THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

A

MONTHLY MAGAZINE

OF

General Literature and Science.

VOL. XXIV.
OCTOBER, 1876, TO MARCH, 1877.

NEW YORK:
THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION HOUSE
9 Warren Street.

1877.

Copyrighted by
THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION SOCIETY,
1877.

THE NATION PRESS, 27 ROSE STREET, NEW YORK.

CONTENTS.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XXIV., No. 139.—OCTOBER, 1876.

Copyright: Rev. I. T. Hecker. 1877.

MIVART’S “LESSONS FROM NATURE.”[1]

The condition of what is called the scientific mind in England to-day may be described as chaotic. Its researches begin nowhere and end nowhere. Its representative men deny the facts of consciousness, or misinterpret them, which is equivalent to negation, and thus ignore the subjective starting point of all knowledge, while they relegate God to the domain of the unknowable, thereby removing from sight the true end and goal of all inquiry. Nothing, then, is the Alpha and Omega of their systems, and it is small matter of surprise that theirs has been called the philosophy of nihilism. Yet it is sadly true that the votaries of scientism (salvâ dignitate, O scientia!) are on the increase, and that Huxley, Spencer, Darwin, and Tyndall usurp among the fashionable leaders of thought, or rather the leaders of fashionable scientific thought, to-day, the place lately held by Mill, Renan, Strauss, and Hegel. It is not quite the ton now to content one’s self with denying the divine inspiration of Holy Writ or with questioning the Divinity of Christ. We must iterate our belief that in matter are to be found the “promise and potency of every form and quality of life,” or that all living things sprang from a primordial homogeneous cell developed in a primitive plastic fluid eruditely denominated “protoplasm”; nay, we must join hands with Herbert Spencer, and affirm of the First Cause that it is unknowable and entirely divested of personal attributes. It is evident that scientism is more rigorously sceptical than rationalism or the materialism of the eighteenth century—in a word, that it is supremely nihilistic. Being such, it is worth while to inquire through what influence it has succeeded in dominating over so many vigorous minds, and winning to its standard the rank and file of non-Catholic scholars. It presents to the expectant lover of truth a set of interesting

facts which fascinate as well by their novelty and truth as by the hope that the “open sesame” which unearthed them cannot but swell the list, and that whatever it pronounces upon is irrevocably fixed. No one can gainsay the value to science of the brilliant experiments and interesting discoveries of Prof. Tyndall, nor underrate the painstaking solicitude of Darwin. Indeed, we are all more or less under the thraldom of the senses, and the truths which reach our minds through that channel come home with irresistible force. Hence the allurements of science for the majority of men, and their complete subjection to the authority of scientific discoverers. No wonder, therefore, that when a slur is cast upon the supersensible order—that order with which they have neither sympathy nor acquaintance—that same majority are ready to deride the sublimest truths of Christianity, and to devour the veriest inanities as the utterances of sound philosophy. No wonder that, captivated by the fast-increasing array of fresh discoveries in the field of physical science, they pay to the dreamy speculations of Spencer and Darwin the homage which is due to their solid contributions to science. These men forget that science is but a grand plexus of facts which afford to many a convenient peg on which to hang a bit of shallow philosophism. The truths of science are so cogent and obvious that most men, failing to discriminate between those truths and unwarranted inferences drawn from them, regard both with equal respect, and so deem those who question the latter to be the sworn foes of the former. It is this confusion of truth with error, natural enough under the circumstances, that has imparted so much

popularity to the unphilosophic portion of the teachings of Spencer, Huxley, Tyndall, Proctor, et id genus omne, and given to the guinea stamp the value which belongs to the gold. Moreover, our modern men of science have not only introduced us to the field of their legitimate labors with a large knowledge of its varied and interesting features, but have invested the presentment of their subject with a glamour which the splendid rhetorical training of the schools and universities of England has enabled them to throw around it.

Such being the anomalous and insidious blending of truth with error which characterizes modern scientific thought in England, we should welcome the appearance of any work aiming at the disentanglement of this intricate web, especially if the ability and scientific culture of its author give earnest of its success. Such a work do we find in that whose title heads this article, and whose author, Dr. Mivart, has already fully attested, in many a well-written page, his competency for the task. In his Lessons from Nature Dr. Mivart has undertaken the consideration of the more salient errors of Herbert Spencer’s philosophy and Mr. Darwin’s theory of descent and evolution. He has wisely addressed himself in his opening chapter to a refutation of the errors which vitiate the substructure of Spencerianism; for the basis having been proved to be rotten, we are not surprised at beholding the entire edifice topple to the ground. This chapter he has entitled “The Starting Point,” and sets out with this theorem for demonstration:

“Our own continued existence is a primary truth naturally made known to us with supreme certainty, and this certainty cannot be denied

without involving the destruction of all knowledge whatever.”

It will be seen from this statement that Dr. Mivart regards his opponents as having laid the basis of their systems on the quicksands of the most radical scepticism; for certainly, if the fact of a το ἐγω be called in question, all knowledge must go by the board, its containing subject being no better than a myth. Those casting a doubt upon the truth of this proposition are by themselves happily styled Agnostics, or know-nothings, and Dr. Mivart includes in the category such distinguished names as Hamilton, Mansel, Mill, Lewes, Spencer, Huxley, and Bain. These writers, one and all, have repeatedly asserted the relativity of our knowledge—i.e., its merely phenomenal character. They do not deny that we possess knowledge, but that we can predicate nothing as to its absolute truth. They claim, indeed, themselves to have sounded the whole diapason of human knowledge, but they regard it only as a mirage which appears real to the eye whilst beholding it, but is none the less a mirage in itself. Dr. Mivart tersely points out the absurdity of this principle of the agnostic philosophy by stating that either this knowledge is absolute—i.e., objectively valid—or has no corresponding reality outside of the mind, in which case it represents nothing—i.e., is no knowledge at all. Those, then, who insist upon the relativity of all knowledge are “in the position of a man who saws across the branch of a tree on which he actually sits, at a point between himself and the trunk.” For if our knowledge be purely relative, we know it but relatively, and that relative knowledge of it is in turn relative, and so on ad infinitum. In

other words, if we assert of our knowledge that it is relative—i.e., purely subjective—we affirm an objective fact; for however much the facts of the mind be subjective in relation to the objects represented, they become objective in regard to the mind viewing them as the term point of knowledge; so that to affirm of all knowledge that it is purely relative is equal to affirming that the knowledge we have of that knowledge is not the knowledge thereof, but a similar modification of the mind having no business to look for anything beyond itself. This surely is a reductio ad absurdum; yet such threads and thrums are made the warp and woof of so-called scientific philosophy.

Professor Huxley is the most conspicuous champion of this universal nescience, and Dr. Mivart devotes himself at greater length to a review of his principles. Huxley says: “Now, is our knowledge of anything we know or feel more or less than a knowledge of states of consciousness? And our whole life is made up of such states. Some of these states we refer to a cause we call ‘self,’ others to a cause or causes which may be comprehended under the title of ‘not-self.’ But neither of the existence of ‘self’ nor of that of ‘not-self’ have we, or can we by any possibility have, any such unquestionable and immediate certainty as we have of the states of consciousness which we consider to be their effects.” This utterance is remarkable for the inaccuracies with which it abounds and for the crudeness of its author’s philosophy. The fact that we immediately apprehend consciousness in the light of passing states is proof that, mediately or by reflection, we view it altogether differently, and

this latter mode certainly affords a more certain and satisfactory knowledge. By reflection, then, or mediately, we regard those passing states as the product of something enduring and continuous of which we are in reality conscious, while experiencing those modifications described by Huxley as “passing states of consciousness.” When conscious of a state we are certainly conscious of that by which consciousness is had, or we would be forced to admit that nothing can be conscious, than which there could be no greater absurdity. The direct consciousness, therefore, which Huxley’s “passing states of consciousness” would describe, presupposes the consciousness of the organ of those “passing states”—a consciousness which stands in an à priori relation to these latter. The chief flaw in Huxley’s reasoning is that, as he confines consciousness to a mere modification, and admits no modified substance as an abiding essence, he must regard mind, so far as he knows it, as a modification of nothing modified.

We have not here followed out the exact line of argument pursued by Dr. Mivart, whose strictures on Huxley in regard to his absurd position must be attentively read in order to be appreciated; but we hope to have indicated enough to enable the reader to judge of the fitness of our neoterists to become the leaders of thought. Having established, then, the implied existence of self in consciousness, Dr. Mivart proceeds, in a chain of the most solid reasoning, to marshal around this central truth those having a direct dependence upon it, and from the admission of which Huxley had fondly hoped to escape by perverting the true data of consciousness. Memory is the corner-stone

of all knowledge outside of direct consciousness, and Dr. Mivart clearly shows that its testimony is constantly invoked by the most outspoken nescients, so that, in regard to its echoings, the choice is absurd between what it attests generally and the circumscribed field of operation to which Herbert Spencer seems anxious to confine it. But Dr. Mivart is satisfied in this chapter with having demonstrated the sufficiency of rightly understood consciousness to be the “starting point” of our knowledge of the objective, and properly dismisses the argument in these words:

“But it is hoped that the cavils of the Agnostics have been here met by arguments sufficient to enable even the most timid and deferential readers and hearers of our modern sophists to hold their own rational convictions, and to maintain they know what they are convinced they do know, and not to give up a certain and absolute truth (their intellectual birthright) at the bidding of those who would illogically make use of such negation as a ground for affirming the relativity of all our knowledge, and consequently for denying all such truths as, for whatever reason, they may desire to deny.”

To the casual thinker it may appear that the arguments of Dr. Mivart are somewhat antiquated as against the strongholds of modern error; but the fact additionally illustrates the slenderness of the resources with which error comes equipped to the fray, since, whenever there is question of first principles, truth can with the same weapons always assail the vulnerable point in the enemy’s armor. It is true that in point of detail the ground of conflict has shifted, and that those who once successfully opposed the errors of Voltaire, Diderot, or Volney, should they suddenly appear on the scene now,

would have to count themselves out of the fight; but with respect to principles and ultimate expressions, we find the Agnostics of to-day ranging themselves side by side with the Gnostics and Manicheans of old. So we believe that Dr. Mivart has done well, before approaching the details of the controversy, to knock the underpinning from the whole superstructure of modern error by exposing the falsity of its principles. At least the procedure is more philosophical and more satisfactory to the logical mind.

In his second chapter, entitled “First Truths,” Dr. Mivart lays down the following proposition:

“Knowledge must be based on the study of mental facts and on undemonstrable truths which declare their own absolute certainty and are seen by the mind to be positively and necessarily true.” This proposition finds its counterpart in every text-book of scholastic philosophy from Bouvier to Liberatore and Ton Giorgi, so that there is no need to follow the learned author through his very excellent series of proofs in support of it. The main points of interest in the chapter are his arraignment of Herbert Spencer’s faulty basis of certainty, and the disproof of Mr. Lewes’ theory of reasoning.

Mr. Spencer says (Psychology, vol. ii. p. 450):

“A discussion in consciousness proves to be simply a trial of strength between different connections in consciousness—a systematized struggle serving to determine which are the least coherent states of consciousness. And the result of the struggle is that the least coherent states of consciousness separate, while the most coherent remain together; forming a proposition of which the predicate persists in the mind along with its subject.… If there are any indissoluble connections, he is compelled to accept them.

If certain states of consciousness absolutely cohere in certain ways, he is obliged to think them in those ways.… Here, then, the inquirer comes down to an ultimate uniformity—a universal law of thinking.”

We have quoted this passage of Mr. Spencer’s at some length, both for the purpose of exhibiting the misty, Germanic manner of his expression, and of calling attention to Dr. Mivart’s neat and effectual unfolding of the fallacy which it contains. We presume that Mr. Spencer means by “least coherent states of consciousness” those propositions in which the subject and predicate mutually repel each other, or, in other words, those which involve a physical or a metaphysical impossibility. Had he, indeed, stated his conception in those terms, he might have avoided Dr. Mivart’s well-aimed shafts, to which his cloudiness of expression alone exposed him. A cannon-ball fired from England to America is the typical proposition which he offers of “least cohering states of consciousness.” But every one perceives that the terms of this proposition involve a mere repugnance to actual and not to imagined facts, causing it to differ in an essential manner, accordingly, from such a proposition as 2×2 = 5, against the truth of which there exists a metaphysical impossibility. The importance of the distinction may be realized when we reflect that there can be no absolute truth so long as we make the test thereof a mere non-cohering state of consciousness; for if the terms of a physically non-possible proposition do not cohere in consciousness, and if such non-coherence be the absolute test of non-truth, that same non-truth must end with such non-coherence. This makes truth purely relative, and is

the legitimate goal of such philosophic speculations as those of Mr. Spencer, which would make all knowledge purely relative.

Dr. Mivart distinguishes four sorts of propositions: “1. Those which can be both imagined and believed. 2. Those which can be imagined, but cannot be believed. 3. Those which cannot be imagined, but can be believed. 4. Those which cannot be imagined and are not believed, because they are positively known to be absolutely impossible.”

The third of these propositions finds no place in Mr. Spencer’s enumeration, since, according to him, it involves “a non-cohering state of consciousness,” or, as he elsewhere expresses it, is “inconceivable.” That there are numberless propositions of the third class described by Dr. Mivart the intelligent reader may perceive at a glance, and so infer the absurdity of Herbert Spencer’s “non-cohering states of consciousness” viewed as a “universal law of thinking.”

Thus there is no absolute impossibility in accepting the doctrine of the multilocation of bodies or of their compenetrability, though no effort of the imagination can enable us to picture such a thing to the mind. The common belief that the soul is whole and entire in every part of the body is “unimaginable,” but certainly not “inconceivable,” since many vigorous and enlightened minds hold the doctrine with implicit confidence.

In connection with this subject Dr. Mivart takes occasion to allude to Professor Helmholtz’s method of disproving the absoluteness of truth. He supposes

“beings living and moving along the surface of a solid body, who are able to perceive nothing but what exists on this surface, and insensible to all beyond it.…

If such beings lived on the surface of a sphere, their space would be without a limit, but it would not be infinitely extended; and the axioms of geometry would turn out very different from ours, and from those of the inhabitants of a plane. The shortest lines which the inhabitants of a spherical surface could draw would be arcs of greater circles,” etc.

We have quoted enough from the professor to indicate the drift of his objection. He concludes: “We may résumé the results of these investigations by saying that the axioms on which our geometrical system is based are no necessary truths.” Such is the sorry mode of reasoning adopted by an eminent man of science in establishing a conclusion so subversive of the principles of science. Is it not evident that, no matter what name the inhabitants of the sphere described by Helmholtz might bestow on the “arcs of great circles,” these still would be “arcs,” and as such those beings would perceive them? As showing the lack of uniformity of views which prevail among men of science when it is question of super-sensible cognitions, Mr. Mill rushes to the opposite extreme from Herbert Spencer, and holds that there is nothing to prevent us from conceiving 2×2 = 5. In this arraignment of Spencer’s faulty view of the basis of certainty, Dr. Mivart proceeds with care and acumen, and adroitly pits his antagonists against each other, or invokes their testimony in support of his own views as against themselves.

The other point of interest in this chapter is the author’s refutation of Mr. Lewes’ conception of reasoning. In his Problems of Life and Mind Mr. Lewes reduces the process of reasoning to mere sensible associations, and entirely overlooks

the force and significance of the ergo. He says: “Could we realize all the links in the chain” (of reasoning) “by reducing conceptions to perceptions, and perceptions to sensibles, our most abstract reasonings would be a series of sensations.” This certainly is strange language for a psychologist, and forcibly demonstrates the hold Locke’s sensism still holds over the English mind. If we can conceive of a series of sensations in which the form of a syllogism does not enter—and we experience such many times daily—then surely there is something more in a train of reasoning than a mere series of sensations, and that is the intellectual act of illation denoted by ergo. Throughout this strange philosophism there runs an endeavor to debase man’s intellect and reduce it to the level of mere brutish faculties. The dignity of our common manhood is made the target of Spencer’s speculation and Mill’s subtle reveries, while the grand work of the church which lifted us out from the slough of barbarism is being gradually undone. We must indeed congratulate Dr. Mivart upon having led the way in grappling with the difficulties with which scientific transcendentalism bristles, and on having rent the net in which error strives to hold truth in silken dalliance.

We come now to the most difficult and important chapter in the book—viz., that pertaining to the existence of the external world. We would premise, before entering upon an analysis of this chapter, that nothing short of a slow and careful perusal of it in the author’s language can convey to the reader a full impression of the difficulty and subtlety which attend the terms of the controversy as waged tripartitely between Herbert Spencer, Mr.

Sidgwick, and the author. The statement of the proposition is simple enough, viz.:

“The real existence of an external world made up of objects possessing qualities such as our faculties declare they possess, cannot be logically denied, and may be rationally affirmed.”

The terms of this proposition differ but little from those in which argument is usually made in support of the reality of external objects, but with Dr. Mivart it serves as the text of a refutation of Mr. Spencer’s theory of “transfigured realism.” Mr. Spencer stoutly professes his belief in the realism of the external world, but distinguishes his conception of it from the common crude realism of the majority as having been by him filtered through the intellect, and based, not on the direct data of the senses, but on these as interpreted by the mind. According to him, “what we are conscious of as properties of matter, even down to its weight and resistance, are but subjective affections produced by objective agencies which are unknown and unknowable.” Divested of an involved and trying terminology, Mr. Spencer’s theory amounts to this: The mind under the experience of a sensation is irresistibly borne to admit that it is not itself the active agent concerned in its production; for sensation as a “passing state of consciousness” is not accompanied by that other “passing state of consciousness” which exhibits the mind to itself as spontaneously generating the sensation in question. Therefore that sensation is derived ab extra; therefore its cause, unknown or unknowable, is something outside of the mind—i.e., has an objective reality. It is a sort of game of blind man’s buff between the

mind and the world, according to Mr. Spencer—we know something has impressed us, but how or what we cannot find out.

“Thus the universe, as we know it,” says Dr. Mivart, “disappears not only from our gaze, but from our very thought. Not only the song of the nightingale, the brilliancy of the diamond, the perfume of the rose, and the savor of the peach lose for us all objective reality—these we might spare and live—but the solidity of the very ground we tread on, nay, even the coherence and integrity of our own material frame, dissolve from us, and leave us vaguely floating in an insensible ocean of unknown potentiality.”

This is “transfigured realism” with a vengeance, and leaves us somewhat at a loss to know what can be meant by idealism. It practically differs not from the doctrine of Berkeley and Hume; for it matters little to us whether external objects exist or not, if they are in and by themselves something “unknown and unknowable,” altogether different from what we consider them to be. The radical fault of Mr. Spencer’s “transfigured realism” is that he mistakes sensations themselves for the act of the mind which is concerned about them; and when in reality he speaks merely of the sensations as such, he imagines he has in view purely speculative intellectual acts. Such confusion is quite natural in a philosopher who recognizes no form of idea but transformed sensation, no purely unimaginable conceivability. This is evident when he says:

“We can think of matter only in terms of mind. We can think of mind only in terms of matter. When we have pushed our explorations of the first to the uttermost limit, we are referred to the second for final answer; and when we have got the final answer of the second, we are referred back to the first for an interpretation of it.”

Thus is he compelled to revolve in a circular process which makes the knowledge of mind depend on the knowledge of matter, and vice versâ. How admirably does the scholastic theory of the origin of thought dissipate the clouds which befog Mr. Spencer throughout this discussion, and prevent him from seeing to what consequences he blindly drifts! The unseen, the unfelt, the unheard are each and all absolutely nothing, so that sense alone can determine reality. Such is the philosophy of Mr. Spencer; and there can be no wonder that upon an analysis of premises he finds that, having set out from nothing, he lands upon the same unreal shore. Scholasticism—the philosophy which at the present time is returning into unexpected though much deserved vogue, superseding in the highest intellectual circles the tenuity of Kant’s unrealism and the sensism of Locke and Condillac—proposes an explanation of the relation of the external world to the intellect through the medium of the senses, which cannot but elicit the endorsement of every logical mind. Just at the point where Spencer modifies his subjective sensible impression received from the external world, in such a manner that he can find nothing corresponding to it outside of himself, the scholastic supposes the active intellect to seize this phantasm or sensible image, and, having so far divested it of its sensible qualities as to fit it to become the object of pure cognition, offers it to the mind cognitive for such cognition, which, as the true cognitive faculty, pronounces it to be the type or exemplar of the object, and this he calls the verbum mentis, or idea of the thing. The created light of our intellect, which is itself a participation in the uncreated divine

light, enables us to see and judge of what is exhibited to it through the organs of sense, surveying it, measuring it, and penetrating its general essence so far as to be able to perceive that it is the spiritualized resemblance of the object which primarily produced the sensation.

We do not here propose to offer any of the usual arguments in support of this system, apart from the palpable fact that it appears to offer to each faculty, sensitive and intellective, appropriate material for operation, but to contrast its adequacy with the confessed impotency of Spencer’s “transfigured realism.” And, indeed, not only is this latter impotent but eminently fallacious. In endeavoring to prove that the mind transfigures its sensations in such a manner that there can exist no correspondence between the sensation and the object, Mr. Spencer allows the decision to rest on his test-case of sound. With respect to the sensation produced on the auditory nerve by aërial undulations, he says that “the subjective state no more resembles its objective cause than the pressure which moves the trigger of a gun resembles the explosion which follows.” And again, summarizing the argument, he says: “All the sensations produced in us by environing things are but symbols of actions out of ourselves, the natures of which we cannot even conceive.” The fallacy of this statement it is not difficult to perceive; for Mr. Spencer rules out the action of the intellect, which can alone determine the value and significance of a sensation, and takes account only of the sensation itself, deeming it able to pronounce upon its own correspondence with its exciting object. Indeed, there can be no more correspondence

between a visual object and the sense of vision than there can be between sound and a vibration of the air, except in so far as the mind pronounces this to be the case after a due investigation of the respective conditions pertaining to both sensations. It is the mind alone which can determine that the sensation we call sound is the result of air undulations, just as it is the mind which determines that the color and outline of visual objects are as represented in vision. The fault, therefore, of Mr. Spencer’s view is that, having constituted sensation the sole and sufficient judge of its own objective validity and correspondence with external objects, he is compelled at once to fly to his chosen refuge and cherished haven of the “unknown and the unknowable.” Again is he guilty of another transparent fallacy when he asserts that a series of successive independent sensations are mistaken for a whole individual one, which we accordingly speak of as such. The instance he adduces is that of musical sound, “which is,” he says, “a seemingly simple feeling clearly resolvable into simpler feelings.” The implied inference is that, since experience proves this not to be a simple feeling, but resolvable into simpler ones, there can be no reciprocity between our sensations and their exciting causes. This reasoning might be accredited with ingenuity, were it not so extremely shallow. For what is a sensation but that which we feel? And if we feel it as one, it must be one. It matters not if each separate beat, contributing to produce musical sound, should, when heard alone, produce a feeling different from that caused by the combination of beats, since it is none the less true that the rapid combination

produces a sensation which is felt as one, and necessarily is one in consequence. Mr. Spencer seems to forget that causes in combination can produce results entirely different from those to which each cause separately taken can give rise; or, as Dr. Mivart says, “All that Mr. Spencer really shows and proves is that diverse conditions result in the evocation of diverse simple perceptions, of which perceptions such conditions are the occasions.” Mr. Spencer’s position, bolstered up as it is by the minutest analysis of mental consciousness and by a wealth of marvellously subtle reasoning, is after all but a prejudice. He is indisposed to admit aught but sensation, and hence plies his batteries against every other element which dares obtrude itself into the domain of thought. How suggestive of this fact are the following words:

“It needs but to think of a brain as a seat of nervous discharges, intermediate between actions in the outer world and actions in the world of thought, to be impressed with the absurdity of supposing that the connections among outer actions, after being transferred through the medium of nervous discharges, can reappear in the world of thought in the forms they originally had.”

With Dr. Mivart we ask, “Where is the absurdity?” For surely He who made the brain might, if he saw fit, and as the facts prove, have so made it that it would perform its functions in this very identical manner. The steps of the process by which the results of nervous action are appropriated by the mind in the shape of knowledge will necessarily remain an inscrutable mystery for ever, but that is no reason why they should not be accomplished in any manner short of that involving a contradiction.

This ends what we wish to say concerning Dr. Mivart’s chapter on the “External World.” He has not endeavored to shirk a single phase of the discussion with his formidable opponents, and we feel that if he has worsted them in the encounter, his triumph is as much the inevitable outcome of the truth of the cause which he has espoused as it is of the undoubted abilities he has exhibited throughout the course of the hard-fought contest.

So pregnant with material for thought are the different chapters of Dr. Mivart’s book that we have thus far been unable to get beyond the opening ones, nor do their diversified character allow of a kindred criticism. Thus, from the consideration of the “External World” the author at once proceeds to a few reflections on language in opposition to the Darwinian theory of its progressive formation and development. We wish we could bestow on the whole of this chapter the same unqualified praise which his previous chapters merit; for, though partaking of the same general character of carefulness and research which belongs to all Dr. Mivart’s writings, in it he rather petulantly waves aside one of the strongest arguments and most valuable auxiliaries which could be found in support of his position. The proposition is to this effect: “Rational language is a bond of connection between the mental and material world which is absolutely peculiar to man.” He first considers language under its twofold aspect of emotional and rational, the latter alone being the division alluded to in the proposition. With the view, however, of facilitating his encounter with Darwin, he makes six subdistinctions which, though true, seem to overlap at times, or

at least are gratuitous, since they are not needed for the purpose of their introduction. Mr. Darwin has exhibited, in his effort to make language a mere improvement on the gutturals and inarticulate sounds of animals, less of his accustomed ingenuity than elsewhere, so that any amount of concession might have been made to him, and yet the orthodox view on the subject have been left intact. And this we deem the wiser procedure in such cases; for less expenditure of force is required if the outer entrenchments can be passed by without a struggle, and siege laid at once to the inner fortress itself. In one point of the argument Dr. Mivart gets the better of Darwin so neatly as to remind us of a carte blanche thrust in fencing. Mr. Darwin remarks that man, in common with the lower animals, uses, in order to express emotion, cries and gestures which are at times more expressive than any words, thus asserting an innate equality between both, if not even the superiority of the emotional over the rational language, and thereby insinuating that, in point of origin, there could not have been any difference between them. Dr. Mivart replies that certainly emotional language is more expressive when it is question of expressing emotion. “But what,” he asks, “has that to do with the question of definite signs intelligently given and understood?” The fact that man uses emotional language in common with other animals proves nothing beyond the additional fact that he too is an animal, which is not the question; the question being whether in addition he possesses exclusively another faculty—viz., that of rational language, sui generis—radically different from the emotional. Mr. Darwin’s argument

is thus representable: a and a (animality) + x (rational language) = a and a.

The passage in this chapter to which we reluctantly take exception is the following: “I actually heard Professor Vogt at Norwich (at the British Association meeting of 1868), in discussing certain cases of aphasia, declare before the whole physiological section: ‘Je ne comprends pas la parole dans un homme qui ne parle pas’—a declaration which manifestly showed that he was not qualified to form, still less to express, any opinion whatever on the subject.” Now, we are of opinion that, rightly understood and interpreted in the light of the most recent researches, these words convey a deep and significant truth. Dr. Mivart is anxious, in the interest of truth, to maintain intact and entire the essential difference between emotional and rational language, and this we believe he might best do by investigating and adapting the facts of aphasia. Aphasia declares that language-function is confined to some portion of the anterior convolution of the brain—a source or centre of nerve-power altogether distinct from the vesicular or gray portion of the cerebral substance which is concerned in the production of thought and all purely intellectual processes. This being the case, whenever we discover a lesion of the anterior convolution, and find it accompanied with impaired ability of speech, we also find inability to conceive such thoughts as those of which words are the sole symbol and sensible signs. The researches made by Trousseau, Hammond, and Ferrier prove that the faculty of language is thus localized, the anatomical region being somewhere in the neighborhood of the island of

Reil; and though Brown-Séquard, a physiologist whose opinion is entitled to great consideration, differs from this view, the fact that more than five hundred cases as against thirteen favor the opinion is sufficient guarantee of its probable truth.

The distinction here is not sufficiently kept in sight between objects of thought which are denoted by some symbol besides the articulate word, and those which can be represented in words alone. All material objects, or such as are found amid material environments, belong to the former class, and of course need no words to become known. Their material outlines and specific sensible qualities sufficiently reveal them to the mind without any spoken language; for these individualize, differentiate, and circumscribe the object, and that is the whole function of language. When, however, it is question of purely intellectual conceptions, such as obtain throughout the range of metaphysics, these are so bound up with their expression that, this being lost, the thought disappears with it. This theory, long since broached by De Bonald, finds unexpected support in the facts of aphasia. There are two forms of aphasia, the one amnesic, involving the loss of the memory of words, the other ataxic, or inability to coordinate words in coherent speech. The latter form is met with often separately, and under those conditions the study of this phenomenon becomes more interesting. We then see that all idea of relation has disappeared, because it being a purely intellectual idea, having no sensible sign to represent it, its expression being lost to the mind, the thought perishes at the same time. Hence words are confusedly jumbled by

the patient without the slightest reference to their meaning. The researches of Bouillaud, Dax, Hughlings, Jackson, Hammond, Flint, and Séguin all tend to establish the close dependence of thought and language, and to justify the utterance of Prof. Vogt which Dr. Mivart quotes with so much disapprobation, or to lend force to the dictum of Max Müller, that “without language there can be no thought.” We have merely touched upon this interesting subject of aphasia, as a lengthened consideration of it would carry us beyond our limits; but we hope to have stated enough to show that Dr. Mivart was, to say the least, rash in dismissing its teachings so summarily. We will, however, do him the justice of saying that he conclusively proves the essential difference between emotional and rational language, and the absurdity of regarding the latter as a mere development of the former. He has done this, too, by citing authorities from the opposing school, and the labors of Mr. Taylor and Sir John Lubbock are made to do yeoman’s service against Mr. Darwin.

We have thus far followed Dr. Mivart step by step through the opening chapters of his book, and have found at each point of our progress abundant materials for reflection. The field he has surveyed with close-gazing eye is varied and extensive; and though many gleaners will come after him laden with fresh sheaves of toilsome gathering, to him belongs the credit of having garnered the first crop of Catholic truth from the seeds which modern science planted. He has done this service, too, for philosophy: that he has enabled us to view modern speculations in the light of the grand old principles of

scholastic philosophy, and dispelled the clouds of sophistry which filled up and gilded over the cranks and crannies of modern error. He has appreciated au juste the drift and meaning of that false science which strives to make the beautiful facts of nature the basis of a pernicious philosophy. Not a few of our orthodox friends have hitherto failed to discern the real germ of falsity in the speculations of such men as Tyndall and Huxley and Spencer. They felt that the conclusions arrived at by those writers are false, subversive of reason and morality, but, not being sufficiently versed in the premises wherewith those conclusions were sought to be connected, they were obliged either to hold themselves to a silent protest or to carp and snarl without proof or argument to offer.

We should remember that, though principles rest the same, consequences assume Protean shapes, according as a sound or a perverse logic deduces them; and such is the invariable necessity imposed upon the champions of truth that they must, from time to time, cast aside weapons which have done good service against a vanquished foe, and fashion others to deal a fresh thrust wherever they find a flaw in the newly-fashioned armor of error. Catholic thinkers must keep abreast of the times, and we hope that henceforth the opponents of scientism will abandon sarcasm and invective, and, approaching their subject with a fulness of knowledge which will compel the respect of their adversaries, proceed in their work, even as Dr. Mivart has done, with dignity and moderation.

[1] Lessons from Nature as manifested in Mind and Matter. By St. George Mivart, Ph.D., F.R.S., etc. 8vo, pp. 461. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1876.

SEVILLE.

Quien no visto a Sevilla

No ha visto a maravilla.

Our first glimpse of the soft-flowing Guadalquivir was a disappointment—a turbid stream between two flat, uninteresting banks, on which grew low bushes that had neither grace nor dignity. It needed its musical name and poetic associations to give it any claim on the attention. But it assumed a better aspect as we went on. Immense orchards of olive-trees, soft and silvery, spread wide their boughs as far as the eye could see. The low hills were sun-bathed; the valleys were fertile; mountains appeared in the distance, severe and jagged as only Spanish mountains know how to be, to give

character to the landscape. Now and then some old town came in sight on a swell of ground, with an imposing gray church or Moorish-looking tower. At length we came to fair Seville, standing amid orange and citron groves, on the very banks of the Guadalquivir, with numerous towers that were once minarets, and, chief among them, the beautiful, rose-flushed Giralda, warm in the sunset light, rising like a stately palm-tree among gleaming white houses. The city looked worthy of its fame as Seville the enchantress—Encantadora Sevilla!

We went to the Fonda Europa, a Spanish-looking hotel with a patio

in the centre, where played a fountain amid odorous trees and shrubs, and lamps, already lighted, hung along the arcades, in which were numerous guests sauntering about, and picturesque beggars, grouped around a pillar, singing some old ditty in a recitative way to the sound of their instruments. Our room was just above, where we were speedily lulled to sleep by their melancholy airs, in a fashion not unworthy of one’s first night in poetic Andalusia. What more, indeed, could one ask for than an orange-perfumed court with a splashing fountain, lamps gleaming among the trailing vines, Spanish caballeros pacing the shadowy arcades, and wild-looking beggars making sad music on the harp and guitar?

Of course our first visit in the morning was to the famed cathedral. Everything was charmingly novel in the streets to our new-world eyes—the gay shops of the Calle de las Sierpes, the Broadway of Seville, which no carriage is allowed to enter; the Plaza, with its orange-trees and graceful arcades; and the dazzling white houses, with their Moorish balconies and pretty courts, of which we caught glimpses through the iron gratings, fresh and clean, with plants set around the cooling fountain, where the family assembled in the evening for music and conversation.

We soon found ourselves at the foot of the Giralda, which still calls to prayer, not, as in the time of the Moors, by means of its muezzin, but by twenty-four bells all duly consecrated and named—Santa Maria, San Miguel, San Cristobal, San Fernando, Santa Barbara, etc.—which, from time to time, send a whole wave of prayer over the city. It is certainly one of the finest towers in Spain, and the people of Seville

are so proud of it that they call it the eighth wonder of the world, which surpasses the seven others:

Tu, maravilla octava, maravillas

A las pasadas siete maravillas.

The Moors regarded it as so sacred that they would have destroyed it rather than have it fall into the hands of the Christians, had not Alfonso the Wise threatened them with his vengeance should they do so. Its strong foundations were partly built out of the statues of the saints, as if they wished to raise a triumphant structure on the ruins of what was sacred to Christians. The remainder is of brick, of a soft rose-tint, very pleasing to the eye. The tower rises to the height of three hundred and fifty feet, square, imposing, and so solid as to have resisted the shock of several earthquakes. Around the belfry is the inscription:

Nomen Domini fortissima Turris

—the name of the Lord is a strong tower. It is lighted by graceful arches and ascended by means of a ramp in the centre, which is so gradual that a horse could go to the very top. We found on the summit no wise old Egyptian raven, as in Prince Ahmed’s time, with one foot in the grave, but still poring, with his knowing one eye, over the cabalistic diagrams before him. No; all magic lore vanished from the land with the dark-browed Moors, and now there were only gentle doves, softly cooing in less heathenish notes, but perhaps not without their spell.

On the top of the tower is a bronze statue of Santa Fé, fourteen feet high, weighing twenty-five hundred pounds, but, instead of being steadfast and immovable, as well-grounded faith should be, it turns like a weather-cock, veering

with every wind like a very straw, whence the name of Giralda. Don Quixote makes his Knight of the Wood, speaking of his exploits in honor of the beautiful Casilda, say: “Once she ordered me to defy the famous giantess of Seville, called Giralda, as valiant and strong as if she were of bronze, and who, without ever moving from her place, is the most changeable and inconstant woman in the world. I went. I saw her. I conquered her. I forced her to remain motionless, as if tied, for more than a week. No wind blew but from the north.”

At the foot of this magic tower is the Patio de las Naranjas—an immense court filled with orange-trees of great age, in the midst of which is the fountain where the Moors used to perform their ablutions. It is surrounded by a high battlemented wall, which makes the cathedral look as if fortified. You enter it by a Moorish archway, now guarded by Christian apostles and surmounted by the victorious cross. Just within you are startled by a thorn-crowned statue of the Ecce Homo, in a deep niche, with a lamp burning before it. The court is thoroughly Oriental in aspect, with its fountain, its secluded groves, the horseshoe arches with their arabesques, the crocodile suspended over the Puerta del Lagarto, sent by the Sultan of Egypt to Alfonso the Wise, asking the hand of his daughter in marriage (an ominous love-token from which the princess naturally shrank); and over the church door, with a lamp burning before it, is a statue of the Oriental Virgin whom all Christians unite in calling Blessed—here specially invoked as Nuestra Señora de los Remedios. The Oriental aspect of the court makes the cathedral within all the more impressive, with its

Gothic gloom and marvels of western art. It is one of the grandest Gothic churches in the world. It is said the canons, when the question of building it was discussed in 1401, exclaimed in full chapter: “Let us build a church of such dimensions that every one who beholds it will consider us mad!” Everything about it is on a grand scale. It is an oblong square four hundred and thirty-one feet long by three hundred and fifteen wide. The nave is of prodigious height, and of the six aisles the two next the walls are divided into a series of chapels. The church is lighted by ninety-three immense windows of stained glass, the finest in Spain, but of the time of the decadence. The rites of the church are performed here with a splendor only second to Rome, and the objects used in the service are on a corresponding scale of magnificence. The silver monstrance, for the exposition of the Host, is one of the largest pieces of silversmith’s work in the kingdom, with niches and saints elaborately wrought, surmounted by a statuette of the Immaculate Conception. The bronze tenebrario for Holy Week is twelve feet high, with sixteen saints arrayed on the triangle. The Pascal candle, given every year by the chapter of Toledo in exchange for the palm branches used on Palm Sunday, is twenty-five feet high, and weighs nearly a ton. It looks like a column of white marble, and might be called the “Grand Duc des chandelles,” as the sun was termed by Du Bartas, a French poet of the time of Henry of Navarre. On the right wall, just within one of the doors, is a St. Christopher, painted in the sixteenth century, thirty-two feet high, with a green tree for a staff, crossing a mighty

current with the child Jesus on his shoulder, looking like an infant Hercules. These gigantic St. Christophers are to be seen in most of the Spanish cathedrals, from a belief that he who looks prayerfully upon an image of this saint will that day come to no evil end: Christophorum videas; postea tutus eas—Christopher behold; then mayest thou safely go; or, according to the old adage:

Christophori sancti, speciem quicumque tuetur,

Istâ nempè die non morte mala morietur.

These colossal images are at first startling, but one soon learns to like the huge, kindly saint who walked with giant steps in the paths of holiness; bore a knowledge of Christ to infidel lands of suffering and trial, upheld amid the current by his lofty courage and strength of will, which raised him above ordinary mortals, and carrying his staff, ever green and vigorous, emblem of his constancy. No legend is more beautifully significant, and no saint was more popular in ancient times. His image was often placed in elevated situations, to catch the eye and express his power over the elements, and he was especially invoked against lightning, hail, and impetuous winds. His name of happy augury—the Christ-bearer—was given to Columbus, destined to carry a knowledge of the faith across an unknown deep.

This reminds us that in the pavement near the end of the church is the tombstone of Fernando, the son of Christopher Columbus, on which are graven the arms given by Ferdinand and Isabella, with the motto: A Castilla y a Leon, mundo nuevo dio Colon. Over this stone is erected the immense monumento for the Host on Maundy Thursday,

shaped like a Greek temple, which is adorned by large statues, and lit up by nearly a thousand candles.

This church, though full of solemn religious gloom, is by no means gloomy. It is too lofty and spacious, and the windows, especially in the morning, light it up with resplendent hues. The choir, which is as large as an ordinary church, stands detached in the body of the house. It is divided into two parts transversely, with a space between them for the laity, as in all the Spanish cathedrals. The part towards the east contains the high altar, and is called the Capilla mayor. The other is the Coro, strictly speaking, and contains the richly-carved stalls of the canons and splendid choral books. They are both surrounded by a high wall finely sculptured, except the ends that face each other, across which extend rejas, or open-work screens of iron artistically wrought, that do not obstruct the view.

The canons were chanting the Office when we entered, and looked like bishops in their flowing purple robes. The service ended with a procession around the church, the clergy in magnificent copes, heavy with ancient embroidery in gold. The people were all devout. No careless ways, as in many places where religion sits lightly on the people, but an earnestness and devotion that were impressive. The attitudes of the clergy were fine, without being studied; the grouping of the people picturesque. The ladies all wore the Spanish mantilla, and, when not kneeling, sat, in true Oriental style, on the matting that covered portions of the marble pavement. Lights were burning on nearly all the altars like constellations

of stars all along the dim aisles. The grandeur of the edifice, the numerous works of Christian art, the august rites of the Catholic Church, and the devotion of the people all seemed in harmony. Few churches leave such an impression on the mind.

In the first chapel at the left, where stands the baptismal font, is Murillo’s celebrated “Vision of St. Anthony,” a portion of which was cut out by an adroit thief a few years ago, and carried to the United States, but is now replaced. It is so large that, with a “Baptism of our Saviour” above it by the same master, it fills the whole side of the chapel up to the very arch. It seemed to be the object of general attraction. Group after group came to look at it before leaving the church, and it is worthy of its popularity and fame, though Mr. Ford says it has always been overrated. Théophile Gautier is more enthusiastic. He says:

“Never was the magic of painting carried so far. The rapt saint is kneeling in the middle of his cell, all the poor details of which are rendered with the vigorous realism characteristic of the Spanish school. Through the half-open door is seen one of those long, spacious cloisters so favorable to reverie. The upper part of the picture, bathed in a soft, transparent, vaporous light, is filled with a circle of angels of truly ideal beauty, playing on musical instruments. Amid them, drawn by the power of prayer, the Infant Jesus descends from cloud to cloud to place himself in the arms of the saintly man, whose head is bathed in the streaming radiance, and who seems ready to fall into an ecstasy of holy rapture. We place this divine picture above the St. Elizabeth of Hungary cleansing the teigneux, to be seen at the Royal Academy of Madrid; above the ‘Moses’; above all the Virgins and all the paintings of the Infant Jesus by this master, however beautiful, however pure they be. He who has not seen the ‘St. Anthony of Padua’ does not know

the highest excellence of the painter of Seville. It is like those who imagine they know Rubens and have never seen the ‘Magdalen’ at Antwerp.”

We passed chapel after chapel with paintings, statues, and tombs, till we came to the Capilla Real, where lies the body of St. Ferdinand in a silver urn, with an inscription in four languages by his son, Alfonso the Wise, who seems to have had a taste for writing epitaphs. He composed that of the Cid.

St. Ferdinand was the contemporary and cousin-german of St. Louis of France, who gave him the Virgen de los Reyes that hangs in this chapel, and, like him, added the virtues of a saint to the glories of a warrior. He had such a tender love for his subjects that he was unwilling to tax them, and feared the curse of one poor old woman more than a whole army of Moors. He took Cordova, and dedicated the mosque of the foul Prophet to the purest of Virgins. He conquered Murcia in 1245; Jaen in 1246; Seville in 1248; but he remained humble amid all his glory, and exclaimed with tears on his death-bed: “O my Lord! thou hast suffered so much for the love of me; but I, wretched man that I am! what have I done out of love for thee?” He died like a criminal, with a cord around his neck and a crucifix in his hands, and so venerated by foes as well as friends that, when he was buried, Mohammed Ebn Alahmar, the founder of the Alhambra, sent a hundred Moorish knights to bear lighted tapers around his bier—a tribute of respect he continued to pay him on every anniversary of his death. And to this day, when the body of St. Ferdinand, which is in a remarkable state of preservation, is

exposed to veneration, the troops present arms as they pass, and the flag is lowered before the conqueror of Seville.

The arms of the city represent St. Ferdinand on his throne, with St. Leander and Isidore, the patrons of Seville, at his side. Below is the curious device—No 8 Do—a rebus of royal invention, to be seen on the pavement of the beautiful chapter-house. When Don Sancho rebelled against his father, Alfonso the Wise, most of the cities joined in the revolt. But Seville remained loyal, and the king gave it this device as the emblem of its fidelity. The figure 8, which represents a knot or skein—madeja in Spanish—between the words No and Do, reads: No madeja do, or No m’ha dejado, which, being interpreted, is: She has not abandoned me.

St. Ferdinand’s effigy is rightfully graven on the city arms; for it was he who wrested Seville from Mahound and restored it to Christ, to use the expression on the Puerta de la Carne:

Condidit Alcides; renovavit Julius urbem,

Restituit Christo Fernandus tertius Heros.

—Alcides founded the city, Julius Cæsar rebuilt it, and Ferdinand III., the Hero, restored it to Christ; a proud inscription, showing the antiquity of Seville. Hercules himself, who played so great a rôle in Spain, founded it, as you see; its historians say just two thousand two hundred and twenty-eight years after the creation of the world. On the Puerta de Jerez it is written: “Hercules built me, Julius Cæsar surrounded me with walls, and the Holy King conquered me with the aid of Garcia Perez de Vargas.” Hercules’ name has been given to one of the principal promenades of

the city, where his statue is to be seen on a column, opposite to another of Julius Cæsar.

The above-mentioned Garcia Perez and Alfonso el Sabio are both buried in the Royal Chapel. Close beside it is the chapel of the Immaculate Conception, with some old paintings of that mystery, which Seville was one of the foremost cities in the world to maintain. Andalusia is the true land of the Immaculate Conception, and Seville was the first to raise a cry of remonstrance against those who dared attack the most precious prerogative of the Virgin. Its clergy and people sent deputies to Rome, and had silence imposed on all who were audacious enough to dispute it. And when Pope Paul V. published his bull authorizing the festival of the Immaculate Conception, and forbidding any one’s preaching or teaching to the contrary, Seville could not contain itself for joy, but broke out into tournaments and banquets, bull-fights and the roaring of cannon. When the festival came round, this joy took another form, and expressed itself in true Oriental fashion by dances before the Virgin, as the Royal Harper danced before the ark. Nor was this a novelty. Religious dances had been practised from remote times in Spain. They formed part of the Mozarabic rite, which Cardinal Ximenes reestablished at Toledo, authorizing dances in the choir and nave. St. Basil, among other fathers, approved of imitating the tripudium angelorum—the dance of the angelic choirs that

“Sing, and, singing in their glory, move.”

At the Cathedral of Seville the choir-boys, called Los Seises—the Sixes—used to dance to the sound of ivory castanets before the Host

on Corpus Christi, and in the chapel of the Virgin on the 8th of December, when they were dressed in blue and white. Sometimes they sang as they danced. One of their hymns began: “Hail, O Virgin, purer and fairer than the dawn or star of day! Daughter, Mother, Spouse, Maria! and the Eastern Gate of God!” with the chorus: “Sing, brothers, sing, to the praise of the Mother of God; of Spain the royal patroness, conceived without sin!” There was nothing profane in this dance. It was a kind of cadence, decorous, and not without religious effect. Several of the archbishops of Seville, however, endeavored to suppress it, but the lower clergy long clung to the custom. Pope Eugenius IV., in 1439, authorized the dance of the Seises. St. Thomas of Villanueva speaks approvingly of the religious dances of Seville in his day. They were also practised in Portugal, where we read of their being celebrated at the canonization of St. Charles Borromeo, as in Spain for that of St. Ignatius de Loyola. These, however, were of a less austere character, and were not performed in church. In honor of the latter, quadrilles were formed of children, personifying the four quarters of the globe, with costumes in accordance. America had the greatest success, executed by children eight or ten years old, dressed as monkeys, parrots, etc.—tropical America, evidently. These were varied in one place by the representation of the taking of Troy, the wooden horse included.

The Immaculate Conception is still the favorite dogma of this region. Ave Maria Purissima! is still a common exclamation. There are few churches without a Virgin dressed in blue and white; few

houses without a picture, at least, of Mary Most Pure. There are numerous confraternities of the Virgin, some of whom come together at dawn to recite the Rosario de la Aurora. Among the hymns they sing is a verse in which Mary is compared to a vessel of grace, of which St. Joseph is the sail, the child Jesus the helm, and the oars are the pious members, who devoutly pray:

“Es Maria la nave de gracia,

San Jose la vela, el Niño el timon;

Y los remos son las buenas almas

Que van al Rosario con gran devocion.”

There is another chapel of Our Lady in the cathedral of Seville, in which is a richly-sculptured retable with pillars, and niches, and statues, all of marble, and a balustrade of silver, along the rails of which you read, in great silver letters, the angelic salutation: Ave Maria!

At the further end of one of the art-adorned sacristies hangs Pedro de Campaña’s famous “Descent from the Cross,” before which Murillo loved to meditate, especially in his last days. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, in deep-red mantles, let down the dead Christ. St. John stands at the foot ready to receive him. The Virgin is half fainting. Magdalen is there with her vase. The figures are a little stiff, but their attitudes are expressive of profound grief, and the picture is admirable in coloring and religious in effect, as well as interesting from its associations. It was once considered so awful that Pacheco was afraid to remain before it after dark. But those were days of profound religious feeling; now men are afraid of nothing. And it was so full of reality to Murillo that, one evening, lingering longer than usual before it, the sacristan

came to warn him it was time to close the church. “I am waiting,” said the pious artist, rousing from his contemplation, “till those holy men shall have finished taking down the body of the Lord.” The painting then hung in the church of Santa Cruz, and Murillo was buried beneath it. This was destroyed by Marshal Soult, and the bones of the artist scattered.

In the same sacristy hang, on opposite walls, St. Leander and his brother Isidore, by Murillo, both with noble heads. The latter is the most popular saint in Spain after St. James, and is numbered among the fathers of the church. Among the twelve burning suns, circling in the fourth heaven of Dante’s Paradiso, is “the arduous spirit of Isidore,” whom the great Alcuin long before called “Hesperus, the star of the church—Jubar Ecclesiæ, sidus Hesperiæ.” The Venerable Bede classes him with Jerome, Athanasius, Augustine, and Cyprian; and it was after dictating some passages from St. Isidore that he died.

St. Isidore is said to have been descended from the old Gothic kings. At any rate, he belonged to a family of saints, which is better; his sister and two brothers being in the calendar. His saintly mother, when the family was exiled from Carthagena on account of their religion, chose to live in Seville, saying with tears: “Let me die in this foreign land, and have my sepulchre here where I was brought to the knowledge of God!” It is said a swarm of bees came to rest on the mouth of St. Isidore when a child; as is related of several other men celebrated for their mellifluence—Plato and St. Ambrose, for example. Old legends tell how he went to Rome and back

in one night. However that may be, his mind was of remarkable activity and compass, and took in all the knowledge of the day. He knew Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, and wrote such a vast number of works as to merit the title of Doctor Egregius. There are two hundred MSS. of his in the Bibliothèque Royale at Paris, and still more at the Vatican, to say nothing of those in Spain. His great work, the Etymologies, in twenty books, is an encyclopædia of all the learning of the seventh century. Joseph Scaliger says it rendered great service to science by saving from destruction what would otherwise have been irretrievably lost.

The account of St. Isidore’s death, celebrated by art, is very affecting. When he felt his end was drawing near, he summoned two of his suffragans, and had himself transported to the church of San Vicente amid a crowd of clergy, monks, and the entire population of Seville, who rent the air with their cries. When he arrived before the high altar, he ordered all the women to retire. Then one of the bishops clothed him in sackcloth, and the other sprinkled him with ashes. In this penitential state he publicly confessed his sins, imploring pardon of God, and begging all present to pray for him. “And if I have offended any one,” added he, “let him pardon me in view of my sincere repentance.” He then received the holy Body of the Lord, and gave all around him the kiss of peace, desiring that it might be a pledge of eternal reunion, after which he distributed all the money he had left to the poor. He was then taken home, and died four days after.[2]

On the church in which this touching scene occurred is represented San Vicente, the titular, with the legendary crow which piloted the ship that bore his body to Lisbon, with a pitchfork in its mouth. Mr. Ford, whose knowledge of saintly lore is not commensurate with his desire to be funny, thinks “a rudder would be more appropriate,” not knowing that a fork was one of the instruments used to torture the “Invincible Martyr.” Prudentius says: “When his body was lacerated by iron forks, he only smiled on his tormentors; the pangs they inflicted were a delight; thorns were his roses; the flames a refreshing bath; death itself was but the entrance to life.”

Near the cathedral is the Alcazar, with battlemented walls, and an outer pillared court where pace the guards to defend the shades of past royalty. As we had not then seen the Alhambra, we were the more struck by the richness and beauty of this next best specimen of Moorish architecture. The fretwork of gold on a green ground, or white on red; the mysterious sentences from the Koran; the curious ceilings inlaid with cedar; the brilliant azulejos; the Moorish arches and decorations; and the secluded courts, were all novel, and like a page from some Eastern romance. The windows looked out on enchanting gardens, worthy of being sung by Ariosto, with orange hedges, palm-trees, groves of citrons and pomegranates, roses in full bloom, though in

January; kiosks lined with bright azulejos, and a fountain in the centre; fish playing in immense marble tanks, tiny jets of water springing up along the paths to cool the air, a bright sun, and a delicious temperature. All this was the creation of Don Pedro the Cruel, aided by some of the best Moorish workmen from Granada. Here reigned triumphant Maria de Padilla, called the queen of sorcerers by the people, who looked upon Don Pedro as bewitched. When she died, the king had her buried with royal honors—shocking to say, in the Capilla Real, where lies Fernando the Saint! Her apartments are pointed out, now silent and deserted where once reigned love and feasting—yes, and crime. In one of the halls it is said Don Pedro treacherously slew Abou Said, King of the Moors, who had come to visit him in sumptuous garments of silk and gold, covered with jewels—slew him for the sake of the booty. Among the spoils were three rubies of extraordinary brilliancy, as large as pigeons’ eggs, one of which Don Pedro afterwards gave the Black Prince; it is now said to adorn the royal crown of England.

There is a little oratory in the Alcazar, only nine or ten feet square, called the Capilla de los Azulejos, because the altar, retable, and the walls to a certain height, are composed of enamelled tiles, some of which bear the F and Y, with the arrows and yoke, showing they were made in the time of Isabella the Catholic. The altar-piece represents the Visitation. In this chapel Charles V. was married to Isabella of Portugal.

No one omits to visit the hospital of La Caridad, which stands on a square by the Guadalquivir, with

five large pictures on the front, of blue and white azulejos, painted after the designs of Murillo. One of them represents St. George and the dragon, to which saint the building is dedicated. This hospital was rebuilt in 1664 by Miguel de Mañara in expiation of his sins; for he had been, before his conversion, a very Don Juan for profligacy. In his latter days he acquired quite a reputation for sanctity, and some years since there was a question of canonizing him. However, he had inscribed on his tomb the unique epitaph: “Here lie the ashes of the worst man that ever lived in the world.” He was a friend of Murillo’s, and, being a man of immense wealth, employed him to adorn the chapel of his hospital. Marshal Soult carried off most of these paintings, among which was the beautiful “St. Elizabeth of Hungary,” now at Madrid; but six still remain. “Moses smiting the Rock” and the “Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes” are justly noted, but the most beautiful is the picture of San Juan de Dios staggering home through the dark street on a stormy night, with a dying man on his shoulder. An angel, whose heavenly radiance lights up the gloom with truly Rembrandt coloring, is aiding him to bear his burden.

There is a frightful picture among these soft Murillos, by Juan Valdés Leal, of a half-open coffin, in which lies a bishop in magnificent pontifical robes, who is partially eaten up by the worms. Murillo could never look at it without compressing his nose, as if it gave out a stench. The “Descent from the Cross” over the altar is exquisitely carved and colored. Few chapels contain so many gems of art, but the light is ill-adapted for displaying them.

This hospital was in part founded for night wanderers. It is now an almshouse for old men, and served by Sisters of Charity.

Among other places of attraction are the palace of the Duke de Montpensier and the beautiful grounds with orange orchards and groves of palm-trees. Then there is the house of Murillo, bright and sunny, with its pleasant court and marble pillars, still the home of art, owned by a dignitary of the church.

The Casa de Pilatos is an elegant palace, half Moorish, half Gothic, belonging to the Duke of Medina Celi, said to have been built by a nobleman of the sixteenth century, in commemoration of a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, after the plan of Pilate’s house. Perhaps the name was given it because the public stations of the Via Crucis, or Way of Bitterness, as the Spanish call it, begin here, at the cross in the court. The Pretorian chapel has a column of the flagellation and burning lamps; and on the staircase, as you go up, is the cock in memory of St. Peter. Beautiful as the palace is, it is unoccupied, and kept merely for show.

It would take a volume to describe all the works of art to be seen in the palaces and churches of Seville. We will only mention the Jesus Nazareno del Gran Poder—of great power—at San Lorenzo, a statue by Montañes, which is carried in the processions of Holy Week, dressed in black velvet broidered with silver and gold, and bearing a large cross encrusted with ivory, shell, and pearl. Angels, with outspread wings, bear lanterns before him. The whole group is carried by men so concealed under draperies that it seems to move of itself. We had not the satisfaction of witnessing one of these processions,

perhaps the most striking in the world, with the awful scenes of the Passion, the Virgin of Great Grief, and the apostles in their traditional colors; even Judas in yellow, still in Spain the color of infamy and criminals.

Of course we went repeatedly to the Museo of Seville; for we had specially come here to see Murillo on his native ground. His statue is in the centre of the square before it. The collection of paintings is small, but it comprises some of the choicest specimens of the Seville school. They are all of a religious nature, and therefore not out of place in the church and sacristy where they are hung—part of the suppressed convent of La Merced, founded by Fernando el Santo in the thirteenth century. The custodian who ushered us in waved his hand to the pictures on the opposite wall, breathing rather than saying the word Murillo! with an ineffable accent, half triumph, half adoration, and then kissed the ends of his fingers to express their delicious quality. He was right. They are adorable. We recognized them at a glance, having read of them for long years, and seen them often in our dreams. And visions they are of beauty and heavenly rapture, such as Murillo alone could paint. His refinement of expression, his warm colors and shimmering tints, the purity and tenderness of his Virgins, the ecstatic glow of his saints, and the infantine grace and beauty of his child Christs, all combine to make him one of the most beautiful expressions of Christian art, in harmony with all that is mystical and fervid. He has twenty-four paintings here, four of which are Conceptions, the subject for which he is specially renowned. Murillo is emphatically the Painter

of the Immaculate Conception. When he established the Academy of Art at Seville, of which he and Herrera were the first presidents, every candidate had to declare his belief in the Most Pure Conception of the Virgin. It was only three months before Murillo’s birth that Philip IV., amid the enthusiastic applause of all Spain, solemnly placed his kingdom under the protection of the Virgen concebida sin peccado. Artists were at once inspired by the subject, and vied with each other in depicting the

“Woman above all women glorified,

Our tainted nature’s solitary boast.”

But Murillo alone rose to the full height of this great theme, and he will always be considered as, par excellence, the Pintor de las Concepciones. He painted the Conception twenty-five times, and not twice in the same way. Two are at Paris, several in England, three at Madrid, and four in this museum, one of which is called the Perla—a pearl indeed. Innocence and purity, of course, are the predominant expressions of these Virgins, from the very nature of the subject. Mary is always represented clothed in flowing white robes, and draped with an azure mantle. She is radiant with youth and grace, and mysterious and pure as the heaven she floats in. Her small, delicate hands are crossed on her virginal breast or folded in adoration. Her lips are half open and tremulous. She is borne up in a flood of silvery light, calmly ecstatic, her whole soul in her eyes, which are bathed in a humid languor, and her beautiful hair, caressed by the wind, is floating around her like an aureola of gold. The whole is a vision as intoxicating as a cloud of Arabian incense. It is a poem of mystical

love—the very ecstasy of devotion.

Murillo’s best paintings were done for the Franciscans, the great defenders of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. From the Capuchins of Seville perhaps he derived his inspiration. They were his first patrons. He loved to paint the Franciscan saints, as well as their darling dogma. Such subjects were in harmony with his spiritual nature. He almost lived in the cloister. Piety reigned in his household. One of his sons took orders, and his daughter, Francisca, the model of some of his virgins, became a nun in the convent of the Madre de Dios.

Among his paintings here is one of “St. Francis at the foot of the Cross,” trampling the world and its vanities under his feet. Our Saviour has detached one bleeding hand from the cross, and bends down to lay it on the shoulder of the saint, as if he would draw him closer to his wounded side. St. Francis is looking up with a whole world of adoring love in his eyes, of self-surrender and abandon in his attitude. Though sombre in tone, this is one of the most expressive and devotional of pictures, and, once seen, can never be forgotten.

Then there is St. Felix, in his brown Franciscan dress, holding the beautiful child Jesus in his arms. When we first saw it, the afternoon sun, streaming through the windows, threw fresh radiance over the heavenly Madonna, who comes lightly, so lightly! down through the luminous ether, borne by God’s angels, slightly bending forward to the saint, as if with special predilection. A wallet of bread is at his feet, in reference to the legend that St. Felix went out

one stormy night to beg for the poor brethren of his convent, and met a child radiant with goodness and beauty, who gave him a loaf and then disappeared. This picture is the perfection of what is called Murillo’s vaporous style. The Spanish say it was painted con leche y sangre—with milk and blood.

The Servietta, so famous, is greatly injured. It is said to have been dashed off on a napkin, while waiting for his dinner, and given to the porter of the convent. If so, the friars’ napkins were of very coarse canvas, as may be seen where the paint has scaled off. The Virgin, a half-length, has large, Oriental eyes, full of intensity and earnestness.

Opposite is St. Thomas of Villanueva, giving alms to the poor, with a look of compassionate feeling on his pale, emaciated face, the light coming through the archway above him with fine effect. The beggars around him stand out as if in relief. One is crawling up to the saint on his knees, the upper part of his body naked and brown from exposure. A child in the corner is showing his coin to his mother with glee. Murillo used to call this his picture, as if he preferred it to his other works.

St. Thomas was Archbishop of Valencia in the sixteenth century, and a patron of letters and the arts, but specially noted for his excessive charity, for which he is surnamed the Almsgiver. His ever-open purse was popularly believed to have been replenished by the angels. When he died, more than eight thousand poor people followed him to the grave, filling the air with their sighs and groans. Pope Paul V. canonized him, and ordered that he should be represented with a purse instead of a crosier.

Murillo’s SS. Justa and Rufina are represented with victorious palms of martyrdom, holding between them the Giralda, of which they have been considered the special protectors since a terrible storm in 1504, which threatened the tower. They are two Spanish-looking maidens, one in a violet dress and yellow mantle, the other in blue and red, with earthen dishes around their feet. They lived in the third century, and were the daughters of a potter in Triana, a faubourg of Seville, on the other side of the river, which has always been famous for its pottery. In the time of the Arabs beautiful azulejos were made here, of which specimens are to be seen in some of the churches of Seville. In the sixteenth century there were fifty manufactories here, which produced similar ones of very fine lustre, such as we see at the Casa de Pilatos. Cervantes celebrates Triana in his Rinconete y Cortadillo. It is said to derive its name, originally Trajana, from the Emperor Trajan, who was born not far from Seville. It has come down from its high estate, and is now mostly inhabited by gypsies and the refuse of the city. The potteries are no longer what they once were. But there is an interesting little church, called Santa Ana, built in the time of Alfonso the Wise, in which are some excellent pictures, and a curious tomb of the sixteenth century made of azulejos. It was in this unpromising quarter the two Christian maidens, Justa and Rufina, lived fifteen hundred years ago or more. Some pagan women coming to their shop one day to buy vases for the worship of Venus, they refused to sell any for the purpose, and the women fell upon their stock of dishes and broke them to pieces.

The saints threw the images of Venus into the ditch to express their abhorrence. Whereupon the people dragged them before the magistrates, and, confessing themselves to be Christians, they were martyred.

There are two St. Anthonies here by Murillo, one of which is specially remarkable for beauty and intensity of expression. The child Jesus has descended from the skies, and sits on an open volume, about to clasp the saint around the neck. St. Anthony’s face seems to have caught something of the glow of heaven. Angels hover over the scene, as well they may.

There are several paintings here by the genial Pacheco, the father-in-law of Velasquez; among others one of St. Peter Nolasco, the tutor of Don Jayme el Conquistador, going in a boat to the redemption of captives. The man at the prow is Cervantes, who, with the other beaux esprits of the day, used to assemble in the studio of Pacheco, a man of erudition and a poet as well as a painter. Pacheco was a familiar of the Inquisition, and inspector of sacred pictures. It was in the latter capacity he laid down rules for their representation, among which were some relating to paintings of the Immaculate Conception (he has two paintings of this subject in the museum), which were generally adhered to in Spain. The general idea was taken from the woman in the Apocalypse, clothed with the sun, having the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. The Virgin was to be represented in the freshness of maidenhood, with grave, sweet eyes, golden hair, in a robe of spotless white and a blue mantle. Blue and white are the traditional colors of the Virgin. In the

unchanging East Lamartine found the women of Nazareth clad in a loose white garment that fell around them in long, graceful folds, over which was a blue tunic confined at the waist by a girdle—a dress he thought might have come down from the time of the patriarchs.

But to return to Pacheco. It was he who, in the seventeenth century, took so active a part in the discussion whether St. Teresa, just canonized, should be chosen as the Compatrona of Spain. Many maintained that St. James should continue to be considered the sole patron, and Quevedo espoused his cause so warmly that he ended by challenging his adversaries to a combat en champ clos, and was in danger of losing his estates. Pacheco, as seen by existing manuscripts, wrote a learned theological treatise against him, taking up the cause of St. Teresa, which proved victorious. She was declared the second patron of Spain by Philip III.—a decision re-echoed by the Spanish Cortes as late as 1812. All the prominent men of the day took part in this discussion, even artists and literary men, as well as politicians and the clergy.

The place of honor in the museum is given to Zurbarán’s “Santo Tomás,” a grand picture, painted for the Dominican college of Seville. In the centre is St. Thomas Aquinas, in the Dominican habit, resting on a cloud, with the four doctors of the church, in ample flowing robes, around him. He holds up his pen, as if for inspiration, to the opening heavens, where appear Christ and the Virgin, St. Paul and St. Dominic. Below, at the left, is Diego de Deza, the founder of the college, and other dignitaries; while on the right, attended by courtiers, is Charles V., in a splendid

imperial mantle, kneeling on a crimson cushion, with one hand raised invokingly to the saint. The faces are all said to be portraits of Zurbarán’s time; that of the emperor, the artist himself. The coloring is rich, the perspective admirable, the costumes varied and striking, and the composition faultless.

Zurbarán has another picture here, of a scene from the legend of St. Hugo, who was Bishop of Grenoble in the time of St. Bruno, and often spent weeks together at the Grande Chartreuse. Once he arrived at dinner-time, and found the monks at table looking despairingly at the meat set before them, which they could not touch, it being a fast-day. The bishop, stretching forth his staff, changed the fowls into tortoises. The white habits and pointed cowls of the monks, and the varied expressions of their faces, contrast agreeably with the venerable bishop in his rich episcopal robes, and the beauty of the page who accompanies him.

The masterpiece of the elder Herrera is also here. Hermenegildo, a Gothic prince of the sixth century, martyred by order of his Arian father, whose religion he had renounced, is represented ascending to heaven in a coat of mail, leaving below him his friends SS. Leandro and Isidore, beside whom is his fair young son, richly attired, gazing wonderingly up at his sainted father as he ascends among a whole cloud of angels. This picture was painted for the high altar of the Jesuits of Seville, with whom Herrera took refuge when accused of the crime of issuing false money. It attracted the artistic eye of Philip IV. when he came to Seville in 1624. He asked the name of the artist, and, learning the cause of his reclusion

sent for him and pardoned him, saying that a man who had so much talent ought not to make a bad use of it.

There is no sculpture in the gallery of Seville, except a few statues of the saints—the spoils of monasteries, like the paintings. The finest thing is a St. Jerome, furrowed and wasted by penance, laying hold of a cross before which he bends one knee, with a stone in his right hand ready to smite his breast. This was done for the convent of Buenavista by Torrigiano, celebrated not only for his works, but for breaking Michael Angelo’s nose. He was sent to Spain by his protector, Alexander VI., who was a generous patron of the arts. Goya considered this

statue superior to Michael Angelo’s Moses.

Our last hours at Seville were spent before all these works of sacred art, each of which has its own special revelation to the soul; and then we went to the cathedral. The day was nearly at an end. The chapels were all closed. The vast edifice was as silent as the grave, with only a few people here and there absorbed in their devotions. The upper western windows alone caught a few rays of the declining sun, empurpling the arches. The long aisles were full of gloom. We lingered awhile, like Murillo, before “Christ descending from the Cross,” and then went back to the Fonda Europa with regret in our hearts.

[2] Roelas’ masterpiece, the Transito de San Isidoro, in the church of that name, represents this solemn scene. The dying saint is on the steps of the altar, supported by two bishops, who look all the more venerable from contrast with the fresh bloom of the beautiful choir-boys behind; the multitude is swaying with grief through the long, receding aisles; and, in the opening heavens above, appear Christ and the Virgin, ready to receive him into the glory of which we catch a glimpse. It is a picture that can only be compared to Domenichino’s “Last Communion of St. Jerome.”

SIX SUNNY MONTHS.

BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE,” “GRAPES AND THORNS,” ETC.

CHAPTER IV.—CONTINUED.

Mr. Bailey had finally, after some management, got Bianca quite to himself, and, discovering that they had mutual friends, and that she liked those parts of his writings which he considered the best, the two were quite over the threshold of a ceremonious acquaintance, and talking together very amicably.

“You may stay to supper, if you will,” the Signora whispered to him. “But don’t say so, because I shall not ask any one else. Get yourself out of sight somewhere.”

“Fly with me!” he said tragically to Bianca. “May we go to the loggia, Signora?”

She nodded.

“If you will watch the windows, and come in the instant I call you; and if that child will get something on the way to put over her head and shoulders.”

The two stole out of the drawing-rooms with all the merry pleasure of children playing a prank.

“Stop a moment!” the young man said when they reached the sala. “See how this room, almost encircled by brightly-lighted chambers, looks like the old moon in the new moon’s arms. Isn’t it pretty?”

They passed the dining-room, traversed the long western wing, went up a little stair, and found themselves on the roof of a building that had been added to the house and used as a studio for sculptors. A balustrade ran across one side,

and at the side opposite a door entered an upper room of the studio. The two connecting sides, the one toward the west and that next the house, had trellises, over which morning-glory vines were running. A few pots of flowers and a chair or two completed the furniture of the place. Below, the garden and vineyard pressed close against its walls, breathing perfume, and just stirring the evening air with a delicate ripple of water and a whisper of leaves.

Bianca leaned on the balustrade and wished she were alone. The silent beauty was too solemn for talk; and, besides, it was the hour when one remembers the absent. Her companion was too sensitive not to perceive and respect her mood. “Only keep the shawl well about you,” he said, as if in reply to some spoken word, then left her to herself, and paced to and fro at the most distant part of the loggia, drinking in the scene, which would some day flow from his pen-point in glowing words. It seemed not ten minutes when the Signora’s voice was heard across the silence, “Children, come in!”

Both sighed as they left the charmed spot, and had half a mind to disobey the summons. “But, after all, it will only be exchanging one picture for another,” the author said. “And, ecco!”

He pointed to the foot of the little

stair that led from the loggia down to the passage. Adriano stood there in the shade, like a portrait framed in ebony, holding in his hand one of the long-handled brass lamps of Italy, the light from whose three wicks struck upwards over his handsome dark face peering out sharply, but not at first seeing them.

“Strong light and shade will make a picture of anything,” Bianca said. “And there is a companion.”

He glanced at the dining-room window, and saw through the open half of a shutter Isabel standing under the chandelier, with face and hand uplifted to examine some pendants that had just caught her attention. The light poured over her face, and filled her beautiful, undazzled eyes, and the hand that held the crystal looked as if carved out of pink transparent coral.

Going in, they found the supper-table set, and Mr. Vane entertaining the ladies with a story of two politicians, of opposite parties, who were so candid they were always convincing each other, and, consequently, were never of the same opinion, except when they were each half convinced; and even then they were not of the same opinion, for their minds turned different ways, like two persons who meet on the threshold of a house, one going in and one coming out. They went on year after year in this way, arguing, and trying to arrive at the truth, till at last they both went crazy and were locked up in separate mad-houses. At length both returned to their first opinions, and so were restored to reason. But when they were set at liberty, they became as great bigots as they had before been liberals, and each was so determined not only not to yield to the other, whom he regarded as the cause of his

misfortunes, but even to own that he could be sincere in his opinions, that they never met without fighting. Their rancor went on increasing, till they finally challenged each other at the same moment; and, in disputing as to which was the challenged and which the challenger, flew into such a fury that at last they killed each other, without ever having had time to fight a duel.

“The moral of it is,” Mr. Vane concluded, “that when a man has once chosen his opinions, he has no more right to hear them abused than he has to hear his wife abused, no matter what she may be; and the cream of the moral is that all arguments are not only useless but dangerous.”

“I know now what is meant by espousing an opinion or a cause,” the Signora said. “I had supposed the word was used merely for variety of phrase. It means, then, ‘for better or for worse.’ Poor Truth! how many buffets she gets! Not from you!” she added hastily, and blushing as she saw that her words had made Mr. Vane suddenly serious, and that he was looking at her with an expression almost reproachful. “No matter what you may say, I am sure you would never see Truth standing on your threshold without bidding her welcome.”

He looked down, and a faint smile rather shone through his face than parted his lips. He seemed to thank her so.

“I fancy she comes oftenest in silence and by herself,” he said in a very quiet tone.

Something in his voice and look made Clive Bailey regard him with a momentary keenness. He felt that they indicated an almost feminine delicacy, and a depth of sensitive

sweetness he had not looked to find in Mr. Vane.

The Signora begged to call their attention to the minestra that was steaming on the table. “Annunciata deserves that we should attend to it at once,” she said; “for she has given her best thoughts to it the whole afternoon. I couldn’t tell how many things have gone to its composition. I do hope it is good, so that we can consistently praise it. I should feel less disappointment in having a book fall dead from the press, than she will if we take no notice of her cooking. Don’t let the vacant chair injure your appetites; it is not for a ghost, but for Signor Leonardo, your Italian teacher. I told him to come to supper, and he is just five minutes too late—a wonder for him. He is the soul of promptness.”

The door opened as she spoke, and Signor Leonardo stood bowing on the threshold—a dark, circumspect little man, who gave an impression of such stiffness and dryness that one almost expected to hear him crackle and snap in moving. He recovered from his low bow, however, without any accident, and, with some excess of ceremoniousness, got himself down to the table, where he sat on the very edge of his chair, looking so solemn and polite that Isabel, as she afterward declared, longed to get up and shake him. “He would have rattled all to pieces, if I had,” she said.

This wooden little body contained, however, a cultivated mind and a good heart, and he was one of the most faithful, modest, and patient of men.

He had been at the Vatican that morning, he said, in answer to the Signora’s questions, and had seen the Holy Father in good health and

spirits, laughing at the cardinals who were with him, all of whom carried canes. “‘I am older than any of you,’ he said, ‘and, see! I can walk without my cane. Oh! I am a young man yet.’”

“I saw Monsignor M——,” the professor added, “and he requested me to give you this,” presenting a little package.

The Signora opened it in smiling expectation, and held up a small half-roll of bread out of which a piece had been bitten. “See how we idolaters love the Pope!” she said to Mr. Vane. “I begged Monsignor to get me a piece of bread from his breakfast-table. Let me see what he has written about it,” reading a card that accompanied this singular gift.

“My dear Signora,” the prelate wrote, “behold your keepsake! I stood by while the Holy Father breakfasted, like a dog watching for a bone, and the moment I saw the one bite taken out of this bread I begged the rest for you. ‘What!’ said the Pope, ‘my children take the very bread from my mouth!’ and gave it to me, laughing pleasantly.”

“The dear father,” the Signora said, kissing her treasure, as she rose to put it away in safety.

This little incident led the talk to the Pope, and to many incidents illustrative of his goodness and the affection the people bore him.

“A few years ago, in the old time,” the Signora said, “the price of bread was raised in Rome, for some reason or other, or for no reason. Some days after the Holy Father passed by here on his way to his favorite church, and ours, Bianca. He was walking, and his carriage following. I can see him now, in his white robe, his hands behind his back, holding his hat,

and his sweet face ready with a kind glance for all. A poor man approached, asked to speak to him, and was allowed. ‘Holy Father,’ he said, kneeling down, ‘the price of bread is raised, and the people are hungry, for they cannot afford to buy it.’ The Pope gave him an alms and his benediction, and passed on. The next day the price of bread was reduced to its former rate.

“‘Such grace had kings when the world began.’”

One anecdote led to another; and then there was some music, Isabel playing rather brilliantly on the piano in the sala, a group of candles at either hand lighting up her face and person and that part of the room. Afterward, when the rest of the company had gone into the drawing-rooms, Bianca, sitting in a half-dark, sang two or three ballads so sweetly that they almost held their breaths to listen to her.

Her singing made them feel quiet, and as if the evening were over; and when it ended, Mr. Bailey and the signore took leave. The family sat a while longer in the sala, with no light but a lamp that burned before a Madonna at the end of the long room. Outside, a pine-tree lifted its huge umbrella against the pure sky, and a great tower showed in the same lucid deep. The streets in front were still and deserted, the windows all dark and sullen. The moon had long since set, and the stars were like large, wide-open eyes that stare with sleepiness. Some Campagna people, who had been in the city, and were going home again, passed by, and stirred the silence with the sound of an accordeon, with which they enlivened their midnight walk; then all was still again.

“The night-sounds of Rome are

almost always pleasant,” the Signora said. “Sometimes the country people come in with a tambourine and singing, but it is not noisy, and if it wakes you it is only for a few minutes. Sometimes it is a wine-cart, with all its little bells.”

The clock of Santa Maria Maggiore was heard striking twelve. “My bells!” she exclaimed; then added: “I wish I could tell you all their lovely ways. For one, when they have the Forty Hours at the basilica, only the great bell strikes the hours, instead of three smaller ones, as now; and for the Angelus the four bells ring steadily together their little running song, while the great bell strikes now and then, but so softly as to be only a dream of a sound, as if Maria Assunta were talking to herself. It is delicious!”

“I hear a bell now—a little bell,” Mr. Vane said.

They listened, and found that his keen hearing had not deceived him. There was a sound of a little bell in the street, faint, but coming slowly nearer. What could it be? They looked out and saw nothing but the long, white street, stretching its ghostly length from hill to hill. The sound, however, was in the street, and at a spot where they looked and saw nothing, and it came constantly nearer. At length, when it was almost under their windows, they perceived a motion, slow and colorless, as if the paving-stones were noiselessly turning over and rolling off toward the Quirinal, and then the paving-stones became a tide of pale water tossing a black stick as it flowed; and, at last, it was sheep, and the stick was a man. The whole street was alive with their little bobbing heads and close pressed, woolly bodies. Soft and timid, they trotted past, as if afraid

of waking the terrible lion of a city in whose sleeping jaws they found themselves. The dogs made no sound as they kept the stragglers in bounds, the men spoke not a word as they moved here and there among their flocks; there was only the small trotting of a multitude of little feet, and bell after bell on the leader of flock after flock. It seemed as if the world had turned to sheep.

“I didn’t know there were so many in the world!” Isabel whispered.

And still they came, stretching a mile, from beyond the Esquiline to beyond the Quirinal—an artery full of tender and innocent life flowing for an hour through the cruel, unconscious town.

The Signora explained that the flocks were being taken from one pasture-ground to another, their shortest way being through the city. “I once saw a herd of cattle pass,” she said. “It was another thing, as you may imagine. Such a sense of the presence of fierce, strong life, and anger barely suppressed, I never experienced. It was their life that called my attention, as one feels lightning in the air. Then I heard their hoofs and the rattling of their horns, and then here they were! They were by no means afraid of Rome, but seemed, rather, impatient and angry that it should be here, drying up the pleasant hills where they would have liked to graze, reposing under the trees afterward, and looking dreamily off to the soft sea-line. How sleepy sheep make one!”

The soft procession passed at length, and the family bade each other good-night.

The next morning Isabel resolved not to be outdone by the other two ladies, and accordingly, when

she heard the door shut softly after them as they went out to early Mass, she made haste to dress and follow. They, meanwhile, walked slowly on, unconscious of her intention, which would scarcely have given them the pleasure she imagined; for they were bound on an errand which would have rendered her society particularly uncongenial.

Isabel went scrupulously to Communion three or four times a year, on certain great festivals, and at such times, according to her light, strove to do what she thought was required. She made her confession, but with scarcely more feeling than she would have reckoned up her money accounts, scrupulous to pay every cent, and, when every cent was paid, having a satisfied conviction that the account was square. Of that generous, higher honesty which, when casting up its accounts with God, blushes and abases itself in view of the little it has paid, or can pay, and which would fain cast itself into the balance, and, by an utter annihilation of every wish, hope, and pleasure that was not penitence, strive to express its gratitude at least for the ever unpayable debt—of this she knew nothing. She acknowledged freely that she was a sinner. “Of course I am a sinner!” she would say. “We are all sinners”; as if she should say, “Of course I am a biped!” but all as a matter of course. If anything decidedly offensive to her human sense of honor lay on her conscience, she certainly had a feeling of shame for it, and resolved not to transgress in that manner again; but there was no tremulous self-searching, no passion of prayer for illumination, unless at some odd time when sickness or peril had made death seem

near. The confession over, she went to church quietly, not talking much, and read respectfully the prayers in her prayer-book, which were, indeed, far warmer on her lips than in her heart. She tried not to look about, and, while her face was buried in her hands, shut her eyes, lest she should peep in spite of herself. Then, the whole over, she left the church, feeling much relieved that it was over, hoping that she had done right, and remaining rather serious for several hours after. Ordinarily, too, since the merciful Lord accepts even the smallest gift, and answers even the most tepid prayer, if they are sincerely offered, she felt some faint sweetness as she turned away, a tender touch of peace that brushed her in passing, and, moved by that slight experience of the rapture of the saints, as if a drop of spray from one of their fountains had fallen on her, she was conscious of an inexplicable regret that made her renew her good resolutions, and say a tiny prayer in her own words far more fervent than any she had breathed through the words of her book. For two days after her prayers were usually longer and more attentive, and she went to Mass; then Richard was himself again.

Knowing all this, then, as we know things without thinking of them, or allowing ourselves to know that we know them, both the Signora and Bianca would far rather have been by themselves in going to church, especially when going to Holy Communion.

They walked through the morning, already hot, though the hour was so early, with a sultry, splendid blue over their heads, and the air too sweet as it flowed over the garden-walls. The orange-trees seemed to be oppressed by the weight

of their own odors, and to throw them off in strong, panting respirations. The sun was blazing directly behind one of the cupolas of the basilica, as they went up the hill, seeming to be set in the lantern; and then a light coolness touched them in the shadow, and they entered the beautiful church, where perpetual freshness reigns, rivalling the climate of St. Peter’s.

The bells were just dropping off for the last fifteen minutes’ tolling, and the canons were coming in for choir, one by one, or two by two. One or two of the earlier ones, in their snow-white cottas and ermine capes, were kneeling before a shrine or strolling slowly across the nave toward the choir-chapel. Here and there a Mass was being said, with a little group of poor people gathered about the altar, kneeling on the magnificent pavement of involved mosaic work, or sitting on the bases of the great columns. A woman with a white handkerchief on her head received communion at one altar, two little children playing about her, and clinging to her skirts as she got up to go to her place, her hands folded, her face wrapt in devotion, as undisturbed by the prattling and pulling of the little ones as St. Charles Borromeo over his altar by the winged cherubs that held up and peeped through his long scarlet train.

Our American ladies knelt near the door, by the side of the tribune, facing the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament at the other side of the church. The morning light entering this chapel set all its marbles glittering, and made the gilt tabernacle in the centre brighter than the lamps that burned before it, and, shining out into the church, set the great porphyry columns of the canopy in a glow. One might fancy that

the blood of the martyrs whose bodies and relics reposed beneath was beginning to rise and circulate through the rich stone, above which the martyr’s crown and palm stood out in burning gold.

Having finished their prayer to “His Majesty,” as the Spaniards beautifully express it, the two knelt at the prie-dieu before the entrance to the gorgeous Borghese Chapel, to salute Our Lady in sight of St. Luke’s portrait of her. The face was doubly covered by its curtain of gold-embroidered silk and gates of transparent alabaster; but their eyes were fixed on the screen as they prayed, and these needed no more than they saw. Of this picture it has been said that sometimes angels have been found chanting litanies about it.

There was no Mass in this chapel, and our friends went down the basilica to the chapel of the Sacred Heart, where a Mass was just beginning. The celebrant was an old man with hair as white as snow, and a face as peaceful and happy as a child’s. The Signora often encountered him in the church, and always felt like touching his robe in passing.

“I am glad we shall receive communion from his hands,” she whispered to Bianca. “I always feel as if he were an angel only half disguised.”

Half an hour afterward they left the chapel, but still lingered in the church, loath to go. There was no one in sight, but the strong, manly chorus of voices from the canons’ choir came out to them, now faintly heard as they moved out of its range, now clear and strong as they went nearer.

“We really must go. They will be waiting for us at home,” the Signora said.

Turning back for one more glance at the door, they saw the procession coming from the sacristy for the canons’ Mass, the vestments glittering brightly as they passed a streak of sunshine coming into the middle of the nave.

“It is a constant succession of pictures,” sighed Bianca, who seemed hardly able to tear herself away.

They stopped a few minutes on the steps.

“Whatever else is injured by these new people, this basilica has certainly profited,” the Signora said. “The tribune front was a little low for the breadth. By digging down the hill, and, consequently, adding so many more steps to this superb flight, they have made the proportion perfect. Then they have also had to make a deeper pedestal to the obelisk, which is an improvement. The new white stone shows now in harsh contrast with the soft-toned old, but time will soon mellow it. And, moreover, they are doing their work well. They really seem to take pride in it. The piazza was formerly muddy or dusty. Now they have made a solid foundation, and it will be all covered, when done, with that gold-colored gravel you see in patches. Fancy a golden piazza leading up to my golden basilica!”

She led her young friend along to the other end of the steps, and pointed up to where beautiful spikes of pink flowers were growing in interstices of the carving, and lovely plants made a fine fringe high in the air. Flights of birds came and went, brushing the flowers with their wings, and alighted, singing and twittering, all about the cupola over the Blessed Sacrament, going away only to return.

“The little wild birds come to our Lord’s cupola,” she said, “and

there are always flocks of doves about Our Lady’s. I wonder why it is?”

Going home, they found Isabel sitting with her bonnet on, taking coffee, and talking to her father, who seemed amused.

“Here they are at last!” she exclaimed. “I have been to Santa Maria Maggiore, hoping to find you, and you weren’t there.”

“Indeed we were there!” she was told.

“You were hiding from me, then,” she went on. “No matter, I had a very pleasant morning, though rather a peculiar one. I searched and searched for you, and saw nothing of you; finally, seeing a movement of clergy toward a chapel at the right side as you go in, half-way down the church, I thought that must be the proper place to go. Accordingly, I went in and took a seat. Some clergymen seated themselves on the same bench, lower down, and I thought it more modest to move up. Then more clergy came, and I kept moving up toward the altar. I began to wish that some woman would come in, if it were only a beggar-woman; even the sight of a poor man or of a child would have been a relief. But there was no one but me besides the clergy. Well, I stood my ground, hoping that when the services should begin some people would come, and, on the whole, rather congratulating myself that I had secured so good a post. I kept moving up till at length I found myself close to the altar, and with a great stand before me on which was a great book. It was one of those turning lecterns, aren’t they?—set on a post about six feet high, and having five or six sides at the top. After a while I began to feel myself getting in a perspiration. Not a soul

came but priests. I looked in their faces to see if they were astonished at my being there, but not one seemed to be even conscious of my presence. They sat in two rows, facing each other, part of them in ermine capes, part in gray squirrel, and with the loveliest little white tunics all crimped and crimped. I didn’t enjoy the crimping much, though, for I perceived at last that I was the right person in the wrong place. The bell stopped ringing, a prelate took his place before the big stand and opened the big book, and there was I in the very highest place in the synagogue,

“Canons to right of me,

Canons to left of me,

Canons in front of me,”

and, at length, one of them smiling, I caught sight of a sidelong glance from him, and saw that he was shaking with laughter. He was a young man, and I forgive him.” Isabel paused to wipe the perspiration from her flushed face, then addressed the Signora solemnly: “My dear Signora, that choir-chapel is a mile long!”

“I dare say you found it so,” was the laughing response. “But, also, I do not doubt that you made the best of the matter, and came out with deliberate dignity. Don’t cry about it, child. They probably thought you were a Protestant stranger. Protestants are expected to commit almost any enormity in Roman churches, and they do not disappoint the expectation. Last Christmas two women, well dressed and genteel-looking, went into the tribune during the High Mass, one of the assistants having left the gate open, and coolly took possession of a vacant seat there, in the face, not only of the assembled chapter and officiating prelate, but of a large congregation. I wonder what they

would say if a stranger should walk into one of their meeting-houses and take a seat in the pulpit? I will explain to you now what I thought you understood. The canons always sing their office together in choir, morning and afternoon, while other clergy say it privately, and the public have nothing to do with it. There is no harm in assisting, but it is not usual to do so. I like to listen, though, and there are certain parts that please me very much. When you hear them again, mark how the Deo gratias comes out; and once in a while they will respond with an Amen that is stirring. However, it is merely the office rapidly chanted by alternate choirs, and is not intended as a musical feast. They have a High Mass a little later, and then one can enter, if there should be room. I never go. There is always a Low Mass in the basilica or the Borghese.”

“Doesn’t the Borghese Chapel belong to the basilica?” Mr. Vane inquired.

“Yes, and no. The Prince Borghese is at the head of it, and, I

think, supports it. It has its own clergy, and its separate services sometimes; for example, there is always the Litany of Our Lady Saturday evening, and they have their own Forty Hours. On some other festas the chapter of the basilica go there for service—as Our Lady of Snow, Nativity of Our Lady, and the Immaculate Conception. Now I must leave you for an hour or two, and take my little baroness to see Monsignore. And, if you wish, I will at the same time arrange for an audience for you at the Vatican. Some time within a week, shall I say? It will have to be after Ascension, I think.”

“How beautiful life begins to be!” said Bianca softly, after the three had sat awhile alone.

Mr. Vane smiled, but made no reply.

Isabel sighed deeply, buried in gloomy reflections. “I wish I knew,” she said, “what they call the man who stands at the desk and sings a part of the office alone; because that is the name by which the canons are calling me at this minute. I feel it in my bones.”

CHAPTER VI.

CARLIN’S NEST.

Yes, life was beginning to grow beautiful to them—beautiful in the sweet, natural sense. Here and there a buckle that held the burden of it was loosed, here and there a flower was set. That uneasy feeling that one ought to be doing something, which often haunts and wearies even those who do nothing and never will do anything, began to give place to a contentment far more favorable to the accomplishment of real good. A generous wish to share their peacefulness with others made them practise every little kindness that occurred to them. Not a hand was stretched to them in vain, no courtesy from the humblest remained unacknowledged, and thus, accompanied by a constant succession of little beneficences, like a stream that passes between flowery banks its own waters keeping fresh, their lives flowed sweetly and brightly on from day to day.

Of course they had the reputation of being angels with the poor about them. It is so easy for the rich and happy to be canonized by the poor. A smile, a kind word, and a penny now and then—that is all that is necessary. But the kindness of these three women was something more than a mere good-natured generosity; for no one of them was very rich, and all had to deprive themselves of something in order to give.

Life was indeed becoming beautiful to them; for they had not yet settled, perhaps were not of a nature to settle, into the worse sort of Roman life, in which idle people collected from every part of the world gradually sink into a round of eating, visiting, gossip, and intrigue, which make the society of the grandest city of the world a strange spectacle of shining saintliness and disgusting meanness and corruption moving side by side.

There is, indeed, no city that tries the character like Rome; for it holds a prize for every ambition, except that of business enterprise. The Christian finds here primitive saintliness flowering in its native soil, and can walk barefoot, though he have purple blood in his veins, and not be wondered at; the artist, whether he use chisel, brush, or pen, finds himself in the midst of a lavish beauty which the study of a life could not exhaust; the lover of nature sees around him the fragments of an only half-ruined paradise; the tuft-hunter finds a confusion of ranks where he may approach the great more nearly than anywhere else, and, perhaps, chat at ease with a princess who, in her own country, would pass him without a nod of recognition; the idle and luxurious can live here like Sybarites on an income that, in another

country, would scarcely give them the comforts of life; the lover of solitude can separate himself from his kind in the midst of a crowd, and yet fill his hours with delight in the contemplation of that ever-visible past which here lies in the midst of the present like an embalmed and beautiful corpse resting uncorrupted in the midst of flowers. But one must have an earnest pursuit, active or intellectual; for the dolce far niente of Italy is like one of the soulless masks of women formed by Circe, which transformed their lovers into beasts.

“I have heard,” the Signora said, “of a man who, lying under a tree in summer-time and gazing at the slow, soft clouds as they floated past, wished that that were work, and he well paid for doing it. My life is almost a realization of that man’s wish. What I should choose to do as a pleasure, and the greatest pleasure possible to me, I have to do as a duty. It is my business to see everything that is beautiful, and to study and dream over it, and turn it into as many shapes as I can. If I like to blow soap-bubbles, then it becomes a trade, and I merit in doing it. If a science should catch my fancy, and invite me to follow awhile its ordered track, I go in a palace-car, and the wheels make music of the track for me. And what friends I have, what confidences receive! The ugliest, commonest object in the world, scorned or disregarded by all, will look at me and whisper a sweet word or reveal a hidden beauty as I pass. You see that log,” pointing to the fire-place, where a mossy stick lay wreathed about by a close network of vine-twigs clinging still in death where they had clung and grown in life. “The moment my eyes fell on that it

sang me a song. In every balcony, every stair, every house they are cutting down to make their new streets, every smallest place where the wind can carry a feathered seed, the seed of a story has lodged for me, and, as I look, it sprouts, grows, blossoms, and overshadows the whole place. But for the pain of bringing out and putting into shape what is in my mind, my life would be too exquisite for earth. If I could give immediate birth to my imaginings, I should be like some winged creature, living for ever in air. I’m glad I work in words, and not in marble, like Carlin here. And, apropos, suppose we should go in there.”

Carlin was the sculptor whose studio was attached to Casa Ottant’-Otto. He was a great friend of the Signora, who had permission to see him work when she liked, and to go and come with her friends as it pleased her.

“We may as well take our work,” she said. “It is pleasanter there than here this morning. When Mr. Vane and Isabel come in from their visit, we shall hear them ring the bell.”

The two went out to the loggia, where the morning sun was blazing hotly on the pink and purple morning-glories, and, passing an ante-room where two marble-workers were chipping away, each at his snowy block, tapped at the door of an inner chamber.

A loud “Avanti!” answered the knock.

“Welcome!” said a voice when they entered. “Make yourselves at home. I’m busy with a model, you see.”

Bianca glanced about in search of the source of this salutation, and perceived presently a large head looking at them over the

top of a screen. The rest of the body was invisible. This head was so colossal and of such a height that for a moment she doubted if it might not be a colored bust on a shelf. But its eyes moved, and in a second it nodded itself out of sight, leaving on the gazer an impression of having seen a large, kind Newfoundland dog. Poor Carlin was very shaggy, his hair almost too profuse, and constantly getting itself tangled, and his beard growing nearly to his eyes. But the eyes were bright, dark, and pleasant, the nose superlatively beautiful, and, by some unexplained means, every one was aware at once that under this mass of shadowy beard there were two deep dimples, one in the cheek and another in the chin.

Before they had well shut the door, the screen was swept aside and the sculptor’s whole form appeared. It was so large as to reduce the head to perfect proportion, and was clad in a suit of dull blue cotton worn with a careless grace that was very picturesque. One hand held a bit of clay; the other pulled off his skull-cap in reverence to his visitors. He said nothing, but immediately replaced the cap, and began rolling the clay between his hands.

He was modelling a group, and his model, a beautiful young contadina, stood before him with her arms up, holding a copper water-vase on her head. Her mother sat near, a dark, bilious, wrinkled Lady Macbeth, who wore her soiled and faded clothes as if they had been velvets and embroideries, and reclined in an old leather chair as superbly as if she sat on a gilded throne with a canopy over her head. A pair of huge rings of pure gold hung from her ears, and two heavy

gold chains surrounded her dark neck, and dropped each its golden locket on her green bodice.

“We won’t mind them,” the Signora said to her friend. “Come and be introduced to the bird of our country.”

“He’s been behaving badly to-day,” the sculptor said, “and I had to beat him. Look and see what he has done to my blouse! The whole front is in rags. He flew at me to dig my heart out, I suppose, with his claws, and screamed so in my face that I was nearly deafened. It took both the men to get him off.”

This contumacious eagle was chained to his perch, and had the stick with which he had been beaten so placed as to be a constant reminder of the consequences attending on any exhibition of ill-temper. He was greatly disconcerted when the two ladies approached him, changed uneasily from foot to foot, and, half lifting his wide wings, curved his neck, and seemed about to hide his head in shame. Then, as they still regarded him, he suddenly lifted himself to his full height, and stared back at them with clear, splendid eyes.

“What pride and disdain!” exclaimed Bianca. “I had no idea the creature was so human. Let’s go away. If we stay much longer, he will speak to us. He considers himself insulted.”

Three walls of the room and a great part of the central space were occupied by the usual medley of a sculptor’s studio—busts, groups, masks, marble and plaster, armor, vases, and a hundred other objects; but the fourth side was hung all over with fragments of baby contours. Single legs and crossed legs; arms from the shoulder down, with the soft flattening of flesh above the elbow, and the sustained roundness

below; little clenched fists, and hands with sprawling, dimpled fingers; chubby feet in every position of little curled toes, each as expressive of delicious babyhood as if the whole creature were there—the wall was gemmed with them. In the midst was a square window, without a sash, and just then crowded as full as it could be. A vine, a breeze, and as much of a hemisphere of sunshine as could get in were all pressing in together. The breeze got through in little puffs that dropped as soon as they entered; the sunshine sank to the tiled floor, where it led a troubled existence by reason of the leaf-shadows that never would be still; and the vine ran over the wall, and in and out among the little hands and feet, kissing them with tender leaf and bud, which seemed to have travelled a long distance for nothing else but that.

Bianca put her face to this window, and drew it back again. “There is nothing visible outside,” she said, “but a fig-tree, half the rim of a great vase, a bit of wall, and a sky full of leaves.”

She seated herself by the Signora, and they made believe to work, dropping a loop of bright wool or silken floss now and then, and glancing from time to time at the artist as he punched and pressed a meaning into the clay before him.