Chapter II · (continued 3)

Vittoria was the eldest, and only female, of six children. Her father was not only a great nobleman of the States of the Church, but the VIII. of France, who had attempted the conquest of the kingdom of Naples, began to experience an evil turn of fortune, Don Fabrizio was detached from his service by Ferdinand of Spain, who succeeded in driving the French out of the southern part of Italy. Most of his life was spent in courts and camps, and but little time was passed in his castles, whither he went either to enjoy the chase or when called by domestic concerns, such as this one that gave a daughter to his house. Her mother was a child of Frederic, Duke of Urbino, head of an illustrious family which for three centuries had ranked among the lesser independent princes of Italy. Some of Vittoria’s ancestors of this line had figured in a conspicuous manner in history, especially as patrons of letters, and during a certain period the court of Urbino was the most refined and intellectual of the Italian peninsula. She felt its influence through her accomplished mother; but her father’s family was also remarkable for an hereditary genius and aptitude in every branch of learning; and a long list could be made of men of erudition, and of writers more or less distinguished, belonging to the Colonna lineage, at the head of which would stand Ægidius Romanus, or Giles of Rome, General of the Augustinians, and for his profound knowledge surnamed Doctor fundatissimus, whose work, De Regimine Principum, composed for his pupil, Philip the Fair of France, was the model in its general subject and didactic form, but without the immoral maxims, of Macchiavelli’s treatise, Del Principe.

According to the custom among the great in that age, Vittoria, while a mere child, being only four years of age, was affianced to one not much older than herself. This was Ferdinand Francesco d’Avalos. His noble family, of Catalan origin, had come over to Italy with the Spanish invaders in 1442, and risen to considerable importance; Don Alonzo, son of Inigo, who accompanied Alphonsus I. in his expedition and died at Naples, having been created Marquis of Pescara, a fortified town of the Abruzzi at the mouth of a river that empties itself into the Adriatic. This very honorable betrothal was made at the suggestion of King Ferdinand, who hoped in this way to attach Fabrizio more strongly to himself. Except this affair, hardly anything is known of Vittoria’s early years, nor who were her instructors; but, judging from subsequent events, she must have been surrounded by whatever advantages wealth, social influence, and political position could procure; and the literary ardor which marked the fifteenth century having passed from colleges and universities into the ranks of private life, her education was such as to ensure her the highest mental culture, united with every accomplishment befitting her station. At the age of five she was transferred to the tutelage of her future husband’s family and placed in care of her sister-in-law, the Duchess of Francavila, who was castellan for the king of the fortress and island of Ischia, at the entrance of the Bay of Naples. This important charge could only have been entrusted to a woman of superior talents, and justifies the praises which Vittoria has given in several sonnets to the “magnanimous Costanza,” as she delights to call her. The duchess loved study, and cultivated Degli Infortuni e Travagli del Mondo. It was in the midst of enchanting scenery, of the fame of martial deeds, and of an elegant conversation that Vittoria’s youthful happiness was passed. She grew up beautiful in person, lovely in mind, and adorned with every grace of manners. She was tall and of an easy carriage, the blood in her veins forming over her white skin a delicate cerulean tracery, while her face was set in a mass of auburn hair which has been sung—such a color being rare in Italy—by some of the best writers of her day. Of her personal appearance, those who have mentioned it can never say enough. That her charms were not the poetical exaggerations of devoted admirers we know from several sources, and particularly from the very sober prose of a curious diary[185] kept by a certain Giuliano Casseri who had occasion to see Vittoria at Naples. She was considered by all—except, of course, by her own sex—the handsomest woman of the age:

After a few years passed in this family, Vittoria returned to Marino to prepare for her marriage, which took place at Ischia in 1507, with all the pomp and splendor that the two great families and their numerous friends could command. The list of marriage gifts and the names of the personages who witnessed the matrimonial contract are interesting—apart from the subjects themselves—for the light they throw upon high society in Italy at a period when it easily surpassed, in the means of luxurious living and all the amenities of social intercourse, that of any other country in Europe.

The Avalos family, like that of Colonna and Montefeltro, was famous for its attention to classical literature and its patronage of learned men. Tiraboschi, in his History of Italian Literature, says of this young Marquis of Pescara that he was no less a diligent student himself than a munificent patron of learning in others. Tall, naturally of romantic ardor, he had moved among men who always inspired him with a taste for the profession of arms, and he rose to be one of the greatest captains of his age.

The first three years of their married life were spent very happily either at Ischia or at Naples. Their affection was mutual and tender. They had ratified the choice of their parents, and their marriage was one of those which are said to be made in heaven. In fact, between her betrothal and final engagement, when the brilliant qualities of her mind and the exquisite beauty of her features began to be the talk and admiration of every one, several great offers had been made to her father in hopes of detaching his daughter from Avalos, and among these suitors were the Dukes of Savoy and Braganza. But while a malicious pen has told us that the reason they were not accepted is that one was too old

In 1512, when war broke out with France, the young Marquis of Pescara was summoned to serve his king, and accompanied his wife’s father, who was Grand Constable of Naples, her uncle, the renowned Prospero Colonna, and her five gallant brothers to the scene of action. Vittoria, meanwhile, remained at Ischia; but before many months had passed she had cause of grief far heavier than that of separation—her husband was wounded and a prisoner. It was at the battle of Ravenna (11th of April, 1512), which has been so tersely described by Macaulay as one of those tremendous days in which human folly and wickedness compress the whole devastation of a famine or a plague, that Fabrizio, who commanded the Spanish vanguard, and Pescara, who was master of the horse, surrendered their swords. The latter was carried to Milan and placed in the fortress of Porta Gobbia. When the news was brought to Ischia, Vittoria and Costanza gave way to their grief, but with a dignified moderation becoming their lofty ideals of sacrifice and duty, and without any of that wild emotion so common to the tender sentiment in the sex.

The illustrious prisoner consoled himself during confinement by composing for his wife a Dialogue on Love. His captivity did not last long, and he was liberated after paying a heavy ransom. He then returned to his beloved home, where he was welcomed by all classes as a veritable hero, and a little of the fast-fading glamour of chivalry showed itself among the Italians in the attention which was directed to his scarred face, so much so that one of his fair admirers, the Duchess of Milan, exclaimed that she too would like to be a man, if only to receive a wound across the cheek, and see how it would add to a fine appearance. All this is very ridiculous, but that it had a hold upon certain minds at this age, and may therefore be noted, is shown from many other circumstances of the same kind; for instance, the delight of Francis of Guise in being surnamed Le Balafré, from a severe cut received at the siege of Bologna, in 1545.

When Pescara was again called (in 1513) to join the forces collected in Lombardy against the French, his wife returned to Ischia, where she continued a diligent course of reading. Besides studying the classics, she cultivated Italian poetry, from which her fame, in our day at least, has chiefly arisen, and in her graceful verses displayed a charm and musical rhythm not equalled since the strains of Petrarch’s muse were heard.

Her husband sometimes came to see her, but his visits from the camp could not be frequent, and most of the time she was left alone in the midst of the little court at Ischia, consumed by that species of domestic grief so poignant to a loving heart when the marital union has not been blessed by issue. Vittoria mentions this particular sorrow, this absence of maternal joy, in a very touching sonnet (No. 22). Finally, despairing of children of her own, she prevailed upon her husband in 1515 to adopt as his son and heir his young cousin, the Marquis del Vasto.

intaminatis fulget honoribus, and assert that his desertion of the losing for the winning party, when he passed over from Charles to Ferdinand, was done without principle, and merely to save his Neapolitan fiefs. He was a great friend of Macchiavelli, and the well-known contempt and hatred of this political fiend for what he was pleased to call the barbarous domination of the foreigner probably influenced him to think that it mattered little whether he served Frenchman or Spaniard, since neither had a right to or deserved his services. It was to him that the subtle Florentine addressed his seven books on the Art of War. His wife, the lovely and pious Agnes, survived him only two years, dying after a pilgrimage to Our Lady of Loretto. One of Vittoria’s most beautiful sonnets is on her mother.

Pescara, being again called to arms, hurried to the north of Italy, and after the battle of Sessia behaved with exquisite courtesy towards the wounded and expiring Bayard. At the battle of Pavia, on Feb. 24, 1525, Pescara was grievously wounded. Although he greatly contributed by his skill and valor to the fortunes of that day, he could not conceal his disappointment at not being more generously rewarded by the emperor, and was soon afterwards approached by Morone, the experienced minister of the Duke of Milan, with an offer of the kingdom of Naples for himself if he would join a league which was being formed among the Italian princes to free Italy of foreign rulers, whether French, Spanish, or German. Historians differ in their accounts of his conduct in this delicate affair. Writers in the imperial interest from that time to this assert that he indignantly rejected the proposal, which involved both treachery and ingratitude—even although he had not received the full measure of his merits—and Sandoval says that he showed himself among those double-dealing Italians “verdadero Español, Castellano viejo.” Certain it is that Pescara used to consider himself more a Spaniard than an Italian, was prouder of his Spanish blood than of his Neapolitan title, and often regretted that he was not born in the land of his ancestors. On the other hand, Italian writers say that he fully committed himself, and was perfectly willing to abandon and turn against his sovereign, but that at the last moment he quailed, and basely betrayed his companions to the vengeance of the emperor, for which reason the rancorous Guicciardini (xiv.. 189) calls him, with almost incredible insolence, “Capitano altiero, insidioso, maligno, senz’ alcuna sincerità.” More moderate historians say that he was merely dazzled by the prospect of a crown, perhaps even entertained the proposition, and would probably have thrown himself into the movement but for the protest and heroic abnegation of his wife. The truth seems to be, as Gregorovius remarks, that national antipathy has biassed the judgment of Italian writers. Immediately after the battle of Pavia, Charles V. wrote a most flattering autograph letter to Vittoria. Her answer from Ischia, May 1, 1525, is written in a fair hand, and preserved among the papers of the Gonzaga Archives at Mantua.

Nov. 25.[186] His funeral took place on the 30th, and the body was afterwards transported to Naples and buried in the church of St. Dominic. Paulus Jovius, a contemporary, wrote his life—Vita Ferdinandi Davali Pescarii—in elegant Latin. A literary memorial of Spanish domination in another extremity of Europe, and of the days when, the great school of war being transferred from classical Italy to the Netherlands, the gests of illustrious soldiers were eagerly studied by military men—although, as a rule, no longer in the learned language of Cæsar’s Commentaries—is preserved to us in the Historia del fortissimo y prudentissimo Capitan Don Hernando de Avalos, Marques de Pescara, published at Antwerp in 1570.

Vittoria’s first impulse, following this shock, was to take the religious habit, but she was prudently dissuaded by the learned Sadolet, Bishop of Carpentras, who was then in Rome, from a measure which would seem to proceed rather from overwhelming grief than mature deliberation. She did, however, retire for a time to the convent of San Silvestro in Capite, which was closely connected with the fortunes of the Colonna family. It was during this pious retreat that she began that In Memoriam to her dead husband which we will mention a little further on.

The first seven years of her widowhood were passed in inconsolable grief. She resided at different periods either with her father’s family at Rome, Marino, or in some other of their castles, or at Naples and Ischia with the relatives of her late husband. Being still in the prime of life, in the bloom of beauty, and well provided for by Pescara’s will, her hand was sought in marriage by several distinguished suitors; but she turned a deaf ear to all proposals of this kind, vowing that her first love still reigned supreme.

Amor le faci spense ove l’accese.[187] (Love lit his torch, and quenched it in the flame.)

When the Emperor Charles V. was in Rome in 1536, he made a ceremonious visit, the more honorable as his stay was so short in the Eternal City, to the widow of his faithful general. In 1537 she made a tour among several cities in northern Italy, and was everywhere received with the greatest distinction. We find her with the Ducal Estes at Ferrara, with the celebrated Veronica Gambara[188] at Bologna, and with the erudite Ghiberto, Bishop of Verona. From a letter of Pietro Aretino it appears that she was bent about this period on making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but was dissuaded by her adopted son and husband’s heir, Del Vastro, who feared that her

In 1538 she was back again in Rome, and one of the most interesting episodes of her life—her friendship with Michael Angelo—was then begun. The austere artist, who was sixty-four years old, felt animated by a fervent but chaste affection, such as he had never before experienced. It brought him the poet’s crown to add to his other crowns of painter, architect, and sculptor; for it is chiefly upon his sonnets to Vittoria that his literary reputation rests. The few years of this sacred friendship were the happiest in his life; and it is no small part of our heroine’s reputation to have inspired in this wonderful man a muse so chaste and powerful. His poetic addresses to her, though marked, says Harford, by the highest admiration of her mind and heart, are throughout expressive of the most reverential respect. They gratefully acknowledge her condescending courtesy, and the beneficial influence of her piety and wisdom upon his own opinions, fluctuating between vice and virtue, but he never presumes even to refer to her personal attractions. It was only after her death, and then but in a single sonnet, that he relaxed in a slight degree his habitual reserve and sang of her earthly beauty. But the strain is still elevated far above the expressions of carnal love, and describes a celestial countenance not unworthy of the Beatrice of Dante.

How highly she was esteemed by all classes is shown, among many other sources, from the words of an unprejudiced foreigner then in Rome, the Spanish artist d’Olanda, who says in his journal that she is one of the noblest and most famous women in Italy and in the whole world; beautiful, chaste, a Latin scholar; adorned with every grace that can redound to a woman’s praise; devoting herself since her husband’s death to thoughts of Christ and to study; supporting the needy; a model of genuine piety. From a letter of Cardinal Pole, dated April 2, 1541, we learn that she visited Ratisbon, but neither the motives nor any details of this long journey have been discovered; only it is known that she was received with honor by the emperor and by the citizens. Her fame, then, had already passed the Alps. On her return from Germany she rested for a while in the convent of San Paolo at Orvieto, whence she wrote to Cardinal Pole, expressing how much delight she found in the rules and society of the sisters, whom she calls “a company of angels.” It was while in this holy place that the apostate Ochino sent her a letter, in which he tried to explain and apologize for his conduct; but she indignantly forwarded it to Cervini at Rome, to be lodged with the ecclesiastical authorities, as it was unbecoming in her to receive any communication from such a reprobate. With fine womanly tact she had long before discovered the weak points in the character of this gifted but miserable man, consumed by pride and lust, and, after hearing him preach, she used often, as though struck by some vague apprehension of a hidden conflict in that eloquent soul, pray for his final perseverance.

And yet it is from her intercourse with several persons—Valdez, Ochhino, Vermigli (Peter Martyr), and some others, who afterwards [189] and, finally, a tender devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. If this be Protestantism, Protestants are welcome to it; and God grant they may make the most of it! Cardinal Pole, who was many years her junior, used to honor her as his mother, and assiduously cultivated her friendship. She left him a legacy of 10,000 scudi in her will, but he made it over to her niece. At Viterbo she displayed a lively interest in all matters of education, and took the greatest pleasure in teaching the pupils entrusted to the religious community of St. Catherine.

Vittoria returned to Rome at the beginning of the year 1547, and retired to the palace of Julian Cesarini, who was married to Julia Colonna. While here she fell very ill, and, feeling her end approach, she was filled with the pious sentiments of one of her own sonnets, composed but a short time before, and which will show her constant preparation for death and serve as a specimen of her style. The translation is by Harford:

She died towards the end of February, 1547—the exact date is not known—in the odor of sanctity, as one of her Italian biographers says. By her will she made Ascanio Colonna her heir, left one thousand scudi to each of the four convents in which she had so often lived, provided for all her servants, and disposed of a large sum in charity, besides making other pious bequests. Her signature to this instrument is in Latin, in these words: Ita testavi ego Vitoria Columna.

Strange it is, perhaps, but yet a worthy ending of a life of humility and mortification, even in the midst of the glories of the world, that no monument is raised over her remains. In fact, her body cannot be identified; for having requested to be buried in the religious habit of the nuns of Sant’Anna de’ Funari, and in their midst, it was committed to the common vault of the community, where it lies undistinguished from the others that repose there.

Her poetry may be classified into a series composed during her husband’s life and the first years of her widowhood, and another written when she had devoted herself to a stricter manner of living. The former is taken up with conjugal love, descriptions of nature, and miscellaneous subjects; the latter is exclusively given up to religious ideas: one is the profane, the other the sacred, series. As an example of the lofty energy with which her mind poured its whole current of feeling into the channel of Christian

As an impartial critic we must confess that, however refined the language, beautiful the sentiments, and learned the imagery, there is too much classical grandiloquence in her love-songs to permit us to forget the head that composed, and allow us to think only of the heart that inspired, them. When Pescara went forth on his first military expedition, she described her grief in a long rhymed letter of thirty-seven stanzas, in which all that is heroic in ancient Greece and Rome is summoned to witness her disconsolate state. The opening address—Eccelso Mio Signore! (My high-engendered Lord!)—while it shows the reverential homage which the wife in those days was expected to offer to her husband, and which, with all its formalism, was better than the disrespectful familiarity of a later age, is the prelude to a style altogether too much like that of the eccentric Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, whose biography of her husband—her Julius Cæsar, her thrice noble, high, and puissant Prince, as she used to call him—is the acme of connubial admiration. After the death of Pescara, Vittoria depicted her own grief and his great, good qualities in a flow of verses full of beauty, dignity, and pathos. Upwards of one hundred sonnets are devoted to his memory. Trollope, with the conceit of his class, calls these touching expressions of sorrow “the tuneful wailings of a young widow as lovely as inconsolable, as irreproachable as noble”; but the more generous feelings and, doubtless, the Catholic instincts of her French biographer discover in this exquisite threnody a form of prayer to God for peace to the living and eternal rest to the dead. After seven years of widowhood a great change took place in her nature. She gave herself up entirely to higher influences; and the difference of style is remarkable between her worldly and her religious poems. The first are, as we have said, devoted to the love of a mortal object; the second to a divine dilection. This series is entitled Rime Spirituali. She begins it:

And again we observe in the following production her resolve to abandon pagan allusions and confine her poetry to sublimer subjects:

All writers on Italian poetry are agreed that for delicacy and grace of style Vittoria ranks next to Petrarch.

Several medals and portraits have perpetuated her features at different periods of life. Of the former, two were made while her husband was living—both heads being represented—and two during her widowhood. A most beautiful medal was struck at Rome in 1840 on occasion of the marriage of Prince Torlonia to Donna Teresa Colonna, but the face is more or less ideal.

“Appena si può dir, questà furosa.”

All writers on Italian literature mention our heroine at considerable length; but of separate biographies the principal ones are the following: Gio. Batt. Rota, Rime e Vita di D. Vittoria Colonna, Marchesana di Pescara, 1 vol. 8vo, 1760; Isabella Teotochi Albizzi, Ritratti, etc., Pisa, 1826 (4th ed., copy in Astor Library); John S. Harford, Life of Michael Angelo Buonarotti … with Memoirs of … Vittoria Colonna, 2 vols., London, 1857 (Astor Library); Cav. P. E. Visconti, Vita di Vittoria Colonna, Rome, 1840; Le Fèvre Deumier published a memoir of her in French in 1856; T. A. Trollope, A Decade of Italian Women; Mrs. Henry Roscoe, Vittoria Colonna, 1 vol., London, 1868. In 1844 the Accademia degli Arcadi at Rome decreed to have a bust of Vittoria made and placed in the museum of the Capitol. It was inaugurated with great pomp on May 12, 1845; and thirty-two poems in Latin and Italian were written to celebrate the event, and afterwards collected into a volume and published. The following is the simple inscription beneath the bust:

A. Vittoria Colonna. N.MCCCCXC. M.MDXLVII. Teresa. Colonna. Principessa. Romana. Pose. MDCCCXLV.

ALLIES’ FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOM[190]

The appearance of the third part of Mr. Allies’ great work offers an occasion for expressing the interest with which we have regarded it since the publication of the first volume in 1865. The author is well known on both sides of the Atlantic, and the present work has been noticed from time to time in this magazine.

It consists of a series of historical lectures grouping and classifying the leading features of that wonderful movement which began shortly after the foundation of the Roman Empire, and has survived its downfall more than a thousand years.

Mr. Allies proposes to examine minutely and accurately into these facts. Those who are familiar with his other works will fully appreciate his ability to cope with his present task, while the need of a calm and

The religious movement of the sixteenth century boasts, and not without reason, of having been a radical departure from the spirit of the age which preceded it. It broke with the past; first, in regard to particular questions, concerning which it took issue with existing belief. But the separation which ensued in the religious sphere soon extended to the whole range of man’s spiritual faculties. The followers of the new prophets were associated together in communities and nations, and became entirely estranged from the ancient system.

This isolation was bound to produce in a short time wide divergence of sentiment, and an ever-increasing estrangement from the past.

Americans going abroad find themselves constantly misinterpreting and being misunderstood by foreigners.

We live in another era, and under circumstances so different that it is only by earnest and thoughtful preparation that we can qualify ourselves to judge of other nations.

Any person who will pause for a moment will realize the difficulty of conceiving what the present state of the world would have been had the movement towards a high material development, which preceded Protestantism, been conducted under Catholic auspices alone. Of course, such a conception is impossible to the common ignorant Protestant; but even enlightened minds outside the Catholic Church must acknowledge that it is not easy to acquire a full sympathy with the intellectual epoch which preceded Protestantism. Wherever the new religion became dominant, a thorough break was effected between past and present. The American freeman resembles his English great-grandfather far more closely than the Protestant of the seventeenth resembles the Catholic of the fifteenth century. The French communist still speaks the language in which the feudal tenant addressed the seigneur of the last century; but it would be rash to affirm his capacity to understand the sentiments of his peasant grandfather.

The change wrought by the sixteenth century extends throughout the world, and affects the deepest, most powerful, and most mysterious range of sentiment. This change occurred just as the literature of modern times had begun to take shape and form. Everything has borne the stamp either of its action or of the reaction against it. It was a veritable Lethe; and those who passed through it forgot the images, expressions, and thoughts of preceding generations.

However, we do not wish to bring them forward in our condemnation of Protestantism, but simply to illustrate another fact which is equally true.

Protestantism, amongst other evils, has brought a spirit of scepticism into historical research which is one of the most ghastly symptoms of its present stage of dissolution. We do not mean a spirit which demands proof, but a spirit which no amount of proof can satisfy—which denies facts unquestionably true, and endeavors to cast discredit upon the most authentic records.

It is not hard to perceive the cause or to trace the development of this spirit.

The cause is that Protestantism was in every sense a break in history. It was an abnormal and morbid occurrence. The consequences of its denial—its protest—extended into every order of truth. But nowhere was their influence more fatal than in the domain of history. It lost the thread of sacred history by denying the authority of the Roman Church. But the isolated position into which it was thrown soon rendered it unfit to interpret any tradition. In fact, it had no tradition; it was obliged to make one in accordance with its own needs. At first its doubts were all directed against the Papacy, because the Papacy was irreconcilable with its existence. Then the histories of the saints were condemned, because Protestantism had nothing of the kind to show. But the irreverent critic of the claims of the Sovereign Pontiff at last attacked the Scripture, which was thrown to him as bearing its own credentials. Far worse than this—the Bible having been destroyed, the sacred person of the Author of Christianity has been exposed for dissection. Nothing is deemed too blasphemous either to deny or assert of him. But now that he has been judged by the high-priests of the new religion, and condemned as an impostor, something has to be done with that vast system which civilized the world and endured for sixteen centuries, on the theory that Christ was what he proclaimed himself to be—the Lord of all things, and that his revelation was true.

After practically demonstrating that Protestantism is a denial of Christianity, we might expect the age to pause in its career of denial. This, however, at present seems to be expecting too much. Having denied the authority which Christ has commissioned, the revolution soon came to deny Christ. Having denied him, it has proceeded to deny him from whom Jesus was sent.

It only remains to deny every other fact which conflicts with the negative theory. It is, therefore, considered necessary to express doubt with regard to every historical fact connected with Christianity. A notable Walks in Rome, a book quite free from the more offensive forms of Protestant vulgarity. Mr. Hare has spent many years in Rome, and learned from its antiquarians the history of its secular traditions. He knows that the scene of St. Peter’s imprisonment is as well attested as any other which he describes in his work. In the course of his remarks on the Mamertine Prison, he says:

“It was by this staircase that Cicero came forth and announced the execution of the Catiline conspirators to the people in the Forum by the single word Viverunt—‘they have ceased to live!’ Close to the exit of these stairs the Emperor Vitellius was murdered.”

He discusses the age of the structure, and cites Ampère to prove it to be the oldest building in Rome. The author further says: “It is described by Livy and by Sallust, who depicts its horrors in his account of the execution of the Catiline conspirators. The spot is shown to which these victims were attached and strangled in turn. In this dungeon, at an earlier period, Appius Claudius and Oppius the decemvirs committed suicide (B.C. 449). Here Jugurtha, king of Mauritania, was starved to death by Marius. Here Julius Cæsar, during his triumph for the conquest of Gaul, caused his gallant enemy Vercingetorix to be put to death. Here Sejanus, the friend and minister of Tiberius, disgraced too late, was executed for the murder of Drusus, son of the emperor, and for an intrigue with his daughter-in-law Livilla. Here, also, Simon Bar Givras, the last defender of Jerusalem, suffered during the triumph of Titus.”

Thus far the writer is dealing with facts of pagan tradition, which has been dead for centuries. Observe the change of tone when he comes to facts of the living Christian tradition—facts which he is evidently inclined to believe, but which must not be spoken of with the confidence appropriate to pagan narrative:

“The spot is more interesting to the Christian world as the prison of SS Peter and Paul, who are said to have been bound for nine months to a pillar, which is shown here.” A little further on: “It is hence that the Roman Catholic Church believes that St. Peter and St. Paul addressed their farewells to the Christian world” (pp. 94-96).

The testimony of the Egyptian hieroglyphs is unquestioned. The most fabulous antiquity is readily admitted for Indian and Chinese history. It is gratuitously assumed that the time of stone implements was not coincident with the use of metals in other nations, though the contrary may be witnessed on our own frontiers. If human remains are found along with those of extinct animals, it is assumed that they died together. No demand upon belief is too great unless it be in connection with Christianity. This tendency is to make men imagine that the era of our Saviour’s advent was purely mythical, and that the events of his time are as obscure as those of the siege of Troy.

We think that we have accounted for the existence of this tendency in the nature of Protestantism, as developed in Strauss and the “more advanced” German speculators. But after having created this artificial cloud in history, the same parties seek to give the impression that

It is, according to these rash theorists, a syncretism of the best thoughts of Egypt, India, and Greece, produced principally by the agency of the Alexandrian schools. This explanation is mainly satisfactory to them because it would explain the rise and establishment of Christianity without a miracle.[191] The hypothesis was eagerly embraced for this reason. Just so Strauss leaped for joy at the hypothesis of Darwin, because it professed to account for the existence of men without creation. But just as Darwin, while able to produce both specimens and remains of man and ape, could never find the intermediate animal, or even any trace of him, so this forged account of the origin of Christianity breaks down in the very fact which is necessary to give it even the semblance of value, viz., the warrant of historical facts. In order still further to misrepresent the origin of Christianity, it is necessary to observe the testimony of history as to the moral condition of the pagan world. Tacitus and Suetonius are pagan authors, therefore it will not do to impeach their writings in the same manner as the Gospels and the Christian Fathers. Being heathens, their works are certainly genuine, and they are to be held as truthful men—a presumption to which the Evangelists and Fathers are in no way entitled. But we notice the tendency to overlook the frightful picture presented by these historians, and the attempt, by a judicious comparison of the best specimens of paganism with the worst scandals or most austere characters of church history, to draw conclusions injurious to Christianity.

This whole process of doubting the records, misstating the origin, and denying the real nature of early Christianity, is a fraud which will not bear scrutiny; it is maintained by men who avow their willingness to accept any hypothesis which conflicts with the ancient faith, and to lend the prestige of their talents to any effort against it.

The historical warfare has been vigorously carried on in Germany by both sides. The movement has penetrated into the English universities. Its echoes have been heard in our own midst, in the utterances of certain writers who, being possessed by the spirit of snobbishness, cleave to outlandish modes of thought because of their foreign or novel character.

Mr. Allies’ work is a thoughtful and profound exposition of facts, and brushes away the cobwebs with which hostile criticism has sought to envelop the history of Christianity. The author does not aim at a connected narrative. The chapters of his work are lectures, each one of which is an essay, complete in itself. The reader is presumed to be acquainted with the general outlines of history, and the author directs his efforts to answer such questions as naturally arise with regard to the introduction of Christianity and the foundation of that

Accordingly, after giving his idea of the philosophy of history, Mr. Allies draws a graphic picture of the state of the Roman world. The civil polity of the Augustan age, the majesty of the Pax Romana, appear in their splendid proportions. The reader is brought face to face with all that is known of that epoch. Its ideas of manhood and morality are set forth from the testimony of eye-witnesses. Then follows a sketch of the work to be accomplished by Christianity, entitled the New Creation of Individual Man. This is succeeded by a series of lectures viewing the results which were to be expected from the influence of Christianity upon human character. Here we find also the testimony of eye-witnesses of the growth of the new religion, and an instructive comparison between Cicero and St. Augustine, illustrative of two most important ages of history. The fifth lecture of this first volume is on the New Creation of the Primary Relation between Man and Woman; and the seventh lecture deals with an equally Christian doctrine, viz., the Creation of the Virginal Life.

A recent German writer, laboring under a delusion not uncommon in his country, doubts whether the improved morality which appeared after the introduction of Christianity was really due to that religion or to the German race. This characteristic doubt is left undecided by the writer, but will probably soon be settled adversely to Christianity by some more adventurous Teuton. The public, for whose benefit these speculations are likely to be extended, will do well to read a little history, and will not find Mr. Allies’ chapters amiss.

The second volume, which appeared in 1869, treats of the developments of that spiritual society which sprang into existence with the original ideas of Christianity and from the same source. The peculiar characteristics are traced of that hierarchical order which, after three centuries of bloody persecution, came forth from its hiding-place in perfect organization, to receive at once the homage of Constantine and to become the guide of civilization and the supreme ruler of nations for more than a thousand years.

The position of the church at the time of Constantine was that of complete victory. The portent in the sky which appeared to that emperor was not more miraculous than the spectacle afforded by Christianity. Starting from a distant point in an obscure race, without means, without facilities of communication, it had not only revolutionized the pagan world but it had maintained its own unity as a corporate body in the face of wholesale treason from within, and intense intellectual opposition, accompanied with three centuries of proscription, from without. Three centuries ago another movement started in our modern world. It had all the prestige of the civilization which germinated along with it. It has had the support of the civil power. It has had the best blood and most vigorous races to work for it. No earthly element of success has been refused to it. What is the result? Where is its unity? The very idea is abandoned. Where are its original convictions? Not one remains. What is its present

Nothing is better calculated to give us a correct idea of the difference between Protestantism and Christianity than this sort of a comparison. Such, however, is not Mr. Allies’ design. He aims, in his second volume, to show that Christianity had a definite theory and constructive spirit with regard to society. As he contrasts in his first volume the pagan notion of individual man with the Christian ideal, and shows a creative power in the latter producing results undreamed of in the heathen character, so the author traces, in his second volume, the social ideas brought in by Christianity.

The unity of the church, as taught and described by the fathers, was an idea no less remarkable in its marvellous working than in its utter novelty. This conception was based on the fundamental principle of Christianity, that its divine Founder had authorized a corporate body to teach the world those truths which he came to bring, and that the power of God was pledged to the infallibility of his church. This doctrine is the only constructive idea that has ever been broached with regard to society. Protestantism was a direct assault upon the very nature of Christianity, and is to be held responsible for the absence of this idea in modern civilization.

Mr. Allies develops the history of this Christian idea with great accuracy, filling out his comparison between Christian and pagan thinkers in all departments of thought, and establishing the claims of the new faith to be a creation fresh from the Author of all things, and not a development out of the putrescent civilization of the ancient world.

That Christianity produced a type of character wholly distinct and peculiar, is a fact of which there can be no doubt on the part of those who have the slightest disposition to consult authentic records. That it possessed a vitality and organizing power of which there is no other instance, is equally certain. But we often hear the sayings of Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and the later Stoics quoted, as exhibiting a tone of thought almost equal to that of Christianity, and by the enemies of religion vaunted as something far above the morality of the Gospel. No reader of Plutarch can escape the impression of his gentle and refined philosophy. Though full of grievous errors, it has a flavor of truth, a respect for purity, and an appreciation of virtue which are not to be found in the earlier historians.

The great error of those who would make Christianity a development of heathen thought is simply, then, mistaking the cause for the effect. A great change was undoubtedly to be expected from the blending of Greek and Roman speculation with the Jewish and Egyptian religions. This change actually took place. But its product was acted upon by Christianity, and did not become a factor of the new religion. Mr. Allies gives us the summary of ancient philosophy, which he traces down to its contact with Christian truth. We are able to see the vanity of that false reading of history which seeks to represent Christianity as a mendicant receiving crumbs from Plato, Pythagoras, Philo, and the Stoics. We perceive from their writings and the tone of their disciples the

The author goes with laborious scrutiny through that labyrinth of error which is included under the title of Neo-Platonism. Outside the Catholic Church, few scholars have read even the principal works of St. Thomas Aquinas. Charles Sumner was said to possess them; Disraeli the elder and George Eliot refer to them. But the former never showed that he understood their contents, and the last-named writers show that they have not. Although such a study is absolutely necessary towards acquiring a correct knowledge of the intellectual life of the Middle Age, it is rarely undertaken by non-Catholics. To study the remains of Neo-Platonism is a task of equal subtlety, and yet nothing is more common than to hear shallow speculators on history affirm that Christianity was greatly affected by the Alexandrian school. But the difference is no less marked when we come to find out what the views of the leading Neo-Platonist actually were. This “distracted chaos of hallucinations” was the highest effort of paganism. It was an attempt to reconcile and weld together all the elements of the old world, as a barrier to the new and irresistible power which was everywhere gaining ground. It was the development which was to have been expected. It was the fusion of East and West to which Christianity has been credited. But, instead of acting upon, it was radically affected by, Christianity; and, instead of bringing forth Christianity, it was the deadliest foe of the Gospel. It is from this old armory of Alexandria that modern error draws and refurbishes the clumsy weapons which dropped thirteen centuries ago from the hands of the first opponents of Christianity. It is a good place to go for this sort of bric-à-brac. It contains a sum of all the aberrations of the human intellect. Here, stripped of its modern garb, we find the cosmic sentimentalism of Strauss. Here the absolute being of the German pantheists stares us in the face. Here, from Iamblichus and Porphyry, we hear the same mournful and unhealthy drivel which is printed and sewed up in gilt morocco by enterprising and philanthropic publishers of the present day. On rising from the perusal of Mr. Allies’ third volume, we see clearly the end of that wonderful and brilliant Hellenism which, while ever occupied “either in telling or in hearing something new,” slighted the real truth which had come into the world, and served but as a pit to its own pride.

Too much praise cannot be given to Mr. Allies for the labor bestowed upon his history of the actual development of the philosophy of Greece in the Roman Empire. He has traced each school of thought from year to year, and reproduced a correct summary of its beliefs. The Neo-Stoic philosophy, which is especially vaunted by the enemies of Christianity, is studiously delineated. The points of agreement and difference are clearly noted between its four great chiefs—Seneca, Musonius, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. The analogies and contrasts between the developed Stoic school and the Christian teachers who were its contemporaries, are also brought into relief.

Following this, another lecture presents the state of the pagan intellect and the common standing ground of philosophy, from the accession of Nero to that of Severus.

Towards the close of his reign, under the auspices of the Empress Julia and from the labors of Philostratus, came forth the new gospel of paganism in the life of Apollonius of Thyana. This work, upon the strength of which modern infidels have sought to attribute a mythical origin to the Gospels, was a counterfeit of the truth, in which paganism sought to construct an ideal teacher, to oppose to that Master who was now beginning to be known throughout the world. This sketch of Apollonius of Thyana is very complete, and shows a new phase of thought yet more strikingly affected by that hated and persecuted power which was daily growing in the midst of the Roman world. Having completed his study of pagan belief and sentiments as far as the reign of Severus, the author is fully prepared for the difficult and thankless task of reviewing the struggle between Neo-Platonism, as represented by Iamblichus, Porphyry, and Plotinus, and their followers, against divine truth. The third volume closes with a graphic summary of the intellectual results from Claudius to Constantine, and a comparative glance at the relative power of the old order and the new to reconstruct a society in stable and harmonious proportions.

With this lecture, which seems to foreshadow the contents of a fourth volume, Mr. Allies’ work stops for the present. Its publication in parts has placed it at a great disadvantage, inasmuch as ten years have passed since the first volume appeared. It may seem premature to review a work not yet complete, but enough has been published to

The style is unpretending, and the whole work extremely modest. In this respect, it will not meet the approval of those who prefer rhetoric to exact truthfulness. Historical works must be plentifully illustrated, either by the engraver or the imagination of the author, to make them popular nowadays.

But the intelligent reader who will take pains to examine carefully Mr. Allies’ volumes will be well repaid, and the author himself can rest in the conviction that he has written a solid and useful book, which deserves a place in every library.

SIR THOMAS MORE.

A HISTORICAL ROMANCE.

FROM THE FRENCH OF THE PRINCESSE DE CRAON.

X.

In that portion of the attic of Whitehall Castle looking toward the west they had, according to the king’s orders, erected an altar in order to celebrate Mass. Three persons had assembled there, and were reflecting on the singularity of the hour and the choice of the place where they found themselves called by this religious ceremony.

Lady Berkley, seated upon a high cane chair, had carefully gathered about her feet the long train of her silk dress, to avoid having it sweep over the floor covered with dust, and she observed with great attention the old tapestries, which had been nailed all around the altar in order to conceal as far as possible the unsightly appearance of the rafters of the roof.

Heneage, with his arms crossed, not far from her, waited, having nothing to do, while Dr. Roland Lee, invested with the pontifical vestments, kneeled on the step of the altar, inwardly grieved at this new whim of the king, which he found as inconvenient as disrespectful; but being very pious, he endeavored to pray to God and occupy himself only with the holy sacrifice he was going to offer up.

They had waited very nearly an hour in this position, when Norris entered with a light in his hand.

“The king,” he said in a loud voice.

On entering she cast a glance upon the surroundings of this improvised chapel, and she was far from finding them to her liking. But Henry VIII. gave her no time for reflection; he placed two chairs in front of the altar, and, putting himself in one, he made a sign to her to kneel upon the other; then, having called Sir Roland, he announced to him that he had to proceed with the marriage.

Although he had presaged nothing good from the singular preparations he had seen made in this attic chapel, yet poor Dr. Lee was far from anticipating such an order as he now received; he found himself in a horrible state of perplexity, and stood without making any reply.

“Come!” said the king after a moment’s silence, “commence the prayers.”

But Roland turned toward him, and still continued to stand on the step of the altar; he said with a great deal of dignity:

“No, your majesty cannot marry, the ecclesiastical authorities not having yet decided.…”

“What say you, Roland?” interrupted the king brusquely. “God alone has power to judge the conscience of princes, and mine has decided that I should marry. Go on and do what I command you now.”

“Sire,” replied Roland, who feared that his days were numbered, “your majesty has all power over my poor body, and I am your very unworthy and very devoted subject; but I cannot solemnize your marriage without having proof that you are at liberty to contract it.”

Henry bit his lower lip.

“Roland!” he said.

“Sire,” replied the other, as if he thought the king had called him.

“The imbecile!” exclaimed Henry VIII. to himself; but he saw it would be better to dissimulate.

“Roland,” he replied, with an inflection of voice as different as his new intention, “do you think I would command you to do anything wrong? I have received from Rome the bulls of our Holy Father, who recognizes the nullity of my marriage with Catherine, the wife of my brother, and permits me to select for my spouse any other unmarried woman in my kingdom. However, in order to avoid scandal, he bound me to do it secretly.”

“Then I have nothing to say,” replied Roland Lee, relieved of an immense weight; “but your majesty will, of course, first show me the proofs.”

“Obstinacy!” thought the king. “How, Sir Roland,” he cried, assuming an air of extreme mortification, “the word of your king, then, is no longer sufficient? Is it necessary for me to go and bring you a thing which I affirm to have in my possession? Roland,” he added in a severe tone, “until now your conscience alone has spoken, therefore I have not been offended; but take care that, instead of commending your course, I no longer

Roland dared not reply, and, unable to believe the king would dare to prevaricate in that manner before such a number of witnesses, he began, although much disturbed, to say the Mass.… But the quiet solemnity of prayer influences the most obdurate heart: man is so insignificant in the presence of God.

Henry felt more and more troubled. Queen Catherine’s letter, Norris’ description of her departure, the scene of the previous evening, passed one after another before his eyes and continued to torture his memory. The words of the holy daughter of Kent, “The woman you wish to marry will dishonor your couch and perish on the scaffold,” arose unconsciously to his lips, and aroused in his soul a gloomy jealousy. He cast a glance upon Anne Boleyn; their eyes met, and the miserable woman was terror-stricken at the expression of fury that gleamed from his eyes. Then he looked around him. The sun had arisen, and brought into bold relief the old and faded tapestries surrounding the altar.

“Is this place worthy of me?” he thought to himself. “Is it thus I have prayed with Thomas More?—that quiet, peace, order, and respect?… There one is happy; here they are consumed, devoured by remorse! Happiness of the just, I execrate thee, because I have not been able to attain thee!”… Thus all that was good excited his envy; even Catherine, whom he had driven from the door of his palace a wanderer on the earth, seemed to him happier than himself.

But it was still worse when the venerable priest, turning towards him, began the ancient and solemn rites of marriage between the children of God, and came to these words: “You, Henry of Lancaster, do confess, acknowledge, and swear before God, and in presence of his holy church, that you now take for your wife and legitimate spouse Anne Boleyn, here present.”

“Ah!” said the king mentally, “hell would be better than the life that I lead.” He trembled, and answered in a loud voice:

“Yes!”

“You promise to keep to her faithfully in all things, as a faithful husband should his wife, according to the commandment of God?”

“Yes,” he answered again.

“And you, Anne Boleyn, you also confess, acknowledge, and swear before God, and in presence of his holy church, that you now take for your husband and legitimate spouse Henry of Lancaster, here present.”

“Yes,” stammered Anne Boleyn, who had no relatives, no friends around her—no one except two valets and a femme de chambre.

“You promise to keep to him faithfully in all things, as a faithful wife should her husband, according to the commandment of God?”

“Yes,” she answered more distinctly.

Then the priest took the nuptial ring, and, placing it in the hand of the king, made a sign to give it to his wife.

Henry VIII., leaning toward Anne Boleyn, gave it to her, seeming scarcely conscious that he did so. The sight of this ring recalled the one he had given Catherine on a former and similar occasion, the sanctity of the engagements he had

“May the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob unite you, and may he shower his benedictions upon you! I now pronounce you man and wife, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,” said the priest, making the sign of the cross over them.

“Amen!” responded the assistants.

“No benedictions! Don’t talk to me about benedictions, wretches!” replied Henry in a stifled voice.

“It is truly just and reasonable,” continued the priest, ascending the steps of the altar and extending his hands towards heaven, “it is right and salutary, that we return thee thanks at all times and in all places, O Lord, most holy Father, Almighty God eternal, who by thy power hast created the universe out of nothing; who in the beginning of the world, after having made man in thine image, gave him, to be his inseparable companion, the woman whom thou hast formed from thyself, in order to teach him that he is never permitted to put asunder those whom thou hast united in the sacrament thou hast instituted. O God! thou who hast consecrated marriage by so excellent a mystery that the nuptial alliance is the figure of the sacred union of Jesus Christ and his church; O God! by whom the woman is united to the man, and who givest to this intimate union thy blessing, the only one which has not been taken away, neither by the punishment of original sin nor the sentence of the Deluge; O God! thou who alone hast dominion over the hearts of men, and who knowest and governest all things by thy providence, insomuch that no man can put asunder those whom thou hast joined together—”

“When shall I get out of this place?” murmured Henry VIII.

“Nor injure those whom thou hast blessed—unite, we pray thee, the souls of these thy servants, who belong to thee, and pour into their hearts a sincere friendship, to the end that they may become one in thee, as thou art the only true and all-powerful God. Regard with a favorable eye thy servant, who, before being united to her spouse, implores your protection. Grant that her yoke may be a yoke of love and peace; grant that, chaste and faithful, she may follow the example of the holy women of old; that she render herself amiable to her husband, like Rachel; that she may be wise as Rebecca; that she may enjoy a long life, and be faithful like Sara; that the author of prevarication may find nothing in her that proceeds from him; that she may abide firm in thy law and

“Do you understand what the priest advises you?” said Henry VIII., angrily regarding Anne Boleyn, and speaking almost loud enough for her to hear him.

“That, in order to sustain her weakness, she may fortify herself by an exact and well-regulated life; that she may conduct herself with such proper modesty as will ensure respect; that she inform herself of her duties in the heavenly doctrines of Jesus Christ; that she may obtain from thee a happy fecundity; that she may lead a life pure and irreproachable—”

“I will not suffer her to do otherwise,” thought the king.

“That at length she may arrive at the rest of the saints in the kingdom of heaven. Grant, Lord, that they may both live to behold their children’s children until the third and fourth generation, and attain a happy old age, through Jesus Christ our Lord, thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, world without end.”

“Amen!” responded the assistants.

“It is over at last,” said the king, rising precipitately.

He motioned Anne Boleyn to follow him; but she made no reply, and he saw that she was weeping, and had put her hands over her eyes to conceal her tears.

He then left her, and immediately went out.

XI.

On returning to his apartments, the king found in his cabinet Cromwell and Cranmer, who, pompously invested with the garb of his new episcopal dignity, came with Cromwell to thank the king for having conferred on him this exalted position.

The sight of these two intriguers produced a disagreeable impression on Henry. He was very wearied already by the scene through which he had just passed, and longed to be alone. Instead of that, he found himself face to face with two new instruments of torture.

Cromwell regarded the king attentively, and was astonished at the expression of dissatisfaction visible on every feature of his face.

“What does he want now?” mentally inquired this unprincipled man. “Have we not procured the accomplishment of all his desires? Is he not now the very legitimate spouse of the brilliant Anne Boleyn, Marchioness of Pembroke?” But he thought it advisable under existing circumstances to let the king speak first, and contented himself with a profound salutation.

“What more do you want of me?” asked the king very brusquely.

“He is not very approachable this morning,” thought Cromwell; “but never mind, he will not escape us for all that.”

“We come,” replied Cromwell, “to congratulate your majesty on the clemency and magnanimity you displayed yesterday evening towards that daughter of Kent; and Dr. Cranmer has come to lay at your feet the assurance of his gratitude and his entire devotion.”

“Yes,” replied the king, happy to attribute his anger to something he could confess; “you are clever men, and richly deserve to be driven from my presence for having risked compromising me with that fool to whom you have made me listen! I am beginning to get tired of your fooleries; Sir Cromwell, understand that well!” And he emphasized the last words with a

“The marriage has not improved matters much, it would seem,” said Cromwell to himself; but he considered it proper to display a little dignity. “I understand,” he replied immediately, “that your majesty may have at first taken some offence at the insolent audacity of that woman of Kent; but I am astonished that you should be so unjust as to think ill of your servants on account of it, and especially since nothing could have been more fortunate in putting us on the track of the infamous intrigues of the queen and her partisans.”

“Infamous intrigues! infamous intrigues!” cried the king. “That is a word which may be very readily applied, and often it is not to those who most deserve it.”

An angry flush mounted to Cromwell’s pale visage; he felt that it was time to calm the storm about to burst upon him.

“I implore your majesty to believe,” he replied in an extremely mortified tone, “that I advance nothing without proof; and I ask now what he will say when he shall know that the queen, Thomas More, and the Bishop of Rochester, concealed in the church, assisted with us at the examination of the holy daughter of Kent, in order to assure themselves that their instrument resounded loudly in the ears of your majesty.”

“What do you say, Cromwell? The queen was in the Abbey last night? And how did she gain admittance there? What! she has heard all? She has enjoyed my humiliation? Why have I not known it? I would have punished her audacity and wickedness on the spot; but I will surely have my revenge.”

“Sire,” replied Cromwell, “the queen is but a woman, and you should pardon her. The real culprits are the Bishop of Rochester and More, whose ingratitude toward your majesty exceeds all conception. The queen’s partisans laud More above the clouds, and publish it abroad that he has retired from your majesty’s service because his conscience would no longer permit him to remain there. It is time to put an end to such excesses, and the honor of your majesty requires that they shall no longer go unpunished.”

Cromwell intended by this discourse to excite the king’s wrath and at the same time strike at his ruling passions—pride, and the fear of losing his authority. Thus he held him in his hands, and changed him from one to the other, like a piece of soft wax melted before a hot fire.

“Yes,” cried the king, “yes, I swear it, I will chastise them! The whole world shall learn what it is to try to resist me!” He was nearly stifled with rage, which entirely transported him and rendered him incapable of reflection.

“You will assist me, Cromwell,” he cried, “you will assist me! I shall have need of you to help me tame this insolent clergy, who will raise a loud howl when they hear I have banished Catherine and married Anne Boleyn without their participation.”

“He is caught,” thought Cromwell. “Poor fish! you have too many vices to hope to escape my nets! I am very happy to see,” he replied with a satisfied air, “that your majesty has not been cast down or discouraged by the trifling difficulties you have until the present encountered. It is time your courage got the better of your generosity, and that you should throw

“Yes, that is just what I want!” cried the king; “but it is a very difficult question to deal with.”

“Not the least in the world,” replied Cromwell; “let your majesty continue as you have begun, and you will very soon see every obstacle fall before you. Not long since they declared your marriage was impossible; to-day it is accomplished.… The clergy will not recognize it!… Make Parliament proclaim it; then demand of them the oath of fidelity to the new queen, to her children, and to the supreme head of the church; because we must not lose sight,” continued Cromwell, “of the fact that there is no longer any necessity for discretion now; after the injury done to the Sovereign Pontiff of the church, there remains no other way to proceed than to cast off his authority at once and substitute another in his place.”

“Softly, softly,” said the king; “unless the necessity be forced upon me, I do not wish to go to such an extremity.”

“This is not an extremity,” replied Cromwell, who had the plan already perfectly arranged, and enjoyed in advance all the ecclesiastical benefits he counted on appropriating to himself; “it is a decisive victory, simple and easy to carry out. Is it not, Cranmer?”

“I think so,” said Cranmer, who had taken the habit of a bishop only that he might be better able to serve his ambition and avidity.

“Softly,” continued the king, with an air of importance; “it is very evident that neither of you are statesmen, and that you are not experienced in such matters, nor acquainted with their difficulties.”

“I think, however, I know very well how to manage my own,” said Cromwell under his breath.

“We know quite as much about it as some others,” thought Cranmer.

“It will first be necessary,” continued Henry, “to see if there will be no means of arranging it otherwise. It is possible that Catherine may submit, that she may ask to become a religieuse, that they may decide at Rome that it is not necessary to enforce the law so urgently in my case. At any rate, I wish to try them,” he added in a determined voice, “by demanding, as is customary, Cranmer’s bulls of the pope. Afterward—ah! well, we will see.”

“Then, sire,” replied Cromwell, “consider well that, by this act of submission, you destroy all the terror you have inspired, and that if Cranmer holds his rank and powers as Archbishop-Primate of England from any other than yourself, he will be obliged to publicly acknowledge the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome, and to take from him, as usual, the oath of fidelity.”

“Oh!” hurriedly interrupted Cranmer, who feared that this remark of Cromwell would make the king hesitate, and retard his installation, “this oath is only a simple formality, … an ancient usage.… Nothing could prevent me later from taking another to the king in the form and tenor adopted.”

“Ah! well; yes, still—” said Cromwell, whose talent above all consisted in never finding, nor letting the king find, any difficulty in following his advice.

“These honest individuals!” thought the king; “an oath weighs no more on their conscience than a gnat on the back of a swallow.”

With this remark his patience was exhausted with them.

“Well, it is all right,” he said;

They then had to retire, and leave the king by himself, a prey to his own reflections.

“They are gone at last!” cried Henry, throwing himself into a fauteuil. “I am rid of them! These are, then, the agents of hell with whom hereafter I must manage the affairs of my kingdom.”

And he angrily pushed from under his feet a footstool, which was hurled against a chair they called the “queen’s chair,” because she had shown a preference for it.

Henry recollected it; he arose abruptly, and changed his position in order to avoid seeing the vacant chair, that annoyed him.

“Always Catherine,” he cried; “nothing but Catherine! I cannot take a step without being reminded of her! So much trouble, and only to make myself so wretched!… That doll-baby, Anne Boleyn, was weeping!… A weak creature, and with no energy!… She is not equal to the position to which I have elevated her. To weep the day that I married her, when for her I have torn myself from the arms of the clergy, the people, the pope, and the emperor!… I shall not be happy with this woman;… she wearies me already!… It will be necessary to make all this known before the coronation; … otherwise there will be no time to recede.… To acknowledge that I have done wrong … it is impossible.… More, could you, then, have been right? Shall I always be more unhappy in following my own will than in conquering it?… That wretch! always calm, always contented.… I see him now, down in his obscurity, seated quietly in his cabinet, working, loving God, not fearing death, … smiling at poverty and all the circumstances of life, which, as he says, have no power to annoy him.… And I—I roll here on these velvet cushions, with remorse in my heart, despair in my soul; and why, when I have obtained the object I wanted?… Hell has already begun for me!… If it is so, I should not, at least, be ashamed to acknowledge it!… March on!”

The king, rising then precipitately, left his cabinet, and ordered preparations for a grand hunting party, and for the assembling of the ladies for a ball and supper in the evening.

XII.

Whilst they were dancing at court, and sought, in dissipation of mind, to drown remorse of heart, a few leagues distant one of the victims of Henry VIII. lay on his death-bed, rapidly approaching his end.

The night before some travellers had knocked at the gate of Leicester Abbey. It was opened, and the Archbishop of York had alighted from his mule, on which he was no longer able to sustain himself. He was carried by the good monks to a chamber, and laid in bed, where he still remained confined and nigh unto death.

All was gloom around this bed; two wax lights only burned on a table at the extremity of the room, whilst several monks were on their knees praying for the dying. Not a sound disturbed the silence around them save the slight noise made by the rosary as they turned it in their hands, and the labored respiration of the sick man.

“Monsieur Kingston,” he suddenly cried in a broken voice, “I conjure you, say to the king that I have never betrayed him, that my enemies have misrepresented me, that I have always been faithful to him!… Tell him this, I conjure you!—ah! tell him this.”

But Sir William Kingston, lieutenant

Fatigued by the journey, some of them were stretched on the floor, while others slept on their arms, leaning against the wall, as if death still required them to guard their prey.

Wolsey receiving no reply, turned himself over with a groan, and saw the shadow of a man standing near his bed.

“Who is that?” he asked.

“It is I,” replied Cavendish, still remaining behind the curtain, and who endeavored in silence to conceal his tears.

“How are you now?” said Wolsey.

“Well, my dear lord, if your grace was well also,” responded the faithful servant.

“Ah! my dear friend,” replied the cardinal, “as for me, I am very sick. I am rapidly approaching my end; but what most distresses me is to have nothing to leave you, and not to be able to assure you of a subsistence.”

“Do not trouble yourself about that,” said this devoted servant, who approached and took the trembling hand of the dying man; “in a few days you will be better, and we shall not lose you.”

“What time is it?” said Wolsey.

“Midnight.”

“Midnight!” replied the archbishop. “How short the time is! Before eight o’clock I shall have to leave this world. God calls me to himself, and I can remain no longer with you. Monsieur Vincent,” he continued after a moment’s silence—“Monsieur Vincent, say to the king that it was my intention to have left him all my property; but he has himself deprived me of that pleasure, since they have seized, by his orders, everything that I possessed.”

On hearing his name called, Monsieur Vincent hurried to the bedside; but at these last words he shook his head in token of incredulity and impatience. He was an employé of the king’s treasury, and his heart was as hard as the coin he had charge of.

Having learned that Wolsey was very sick when he left the castle of the Count of Shrewsbury, and fearing he might die on the road, the king had despatched this man in all haste to secure the money and valuables he supposed Wolsey might have concealed among his friends.

“I have told you the truth,” replied the archbishop, who remarked his movement. “I have nothing left in London, and but for the assistance of Monsieur Arundel I should have died of starvation at Asher. I implore you, then, that the king may have compassion on my poor servants, and allow them the wages now due them.”

“We will see, my lord,” said the dissatisfied scribe, who was waiting for an avowal which he had continued to solicit, without any

“Monsieur Vincent, I implore you!” replied the cardinal.

“Master Vincent,” said Cavendish, “I beg you to leave the room; your presence annoys and excites him. Have mercy, then, and leave him in peace.”

The scribe hesitated, but he did not go; he returned to the corner of the chamber and began to write as before.

Cavendish followed him with a look of indignation. It seemed very hard that his master could not even be permitted to die without this avaricious surveillance.

“Cavendish,” asked the archbishop immediately, “do you think she will come?”

“They expect her every moment, my dear lord,” he replied; “she will remain three days here.”

“O Cavendish!”

“My dear master!”

And he fell on his knees by the bed. He bathed with tears the hand of the archbishop, which he held in his own.

“She will not see me, my son! She will not forgive me!”

“Ah! my dear, my beloved lord.” He could say no more, being entirely overcome by grief.

“Remember, my son, remember,” continued Wolsey, “that it was my infernal policy that persuaded the king of the possibility of his divorce! Is that she? I hear a noise. My God! I am dying. Spare me, that I may ask her forgiveness; yes, her forgiveness, even as God has forgiven me. O my God!” he cried suddenly, fixing his eyes on a crucifix he had made them hang on the wall in front of him,” had I only served thee as faithfully as I have served this prince in whom I have placed all my hopes and centred all my affections! Weak mortal like myself, what had he to offer me that I should attach myself to him? Vain splendor of an ephemeral power, where have you led me? O man, crowned with a diadem! cast a glance upon the bed of a dying man, and reflect. Why have I not despised your favors and the gifts you have offered me? How fatal they have proved to me! To-day, solitary and alone, I must appear before my God, with hands empty and void of all those virtues and merits which you have prevented me from acquiring. Why have I not come here in my youth, among these humble monks, and learned to extinguish the pride that has governed my entire life? Listen, all you who are here present! Come and behold my emaciated limbs; see the flesh that covered them already destroyed by the breath of death, that has struck them! And my tongue that now speaks to you, and which was thought capable of dictating the decrees of conquerors, will soon be silenced for ever.”

But exhausted by so violent an effort, he sank into a state of insensibility.

Seized with terror, the monks gathered around his bed, recalling the power and éclat with which the name of Wolsey was surrounded, and which had so many times resounded even through the most remote walls of their solitude.…

Yes, it was she—it was indeed Queen Catherine. She had reached this monastery, where she intended remaining several days before deciding on the place of her VIII., in order to entirely prove that she had become to him an object of perfect indifference, had not even offered her an asylum.

“She is free,” he said; “let her do what she pleases. That is the widow of my brother, the Princess Dowager of Wales. Hereafter she must bear no other name.”

However, they had opened all the gates, and the father abbot, preceded by the cross and followed by all his religieux carrying lighted torches, went before the queen and conducted her into the chapter-hall, which had been prepared for her reception.

There she found carpets, cushions, an arm-chair covered with velvet, and everything the good monks could imagine would be agreeable and testify their devotion.

Catherine felt touched to the heart by these testimonials of respect and affection.

She seated herself a moment in order to thank them; then, rising with that calm and majestic dignity which so eminently characterized her, she said:

“Good fathers, it is no more your queen whom you receive in your midst; it is a fugitive woman, an outraged mother, separated from all that she holds most dear in the world. Do not treat me, then, with so much honor. I have more need of your tears and prayers than of your respect and homage.”

“Alas! madam,” replied the father abbot, “life is very short, and the judgments of God are inscrutable. You come beneath the shadow of this sanctuary to seek an asylum, while the first author of all your woes, a man of whom you have had great cause to complain, has sought here a refuge to die.”

“What!” said the queen. “Venerable father, explain yourself!”

“Yesterday, madam,” replied the abbot, “the Archbishop of York arrived here in a dying condition. He was accompanied by Cavendish, his servant, and the lieutenant of the Tower, who is conducting him to London, there to be tried on the charge of high treason.”

“He here!” cried the queen, overwhelmed with astonishment. And Catherine, a Spaniard and a mother, felt the hatred she had borne Wolsey revive in her soul with extreme violence. The feeling she had vainly sought to extinguish rekindled with renewed strength every time she received a new outrage, or when the name and conduct of the minister who had sacrificed her to his political views and interests was brought to her recollection.

A sudden tremor seized her.

“Wolsey here!” she repeated. “No matter where I go, this man follows me!… Here!” she said again.

“Yes, madam,” replied the father abbot, “here, dying, but more worthy of pity than hatred; he weeps, he bemoans his past life, he implores God’s mercy. It is sufficient to see him to be touched with compassion. For two days we have watched him by turns; he has not ceased to pray God, and I know that to see you will be a great consolation to him.”

“See him?” replied the queen. “No! oh! no, never. God forgive him the injury he has done me; but I will never see him.”

“Will Queen Catherine forget the charity of Jesus Christ?” replied the father abbot in a severe tone. “Can that virtue be more than a vain appearance which is stranded by coming in contact with a resentment,

Catherine remained silent, but she advanced a step forward, which the father accepted as a mute consent; and passing immediately before her, he conducted her into the chamber where Wolsey was lying.

She advanced to the middle of the room, and was struck by the spectacle presented to her view. Cavendish supported the dying man in his arms, and wiped the cold sweat from his face, now as white as the sheet on which he lay. A convulsive movement agitated occasionally his extended limbs, and it was from that alone they saw that life was not yet extinct.

Catherine approached at once, and remained standing in silence, in the face of this enemy, heretofore so powerful and so formidable.

She made no movement, and her eyes only were fixed on the dying. “And I too will die!” she said in her heart. “The day will come when I shall cease to suffer. O material life which envelops me! cease also to burden my soul, and let it flee into eternity. Let me find a refuge even in the bosom of the tomb.”

* * * * *

“My daughter, my daughter!” she suddenly cried, as though beside herself; “give her back to me, you who have torn her from my arms!”

A shudder passed over the form of Wolsey; he had heard that voice. It seemed as though a burning fire had touched him. He rose up in his bed, and, gazing at the queen with wildly staring eyes, “Your daughter, madam!” he cried, “your daughter!… Alas! it is I who have done all. You accuse me, and yet, as God is my judge, I threw myself at the feet of the king, and tried to turn him from his evil intention; but it was too late, and I had not foreseen the fatal consequences of a policy which I believed would be advantageous and beneficial. Alas! how differently I regard it at this terrible hour. Pardon me! pardon me!… I conjure you, that I may not bear to the foot of the throne of the Sovereign Judge the fearful weight of the malediction of the widow and the orphan!” And he stretched towards her his hands, which he was no longer able to raise.

“May God forgive you,” responded the queen, “may God forgive you! But what can there be in common between you and me, unless it is suffering? You will soon be delivered from your woes; but I—I must live!”

“Ah!” cried Woolsey with expressions of the most profound wretchedness, “you hear it, brothers, already the voice of God punishes me by the mouth of this woman. And thus,” he continued, fixing his terrified gaze on the queen, “I die at enmity with you, and you will not have compassion on the condition to which I am reduced! How can one human being call down upon another without trembling the vengeance of the Most High? Are we not all formed of the same flesh and blood? Are you not horror-stricken at the thought of the judgments I must suffer and the account I must render?”

Catherine felt her blood congealed by the frightful eloquence of

At the thought of the nothingness of all created humanity, she felt the hatred she had borne Wolsey entirely effaced.

“Your reasoning enlightens me!” she cried. “Who are we that we should wish to be revenged?. Weak and blind, should we precipitate ourselves into the bottomless pit? We have received an injury, and shall we inflict one in return? Who are we, and what is our duty?”

She then advanced toward him, and, taking in her own the hands of her enemy, she said:

“I forgive you, I forgive you from the most profound depths of my heart.… May God, the sovereign Creator of all things, bless you, and blot out from the awful book of his justice your slightest fault! May he open to you the mansions of eternal bliss! Then remember me, and ask of him that my eyes also may soon be closed to the light of that day which you have rendered insupportable. Tell him that I want to die, and beg him to recall to himself the soul that he has given me; say that my eyes are weary with tears, and my heart worn with suffering; that sorrow has multiplied my days, and that I have lived during the night, keeping tearful vigils; that I have only enjoyed the blessings of life long enough to regret them; that I am ready, that I listen, I wait to hear his voice, in order that I may arise and depart.”

Wolsey drank in with avidity all of her words, and his eyes followed every movement of the queen’s lips; but suddenly the fire of his burning glance was extinguished, his head fell forward on his breast—he had ceased to breathe!…

What pen can describe, what pencil portray, the terrible and solemn moment when a man is called to leave for ever the world that gave him birth—the moment when those who, having surrounded him with the most constant care, loving words, and affectionate attentions, fall prostrate around the silent couch, which now contains no more than the despoiled and lifeless clay which a beloved and cherished being seems to have cast aside like a soiled garment? Let the cold sceptic come, and, passing through that throng of afflicted friends, let him place his hand on the heart that has ceased to beat, and then turn and dare still to tell them that man has been created to die, and nothing more remains of him after death!… It is easy in the intoxication of joy, amid the false glare of vanity and of worldly dissipations, to put our trust in falsehood and array ourselves against the truth; but the day and the hour will come when she will appear clothed in dazzling robes of light, and the splendor of her irradiated countenance will strike with terror and annihilation the last one of her wretched and presumptuous enemies.

SOME ODD IDEAS.

Our intelligence,” says the celebrated Montaigne, “is a kind of vagabond instrument, daring and dangerous, to which it is difficult to associate order or appoint limits. It is a hurtful weapon to its owner himself, if he does not know how to use it discreetly.”

No one can doubt the truth of this observation who has ever studied the workings of his own individual mind with some little attention. And even when we cannot perceive the beam in our own eye, how very evident is the straw in our neighbor’s! Though unsuspecting of the bee in our own bonnet, how quickly we hear it buzzing in his!

A specimen of some of the extravagant vagaries of human wit may perhaps interest and amuse. To begin at the beginning: thinkers have endeavored to imagine what was going on before the Creation.

In the seventeenth century, a mystic writer composed a work on

“To ask what God was doing before the Creation is an impertinence, a puerility.… It is certain that the eternal God who made this earth by the power of his word had no need of the world and all the creatures it contains—he had lived and reigned before Time began, happy and contented in the paradise of his essence and in the essence of himself.… He was contemplating his only Son, not made, not created, but begotten from all eternity; in the eternal Word he contemplated the archetype, the world of the world, angels, souls, and all things. In conclusion, we may say that God, before the creation of the world, did something and did nothing.…”

Singular problems, most daringly resolved, have been presented respecting the epoch of the Creation. Chevreau, in his Histoire du Monde, 1686, tells us that, according to some writers, the earth was created in the spring; according to others, equally good authorities, on a Friday, the 6th of September, at four o’clock in the afternoon!

A learned Italian of the last century, Monsignor Baiardi, in the course of a conversation with the Abbé Barthélemy, mentioned that he was about writing an abridgment of universal history, and that he intended to commence his work with the solution of one of the most important problems of astronomy and history. His desire was to determine the exact spot in the firmament in which God had placed the sun when he made the earth. “And,” says Barthélemy, “he had just discovered it, and showed it to me on a globe.”

Our common father has been the subject of an infinite number of curious suppositions, not to say crack-brained fancies. The Talmudists, for instance, have constructed the following programme of Adam’s first day of life:

In the first hour, the Creator kneaded the clay of which man was made, and moulded the outlines of his form.

In the second hour, Adam was perfected and capable of action.

In the fourth hour, God called to him, and commanded him to give names to the beasts, birds, and fishes.

In the seventh hour, the marriage of our first parents took place.

In the tenth hour, Adam sinned.

In the twelfth hour, the penalty of labor began.

James Salien, a Jesuit of the seventeenth Annales Ecclesiastici that, “while man was being created, the divine hands, ambrosial face, and admirable arms of his Creator were visible to him.”

The Arabs have a tradition that Adam, when first created, stretched from one extremity of the earth to the other. But after he had sinned, God pressed him down with his almighty hand, and thus diminished his height to nine hundred cubits. The Creator, it is added, did this at the request of the angels, who regarded the gigantic mortal with strange fear.

According to Moreri, Adam possessed a profound knowledge of all the sciences, especially of astrology, many secrets of which he taught to his children, besides engraving two tables of observations on the movements of the planets. All the learned doctors of the Middle Ages are agreed in ascribing the possession of immense science to Adam. The angels themselves, they say, were inferior to him in knowledge; and they relate as proof of this that God, having heard them speak of man with contempt, determined to confound them by asking them what were the names of certain beasts which he called into his presence at that moment. The angels could not answer; man, summoned to the task, gave each animal its due appellation without hesitation.

Adam, being thus endowed with unlimited knowledge, would have been culpable towards his posterity if he had left none of it behind him. We are accordingly told that he composed two works, one upon the Creation, the other upon the Divinity. Having been present, we may almost say, at the first, and conversed familiarly with the second, he was able to tell us something interesting about both, and it is our misfortune that the two works have been lost. It is, however, said that they survived the Deluge, for a Mahometan author relates that Abraham, being in the country of the Sabeans, opened Adam’s chest, and found in it not only our progenitor’s writings but also those of Seth.

Opinions are various concerning the form the tempter assumed to deceive poor Eve. It has been asserted that Sammaël, the prince of devils, came to her mounted on a serpent as large in girth as a camel; and then again it is said that Satan borrowed the form of the serpent, and made it more seductive by the addition of a sweet maiden’s face! This tradition has been adopted by poets and painters.

As the name of the forbidden fruit is not mentioned in the Book of Genesis, conjecture has had full scope. Northern nations believe that it was an apple; southern people that it was a fig or citron. Rabbi Salomon thinks that Moses concealed the name of the fruit purposely, fearing that, if it were known, nobody would ever eat of it.

According to St. Jerome, Adam was buried in Hebron; other learned authors say on Calvary; either assertion is difficult of verification, for both Hebron and Calvary only date from the Deluge. “Barcepha alleges,” says Bayle, “that a highly esteemed Syrian doctor had said that Noe dwelt in Judea; that he planted in the plains of Sodom the cedar-trees with which he afterwards built the ark; and that he carried Adam’s bones into the ark with him. When he came out of the ark, he divided these bones among his three sons; the skull fell to the share of Sem, and when the descendants of Sem took possession of Judea, they

In 1615, a shoemaker of Amiens published a treatise entitled De Calceo Antiquo. In this history of shoes, the writer begins at the beginning of the world, and gravely informs us that Adam made the first pair from the prepared skins of beasts, the secret of tanning having been taught him by God himself!

In the last century, Henrion, a French Orientalist, and a member of the Institute of France, conceived the idea of composing an exhaustive work on the weights and measures of the ancients, and presented a specimen of his labors to the Academy of Inscriptions, to which he belonged. It was a kind of chronological scale of the differences in man’s stature from the epoch of Adam’s creation to the time of our Saviour.