Volume 25 — SIX SUNNY MONTHS. BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE,” “GRAPES AND THORNS,” ETC. CHAPTER XIII. “OUR LADY OF SNOW.” (continued 3)

This station consisted of simply a “porter and a platform,” one equally intelligent as the other, and of the two the platform was “the better man.”

“Sorra a know I know,” was the invariable reply to almost every query.

“Did the lady alight here?”

“Sorra a know I know.”

“Did she give you no message?”

“Sorra a know I know.”

“No card?”

“Sorra a wan.”

“Who handed you the portmanteau?”

“Sorra a know I know.”

A thought now flashed across my brain: Fribscombe! He was not the man to lose a chance of talking to a pretty woman. He would have told her who I was, and it was through him that she had communicated. How asinine not to have thought of this before!

Chartering a jarvey, I started across the country to the family mansion of the Fribscombes, accompanied by the two portmanteaus.

“I never opened my lips to her. She dried up after you left, and pulled down the shutters.” This gave me a pang of the keenest delight. “I got out at Killoughter, the next station, and she went on.”

On my return to Dublin I caused advertisements to be inserted in several of the leading Irish papers; I also tried the second column of the Times and the Glasgow Herald, but, alas! with no effect.

Six months had glided away, during which she made no sign. The portmanteau maintained possession of a corner of my solitary apartment, and the image of its whilome proprietor defiantly held more than one corner of my heart; indeed, I may as well candidly confess that it was strongly entrenched in all four.

The summer assizes were over, and the briefless ones flitted hither and thither for the long vacation: some to Switzerland, with Mont Blanc in the distance—very much in the distance—others the passes of the Tyrol, sunny Spain, byways in Brittany, or the Highlands of Scotland. Connemara found its true believers, and Killarney its pious pilgrims. As for myself, I was perforce compelled to substitute the Dodder for the Rhine, the Dublin mountains for the Alps, and Sackville Street for the Boulevard des Italiens. My aunt had contributed the ten-pound note upon which I had hung in fond anticipation towards the building of Father Donnelly’s new church at Shinanshone, and the letter which conveyed this intelligence concluded with the following: “I don’t see your name figuring in any of the trials, good, bad, or indifferent. It’s all Macdonogh and Armstrong. What are you about, at all at all? At this rate of going you’ll never see a silk gown, let alone the bench. You might as well be on the Hill of 415Howth as in the Four Courts, if you don’t stir yourself. Let me see you cheek by jowl with Macdonogh and Armstrong during the coming winter, or I’ll know the reason why, and make my financial arrangements accordingly.”

I was seated one lovely morning in autumn gazing gloomily into the street, which was as empty as my own exchequer. Dreamy visions of the golden glory of ripening corn, of blood-red poppies, of fern-shaded dells, of limpid pools and purple-clad mountains mocked my aching heart. I sighed the sigh of impecuniosity, and railed at the inconsistency of a fortune which gave little Bangs, who hadn’t one idea to rub against another, a thousand per annum, a vulgar cad like Hopkins a bagful of briefs, and which left me high and dry in a front garret in Eccles Street, without a red cent to come into collision with a battered sixpence in my somewhat cavernous pockets. Heigh-ho!

An outside car, driven at a frosty pace, smote upon the drowsy stillness of the street, and my gloom was somewhat speedily dispelled by the sight of my friend Tom Whiffler’s honest and beaming face, and his expressive and expansive signals while yet a considerable distance from the house. Tom is always full of money, full of health, and full of the most boisterous and explosive spirits.

“Aha! you old cat on the tiles,” he shouted, “come down from your coign of vantage. I was afraid you were out of town. Somebody said you were on Circuit.” And standing upon the foot-board of the car, he burst forth with—

“Hail to our barrister back from the Circuit!

Honor and wealth to the curls of his wig!

Long may he live o’er his forehead to jerk it,

Long at a witness look burly and big!”

“Come up, for gracious sake!” I cried, as I perceived heads peeping from behind the partly-closed shutters of an opposite house, inhabited by a genteel family, who wished their little world to imagine them in Italy, France, Spain—anywhere but in Dublin—during the dog-days.

In a few seconds Tom bounded into the apartment. “This is a slice of luck to get you, old man. Come, now, pack up your traps, and we’ll have four days in the County Wicklow. I shall have the car in any case, and our hotel bills will be mere bagatelles which we’ll square up at Tib’s Eve. Lend me a couple of shirts and things; you can bring the baggage—a change for two—and I’ll do the rest. We’ve twenty-five minutes to catch the train.”

Five minutes found Tom upon one side of the car, myself upon the other, and, calmly reposing in the well between us, the neat little portmanteau of the fair unknown. I was compelled to make use of it, as Whiffler had no “leathern conveniency,” and my travelling-valise had been lent to one of “ours,” and was possibly at that particular moment strapped upon the murderous mound of luggage which encumbers the groaning roof of the Alpine diligence, or snugly ensconced on the grape-strewn deck of a Rhine or a Moselle steamer. It gave me more than a pang to remove it from its well-known corner. A chord had been touched which set all my memories vibrating, and I handled it with as much care and anxiety as though it were a new-born infant or a rickety case containing rack-rent or nitro-glycerine.

A glorious moonlight found us driving through the Vale of Clara 416en route to Glendalough—the sad, stricken valley of the Seven Churches. The hills, quietly entranced, lay gazing upwards at the gentle moon, who enfolded them in her pellucid beams as with a soft, sheeny mantle of light. The Avonmore far, far down in the valley musically murmured while she glided onwards to join the Avonbeg, who joyously awaited her coming in the sweet Vale of Avoca. The honest watch-dog’s bark bayed up the valley, and the perfume-laden air in its holy calm was as sweet as an angel’s whisper.

After “a square meal” of rasher and eggs which would have put the most elaborate chef-d’œuvre of the cuisine out of count, we strutted forth from the hostelry in the direction of St. Kevin’s Bed, and heard the oft-repeated legend of poor Kathleen’s fate from the lips of a very ragged but very amusing guide, whose services we were desirous of engaging for the morrow.

“Troth, thin, but it’s me father’s son that’s sorry not to be wud yez; but shure”—and here he lowered his voice—“it’s in regard to me bein’ in a hobble that I’m out in the moonlight.”

“What scrape have you got yourself into?” asked Tom Whiffler. “Whiskey?”

“Musha, thin, it wasn’t a dhrop o’ sperrits that done it this offer.”

“A colleen?

“Sorra a fear av all the colleens from this to Wicklow Head.”

“Mistaking another man’s sheep for your own?” laughed Tom.

“If ye wor spaikin’ airnest I’d make ye sorry for them words,” said the man in an angry tone; but brightening up, he added: “Av yez wor guessin’ from this to Candlemas ye’d be out every offer. I got into thrubble be raison av a saint, an’ I’ll tell yez how: A lot av ignoraamusses av English comes here in the summer saison, an’ nothin’s too holy but they’ll make a joke on it; but the divvle will have his own wan av these days. Well, sir, last Monday I was engaged for to divart a cupple of English, as bowld as brass, an’ that vulgar that the very cows turned their tails to thim as we thravelled through the fields—sorra a lie in it. I done me best for to earn an honest shillin’, but, on my word, wan av thim, a stout lump av a man, gev me all soarts av impidince, an’ whin I come for to narrate about St. Kavin he up’s an’ insults the holy saint to me very face.

“'There never was no sich man,’ sez he.

“'There was, sir,’ sez I.

“'It’s all humbug,’ sez he; 'an’ as for Kathleen,’ sez he, 'she was no betther nor—'

'“Ye’d betther stop, sir,’ sez I, intherruptin’ him; 'for St. Kavin was a holy man, an’ never done nothin’ but what was good an’ saintly.’ Well, sir, he up’s an’ calls the blessed saint a bad name, so I hot him betune th’ eyes an’ rowled him on the grass, an’ I planted his comrade beside him. An’ now I’m the worst in the world below at the hotel for bating two blackguards that done nothin’ but insult me an’ me holy religion; an’ that’s why I can’t go wud yez to-morrow.”

It was far into the “wee sma’ hours” when we parted with Myles O’Byrne and gained sanctuary in the double-bedded room which had been told off to us. The pale and gentle Luna was surrendering her charge to the pink and rosy Aurora, and we sought our couches in beautiful budding daylight.

“Where’s your portmanteau, 417Dawkins?” asked Tom Whiffler. “I want to get at my things.”

To my utter dismay, the portmanteau was not in the apartment. To ring the bell at this unseemly hour was but to alarm the entire hotel; so, slipping off my shoes, I descended to the hall in the hope of discovering it in a heap of luggage which lay piled in graceful profusion near the entrance. My search was vain, and, with secret forebodings of another mischance in connection with this unhappy valise, I returned to the room and retired to bed.

“I seen it in yer hand, sir,” observed the waiter the next morning whom I interrogated about the missing article—“a thick lump of a solid leather portmantle. I can take the buke on it, if necessary, sir. Here’s the boots; mebbe he can tell us something. Jim, did ye see a thick lump av a solid leather portmantle lyin’ about?”

“I did,” replied the boots, who was a man of much physique and very few words.

“Ye did?”

“Yis.”

“Where is it, thin?”

“Where it ought to be.”

“Where’s that?”

“Wud th’ owner.”

“It was not left in my room,” I exclaimed.

“It was left in number five.”

“Shure, number five’s gone,” cried the waiter.

“It’s news yer tellin’ us,” observed the boots with a surly grin.

“An’ is the portmantle tuk be number five?”

“Yis.”

“Phew!” whistled the waiter. “Be the mortial the fat’s in the fire now, anyhow.”

Here was a situation! My misgivings realized. My portmanteau gone, perhaps never to return. How could I face the owner? I never gave up the hope of meeting her and of restoring the property.

“Who slept in number five?” I asked.

“Number five is two faymales.”

“When did they leave?”

“They left for Father Rooney’s first Mass beyant at Annamoe.”

“Where were they going to?”

“To Lake Dan and Luggelaw.”

I proceeded to hold a council of war—consisting of the landlord, the waiter, the boots, two or three stable-boys, and the surplus population of the village—when it was determined to send a boy on a fast-trotting pony in pursuit of the fugitive luggage.

I was two inches on a mild Havana after such a breakfast as the tourist alone can dispose of, when the waiter burst into the summer-house situated over the lake, whither we had repaired to enjoy the “witching weed.”

“The portmantle is safe, sir, an’ number five is here with it an’ wants for to see ye, sir.”

“Well, I do not want to see number five, waiter, so just say—”

“I dar’n’t say nothin’, sir; she slipped a half a crown into the heel of me fist an’ towld me to hurry you up,” burst in the waiter, now in a white perspiration.

“I’ll not stir till I finish this cigar, at all events, and there is a good hour’s pull in it yet.”

“Och! murther, an’ she’s in such a hurry—such a dainty little craythur; an’ it was so dacent of her for to journey back the road with it.”

This last thrust failed to pierce my armor. The waiter was conscientiously working out his half-crown.

“She’s quite convaynient in the 418coffee-room, sir. I’ll show ye a short cut across the bog.”

I listened and puffed, puffed and listened.

“I must get back, sir. May I tell her ye’ll be over in five minutes, sir?”

“Tell her anything you like, my friend, but out of this till I finish my cigar I’ll not stir.”

Why I acted in this manner I was at a loss to determine. My anxiety for the valise almost amounted to pain; and yet here was the cause for worry removed, and I would not even trouble myself to walk a few hundred yards to the hotel to thank the lady for returning with it, which, as a gentleman, I was bound to do at any cost as to personal discomfort.

“Some frouzy old maid,” suggested Whiffler.

“Probably; or a strong-minded female doing Wicklow on a geological survey,” I added.

When I got back to the hotel, which might have been an hour or so subsequently, I found my portmanteau safely deposited in my room.

“Where is this lady, until I—”

“She’s gone, sir,” interrupted the waiter in a reproachful tone, “but she towld me for to give you this bit av’ a note,” handing me a piece of paper folded cocked-hat fashion.

I opened it.

“I have two regrets,” it said—the geologist’s handwriting was exquisitely feminine—“one, that I was inadvertently the cause of inconvenience; and the other, that I was denied the opportunity of claiming the portmanteau, as I imagine that I recognize in it one which I lost about eight months ago during a railway journey to the north.”

I was literally stunned. I gazed from the letter to the now astonished waiter, and back from his vacant countenance to the three-cornered billet, which, alas! told so much and yet so little. It bore no name, no initial, no monogram, no clue.

“Describe this lady’s appearance!” I shouted, clutching the waiter by his greasy collar, and imparting to him no very delicate shake.

“I never seen her; her veil was foreninst her nose the whole time she was spakin’ to me. The boy that attindid her is gone to the fair at Knockatemple.”

“Who saw her?”

“Barrin’ the masther, dickins a wan; for Mary, the chambermaid, started this mornin’ for Fogarty’s, of Glinmaloure. She an’ the misthress had a few words in regard to—but here’s the masther.”

The burly host presented himself; he had not encountered my enslaver, for the bill had been paid by the other lady.

“The red wan,” interposed the waiter.

“Just so, Mick,” said his master approvingly, and turning to me: “They have gone on to Luggelaw, sir, and intend to sleep at Enniskerry to-night.”

I unbosomed myself to Tom Whiffler, who immediately entered into the affair con amore. “We’ll hunt them,” he said; “we must catch them at Latouche’s Cottage. There is no exit from Luggelaw except the one.”

The road from the Seven Churches to Luggelaw is exquisitely picturesque. Behind lies that lake whose gloomy shore skylark never warbles o’er, with Lugnacullagh frowning sternly over its gloomy waters, and the round tower standing like a grim sentinel ready to challenge the approach alike of friend and foe. In front is the little village of Lara, with Castle Kevin perched upon a 419ledge of rock like an aerie’s nest, and stretching away in the distance the silvern beech-woods of Annamoe, while to the left the purple-crowned crags of Slonaveena seem almost to topple into the placid bosom of Lough Dan. It was a lovely summer day—one of those days that recall past joys, and in which the present is but a voluptuous dream.

At Roundwood we gained intelligence of the objects of our pursuit. The car had passed through about half an hour previously; the ladies had stopped at the hotel while the horse was being baited, and had indulged in that inevitable cup of tea which is at once the dissipation and the solace of the sex. The road to the first gate at Luggelaw is an ascent of three miles, which must of necessity be traversed upon “shanks’ mare,” and it is a blisterer. Not a vestige of tree, and with scarcely as much pasture as will satisfy the cravings of a few stunted sheep, the sun smiles grimly upon the entire roadway and scorches the luckless traveller whom destiny leads to the little lodge perched on the summit of the mountain. We were not spared, and coats, waistcoats, and neckties were cast upon the car, while we retained our pocket-handkerchiefs to mop our glowing faces, which resembled two very full and exceedingly dissipated-looking rosy moons.

Puffing, panting, blowing, mopping, by one supreme effort we gained the table-land which crowns the ascent, and, plunging towards an adjacent thicket of pines, took tremendous headers into the middle of it, where we lay gasping like a pair of stranded fish.

“Blow me,” exclaimed Tom Whiffler, “if I’ll ever climb Luggelaw Hill widow-hunting in July again. I wish you and your portmanteau and widow at Timbuctoo!”

A low, musical laugh quite near us; a rustle of female garments—my heart gave one mighty throb; for right in front of us, not two yards distant, with her large, lustrous gray eyes bent searchingly upon me, stood the owner of the peripatetic portmanteau.

To spring to my feet, to apologize for our déshabille—the car was as yet half a mile down the hill—to mumble some horrible incoherencies, was the impulse and action of half a minute.

She seemed puzzled to know how to act, but her friend, the “red wan,” cut the Gordian knot of the present embarrassment by a fit of loud, hearty, ringing laughter, which, maelstrom-like, sucked us one after another into it, and whirled us into an ocean of mirth before we knew where we were exactly, or what it was all about. There are some contagious laughs in the world, and she of the ruby locks was the fortunate possessor of one.

Two things establish instantaneous and easy communication with strangers—with women a baby, with men a cigar. Throw in a laugh, and, if the situation be a comical one, the laugh beats infant and tobacco. In this case it proved a talisman, and a very few words found us at our ease while I unfolded my tale.

I was i’ the vein and told my story well.

“Why did you not send it after me?” she asked.

“I had no clue,” I replied.

“I flung my card to the porter at the station.”

“It must have gone down the line; for the only reply I could awake in that self-same porter was, 'Sorra a know I know.’” And I 420devoutly dwelt upon all the bitter anxiety the hopeless efforts at restoration had cost me, to all of which I found a deeply-interested listener.

Before the sun had set on Luggelaw’s deep-wooded vale I learned much that satisfied me as to the past, and a something—inferentially only—that caused the white wings of Hope to flutter against my heart. Lucy Donaldson had been married to Captain George Middlecomb, of the Sixth Dragoon Guards, if not against her will, at least under the pressure of being talked into it. Captain Middlecomb had died within a year of their marriage of delirium tremens.

Need I say that we travelled up to Dublin as a party; that I became a constant visitor at Mrs. Middlecomb’s beautiful residence—Arcachon Villa at Killiney; that—

I suppose I should not divulge it, but, as I have written so far, I may as well finish the chapter. After all, I won’t. Those who have been interested, however, in the portmanteau may be pleased to know that it is now the common property of Lucy and the writer.

THE BRIDES OF CHRIST.

I. ST. DOROTHEA.

The little martyr-maid of Cæsarea—

I do not a more lovely legend know.

Said young Theophilus, mocking: “Dost thou go

To join thy Spouse? If more than fond idea,

Send me, I pray thee, pretty Dorothea,

Of flowers and fruits that in his garden grow!”

The maiden meekly bowed her head; and so

She passed to death along the Roman Via.

A blooming boy, with hair like odorous flame,

Out-dazed the sword that slew her; the next morn

A blooming boy to young Theophilus came,

With three fresh roses and three apples: scorn

Melted in bliss. By crown and palm! we claim

To guess that fragrance, and are less forlorn!

421

II. ST. CECILIA.

Two visions of divine Cecilia,

Born of Italian art, possess my mind.

One in the marble, at her tomb enshrined,

Reveals her as in catacomb she lay.

The budding maiden in her chaste array—

Ah! closely let that awful necklace bind

Clipt flower to stem!—to that cold sleep declined,

Was in warm marriage-bed a bud alway.

Her heart’s dear love starved for a Mystic Spouse;

She was not chary of sweet music’s gift

I see the listening rapture of her brows:

I hear her organ yearn, exult, and lift

Humanity to God! The heavens arouse,

And storms and seraphs o’er the white keys drift.

III. ST. AGNES.

I was God’s maid, less woman than a child;

And yet they threw me in the common stews

Naked as I was born, for men to use.

The dear Lord saved his vessel, though reviled,

From outrage of a look: the Mother smiled—

Over my hot shame all my hair shook loose;

And, lo! it swept my feet in lengths profuse,

A bower of blinding awe to ruffians wild!

My life’s green branch they lopped with cruel sword;

But He hath kissed my hurts, and they are well;

And, walking in the meads of asphodel,

I kiss the scarred feet of my gracious Lord:

I lead his lambkins by my lily bell,

Where the pomegranates shade the softest sward.

422

SHAKSPERE, FROM AN AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.^[71]

This elegantly-printed volume, published in England, though by an American author, has for its subject four distinct lines of inquiry; two of these—the validity of a theory which originated in this country a few years ago, that Bacon, Lord Verulam, really wrote the plays known as Shakspere’s; and, secondly, the extent of Shakspere’s legal knowledge—though carried through the work, are subordinate to the other two—the anti-democratic tone of the dramatist and the fact that he was a Catholic. These are the real issues of the book. Mr. Wilkes holds that Shakspere should not exert the influence in this country that he does in England, and he arraigns him at the bar of American public opinion to answer the indictment that he is always a strenuous upholder of royal authority, an advocate of the privileges of the nobility, regarding them as far removed above the ignobile vulgus, for whom on all occasions the poet manifests the utmost contempt. That a work teeming with constant lessons of this character is no fit guide for Americans he makes the real argument of his book. The second count is apparently intended to be no less damaging. Shakspere was a Catholic, and as such should exercise no influence on a Protestant community. His influence in England for three hundred years has not apparently won that country back to Catholicity, and the United States are probably as safe. Still, it may serve for a new agitation to get up a cry: “No Shakspere in the public schools!”

That Mr. Wilkes considers it a danger is seen by the fact that he uses toward Catholics every vile nickname drawn from the slums by religious hate to degrade us in the eyes of our fellow-men. Yet surely a Shaksperean scholar should not need reminding that to rob one of his good name is worse than stealing his purse, oft-times as bad as taking his life. Not only this, but he more than once represents the Catholic Church as actuated by a hatred of intense fury against the Jews, as an earnest upholder of the unlawful claims of aristocracy, as an enemy of popular rights, and as an excuser of perjury. While thus under a strong anti-Catholic bias or prejudice—stronger even than he at all conceives—he has attempted to understand Catholic terms and usages, and to enter into that world which to Protestants seems so strange and inconceivable—the world of Catholic thought.

The question as to the religious convictions of Shakspere is not a new one. No Catholic has ever read the great dramatist without feeling that he was strangely lacking in the usual anti-Catholic element, even if he did not impress him as often Catholic in thought.

Catholic writers in English periodicals, such as the Rambler and others, had already claimed Shakspere 423as a Catholic. All evidence, extrinsic and intrinsic, seems to sustain the position. His family belonged to the gentry on the father’s and mother’s side, and on both sides had adhered to Catholicity after the change of religion in England. The will of his maternal grandfather, Robert Arden, who died in 1556, is distinctly Catholic: “I bequeath my soul to Almighty God, and to our Blessed Lady St. Mary, and to all the holy company of heaven.” Of his father there is still extant a Testament of the Soul—not, as Mr. Wilkes supposes, a form drawn up by some chaplain of the family, but that Testamentum Animæ Christianæ which, in Latin and the vernacular, has for centuries been found in Catholic devotional manuals, and the copying of which, as a kind of formal act, has been maintained in many families—certainly was in the family of the present writer down to the nineteenth century. Shakspere’s father, too, was fined for non-attendance at the established church. So far as the families of his parents were concerned, he was evidently Catholic, and must in childhood have been familiar with the thoughts and language of English Catholics. How far in mature age he retained the impressions of youth, or how faithful he may have been to the teachings of his religion, we have no means of judging. The lightness with which moral obligations lay on him, his career as a wild but gifted man, give little ground for supposing him to have practised the religion he may still have professed.

In his dramas Shakspere constantly uses Catholic terms, speaks of Catholic clergy, religious of both sexes, rites and ceremonies with respect, and in many cases turns his ridicule upon the new order of clergy in England. The Shaksperes and Ardens had both held office under the Tudor kings, and the dramatist shows the utmost zeal for royal power as against the Pope. To a Catholic, now, this gives his position at once. His life was not a regular one; and he could scarcely, in those days of persecution, have been a firm, consistent, practical Catholic, although he clung to the faith, never abjured it, and had no liking for any of the new forms. His Bible reading was in the Protestant versions of the day, not in the Rheims and Douay, of which no influence has ever been detected in his plays. That he died a good Catholic needs proof; but Mr. Wilkes’ ideas of the meaning of the term are vague, since he tells us that Henry VIII. died a good Catholic.

The fact that Shakspere makes his characters—most of whom are Catholics in time or country—speak as Catholics is really no proof of his own Catholicity, any more than Longfellow’s almost constant correctness in his use of Catholic terms and familiarity with Catholic thought is proof that he is a Catholic. The fact is, we admit, suspicious; for during centuries Protestant writers seem to have made it a point to display the most intense ignorance of Catholic terms, usages, rites, and ceremonies, and equally a point to insist on talking about what they vaunt their ignorance of. But, going back to Shakspere’s time, we must bear in mind that the new religion had not yet taken any hold on the people at large; that the only religious terms and expressions that conveyed any definite ideas to their minds were those of the old faith sanctioned by the usage of centuries, and that the terms introduced 424by the various classes of reformers were diverse, new, strange, and, to the people, a mere ridiculous jargon. The coinage of a new religious vocabulary took time and skill. It was no easy task to shape Bible translation so as to avoid old ideas and thoughts. This new jargon rose to be a language when the King James Bible was imposed on the people after the Restoration. Though long vaunted as a well of English undefiled, philologists now admit that it is the language of no period of English history, of no district of English soil; it was a hash made to meet the pressing want, with obsolete words, terms drawn from every county of England, and new-coined expressions, all forced into the service so as to supply the English people with a new vocabulary of religious thought.

To convey religious ideas in Shakspere’s time, the readiest words were those familiar to the people. The dramatist employs them with no regard to the country or time. The pagan Hamlet refers to the Blessed Sacrament, Extreme Unction, the Mass, and Office for the Dead; they talk of confession and beads in the Comedy of Errors; of indulgences in the Tempest, and even in Troilus and Cressida; of fasting days in Pericles and Coriolanus; and christening is spoken of in Titus Andronicus. The anachronisms were apparently not noticed in his time, nor taken into account.

The system had not been adopted of entirely ignoring Catholic terms; there were no others, and Shakspere used what he had. One word seems to be avoided. The Mass is introduced only like Moore’s “neat little Testament, just kept to swear by.” It occurs only in the form of an oath, except in one instance, to which Mr. Wilkes devotes a chapter. Juliet, going to her confessor, asks:

“Are you at leisure, holy father, now,

Or shall I come to you at evening Mass?”

Mr. Wilkes goes into a lengthened argument to show that it was the custom at that time in England to celebrate Mass at night. He says: “I have found many illustrations from Catholic reviews and other reliable authorities of the practices of the hedge-priests, as they were called, in times of Catholic persecution, whose business it was to go in the darkness of the evening to the houses of the faithful to celebrate a nocturnal Mass.” We should be much pleased to see any such authorities. He cites only an article in the Manhattan Monthly last year, where a writer speaks of priests in Ireland “who often at dead of night fled to the mountain cave, the wooded glen, and wild rath to celebrate Mass for the faithful”; but travelling by night is one thing, and saying Mass at night is another. Again, there were no priests in England answering to the Irish hedge-priests. The priests in England found shelter in the houses of Catholic gentry; they had not a mass of poor and oppressed faithful among whom they lived. But neither in Ireland nor in England is there a single example that the writer has ever found of a Mass said in what may be called the evening—that is, between sunset and midnight—much less of its being so frequent an occurrence as to make Shakspere refer to evening Mass as an ordinary matter. Dodd’s History of the Church, Challoner’s Missionary Priests, the works of Father Parsons, Campion, and other 425Catholic writers of the time, never allude to any single case where such a Mass was said. Nor is there in any liturgical work reference to any such custom ever having obtained in England.

Mr. Wilkes seems to feel that the theory is not very solid. He next refers to the custom in some parts of saying a Low Mass immediately after the Sunday High Mass. “Shakspere may have considered the last or one o’clock Mass an evening Mass.” The play itself makes this untenable. It was late in the afternoon when Juliet went to the friar. When she comes back the nurse says:

“See where she comes from shrift with merry look”—

not half as charmingly as Longfellow describes Evangeline as most beautiful

“When, after confession,

Homeward serenely she walks with God’s benediction upon her.”

Then, a few lines lower down, Lady Capulet, in the same scene, says:

“’Tis now near night.”

This fixes the time too clearly to allow that any reference is made to a Mass about mid-day. “Evening Mass” is simply nonsense; but the phrase has charmed later writers, and several poets introduce the expression, just as poets and prose writers have all copied the Protestant Bible misprint, “Strain at a gnat,” instead of “Strain out a gnat.”

But the word Mass here is against all Catholic custom and reason. Juliet wishes to go to confession. She politely asks her confessor whether he is at leisure or whether she shall come again at a later hour. Would any one, under the same circumstances, propose to come to confession to the priest when he was saying Mass? It would be just the time when he could not possibly hear confessions. If he expected to say Mass soon, he would hear her then, and neither he nor she would think of putting it off till he had begun his Mass. Shakspere critics have boggled and blundered over this without seeing this incongruity, which to a Catholic is as patent as the day. What, then, does it mean? Juliet can ask only whether he will hear her then or whether she shall come later. Now, if we consider Shakspere to have written:

“Are you at leisure, holy father, now,

Or shall I come to you as evening wanes?”

the whole thing is as natural, consistent, and usual to Catholic ideas as can be. Then there is no such absurdity as evening Mass, or going to confession to a priest who is saying Mass. The dense ignorance of later times on every Catholic matter will easily account for the neglect to correct the palpable error in the actual text.

The fact that, while Shakspere speaks of religion as the monastic state, religious, monks, nuns, convents, monasteries, beads, penance, month’s mind, dirge, requiem, purgatory, indulgences, relics, shrines, the housel (Eucharist), christening or baptism, aneling (anointing), the cross, altar, holy-water, he nowhere in any of his plays speaks of the Mass (except in the oath “By the Mass”), is a strong argument against its use here. Convents and monasteries were abolished; relics and shrines were gone; no dirges or requiems resounded in the old church walls; allusions to them were simply allusions to something deemed past and gone; but there were nearly a thousand Mass-priests in 426England—men who carried their lives in their hands, over whom the severest edicts of the law were hanging like the sword of Damocles. To talk of the Mass as a service with respect was verging on high treason. Having avoided it everywhere else, he would scarcely introduce it here absurdly—no less absurdly to him than to us.

At that time, though the government was anti-Catholic, the state church was a mere matter of office. There was little zeal in its members—little more than conformity to law. The Puritans were active and zealous in spreading their doctrines; but the people were to a great extent still Catholic, and, with many nobles and gentlemen as leaders, and a greater number of priests than during the next two centuries, formed a power which was finally crushed by the Civil War. With this body Shakspere sympathized. He was not of the stuff to make a martyr. Ben Jonson and Massinger were, we know, Catholics, but not a single act of Shakspere’s is recorded that stamps him as a Catholic. He was not fined as a recusant, had no intercourse with known Catholics, in all arrests under the penal laws there is no allusion to him, even as using his undoubted influence with the great to shield some poor victim. With the mass of the people, at court and not at court, he ridiculed the new Gospellers, as we do Millerites or any other oddities. Against royal supremacy or the religion established by law, the Common Prayer, or the bishops who had been intruded into the old Catholic sees, Shakspere says nothing. His ridicule is never launched at them. His wit is turned, as was that of the court circle, at the Puritan element. The state church was respectable, but lacked earnestness, piety, and zeal: it was simply a state affair. Those whose minds and imaginations tended to effusive piety found themselves repulsed. Gradually they camped apart and formed new organizations. In Shakspere’s time the government and the government church laughed at them, when they should have used them to build up the Church of England. Just so in the following century they repulsed Wesley. Shakspere takes not a Catholic but the court-prelatic side; and there were no prophets on that side to see that James’ son was to die on the block and the Church of England be abolished by these very Puritans. That he had any direct idea of attacking Protestantism as a system, or making his dramas—with their coarse and often impure speech, such as then found favor with Elizabeth and her court—an arm against the Reformation, is absurd, and Mr. Wilkes, in going through play after play to note every praise of convents or religious practices as done with a direct view to elevate the Catholic Church, is extravagant. We have but to remember that Protestantism had then no institutions, no religious rites or practices, nothing absolutely for a poet or dramatist to employ as illustrations. Protestant poets and artists feel the poverty to this day, and in despair turn from cold, set formalism to Catholic themes, where poetry finds so many a subject.

Our American critic has endeavored to follow out Catholic thoughts, but not always successfully. Thus, in Richard III. Elizabeth addressing her murdered children:

“If yet your gentle souls fly in the air,”

and Buckingham:

427“If that your moody discontented souls

Do through the clouds behold this present hour,”

are gravely put down as evidences of Shakspere’s recognition of the doctrine of purgatory, as though every believer in ghosts must be a believer in purgatory. There are some comical remarks about Shakspere’s familiarity with “the intricacies of the Roman Catholic faith,” because in Henry VI. we find:

“Although by sight his sin be multiplied,”

when surely the Scriptural injunction to pluck out an eye that leads one to sin might explain it without his getting tangled in intricacies. His knowledge of the marriage service also seems peculiar; the rituals we know are hardly the origin of Shakspere’s marriage form.

Mr. Wilkes is evidently led away by his theory in his forced Catholic interpretation of many passages of the dramatist; and his desire to show that the whole series of dramas was a device of the Catholic Church to attack Protestantism in England induces him to strain much to support his view, and often to jump at unwarranted conclusions, as in making Hartley, in the strange Girachy case, to have been a priest. A man might be hanged as a Catholic priest—as Ury was a century ago within sight of the spot where Mr. Wilkes’ office now stands—and yet not have been even a Catholic. There is no Catholic record of priest or layman suffering in connection with this affair.

Hence, while we admit Mr. Wilkes’ diligence and ability in studying Shakspere, we must regret that his judgment, like that of too many, has been warped by the old anti-Catholic feeling, to the extent of giving the plays a character which neither friend nor foe of Catholicity at the time dreamed of ascribing to them.

In treating the question of Shakspere’s legal knowledge, he is free from bias, and hence easily perceives and often exposes the exaggeration which induces learned men of the law to interpret much that any attendant at courts, whether as witness or juror, might easily acquire as proof of serious legal study. The length to which the legal argument has been pushed has led to similar claims by other professions; but a young man of such Catholic stock as Shakspere undoubtedly was could scarcely have attempted to obtain admission to the bar in those days.

Certainly, as Mr. Wilkes well maintains, the amount of legal knowledge and the use of legal terms manifested in the plays are not of the character that we should expect from one who had held such eminent legal and judicial positions as Lord Bacon. Nor is this, as he shows, the only difficulty. The style of the dramas and that of Bacon’s acknowledged writings are utterly different; the conception of thoughts and their clothing in language are both distinct. The ear attuned to Shakspere finds in Bacon a measure, an adaptation of words, a symmetry of his own, utterly at variance with the dramatist. Wilkes’ euphonic test has great weight; and he well and aptly cites Bacon to show that the chancellor made style a test of disputed authorship. If the Baconian theory is but “a bubble which has never floated among the public with any amount of success,” it has doubtless found some advocates, and Mr. Wilkes has strengthened the arguments against it.

His argument against Shakspere as one who worships a lord and 428despises the middle and lower classes has but the one fault: that it takes our modern American theories as the test—our theories, and not our practice; for after all personal liberty has, in a certain sense, steadily declined in America during the last century, and many of the rights possessed by individuals in Shakspere’s time, and enjoyed by our ancestors down to the Revolution, have been swept away in the name of liberty, while general and local taxation has reached a point that often amounts practically to confiscation of all revenue, and sometimes of the whole estate. In point of fact, the lower classes among us are more oppressed in person and property by official power, and less able to obtain legal redress, than they were in England in Shakspere’s time. The distinction of rank was then as absolute almost as that of the Hindoo castes, and the contemptuous style of the day in which the aristocratic portion treated their inferiors was caught up too readily by Shakspere. Mr. Wilkes develops this element steadily through the work, and makes it, as we have seen, the basis of one of his heaviest charges against the dramatist. He treats the point skilfully, and the subject affords a fine scope for discussion. For our own part, we think that he carries his theory too far, and that Shakspere may find an advocate who will relieve him from much of the obloquy and secure his claim to respect in America.

Shakspere literature is now a field so vast, and has won contributions from so many able minds and eloquent pens, that it requires some courage to produce a new work on the topic at large; yet Mr. Wilkes has certainly produced a volume that will take a prominent place among the Shaksperiana. It gives utterance to many new views; the whole treatment, being thoroughly American, is fresh and free from much of the conventional bias that is almost inevitable in England; while solid German learning, by its very seriousness and profundity, seems often to miss the point and finesse of the dramatist.

The Catholic part is so prominent that we could not but treat it plainly and frankly, addressing as we do more exclusively a circle of Catholic readers. We do so with no wish to be merely censorious, and with our recognition of the author’s evidently careful study and desire to treat the question fairly.

“He presents the volume,” he avows, “rather as a series of inquiries than as dogmatic doctrine, and strives,” he says, “to support them only by such an amount of controversy as is legitimately due from one who invites the public to a new discussion.”

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NEW PUBLICATIONS.

Essays and Reviews By Rt. Rev. J. L. Spalding, D.D. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 355. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1877.

The author of these essays has been recently raised to the dignity of the episcopate and appointed to the newly-created see of Peoria, Ill. His name and fame as an author, preacher, and orator are already widely known in this country. His Life of Archbishop Spalding, his illustrious uncle, will remain one of the landmarks of Catholic history and biography in the United States. By this important and valuable work the name of the learned and distinguished author is at present best known outside of the immediate circle with whom friendship and the round of daily life connect him. He has done, however, much more than this. He has used his great gifts incessantly and in whatever way they could prove of service to the cause which every word he utters and every line he writes proclaim he has alone at heart—the growth and strengthening of Christ’s church, the defence of Catholic faith and doctrine, and the spread of Christ’s kingdom on earth. With this view he has even gone down to that lowly, much neglected, yet most important field of editing a series of Catholic school-books—that issued by the Catholic Publication Society.

He has been a constant and most valued contributor to the pages of this magazine, and a selection of his articles—which, had he chosen, might have been much larger—goes to form the present volume of Essays and Reviews. As they come before us now in book-form we are glad to have this opportunity of saying publicly what we have always felt, not only in regard to these but also all other contributions from the same pen: that they are of the very best kind of that peculiarly modern, peculiarly favorite, and peculiarly difficult form of literature—the magazine article. Dr. Brownson used to say that there were not half a dozen men in this country who could write a really good review article. Whether that be so or not, we are sure that the veteran reviewer would not have excluded these essays from his category. And what we here state regarding them is only an echo of the general opinion, so far as it reaches us through the medium of the public press and the private verdict of excellent judges. The style is fascinating, glowing, brilliant. There are here and there passages of extreme beauty and eloquence. There is nothing like mere verbiage or redundance. There is a man behind it all—a man of knowledge, of wide yet careful culture, writing in dead earnest, observing the march of events while the history of the past is ever present to him, with power and courage to say what he means in a manner that all will understand. Not one of these articles fell dead. The leading one, “The Catholic Church in the United States, 1776-1876,” excited universal interest and attention not alone in this country but abroad, and a distinguished writer in the Correspondant made it the chief text of an important article on the United States. No history or historical sketch that we have seen gives so complete and profound a view of the history, the trials, and struggles of the Catholic Church in this country within the century as that article. The other essays are of a piece with it. Their very titles speak their timeliness: “The Persecution of the Church in the German Empire,” “Prussia and the Church” (three essays), “German Journalism,” etc. Perhaps the most valuable of all, however, are the three essays on the “Comparative Influence of Catholicism and Protestantism on National Prosperity,” for which M. de Laveleye’s well-known pamphlet furnished a text. They are eminently characteristic of the writer. He faces everything, shirks nothing. He takes up the subjects of “Wealth,” “Education,” and “Morality”—just the very points on which Protestant writers are in the habit of claiming superiority for Protestant over Catholic nations—and how he treats them we leave to the reader’s enjoyment.

We are often asked the kind of article needed for The Catholic World. We can recommend no better text-book to 430such applicants than this volume of Essays and Reviews; nor can we recommend anything fresher, better, or more interesting to Catholics generally who are anxious to defend their faith on points where it is often believed to be most assailable.

Magister Choralis: a Theoretical and Practical Manual of Gregorian Chant for the use of the clergy, seminarists, organists, choir-masters, choristers, etc. By Rev. Francis Xavier Haberl, cathedral choir-master, Ratisbon. Translated and enlarged (from the fourth German edition) by Rev. N. Donnelly, Cathedral Church of the Immaculate Conception, Dublin. Ratisbon, New York, and Cincinnati: Frederick Pustet.

This excellent and most timely work is one we have long desired to see. Many pastors of churches and their organists have been willing to do something towards the introduction of the holy chant in the divine offices, but the means of instruction have been almost wholly wanting. Very few organists and choir-directors in the United States have made any study whatever of the chant, and the greater number are not able to read even its notation. We have felt and lamented the difficulties in the way of those who, convinced of the claims of Gregorian chant, and wearied and disgusted with the wretched cheap concert performances they have been forced to endure at Holy Mass and Vespers, have longed to rid themselves of the “church music” nuisance and again hear the true song of the church resounding in the sanctuary. Even with ample pecuniary resources it would not have been enough to issue an order to the choir-director to organize a Gregorian choir, or even to sing some portions of the chant from the organ gallery. The work before us solves almost all these difficulties. Of course the organist will need to study the character of the chant in other works, that he may be able to appreciate its tonality and style, and to give it its true accompaniment, without which he would be more likely to produce poor music than good chant, or a detestable mixture of both, such as one commonly finds published in various Catholic “choir-books” and books of so-called “Services of the Catholic Church.”

We recommend to Gregorian organists the careful study of the harmonies of John Lambert in his harmonized Gradual and Vesperal, the Organum Comitans by Dr. Witt, and the Accompagnment d’Orgue pour le Graduel et Antiphonarium de Rheims et Cambrai, by Messrs. Dietsch and Tessier.

The only faults we have to find with Father Haberl’s work are, first, the rules as given for the Italian pronunciation of Latin, especially for the pronunciation of the word excelsis, which is directed to be pronounced egg-shell-sis! and, second, the rule on page 66 directing the elision of the last vowel of a word when followed by another vowel in the next word, in the verses of hymns; and we regret to see this rule carried out in the new Vesperal as published by Mr. Pustet. This rule may do for reading classic poetry, but, if we mistake not, such elision is absolutely forbidden in the recitation of the divine Office, whether read or sung. In all former editions of the Vesperal we have found an extra note provided for the superfluous syllable.

We cannot bring ourselves to sing or say

Sit laus Patr-ac Paraclito,

or

Quænam lingua tib-o Lancea, debitas

Grates pro merit-est apta rependere?

Christi vivificum namqu-aperis latus

Und-Ecclesia nascitur.

How is one to sing namqu-aperis? and what are we to think of clavor-aditus for clavorum aditus, and ill-hic for ille, hic? We would like to be referred to some authority on this subject. That this work has already reached the fourth edition in Ratisbon is a very encouraging sign of the restoration of Gregorian chant among our German brethren. May it find a wide-spread sale in our own country!

Golden Sand: A Collection of little Counsels for the Sanctification and Happiness of Daily Life. Translated from the French. New York: Sadlier & Co. 1877.

We have not seen for a long time a more charming little hand-book of daily piety than the modest volume of which a young lady, who is too modest to put her name on the title-page, has here given us an excellent translation. Miss Ella J. McMahon, to whom we are indebted for the publication of this version 431of Paillettes d’Or, has turned the simple and unaffected original into equally simple and attractive English. First published periodically in the form of tracts, these short chapters of practical counsels were afterwards collected in pocket volumes, and the book now before us, though it could be read through in a morning, contains the series for several years. It is addressed to people in the world, and it embraces rules for the sanctification of all the actions of life, for making home happy and the domestic hearth an altar of blessing and sacrifice. No one can read a few of its pages without feeling. “Here is something that just suits my case; the circumstances described here are just my own; the temptations are mine; the little trials are mine; nothing can be easier than to make the virtues mine, too.” Several chapters of the book, for instance, are devoted to what the author styles “The Angels of the Hearth,” and here is a description of “The Angel of Little Sacrifices”:

“Have you never seen her at work?

“Have you never at least felt her influence?

“In every Christian family and in all pious communities, as the image of his providence in the household, God has placed the angel of little sacrifices, trying to remove all the thorns, to lighten all the burdens, to share all the fatigues.

“She has for her motto these gracious words of an amiable saint: Good makes no noise, and noise effects no good.

“Thus she is like a ray of sunlight, lighting, warming, giving life to all, but inconveniencing no one.

“We feel that she is with us, because we no longer experience those misunderstandings of heretofore, those rancorous thoughts, those deliberate coolnesses which spoil family life; because we no longer hear those sharp, rude words which wound so deeply; because affectionate sentiments mount readily from the heart to the lips, and life is sweeter.

“Who, then, has absorbed that self-love which would not yield; that egotism which mingled with the most sincere friendship; that self-indulgence, in fine, which always sought ease?

“The angel of little sacrifices has received from heaven the mission of those angels of whom the prophet speaks, who removed the stones from the road, lest they should bruise the feet of travellers.

“And that of the angels who, according to the simple legend of the first Christians, scattered rose-leaves 'neath the feet of Jesus and Mary in their flight into Egypt....

“But, like them, she is oftener invisible; she does her work in secret.

“There is a place less commodious than another; she chooses it, saying with a sweet smile, How comfortable I am here!

“There is some work to be done, and she presents herself for it simply with the joyous manner of one who finds her happiness in so doing.

“It is an object of trifling value, of which she deprives herself to give to her who the evening before has manifested a desire to possess one like it.

“How many oversights repaired by this unknown hand!

“How many neglected things put in their places, without our ever seeing how they came there!

“How many little joys procured for another without his ever having mentioned to any one the happiness which they would give him!

“Who has known thus how to do good in secret? Who has known how to divine the secrets of the heart?

“Does a dispute arise? She knows how to settle it by a pleasant word which wounds no one, and falls upon the slight disturbance like a ray of sunlight upon a cloud.

“Should she hear of two hearts estranged, she has always new means of reuniting them without their being able to show her any gratitude, so sweet, simple, and natural is what she does.

“But who will tell the thorns which have torn her hands, the pain her heart has endured, the humiliations her charity has borne?

“And yet she is always smiling.

“Does sacrifice give her joy?

“Have you never seen her at work, the angel of little sacrifices?

“On earth she is called a mother, a friend, a sister, a wife.

“In heaven she is called a saint.”

Here is another example of the familiar and easy spirit, the clearness, the practicality of this admirable little counsellor:

“What is my Cross of To-day?—It is that person whom Providence has placed near me, and whom I dislike; who humiliates me constantly by her 432disdainful manner; who wearies me by her slowness in the work which I share with her; who excites my jealousy because she is loved more than I and because she succeeds better than I; who irritates me by her chatter, her frivolity, or even by her attentions to me.

“It is that person who, for some vague reason, I believe to be inimical to me; who, according to my excited imagination, watches me, criticises me, ridicules me.

“She is there, always there.... My efforts to avoid her are of no avail.

“A mysterious power seems to multiply these appearances before me....

“This is my most painful cross; the others are very small compared to this.

“Circumstances change, temptations diminish, positions improve, misfortune becomes endurable by habit, but persons who are disagreeable to us always irritate us more and more.

“How I Must Bear my Cross of To-day.—By not showing in any way either the weariness, the dislike, or the involuntary repulsion which her presence causes me. By obliging myself to render her some service, it matters little whether she knows it—it is a secret between God and me.

“To say nearly every day something good of her talents, of her virtues, her tact.... Something, certainly, I will find to praise.

“To pray seriously for her soul, and even to go so far as to ask God to love her and leave her with me.

“Dear companion, blessed messenger of God’s mercy, you have unconsciously the mission of sanctifying me, and I will not be ungrateful.

“Angel of a rude and appalling exterior, were it not for thee I would fall into humiliating faults. My nature disdains and repulses thee, but, oh! how my heart loves thee.”

There is an abundance of good advice which will touch directly upon a multitude of the commonest faults of good people—those apparently trivial sins and imperfections which cause so much unhappiness at home, which make family life so hard and bitter, and place so many obstacles in the path of perfection.

The book cannot fail to do good. It will be a favorite companion of the pious soul, an affectionate and never unwelcome monitor to the cold and careless.

Life of the Venerable Clement Mary Hofbauer, Priest of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer. By a Member of the Order of Mercy, authoress of the Life of Catharine McAuley, Life of St. Alphonsus, Glimpses of Pleasant Homes, etc. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1877.

We have received advance sheets of this beautiful and most interesting life by the gifted author of the Life of Catharine McAuley. Father Hofbauer was one of God’s heroes, and the story of his life will be found full of interest and profit. He is fortunate in his biographer, whose clever pen seems particularly adapted to a style of literary work than which there is none more pleasing and useful. An extended notice will appear later.

The Lady of Neville Court. A Tale of the Times. By the author of Marion Howard, etc., etc. London: Burns & Oates. 1877. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society.)

It is really refreshing to come across a simple, unaffected, yet most interesting story such as this. Its only fault is that happiest of faults—brevity. The characters are few, natural, well contrasted, and well developed; the situations well wrought up, yet by the most natural of means. The pathetic portions are indescribably touching, but constantly and happily relieved by bright dialogue or playfully humorous narrative. Richard O’Meara is a genuine Catholic hero, albeit a modern one; and Maud Neville as sweet and noble a woman as we have ever met with in fiction. The real art of the book lies in its genuine artlessness, and we trust the author may give us many such.

In the July number of The Catholic World will appear the first instalment of a new story, entitled Alba’s Dream, by the author of Are You My Wife?, A Salon in Paris before the War, Number Thirteen, M. Gombard’s Mistake, etc., etc. The story will be completed in three parts.

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