Volume 25 / Part 1 — SIX SUNNY MONTHS. BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE,” “GRAPES AND THORNS,” ETC. CHAPTER XIV. THE RAVEN AND THE DOVE. CONCLUSION. (continued 2)

It is perfectly true that the survival of the soul is, like other facts, susceptible of proof. Yet not all facts are proved by the same kind of proofs. There are, even in the natural sciences, facts which must be proved by reasoning, owing to the impossibility of ascertaining them directly by the experimental method. We must not expect, therefore, that souls, which are spiritual and invisible, should, after departing from their bodies, give sensible signs of their survival in a different state. Nor do we need any such sensible proof of their survival; for we have proofs of a higher order, by which we show that the human soul cannot die. We therefore establish not only the fact of its survival, but also the necessity of the fact. On the other hand, if a soul were to appear before us, we might suspect the objective reality of the apparition; at best we might simply conclude that such a soul has been kept in existence; but we would have no ground for concluding that all other human souls are likewise kept 506in existence, and that they must remain in existence for ever. In fact, could not that soul be annihilated some time after its apparition? Or could we logically maintain that the survival of one soul suffices to prove the survival of all other souls? It is therefore impossible to prove the immortality of all human souls by means of individual apparitions; to establish it a general principle is indispensable, and this principle is drawn from the very essence of the soul and from the sanctity and justice of its Creator.

But “why does not the soul in some way manifest itself”? This question is very easily answered. The departed souls are either in heaven, or in hell, or in purgatory. If in hell or in purgatory, they are there like prisoners, and cannot freely roam about. If, on the contrary, they are in heaven, they have none other than spiritual relations with this world, except by special dispensation of divine Providence. And again, why should departed souls manifest themselves in a sensible manner? To convince us that the Scriptural doctrine of immortality is true? As if our faith in the word of God were based on the testimony of our senses, not on the authority and truthfulness of God himself. “Because thou hast seen me, Thomas, thou hast believed,” said our Lord to his sceptical disciple: “blessed are they that have not seen and have believed.” Miracles, in the present order of Providence, are not the rule, but the exception: hence the sensible manifestation of departed souls, as being above the requirements of nature, is not to be made the test of their survival.

“Were they still in the flesh,” we are told, “no obstacle would prevent their hurrying to join the objects of their affection.” Certainly; for if they were still in the flesh they would belong to this world; but, since they are no more in the flesh, they now belong to the world of spirits, which is invisible to our eyes of flesh, and from which they cannot communicate with us in sensible forms without a special command or permission of God. It is not true that they “hover about us in spirit form”; this is a pagan conception. Nor is it true that the soul survives “as a real man, woman, or child.” Souls have no sex, and man cannot be without a body; hence no departed soul is either man, woman, or child: it is a soul simply, and its “personal identity” consists in its being the same soul which was in the body.

To the question, “Why do not souls manifest themselves in a sensible way?” a second answer can be given by replying that many souls have thus manifested themselves. This answer, good and legitimate as it is, is ridiculed by sceptical critics, who, while constantly appealing to facts, are invariably determined to spurn all facts contrary to their theories. Our writer says:

“Equally inconclusive is the little we have of positive testimony on the subject. It is true that in all ages there have been some who have asserted the power of actually seeing and speaking with departed souls, and the whole tribe of spirit-mediums pretend to it now. As to what has happened in bygone times it is, of course, impossible now to base any conclusion upon it. The circumstances cannot be inquired into, and, moreover, one single witness coming before us and submitting his testimony to our scrutiny is worth more than a thousand who are out of our reach. The question is: Does anybody at this day really have intercourse with the spirits of the dead? The spirit-rappers and their followers say Yes, but the great incredulous 507world, after hearing all they have to present in confirmation of their assertions, still says No. There is so much fraud and nonsense connected with the business that the scientific mind rejects it contemptuously. The very phenomena themselves are clouded with a suspicion of jugglery and deceit, while there is a wide divergence of opinion as to their interpretation, even granting them to be honestly produced.”

We agree with the author that spiritists have no intercourse with the spirits of the dead, and we add that no mortal has the power to call back to this world a departed soul. This, we think, is certain both by authority and philosophy. Hence, if any spirits are really made to appear and to answer questions—which we know to be a fact, though not so frequent as simpletons are apt to believe—those spirits are not the souls of the departed, but the lying spirits of hell, who volunteer to play nonsensical tricks for the amusement and the perversion of their foolish consultors. But that departed souls have now and then appeared to men in visible form is a fact established on indisputable historical evidence. Do we not read in the Bible that the ghost of Samuel appeared to Saul, rebuked his recklessness, and intimated to him the impending defeat of his army and his own death? Nor can it be objected that the ghost was a devil, for devils do not know the future actions of men; nor can it be said that the apparition was a delusion, for the ghost was seen by the witch before it was seen by Saul; and the whole narrative of the sacred writer is so worded as to exclude the possibility of explaining away the fact by such a loose interpretation. It will be said, however, that “the scientific mind” rejects all such facts with absolute contempt. To which we may reply that “the scientific mind” has no right whatever to reject historical facts. Science is based on facts; its duty is to account for them by a sufficient reason, not to deny them when they transcend our comprehension. We know that there is a class of modern scientists who contend that everything must be explained by the properties of matter, and that no exception can be admitted in favor of supernatural facts. But we do not see how this mental disposition can be called “scientific.” If physicists refuse to acknowledge all the facts which transcend the limits of their sphere, why could not the musician reject all the phenomena which transcend his musical knowledge, or the chemist ridicule all the astronomical calculations? It is evident that every science must dwell within its proper limits, and therefore no weight can be attached to the opinions of mere physicists when they presume to decide questions entirely extraneous to their profession. Thus the facts remain, and all attempts at discrediting them must be accounted idle and unscientific talk. Lazarus, dead and buried, at the voice of Christ revived. The fact was public and recognized by Christ’s enemies. “The scientific mind” will not deny it. But then, we ask, how could the soul of Lazarus retake possession of his body, if it had ceased to exist? and what else was the rising of the body from its tomb than a sensible manifestation of the soul returned to its primitive office? We read in the Gospels, in the Acts of the Apostles, and in ecclesiastical history of many dead recalled to life either by Christ or by his disciples and followers. In all such facts souls have manifested 508themselves. We might mention a great number of genuine apparitions well known to all readers of the lives of saints; but as we have neither time nor intention to enter into a critical discussion of the evidence by which they are supported, we shall content ourselves with citing the glorious apparitions of Lourdes, of La Salette, and of Marpingen, which, as all the world knows, are unquestionable facts, accompanied and followed by a continuous series of public miracles, to which “the scientific mind” of modern thinkers has found nothing to object, though it has been formally and repeatedly challenged to disprove them by its pretended superior knowledge. Our Catholic readers know most of the facts to which we allude; but it is probable that the writer to whom we reply is not acquainted with them, and we would suggest to him to read M. Lasserre’s book on the apparition of Lourdes, where he will find, we trust, sufficient evidence concerning the reality and nature of the facts just mentioned. But we repeat that a Christian and a philosopher has no need of sensible manifestations to believe in the immortality of the human soul. Reason and the Gospel afford such a strong evidence of this truth that all further evidence may seem superfluous. When unbelievers ask for apparitions or sensible manifestations, we may answer them as Abraham answered the rich man: “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they believe if one rise again from the dead” (Luke xvi. 31).

Our writer sums up his arguments as follows:

“The fact, then, seems to be—and we would earnestly press it upon the attention of religious thinkers of every kind, and especially upon theologians and clergymen, whose peculiar duty it is to deal with such subjects—the fact seems to be that analogy, reason, revelation, and human testimony alike fail to establish the doctrine that man can exist as a man without a material body. Books such as that of Dr. Nisbet rather add to than remove the philosophical difficulties of the subject so long as they leave the main question untouched. Moreover, in explaining away the popular interpretation of the Scriptures in regard to it, they tend to produce very much the same results as have been produced by the efforts to reconcile Genesis with geology. The conclusion that the Bible does not teach science correctly has been followed by the conclusion that it does not teach science at all; and so, if we agree with Dr. Nisbet that what it says about the resurrection is not to be taken literally, we shall be in great danger of rejecting its testimony altogether.”

This is to say that the Scriptures, in the Protestant system of free interpretation, lose all authority, inasmuch as the word of man is thereby substituted for the word of God. Thus far we agree with the writer. But that religious thinkers, theologians, and clergymen should undertake a new demonstration of the soul’s immortality and of the resurrection of the flesh, we consider unnecessary. Theologians and clergymen have done their duty on this point with such completeness as to make all sceptics inexcusable. All that is wanted is that the sceptics themselves undertake to study the works of such theologians and philosophers as have answered the objections of the materialists of the last century. Scepticism is ignorance. There is no remedy for it but study—the study of that special branch of knowledge on which the solution of any given question depends.

Our writer imagines that some “efforts” have been made “to reconcile Genesis with geology.” 509This, however, is not the case. The truth is that a class of scientists have made some “efforts” to turn geology against Genesis, and that those efforts have been unsuccessful. A science which denies to-day what it considered yesterday as demonstrated, and which is apt to deny to-morrow what it teaches to-day, needs none of our “efforts” to be reconciled with Genesis. When the facts of geology shall be well known, and when the theories built on those facts shall be logically correct, then we shall have no need of “reconciling” geology with Genesis; for geology will teach us nothing in opposition to the revealed origin of things.

As to the conclusion “that the Bible does not teach science correctly,” or “that it teaches no science at all,” we will only remark that the Biblical record of creation is a history of facts, not a treatise of science. Hence the proposition that the Bible does not teach science correctly has no meaning, whilst the proposition that the Bible teaches no science at all is perfectly true, although the facts themselves which it relates must be looked upon as the groundwork of geological science.

But our writer seems to take a different view of the subject. He says:

“Many believers in Christianity deny that the world was made in six days, although the Bible says it was made in six days; deny that a flood ever covered the tops of the mountains, that there ever were witches and magicians, and that Joshua made the sun and the moon stand still, although the Bible asserts all these things; why may they not likewise safely deny as unscientific the dogma of a future existence of all individual human beings? This is the dilemma into which speculations like those of Dr. Nisbet bring us; and if he and his school can furnish a way out of it, they will confer an immense benefit upon the whole world of anxious but sincere doubters upon this great subject.”

Such is the end of the article we have been examining. We would tell the writer that if there are believers in Christianity who deny anything revealed by God in the Bible, such believers are not consistent with themselves; for why should they believe in Christianity if they disbelieve the Bible? If the word of God in the Old Testament does not command their assent, why should the same word of God in the New Testament cause them to believe? It is clear that, if they believed on God’s authority, they could not reject anything based on that authority. A belief of this sort is not divine faith, but human opinion; it is not submission to God’s authority, but a denial of God’s authority in all things which man chooses to disbelieve; and consequently such a belief is not that faith “without which it is impossible to please God.” It is, however, the faith of many advanced Protestants; and thus we are not surprised that the writer considers such an irrational form of belief as consistent with the mutilated form of “Christianity” with which he is familiar. But we Catholics—we heirs of the apostolic doctrine transmitted to us in an uninterrupted manner by the universal church—we believe everything that has been revealed either in the Old or in the New Testament. We do not question the fact that there have been witches and magicians, nor do we see any reason for questioning it; we believe in like manner what the Bible says about the Flood, the six days of creation, Joshua’s great miracle, and everything else; by which we mean that those facts which we 510read in the Bible, whether we have a true appreciation of them or not, are all true, and that the difficulties we may find in their explanation arise from our ignorance, which the modern progress of science has done very little to dispel. Thus, while we are free to choose among the various explanations of Biblical facts, we all agree in believing the facts themselves. But, if this is true of those passages of Scripture whose meaning is obscure, and whose interpretation has not been settled by the authority of the church or by the consensus of the doctors, it is not true of those other passages whose meaning is obvious and unmistakable, or whose interpretation has been sanctioned by the unanimous decision of the universal church. Hence, while we may freely discuss the six days of creation and the astronomical result of Joshua’s dealings with the sun, we have no reasonable ground for discussing or doubting “the dogma of a future existence of all individual human souls.” To say that this dogma is “unscientific” is to assume what neither has been nor can be proved; unless, indeed, we call “unscientific” every truth which ranges above the compass of experimental science; in which case even logic itself would be utterly unscientific.

Whether Dr. Nisbet or his school can furnish a way out of the difficulties complained of by our writer we do not know. It is probable, however, that neither Dr. Nisbet nor any other doctor of the same school can successfully combat the invading spirit of infidelity so long as they do not give up their Protestant method of reasoning and their Protestant profession. Protestantism is itself one kind of infidelity; it cannot contribute in any way towards the restoration of sound philosophical or theological ideas; it can only sow doubt, discord, and inconsistency, thus paving the way for religious scepticism and its concomitant evils. The history of Protestantism is sufficient evidence of the fact. It is vain, therefore, to hope that Dr. Nisbet or his school will “confer any benefit upon the whole world of anxious but sincere doubters” by establishing either the immortality of the soul or the resurrection of the flesh on impregnable proofs. Let, then, all anxious but sincere doubters turn to Catholic doctors and Catholic books; let them hear the church—the old, calumniated church, the column of truth, the heir of the apostles, of the prophets, of the patriarchs, and the spouse of Christ. She will teach them how to reconcile reason with faith and religion with science, so as to believe rationally and consistently whatever God has revealed, while preserving the fullest liberty of judgment in regard to all other things. Yet we must warn these “anxious but sincere doubters” that no benefit will accrue to them, if they approach our divines or read our books with that spirit of contention which is so common among all the Protestant sects. If they are “anxious” to know the truth, they must not rely exclusively on the strength of their reasoning powers, but must be ready to yield to authority in all things connected with Christian faith. If they are “sincere,” humility must be a part of their sincerity.

To conclude: We have met and answered the reasons alleged by the writer in the Sun against the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the flesh; and although we have scarcely developed 511the reflections suggested by those reasons, yet we confidently believe that our brief remarks will be found sufficient to set at rest the arguments of the sceptic. As to the doctrine of immortality in particular, of which the same writer desired “a solid and impregnable philosophical demonstration,” we have shown that the human soul neither can be destroyed by any created cause nor will be destroyed by God; accordingly, the human soul is intrinsically and extrinsically immortal. Our proofs have been few, but simple and intelligible; and we trust that the writer who gave us occasion to speak of this subject, if he chances to read these pages, will soon acquire the conviction that the doctrine of immortality was really in no need of a new philosophical demonstration.

SANNAZZARO.

One Sunday morning, while at Naples, we went to hear our Mass of obligation in the church of the Servites, erected by the poet Sannazzaro in honor of the divine Maternity of Mary, and called after his famous poem, De Partu Virginis. It stands on the Mergellina, that pezzo di cielo caduto in terra, as the Neapolitans say—“a fragment of heaven to earth vouchsafed”—and certainly the most beautiful shore on which the sun shines. It was this shore that inspired the ardent Stazio. Not far off is the tomb of Virgil, and the place where Pollio lived, and the grove where Silius Italicus conceived the idea of his Punica. Here, too, Sannazzaro had a charming villa which tempted the very Muses to descend from the mountain to dwell on the sandy shore, as Ariosto says:

“Alle Camene

Lasciar fa i monti e abitar le arene.”

Here he wrote most of his poems and gathered around him all the wit and talent of Naples on those Dies geniales, which were as famous at that time as the Noctes Ambrosianæ of Christopher North at Edinburgh in our younger days, though not quite so convivial, perhaps. This villa had about it a certain perfume of antiquity of which we know nothing in these times, and which we affect to despise. It was the natural atmosphere of this Virgilian region, and it had an inspiration of its own which must be taken into account in reading the works of Sannazzaro. He has celebrated his villa in an ode worthy of Horace. He did not, however, notwithstanding his classical tastes, dedicate his household altar to Apollo, or even to Venus—he was too genuine a Christian for that—but to the tutelar care of San Nazzaro, whom he reckoned among his ancestors. When nearly done with life, he built a church on the spot, in memory of that divine Birth which he had so sweetly sung, and attached thereto a convent of Servite monks, to whom he gave the income of eight thousand florins for the solemn celebration of Christmas and certain expiatory services for himself, his ancestors, and King Frederick III. of Naples. Here 512he also set up an altar to San Nazzaro, and ordered his own tomb to be built.

We had repeatedly passed the Church del Parto without being able to find it, so embedded is it among houses on the side of the cliff. And the entrance is from a side terrace, to which you ascend by a flight of steps, as to the court of a private dwelling. This terrace commands a view that surpasses all the most vivid imagination could conceive. The Castel del Ovo advances directly before you into the incomparable bay, the waters of which, generally blue as the heavens, were at this early hour all crimson and gold and amethyst, with great floods of silver coming in from the sea. Behind them were islands, such as we see in dreams, rising out of the magic waves: Capri, with its marvellous grottos, clouded with the memory of Tiberius; Procida, with its fort on the volcanic rocks; and Ischia, where the beautiful Vittoria Colonna, beloved of Michael Angelo, retired to mourn her husband’s loss, and beneath which the giant Typhœus, transfixed by a thunderbolt from Jupiter, lies imprisoned, at long intervals groaning with pain, and sending forth in his rage fearful eruptions of burning lava. On the inner curve of the bay sits Naples like a queen, with her palaces, her citadels, her white villas gleaming like jewels—her glance all flame, and her heart all fire. Beyond rises Mount Vesuvius, with its cone of perfect symmetry, full of mystery and terror, its summit now flecked with patches of snow, looking like great white flowers that bloom

“Around the crater’s burning lips,

Sweetening the very edge of doom.”

A light vapor, rather than smoke, issued from the top, no longer dark and foreboding like the evil genius whose vase was unsealed, but of soft, dove-like hues, as if some pacific herald. At its foot sleep fair villages among peaceful olive-trees, wreathed with vines, and lulled into forgetfulness by the gentle waves that caress the shore. Harmonious tints blend earth and sky and sea, but they are constantly varying with the rolling hours. There is nothing monotonous here, except the languid air which wearily plays among the odorous trees without the force to agitate their branches. Nature is here a genuine siren, half-earth, half-sea, whose magic voice wooes many a wanderer still to forget his native shore. We feel its charm as we survey the matchless landscape. An electric fire comes over the soul—admiration, wonder, emotions no words can express. Poetry is in the golden air, the bright waves, the enchanting shores, the intense hues that color everything—yes, even in the awful scars and lava streams that furnished the ancients with their ideas of Tartarus, and made Virgil place his descent thereto near the tenebrosa palus—the gloomy lake of Avernus, formed from the overflowing of the Acheron—

“Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep.”

The church bell awoke us from this delightful vision, and we entered the open door. It is a small building whose walls within are tinged a delicate sea-green, and have white mouldings, as if to harmonize with the foam-crested waves of the bay without. The windows are mere lunettes, high up in the arches, and below are five or six deep recesses with altars and paintings. The white marble basin at the entrance, for holy-water, 513looks like a flower on its tall, slender stem. On it is graven a shield like a chess-board—perhaps the arms of some noble of this farniente land to whom life was a mere game. We were at once struck by a singular crucifix on a kind of a tripod, under a canopy like a penthouse. Near by stood the Addolorata—the Madonna of Many Sorrows—in black like a nun, with wimple and veil, a stole embroidered with gold, and a wheel of gilt arrows piercing the silver heart on her breast. One poor dim lamp was burning before her. Opposite was a more cheerful altar with the Virgin del Parto, the titular of the church, gaily dressed after the Italian taste, and surrounded with lights and flowers. These two Madonnas seemed to personify Bethlehem and Calvary—the Alpha and Omega of the Christian mysteries—and between them we knelt to hear Mass.

The church was nearly full of people in bright holiday attire, quite absorbed in their devotions, and, though mostly of the lower classes, so-called, they all responded in Latin to the litany at the close of the service. Near by us, in the pavement, was a tomb-stone with the bas-relief of a boy with a book under his head, another in his hand, and one at his feet. This was a promising youth named Fabrizio Manlio, who so loved the Mergellina that, when ill, he wished to be brought here to die, and here be buried, as his touching epitaph relates. But that was three hundred years ago, and the father who here records the tears he shed long since rejoined his son, and now there is not a smile the less at sunny Naples. Why lay aught too much to heart?

In a recess at the right is a noted painting, generally known at Naples as the Diavolo di Mergellina. This is no new fiend, but the old outcast from heaven vanquished by St. Michael, the great captain of the heavenly host, a picture by Leonardo da Pistoja, a Tuscan painter of the Da Vinci school. The archangel, “severe in youthful beauty,” is girded with a vest of heavenly azure, and from his shoulders spring broad wings of many hues—green, yellow, and purple—with rays like long arrows of gold. His right hand seemingly disdains to use its sword—“Satan’s dire dread”—but holds it behind him, while with the left he thrusts his long spear through the demon’s neck and nails him to the ground. His face is perfectly passionless, as if not even so terrible a combat could ruffle the serenity of his angelic nature. The Diavolo is one of those strange demons that entice souls down to the gulf of perdition, common in the middle ages, with two faces, not Janus-wise, but with the second face on the bowels, of most startling character. The fiend before us has the beautiful face and bust of a woman, said to be the genuine portrait of a lady who became passionately enamored of Diomedes Carafa, Bishop of Ariano, who lies buried at the foot of the altar beneath, with the triumphant inscription: Et fecit victoriam, halleluja! which may be applied both to the bishop and the archangel. The round arms of this fair demon are drawn up under her head. Her long, golden locks

“In masses bright

Fall like floating rays of light”

around her shoulders and half-veil her bosom. Her youthful face is deadly pale, but not contracted, and her eyes are cold and vigilant. The lower face, on the contrary, is 514old and convulsed, as if crying with pain. The hair is grizzled and witch-like. The legs are like two scaly serpents, twisted and writhing, and the bat-like wings shade off to a lurid brown and yellow. The contrast in these two faces is very striking and has a deep moral. It is a common proverb at Naples to compare too tempting a project, or too seducing a beauty, to the Diavolo di Mergellina.

The high altar of the church is of inlaid marble. At the sides are niches containing statues of SS. Jacobo and Nazzaro, the patrons of the founder. On what is called the arch of triumph over the head of the nave is an old painting of the Annunciation, the Virgin in one spandrel with the dove on her hand, and the angel in the other with the lily stem. Along the connecting arch is the distich from Sannazzaro:

“Virginitas Partus discordes tempore longo,

Virginia in gremio fœdera pacis habent.”^[82]

In a neighboring recess is an Adoration of the Magi, which contends with that of the Castello Nuovo as being the one given Sannazzaro by Frederick of Aragon, painted by Van Eyck, and said by Vasari to be the first oil-painting ever brought to Italy.

We searched a long time in vain for the tomb of Sannazzaro. Chapels, flagstones, and mural inscriptions, all underwent a severe scrutiny; and, supposing it must have been destroyed in some political convulsion, when even death itself is not respected, we were on the point of leaving the church when it occurred to us to go behind the high altar. We found there a door which we made bold to enter, remembering how often we had been repaid for exploring sacristies and odd nooks. There was the tomb directly before us, in the smallest of choirs in which ever monk lost his voice “with singing of anthems.” It is the most quiet, secluded spot in the world—dim, frescoed, and crowded with a dozen stalls, on which cherubs’ heads are carved. It is more like a little chantry than a choir, and nothing ever breaks the silence but the voice of holy psalmody. The poet’s tomb is of white marble, chiefly sculptured by Fra Giovanni da Montorsoli. It is surmounted by his bust crowned with laurel. The face is somewhat haggard, but the features are noble. He wears a cap like that we see in pictures of Dante. Beside him are two putti, one with a book and the other bearing a helmet, in allusion to the different ways in which Sannazzaro distinguished himself. The sarcophagus beneath rests on an entablature, below which, in delicate relief, are Neptune and his trident—doubtless in allusion to the Piscatoriæ—and Pan with his reeds, accompanied by fauns and satyrs, with jovial faces and shaggy sides, as if to sing the praises of the author of the Arcadia. Along the base of the monument is an inscription by Bembo, which shows he believed Virgil to have been buried at Naples:

“Da sacro cineri flores: hic ille Maroni

Syncerus musa proximus ut tumulo.”^[83]

At the sides are fine statues of Apollo and Minerva by Santa-croce.

Iacopo Sannazzaro, the inspired poet of the Virgin, was born at Naples in 1458. He sprang from an illustrious family of Spanish origin that had fallen from its former grandeur, 515but was left not without considerable means. His mother, on becoming a widow, withdrew into the country in order to bring him up in retirement, uncontaminated by the world; but he soon displayed such uncommon abilities that she was persuaded to return to Naples and there watch over his education. It is said he showed a talent for poetry at eight years of age; but it must be remembered he belonged to a land where poesy is like the flowers that spring up spontaneously from the soil at every season. Of course his education was chiefly classical; for he belonged to an age when Greek and Latin literature was regarded as the standard of excellence, and the very mysteries of religion were sung in the measure of Homer and Virgil. When of sufficient age he chose as his master Giovanni Pontano, called “the Trojan Horse” on account of the great number of illustrious poets, orators, and warriors that sprang from his school. Pontano was then director of the celebrated Accademia Napolitana, in which he figured as grammarian, philosopher, historian, orator, and poet. He was the literary autocrat of Naples,

“Whose smile was transport, and whose frown was fate.”

He was regarded as the favorite of Apollo and the Aonides, and from his lips was said to flow a river of gold:

“Quel bel tesoro

D’Apollo e delle Aonide sorelle,

Che con la lingua sparge un fiume d’oro.”

His astronomical discoveries were announced in Latin verse. It is said he was the first in modern times to revive the idea of Democritus that the Milky Way is composed of myriads of stars.

Sannazzaro succeeded his master at the Academy of Naples, which at that time held its meetings at Pontano’s residence, near which was the Cappella Pontaniana—a gem of art, erected by Pontano in honor of the Virgin and the two St. Johns. Here were set up the wise maxims of the founder, graven on stone, which we translate from the original Latin:

“It is noble but difficult to restrain one’s self in opulence.

“He who never forgets injuries forgets that he is man.

“Whatever thy fortune, be mindful of Fortune herself.

“Integrity promotes confidence, and confidence friendship.

“He who decides too hastily on doubtful occasions repents too late, though he repent quickly.

“It is in vain the law cannot reach him whose conscience absolves him not.

“The sky is not always serene, nor does prudence always ensure safety.

“In every condition of life the chief thing is to know thyself.

“It belongs to the upright to despise the injuries of the wicked, whose praises even are a disgrace.

“Let us bear the penalty of our faults rather than the state should expiate them to its injury.

“Content not thyself with being upright, but find others who resemble thee to serve thy country.

“It is by boldness and conquest a kingdom is enlarged, and not by those counsels that seem to the timid full of wisdom and prudence.”

Such were the maxims instilled into Sannazzaro’s youthful mind. They have a flavor of antiquity. The Academy of Naples still exists, but holds its meetings in the cell of St. Thomas Aquinas at San Domenico’s, where royalty itself used to attend the lectures of the Angelic Doctor. 516In the church of Monte Oliveto at Naples—where Tasso found shelter—there is a striking group of figures in the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre, gathered in sorrowful attitudes around the dead Christ—all life-size likenesses of celebrities in the time of the artist, Modanin of Modena. Sannazzaro is represented as Joseph of Arimathea; Pontano as Nicodemus; Alfonso II. as St. John, with his son Ferdinand beside him.

Sannazzaro has celebrated a young Neapolitan girl in classical measure, under the Greek names of Amarante, Phyllis, and Charmosyne, which signify joy, love, and the immortal; but he veiled his passion, if it was one, under mythological allusions. He took as his device an urn of black pebbles, among which was a single white one with the motto, Æquabit nigras candida sola dies, as if in time he hoped to please his lady. But she died young, and he bewailed her in suitable elegies. In spite of this somewhat fantastic attachment—perhaps only a poetic fancy—it is sure Sannazzaro was all his life rather a votary of Diana than of Venus, as became one destined to sing the praises of the Purissima.

Admitted to familiarity with Frederick of Aragon, son of King Ferdinand of Naples, Sannazzaro was appointed director of the royal festivities, and in this capacity composed dramas in the language of the lazzaroni for the amusement of the court. These soon became as popular in the streets as in the palace, and were the germs of the modern Italian comedy, which finds its broadest expression in Pulcinella’s farces at San Carlino. One of these plays is spoken of with particular admiration, composed in 1492 to celebrate the conquest of Granada, and acted at the Castello Capuano in presence of Alfonso, Duke of Calabria.

Sannazzaro became so attached to his royal patron that he accompanied him in an expedition against the Turks, where he acquired the reputation of a courageous soldier. And when the prince was deprived of the throne to which he had succeeded, and retired to France, the poet, more faithful in misfortune than Pontano to Frederick I., generously sold two paternal estates to provide for his sovereign’s wants, and accompanied him into exile. It was in the following lines he bade adieu to Naples, which to leave is a kind of death:

“Parthenope, mihi culta; vale, blandissima siren,

Atque horti valeant, Hesperidesque tuæ;

Mergellina, vale, nostri momor; et mea flentis

Serta cape, heu domini numera avara tui;

Maternæ salvete umbræ, salvete paternæ.”^[84]

Sannazzaro remained with Frederick III. till his death at Tours, and then returned to Naples, where he devoted himself wholly to literature. The Arcadia, which he finished in France, was published in 1504. This is a romance of mingled prose and verse after the manner of Boccaccio’s Ameto. It caused a great sensation in Italy, and is still regarded as one of the happiest inspirations of the Italian muse. His pleasant villa on the Mergellina had been respected during his exile, and here he established himself at his return. It became a rendezvous for all the literary men of the city. On Thursdays in particular, when the scholars and barristers had a holiday, all that was brilliant at Naples assembled here for a frugal repast, at 517which poems and epigrams were recited. Sannazzaro was very popular, and to be his friend was regarded as a brevet of immortality.

“Dipinto io sia nell’opre eterne e belle

Del mio bel Sannazzaro, vero Sincero,

Ch’allora io giugnero fino alle stelle,”^[85]

wrote Cariteo. Sannazzaro, it should be remarked, had, after the fashion of the time, taken the more classical name of Actius Syncerus, to which allusion is made on his tomb.

But the greatest festival of the year on the Mergellina was the birthday of Virgil, for whom Sannazzaro had a kind of passion. He celebrated this anniversary—perhaps in imitation of Silius Italicus, who offered an annual sacrifice to the manes of the bard of Mantua—by a banquet, to which he invited his most intimate friends, such as “Alessandro, the jurisconsult, whose works, so long popular, furnish curious details respecting the public and private life of the Romans; Cariteo, who sang in his heterodox style the human soul formed by the Creator, from which nothing is concealed in heaven before it assumes its earthly veil, but which, coming below, as if fallen from some star into a human body, no longer retains any memory of the past; Andrea Acquaviva, who dismounted from his war-horse to take the lyre and drink from the fount of Hippocrene; Girolamo Carbone, who preferred the Tuscan language to the Latin, then so popular, and whose rhythm is a kind of music to the ear; and, finally, Pontano, the master of Sannazzaro, the restorer of the Neapolitan academy founded by Panormita.”^[86] These repasts were served by Hiempsal, a young African slave whom Sannazzaro had freed and taught to sing the elegies of Tibullus to an air he himself had composed. It was after one of these Virgilian feasts the poet went to hear Egidio, an Augustinian monk, preach. He was as celebrated for his eloquence as his learning, and was a favorite of two popes, one of whom (Leo X.) afterwards made him cardinal. Egidio, in declaiming with his usual animation against the vices of the time, made a happy citation from Virgil, which delighted his hearer and led to a friendship between them. It was this or some other sermon of his that suggested to Sannazzaro the idea of his great poem, De Partu Virginis, to which he devoted twenty years of his life—a poem of which Mr. Hallam says “it would be difficult to find its equal for purity, elegance, and harmony of versification.” Pope Leo. X., who appreciated genius in whatever way it found expression, whether by pen, chisel, or pencil, sent the poet a brief in 1521 to encourage him in singing the mysteries of the Christian faith, and to express his satisfaction that, at a time when the voice of a monk was troubling the peace of the church, the Catholic faith should find a defender among the laity—another David, as it were, to smite the new Goliath and appease with his lyre another Saul; and he declared the poem an honor to religion and to his pontificate. Clement VII. also wrote him a brief, accepting the dedication, which alone, he said, was enough to immortalize the pontiff thus honored.

The De Partu Virginis is the most remarkable poem of the Renaissance, and its publication was an event in the literary world. It was everywhere eulogized, and the 518author was styled the Christian Virgil. Egidio of Viterbo, after reading it, thus wrote to the author: “When I received your divine poem, I eagerly hastened to make myself familiar with its contents. God alone, whose inspiration suggested so wonderful a creation, can reward you suitably—not by admitting you to the Elysian Fields, the fabulous abode of Linus and Orpheus, but to a blessed eternity.” This poem still merits attention, if for no other reason, at least because of its effect on religious art in the sixteenth century—an influence which has been compared to Dante’s. Mrs. Jameson says she can trace it in all the contemporary productions of Italian art of all schools from Milan to Naples. She regards this influence, however, as perverse. But let us take a brief glance at a poem which has excited so much admiration and criticism down to the present day.

The De Partu Virginis is an epic poem, in which the birth of Christ is sung with the harmonious flow, the variety of imagery, and the elevated tone of Virgil. But, strange to say, none of the sacred characters introduced are called by their real names—perhaps because unknown to the Latin muse. Even the names of Jesus and Mary are expressed by Virgilian paraphrases. The former is called Divus Puer and Numen sanctum; the latter Alma parens, Dia, and Regina. St. Joseph is the Senior Custos; St. Elizabeth the Matrona defessa ævo; and the Supreme Being is styled the Regnator, Genitor superum, etc. The author calls upon the inhabitants of heaven (cœlicolæ) to reveal to his limited vision the profound secrets of the mystery he is about to sing, and invokes the sacred Aonides as the natural protectresses of virginal purity. “Dear delight of poets,” says he, “ye sacred Muses who have never refused me your favor, allow me once more to take a long draught at your clear fount. Ye who derive your glorious origin from heaven, and have so singular a regard for what is pure, aid me in singing of heavenly themes and celebrating the glory of a Virgin. Drive away the darkness of my mind and show me the way by which to rise to the highest summit of your celestial mount. These lofty mysteries were not unknown to you. You must have beheld the sacred grotto of the Nativity. You must have heard the sweet music of the angels that surrounded it. And it is hardly credible you did not admire the splendor of the star that led from the extremity of the Orient three powerful princes to render homage to the new-born Child.

“I have not herein the less need of thy aid, thou constant Hope of men and gods, at once Maid and Mother! If I have taken delight every year in adorning the walls of thy temple with festoons and garlands of flowers; if, on this delicious cliff of the Mergellina, that seems from its proud height to disdain the waves of the sea and promise safety to the boatmen who hail it from afar, I have hewn out for thee altars of eternal duration; if, following the footsteps of my ancestors, I have taken pleasure in singing thy praises and celebrating thy honor with the immense crowds of devout people who, with lively joy, hallow the for ever memorable day of thy happy deliverance, guide my steps in these unfrequented paths, give me the courage to accomplish what I have undertaken, and abandon me not in a task at once so glorious and so difficult.”

519The poet goes on to relate how the Regnator Superum, seeing the human race in danger of falling into Tartarus, a prey to the fury of Tysiphone, wishes, as all this evil has been brought about by woman, that by woman it should be repaired. He therefore despatches one of his ministering spirits to announce to the purest of virgins the sublime destiny that awaits her. The messenger finds her plunged in meditation with the prophetic page of the Sibyl open before her, and, saluting her with reverence, he makes known the advent of the Numen sanctum who would deliver mankind from the horrors of the Styx. Fame everywhere publishes the tidings of this mysterious event. Hell itself is told of it. The Eumenides tremble. Alecto, Cerberus, and all the monsters of paganism shudder with fear. The souls of the Fathers—those genuine heroes, as Sannazzaro, after St. Jerome, calls them—rejoice. David himself repeats his prophetic Psalms, and sings the life of Christ, his Passion, Death, and Descent into Limbo.

But it is the great Governor of the universe himself who reveals to the inhabitants of heaven his designs of mercy towards mankind. And when the time of the Nativity comes, he summons Joy (Lætitia) to his presence, whose privilege it is to appease the anger of the Thunderer and diffuse serenity over his face:

“Hæc magni motusque animosque Tonantis

Temperat et vultum discussâ nube serenat,”

and sends her to announce the glad tidings of the divine Birth. Putting wings to her feet, she leaves heaven, guarded by the Hours, and proceeds to earth, where she reveals the great event to the shepherds. Two of them, Lycidas and Egon, recite a part of the fourth Eclogue of Virgil, applying it to the new-born Child. The birth of Christ is related with delicacy and poetic grace. There is a sublime energy worthy of Dante in the lines that speak of the Incarnation, and the astonishment of nature in view of the prodigy. Angels in the air celebrate it by sports and combats in the style of Homer’s heroes, with the instruments of the Passion for arms. Other angels, like Demodocus, sing the creation, renovation of nature, the seasons, etc. The Jordan, leaning on its urn, is moved to its depths, and relates to the Naiads gathered about him the wonderful event on its shores. An angel comes to bathe the Child in its waters. A dove hovers above. The water-nymphs bend around in veneration. The Jordan, amazed, stays its current with respect, and recalls the prophecy of old Proteus, that the time would come for it to be visited by One who would raise the glory of the Jordan above the Ganges, the Nile, or the Tiber. After which the river, wrapped in its mantle, wonderfully wrought by the Naiads, returns majestically to its bed.

This is too brief an outline of the splendid crown Sannazzaro has woven for the Blessed Virgin, set with so many antique gems. Many have been shocked by the mingling of paganism and Christianity in this poem, but to us it is as if the waters of the Permessus had been turned into the Jordan. All these pagan deities and profane allusions that sprinkle its pages seem to sing the triumph of Christianity. They are in harmony, too, with the Virgilian region in which the poem was written, as well as with the spirit of the age. There was such a passion for antiquity and for 520Greek and Latin authors in the sixteenth century that even religion and art put on a classic air. Nor was Leo X., to whom it has been made a subject of reproach, the only dignitary of the church that has felt this fascination. St. Jerome himself was called by the accusing spirit, Non Christianus, sed Ciceronianus, and he used to fast before reading the works of the great orator, so much did he fear their ascendency.

Virgil was especially dear to the middle ages on account of the tenderness and melancholy of his noble nature and his strange presentiment of the future. We all remember the famous passage: “The last age of the Cumæan song now approaches; the great series of ages begins again; now returns the Virgin (Astrea), now return the Saturnian kingdoms; now a new progeny is sent from high heaven. Be propitious, chaste Lucina, to the boy at his birth, through whom the iron age will first cease, and the golden age dawn on the world.”

The learned at that time regarded Virgil as a prophet; and the people, as a magician. It was common to have recourse to his writings, as well as Homer’s and other authors, to obtain prognostics. But this was not exclusively a mediæval superstition. It was in use before the Christian era, and has not in these days wholly disappeared. The author of Margaret Fuller’s life says: “She tried the sortes biblicæ, and her hits were memorable. I think each new book which interested her she was disposed to put to this test and know if it had somewhat personal to say to her.” The church has condemned this practice, even by a similar use of the Holy Scriptures.

Dante shared in the general passion for Virgil. He makes him his guide—“My guide and master, thou”—through the lower realms; not in Paradise, whence he is excluded,

“For no sin except for lack of faith.”

Petrarch, too, loved Virgil and planted a laurel—“the meed of poets sage”—at his tomb, but it was long since done to death by the cruel hands of tourists.

A touching sequence was long sung in the church of Mantua, in which St. Paul is represented visiting the tomb of Virgil at Naples, and weeping because he had come too late for him.

In the time of Sannazzaro, Plato was also in great repute. Every one remembers the festival instituted in his honor by Lorenzo de’ Medici at his villa on the side of Fiesole, in which Ficino, Politian, and all that was brilliant in the intellectual world of Florence took part. The bust of the divine Plato, presented by Jerome Roscio of Pistoja, was set up at the end of a shady avenue and crowned with laurel, and, after a grand repast, they all gathered around it and sang cantos in his honor. Ficino even pretended to find in Plato’s writings the doctrines of the Trinity, Incarnation, Eucharist, etc. He used to address his audience as “My brethren in Plato,” and he makes Christ, in his descent into Limbo, snatch Plato from the jaws of hell to place him among the blessed in Paradise. This reminds us of the great Erasmus, who says: “There are many in the society of the saints who are not in the calendar. I am every instant tempted to exclaim: Sancte Socrates, ora pro nobis, and to recommend myself to the Blessed Flaccus and Maro.”

521Another of these academies that sought to revive the antique spirit was that of Pomponio Leto at Rome, which has brought so many unmerited reproaches on Pope Paul II. because it was for a time suppressed by him for carrying its passion for antiquity to a pernicious degree. One historian after another has declared him an enemy of the sciences on the principle of their tending to heresy! Hallam, Roscoe, and Henri Martin all echo the calumnies of Platina against this pope. M. de l’Epinois has proved the falseness of this accusation. As if a pope, as he says, who was all his life an amateur of ancient manuscripts, a numismatist of the first class, and an able judge of painting and sculpture, who took pleasure in doing himself the honors of his collections, and provided liberally for the education of poor children that showed an aptitude for study, was an enemy of science! Francesco Filelfo did not think so when he thus wrote to Leonardo Dati: “What do not I and all learned men owe to the great and immortal wisdom of Paul II.?”

As for the Academy of Pomponio Leto, there was a general conviction that it was pagan and licentious in its tendency, if not in actual practice. Canensius, in his life of Paul II., says explicitly: “The pope dissolved a society of young men of corrupt morals, who affirmed that our orthodox faith was not so much founded on the genuine basis of facts as on the jugglery of the saints, and maintained that it was permissible for every one to indulge in whatever pleasure he liked.” And the Chevalier de Rossi, in the Roma Sotteranea, quotes the following passage from a letter of Battista de Judicibus, Bishop of Ventimiglia, written to Platina a short time after the affair in question: “Some call you more pagan than Christian, and affirm that you follow pagan morals rather than ours. Others circulate the report that Hercules is your deity. Another says it is Mercury, a third that it is Jupiter, a fourth that it is Apollo, Venus, or Diana. They say you are in the habit of calling these gods and goddesses to witness, especially when in the company of those who give themselves up to like superstitions—people whom you associate more willingly with than others.” M. de Rossi has also found several inscriptions which prove that a secret hierarchy was established by this society, of which it is reasonable to suppose Pope Paul II. was as aware as of their other anti-Christian practices. Additional suspicion was excited by their secret meetings from the report at this very time that a conspiracy was formed against the life of the Sovereign Pontiff—the more readily credited because only nine years previously the streets of Rome had been deluged with blood by an insurrection. However, the pope, so far from being the farouche and sanguinary ruler M. Martin styles him, let off the academicians with a short confinement, and in 1475 Pomponio and his companions were once more quietly pursuing their studies, having profited by so beneficial a lesson. The academy became more flourishing than ever, and counted among its members a great number of bishops and prelates of the church.^[87] Pope Leo X. himself, before his elevation to the papacy, was in the habit of attending its reunions. Archæology, poetry, 522and music all had a part in them, as well as other sciences, and all these Leo X. sincerely loved. “I have always loved letters,” wrote he to Henry VIII. “This love, innate in me, age has only served to increase; for I have observed that those who cultivate them are heartily attached to the dogmas of the faith, and are the ornaments of the church.” Notwithstanding this love of literature, especially ancient, Leo X. himself realized that too excessive an application to such pursuits might be prejudicial to the spiritual life. Though at Florence he participated in the general admiration for Plato, after his elevation to the Papacy he recommended to the pupils of the Roman College to give themselves up to serious studies, and renounce Platonic philosophy and pagan poetry as tending to injure the soul. So also St. Odo, Abbot of Cluny, was so fond of Virgil that it finally became injurious to his spiritual interests, and, falling asleep one day while reading one of his Eclogues, he saw in a dream a beautiful antique vase full of serpents. He understood the allusion and gave up profane reading.

Sannazzaro’s poem, therefore, is only an expression of the tastes of his age. It may also be considered in harmony with those of the primitive church, which adorned the very walls of the Catacombs with pagan symbols, and blazoned them in the mosaics of their churches. There we find Theseus vanquishing the Minotaur, beside David slaying Goliath. The Jordan is represented as a river-god leaning on an antique urn, his head crowned with aquatic plants and his beard dripping with moisture; Cupids flutter among the vines around the form of the Good Shepherd; and Orpheus is made the emblem of our Saviour.

The De Partu Virginis is like one of those beautiful Madonnas so often met with in Italy, not seated in a humble chair at Nazareth, but robed like a queen, occupying a throne covered with mythological subjects and antique devices—an emblem of the church enthroned on the ruins of paganism.

523

A BIRTH-DAY SONG. TWENTY-ONE.

Bright summer sun, to-day

Mount with thy glancing spears, a cohort proud,

O’er cliff and peak, and chase each threatening cloud,

Each gathering mist, away.

Fair, fragrant summer flowers,

Lily and heliotrope and spicy fern,

Exhale your sweets from leaf and petaled urn

Through all the golden hours.

Thou deep-voiced western wind,

The stately arches of the forest fill,

Till oak and elm to thy andante thrill

As mind replies to mind.

Take up the song and sing,

O summer birds! until the joyous strains

Ring through the hills, chant in the blooming plains,

Gurgle in brook and spring.

And thou, O river deep!

Send from the shore thy message calm and plain,

As, bearing ship and shallop to the main,

Thy mighty currents sweep.

Sing, while the golden gate

Swings open, and reveals the thronging hopes,

Wingèd and crowned, that crowd the flowery slopes

Of Manhood’s first estate.

Yet soft and low! The door

Is closing, as ye sing, on Childhood’s meads;

The garrulous trump of Youth’s heroic deeds

Is hushed for evermore;

And shining shapes, that blaze

Like loadstars, with occasion wait to lure

The dazzled soul o’er crag and fell and moor

From Wisdom’s peaceful ways.

524Tell him, O sunshine bright!

How clouds of lust and mists of evil thought

By Chastity’s white beams are brought to naught

Through Virtue’s silent might.

Tell him, ye blossoms sweet,

How Charity divine her perfume rare

Exhales alike in pure or noxious air,

With holy love replete.

O brook and bird and spring!

Babble your simple sermon; say, Behold

Contentment, better far than gems or gold,

Or crown of sceptred king.

Tell him, thou deep-voiced wind,

How a brave, earnest spirit may awake

Responsive thought, till distant cycles take

Their orbits from his mind;

And thou, O river wide!

Tell how a steady purpose gathers strength

From singleness of aim, until at length

On its resistless tide

It bears both great and small

With equal, silent, comprehensive love

To that great sea whose calm no storm can move,

God’s grace o’er-arching all.

So may his spirit clear,

Untroubled by the scoff, the sneer, the sting

Of clashing creeds, find heaven a real thing,

And walk with seraphs here.

Thou great Triune! thy sign

Is on his forehead. May he, manful, fight

Under thy banner, till upon his sight

Fair Paradise shall shine;

Till, crown and palm-branch won,

He shall before thee stand without a fear,

Wearing the bright and morning star, and hear

The Master say, Well done.

525

JANE’S VOCATION.

“O amare! O ire! O sibi perire! O ad Deum pervenire.”—St. Augustine.

She sat upon an enormous sea-washed cliff of granite, in a flood of golden light from the stooping western sun behind her. Beneath her the sea-waves rippled lightly against the cliff. Far out before her the broad expanse of sea extended till it met the sky. But on neither sea nor sky were the girl’s eyes fastened. She was looking steadily across the narrow gulf that separated the high promontory where her home was from the fishing town on the mainland. Behind her was a farm-house with its prosaic surroundings, and a few huts for drying fish were close at hand. Not far beyond these the stage-road ran, and coming over the brow of the promontory was the lumbering stage.

She did not hear the wheels as they went rumbling by, and did not know how closely she was scanned. Next the driver a youth was sitting, whose face bespoke the artistic temperament as plainly as did the portfolio and hastily-traced sketch upon his knee. Like a flash he caught the loveliness of the picture—its glorious framework of nature’s beauties, its central point of that girlish figure in its graceful pose: the upraised head, the hands clasped round the knee as she sat bending slightly forward, the sense conveyed of absorbed, pathetic yearning for something more and higher than the farm life of her home.

“Who lives there?” asked the young man of the driver; and the driver made answer, glancing for very pleasure at the boyish, handsome face, stamped, in spite of its vanity, with the impress of a singularly clean and happy heart:

“Nobody much, mister: old Jake Escott and Marm Escott and Jane. That’s Jane sitting there. She’s their niece, and the best o’ the lot.”

“Jane!” repeated the youth to himself; but to the driver he said: “Do they take boarders there?”

The man chuckled, as if the very idea was absurd.

“Much as they can do to board themselves, I guess. Shiftless set. 'Tan’t so much lack of money, though, as of go-aheadativeness. ’Twould be too much trouble.”

“Think I’d be a trouble?”

The man laughed again. “Don’t know 'bout that. You’re as clever a chap and as taking a chap to talk with as I’ve seen this many a day. You’re a real true, good-hearted gentleman, you be, sir; but you’re city-bred for all that. Reckon you’d want white napkins every meal, and all sorts of finified stuff. Marm Escott couldn’t give you such. 'Cause why? She’s no idea what they are.”

“I’ll try it,” the traveller said, shutting his portfolio decisively and speaking like one who always had his way. “Can’t you stop at the turn—there’s a good fellow—and let me and my traps down?”

“Well, well! You never meant to come here; that’s certain. Where ye bound?”

“Nowhere.” Then, seeing the driver’s puzzled look, “Anywhere,” 526the youth added merrily. “I’m come to do what I please, and stop where I please, and stay as long as I please. This is the loveliest place I have seen yet, and I must sketch it. Why, surely you have carried passengers before who had no settled destination, but liked to stop where it suited them.”

“Ye—es,” was the doubtful response. “Yes, mister. But never one quite like you. You’re a wide-awake chap and a merry, but you look as dainty as any city lady I ever met.”

The words were evidently taken as a compliment, in whatever way they might have been meant. The youth slung his knapsack over his shoulder, concealing the long name which had puzzled the driver for the whole journey—Van Stuyvesant Van Doorm—leaped lightly down from the coach almost before it stopped, doffed his cap courteously, and with a gay farewell was on his way along a narrow path to the house.

A woman, remarkable for nothing except her curiously total lack of anything noticeable, opened the door, but into that dull face an actual sunny gleam of pleasure came as soon as she saw the blithe young face before her. The descendant of all the Vans doffed his cap courteously again, with an answering gleam in his very brilliant eyes. He had been used all his life to know that people admired him, but it is to be acknowledged that this oft-repeated fact had never lost its charm.

“Is this Mrs. Escott?” he asked.

“I be,” was the succinct reply.

No faintest shadow of a smile betrayed her hearer’s amusement. He knew himself master already of the field. “If you please, Mrs. Escott,” he said audaciously, in his most captivating tone and with his most pleading, obstinate look, “I’m come to board with you.”

Mrs. Escott stared as one taken by storm and unable to collect her scattered forces. “But—but,” she stammered, “we never take boarders, we don’t.”

“This exception will prove the rule, then,” quoth Van. “Oh! for shame, Mrs. Escott. You never would have the heart to turn me away from such a view as this. I want to sketch it, and I will give you a sketch of it, and pay you the highest board into the bargain.”

“But we an’t got nothing fit to board ye on.”

“Ah? No eggs, then, I suppose,” suggested Van mildly, pointing at the hens cackling in the yard. “No milk, either,” he added as the lowing of a cow sounded near by. “No berries to be had for love or money, eh? And of course there are no fish to be found in the sea.”

The woman actually laughed. “I’ll speak to Jake,” she said, then disappeared, and Van seated himself on the doorstep and waited her return without fear of disappointment.

“Jane and I can pick berries,” he said to himself; and then he trilled forth gaily, in a voice that was the envy and admiration of city circles:

“In the days when we went gipsying,

Long time ago.”

The melody pleased him; it chimed in well with the birds’ blithe song in the trees and the faint dash of the waves along the shore. He began the song and went through it all as blithely and carelessly as they.

“That’s handsome, now,” an uncouth voice behind him said when he stopped at last with a sense of 527buoyant delight in his own power. “That’s handsome, stranger. Sing like that, and you’re welcome here, and no mistake.”

This was “Jake,” then, shuffling, untidy, uncouth as his voice. A misgiving arose in Van’s mind. Would the house, the table, his room, be like Jake and Marm Escott? But he need stay no longer than he chose—no longer than one night; and it was now nearly six o’clock in the afternoon. So, all necessary arrangements being concluded, Jake trundled a dilapidated wheel-barrow, in some vague, slipshod fashion, to the road to “fetch the stranger’s traps,” and Mrs. Escott, going to the gate, called loudly, “Jane! Jane! I want ye, child.”

Van, waiting in the parlor for her coming, looked attentively about him. There was almost nothing in the room to show that any one ever came there who cared a whit more for beauty than Jacob Escott himself did. Rag mats of discordant hues covered squares and ovals and rectangular parallelograms of the pine floor; the walls were decorated with coarse prints of General Washington and of the prize ox of twenty years ago; on the table was a big family Bible and a Farmer’s Almanac illuminating the sombre cover with its sickly yellow, and on this was a half-knitted blue yarn stocking.

There was a cheap piano in one corner, but it looked as though it was never opened. The windows were not uncurtained, but, of all other things there, they set Van’s teeth on edge with their execrable attempts at some sort of a painted landscape; he seized the tassels vindictively, and pulled the curtains out of sight, thus letting in the superb view beyond.

Some one, he discovered then, had had taste enough to put flowers in the room. A great handful of daisies and clovers and delicate grasses stood on the sill of the window that looked out to where the narrow gulf separated the promontory from the mainland.

“Jane’s work,” said Van to himself; and as he thought it, he heard a slow, calm step coming through the entry, and Jane herself stood in the doorway.

Involuntarily he bent his head with such a reverence as he had never paid to woman before. He was the cynosure at home among all ladies, but none yet had won from him the reverent greeting of an utter self-forgetful absorption in another’s presence. The girl who stood there was not beautiful, though there was nothing in her features to displease the artist’s eye; indeed, the absence of mere material beauty made more marked the impression conveyed in movement and feature and face. Of all colors in the world—and Van was passionately fond of color—he loved best the gold that is sometimes seen in the western sky near where the sun is setting: a clear, fair hue that does not dazzle but rests the eyes that gaze upon it. Van thought of that color when he saw Jane’s face with its look of unclouded peace.

She lifted her eyes and glanced at him, at first with a tranquil, unmoved expression, as though it was quite indifferent to her who it was that she was meeting; then she gave a quicker, keener glance that thrilled Van with an uneasy sense that she was reading him through and through. What was it that she read? he wondered.

He tried to talk with her as she moved about the room, engaged in the very ordinary task of setting 528the supper-table. Her language showed some culture and refinement. He hazarded the question, “Are there good schools about here?”

“I do not know,” she said meditatively. “There is the district school.”

“Why does she not say, 'I went there’?” thought Van. “That would tell me something about herself.”

But more and more he found, as his talk went on, that Jane ignored herself. It did not appear to enter her mind that she was anybody to be thought of or talked about. He had at first to make conversation at the supper-table—the farm, the fisheries, the crops—but presently Jacob Escott made bold to ask: “What may be your occupation, sir?”

And, nothing loath, Van launched upon one of his pet topics—art and artists. Even the plain farmer and his wife enjoyed it. How could they resist the fascination of the merry stories, the musical voice, the face that spoke as clearly as the words? But Jane hardly listened, and suddenly a thought struck Van: “This is mere surface-talk after all. Can it be that this farmer’s girl cares for anything deeper, or is it only that she has not depth enough to care?”

They rose from the table, and Van followed Jane to the door. She did not see or heed him. The tide was at the full; wave upon wave came heaving gently onward toward the land as a child, tired out with play, comes home to its mother’s arms to rest; through the twilight the dark, restless mass of water and its ceaseless murmuring alike woke a sense of mystery and awe; above, in the darkening skies, a pale half-moon was shining and a few great throbbing stars. And in the dim light Van saw Jane’s face, and it seemed to him as beautiful and as full of mystery as sea and sky. Such a look of hunger marked it! He thought of Niobe, and of Cassandra, and of Mariana in the moated grange, but she differed in some inexplicable fashion from them all, and then he heard her say below her breath: “My God! My God! My God!”

Over and over again—not what Van had ever fancied a prayer could be, and yet to his ear more full of intense personal pleading than any prayer he had ever heard. Faith, hope, love, expectation, keen desire, and suffering were all summed up in two words; and though he knew nothing of her trouble, yet when the aunt’s call for her came from the room within, Van started as if he had been struck. He could not bear to have her harried back into the dull life of her home.

“Just mend this, Janey, will you?” Mrs. Escott said, exhibiting a coarse blue shirt. “Your uncle wants it for to-morrow.”

The girl’s face was tranquil and happy again by some sudden transformation. She took the rough work—it was not clean work, either; it had evidently been worn once or twice, Van saw with mingled disgust and pity—and, sitting down contentedly in the dingy room, she began her mending. She puzzled Van greatly, she interested him intensely. As he talked to her uncle he watched with his artistically-trained eye each expression of her face. It varied now and then, though the strange, yearning look did not return to it. The peace was there, and an exquisite happiness.

“She is like a dove,” thought Van. “She is like an innocent 529baby. Oh! if one could take her away from this.”

But one clue to her character he was certain that he had found. He rose up before she finished her work, and he flung open the old piano and sat down before it. It was not so unfit for use as he had feared it would be, and he knew how to glide skilfully over the worst notes. And then he began to try Jane. First he sang ballads, “Robin Adair,” “John Anderson my jo, John,” “Oh! wert thou in the cauld blast.”

“That’s fine, Phœbe,” said Jacob, and Phœbe said “Yes” with an unwonted enthusiasm. But Jane worked steadily on, and if she heard or cared Van could not tell, though he fancied the sweet, dove-like look deepened upon her face.

“The brightest jewel in my crown

Wad be my queen, wad be my queen.”

The last tender notes of the song lingered under Van’s fingers, as a knock was heard at the kitchen door, and Jacob went to answer it, followed soon by Phœbe, who evidently recognized the voice of the new-comer. There was a scraping of chairs on the kitchen floor—the plain indication that somebody had come to stay awhile. Van leaned his head forward against the music-rack, and once again before his eyes was the scene he had witnessed in the twilight one hour before. Could the same person who sat quietly at her rough work now be she whom he had seen and heard then in that passion of prayer? And while he mused there rang through his brain echoes that always thrilled his music-loving, art-loving nature with an especial power, and that seemed now like fit mates for the darkly-heaving sea, the star-lit sky, the girl’s yearning face; and from the old ivory keys, that grew strangely full of power and sweetness beneath his magical touch, rang out Chopin’s grand funeral march.

The work dropped from Jane’s hands. He could not watch her face, for she turned it straight toward that eastern flower-decked window that looked out to gulf and sea; but he saw her fingers lock tightly into one another and her form become rigidly still. When he ended she rose quietly and went away, and he did not see her again that night.

But long that night he studied her, while an unwonted shame of himself and a keen admiration for her grew steadily in him, and what he inferred of her then was confirmed each day more and more.

“She does not know one-half the things that I know,” he said, “but she has it in her to care for the highest art and beauty. And she is so noble by nature that she couldn’t spend her thoughts on a thousand trifling things that I waste mine upon. Such a glorious creature imprisoned here! I’ll do my best for her.”

Never used to early rising, he came down stairs the next day to find his breakfast waiting for him and the morning of the family half over.

“Yes, we be early risers,” said Mrs. Escott. “Leastways, Jake and Jane be. I’m a poor hand at it myself. Why, Jane here, she’s across the gulf and home again afore six every day.”

“Across the gulf! Before six!” exclaimed Van.

“Certain sure, Mr. Van. These Catholics are queer creatures. Jane’s a Catholic, you know.”

Habitual courtesy quelled the words of surprise and of pain that rose to Van’s lips—surprise at finding 530a Catholic in this notedly Protestant fishing settlement, pain at hearing Jane’s deepest feelings thus lightly exposed to view. But Jane showed not the slightest shade of annoyance.

Now he thought he understood her better. One of the many marvellous spells of Catholicism had been woven about her—some vision of beauty had thus come into her hitherto blank life; he would strive the more now to teach her of what he blandly deemed the freer, nobler lights of art and science, but never should word or look from him throw scorn or jest or trifling speech of any kind on that which was dear to her.

Love at first sight—Van had always maintained that he believed in it; he was always falling in love with any pretty face that struck his fancy, and then just as easily falling out of love with an unwounded heart. But here love and pity and real reverence all awoke together and made of him their willing slave. “I’ll go with her to Mass to-morrow,” he said, and on the morrow he stood in the early sunrise on the beach.

So early was it that Jane herself was not yet there. He watched her coming towards her boat, her eyes cast down, and that hungry, longing look stamped plainly on her.

“May I go too?” he said, the gay, trifling manner gone, and that peculiarly distinct imprint of a clean heart shining in his eyes. Lifting her own sweet eyes, once again he felt that she read him through; then, saying nothing, she bowed assent and stepped into the boat. And still without a word she let him take the oars from her, and, drawing her rosary from her pocket, she began to tell her beads. Van thought she never would stop, and she did not till they reached the town. Still silent, she led the way from the shore through some dull, shell-paved paths to a small chapel, and, entering, forgot Van altogether and went with eager footsteps up the aisle. Van stationed himself where he could see her; she sank on her knees before the altar, and crossed herself, and lifted up her face. The lips were parted in a smile of ecstasy, the eyes were shining bright as though they saw unearthly loveliness.

What Van saw was this: a square, low-studded, dingy room, poor prints of religious subjects, mean tallow dips for candles, tawdry gilding and hangings, artificial tawdry flowers, a plain, small altar, a few squalid worshippers; presently an aged priest, who said Mass in a cracked and feeble voice.

“What spell is over her?” thought Van, marvelling. “Oh! if I could once take her out of it all, home to wealth and beauty and tenderness, and to our churches. No need to tell her that Catholics have beautiful ones somewhere.”

But on their way back to the farm she did not speak, and he could not venture to break the intense calm in which she was wrapped. Every evening he read or sang and played, or talked his best, in the parlor where the household gathered, but she never again was there alone with him, and in the daytime she was always busy just when he wanted her society most. Often he was conscious that what he said or read or did failed to make any impression at all upon her; often while he tried to interest her he found her gazing toward that eastern window, and knew that she did not heed him. He longed to say: “I cannot see what you 531find in that dull church to give your eyes and thoughts to,” but he could not say it.

Sometimes when he read, far oftener when he played grand music—often, too, when they watched the sky and sea and listened to the waves, the noble nature woke responsive to his call. But it stung him to the quick to feel his general powerlessness to move her except when he roused his best and highest powers; it stung him to see how little she cared for the comforts and luxuries and prettinesses, for knowledge even and the art, that were part of his daily existence, and which he deemed necessary to him; it stung him to find that the meanest occupation never made her discontented, but glad and bright instead; while what he considered suited to her condition or her needs was as nothing to her, and the yearning which he could not fathom seldom came into her face when at her daily labor, but often when he told himself she ought to be content and glad with him.

She talked very little to him; she never seemed to care whether he came or went, and he—all his thoughts became engrossed in her.

One afternoon, near the close of a sultry day, as the first mutterings of thunder and the first far-off flashes of lightning shone and sounded from the dark depths of low-lying clouds above the sea—when the winds were rising, and the poplars showed their leaves’ white faces, and the white-crested waves broke in ominously upon the shore; when Jane’s sensitive nature was awake and quivering in sympathy with the gathering storm—Jacob Escott came hurrying his cattle home to shelter, bringing with him a letter which the stage-driver had flung down to him as he raced his horses by to town. “For you, Mr. Van,” he said.

Van opened it carelessly, read it carefully, then came straight to where Jane stood, watching with keen delight the seething sea and storm-tossed sky.

“Jane,” he said, “listen to me. They have sent for me to go home at once. My father is very ill. Jane, I love you. Will you be my wife?”

She turned with great displeasure in her eyes. “You jest, sir,” she said. “Such jesting pains me much. Even my uncle understands that now.”

“I am not jesting,” he cried vehemently. “I speak the truth. I love you. None but you can ever be my wife. Give me your promise, Jane. I love you so.”

At first her look of rebuke waxed sterner; then for a moment her eyes met the pleading bright eyes fastened on her with the look peculiar to them, that bespoke a singularly clean heart. She smiled as one smiles at a child.

“It is impossible,” she said.

Tumultuously he hurried on: “No, no, not impossible. If I will promise to read, to study, to be a Catholic if I can—will you think of it then? Will you try me?”

“It is impossible,” she repeated. “You pain me.” And then, with an effort, as though she spoke of things too sacred for the common ear, “By the grace of God,” she said slowly, “when he makes the way plain before me, I am to be a nun.”

“No, no!” Van cried again. “No, no! Think—listen. Think it all over again. You do not understand. Your life has been cramped here in this poor, mean place. That is why you want to be a nun. Come away with me to a life that 532suits a soul like yours. I have seen your craving for higher things.”

The sudden, jagged lightning cleft the skies. By its glare he saw her face distinctly, and a noble scorn was on it, and a righteous indignation.

“Come away with you—from God!” she said, and in the pause that followed Van felt himself more mean than the dust from whence he came.

“Forgive me,” she said gently. “I forget. It is you who do not understand. I do not mind that this house is poor and mean; my Lord was born in a stable, and he died upon a cross. And if I suffer here and crave for higher things, it is a suffering which even the cloister can never cure—far less, then, you—for I crave to see the face of God! To love my God, to cease from sin, to come to my God and be for ever one with him in his high heaven—I hunger for it by night and by day.”

“And if this life suits you so well, and you must suffer anyhow,” Van said curiously, “why not stay here always? or why not come with me?”

“Mr. Van,” Jane answered, “to be a nun is my vocation. God himself calls me. I must do his will. Forgive me again, but I cannot talk any more to you about it. If you did not seem so young to me—so like a little innocent child, in spite of all your knowledge—I could not have said so much.” And the next minute she was gone, leaving Van abashed and utterly ignorant of the high meed of true praise which she had bestowed upon him.

He went home to watch for two long days and nights beside a couch of foolish delirium and lingering death; to see a mind of uncommon intellect and far-famed, exquisite taste reduced to folly; to see the eyes stare vacantly at picture and statue and familiar face alike; and then to follow the lifeless body to the grave, and hide it there, clay to its kindred clay. The young heir of enormous wealth and princely possessions paced alone in his father’s halls that night, and found no pleasure in the beauty that once had satisfied him. Even the memory of Jane’s face was a burden to him.

“She would have to die too,” Van muttered. “And, after all, one could as soon love a St. Catherine borne by angels as love her. I do not believe I ever did. And yet if I did not, I never really loved any woman.”

Wherein he spoke the truth.

Yet one look of hers haunted him—that look of settled, tranquil peace, like the undazzling gold of the western sky; and while it shone before him the steady, tranquil voice echoed through his memory, “To be a nun is my vocation. God himself calls me. I must do his will.”

“I wonder,” queried Van wistfully—“I wonder what my vocation is. I’m sure it has never made any difference to me. I have sketched, and played, and read, just as I fancied.”

And, with that great grace vouchsafed him, of which he was so ignorant, he said like a child: “O God! what shall I do?”

The answer did not come at once. He fretted and puzzled; by and by he began to wonder whether Jane’s religion had anything to do with her choice. Besides, if it was worth a man’s while to think of changing his religion because he fancied himself in love with a creature that some time must die, had 533he not reason to think seriously about it anyhow? What did she mean when she said she craved to see God’s face? What caused that woman of so few words to speak with such power when she spoke of that?

Van read and thought, but it was not the books that enlightened him. He went one evening where he seldom went by day, when curious eyes could watch him—to his father’s grave. It was a warm evening late in September. As he passed the rectory adjoining the church, which his father, and his father’s father, and all the Van Doorms of the region had religiously attended, gay voices and snatches of music caught his ear, and he looked up involuntarily.

It was a pretty sight. The gas had just been lighted, the curtains were still up. Lonely, sorrowful Van, forgetful of his wonted courtesy, stood still where he was and took in the whole picture with an added heartache.

In the pleasant parlor, not luxurious, but a home-room, the mother sat with her baby on her knee. Van remembered her when she came a bride to the parish, and he was only a child of five years old. It was one of his earliest memories—that being taken to church with the promise of seeing the new young minister’s new young wife, if he would be very good. That was twenty years ago, and there were lines of gray in Mrs. Charles’ hair, but her face wore the same kindly smile that had marked it then in the freshness of her nineteen years, and at the piano a girl of nineteen might have been taken for the bride brought back again in her youthful bloom. She was playing some familiar melody; five or six brothers and sisters clustered about her, sang blithely with her; a toddling child at the mother’s knee beat time with its chubby fingers on the younger baby’s chubby hand. Presently an inner door opened, and the pastor entered. There was a cry of “Father! father!” a general rush to meet him, frantic, merry embraces from the children, while the mother smiled contented, and the father stood tender and strong in the midst of his happy flock.

The picture lasted for a brief space only; with a pretty gesture of horror the eldest daughter sprang toward the window and drew down the shades, lest somebody should see, and Van stood alone outside in the gathering night.

He plodded on dreamily to the church-yard, and sat down near the new grave among many, many older graves where the men and women of his race lay buried.

“Wife and child,” said Van, with a long, hard, envious sigh, “father and mother, and happy home. And I—”

“Wife and child—father and mother.” The words repeated themselves in that curious, echo-like fashion which words have when they come to the mind as a part of a familiar saying, whose whole cannot be at once recalled, and which for a time we vainly strive to place.

“Wife and child—father and mother.” Ah! something else comes: “Houses and lands.” What is it? What is Van striving to get?

“Houses and lands.”

He has it.

“No man who hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or children, or lands for my sake and for the Gospel, who shall not receive an hundred times as much, now in this time: and in 534the world to come life everlasting.”

He does not see with his bodily eyes at all now, but the eyes of his soul are wide awake, and they see clear and true.

In which church—Catholic or Protestant—were the men who, not by tens or by hundreds, but by thousands upon thousands, and through centuries upon centuries, had carried out to the very letter the words of Christ, the Bible words? Which, except through some exceptions that only served to prove the rule, had by loud-voiced declamation, and an action that spoke more loudly still, set at naught the teaching of the Master—set at naught the example of Him who left all for them?

Van seemed to hear it once again—the missionary letters read from the pulpit and published in Protestant magazines; the pleadings for clothes for the missionary’s wife and children; the appeals for money, or a missionary must leave his important field because his family could not be supported there; the vaunted heroism of missionaries who endured to see their children suffer rather than desert their post. Where were the men whose heroism was such that they had no home, no family, no earthly tie, but stood ready like the angels—true messengers—to go or to stay, undeterred by any human consideration, where God and his church asked or needed them?

And so it came to pass that Van understood the mystery of Jane’s vocation; comprehended that men and women, young and old, rich and poor, ignorant and lettered, heard, as the wedded Peter and the unwedded John heard once the voice of Christ call to them, and literally, like them, left all and followed him. It came to pass also that he understood Jane’s suffering; knew that that call of God and the accompanying love of God were a hundred-fold more in this life than the earthly joys renounced, and yet that the promise of the everlasting life spoke of such ineffable bliss that the longing awakened for it could only be appeased in heaven.

Van found his vocation too. He threw himself, heart and soul, into true Christian art. His pictures were seldom seen on the walls of rich men’s houses, but churches and convents owned them free of price. That part of his work, however, was the smallest part. Money and time and strength were lavished nobly with and in aid of those who are successfully laboring in our day to show, by research in catacombs and ruined sacred buildings and among old missals and breviaries and parchments, that the Catholic Church of to-day is the church of the early Christians and martyrs.

In Italy he met and married some one very different from Jane—a very lovely and good and noble woman—and Jane to him became more and more a St. Catherine borne by angels, and more and more he wondered that he ever had presumed to think of offering her an earthly love.

“Had I been a Catholic then, I never could have done it,” he told his wife. “God had called her for himself, and set his seal upon her.”

And the happy wife said humbly: “Hers was the higher calling, dear.”

So when, one day, their only daughter came to them—a strong, high-spirited, brilliant girl, the sunshine of their home—and told them that God’s call had come to her to 535leave her home for Christ’s poverty, and all human love for his love alone, she found no weak resistance.

“Thank God,” they said, “for the honor he has done us! For him we gladly bid thee forget thine own people and thy father’s house.”

But of Jane they never heard, except that, when God’s time came, she left the farm beside the sea. What need to know more of her, who was where she longed to be—one of the great number who lose all to find All, and, having Him whom their soul loveth, need nothing more?

COUNT FREDERICK LEOPOLD STOLBERG^[88]

Count Stolberg, a well-known statesman and writer, a minister of the Duke of Oldenburg, the friend of Goethe, Schlegel, Klopstock, Lavater, Stein, John and Adam Müller, La Motte Fouqué, Körner, and others as distinguished, the correspondent of most of the German historians, philosophers, and savants of his day, became a Catholic, after seven years’ anxious seeking for truth, on the 1st of June, 1800, at Münster, in Westphalia, in the fifty-first year of his age. He immediately retired from public life, although circumstances afterwards brought him before Germany as a representative man; and his writings spread through all classes of his countrymen as a worthy and dignified exposition of a religion at that time much reviled, misunderstood, and in some cases persecuted. His example in home-life was as powerful in a smaller circle as his writings were in a wider one; and his relations with his wife and children (he had eighteen children by his two marriages) were such as to make it true of him that he was a model for all Christian heads of families. His own tastes were simple and domestic; he was fond of the country, and was a childlike companion even to his youngest children, while to all, as they grew up, he was a wise friend and teacher. All his children, except Mariagnes, his eldest daughter by his first marriage, became Catholics with him; those born after his conversion were of course brought up in the church. His second wife, Sophie, Countess von Redern, had shared his doubts and his experiences during those seven years of eager search after religious certainty, and became a Catholic also; but while he remained in intimate and sympathetic relations with his brothers and sisters, he never influenced any of them far enough to make them follow his footsteps. His brother Christian and his wife Luise were his most constant and intimate correspondents; with the former religion seemed to make no difference, as his admiration for, and sympathy with, Stolberg was proof against anything—indeed, Stolberg often called him his “other self”; and the latter, to judge by her letters, was a woman of more than common understanding, a student of science, an observer of the times, whose mind was open to receive 536any new impression that had the semblance of truth or real progress in it; an investigating and impartial searcher, better versed than most women in classic learning, and eager for knowledge in any shape. To give up constant intercourse with his own family and remove to a Catholic city was the hardest sacrifice Stolberg had to make on leaving the Lutheran communion; but he considered the change imperative for the proper education of his children. In a letter to Luise announcing this resolve he says: “There is no dilemma, but, even if there were, you will agree with me that a tender conscience, in a doubtful case, must always choose against its wishes—I mean its natural wishes, which are always suspicious to upright morals, let alone to Christianity.” To his friend Princess Gallitzin, the mother of the zealous missionary in America, Demetrius Gallitzin, he says: “It is an unspeakable joy to me that my brother and sister-in-law remain bound to me in the fullest and most unreserved love, and that not even the shadow of a misunderstanding has come between them and me, however painful to them is the separation from me, from Sophie, and from the children.”