to men or women only, in which the abominations of the confessional are revealed and the general preternatural wickedness of priests, monks, and nuns is made fully manifest. This, to us, we must say, has never seemed strange. The doctrine of total depravity is an article of Protestant faith, and, when applied to Catholics, to none other have Protestants ever clung with such unwavering firmness and perfect unanimity. When disagreeing about everything else, they have never failed to find a point of union in this. Even after having lived and dealt with Catholics who are kind-hearted, pure, and fair-minded, in the true Protestant there still lurks a vague kind of suspicion that there must be some mysterious and secret diabolism in them which eludes his observation; that after all they may be only “as mild-mannered men as ever scuttled ship or cut a throat”; and after his reason has been fully convinced that the Catholic Church is the only historical Christianity, he is still able to remain a strong Protestant by falling back upon the undoubted total depravity of Papists. Dr. Newman, in his Apologia, the most careful and instructive self-analysis which has been written in this century, or probably in any other, declares that after he had become thoroughly persuaded of the truth of the Catholic Church his former belief that the pope was Antichrist still remained like a stain upon his imagination; and yet he had never been an ultra-Protestant. Many a Protestant has ceased to believe in Christ, without giving up his faith in the pope as Antichrist.

When quite recently the excited Germans charged the dynamite plot of Thomassen upon our American civilization, we replied, with perfect justice, that such crimes are anomalies, the guilt of which ought not to be laid upon any nation, and all reasonable men admitted the evident good sense of our answer; but Protestants the world over have been unanimous in seeking to hold up the church to the execration of mankind as responsible for the St. Bartholomew massacre. Is Protestantism answerable for Cromwell’s massacres at Drogheda and Wexford? Religious fanaticism, no doubt, had much to do in urging him to butcher idolaters and slaves of Satan; but we should blush for shame were we capable of thinking for a moment that such inhumanities are either produced or approved by the real spirit of the Protestant religion.

We know of nothing in the Catholic Church which in any way corresponds with Protestant anti-popery literature; indeed, we doubt whether in the whole history of literature anything so disgraceful and disreputable as this can be found, unless, possibly, it be that which is professedly obscene, but which has nowhere ever had a recognized existence; and we question whether even this is as discreditable to human nature as the “awful disclosures” and “lectures to men or women only” of Protestants.

In discussing the comparative morality of Catholic and Protestant nations it would be more satisfactory, even though it should not be more conclusive, to consider their respective virtues rather than their vices. There would seem to be neither good sense nor logic in taking the individuals and classes that are least brought under religious influences of any kind, in order to use their depravity as an argument for or against the church or Protestantism. In the apostolic body one out of twelve was a thief and traitor, yet neither Catholics nor Protestants are in the habit of concluding from this that they must all have been rogues and hypocrites. The amount of crime, one would think, is but a poor test of the amount of virtue. As the greatest sinners have made the greatest saints, so in the church depravity may co-exist with the most heroic virtue, though, of course, not in the same individual. Our divine Saviour plainly declares that in his church the good shall be mingled with the bad; that the cockle shall grow with the wheat till the harvest time; that some shall call him Lord and Master, and yet do not the will of his Father; that even, with regard to those who sit in the chair of Moses—and, let us add, of Peter—though their authority must ever be acknowledged, yet are not their lives always to be imitated, nor approved of even. It is manifestly contrary to the teaching of Christ to make the note of sanctity in his church consist in the individual holiness of each and every member. He is no Puritan, though he is the all-holy God. A puristic religion is essentially narrow, self-conscious, and unsympathetic; it draws a line here on earth between the elect and the reprobate; its disciples eat not with sinners, nor enter into their abodes, nor hold out to them the pleading hands of large-hearted charity. Such a faith does not grow upon men; it

If, instead of comparing the crimes, we should consider the respective virtues of Catholic and Protestant nations, we should at once be struck by the difference in their standards of morality. The most practical way of determining the real standard of morality of any religion is to study the character of its saints. There we find religious ideals made tangible and fully discernible. Here at once we perceive that there is an essential difference between the Catholic and the Protestant standard of morality. The lives of our saints, even when understood by Protestants, generally repel them. They are, in their eyes, useless lives, idle lives, superstitious lives, unnatural and inhuman. We take the words of Christ, “If thou wouldst be perfect, go sell what thou hast, give it to the poor, and come and follow me,” in their full and complete literal meaning. The highest life is to leave father and mother, to have nor wife nor children, nor temporal goods except what barely suffices, and to cleave to Christ only with all one’s soul in poverty, chastity, and obedience. Now, this life of prayer in poverty, chastity, and obedience is an offence to Protestants. They do not believe in perfect chastity, they hold religious obedience to be a slavery, and poverty, in their eyes, is ridiculous. Inasmuch as the monks tilled the earth, transcribed books, and taught school, they receive a partial recognition from the Protestant world; but inasmuch as they were bound by religious vows they excite disgust. We should say, then, that the distinctive trait of Catholic morality is ascetic, while the Protestant is utilitarian. The one primarily regards the world that is to be, the other that which already is. The one inclines us to look upon this as a worthless world to lose or win; the other is shrewd and calculating—this is the best we have any practical experience of; it is the part of wisdom to make the most of it. The one seems to be more certain of the future life, the other of the present. It is needless to prolong the contrast, and we shall simply confess that we have always been inclined to the opinion of those who hold that Protestantism, in its aims and direct tendencies, is more favorable to what is called material progress than Catholicism. In fact, one cannot realize the personal survival of the soul through eternity, and at the same time be supremely interested in stocks or the price of cotton.

Not that the church discourages efforts which have as their object the material interests of mankind; but, in her view, our duties to God are of the first importance, and to these all others are subordinate. What doth it profit? she is always asking, whereas Protestantism is busy trying to show us how very profitable and pleasant the Reformation has made this world—and virtuous, too, since honesty is the best policy and enlightened self-interest the standard of morals. It is the old story—God and the world, the supernatural and the natural, progress from above and progress from below.

But we feel that it is time we should give our readers proof that we have no desire to avoid direct issue with M. de Laveleye. We flatly deny, then, his assertion that the Catholic nations are more immoral than the Protestant; and when he further affirms that Catholic writers themselves—for his words can have no other meaning—admit this, he lies under a mistake for which there [4] Alison, the historian, writing about the same time, but referring to the early part of this century, says that the proportion of crime to the inhabitants was twelve times greater in Prussia than in France.[5] To this may be added the testimony of John Stuart Mill, in his Autobiography, published since his death, who passed a considerable portion of his life in France. Referring to his sojourn there when quite a young man, he says:

“Having so little experience of English life, and the few people I knew being mostly such as had public objects of a large and personally disinterested kind at heart, I was ignorant of the low moral tone of what in England is called society: the habit of, not indeed professing, but taking for granted in every mode of implication that conduct is of course always directed towards low and petty objects; the absence of high feelings, which manifests itself by sneering depreciation of all demonstrations of them, and by general abstinence (except among a few of the stricter religionists) from professing any high principles of action at all, except in those preordained cases in which such profession is put on as part of the costume and formalities of the occasion. I could not then know or estimate the difference between this manner of existence and that of a people like the French, whose faults, if equally real, are at all events different; among whom sentiments which, by comparison at least, may be called elevated are the current coin of human intercourse, both in books and in private life, and, though often evaporating in profession, are yet kept alive in the nation at large by constant exercise and stimulated by sympathy, so as to form a living and active part of the existence of a great number of persons, and to be recognized and understood by all. Neither could I then appreciate the general culture of the understanding, which results from the habitual exercise of the feelings, and is thus carried down into the most uneducated classes of several countries on the Continent, in a degree not equalled in England among the so-called educated, except where an unusual tenderness of conscience leads to a habitual exercise of the intellect on questions of right and wrong.”[6]

This is strong testimony when we consider that it comes from an Englishman. In speaking of the elder Austin the same writer says: “He had a strong distaste for the general meanness of English life, the absence of enlarged thoughts and unselfish desires, the low objects on which the faculties of all classes of the English are intent.”[7] Mill’s opinion of the French is confirmed by Lecky, who writes: “No other nation has so habitual and vivid a sympathy for great struggles for freedom beyond its border. No other literature exhibits so expansive and œcumenical a genius, or expounds so skilfully or appreciates so [8]

Much has been said and written of the licentiousness of the French, which may, in part at least, be due to the fact that they, more than any other people, have known how to make vice attractive by taking from it something of the repulsive coarseness which naturally belongs to it, but must also be ascribed to the feeling that they are Catholic, and therefore sensual. But let us examine the facts on this subject. We again bring Laing forward as a witness.

“Of all the virtues,” he says, “that which the domestic family education of both the sexes most obviously influences—that which marks more clearly than any other the moral condition of a society, the home state of moral and religious principles, the efficiency of those principles in it, and the amount of that moral restraint upon passions and impulses which it is the object of education and knowledge to attain—is undoubtedly female chastity. Will any traveller, will any Prussian, say that this index-virtue of the moral condition of a people is not lower in Prussia than in almost any part of Europe?”[9]

Acts which in other countries would affect the respectability and happiness of a whole family for generations are in Prussia looked upon as mere youthful indiscretions. But let us take the statistics of illegitimacy, which is a method of discussing the question made popular among Protestants by the Rev. Hobart Seymour in his Evenings with the Romanists.

The number of illegitimate births in France for every hundred was, in 1858, 7.8; in the same year in Protestant Saxony it was 16; in Protestant Prussia, 9.3; in Würtemberg (Prot.), 16.1; in Iceland (Prot.) (1838-47), 14; in Denmark (1855), 11.5; Scotland (1871), 10.1; Hanover (1855), 9.9; Sweden (1855), 9.5; Norway (1855), 9.3.

Catholic France, then, judged by this test, stands higher than any Protestant country of which we have statistical reports, except England and Wales, where the percentage was, in 1859, 6.5; but England and Wales are below other Catholic countries, and notably far below Ireland. The rate of illegitimacy in the kingdom of Sardinia (1828-37) was 2.1; in Ireland (1865-66), 3.8; in Spain (1859), 5.6; in Tuscany, 6; in Catholic Prussia, 6.1.

In Scotland there are, in proportion to population, more than three times as many illegitimate births as in Ireland; and in England and Wales there are more than twice as many, and in Protestant Prussia the percentage is a third greater than in Catholic Prussia.[10]

If chastity, to use Laing’s expression, is the index-virtue, the question as to the comparative morality of Protestant and Catholic nations may be considered at an end. Lecky’s words on the Irish people have often been quoted, to his own regret we believe.

“Had the Irish peasants been less chaste,” he says, “they would have been more prosperous. Had that fearful famine which in the present century desolated the land fallen upon a people who thought more of accumulating subsistence than of avoiding sin, multitudes might now be living who perished by literal starvation on the dreary hills of Limerick or Skibbereen.”[11]

There is not in all Europe a more

Drunkenness, too, was more common there than in any other country of Europe or of the world. Nearly 40,000,000 gallons of liquor were consumed in 1850 by a population of only 3,000,000, which gives thirteen gallons of intoxicating drink to every man, woman, and child in the kingdom.

If these things could be said of any Catholic nation, the whole Protestant world would stand aghast, nor need other proof of the absolutely diabolical nature of popery. Compare this agricultural and pastoral population with the Catholic Swiss mountaineers—who to this day claim to have descended from a Swedish stock, and whose climate is not greatly different from that of Sweden—and we find that the Catholic Swiss are as moral and sober as the Protestant Swedes are corrupt and besotted. Or compare them with the Tyrolese, than whom there is no more Catholic and liberty-loving people on earth.

“Honesty may be regarded as a leading feature in the character of the Tyrolese,” says Alison.… “In no part of the world are the domestic or conjugal duties more strictly or faithfully observed, and in none do the parish priests exercise a stricter or more conscientious control over their flocks.… Perhaps the most remarkable feature in the character of the Tyrolese is their uniform piety—a feeling which is nowhere so universally diffused as among their sequestered valleys.… On Sunday the whole people flock to church in their neatest and gayest attire; and so great is the number who thus frequent these places of worship that it is not unfrequent to see the peasants kneeling on the turf in the church-yard where Mass is performed, from being unable to find a place within its walls. Regularly in the evening prayers are read in every family; and the traveller who passes through the villages at the hour of twilight often sees through their latticed windows the young and the old kneeling together round their humble fire, or is warned of his approach to human habitation by hearing their evening hymns stealing through the silence and solitude of the forest.… In one great virtue the peasants in this country (in common, it must be owned, with most Catholic states) are particularly worthy of imitation. The virtue of charity, which is too much overlooked in many Protestant kingdoms, is there practised to the greatest degree and by all classes of people.”[12]

With true Protestant condescension Alison adds: “Debased as their religion is by the absurdities and errors of the Catholic form of worship, and mixed up as it is with innumerable legends and visionary tales, it yet preserves enough of the pure spirit of its divine origin to influence in a great measure the conduct of their private lives.”

Kay, after having given a table of criminal statistics for England and Wales for the years 1841 and 1847, makes the following remarks upon the facts there presented:

“This table well deserves study. It shows that the proportional amount of crime to population calculated in two years, 1841 and 1847, was greater in both years in almost all the agricultural counties of England than it was in the manufacturing and mining districts.… With what terrible significance do these statistics plead the cause of the poor of our rural districts! Notwithstanding that a town life necessarily presents so many more opportunities for, and temptations to, vice than a rural life; notwithstanding that the associations of the latter are naturally so much purer and so much more moral than those of the former; notwithstanding the wonderfully crowded state of the great manufacturing cities of Lancashire; notwithstanding the constant influx of Irish, sailors, vagrants, beggars, and starving natives of agricultural districts of England and Wales; and notwithstanding the miserable state of most of the primary schools of those districts and the great ignorance of the majority of the inhabitants, still, in the face of all these and other equally significant facts, the criminality of the manufacturing districts of Lancashire is LESS in proportion to the population than that of most of the rural districts of England and Wales!”[13]

In Scotland illegitimacy is more common in the country than in the towns and cities. In 1870 the rate of illegitimacy for the whole country was 9.4 per cent., or 1 in every 10.6; whereas in the rural districts alone it was 10.5, or 1 in every 9.5. In 1871 it was for the whole country 10.1, or 1 in every 9.8, and in the rural districts 11.2, or 1 in every 8.9.[14] In England also the rate of illegitimacy is much larger in the rural districts than in the cities, whereas in Catholic France it is just the reverse. In the country

Nottingham,8.9

York, North Riding,8.9

Salop,9.8

Westmoreland,9.7

Norfolk,10.7

Cumberland,11.4

In France:

Rural districts, 4.2

La Vendée,2.2

Brittany—Côte d’Or,1.2

Thus in the most Catholic rural districts of France there are only one or two illegitimate births in every hundred.

This is also true of Prussia, whose most strongly Catholic provinces are Westphalia and the Rhineland. In Westphalia there are only three and a half illegitimate births in every hundred, and in the Rhineland only three and a third; but in thoroughly Protestant Pomerania and Brandenburg there are ten and twelve illegitimate births in the hundred.[15] In Ireland, again, we find the same state of things. The rate of illegitimate births for all Ireland is 3.8 per cent.; but the lowest proportion is in Connaught, nineteen-twentieths of whose people are Catholics, and the greatest is in Ulster, half of whose population is Protestant. “The sum of the whole matter,” says the Scotsman (June, 1869), a leading organ of Presbyterian Scotland, “is that semi-Presbyterian and semi-Scotch Ulster is fully three times more immoral than wholly popish and wholly Irish Connaught—which corresponds with wonderful accuracy to the more general fact that Scotland as a whole is three times more immoral than Ireland as a whole.” There is no reason why further proof should be given of what is a manifest truth: that rural populations—let us say, rather, the people—in proportion as they are Catholic, are also chaste; and consequently that the Catholic Church, as every man who is competent to judge must know, is the mother of purity, which is the soul of Christian life, and without which we cannot draw near to the heart of the Saviour and supreme Lover of men. Protestants, however, will be at no loss for arguments. Should the worst come to the worst, illegitimacy, like the gallows, may be declared an evidence of civilization, and then it needs must follow, as the night the day, that it is more common in Protestant than in Catholic countries.

Let us now turn to the vice of intemperance. “I am sure,” says Hill, “that I am within the truth when I state, as the result of minute and extensive inquiry, that, in four cases out of five, when an offence is committed intoxicating drink has been one of the causes.”[16]

In an attempt, then, to form an estimate of the relative morality of nations, we should not omit to consider the vice of drunkenness, which is the cause of half the crime and misery in the world. Were it in our power to obtain accurate statistics on this subject, as on that of illegitimacy, the superior sobriety of the Catholic nations would be shown even more strikingly than their superior chastity. The Spaniards, it is universally acknowledged, are the soberest people in Europe, as the Swedes are the most intemperate. Their respective geographical positions suggest at once what is often assigned as a sufficient explanation of this fact—the great difference of climate. It was long

Scotch statistics show a greater amount of intemperance in summer than in winter, which would seem to indicate that a high temperature does not tend to destroy the passion for intoxicating drink. But we do not propose to enter into a discussion of causes, which, however, we are perfectly willing to take up at the proper time. Our controversy with M. de Laveleye turns upon facts.

We have already cited the testimony of Laing to show that the Swedes, after they had been under the exclusive influence of Protestantism for three hundred years, were the most drunken people in Europe. Laing was in Venice on the occasion of a festival, when the whole population had turned out for pleasure, and he did not see a single case of intoxication; not a single instance, even among the boys, of rudeness; and yet all were singing, talking, and enjoying themselves. He gives the following account of a popular merry-making which he saw at Florence:

“It happened that the 9th of May was kept here as a great holiday by the lower class, as May-day with us, and they assembled in a kind of park about a mile from the city, where booths, tents, and carts, with wine and eatables for sale, were in crowds and clusters, as at our village wakes and race-courses. The multitude from town and country round could not be less than twenty thousand people, grouped in small parties, dancing, singing, talking, dining on the grass, and enjoying themselves. I did not see a single instance of inebriety, ill-temper, or unruly, boisterous conduct; yet the people were gay and joyous.”[17]

Robert Dale Owen, writing from Naples, said: “I have not seen a man even partially intoxicated since I have been in the city, of 420,000 inhabitants, and they say one may live here for four years without seeing one.”

Let us now turn to Protestant lands. St. Cuthbert’s parish, Edinburgh, had in 1861 a population somewhat exceeding 90,000 souls. Of these, 1,953 were “drunk and incapable,” 3,935 were “drunk and discharged”; making in all 5,888, or nearly 1 in 15.

In Salford jail (England), in 1870, the proportion of commitments for drunkenness was, as compared with commitments for all offences, 37 per cent.[18]

We have it upon the authority of the English government that in 1874 no fewer than 285,730 Britons Alliance News,” that, notwithstanding vast agencies of improvement, intemperance, crime, pauperism, insanity, and brutality are more rampant than ever; and, if we except pauperism, these evils have more than doubled in the last forty years.” We have not been able to get the statistics of drunkenness for Ireland, and can therefore institute no comparison between England and that country with regard to intemperance;[19] but we have before us the criminal statistics of both countries for 1854, the population of England and Wales in that year being about three times as great as that of Ireland. The following table of convictions will enable us to form an estimate of the comparative honesty of the two nations:

Robbery by persons armed, England and Wales, 210

Robbery by persons armed, Ireland, 2

Larceny from the person, England and Wales, 1,570

Larceny from the person, Ireland, 389

Larceny by servants,[20] England and Wales, 2,140

Larceny by servants, Ireland, 44

Larceny, simple, England and Wales, 12,562

Larceny, simple, Ireland, 3,329

Frauds and attempts to defraud, England and Wales, 676

Frauds and attempts to defraud, Ireland, 62

Forgery, England and Wales, 149

Forgery, Ireland, 4

Uttering and having in possession counterfeit coin, England and Wales, 674

Uttering and having in possession counterfeit coin, Ireland, 4

On the other hand, the following crimes are proportionately more numerous in Ireland:

Convictions for manslaughter in 1854:

England and Wales,96

Ireland,50

Burglary, England and Wales,384

“ Ireland,240

We cannot think, however, that these returns are reliable, for the Statistical Journal of 1867 gives the following criminal tables for England in 1865:

Wilful murder cases tried,60

Manslaughter,316

Concealment of birth,143

Total,519

It is greatly to be regretted that criminal statistics give us no information upon the religious character of the persons accused or convicted of offences against the law. Many persons have been baptized in infancy, and are called Catholics, though they have never been brought under the influence of the church. In the absence of official statistics, Dr. Descuret, who, in his capacity of legal physician in Paris, had abundant opportunity to obtain data relative to this subject, made, about thirty years ago, a careful study of the religious views and sentiments of French criminals. The conclusion which he reached was that, in every hundred persons accused of crime, fifty are indifferentists in religion, forty are infidels, and the remaining ten sincere believers. In a hundred suicides he found only four persons of known piety, three of whom were women subject to melancholia, and the other had been for some time mentally deranged.[21]

PRIMEVAL GERMANS.

Urdeutsch (which we have translated Primeval Germans) is a historical novel, the scene of which is laid in the Black Forest towards the second half of the fourth century. The author, Conrad von Bolanden,[22] says in his preface that he intends it to be the first of a series of three illustrating the action of Christianity on the German people: the state in which it found them, that to which it brought them, and that to which he says they are likely to be reduced by modern infidelity. The story—which is mainly put together from facts of the biography of St. Martin, Bishop of Tours, and from descriptions of ancient German life drawn from Roman and German historians—is interesting as the record of a time utterly gone by, and of a state of barbarism incident to the childhood of nations. Very nearly the same characteristics appear in the earliest chapters of the history of all uncivilized tribes, and a special likeness can be traced between the Teutons of the ninth century and the American Indians of the sixteenth and seventeenth. Sprung from widely different races, and experiencing the effects of Christianity in a very different manner, there is yet a striking likeness in some of the manners and customs, the industries, the opinions, and the few moral axioms of both peoples with which Christian missionaries have made us familiar.

St. Martin, yet a deacon, is travelling to Strassburg with his servant Eustace (one of the best characters in the book), and stumbles upon a sleeping barbarian, whom he awakens from a bad nightmare by the strains of his harp or lyre. He then asks of the gigantic German what is his errand, and the Buffalo (such names were common among the Teutons) tells him that he is on his return from the famous grove of Helygenforst, where he had been sent by Bissula, the only daughter of the last king of the Suevi, to consult an oracle on the issue of a blood-feud between the two noble families of the Walen and the Billing. She and her youngest brother Hermanric are the only representatives left of the former family, her father and her eleven brothers having all fallen victims to the enmity of the Billing. St. Martin remonstrates with the German (a freedman of the Suevi), and tells him that the true God abhors blood-feuds, and, availing himself of the German belief in one Supreme God, the All-Father, whose reign is to be made manifest after the end of the world and the destruction of the gods Odin, Thor, Freya, Loki, etc., tells Buffalo that he is the messenger of the All-Father, and will save the last of the Walen from their danger and dilemma. The German, by his word and his hand (as was also the custom later in the vowing of feudal homage), constitutes himself the Muntwaldo, or protector, of the deacon, and they set off to the land of the Suevi. Eustace, formerly a soldier under Martin when the latter was a centurion, strongly objects to this arrangement, and grimly reiterates his certainty that nothing will ever transform the hopelessly barbaric Germans. On their way the party are attacked by four Chatti, a tribe opposed to the Suevi, and Martin forbids Buffalo to fight in his behalf, saying that he will willingly go with the strangers, but in six days will not fail to visit the Suevi. Buffalo goes on his way, and the two Romans are taken to the village of Duke Fraomar, the leader of the Chatti.

Here follows an interesting description of the dress and domestic arrangements of the early German tribes. The duke is not an hereditary chieftain, but a leader chosen by the tribe for his valor and strength, who has collected round himself a personal following or guard, a sort of freebooter’s company—the original, perhaps, of the roving bands of “Free Companions” who played such a conspicuous part in the wars of the middle ages. The dress of the freemen of the tribe consisted mostly of skins and furs, with the head of the animal, whether buffalo, stag, wolf, or bear, drawn like a hood over the head, and the front paws tied under the chin or crossed on the breast. The women wore long, rather tight-fitting garments of coarse linen, with short sleeves and bands of gaudy colors sewed round the hem; the feet were bare. Both men and women wore long hair; it was a sign of free or noble birth, and was plentifully greased with butter, as were also, on some occasions, the bodies of the warriors. The children and the slaves were for the most part naked or only provided with leathern St. Martin and his servant are introduced into this wild interior just after the Duke Fraomar has been winning house, lands, slaves, cattle, and even his wife, from a freeman of the “hundred.” The strangers are made welcome and become the guests of the duke, which implies that henceforth their persons are sacred, as nothing was more shameful in the eyes of the Germans than to break their word or infringe the rights of hospitality. Eustace, however, looks ruefully on the evidences of good-will tendered him in the shape of a kind of oat-broth, seasoned with the primitive German preparation of salt, which (Pliny is responsible for the statement) consisted of charcoal made of oak or hazel, impregnated when hot with the water of salt springs; the black morsels giving the same odor to the broth with which they were mixed.

Duke Fraomar, who has a promise from Odin’s oracle to help him in a foray against the neighboring Suevi, provided he does not attack them before the “ninth full moon,” is rather uneasy at having these strangers, who are under the protection of his enemies, brought to him, in case anything untoward should happen to them, and the Suevi fall upon him to avenge them, before the charmed time. The next day one of the freemen takes the saint and his servant round the settlement; and the author here introduces an account of the old German division of property in a “hundred,” or community of one hundred freemen, each possessing the same quantity of ground, and each obliged to render military service to the head of the tribe. The agricultural economy was by no means contemptible. Ploughed land and land overgrown with bushes alternated in lots, and each was cultivated during six years, then allowed to lie fallow six more. Manuring was unknown, chiefly because the animal manure was used as a safe and warm covering to the earth caves where the grain was stored in winter, and where not seldom the owner and his family also took refuge from the cold. Each freeman had his stables, his slave-huts, and his brewery, the latter being generally a cave in a rock furnished with one or two mighty caldrons.

The “journey to Walhalla” was the poetical title given to the immolation of aged and wealthy persons of both sexes, who, instead of being allowed to die a natural death, were, according to the ancient custom, first killed and then burned with their possessions, with an accompaniment of religious ceremonies. A pile of wood was raised, and the victims, stupefied with beer, laid thereon, with one or two slaves who were to wait upon them in the halls of Odin; for the Germans believed that no one who died a natural death went to Walhalla, but endured torments and shame in hell. Men and women, therefore, willingly allowed themselves to be killed, and often committed suicide as another means of reaching Walhalla. On this occasion two old men and a woman were to be immolated. A ludicrous dispute occurs here between one of the men and his son, who grudges him two slaves as his servants in Odin’s hall, whereupon the father announces his determination to live rather than go to the other world with so paltry a following. This settles the question, and the son gives up the second slave. A great deal of drinking and a sacred chant by the priest of Odin precede the butchery, and the victims are each killed by one blow of “Thor’s hammer,” wielded by a freeman deputed to this office by the heathen priest. The worst part follows. Just as the pile has been set on fire an infant is thrown on, the child of the woman whom the duke won the night before at dice. The indifference of the mother at the order for this barbarous execution seems to us rather overdrawn. Human nature is human nature the world over; and if there is one feeling more obstinately ineradicable than any other, it is the feeling of a mother for her child—or, say, in the very lowest possible scale of civilization, of a female for her young. Even though infanticide is common among most heathen nations, and was certainly not unknown among the early Germans, it is rather an exaggeration on the part of the author to represent the mother herself in this case as utterly and absolutely indifferent to the child’s fate. While their guide is busy drinking among the spectators of this scene, Martin and Eustace penetrate the sacred grove, round which is drawn a cord, which no German would have passed with unbound hands. Unknowing of this custom, the strangers enter the wood and gaze on the human skulls and skeletons, the bloody skins and the sacred horse-skulls, hung on the branches of the trees. The priest soon discovers their presence in the holy grove, and threatens to kill them on the spot, but is restrained by the duke’s messenger, their guide. He afterwards goes to the duke and demands that the law shall be carried out, which, for such a sacrilege, decrees that the profaner of the holy grove should lose his right hand and his left foot. Fraomar, thinking of his plan for attacking the Suevi at the ninth moon, and not before, hesitates to consent to the priest’s demand and seeks to protect his guests.

Meanwhile, the story goes on to follow Buffalo to the house of the Walen princess Bissula, who, though a heathen, has been in Gaul and had some intercourse with the Romans in a circle surrounded by trees, on which the freemen hung their shields and helmets. A rock, sacred as a kind of tribunal, stood in the centre, and round this stone benches were ranged, on which sat the representatives of the several hundreds. The oracle which Buffalo had been sent to consult had returned the answer, “Let the Thing judge the cause,” the priest who represented the deity having been bribed by the Billing prince to send this answer. Bissula, with her lover, appears at the assembly; but before their coming a lesser court of justice is held for the adjustment of local claims, which gives us an opportunity of reviewing some curious customs of the ancient Germans.

For instance, the value of human life in the case of a slave is shown in two “cases” which come up for arbitration. A slave—but the son of a free father, and a freeman himself by birth—secretly marries a freewoman, and, on her father’s discovering the connection, the choice is given her of killing her husband with her own hand or of being herself degraded to slavery. A sword and a distaff were offered her; if she chose the former, she was free, but was forced to plunge it in the man’s breast; if the latter, she became a slave. There were two other possible means of settling the question: the father had the right to kill her, and the owner of the slave might give him his freedom. In the case in point this last was the happy solution of the problem. Another difficulty arose in the case of damages claimed by a freeman whose neighbor’s tame stag, trained for hunting purposes, had broken into his fields, killed a dozen head of cattle and two slaves, in return for

When Bissula makes her appearance, the gathering of the people resolves itself into a “Thing,” and she and her enemies, the five sons of the noble Billing Brenno, take their place by the rock. Hermanric’s absence causes some wonder and annoyance, but Marcomir, the umpire, nevertheless begins the session. Katuwald boldly proposes to end the feud by marrying Bissula, who openly and contemptuously refuses his suit, whereupon a great tumult arises and Hermanric rides into the circle, a bloody head dangling at his saddle-bow. He recounts his exploit—how he, though not yet invested with a man’s weapons (as the rule was to entrust neither sword nor spear to a youth under nineteen), forced the aged Brenno, who had stayed at home, to fight him in single combat, the Billing armed with sword and shield, and himself only with a club. The trembling slave who follows him corroborates his story, and Katuwald, already sore from Bissula’s proud refusal of his love, looks upon the youth with a significant and angry eye, and at last leaves the council, having publicly asked to be told the law of compensation for carrying off another man’s wife or betrothed. Affairs stand thus with the Suevi, while the story returns to Martin in the hands of the Chatti.

An assembly of the freemen of this tribe is held to discuss the question raised by the priest, as to Martin’s punishment for invading the sacred grove. This takes place the same day that Buffalo goes in quest of his friend, and he arrives in time to be present at the gathering. Duke Fraomar is anxious to save the strangers—not for their own sakes, but for fear of precipitating the attack on the Suevi before the propitious time appointed by the oracle. At last Martin proposes an ordeal such as, since the days of Elijah, has often been resorted to to decide rival claims to truth. A few chosen representatives are to accompany him and the priest to the shrine of the heathen gods in the forest, and the Christian and the priest are both to call upon their gods to show themselves. Here follows a description of the shrine—a building of wood beneath a gigantic oak-tree. Within are kept “Thor’s hammer” and “Tyr’s sword,” and the car of the goddess Hertha, the Cybele of Teutonic mythology, or simply the Earth-mother. Into this car she was at times supposed to descend, when a yoke of cows was harnessed to it, and it was covered with a white cloth, and thus drawn solemnly through the “hundred.” After these processions, the car and cloth were washed by slaves in a pond, into which the latter were afterwards thrown and drowned. The statue or figure of the goddess was erected in a huge crack of the sacred tree, and her grim, enormous head, with staring eyes and yawning mouth, black with clotted blood, crowned [23] Horse-skulls and white horse-skins (the priest was also clad in such skins), human skulls and skeletons, dogs’ heads and skins of wild beasts, hung from the branches of the sacred tree, which might have sheltered a regiment. Near the sacred car stood a stone altar encrusted with blood. The priest carefully placed the Christian stranger within easy reach of his arm, and distributed the others, the duke, the Sueve Buffalo, and the wise men of the hundred, where they could not see his movements. After his prayer, he was preparing to swing the hammer so as to reach the saint’s head, when Buffalo, suspecting foul play, stole quietly forward and called to Martin to shift his position. Martin simply bade his companions, who, like himself, had their hands securely bound, rise up and lift their hands free from the cords. The fastenings fell off and the heathens stood in awe, waiting for his words. This, says the author, is word for word from St. Martin’s biographer, Sulpicius Severus. Then came a crashing noise, and the lightning fell on the priest, killing him instantly, while the mighty tree was rent in pieces and fell to the earth, carrying in its fall the idol, temple, altar, and car, which disappeared under its burning branches. With awe and terror Fraomar and the Chatti besought the stranger, as a terrible magician, to leave them and not work them any more mischief. The saint sorrowfully complies, grieving that the true God had not yet conquered their hearts, though his might had been shown in such a way, and goes his way with Buffalo to the Suevian settlement. Here he takes up his abode in a cave, in front of which is a spring called Odin’s Spring, and in which the Germans bathe their new-born children and give them names. Meanwhile, Withimer, the Christian, struggles with his love, and Bissula, the proud, beautiful heathen princess, still refuses to marry him unless he will undertake the duty of avenging her murdered father and brothers. St. Martin reasons with both, and at last prevails with the former to give up his love for the sake of his conscience; but having painted the evils of ingratitude to God and of eternal damnation in vain, he at last conquers the youth by reminding him that, as a German, it would be an indelible disgrace to him to forswear himself by breaking his baptismal vows. Bissula mourns his sudden departure, which she attributes to a messenger having recalled him during her absence, and turns her attention to preserving her last remaining brother from the hatred of the Billing. This she does by resorting to the charms of the Abruna woman Velleda, a priestess said to be hundreds of years old, and to possess marvellous powers, as Circe of old, to change men into stones, trees, and animals. She is, however, not a witch, but the enemy of witches; and here follows a terrible account of the cruelties and absurdities to which the belief in witches led in those times, and, indeed, in all times. Châteaubriand’s[24] beautiful Gallic Velleda is a very different character from this hideous old hag of the Black Forest. Though not a witch, she has, in Bolanden’s book, all the conventional “properties” of one in the shape of a talking raven and two snakes entwined round her

St. Martin, in the meanwhile, has managed to gather an audience of children, whom he instructs in the truths of Christianity and teaches to behave according to Christian morality, not forgetting also to induce them to clothe and wash themselves regularly every day. Some of the parents also join his catechumens, but the greater part still look upon him as an impious contemner of the gods and a powerful magician The priest of this “hundred” once tries to entrap him at the head of a crowd of infuriated Germans, but the saint mildly and logically drives him into contradictions which are evident even to his unlearned hearers. On this occasion the two accounts of the creation, the Biblical and the Teutonic, are set side by side. The defeated priest retires, but only to plot further mischief; and the scene changes to a German wedding, which forms a very interesting chapter. Girls of an age and willing to be married usually wore several little bells in their girdle, and it was allowed to any freeman to carry them off, provided he afterwards loyally paid the stipulated price—two fat oxen, a caparisoned horse, two slaves, a sword, a spear, and a shield—to the bride’s father. The bridegroom’s dress was that usually worn by freemen on state occasions, and of course the full complement of weapons was indispensable. Falk, the bridegroom, is represented as wearing a magnificent bear-skin, with the head drawn over his own as a hood. The bride, besides her linen tunic or undergarment; wore also a cloak of Roman manufacture and of gaudy colors. The whole kindred of the bridegroom accompanied him with horns, pipes, and a kind of cymbals to his father-in-law’s house, and the oxen, etc., were led by the slaves. The father performed the ceremony, and Falk swore by “sword and spear” to hold his wife in all honor and truth. The father put a ring on the bride’s finger and bade her remember that, although her husband would be allowed by ancient custom to take other wives if he pleased, she herself would nevertheless be bound to the most unswerving fidelity; and, giving her two yoked oxen as a wedding present, told her that as these two drew one car, so husband and wife were bound to share and carry together the burdens of life.[25] The shrill music of the horns and clashing together of weapons accompanied the approving hurrahs of the two families, and Falk now led his wife home. From the door of his house hung a naked sword—the “marriage sword”—a warning of the doom that follows the least infidelity; and on going in the bridegroom led the bride three times round the hearth, saying: “Here shalt thou stay and watch as housemistress in chastity, prudence, and industry.” A free-woman of the husband’s kindred then brought a bowl of water and washed the bride’s feet, after which the bride’s father dipped a linden-branch in the same water and sprinkled the bed, the domestic utensils, and the relations of the bridegroom. A wooden platter full of honey was then handed to him, and, as he anointed the bride’s mouth with honey, he said these words: “Let thy mouth always

The expected presence of Bissula at the banquet had led to a departure from the ordinary German usage, and a table had been prepared for such as would sit at it during the bridal feast. The king’s daughter, when she came, brought a much-valued present, one which German housewives of the present day rate as highly as their gigantic ancestresses of the days of old—a store of home-spun linen. After the banquet, a wild dance was performed in honor of the young couple. Tacitus gives an account of it: The young men assembled in a crooked double line, half of them holding naked swords and the other half spears, held forward, crossing each other. Four or five youths, entirely naked, now began a skilful dance, threading their way with incredible quickness between the shining weapons. The Scotch sword-dance is thought sufficiently clever nowadays, but what is it compared to the real danger, and the opportunity of showing dexterity as well as courage, which this ancient German custom offered? This game was accompanied by the shrill blast of horns and pipes and the hoarse shouting of the excited spectators. Another drinking bout followed this exploit, when, as the day began to fade, the priestess Velleda made her appearance. And now a natural phenomenon was added to the strange scene—a partial eclipse of the moon, which the Germans explained as the struggle between the moon and the giant wolf Managarm, a half-divine creature, who feeds on the bodies of the dead and now and then hunts and pursues the heavenly bodies. As the shadow grew less and the moon’s light broke forth again, the guests clamored and clashed their arms together, crying out, “The moon wins! the moon wins!” as if encouraging human combatants. During this confusion Katuwald, the Billing chief, emboldened by the love-potion which Velleda has given Bissula to drink, attempts to carry her off; but the maiden, strong as the women of giant growth of old Germany ever were, wrestles with him and overcomes him, bearing him in her arms into the midst of the assembled guests. Most of the authorities quoted by Bolanden go to confirm the facts of the extraordinary strength of the women of that time, their stature of six and often seven feet, and of the custom prevalent among the Germans of teaching young girls to wrestle and throw the spear like the men.

The next scene of primitive life in the Black Forest is the doom of the adulteress, a wretched, guilty woman being driven naked through the “hundred,” pursued by all the free-women, each armed with long whips and small knives. This was the common punishment decreed for such offences. A human sacrifice to the gods of Walhalla is also portrayed in vivid colors: the Chatti St. Martin is seen in the distance advancing towards them at a miraculously quick pace, and as he comes nearer the storm-cloud is just seen passing away, while the sun breaks forth again. The cry of “The sorcerer!” is raised, but Buffalo cries out, “He is no sorcerer, but a holy man,” and, breathless, they all watch the saint.

Here the author again draws on Sulpicius Severus for a signal miracle—nothing short of a raising from the dead. St. Martin commands the dead Hermanric to arise and live; the youth starts up and clings to the saint’s mantle, while the bystanders are dumb with fear and awe. He comes forth, and, mounting one of his horses, seats his deliverer on another and rides away with him, bidding his sister believe in the almighty and only God of the Christians, and telling his slaves that as they were to have followed him into Walhalla, so he expects them the next day at the saint’s abode, to follow him in the new way of life he has at last discovered. The end is easy to see: Bissula becomes a Christian, renounces her hatred against the Billing, and receives baptism with hundreds of her relations and slaves, to all the latter of whom she and her brother give their freedom and certain necessary possessions—in fact, almost portioning out their estate between them. Bissula then marries Withimer, and they spend their lives in trying to spread the light of the Gospel among their fellow-countrymen, while Hermanric follows St. Martin and becomes a monk in one of the first Frankish monasteries.