[Transcriber's notes: This text is based on text and image files from the Internet Archive and http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/moajrnl/browse.journals/cath.1867.html. Page numbers are shown in curly braces, such as {123}. They have been moved to the nearest sentence break.]

The Catholic World.

Monthly Magazine
of
General Literature and Science

Vol. V.
April to September 1867.

New York:
The Catholic Publication House
126 Nassau Street.

1867

John A. Gray & Green Printers, 16 & 18 Jacob Street, New-York/

Contents.

Athlone and Aughrim, [119].
Ancor-Viatt, a New Giant City, [135].
An Old Quarrel, [145].
A Naturalist's Home, [189].
Animals, The Souls of, [510].
Americus Vespucius and Christopher Columbus, [611].
An Irish Saint, [664].
Birds, Architecture of, [349].
Bible, Protestant Attacks upon the, [789].
Bride of Eberstein, The, [847].
Church and State, [1] Conversions to the Catholic Church, Dr. Bacon on, [104] Conscience, The Revenge of, [236].
Catholic Doctrine and Natural Science, [280].
Cousin, Victor, [333].
Church and the Roman Empire, The, [362].
Christianity and Social Happiness, [414].
Congresses, Catholic, [433].
Crucifix of Baden, The, [480], [672].
Catholic Church and Modern Art, The, [546].
Christianity and its Conflicts, [701].
Decimated, [794].
Early Rising, [754].
Eberstein, The Bride of, [847].
Father Ignatius of St. Paul, [174].
Father of Waters, The, [354].
Flavia Domitilla, The Two Lovers of, [386], [529], [651], [815].
Fathers of the Desert, Sayings of, [814].
Godfrey Family, The, [34].
Holy Sepulchre, Procession in the Church of, [232].
He went about Doing Good, [258].
Ireland, Invasions of, by the Danes, [768].
Ireland, The Churches of, [828].
Lady of La Garaye, [227].
Lectures and Conferences among the Ancients, [289].
Libraries of the Middle Ages, [397].
Lorraine, Lakes of, [522]
Miscellany, [140], [284], [428], [570], [714], [856].
Mediaeval Universities, [207].
Mercersburg Philosophy, [253].
Mortality of Great Capitals, [422].
Minor Brethren, The, [495].
Marriage, Indissolubility of, [567], [684].
Moore, Sir Thomas, [633].
Missionary Journey in South America, Scenes from, [807].
Miner, The, [852].
Paris, A Talk about, [97].
Père Hyacinthe, Sketch of, [382].
Papacy Schismatic, Guettée's, [463], [577].
Plants, The Struggle for Existence among, [538].
Procter, Adelaide Ann, [553].
Parisian Problems, Solution of some, [691].
Playing with Fire, [697].
Paris, Old, [824]
Ritualism, [52].
Robert; or, The Influence of a Good Mother, [66], [194].
Rationalism, Lecky's History of, [77].
Rome or Reason, [721].
Sister, The Story of, [15].
Spain, Modern Writers of, [26].
Spain, Impressions of, [160], [320], [443], [594], [738].
Speech, Visible, [417].
The Birds' Friend, [268].
Time-Measurers, [271].
Three Leaves from an Old Journal, [627].
Thermometers, [707].
Tuscan Peasants and the Maremna, [710].
Tetzel, John, [838].
Verheyden's Right Hand, [309].
Wandering Jew, The, [761].

Poetry.

A Dream, [94].
Asperges Me, [134].
At Threescore, [235].
A Family Motto, [257].
Abide in Me, [767].
Blessed Sacrament, Praises of the, [347].
Beams, [753].
Confiteor, [206].
Columbus, [525].
Charles the X. at the Convent of Yuste, [671].
Forebodings, [494].
Gladiators' Song, The, [521].
Hidden Crucifixion, The, [159].
Il Duomo, [608].
Kettle Song, [51].
Looking Down the Road, [172].
Laudate Pueri Dominum, [413].
Leaf of Last Year, This, [545].
May, A Fancy, [318].
Mary's Dirge, [631].
Mea Culpa, [690].
Napoleon, The Death of; [379].
Olive Branches in Gethsemane, [14]
Planting of the Cross, [139].

Regret, [442].
Rhoda, [784].
Sleep, My Tears in, [193].
Sir Ralph de Blanc-Minster, [460].
The Church and the Sinner, [25].
The Cross, [65].
Under the Violets, [663].
Wasted Vigil, The, [823].

New Publications.

Art of Illuminating, Practical Hints on, [144] American Boys and Girls, [430].
Antoine de Boneval, [574].
Appleton's Annual Cyclopaedia, [719].
Bible, Literary Characters of, [576].
Barbarossa, [719].
Beauties of Faith, [720].
Catholic Tracts, [142], [715].
Christian Love, Three Phases of, [144].
Cunningham's Catholic Library, [144].
Christian Unity, Lectures on, [287].
Catholic Anecdotes, [576].
Christianity and its Conflicts, [576].
Critical and Social Essays, [718].
Cummiskey's Juvenile Library, [720].
Coaina, [720].
De Guerin, Maurice, Journal of, [288].
Döllinger's First Age of Christianity, [716].
Études Philologiques sur Quelques Langues Sauvages de l'Amerique, [575].
Frithiof's Saga, [431].
Fronde's History of England, [573].
First Historical Transformations of Christendom, [717].
Fathers and Sons, [718].
Faber's Notes, [719].
L'Echo de la France, [143].
Labor, Sermon on the Dignity and Value of, [431].
Mühlbach's Historical Romances, [285].
Moore's Irish Melodies, [432].
Monks of the West, The, [715].
Manual of the Lives of the Popes, [720].
Melpomene Divina, [859].
Poems, Miss Starr's, [716].
Roman Pontiffs, Lives and Times of, [576].
St. Dominic, Life of, [288].
Student of Blenheim Forest, The, [574].
Studies in English, [574].
Stories of the Commandments, [720].
Science of Happiness, [860].
Studies in the Gospels, [860].
Tracts, Catholic, 142, [715].
Three Phases of Christian Love, [144].
The Man with the Broken Ear, [720].

The Catholic World.

Vol. V., NO. 25—April 1867.

Church And State. [Footnote 1]

[Footnote 1: Essay on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism, considered in their fundamental Principles. By Donoso Cortes, Marquis of Valdegamas. From the original Spanish. To which is prefixed a sketch of the Life and Works of the Author, from the Italian of G. E. de Castro. Translated by Madeleine Vinton Goddard. Philadelphia: Lippincott and Co. 1862. 16mo. PP. 835.]

The political changes and weighty events that have occurred since, have almost obliterated from the memory the men and the revolutions or catastrophes of 1848 and 1849. We seem removed from them by centuries, and have lost all recollection of the great questions which then agitated the public mind, and on which seemed suspended the issues of the life and death of society. Then an irreligious liberalism threatened the destruction of all authority, of all belief in revelation, and piety toward God; and a rampant, and apparently victorious, socialism, or more properly, anti-socialism, threatened the destruction of society itself, and to replunge the civilized world into the barbarism from which the church, by long centuries of patient and unremitting toil, had been slowly recovering it.

Among the noble and brave men who then placed themselves on the side of religion and society, of faith and Christian civilization, and attempted to stay the advancing tide Of infidelity and barbarism, few were more conspicuous, or did more to stir up men's minds and hearts to a sense of the danger, than the learned, earnest, and most eloquent Donoso Cortes, Marquis of Valdegamas. He was then in the prime and vigor of his manhood. Born and bred in Catholic Spain at a time when the philosophy of the eighteenth century had not yet ceased to be in vogue, and faith, if not extinct, was obscured and weak, he had grown up without religious fervor, a philosophist rather than a believer--mdash;a liberal in politics, and disposed to be a social reformer. He sustained The Christinos against the Carlists, and rose to high favor with the court of Isabella Segunda. He was created a marquis, was appointed a senator, held various civil and diplomatic appointments, and was in 1848 one of the most prominent and, influential statesmen in Spain, I might almost say, in Europe.

The death of a dearly beloved brother, some time before, had very deeply affected him, and became the occasion of awakening his dormant religious faith, and turning his attention to theological studies. His religious convictions became active and fruitful, and by the aid of divine grace vivified all his thoughts and actions, growing stronger and stronger, and more absorbing every day. He at length lived but for religion, and devoted his whole mind and soul to defend it against its enemies, to diffuse it in society, and to adorn it by his piety and deeds of charity, especially to the poor. He died in the habit of a Jesuit at Paris, in May, 1853.

Some of our readers must still remember the remarkable speech which the Marquis de Valdegamas pronounced in the Spanish Cortes, January 4, 1849--mdash;a speech that produced a marked effect in France, and indeed throughout all Europe, not to add America--mdash;in which he renounced all liberal ideas and tendencies, denounced constitutionalism and parliamentary governments, and demanded the dictatorship. It had great effect in preparing even the friends of liberty, frightened by the excesses of the so-called liberals, red republicans, socialists, and revolutionists, if not to favor, at least to accept the coup d'état, and the re-establishment of the Imperial régime in France; and it, no doubt, helped to push the reaction that was about to commence against the revolutionary movements of 1848, to a dangerous extreme, and to favor, by another sort of reaction, that recrudescence of infidelity that has since followed throughout nearly all Europe. It is hardly less difficult to restrain reactionary movements within just limits than it is the movements that provoke them.

The new American Cyclopedia says Donoso Cortes published his Essay on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism in French. That is a mistake. He wrote and published it in Spanish, at Madrid, in 1851. The French work published at Paris, the same year, was a translation, and very inferior to the original. A presentation copy by the distinguished author of the original Spanish edition of 1851 to the late Mr. Calderon de la Barca—so long resident Spanish minister at Washington, and who was his life-long personal and political friend—is now in my possession, and is the very copy from which Mrs. Goddard, now the noble wife of Rear Admiral Dahlgren, made the translation cited at the head of this article. Mr. Calderon—a good judge—pronounced the work in Spanish by far the most eloquent work that he ever read in any language; and I can say, though that may not be much, that it far surpasses in the highest and truest order of eloquence any work in any language that I am acquainted with. In it one meets all the power and majesty, grace and unction of the old Castilian tongue, that noblest of modern languages, and in which Cicero might have surprised himself.

The work necessarily loses much in being translated, but Mrs. Goddard's translation comes as near to the original as any translation can. It is singularly faithful and elegant, and reproduces the thought and spirit of the author with felicity and exactness, in idiomatic English, which one can read without suspecting it to be not the language in which the work was originally written. There is scarcely a sentence in which the translation can be detected. It must have been made con amore, and we can recommend it as a model to translators, who too often do the work from the original language into no language. The following, from the opening pages, is a fair specimen of the thought and style of the author, and of the clearness, force, and beauty of the translation:

"Mr. Proudhon, in his Confession, of a Revolutionist, has written these remarkable words: 'It is surprising to observe how constantly we find all our political questions complicated with theological questions.' There is nothing in this to cause surprise, except it be the surprise of Mr. Proudhon Theology being the science of God, is the ocean which contains and embraces all the sciences, as God is the ocean in which all things are contained. All things existed, both prior to and after their creation, in the divine mind; because as God made them out of nothing, so did he form them according to a model which existed in himself from eternity. All things are in God in a profound manner in which effects are in their causes, consequences in their principles, reflections in light, and forms in their eternal exemplars. In him are united the vastness of the sea, the glory or the fields, the harmony of the spheres, the grandeur or the universe, the splendor of the stars, and the magnificence of the heavens. In him are the measure, weight, and number of all things, and all things proceed from him with number, weight, and measure. In him are the inviolable and sacred laws of being, and every being has its particular law. All that lives, finds in him the laws of life; all that vegetates, the laws of vegetation; all that moves, the laws or motion; all that has feeling, the law or sensation; all that has understanding, the law of intelligence; and all that has liberty, the law of freedom. It may in this sense be affirmed, without falling into Pantheism, that all things are in God, and God is in all things. This will serve to explain how in proportion as faith is impaired in this world, truth is weakened, and how the society that turns its back upon God, will find its horizon quickly enveloped in frightful obscurity. For this reason religion has been considered by all men, and in all ages, as the indestructible foundation of human society. Omnis humana societatis fundamentum convellit qui religionem convellit, says Plato in Book 10 of his laws. According to Xenophon (on Socrates), "the most pious cities and nations have always been the most durable, and the wisest." Plutarch affirms (contra Colotes) 'that it is easier to build a city in the air than to establish society without a belief in the gods.' Rousseau, in his Social Contract, Book iv., ch. viii., observes, 'that a State was never established without religion as a foundation.' Voltaire says, in his Treatise on Toleration, ch. xx., 'that religion is, on all accounts, necessary wherever society exists.' All the legislation of the ancients rests upon a fear of gods. Polybius declares that this holy fear is always more requisite in a free people than in others. That Rome might be the eternal city, Numa made it the holy city. Among the nations of antiquity the Roman was the greatest, precisely because it was the most religious. Cesar having one day uttered certain words, in open Senate, against the existence of the gods, Cato and Cicero arose from their seats and accused the irreverent youth of having spoken words fatal to the Republic. It is related of Fabricius, a Roman captain, that having heard the philosopher Cineas ridicule the Divinity in presence of Pyrrhus, he pronounced these memorable words: 'May it please the gods, that our enemies follow this doctrine when they make war against the Republic.'

'The decline of faith that produces the decline of truth does not necessarily cripple, but certainly misleads the human mind. God, who is both compassionate and just, denies truth to guilty souls, but does not deprive them of life. He condemns them to error, but not to death. All an evidence of this, every one has witnessed those periods of prodigious incredulity and of highest culture that have shown in history with a phosphorescent light, leaving more of a burning than a luminous track behind them. If we carefully contemplate these ages, we shall see that their splendor is only the inflamed glare or the lightning's flash. It is evident that their brightness is the sudden explosion of their obscure but combustible materials, rather than the calm light proceeding from purest regions, and serenely spread over heaven's vault by the divine pencil of the sovereign painter.

"What is here said of ages may also be said of men. The absence or the possession of faith, the denial of God or the abandonment of truth, neither gives them understanding nor deprives them of it. That of the unbeliever may be of the highest order, and that of the believer very limited; but the greatness of the first is that of an abyss, while the second has the holiness of a tabernacle. In the first dwells error, in the second truth. In the abyss with error is death, in the tabernacle with truth is life. Consequently there can be no hope whatever for those communities that renounce the austere worship of truth for the idolatry of the intellect. Sophisms produce revolutions and sophists are succeeded by hangmen.

"He possesses political truth who understands the laws to which governments are amenable; and he possesses social truth who comprehends, the laws to which human societies are answerable. He who knows God knows these laws; and he knows God who listens to what he affirms of himself, and believes the same. Theology is the science which has for its object these affirmations. Whence it follows that every affirmation respecting society or government, supposes an affirmation relative to God; or, what is the same thing, that every political or social truth necessarily resolves itself into a theological truth.

"If everything is intelligible in God and through God, and theology is the science of God, in whom and by whom everything is elucidated, theology is the universal science. Such being the case, there is nothing not comprised in this science, which has no plural; because totality, which constitutes it, has it not. Political and social sciences have no existence except as arbitrary classifications of the human mind. Man in his feebleness classifies that which in God is characterized by the most simple unity. Thus, he distinguishes political from social and religious affirmations; while in God there is but one affirmation, indivisible and supreme. He who speaks explicitly of what thing soever, and is ignorant that he implicitly speaks of God; and who does not know when he discusses explicitly any science whatever, that he implicitly illustrates theology, has received from God simply the necessary amount of intelligence to constitute him a man. Theology, then, considered in its highest acceptation, is the perpetual object of all the sciences, even as God is the perpetual object of human speculations.

"Every word that a man utters is a recognition of the Diety, even that which curses or denies God. He who rebels against God, and frantically exclaims, 'I abhor thee; thou art not!' illustrates a complete system of theology, as he does who raises to him a contrite heart, and says, 'Lord, have mercy on thy servant, who adores thee.' The first blasphemes him to his face, the second prays at his feet, yet both acknowledge him, each in his own way; for both pronounce his incommunicable name."

The work shows no great familiarity with the writings of the later theologians, and no fondness for the style and method of the schools, but it shows a profound study of the Fathers, and a perfect mastery of contemporary theories and speculations. The author is a man of the nineteenth century, with the profound thought of an Augustine, the eloquence of a Chrysostom, and the tender piety of a Francis of Assissium. He has studied the epistles of St. Paul, and been touched with the inspiration of that great apostle's burning zeal and consuming charity. He observes not always the technical exactness of modern theological professors, and some French abbés thought they detected in his Ensayo some grave theological errors, but only because they missed the signs which they were accustomed to identify with the things signified, and met with terms and illustrations with which they were unfamiliar. But he seizes with rare sagacity and firmness the living truth, and presents us theology as a thing of life and love.

The principles of the essay are catholic, are the real principles of Christianity and society, set fourth with a clearness, a depth, a logical force, a truthfulness, a richness of illustration and an eloquence which have seldom, if ever, been surpassed. But some of the inferences be draws from them, and some of the applications he makes of them to social and political science are not such as every Catholic even is prepared to accept. The author was drawn to religion by domestic afflictions, which saddened while they softened his heart, and he writes, as he felt, amid the ruins of a falling world. All things seemed to him gone or going, and he looked out upon a universal wreck. His spirit is not soured, but his feelings are tinged with the gloom of the prospect, and while he hopes in God he well-nigh despairs of the world, of man, of society, of civilization, above all, of liberty, and sees no means of saving European society but in the dictatorship or pure despotism acting under the inspiration and direction of the church. He was evidently more deeply impressed by what was lost in the primitive fall or original sin than by what in our nature has survived that catastrophe. He adored the justice of God displayed in the punishment of the wicked, justified him in all his dealings with men, but he saw in his providence no mercy for fallen nations, or a derelict society. This life he regarded as a trial, the earth as a scene of suffering, a vale of tears, and found in religion a support, indeed, but hardly a consolation. The Christian has hope in God, but is a man of sorrows, and his life an expiation. Much of this is true and scriptural, and this world certainly is not our abiding place, and can afford us no abiding joy. But this is not saying that there are no consolations, no abiding joys for us even in this life. Consolations and joys a Christian has in this world, though they proceed not from it. It can neither give them nor take them away; yet we taste them even while in it. This world is not the contradictory of the world to come; it is not heaven, indeed, and cannot be heaven, yet it is related to heaven as a medium, and the medium must partake, in some measure, of both the principle and the end.

The great merit of the essay is in deducing political and social from theological principles. This is undoubtedly not only the teaching of the church, but of all sound philosophy; and what I regard as the principal error of the book is the desire to transfer to the state the immobility and unchangeableness which belong to the church, an institution existing by the direct and immediate appointment of God. The author seems to be as unwilling to recognize the intervention of man and man's nature in government and society as in the direct and immediate works of the Creator. He is no pantheist or Jansenist, and yet be seems to me to make too little account of the part of second causes, or the activity of creatures; and sometimes to forget, or almost forget, that grace does not supersede nature, but supports it, strengthens it, elevates it, and completes it. He sees only the Divine action in events; or in plain words, he does not make enough of nature, and does not sufficiently bring out the fact that natural and supernatural, nature and grace, reason and faith, earth and heaven, are not antagonistic forces, to be reconciled only by the suppression of the one or the other, but really parts of one dialectic whole, which, to the eye that can take in the whole in all its parts, and all the parts in the whole, in which they are integrated, would appear perfectly consistent with each other, living the same life in God, and directed by him to one and the same end. He, therefore, unconsciously and unintentionally, favors or appears to favor a dualism as un-christian as it is unphilosophical. God being in his essence dialectical, nothing proceeding from him can be sophistical, or wanting in logical unity, and one part of his works can never be opposed to another, or demand its suppression. The one must always be the complement of the other. Christianity was given to fulfil nature, not to destroy it. "Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil." (St. Matt. v. 17.)

The misapprehension on this subject arises from the ambiguity of the word world. This word is generally used by ascetic writers not to designate the natural order, but the principles, spirit, and conduct of those who live for this world alone; who look not beyond this life; who take the earth not as a medium, but as the end, and seek only the goods this world offers. These are called worldly, sensual, or carnal-minded people, and as such contrast with the spiritually minded, or those who look above and beyond merely sensible goods—to heaven beyond the earth, to a life beyond the grave, a life of spiritual bliss in indissoluble union with God, the end of their existence, and their supreme good as well as the supreme good in itself. In this sense there is a real antagonism between this world and the next; but when the world is taken in its proper place, and for what it really is, in the plan of the Creator, there is no antagonism in the case; and to despise it would be to despise the work of God, and to neglect it would be not a virtue, but even a sin. This world has its temptations and its snares, and as long as we remain in the flesh we are in danger of mistaking it for the end of our existence, and therefore it is necessary that we be on our guard against its seductions. But the chief motive that leads souls hungering and bursting for perfection to retire to the desert or to the monastery is not that they may fly its temptations, or the enemies to their virtue, for they find greater temptations to struggle against and fiercer enemies to combat in solitude than in the thronged city; it is the love of sacrifice, and the longing to take part with our Lord in his great work of expiation that moves them. Simply to get rid of the world, to turn the back on society, or to get away from the duties and cares of the world, is no proper motive for retirement from the world, and the church permits not her children to do it and enter a religious order so long as they have duties to their family or their country to perform. Nothing could better prove that the church does not suffer us to contemn or neglect the natural or temporal order, or regard as of slight importance the proper discharge of our duties to our families, our country, or natural society. The same thing is proved by the fact that the process for canonization cannot go on in a case where the individual has not fulfilled all his natural duties, growing out of his state or relations in society. Gratia supponit naturam.

In consequence of his tendency to an exclusive asceticism, a tendency which he owed to the unsettled times in which he lived, and the reaction in his own mind against the liberalism be had at one time favored, Donoso Cortes countenanced, to some extent, political absolutism; and had great influence in leading even eminent Catholics to denounce constitutionalism, legislative assemblies, publicity, and free political discussion, as if these things were un-catholic, and inseparable from the political atheism of the age. There was a moment when the writer of this article himself, under the charm of his eloquence, and the force of the arguments he drew from the individual and social crimes committed in the name of liberty and progress, was almost converted to his side of the question, and supported popular institutions only because cause they were the law in his own country. But without pretending that the church enjoins any particular form of civil polity, or maintaining the infallibility or impeccability of the people, either collectively or individually, a calmer study of history, and the recent experience of our own country, have restored me to my early faith in popular forms of government, or democracy as organized under our American system, which, though it has its dangers and attendant evils, is, wherever practicable, the form of government that, upon the whole, best conforms to those great Catholic principles on which the church herself is founded.

But the people cannot govern well, any more than kings or kaisers, unless trained to the exercise of power, and subjected to moral and religious discipline. It is precisely here that the work of Donoso Cortes has its value. The reaction which has for a century or two been going on against that mixture of civil and ecclesiastical government which grew up after the downfall of the Roman empire in the west, and which was not only natural but necessary, since the clergy had nearly all the learning, science, and cultivation of the times, and to which modern society is so deeply indebted for its civilization, has carried modern statesmen to an opposite extreme, and resulted in almost universal political atheism. The separation of church and state in our age means not merely the separation of the church and the state as corporations or governments, which the popes have always insisted on, but the separation of political principles from theological principles, and the subjection of the church and ecclesiastical affairs to the state. Where monarchy, in its proper sense, obtains, the king or emperor, and where democracy, save in its American sense, is asserted, the people, takes the place of God, at least in the political order. Statolatry is almost as prevalent in our days as idolatry was with the ancient Greeks and Romans.

Even in our own country, it may be remarked that the general sympathy is with anti-Christian—especially anti-papal insurrections and revolutions. We should witness little sympathy with the Cretans and Christians of the Turkish empire, if they were not understood to be schismatics, who reject the authority of the pope in spirituals as well as in temporals. Yet, prior to the treaty of Paris in 1856, the Greek prelates were, under the Turkish sovereignty, the temporal lords of their people, and the design of that treaty, so far as relates to the Eastern Christians, was to deprive them of the last remains of temporal independence, and to complete the conquest of Mahomet II. The complete subjection of religion to the state is called religious liberty, the emancipation of conscience. Our American press applauds the Italian ministry for laying down the law for the Italian bishops, restored their sees, from which the state exiled them, and prescribing them their bounds, beyond which they must not pass. The Italian State does not, as with us, recognize the freedom and independence of the Spiritual order, but at best only tolerates it. It asserts not only the freedom and independence of the state in face of the church, but its supremacy, its right to govern the church, or at least to define the limits within which it may exist and operate.

This is what our age understands by the separation of church and state. If it foregoes, at any time or place, the authority to govern the church, it still holds that it has the right to govern churchmen the same as any other class of persons; that the civil law is the supreme law of the land; and that religion, when it happens to conflict with it, must give way to it. The law of the state is the supreme law. This is everywhere the doctrine of European liberals, and the doctrine they reduce to practice wherever they have the power, and hence the reason why the church visits them with her censures. Many devout believers think the separation of church and state must mean this, and can mean nothing else, and therefore that the union of church and state must mean a return to the old mixture of civil and ecclesiastical government of the middle ages. Hence a Donoso Cortes and a Baron Ricasoli are on this point in singular accord. Our American press, which takes its cue principally from European liberals, takes the same view, and understands both the separation and the union of church and state in the same sense.

Yet the American solution of the mutual relations of church and state is a living proof, a practical demonstration that they are wrong. Here the state does not tolerate the church, nor the church either enslave or tolerate the state, because the state recognizes the freedom or conscience, and its independence of all secular control. My church is my conscience, and my conscience being free here, my church is free, and for me and all Catholics, in the free exercise of her full spiritual authority. Here it is not the state that bounds conscience, but conscience that bounds the state. The state here is bound by its own constitution to respect and protect the rights of the citizen. Among these rights, the most precious is the right of conscience—the right to the free exercise of my religion. This right does not decide what the civil law shall be, but it does decide what it shall not be. Any law abridging my right of conscience—that is, the freedom of my church—is unconstitutional, and, so far, null and void. This, which is my right, is equally the right of every other citizen, whether his conscience—that is, his church—agrees with mine or not. The Catholic and the Protestant stand on the same footing before the law, and the conscience of each is free before the state, and a limit beyond which the civil law cannot extend its jurisdiction. Here, then, is a separation of church and state that does not enslave the church, and a union of church and state that does not enslave the state, or interfere with its free and independent action in its own proper sphere. The church maintains her independence and her superiority as representing the spiritual order, for she governs those who are within, not those who are without, and the state acts in harmony, not in conflict with her, because it confines its action— where it has power—to things temporal.

The only restriction, on any side, is, that the citizen must so assert his own right of conscience as not to abridge the equal right of conscience in his fellow-citizen who differs from him. Of course the freedom of conscience cannot be made a pretext for disturbing the public peace, or outraging public decency, nor can it be suffered to be worn as a cloak to cover dissoluteness of manners or the transgression of the universal moral law; when it is so made or worn it ceases to be the right of conscience, ceases to be conscience at all, and the state has authority to intervene and protect the public peace and public decency. It may, therefore, suppress the Mormon concubinage, and require the Latter Day Saints to conform to the marriage law as recognized by the whole civilized world, alike in the interests of religion and of civilization. But beyond this the state cannot go, at least with us.

It may be doubted whether this American system is practicable in any but a republican country—under a government based on equal rights, not on privilege, whether the privilege of the one, the few, or the many. Democracy, as Europeans understand it, is not based on equal rights, but is only the system of privilege, if I may so speak, expanded. It recognizes no equal rights, because it recognizes no rights of the individual at all before the state. It is the pagan republic which asserts the universal and absolute supremacy of the state. The American democracy is Christian, not pagan, and asserts, for every citizen, even the meanest, equal rights, which the state must treated as sacred and inviolable. It is because our system is based on equal rights, not on privilege—on rights held not from the state, but which the state is bound to recognize and protect, that American democracy, instead of subjecting religion to the state, secures its freedom and independence.

Donoso Cortes can no more understand this than can the European democrat, because he has no conception of the equal rights of all men before the state; or rather, because he has no conception of the rights of man. Man, he says, has no rights; he has only duties. This is true, when we speak of man in relation to his Maker. The thing made has no right to say to the maker, "Why hast thou made me thus?" Man has only duties before God, because he owes to him all he is, has, or can do, and he finds beatitude in discharging his duties to God, because God is good, the good in itself, and would not be God and could not be creator if be were not. But that man has no rights in relation to society, to the state, or to his fellow man, is not true. Otherwise there could be no justice between man and man, between the individual and society, or the citizen and the state, and no injustice, for there is no injustice where no right is violated. Denying or misconceiving the rights of man, and conceiving the state as based on privilege, not on equal rights, the Spaniard is unable to conceive it possible to assert the freedom and independence of the state, without denying the freedom and independence of the church.

But, if republican institutions based on equal rights are necessary to secure the freedom and independence of the church, the freedom and independence of the church, on the other hand, are no less necessary to the maintenance of such institutions. I say, of the church, rather than of religion, because I choose to speak of things in the concrete rather than in the abstract, and because it is only as concreted in the church that the freedom and independence of religion can be assailed, or that religion has power to protect or give security to institutions based on equal rights. The church is concrete religion. Whether there is more than one church, or which of the thousand and one claimants is the true church, is not now the question. The answer of the Catholic is not doubtful. At present I am treating the question of equal rights, and asking no more for the church before the state than for the several sects. Of course, I recognize none of the sects as the church, but I am free to say that I regard even the lowest of them as better for society than any form of downright infidelity. There is something in common between Catholics and the sects that confess Christ as the Son of God, incarnate for our redemption and salvation, which there is not, and cannot be, between us and those who confess not Christ at all. But this is a digression.

Equal rights must have a foundation, something on which to stand. They cannot stand on the state or civil society, for that would deny them to be rights at all, and reduce them to simple privileges granted by the state and revocable at its will. This is precisely the error of the European liberals, who invariably confound right with privilege. All European society has been, and still is to a great extent, based on privilege, not right. Thus in England you have the rights—more properly, the privileges or franchises—of Englishman, but no rights of man which parliament is bound to recognize and protect as such. There is no right or freedom of conscience which the state must respect as sacred and inviolable; there is only toleration, more or less general. In the new kingdom of Italy there are the privileges and franchises of Italians, and, within certain limits, toleration for the church. Her bishops may exercise their spiritual functions so long as they do not incur the displeasure of the state. The supremacy of the state is asserted, and the ecclesiastical administration is at the mercy of the civil. It is so in every European state, because in none of them is the state based on equal rights. The United States are the only state in the world that is so based. Our political system is based on right, not privilege, and the equal rights of all men.

The state with us rests on equal rights of all men; but on what do the equal rights themselves rest? What supports or upholds them? The state covers or represents the whole temporal order, and they, therefore, have not, and cannot have, their basis or support in that order. Besides the temporal there is no order but the spiritual, covered or represented by the church. The equal rights, then, which are with us the basis of the state, depend themselves on the church or spiritual order for their support. Take away that order or remove the church, or even suppress the freedom and independence of the church, and you leave them without any support at all. The absolutism of the state follows, then, as a necessary consequence, and might usurps the place of right. Hence political principles must find their support in theology, and the separation of church and state in the sense of separating political from theological principles is as hostile to the state as to the church, and to liberty as to religion. It is not easy to controvert this conclusion, if we consider whence our rights are derived, and on what they depend for their reality and support. These rights, which we do not derive from the state or civil society, and hold independently of it, among which the Declaration of Independence enumerates "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," which it asserts to be "inalienable," whence do we hold them but from God, our Creator? This is what is meant when they are called the natural rights of man. They are called natural rights, because rights held under the natural law, but the natural law in the sense of the jurists and theologians, not in the sense of the physicists or natural philosophers—a moral law addressed to reason and free-will, and binding upon all men, whatever their state or position; not a physical law, like that by which clouds are formed, seeds germinate, or heavy bodies tend to the centre of the earth; for it is a law that does not execute itself and is not executed at all without the action of the reason and will of society. It is necessarily a law prescribed by the Author of nature, and is called the natural law, the law of natural justice, or the moral law, in distinction from the revealed or supernatural law, because promulgated by the supreme Lawgiver through natural reason, or the reason common to all men, which is itself in intimate relation with the Divine Reason.

These natural equal rights are the law for the state or civil authority, and every law of the state that violates them violates natural justice, and is by that fact null and void; is, as St. Augustine says, and St. Thomas after him, "Violence rather than law," and can never be binding on the civil courts, though human courts not unfrequently enforce such laws. Not being derived from the state or civil society, these rights are evidently not in the temporal order, or the same order with the state, and therefore must have, as we have seen, their basis in the spiritual order, that is, in theology, or have no basis at all.

The existence of God as the creator and upholder of nature, I do not here undertake to prove; for that has been done in the papers on The Problems of the Age, which have appeared in this magazine. I am not arguing against atheism in general, but only against what is called political atheism, or the doctrine that theology, and therefore the church, has nothing to do with politics. The state, with us, is based on the equal rights, not equal privileges, of all men; and if these equal rights have no real and solid basis beyond and independent of civil society, the state itself has no real basis, and is a chateau d'Espagne, or a mere castle in the air. Hence political atheism is not only the exclusion of the church from politics, but the denial of the state itself, and the substitution for it of mere physical force. Political atheism cannot be asserted without atheism in general, without, in fact, denying all existence, and, therefore, of necessity, all right. Political atheism is, then, alike destructive of religion and politics, church and state, of authority and liberty. Deny all right independent of the state, and the citizen can have no right not derived from the state, which denies all liberty; deny all right independent of the state, the state itself can have no right to govern, unless the state itself be God, which would be statolatry, alike absurd and blasphemous.

The rights of the state and of the citizen, alike must be derived from God, and have a theological basis, or be no rights at all, but words without meaning. There is then no such separation between politics and theology as European democracy asserts. Such separation is unphilosophical, and against the truth of things. It has been so held in all ages and nations of the world. All the great theologians, philosophers, and moralists of the human race have always held polities to be a branch of ethics, or morals, and that branch which treats of the application of the catholic principles of theology to society, or the social relations of mankind. The permanent, universal, and invariable principles of civil society are all theological principles, for there are no such principles outside of theology, and the office of the state is to apply these principles only to what is local, temporal, and variable. It is evident then that principles, properly so called, lie in the theological order, and come within the province of the theologian, not of the statesman, and are therefore to be determined by the spiritual society, not by the civil.

It is, then, the spiritual not the temporal, religion not politics, that asserts and maintains these rights, and religion does it in asserting and maintaining the right of conscience, which is the right of God, and the basis of all rights. The right of conscience is exemption from all merely human authority—a right to be held by all civil society as sacred and inviolable; and is the first and impassable barrier to the power of the state. The state cannot pass it without violence, without the most outrageous tyranny. It is then religion, not the state, that asserts and maintains freedom; for the state when it acts, acts as authority, not as liberty. So, on the other hand, is it religion that asserts and maintains the authority, I say, not the force, of the state. The authority of the state is its right to govern. In respect to civil society itself, it is liberty; in respect to citizens, it is authority. Being a right on the part of the state or society, it, like all other rights, lies in the spiritual order, and is equally sacred and inviolable. Religion, then, while it makes it the duty of the state to recognize and protect the rights of the individual citizen, makes it the duty of the individual citizen to recognize, respect, and defend the rights of the state or society. The duty in both cases is a religious duty, because all right is held from God, and only God can enjoin duty, or bind conscience. Deny God, and you deny religion; deny religion, and you deny all duty and all right;—alike the rights and duties of the state and the rights and duties of the individual citizen, and, therefore, alike both liberty and authority, which being correlatives can never exist the one without the other. There is no denying this conclusion without denying reason itself.

But religion, as an abstract theory, is powerless, as are all abstractions, and exists only as concreted, and religion in the concrete is the church. In the state and in the individual, God operates indeed, but mediately, through natural or secondary causes; but in the church immediately, for the church is his body, and her vitality is the Holy Ghost, who dwells in her, and is to her something like what the soul is to the body, forma corporis. Religion without the church is a theory or a vague sentiment; religion concreted in the church is a living reality, a power, and is efficient in vindicating both rights and duties, and affording a solid support to both liberty and authority. The sects, as far as they go, are concrete religion, but not religion in its unity and integrity. They are better than nothing; but lacking the unity and catholicity of truth, and being divided and subdivided among themselves, they can very imperfectly perform the office of religion or the Catholic Church. They are unable to make head against material force, and to maintain with any efficiency the rights of the spiritual against the encroachments of the temporal, or to prevent the state from asserting its own absolute supremacy. They exist not by a recognized right, but by state tolerance; they are suffered to exist and are protected, because they become auxiliaries of the state in its efforts to break the power and influence of the church, whose authority in spirituals is more repugnant to them then is state supremacy. Hence we find that wherever, except in the United States, the spiritual power is broken and divided into a great variety of sects, the state claims to be supreme alike in spirituals and temporals; and it is very doubtful if the freedom and independence of the spiritual order could long be preserved even in our country should our sectarian divisions continue. These divisions are already generating a wide-spread indifference to religion, almost a contempt for it; while there are manifest and growing tendencies to extend the authority of the state beyond its legitimate bounds into the domain of individual liberty. The unity and catholicity of the church, representing the unity and catholicity of the spiritual order, will soon be seen to be necessary to preserve our free institutions.

It was concrete religion, in its unity and catholicity embodied in the church as an institution, that was able during the middle ages to assert the freedom and independence of the spiritual order, which is only another term for the freedom and independence of conscience, against the political order. She was thus constituted a living reality, a concrete power, and the powers of the earth had to reckon with her. Constituted as society then was, she needed and exercised more positive power in the temporal order than was agreeable to her, or than is necessary in a society constituted like ours. The republic, then, was pagan, and sought to be supreme everywhere and in everything, or in other words, to subject the spiritual order to the temporal, as it was in pagan Rome, and for the most part continued to be even in Christian Rome of the East, till its conquest by the Turks. Hence the relation between Peter and Cesar, between the pope and emperor, was ordinarily that of antagonism. It was necessary that the pope should be clothed with a power that could control princes, and force them to respect the rights of conscience, or the independence of the church, which to be sufficient must be positive as well as negative. The temporal authority, or the authority of the church over the temporal, claimed and exercised over secular princes seeking to combine in themselves both the imperial and the pontifical power, was no usurpation, and rested on no grant of civil society, or jus publicum, as has sometimes been asserted, but grew out of the necessity of the case; its justification was in its necessity to maintain her own independence in spirituals, or the freedom of conscience. It was her right as representing the spiritual order, and would be her right still in a similarly constituted society, and the modern world is reaping in its advanced civilization the fruits of her having claimed and exercised it.

The necessity for claiming and exercising that power in a society constituted as is the American does not exist, because in our society the state frankly concedes all that she was in those ages struggling for. There was nothing which Gregory VII., Innocent III., Boniface VIII., and other great popes struggled for against the German emperors, the kings of France, Aragon, and England, and the Italian republics, that is not recognized here by our republic to be the right of the spiritual order. Here the old antagonism between church and state does not exist. There is here a certain antagonism, no doubt, between the church and the sects, but none between the church and the state or civil society. Here the church has, so far as civil society is concerned, all that she has ever claimed, all that she has ever struggled for. Here she is perfectly free. She summons her prelates to meet in council when she pleases, and promulgates her decrees for the spiritual government of her children without leave asked or obtained. The placet of the civil power is not needed, is neither solicited nor accepted. She erects and fills sees as she judges proper, founds and conducts schools, colleges, and seminaries in her own way, without let or hindrance; she manages her own temporalities, not by virtue of a grant or concession of the state, but as her acknowledged right, held as the right of conscience, independently of the state. Here she has nothing to conquer from the state, for the civil law affords her the same protection for her property that it does to the citizen for his; and therefore all that she can seek in relation to the constitution of our civil society, is that it should remain unaltered.

True, the sects have before civil society the same freedom that she has, but the state protects her from any violence they might be disposed to offer her. They are not permitted to rob her of her churches, desecrate her altars, molest her worship, or interfere with her management of her own affairs. Their freedom in no respect whatever abridges hers, and whatever controversy she may have with them, it is entirely on questions with which civil society has nothing to do, which are wholly within the spiritual order, and which could not be settled by physical force, if she had it at her command, and was disposed to use it. Lying in the spiritual order, they are independent of the state, and it has no right to interfere with them. There is nothing, then, in the freedom of the sects to interfere with the fullest liberty of the church, so long as the state recognizes and protect her freedom and independence as well as theirs. There is nothing, then, that the church can receive from civil society, that she has not in the United States, and guaranteed to her by the whole force of the civil constitution.

It is one of the mysteries of Providence that what the popes for ages struggled for and still struggle for in the old world, and in all parts of the new world originally colonized by Catholic states, should for the first time in history be fully realized in a society founded by the most anti-papal people on earth, who held the church to be the Scarlet Lady of the Apocalypse. Surely, they builded better than they knew. But explain it as you will, such is the fact. The United States is the only country in the world where the church is really free. It would seem that both state and church had to emigrate to the new world to escape the antagonisms of the old, and to find a field for the free and untrammeled development of each. It is idle to fear that the church will ever seek to disturb the order established here, for she supports no principle and has no interest that would lead her to do it. Individual Catholics, affected by the relations that have subsisted between church and state in the old world, and not aware that the church has here all that she has ever struggled for against kings and princes, may think that the church lacks here some advantages which she ought to have, or may think it desirable to reproduce here the order of things which they have been accustomed to elsewhere, and which in fact the church has submitted to as the best she could get, but has never fully approved. These, however, are few, and are soon corrected by experience, soon convinced that the real solution of the questions which have so long and often so fearfully agitated the nations of Europe, has been providentially obtained by the American people. The church has no wish to alter the relation that exists with us between her and the state.

But there is a very important question for the American people to ask themselves. With the multiplicity of sects, the growing indifference to religion, and the political atheism consciously or unconsciously fostered by a large portion of the secular press and but feebly resisted by the religious press, will they be able to reserve the freedom and independence of the spiritual order, or protect the equal rights on which our political institutions are founded? Instead of asking, as some do, are the presence and extension of the church dangerous to our institutions, should they not rather ask, is she not necessary to their safety? The higher question to be addressed to the sects undoubtedly is, can men save their souls without the church? but in addressing politicians and patriots, it is not beneath the Catholic even to ask if the republic, the authority of the state, and the liberty of the citizen, both of which rest on the freedom and authority of conscience, can be saved or preserved without her? Are not the unity and catholicity which she asserts and represents, and which the sects break and discard, necessary to maintain the freedom and independence of the spiritual order against the constant tendency of the political order and material interests to invade and subject it?

This is the great question for American patriots and statesman, and I have written in vain, if this article does not at least suggest the answer. Hitherto almost everywhere Catholics have found themselves obliged to contend against the civil power to gain the freedom and independence of their church, and at the same time, in these later centuries, to sustain that power, even though hostile to liberty, in order to save society from dissolution. Here they have to do neither, for here church and state, liberty and authority, are in harmonious relation, and form really, as they should, but two distinct parts of one whole; distinct, I say, not separate parts. There is here a true union, not unity, of church and state—a union without which neither the liberty of the citizen nor the authority of the state has any solid basis or support. The duty of the Catholic on this question is, it seems to me, to do his best to preserve this union as it is, and to combat every influence or tendency hostile to it.

Donoso Cortes demonstrates most clearly that religion is the basis of society and politics, but he is apparently disposed to assert the unity of church and state, with European liberals, but differing from them by absorbing the state in the church, or by virtually suppressing it; while they would suppress the church or absorb her in the state. My endeavor in what I have written has been to preserve both, and to defend not the unity, but the union of church and state. This union in my judgment, has never existed or been practicable in the old world, and I do not believe it is even yet practicable there, and consequently, I regard whatever tends there to weaken the political influence of the church as unfavorable to civilization, and favorable only to political atheism, virtually asserted by every European state, unless Belgium be an exception. But here the union really exists, in the most perfect form that I am able to conceive it; and for the harmonious progress of real civilization, we only need the church, the real guardian of all rights that exist independently of civil society, to become sufficiently diffused or to embrace a sufficient number of the people in her communion; to preserve that union intact, from whatever quarter it may be assailed.

This, we are permitted to hope, will ere long be the case. The sects, seeing their freedom and independence require its maintenance, must in this respect make common cause with us; and hence the spiritual power is probably already nearly, if not quite strong enough to maintain it against any and every enemy that may arise. As to the controversy between the church and the sects, I do not expect that to end very soon; but truth is mighty and in the end will prevail They will, no doubt, struggle to the last, but as the state cannot intervene in the dispute, and must maintain an open field for the combatants, I have no doubt that they will yield at last, because the church has the truth in its unity and integrity, and they have it only as disunited or broken in scattered fragments. Reason demands unity and catholicity, and where reason is free, and assisted by grace, she must win the victory.

Original
On The Olive-branches In The Garden Of Gethsemane.

Unto the spreading olive-branches thus spake I:
"Emblems of peace!
Why do ye mock His bitter grief?
He cometh here to seek relief:
And ye His woes increase!"
When for the silent trees my Jesus made reply:
"It should be so;
To men the sign of peace and life,
To Me should be of death and strife,
Who save them by My woe."

Translated from Le Correspondant
The Story of A Sister.
by Augustin Cochin.

Would you wish to see happiness realized on earth? It reigned in the palace of Simonetti at Rome, in the family of the ambassador of France, in the month of May, 1830. The ambassador was the Count de la Ferronaya. He had been for a long time ambassador in Russia, where his character, his natural gifts, his integrity, had triumphed over the reserve and hauteur of the Emperor Nicholas, who treated him as a friend. He was also the friend of the King of France, who, in 1828, appointed him minister of foreign affairs. Handsome, brilliant, brave, intelligent, he bore in his heart and in his appearance the qualities which constitute the true French gentleman. He had married the niece of the devoted, faithful Duchess of Tourzel, who accompanied the king and queen to Varennes as governess to their children. Three boys and four girls were the result of this happy marriage. This family, endowed with birth, rank, and so many gifts of this world, were united at Rome, under the most beautiful sky, in the most beautiful month of the year, in the sunny brightness of an unclouded existence. The revolution of July, 1830, having wrested the monarchy from the Bourbons, the Ferronays were not unhappy. God had not yet taken everything from them, he had only taken their riches. The father, by his fidelity, had grown in public respect; his sons and daughters had been prepared by a solid education for industry and self-sacrifice. For fifteen years the parents had enjoyed uninterrupted prosperity, but they had not forgotten their days of exile; and when poverty overtook them they met her as an old friend, meekly bowing to the hand from whom all changes come. They went to live in retirement at Castellamare, where their house was the image of their life, a small chamber and a magnificent view, a radiant horizon seen from a narrow dwelling. Soon after we find them at Chiaja, gay, happy, the brothers quitting home for an active life, the sisters loving each other devotedly, gathering flowers in Lady Acton's garden to wear them at the next ball, presented at court, deprived of their fortune, but still happy; tasting the pleasure that we find in traveling, and that we ought to find in the journey of life—the pleasure which consists in admiring ardently what we do process without the vanity of personal possession. However, this delightful life was not exempt from danger: a stranger has too much liberty; he is not subject to the supervision of relatives, friends, neighbors, or rivals, who exercise a control which, though often trying, is more often useful. Diplomatic families, above all, accustomed to be treated with consideration, to form transient acquaintances, passing from court to court, from St. Petersburg to London, from London to Rome, live in a cosmopolitan world, the most delightful, the most amusing, but by far the most dangerous. The family of M. de la Ferronays had not long escaped this danger, which was rendered still more seductive under the charming sky and in the luxurious climate of Italy. However, we do not pretend that this story introduces us to exceptional creatures; this is not a voyage to the country of the angels; we are still upon earth with common mortals. Albert, one of the younger brothers, was the first to perceive the dangers of this too self-indulgent life, and he had the courage to escape from it. He was a brave heart in a frail body; be was capable of making a mistake, but utterly incapable of excusing an unworthy action by an unworthy doctrine. Providence gave him the support of two friends, who drew him at eighteen from the enervating influences which he held in such horror, and the elevating power of whose example transformed the child into a man. Both survived him. M. Rio had been placed in the foreign office by M. de la Ferronays; he refused to change his opinions to please M. Polignac, or to abjure his oath to satisfy M. Guizot. M. de Polignac and M. Guizot, respecting his courage and firmness, had not forsaken him; and making use of his leisure to gratify his tastes as well as to show his gratitude, he begged his old chief to allow him to return to his son the favors that he had received from himself, and to permit him to take Albert to be his companion in that delightful journey among the churches and classical associations of Italy, to which we owe his great work on Christian Art. The other friend, the Count de Montalembert, was younger, his heart was filled with love of the church and of liberty; and devoting himself to their service, with an eloquence and activity which nothing could tire, he arrived in Italy to rejoin MM de Lamennais and Lacordaire. They set out all three for Rome in the month of January, 1832, and nothing appears more rare and more touching than the position of the gifted trio who arrived in the eternal city, the first in search of beauty, the second in pursuit of truth, and the third going unconsciously to encounter the pure love of his life. At St. Petersburg M. de la Ferronays had become acquainted with the family of the Count d'Alopeus, Russian minister at Berlin, whose daughter, Alexandrine, was much attached to Albert's sisters. After the death of her husband, in 1831, the Countess d'Alopeus came to Rome, and the young people met for the first time on the 1st of January, 1832.

We must read in Le Recit d'une Soeur, or rather in the story of Alexandrine, a journal which begins at this date, the origin, the progress, the incidents, and the development of the pure, innocent love of Alexandrine and Albert de Ferronays; those conversations which touch so deeply the heart; the friendship which changes into a warmer sentiment the name of brother which no longer satisfies; and at last the words "I love you" whispered on the steps of St. Peter's one beautiful evening in spring. A journey to Naples united the two families at Vomero, in the pretty villa of Trecase. We passed the greatest parts of our evenings on the terrace. Everything was enchanting; the two gulfs, the shores, Vesuvius, the sky gleaming with stars, the air breathing perfume above all to love—to love, yet to be able to speak of God. Delightful and innocent hours, who would wish to efface you from these pages, and who would wish not to have known your happiness!

But I hear stern voices cry out in alarm, lest this book should fall into the hands of young girls. "This book," they say, "is not written for them." Is it then necessary because we are Christians, to cast down our eyes and blush, when we hear those sacred words: Reason, love, liberty? What would life be without these words? Ah! you may allow your daughters' eyes, without fear, to wander over these brilliant pages, if they will only turn the leaves, and read to the end, to learn the uncertainty of human hope, the length of human suffering, the gentle consolations of faith, and the beauty of this holy union of tenderness and purity, under the protection of God.

In the month of November, it was thought better that Albert and Alexandrine should separate. They were engaged, but one was without fortune, the other was a Protestant. Their friends wished them to reflect, to try the strength of their attachment. It was absence without pain, full of hope. After three months Albert came back. The same family life recommenced, full of little home scenes; naïve, tender, sweet. This continued for three more months, short but happy, sunny days without clouds; and doubtless the beauty of nature, the enchantment of an innocent affection, the presence of God, formed a paradise around and above them.

"On Holy Thursday," wrote Alexandrine, "my mother allowed me to go with my friends, to Tenebrae at the chapel of the palace, to hear the charming music. In spite of my frivolity, the beautiful chapel, the singing, and above all, perhaps, the happiness of praying with Albert, inspired me to such a degree, that I prayed with gentleness and recollection. I was pleased to have the air of a Catholic. M. de La Ferronays took us there, and the return on foot was delightful. It was bright moonlight, and the air was heavy with the perfumes of spring. We went into several churches to pray before the holy tomb. Albert and I threw ourselves upon our knees, one besides the other, on the pavement of the church. I remember that I felt an indescribable calm; and I don't know what I asked from God, but I felt that we both implored his protection for us, and that, we felt it realized." The two families separated on the 30th of April. Alexandrine went with her mother to Germany, Madame de Ferronays took her two oldest daughters and Albert to France, and their father placed the two youngest in the convent de la Trinité du Mont at Rome. They left Naples together, but separated at Civita Vecchia. Albert not feeling well, his father kept him with him; leaving him at the inn, while he took his wife and children to the wharf for embarkation. He embraced them, following with his eyes the receding vessel, sending kisses from afar to the fast-fading shadows; and then when the last faint smoke of the steamer disappears in the circle of the horizon, he sighs, oppressed with a weight to which all are familiar, the heavy weight of loneliness which is inseparable from farewell words to those we love. He returned silently and sadly to the inn, where a frightful spectacle met his eyes. Albert is dying! They are bleeding him; one moment later he would be dead. It is necessary to read for oneself in his own words, the letters of a father to a mother. A father alone, a stranger in an inn, beside the deathbed of his child. "We were kept in an agony of suspense from three o'clock until seven. At seven the perspiration which, until then, had resisted all our efforts, this welcome perspiration showed itself, and became excessive. O my friend! with what faith, with what fervor of gratitude, I thanked heaven! How everything changes its nature and aspect when we nurse an invalid whom we love! The physicians say that this dreadful crisis will re-establish his health. He is saved! O my God! I Frank thee! for today I can feel only joy. O all you who are loved by heaven! give thanks for me, and ask God to smite me, but to spare my poor children." During this time Mademoiselle Alopeus had arrived in Rome, and was once more amid the scenes and associates where she first met Albert, when she learned that, instead of returning to France, he was dying at Civita Vecchia. In despair, she wrote to him, and wished to fly to him; she could not do so, and she quitted Rome without seeing him, feeling that he was only more dear to her because she had so nearly lost him. "At Viterbo," she writes, "where we slept, I heard them speak of the death of a young man, whose body was exposed in the neighboring church; this distressed me. I could not bear to hear anything that reminded me that Albert could die."

Eugenie To Alexandrine.

"I pray for you, for you and Pauline, for Pauline and you. I do not mention Albert. Albert is comprehended in you; it is the same prayer. God has loved him; God has spared him. God will bless him, and to bless him is to bless you. With what fervor have I repeated my favorite prayer that God would take my share of happiness and unite it to yours, that you may have a double portion. This desire realized would insure my bliss." In order that nothing might be wanting in this union of noble souls, Albert, just convalescent, writes to his friends, Montalembert and Rio, letters full of energy and confidence. Calm and serenity succeeded to this anxiety and disquiet. We find the two families united at Rome in September, 1833, where the young sister, Olga, makes her first communion. They then went to Naples, where Albert met them, looking so well that his health had never seemed so perfectly established. It was Alexandrine's health which, at this time, gave them cause for anxiety. Her mind was distressed, though she did her best to conceal her trouble. Her mother had not failed during their travels in Germany to represent to her Albert's bad health and his poverty. Happily he had recovered his health, but he was still poor. I do not know what prudent parents will say, but I agree with Monsieur de la Ferronays, who wrote thus to his wife: "They will be poor, but they will be truly happy. I have neither the courage nor the wish to oppose them; you will not be more cruel than I am." Alexandrine was still suffering. She was lying sadly on the sofa one evening at twilight, when her sister came to her, and told her that her wishes were realized; that she might look upon Albert as her future husband. These joyful tidings worked her cure—happiness is the best medicine. The marriage of Monsieur and Madame Albert de la Ferronays was preceded by that of the Countess d'Alopeus with the Prince Paul Lepoukhyn. Many dreary months of waiting elapsed, but I will not resume the letters at this period—one word is sufficient. Lovers are always permitted to repeat the same things. It was at this time that the sad revolt of M. de Lamennais took place, and Albert causelessly, but nobly anxious, writes thus to his friend: "Let us throw ourselves at the foot of the cross, which is the foundation of the church, not to undermine her, but to support and defend her; but, above all, I pray you do not commit yourself to M. de Lamennais. You know the happiness which is to be mine in the spring; but I will postpone it and fly to you if you wish me to do so." To these enthusiastic words his friend replied: "There is not a word in your letter which does not accord with all I have thought and desired. I used every effort to induce M. de Lamennais to do as I have done—to bow to the inscrutable dispensations of providence; and humbly, and with docility, to await the will of heaven." But we must leave the two friends to return to the preparations for the marriage, which was at last celebrated on the 17th of April, 1834. In the evening a carriage took Albert and Alexandrine to Castellamare. They were handsome, talented, good, and happy, and they loved.

Blissful dream! which as yet knew no awakening. If we could judge of life by outward appearances, we would believe that these bright anticipations would last for ever. All the family rejoined the newly married couple at Castellamare. "A staircase, embowered by vines and roses, led to the pretty house, the ground floor of which, occupied by Albert and Alexandrine, opened by large windows into the garden. Charles and Emma occupied the first floor; my parents, Fernand, my sisters and myself the second, and at each story these terraces communicated by outside staircases. We were always in communication by these terraces, and were only too glad of an excuse to be together, for never was a family more perfectly, more happily united." The sister who painted this little picture, which seems bathed in sunlight, added to the happiness of all during this pleasant summer, by her marriage; and her younger sister, Eugenie, melancholy and enthusiastic, overpowered with happiness, exclaimed, "Oh! if life is so delightful, what must be the joy of heaven; death is then better than all!" From Castellamare they went to Sorrento, thence to Rome, then to Pisa, where they spent the winter, and where they were joined by their faithful friend, like themselves young, intelligent, and amiable. "You can imagine," wrote Albert to his sister, "that he does not render our life less charming." "He left us in tears," writes Alexandrine. This friend was the Count de Montalembert. From Pisa M. and Madame de la Ferronays embarked for Naples in the month of March, and thence a month later for Malta, en route for the east. This journey was full of amusing and piquant little incidents. Friendship and affection followed them wherever they went. What delight to visit Castellamare, Sorrento, Pisa, Naples, Malta, Smyrna, Constantinople, Odessa, Vienna, Venice, at twenty years of age with hearts full of love! "The dim light of my lamp falling on her dear head—is not this worth all the world?" writes Albert. Alexandrine was filled with enthusiasm on returning to Italy. "O dear Italy!" she cries, "I return to thee for the ninetieth time, and always with renewed pleasure." But alas! this journey, made under these happy auspices, resembled the course of the inhabitant of the seas whom the harpoon of the fisherman has wounded, and who plunges and escapes in agitation and affright, carrying the iron in his side. The health of Albert and the religion of Alexandrine were the two poisons hidden under this smiling exterior. Ten days after his marriage, Albert in putting his handkerchief to his mouth, drew it away covered with blood. At Pisa he was better, at Constantinople quite well, at Rouen he was at death's-door. At Venice he was again better, and the husband and wife went together to Lido.

While the wife was disturbed for the health of her husband, he was trembling for more important interests. From the commencement of their love, Albert's most ardent desire had been to see Alexandrine kneel at the same altar, and practice the same faith, as himself. This hope seemed sure of realization when they married, for God was ever with them in their happiest hours; since their marriage a feeling of delicacy had kept them silent on the great subjects of conversion. Albert did not wish that Alexandrine should be constrained by her affection for him, and she feared for herself the same powerful influence. She was not willing to sacrifice her reason to the dictates of her heart, and dreading the displeasure of her mother, she dreaded still more the censures of conscience. She desired to submit to conviction, and to resist the pleadings of her love. We recognize here the transparent sincerity of a character of which Albert said truly, "I never saw in her the slightest affectation."

Thus Albert's health and Alexandrine's religion agitated them both with a constant, silent anxiety, which introduces something tragical and sorrowful into their history. Being prevented by his health from devoting himself to the service of his country and his church, Albert had concentrated all his desires on the establishment of truth in the heart dearest to him. Nothing could be more touching than Alexandrine's care for Albert's health. The charming Swede, the graceful daughter of the North, the belle of the Neapolitan fêtes, was transformed into the attentive nurse, hiding her fears, and accepting disagreeable duties. Shut up in a sick room, closing with her delicate fingers the curtains, while Albert was asleep, weeping while he slept, and, smiling when he woke. At this cruel moment hope is absent; sorrow extends still more and more her heavy icy hand over this hitherto so happy pair. Albert, at Venice, became so ill that they sent for his family. They come, they see him, he is dying, but he is consumed with an irresistible desire to revisit his country. They set out in a carriage at short journeys. They leave Venice the 10th of April, and arrive in Paris on the 11th of May. On the 26th Albert is established 13 Rue de Madame, in a hired room near the Luxembourg. He is a little better and much happier, for he is in France, surrounded by his friends. They are young, they are good, they are happy—why then, death, sickness, and the crushing sorrow of approaching separation? Why all this anguish at once—conversion refused to the prayers of Albert—recovery refused to the tears of Alexandrine? O God! where art thou? Thou art absent when they all wait for thee. Thou wert the witness of their innocent love, the author of their union. Thou wert with them when they were happy, and now they suffer, they cry, and thou dost not hear, and yet they have had days of perfect happiness and a youth without clouds. Thou didst create them. Thou hast forsaken them.

Thou permittest that they should be afflicted, and when they cry, thou wilt not answer. Why didst thou say by thy prophet, "Before they call I will answer. As they are yet speaking, I will hear." Thy promises but add to their sufferings the pain of disappointed hope. O God! where art thou? With their hearts wrung by the same sorrow, the disciples were walking on the road to Emmaus, when meeting a stranger they confided to him their trouble. "We hoped that it was he who would have redeemed Israel, and to-day is the third day since these things were done." They did not know that God was present, though hidden from them in the silence of the little chamber, where these poor Jews, who represent too well our patience so soon exhausted, and our unworthy dejection, were sadly assembled together. Suddenly their hearts awoke and they recognized in the breaking of bread this ever-present God who gives himself to us as the pledge of future immortality. The miracle of the little cottage of Emmaus is enacted every day, and was visible at the death-bed of Albert de La Ferronays. Already at Venice, during the night of the 6th of March, Albert appeared oppressed in his sleep, and Alexandrine, overwhelmed by the agony of the coming separation, watched by his bed. "At half-past five," she writes, "the color left his lips, he spoke with effort and desired me to send for his confessor. 'Has it come to this? Has it come to this?' I cried; then I added at the same moment, 'now I am a Catholic.' In pronouncing these words, firmness, if not happiness, filled my heart." On the 14th of March she wrote to her mother a truly sublime letter, which I will quote at length. "From love and respect to you, my mother, I have not inquired into the claims of the Catholic religion for fear that I should find it true, and I should be forced to embrace it. But now I am possessed with an irresistible desire to belong to the same faith as my Albert. At no price, however, not even to soften the death-bed of my husband, would I act disloyally toward God. Be assured, I shall not act without conviction. Dear mother, allow me to be instructed, and when you meet again your poor widowed daughter, ah! you will not repine at her being a Catholic. If the Catholic Church had no other advantage over ours than that she prays for the dead, I should prefer her." On his side Albert, with his dying hand, traced in his journal these words, which were his last: "O Lord! I implored thee by day and by night, Give her to me, grant me this joy if it only lasts for one day. Thou heardest me, O God! why should I complain. My happiness was complete, if it was short, and now thou hast granted the rest of my prayers, and my dear one is about to enter the bosom of the church, thus giving me the assurance that I shall see her again in that happy home where we shall both be lost in the beatific vision of thy boundless love." On the 27th of May, 1836, Madame de Ferronays knelt before an altar, arranged in her husband's room, on which the Abbé Martin de Mourien celebrated mass, and made her profession of the Catholic faith. On the night of the 5th or 7th of June, she received her first communion at the same mass where Albert received his last. I will describe this pathetic scene in the words of Alexandrine herself. "Albert was in bed, be had not been able to rise. I knelt beside him, I took his hand, it was thus that we commenced the mass of Abbé Gerbert. As the mass advanced, Albert made me let fall his hand, this dear hand that was to me so sacred that in the most solemn hour of life I felt that I did not offend God in retaining it. Albert drew it from me, exclaiming, 'Go, go, belong only to God.' The Abbé Gerbert addressed a few words to me before giving me communion, then be gave it to Albert, then again I took his beloved hand; we expected every moment would be his last." No book could contain, no imagination could depict a scene more tenderly, more profoundly pathetic. At this point we read no more, we weep; it is to thee, O God! that the soul turns, to thee that the soul ascends, to thee who truly and really wert present in his chamber of suffering, walking so to speak on the waves of death, and saying, "Fear not, I am with thee." O my Protestant brethren: it is to you that this page seems to be dedicated; it is you who have formed the character of this young girl; it is to you that she owes the habit of living in the presence of God, to you she owes the loyalty, the perfect sincerity of her intentions and the zeal with which she purifies her conscience; at each moment guarding it as a stainless mirror which must ever reflect the image of God. She followed you on the road to Emmaus, where Jesus explained to his disciples the sacred Scriptures; but like the disciples she has thrown down the book, it could not satisfy her; she has followed God to his holy table. By the bed of death, on the edge of the yawning abyss of irreparable separation, hymns and words disappear like useless sounds and barren discourses. Famished for hope and for consolation, the soul has need of stronger food. She must tear down the veil, and lay hold of God. O my Protestant brethren! read this history of a Christian, who was yours until the moment when stretching out her despairing hands toward nothingness, she came to us to be united in God with her dying husband. Read the sad but striking description of the days that follow the first communion. It is to you that I would dedicate the story of this sublime agony, accompanied so tenderly by the church to the last sigh of the passing soul.

On the 27th of June, after two years of married life, at twenty-two years of age, Albert returned to God!

Is not this sad enough? Why should we continue after such scenes? What new spectacle can move us? We have known the bride, the wife. We are going to follow the widow; to follow her from the extremity of human sorrow, to consolation, even to joy and love, reformed again in God. The only difference between the widow of India burned in the ashes of her husband and the Christian widow, is that the Christian is consumed more slowly. She waits for death, instead of seeking it; from the first day of bereavement an invisible fire, which nothing can extinguish, saps the spring of her life.

The first moments are the most cruel, but they are not the hardest to endure; when one can say yesterday, the day before yesterday, it is only absence, it is not the abyss of an irreparable adieu.

Alexandrine to Pauline.
"Boury, July 10, 1836.

"Pauline—Pauline! I could have written to you on the 29th of June, had I not been occupied with other things. I repeat, I could have done it. God has given me the power to do and to endure much far beyond all I ever believed possible, for have I not seen the eyes of Albert close in death? have I not felt his hand grow cold for ever? Eugenie will tell you that God has granted me that which I asked of him. He died resting in my arms, my hand in his. Alone, and very quietly, I closed his dear eyes, deprived of sight, and perhaps of feeling. I whispered close into his ear the name so beloved, Albert! I had nothing more tender to say to him than this word which expressed everything I felt. I wished that the last sound which should fall upon his ear should be my voice, growing fainter and fainter until it was lost in the distance and darkness of that gloomy passage, which leads at last into the light. Alas! my voice, like myself, was obliged to remain on the confines, obliged for the first time to be separated from him. O Pauline! I was strong then, unnaturally strong. I was still stronger for three days, then I commenced to grow weaker and weaker, and each morning I seemed feebler than the night before."

This estimable widow of twenty years, always ardent and always perfectly natural, expresses a truth even in her first sensations. Little by little sorrow intensifies, courage fails, despair commences. The sympathy of friends, which had until then a little occupied, distracted, and deadened the pain, without healing it, becomes colder and more distant, and the soul is enveloped in the icy shades of silence and solitude.

Alexandrine to Pauline.

"To tell me at my age that all happiness is passed, that makes me shudder, and yet my only rest will be to feel entirely inconsolable, for I should loathe myself if I felt that I could again enjoy the amusements of life, or look upon the world otherwise than I do now. Albert was to me the light which colored everything. With him pearls, jewels, pretty rooms, beautiful scenery, appeared to me lovely. Now, nothing charms me. I have but one wish, to know where he is. To see if he is happy, if he loves me still; to share all things with him now as I promised to do on earth before God."

Yes, the faithful widow sees nothing, she is ever with the absent; it is not he who is dead, it is the world which has gone from her, which is shrouded in darkness. But in the long weary hours, when she listens to the plaintive murmurings of her own heart, the Christian widow hears another voice of heavenly music, and angels whisper in her ear those gentle words, "Blessed are those who weep, for they shall be comforted." "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." It is not only in heaven that pure hearts see God, they see him everywhere on earth, in all objects, in all creatures—in all events they recognize him, they contemplate him. An unexpected brightness is introduced little by little into this desolate life. The world is colored anew; obscured by sorrow, it is transfigured by faith.

She who is afflicted is not consoled, she is accepted, supported; from this day a miracle commences. She whose affections have been riven, seeks to love again in making friends for him whom she has lost, in interesting for him the saints whom she invokes, the poor whom she assists. Some days after the death of Albert, Alexandrine sold a beautiful pearl collar, a relic of happy days, and she wrote:

"Pearls! symbol of tears!
Pearls! tears of the sea,
Gathered with tears in the depths of the ocean,
Worn often with tears in the midst of the pleasures of the world;
Resigned to-day with tears in the greatest of human sorrows,
Go, dry tears, by changing into bread."

The love of the poor became for this young Christian a sublime consolation—the love of Jesus Christ in the persons of the poor—the love of the poor in the thought of Albert. To love the unhappy when we are unhappy is an exquisite sign of perfection in our poor human nature, but a sign happily very common. Is it not much more difficult when we suffer to love the happy—not to be impatient of their pleasures, to lend ourselves to them, and though our own hearts are for ever shut against joy, to be able to rejoice with those who rejoice? Le Récit d'une Soeur shows us the Christian widow in the midst of her family, among her young sisters and brothers, smiling, amiable, communicating, no doubt, by her presence to the pleasures of the house the tinge of melancholy which ever belongs to the joys or earth.

The commencement of the second volume of Madame Craven's history is occupied with the tableau of the interior of her family, who were united at the Chateau of Boury during the years 1836, '37, and '38, which followed the death of M. Albert de la Ferronays. Obliged, by the diplomatic career of her husband, to change frequently her residence—to go from Naples to Lisbon, to London, to Carlsruhe, to Brussels—Madame Craven was almost always separated from her parents and her sisters. To this separation we owe the correspondence which serves today to interest and console us.

The description of the interior of the Chateau de Boury, depicted in these letters, resembles a conversation, where each speaks in his turn and with his own peculiar accent. But I will pass over this family picture to return to Madame Albert de la Ferronays, the principal character in my story.

In the month of October, 1837, they removed the body of Albert to Boury, in order to bury it in a sepulchre, where they had arranged two places without separation.

"Yesterday, alone with Julia, by the aid or a little ladder, Alexandrine descended into the excavation in order to touch and to kiss, for the last time, the coffin in which is enclosed all that she loves. In doing this she was on her knees in her own tomb. On the stone she had engraved: 'What God hath put together, let no man put asunder.'"

In 1838 she rejoined her mother in Germany, where she spent the second anniversary of the 29th of June. From Ischl she wrote to her sister a touching description of the death of a young priest, who died of consumption eleven months after his ordination. From Germany Madame de la Ferronays went to Lumigny, from thence to Boury; and when the family resolved to pass the winter of 1839 in Italy, she returned with a sad delight to this beautiful country, where she had been so happy. She wished to revisit all the scenes of her past happiness—to see again the rocks, the trees, the mountains, which had been witnesses of her felicity—not without tears, but without complaining; with the sweet serenity of perfect resignation. "It is here," she said, "that I have been so full of bliss that this world and life appeared too beautiful." After the description of the second journey to Italy, there follows the account of the successive deaths of M. de la Ferronays and the young daughters, Olga and Eugenie. At this time, always absolutely sincere, incapable in anything of being carried away by feeling, Alexandrine thought of entering a convent; she relinquished the idea, but resolved to live in poverty for the poor. From this day she dreams no more, she writes no more, she acts. Her love expresses itself in joyous accents, in words of heavenly sweetness, accompanied by austere virtues. It is the miracle and the triumph of true piety, What is this? demands a disdainful world. Who is this devotee, draped in black, who ventures out in the most inclement season, laden with bundles? Has she paralyzed her heart? Does she love no one? Is she a piece of mechanism, passing from the dreary garret to the dark cellar in the poor neighborhood which surrounds her? No; this widow is a great lady, bearing one of the oldest names of France. She is going to visit the dying, to supply them with clothes and food, to teach their ignorant children; and on her return she takes her pen, and from this heart, which you believe cold and frozen, flow forth these words: "O my dear sister! can I fill you with joy and courage in writing? Would that it were in my power; you do not know how I love you, but you will know in eternity, where we shall enjoy each other's love fully and completely."

This devotee paid a visit to another devotee, an old Russian lady, of whom she writes: "I have seen Madame Swetchine; this delightful, excellent woman told me that we ought not to speak ill of life, for it is full of beauty; and yet this woman, so tender and so pious, is overwhelmed with moral and physical suffering. She said to me, 'I love what is, because it is true; I am contented.' The longer I live the more I wish to have my heart filled with love, and only with love." Of all Alexandrine's former pleasures, the sole relaxations she permitted herself were music and reading. Part of her time she spent in Paris in the hospitals, which she entered with the joyous, animated air of a young girl who sets out for a fête, or a warrior who returns from battle. She ended by hiring a little room in the Rue de Sèvres in order to live more plainly. Her sisters, in looking into her wardrobe, found that it contained nothing. She had robbed herself to give to the poor. This noble woman had but one cause —the cause of God. She became the generous servant, almost the soldier of the church, interesting herself in the cause of freedom, contributing to foreign missions, seconding the educational projects of her friend, M. de Montalembert; and, from the quiet of her little chamber, giving forth her money and her prayers for the service of God. Madame Craven, in a letter, dated the 31st of July, thus writes: "The evening of my departure from Boury we went into the cemetery to pray. Alexandrine knelt beside Albert's tomb, on the spot which, twelve years before, had been prepared for herself. I was on my knees, by Olga. The night was warm and beautiful. As we strolled slowly home, I turned and admired the setting sun, which was embellishing, with its many colored rays, this sad spot. 'I love the setting sun,' I exclaimed. 'Since my sorrow,' replied Alexandrine, 'the setting sun makes me sad. It is the precursor of night. I do not like the night. I love the morning and the spring—they bring before me the reality of life that never ends. Night represents to me darkness and sin; evening the transitory nature of the world; but morning and spring give me promise of the resurrection and renewal of all things.' As we continued our walk, Alexandrine said: 'Rest assured that all that pleases us most upon earth is but a shadow; that the reality is alone in heaven. What is there upon earth so sweet as to love? And I ask you if it is not easy to conceive that the love of the divine love ought to be the perfection of this sweetness?—and is not this the love of Jesus Christ? I should never have been comforted if I had not learnt that this love exists for God, and is everlasting.' I replied, 'You are very happy so to love God.' She answered me—and her words, her expression, her attitude will remain ever engraved on my memory—'O Pauline! should I not love God? should I not be transported with joy when I think of him? How can you imagine there is any merit in this, even that of faith, when I think of the miracle that he has wrought in my soul? I loved, and desired the joy of earth—it was given to me. I lost it, and I was overwhelmed with despair. Yet, to-day my soul is so transformed that all the happiness I have ever known pales and grows dim in comparison with the felicity with which God has filled my soul.' Surprised to hear her speak thus, I said: 'If you had offered to you a long life to be spent with Albert, would you accept it?' She replied, without hesitation. 'I would not take it.' This was our last conversation, and as I saw her then I see her now, with a flower of jessamine in her hand, her face lighted up with heavenly beauty; and so she will ever appear to me until I meet her again where there will be no more parting.' Alexandrine died some months after, on the 9th of February, 1848.

If the angels could die, they would die as she did. Her last words to Albert's mother were: "Tell Pauline it is so sweet to die."

On the 14th of November of the same year, Madame de la Ferronays rejoined her husband, her son, and her three daughters. On the tombs of Albert, Alexandrine, Olga, and Eugenie, and of their father and mother, one single epitaph is necessary. It comprehends their life; it is the epitome of their faith; it is the conclusion, the explanation, the design of this book: "Love is stronger than death."

Original
The Church And The Sinner.

The Church
Prithee, why continue eating,
Child, the husks of swine?
Thou thy soul art only cheating
With this food of thine.
The Sinner.
Other food hath long been wasted,
Mother, by my sin;
All its empty joys are tasted,
Sorrows now begin.
The Church.
Hadst thou not a loving Father,
Child, and happy home?
There with him have rested, rather
Shouldst thou than to roam.
The Sinner.
Yes; but he his now degraded
Son would never know;
From his memory I have faded,
Mother, long ago.
The Church.
Child, the Father ne'er forgetteth
Whom he called his son,
To him naught but pride now letteth
Not thy feet to run.
The Sinner.
Worthy for his lowly servant
Am I not, I know;
Yet with love and sorrow fervent
Will arise, and go!

From The Dublin University Magazine.
Modern Writers Of Spain.

The literary portion of English and French people take little interest about what philosophers and romance writers are doing on the outer borders of Europe. Scarcely does an editor of a literary journal direct his subscribers' attention to the current literature of Russia, Norway, Spain, or Portugal. The most universally-read Englishman would be puzzled if you asked him who is the Dickens or the Braddon of Transylvania, or if anything worth reading has lately appeared in the Portuguese province of Alentejo. Thanks to the talents and the genial disposition of Frederica Bremer, and the vigorous and original character of Emily Carlen's novels, and the interest excited for Norse literature by William and Mary Howitt, we have become familiarized with the popular literature of Sweden. Worsae and Andersen have made us attend to literary sayings and doings among the meadows and beech woods and havns of the Danish Isles. The efforts of Count Sollogub and one or two other enlightened Russians have failed to dispel our apathy on the subject of native Russian literature, and at this moment we can recollect among the contents of our own reviews and magazines for five or six years back, only two notices of the productions of living Spanish novelist or romancist. Either we (English and French) are too much absorbed in our own literature, and consequently negligent of that of our neighbors, or those neighbors are producing nothing worthy [of] notice, and in either case our efforts will scarcely turn public attention into a new channel. Our intention is merely to advert to some literary features in the life of the Spain of the present day. We shall not find her altogether neglectful of the claims of her children who are at the moment striving to add to her literary renown.

Cervantes Remembered Too Late.

There is something very saddening in those solemnities held in honor of departed genius. We see much time taken from necessary business, much eloquence wasted—often with a side glance toward self-glorification, and much money thrown away, which, if once timely and prudently used, would have relieved the anxieties and cheered the existence of the ill-favored son of genius.

In the article on Cervantes which appeared in the University for August, [Footnote 2] allusion was made to his imprisonment and harsh treatment in a certain town of La Mancha. It is the same whose name, he says, in the commencement of Don Quixote, he does not choose to remember. It has been ascertained that this village of unenviable reputation is Argamasilla; and the very house where he resided against his will, and dreamily arranged the plan of his prose epic, has been identified. The Infanta Don Sebastian has purchased it, with a view to its preservation, and a patriotic and spirited printer, Don Manuel de Ribadeneira, has obtained permission to work off two impressions there of the Life and Adventures of the ingenious Hidalgo, Don Quixote. One is, in the Paris idiom, an edition of luxury, intended for the libraries and salons of the great, the other a carefully executed but low-priced edition for the populace.

[Footnote 2: See Catholic World for October, 1886.]

The English cannot be accused of having neglected their own Cervantes in his need. He appears to have united to his comprehensive and mighty genius, good business habits, consulted the tastes of his public while endeavoring to improve them, watched the behavior of his door-keepers, and though probably not a rigid self-denier, made his outlay fall far short of his income, and enjoyed some years of life in respectable retirement. So his countrymen feeling no remorse on his account, show their respect for his memory by eating and drinking heartily on stated occasions, and boring each other with stereotyped speeches. When suitable days for jubilees or centenaries or tercentenaries arrive, they take more trouble on themselves. They journey to a small town in Warwickshire, and celebrate the event in as tiresome a fashion as if they were members of the "British Association for bettering the Universe," under all the inconveniences of crowded rooms, crowded vehicles going and coming, and dear hotels. They manage matters of the kind in Spain with a difference.

Some years since a statue was erected to Cervantes in front of the Congress building, and the historian, Antonio Cavanilles, took occasion to mention the opinion of the ghost of the great Spaniard on the matter in a dialogue held between them.

"During my life they left me in poverty. Now they raise statues which are of no manner of use to me, and they never celebrate a mass for the repose of my soul—a thing of which I have much need."

Whether the Marquis of Molins, the same gentleman who superintended the editions of Don Quixote at Argamasilla, took this appeal to heart or not, it is certain that since the year 1862 a solemn high mass and office have been celebrated for the above-mentioned purpose before the Royal Academy of Madrid. M. Antoine de Latour, [Footnote 3] in his Études Littéraires sur l'Espagne Moderne, has left an account of one of these solemnities, some particulars of which are worth being presented.

[Footnote 3: This gifted and agreeable writer was born at Sainte Yrieix (Haute Vienne) in 1818, and educated at the college of Dijon. He held professorships at the College Bourbon and the college Henri Quatre. Louis Philippe confided to him the education of the young Duc de Montpensier, and in 1848 he shared the exile of the house of Orleans. He made his literary début in poetry, his other productions being an Essay on the History of France in the Nineteenth Century, an Account of the Duc de Montpensier's Journey to the East, and and essays on Luther, Racan, Vertot, Malherbe. &c. He has resided for a considerable time in Spain, and written four or five works Spanish subjects.]

In 1616 Cervantes was interred in the church of the Convent of the Trinitarians, where his daughter had taken the veil. Some fifteen years afterward the community removed to the site now occupied by them, and the impression is strong that in the removal the remains of the poet were brought to their own house, his daughter being alive, or but recently dead at the time. In the chapel of their convent the annual solemnity takes place on the 16th April. The convent stands in the street called after Cervantes' contemporary and dramatic rival, Lope de Vega. We proceed with M. de Latour's account of what he witnessed.

Our visitor found the chapel hung with black cloth trimmed with gold fringe. In the centre was a catafalque on which rested the habit of St. Francis borne by Cervantes during the last three years of his life, a sword, prison-fetters, a crown of laurel, and a copy of the first edition of Don Quixote. At each corner of the catafalque stood a disabled soldier, and at each side, and extending the whole length of the chapel, ran two lines of seats for the members of the various academies.

At the lower end of the chapel, on seats connecting the extremities of the long rows mentioned, sat the Alcaid, the rector of the University, and the curé of Alcala de Henares, Cervantes' birthplace, where the record of his baptism was discovered some time since.

Among the remarkable personages met to celebrate the occasion, M. de Latour noticed the Marquis de Molins, its institutor; M. Hartzembuch, a dramatic poet, an idolizer of Cervantes, and the zealous superintendent of the two Argamasilla editions of the Don; Ventum de la Vega, the Marquis de Santa Cruz, whose ancestor fought at Lepanto, and Antonio Cavanilles, the eminent historian before mentioned. Seated behind the academicians were the most illustrious ladies of Spain, all appropriately attired in mourning dress.

The Archbishop of Seville celebrated high mass, the different parts of which were accompanied with music as old as the days of Cervantes himself. The distinguished composer, Don Francisco Asenjo Barbieri, had sought these pieces out with much trouble, some of them having for a long time been only heard in the Sistine chapel at Rome. We subjoin the openings of some of these, with the authors and dates.

Regem cui omnia vivunt (the king by whom all things live) was composed by Don Melchior Robledo, chapel master in Saragossa in 1569, the same year when Cervantes' little collection of elegiac poems on Queen Isabel appeared.

Domine in furore tuo (Lord (rebuke) me not in thy fury) was the composition of Don Andres Lorente, organist in Alcala de Henares, Cervantes' birthplace. He himself probably heard it sung there in his youth.

Versa est in luctum cithara mea (my harp has changed to sorrow) was composed for the funeral of Philip II. by Don Alfonso Lobo.

Libera me (deliver me), the composition of Don Matias Romero, Chapel Master to Philip III., dates from about the death of Cervantes.

Don Francisco de Paula Benavides, the young bishop of Siguenza, preached the sermon. Taking his text from St. Paul, "Being dead he still speaketh through faith," he proceeded with the panegyric of the great-souled poet and soldier, and of all the illustrious dead who have honourcd Spain by their writings. He did not neglect to interest the nuns, who were listening with all their might behind their lattices. Their order had been instrumental in restoring the brave Saavedra to his country, and to their exertions Spain and the world were in part indebted for the Don Quixote and the Exemplary Novels. They possessed the remains of the poet in their house, and thus bound to his memory they must not omit the care of his salvation to their prayers. The delivery of the discourse, according to M. Latour, was marked with a noble simplicity, and a manner combining sweetness with vigour.

Next morning he returned to the convent, hoping to be gratified with the sight of Cervantes' tomb. Alas! he learned that when the remains were transferred from the old house, sufficient attention was not paid to keep them apart from those of others who were removed along with them. So, though it is morally certain that the present convent of the Trinitarians guards all that remains of the body, once so full of life and active energy, they are now undistinguishable from the relics of the nameless individuals who had received interment in the same building.

The Modern Novel:
Donna Caecelia De Faber.

We are not to imagine Spain insensible to the merits of her living gifted sons and daughters, and ever employed in shedding tears over the tombs of her Cervantes, her Lope de Vega, or her Mendoza. No. She possesses living writers whose names are not only known from Andaluçia to Biscay, but are even spoken of in Paris salons. The most distinguished among these is the lady who chooses to style herself Fernan Caballero, her real name being Caecilia de Faber, her birthplace Alorges in Switzerland, and her father, M. Bohl de Faber, a Hamburgh merchant, and consul for that city at Cadiz.

She has been married more than once, and thus enabled to combine experience with natural ability in her pictures of life and manners. Through the favor of the queen she holds apartments in the Alcazar of Seville, and the splendid old Moorish city could not possess a writer better qualified to paint the manners of the little-doing, much-enjoying people of that southern paradise, Andalulçia, and the delights of the happy climate, where life is not only supportable, but enjoyable at very small expense.

Besides happily seizing and vividly sketching what takes place among the aristocracy of Seville in their Patios [Footnote 4] and Tertulias (reunions in their salons), this authoress has made herself thoroughly acquainted with the circumstances and characters and peculiar customs of the country laborers and shepherds. Melodramatic situations abound in some of them, and perhaps these are more relished by her Spanish readers than others whose chief merit consists in truthful and picturesque tableaux of the order of things among which they are placed, and which consequently possesses no novelty for them. We can readily conceive how French and English students of her novels and romances would prefer this latter class for their entertainment. Who would not rather listen to a couple of Andaluçian peasants discussing the clime and people of Britain than to some terrible, exciting though undignified, domestic tragedy? (A. is dissuading B. from making the voyage to Britain.)

"A. The earth is there covered with so deep a crust of snow that people are buried in it.
"B. Most Blessed Mary! But they are quiet folk, and do not carry stilettoes.
"A. They have no olives, no gaspacho, [Footnote 5] and must put up with black bread, potatoes, and milk.
"B. Much good may it do them.

[Footnote 4: The Patios are the interior flagged courts surrounded by colonnades from the roof of which lamps are suspended. In the centre of the court is a fountain surrounded by shrubs in fruit or flower. Seated on sofas in the corridor, or on carpets near the fountain, the princely owners enjoy an elysium during hot weather.]

[Footnote 5: Soup made up of olive oil, vinegar, spices, etc.]

"A. The worst is, there are neither monks nor nuns there; the churches are few, and the walls of them as bare as if they were hospitals; no private chapels, no altars, no crucifixion.

"B. Oh, my sun, my white bread, my church, my Maria Santissima, my delightful land, my Dios Sacramentado! How could I think to change you for that land of snow, of black bread, of bare-walled churches, of heretics? Horrible!"

Fernan Caballero enters with warm-hearted sympathy into the pleasures and troubles of her country people. Few could read without interest her sketch of the peasants returning at evening from their work. We fancy Sancho Panza and a neighbor coming home to meet the greeting of Tereza and his children, himself mounted on Dapple, while the little foal frolics about, unconscious of its own future life of labor. Sancho carries a basket of fruit and vegetables covered with the sappy maize stalks, which will furnish a delightful supper to the patient burra. Sancho's neighbor is riding beside him, and you will hear in a quarter of an hour of their conversation more proverbs than John Smith and Tom Brown would quote in seven years. The burras quicken their pace as they approach the village, for the children of both men are running to meet them, while their wives are looking out for them from the porches of their doors. Sancho dismounts and sets his younger child on Dapple, while his elder frolics about her and makes free with her ears. Sancho's neighbor gets his youngest into his lap, while one of the elder boys takes the halter and the other gambols about with the trusty house dog, asses and dog being much better treated than if their lot lay in Berkshire or Donegal.

With their innumerable rhymed proverbs, their chatty propensities, their happy clime, fine country, facility of procuring a livelihood, few wants, and lively and happy temperaments, the Andaluçian peasants afford suitable subjects to Fernan Caballero's pencil. They see in the many natural advantages they possess, the goodness of God and the favors of the saints; and their pious legends, in connection with every object round them, are innumerable. "Toads and serpents are useful in absorbing the poisonous exhalations of the earth; the serpent attempted to bite the Holy Infant on the journey into Egypt, so Saint Joseph appointed him to creep on his belly thenceforth. Some trees have the privilege of permanent foliage because they sheltered the HOLY FAMILY on the same journey. The Blessed Virgin hung the clothes of the Infant Jesus on a rosemary bush to dry, so its sweetest perfume and brightest blossoms are reserved for Friday. The swallow plucked some of the thorns out of the Saviour's crown, therefore he is a favorite bird with all Christians, while the owl is obliged to keep his eyes shut and whimper out, 'cruz, cruz,' because he irreverently stared at our suffering Lord on the cross. The hedgehog should be well treated, because he presented to the Blessed Virgin some sweet apples on the tips of his prickles, while the earwig is deservedly hated for boring his way into, and effectually spoiling the nicest of them." Most of these poetically develop fancies are or were familiar with the Roman Catholic peasantry of Ireland, and probably amongst the populace of moat continental countries.

Perhaps the most powerful of our authoress's stories is La Gaviota (the sea-gull), giving the career of a selfish, ill-disposed country girl, gifted with some beauty and a fine voice. She obtains a gentle German doctor for husband, is patronized by a duke, trained for the office of a prima donna, becomes fascinated by a bull fighter, proves false to her estimable husband, and ends badly of course. Devout and moral as the authoress undoubtedly is, she does not avoid strong and exciting situations no more than Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe or Mrs. Oliphant. Such is the scene where the betrayed husband sees her seated beside the bullfighter among his unedifying associates, and that other of the death of her paramour by a furious animal in the arena before her eyes, and these are matched by passages in the Alvareda Family.[Footnote 6] This story, which is entirely occupied with country folk, and incidents of the war in Buonaparte's time, and scenes of brigandage, is next to La Gaviota in power. The match-making scene between the garrulous and saving Pedro and his relative that is to be, the Tia Maria, fully as provident as himself, might have happened in a country farmhouse in Wexford or Carlow, and would have been described by Banim or Griffin or Carleton, nearly in the same terms.

[Footnote 6: A translation of this story was given in The Catholic World of last year, as Perico the Sad; or, The Alvareda Family.]

The Andalusians are as partial to bantering each other as the natives of Kilcullen or Bantry, but all is taken in good humor.

In reading the country business in this and others of our authoress's tales we have been forcibly reminded of corresponding pictures so truthfully painted in Adam Bede. We could scarcely fancy such a piece of extravagance as the following to be uttered by a Spanish lady, till assured of the fact by Fernan Caballero. Casta wishes to induce her elderly lover, Don Judas Taddeo Barbo, to cease his persecutions. He does not read, and entertains feelings of repugnance to literary ladies in general; so she takes him into her confidence.

"'Yes, yes I am a poet, but do not mention it, I beg. Some of my works are printed, but I have put the names of my friends to them. Martinez de la Rosa's poems are mine, not his. I have also tried my hand on theatrical pieces. The Consolations of a Prisoner, attributed to the Duke de Rivas, is my composition.'

"'Who would have suspected a lady, so young, so beautiful, so womanly, so attractive? Why, a writing woman ought to be old, ugly, and slovenly—a man-woman!'

"'All prejudices, Don Judas. Have you read my Tell?'

"'Miguel Tell, the Treasurer? No. I never read; it injures my sight.'

"'Well I must read an extract from my great historical work on William Tell, not Miguel the Treasurer.' (Here poor Don Judas began to meditate an escape, the very thing the lady wished.)

"'William Tell, my hero, was a native of Scotland who refused to bow down to the beaver hat of the English General, Malbrun, set up on a high pole. Out of this circumstance arose the thirty years' war, at the end of which Tell was proclaimed King of England under the title of William the Conqueror. He brought disgrace on his royal name by causing his wife, the beautiful Anne Boleyn, to be beheaded. Struck with remorse he sent his son Richard Lion-heart on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. On his return he was imprisoned for his great admiration of Luther, Calvin, Voltaire, and Rousseau, members of the Revolutionary Directory which put the pious King Louis XIV. to death. About that time Don Pedro the Cruel established the inquisition in Spain to prevent such proceedings in his kingdom, and thus he obtained his surname'"

Poor Don Judas was terrified by the erudition of the cunning lady, who thus got rid of him.

The collected works of this lady have been printed at the expense of the queen. It is only seventeen or eighteen years since she began to write, and, if we can trust the accuracy of foreign biographers, she is now in her seventieth year. Two volumes of selections from her works entitled The Castle and Cottage in Spain, have appeared in an English dress.

Rustic Tales:
Don Antonio De Trueba.

The writer next to be noticed, by birth a Biscayan peasant, is now or was lately a sub-editor of a newspaper. Don Antonio de Trueba y la Quintana was born 24th December, 1821. In the preface to one of his works he presents this picture of his birthplace and his early life.

"On the slope of one of the mountains of Biscay stand four white houses nearly hidden in a wood of walnut and chestnut trees, and which cannot be seen at any distance till winter has deprived the trees of their foliage. There I passed the first fifteen years of my life.

"In the valley is a church whose spire pierces the surrounding canopy of foliage, and is seen above the chestnut and ash trees. In this church they celebrate two masses, one at the rising of the sun, the other two hours afterward.

"We, the young boys of the hamlet rose every Sunday with the song of the birds, and went down to the early mass, singing and jumping over the bushes. The elders of the families attended the later devotions. While the fathers and grandfathers were so occupied, I took my seat under a cherry tree opposite the door, and had a full view of the entire vale till it approached the shore. I was soon joined by four or five young girls with cheeks as blooming as the cherries which hung over our beads, or the red ribbons which bound the long braids of their hair. They would request me to make some verses for them to sing in the evening to the accompaniment of the basque tambourine, when the young would be dancing, and the aged looking on in sympathy with their enjoyment."

Don Antonio was already a poet, though his material sources of information and inspiration were very easily counted. His library consisted of the Fueros (Customs) of Biscay, Samanego's Fables, Don Quixote, a book of ballads, and two or three volumes of the Lives of the Saints. At fifteen years of age (1836), the Carlist cause gathering the youth of Biscay to its side, Antonio's parents not being enthusiastic partisans of that party, sent their son to a distant relative in Madrid, who could do nothing better for the future poet and novelist than employ him in his hardware shop to take down door-hinges, pokers, and frying-pans for his customers.

For ten tedious years did our poet in embryo do the duty of a shopman by day, treat himself the to a book when be could, and spend in study great part of the time that should be given to sleep. Bad business or failure obliged him at the end of the time mentioned to look out for other occupation, and since that time he has been connected with journalism, the evenings still being devoted to poetry and romance.

The ordinary vehicle in which the nameless poets of Spain utter their thoughts to the people is the quatrain, in which the second and fourth lines rhyme after a fashion, the accented vowels corresponding without exception, the consonants when it pleases Apollo. This is what they call the Romance, and in which Trueba has endeavored to improve the taste of the people by a genuine poetic feeling, and perfection in the structure of the verse.

But our Biscayan thought a poet's life incomplete without the sympathy which only a loving and intelligent wife can afford. So he incurred the expense of a household, as well as gave support to his aged parents. Along with laboring at the public press and writing and publishing Los Cantares, he found time to compose his Rose-colored Tales, all concerned with the ordinary life of the country in which his boyhood was passed, and all seen through that softly colored magic medium through which mature age loves to look back to the period of careless hopeful youth. These stories are called The Resurrection of the Soul, The Stepmother, From our Country to Heaven. The Judas of the House, and Juan Palamo. All end happily, all are imbued with the purest morality, and breathe an atmosphere in which live the best feelings of our nature.

While writing the dedication of them to his wife, he was enlivened by the anticipation of a visit they would shortly make to his natal village.

"While I write this, the most cherished wish of my life is about to be gratified. Before the July sun withers up the flowers, the breezes and the flowers of my native hills shall cool our foreheads, and perfume our hair. The venerable man who honors himself and thee in calling thee his daughter, is now going from house to house in the village, and telling the companions of my boyhood, while tears of joy find their way down his check, 'My children are coming; my son is about revisiting his native valleys as lovingly as he bade them adieu twenty years ago.'

"And our father and our brothers are thinking on us every moment, and doing all in their humble means to beautify and cheer the apartments destined for us. Every time they come to the windows, they expect to see my form on the hillock where they caught the last site of me seventeen years ago."

Alas! what disappointments wait on such pleasant anticipations! Paying a tardy visit to the scenes so lovingly and pleasurably remembered, the careworn elderly man finds dear old houses levelled; new, raw ones reared on their site; old paths and ways deserted, and new roads laid down; new and uninteresting topics filling up conversation, the once fresh and fair romantic boys and girls now common-place husbands and wives, except such as have been removed by death or change of residence. His former comrades, youths and maids once buoyant with bright hopes, are now gray-haired and wrinkled, or distressed, or departed, and of the revered and loved old people of long ago not one has been left to bid him welcome. There are now no ties to detain him in his long regretted native place; he hastens back to his ordinary colorless occupation and cares, rendered agreeable or tolerable by habit, and wishes he had not gone on that sorrowful journey.

In the greater part of these tales figures the Indian, that is, one who has spent some time in Mexico or the West Indies, and returns to cheer or disturb the former companions of his early life. The narratives are made up of simple village annals, loves and jealousies, injustices and their punishments, generous deeds and their recompenses, constancy sharply tried and victorious, unions at the threshing floors, Sunday morning devotions, Sunday evening recreations, troubles of good housewives with their play-loving little boys, and all the worries and comforts and joys and griefs that attend on the lives of those whose lot is to cultivate the earth, the curé always filling the office of the good fairy in household tales.

Satire:
Don Jose Gonzalez De Tejada.

Don José Gonzalez de Tejada may be taken as the representative man of the living Spanish satirists. Few looking on the steady, easy-going, fat, and florid young man with good-nature playing about the corners of his mouth, would suspect the keen spirit of satire which inspires his verses. Making use of the romance form before explained, he celebrated in the public papers the late triumphs of his country over the Moors, and these verses were in every one's mouth. In his satires he never condescends to personalities. He lashes selfishness, rage for wealth, worldliness, lack of patriotism, etc. He calls his collection "Anacreontic Poems of the latest Fashion," but they have nothing of the genuine Anacreontics but the form. The classic student, or even the reader of Moore's translation, recollects the bibulous old poet's direction to the painter about his mistress's portrait. Here is the Spanish equivalent:

"Figure to me, O photographer of my soul! the beauty who holds me in thrall.

"As to countenance, let her be dark or fair, to me it's all the same.

"But let sparkling diamonds give lustre to her tresses, and two golden lamps hang from her ears.

"Let her neck be dark, or possess the whiteness of alabaster, but for decency's sake cover it with pearls or sapphires.

"Let her graceful form be shrouded with rich valuable stuffs. A rich binding always enhances the value of books.

"While she rolls along in her calèche my attention is occupied with her rich liveries and the cost of the equipage.

"Happy he who, prancing along by the carriage, or seated by her side, cigar in mouth, can exclaim, 'All that surrounds me is mine!'

"Paint her for me in ball costume, at the mass, or the retiro, ever richly dressed, ever surrounded by opulent charms.

"But alas! her greatest charms you cannot see to portray—her father's crowns! On these is my heart fixed."

Don José is somewhat old fashioned in his notions. He does not attribute all the qualities of and overruling Providence to the mere progress of science and the additions to our corporal conveniences. Here is his vision of the origin of printing:

"Turning the earth into a sponge with his tears, man presented himself all dreeping at the throne of Jupiter.

"And cried, 'Good evening, O powerful god, maker of stars, of worlds, and of domestic fowl!

"Thou createdst us one day from nothing mixed with a little mud; thou hast bestowed on us genius enveloped in a soft covering of flesh.

"'The world is a cage, and each of us a parrot climbing and balancing himself over his neighbor's head.

. . . . .

"'Thou hast bestowed us ears which to the deaf are a mere ornament, and a tongue, best gift of all.

"'Placed between the teeth she gives them to understand that unless she lies, they can have nothing to chew.

"'But alas! in our time she is incapable to express all that the fruitful brain conceives and brings forth.

"'Lengthen it then the third of a perch, or give it for aid an additional organ.

"'Juppy made a grimace, and the affrighted hills sunk, and the poles trembled.

"'Well,' said the deity, always prodigal of gifts, 'I shall convert into tongues sundry vile things of this lower world.

"'Of old shirts, of disgusting rags, I shall make gay clothes for the press, flesh and blood for the daily paper.

"'In the feathered garb of the goose are cannons sufficient to win treasures.

"'Let your arms cease to brandish the war-like steel, and turn inert and fat bodies of men into sieves.

"'Iron fashioned into slender tongues which sing along the paper, shall there engrave the conceptions of genius.

"'And in order that you may attain the steepest summits, I shall furnish your heads with pride and envy in abundance.

"'Advance, throw shame behind, flatter the proud, copy, deride, calumniate, and be sure to burn incense in your own honor.

"'I have spoken.' And he added, rubbing his chin, 'Henceforth you are a man; hitherto you were but an ape.'"

History:
Don Antonio Cavanilles.

Don Antonio Cavanilles, an advocate and member or the Academy, has distinguished himself by his yet unfinished history of Spain, an interesting narrative, evincing the most patient research, and attractive from the adjuncts of customs and phases of the different eras, and personal traits of the historical personages. Don Modesto Lafuente is engaged on another history of the same country. Don Antonio belongs to the school of Livy and Herodotus, Don Modesto writes in the spirit and with the pen of a Manchester radical.

The Drama:
Don Adelardo Lopez De Ayala.

Zealous as the first historian for the preservation of the heroic and unselfish character of the genuine Hidalgo, Don Adelardo Lopez de Ayala writes his drama of "So Much per Cent," in which he excites unmeasured contempt for the greed of gold, and the rage of speculation, whose visit to the old soil of chivalry the author deprecates with all his might.

Don Gaspar Bono Serrano, a brave and devout military chaplain, once attending the wounded in Don Carlos's camp, and an Arragonese by birth, has given the lie to the public impression that no poet is born outside of Castile and Andalulçia.

While it must be owned with regret that pestilent French novels have found their way in abundance across the Pyrenees, the native literature of Spain, with scarce an exception, maintains its ancient prestige for Christian morality. Long may the word continue to be said!

Want of space prevents any notice of the feuilleton and the drama of Spain at the present day, and other literary topics interesting the Spanish capital. An instance of the interest taken in sound fictional literature in high quarters is furnished by the publication of the complete collected novels of Fernan Caballero, and of Antonio Trueba at the expense of the Queen. Meanwhile Fernan, or rather Doña Caecilia, (née) de Faber, dwells in the Royal Alcazar of Seville in apartments granted by her queen, employs herself writing an educational work for the junior portion of the royal family, and enjoys an extensive view from her windows over the old Moorish buildings, the Guadalquiver, and the charming Andaluçian landscape through which it winds.

Original.
The Godfrey Family; or,
Questions Of The Day

Chapter XXVIII.

With a woman's tact, Adelaide set to work to provide some powerful attraction for her father; and luckily the proposed formation of a scientific society brought many men of his own way of thinking to town just then: and among them Mr. Spence, and a lord or two of "promotion of knowledge" celebrity. Having managed thoroughly to interest her father in this society, Adelaide told him that sea-air would benefit Hester's health, that she intended to go with her for a few weeks to try it, that meantime Mr. Spence would keep him company in the house, which Lucy Fairfield would take charge of. To this Mr. Godfrey, though somewhat taken by surprise, assented: he had already, at Adelaide's request, invited Mr. Spence to spend a few weeks with him; but that gentleman was not exactly well pleased to find on his arrival that the ladies were already preparing for departure. He had intended to win a bride during his visit, thinking that even if Hester proved obdurate, he might have a chance with the fair young widow. But the carriage was already at the door. "I shall send the carriage back, father, in a day or two;" said Adelaide. "I do not care to have my horses at a livery stable; Hester and I are going to rusticate, ride donkeys, climb hills, and throw pebbles into the sea: we take only Norah with us, and you will have to see that the carriage horses are duly exercised every day." She waved her hand in adieu, giving no time for reply. The gentlemen could only bow their assent. Mr. Godfrey was too well acquainted with Adelaide's imperious temperament to think of disputing her commands; he had long learned to respect even her eccentricities. Was she not a duchess?

The journey went on well enough the first day, but on the second, Adelaide surprised her retinue by sending them back with the carriage, telling them she would proceed onward with a hired vehicle. The coachman and footman looked as if they would like to remonstrate, but it had been proved to be somewhat dangerous to argue with this very positive lady, accustomed to obey no will except her own. They submitted in silence, therefore, though much against their inclination. "Now," said Adelaide, when they had departed, "we can enjoy the luxury of being ourselves, unencumbered by state and trappings. Hester, do you think you can teach Norah to call me plain 'ma'am,' for a little while, till we return home? I am again Adelaide Godfrey, that name will tell nothing and will enable us to act as we like, observed by any."

It was not found difficult to initiate Norah into the idea that the great duchess wanted to lay aside her dignity for a while, for the truth was Norah's difficulty had ever been to get herself to say "your grace," on requisite occasions. These preliminaries settled, the ladies proceeded on their journey, took ready furnished lodgings in H----, and prepared to lead the quiet life of the middle classes of society when out on a "bathing for health" excursion.

The location of the Catholic chapel was soon examined, the priest's house communicating with it. In neat straw bonnets trimmed with white, and plain muslin dresses, Adelaide and Hester assisted at the daily mass. In the priest they recognized at once the Abbé Martigni, and in the noble-featured youth who knelt by his side Adelaide traced the likeness, now first becoming dear to her, of her late husband. A day or two elapsed ere she could summon courage to call at the house. At length the moment arrived for the looked-for visit; the sisters had, however, scarcely gained entrance to the outer court, when their attention was attracted by loud sobs from a little boy and girl, who stood weeping as if their hearts would break. The abbé was speaking to the woman with whom they came; he then turned to the children, and patting them on the heads, said tenderly: "I will come directly, my poor children." He turned hastily away without receiving his visitors. Adelaide took the boy's hand kindly. "What is the matter?" she asked. The boy could not speak for weeping, but the woman answered: "His mother, my lady, poor Biddy, shure, she has fallen from her seat, on to the stone pavement, while she was cleaning the windows of a large house in Queen street, and they say she must die."

Adelaide whispered, "take me to your mother;" the boy looked at the woman; "aye," said she, "do you and Sissy go home with the ladies, I will wait to show his reverence the way." Led by Adelaide and Hester, the girl and boy threaded back the way to their wretched home, and entered it some time before the priest arrived. In one of those dreary places of large cities called a "blind alley"—where the houses nearly meet in the upper stories, and where the sunshine of heaven is excluded; surrounded by bad smells, and the very atmosphere of which makes us shrink and shudder as we enter the damp and dirty houses, the inhabitants of which are for the most part very dirty also—here in a cellar, darker even than its neighbors, lay a poor widow with four children weeping around her. The woman was barely sensible; her brain and spine were injured; the doctor had said she could not live till night; two women, neighbors, were with her trying "to get sense out of her," as they said. It was the first time the sisters had ever witnessed such a scene. The very walls were covered with dirt; the floor was partly brick, and where these were broken away, the foot slipped into holes of the bare earth; the windows were so covered with dust and cobwebs it was difficult to find out what they were made of. On a low pallet, on a dirty straw-bed, with no blankets, no sheets, naught save one dirty coverlet, lay a figure with long, dark, lank hair, almost covering her face and person. Adelaide approached, but the woman heeded her not; her large dark eyes were set: she moaned from time to time, but spoke not. "Where do you feel pain?" kindly inquired the lady. "Oh I bless you, my lady, she cannot spake," said one of the women. "The Lord be praised, here comes his reverence," said the other. "May the sweet Jesus lend her her senses a few minutes, to let her spake to the priest!" The abbé entered; he looked very grave; he sat down on the bed (there was no other seat in the room) to examine the pulse and breathing of the patient. He spoke to her. She answered not. "Try to rouse her," he said to the women. They called to her: "Biddy, dear, shure here's his reverence. Biddy, won't you spake to the priest?" She continued unconscious. "Have you a smelling-bottle?" he said to Adelaide. "We must bring her to consciousness, I wish I had some eau-de Cologne." "I will fetch you some," laid Adelaide.

The sisters went out and purchased the eau-de-Cologne, also bread and refreshments for the children; and then in that damp, unwholesome den, the duchess watched long hours by the side of the unfortunate woman. She was unattended too, for Hester had grown faint, and Adelaide had insisted on her going home, and the abbé had left for a while. At length consciousness returned, and the poor mother opened her eyes again. The priest was immediately sent for, as he had desired to be, and the first words she whispered betrayed a consciousness of his presence, for they were: "Bring me my God! O my sweet Jesus, come!" The room was cleared for a few moments. Biddy had been a faithful member of the church—she was a monthly communicant, and the last sacraments brought unspeakable consolation to her. She had remained silent and in prayer for some time. A change came over her, and she motioned the father to come near to her. "I am dying, father, and but for one thought it were sweet to die. My children—oh! my children! I have struggled—father, you know I have struggled to keep them in the true faith, to make them love Jesus and Mary; and now, must they go to the scoffers? must they hear their faith laughed at? O my God! O my Jesus! have pity on my children! Mary, my mother, send a mother to my children. Let me come to thee in love and not in fear. O mother of God, pity my children!" Agony caused the drops to stand on the poor woman's brow; tears streamed down her cheeks; her hands were clasped convulsively together; it was as though the soul were anxious to depart, but delayed in order to plead with heaven in favor of the dear little ones it left behind. There was a solemn pause within that dreary chamber. The dim candle seemed to take a bright unearthly light. The spirits of all were hushed in awe. Surely angels were hovering near, whispering to the mother that her prayer was heard, for a smile broke over the features, the hands unclenched themselves, peace overshadowed the room; and then, as if moved by a power she could not withstand, Adelaide came forward and knelt down in solemnity by the dying woman's side. Taking within her own that now almost lifeless hand, she said: "I promise you, my sister, before God and this holy priest, that I will take care of your children while I live, and that they shall be carefully brought up in the holy Catholic Faith." The woman's eyes were no longer sensible to sight, but her spirit beard the promise. "I thank thee, O my God!" she uttered. Shortly after a ray of indescribable rapture lighted up her features, "Jesus, Mary, I come!" she said; and the soul had flown to its home in the bright, bright realms of everlasting bliss.

· · · · ·

"This must be a pauper's funeral," said Adelaide, as she rose from her knees. "Father, I am a stranger here; will you appoint some one to see to it?" She placed her purse in his hand as she spoke. The father looked at her. "Surely I have seen you before," he said; "your face is familiar to me, but I cannot remember where we met." Adelaide blushed. "I will see you after the funeral," she said; "meanwhile, may I ask you to point out some woman to go home with me, and take charge of these children? I will pay her well for her trouble." The abbé sent for a woman; a coach was called, and Adelaide took the poor children to her lodgings. Here they were fed, washed, clothed in neat mourning, and made ready to do the last sad honors to their mother's remains.

A large concourse of Irish neighbors attended the funeral, though of course all eyes were attracted to the stranger ladies, who walked up the aisle with a child at each side of them. The priest was evidently moved as he turned to address the assembly; and ever and anon his eye would glance to Adelaide, as if trying in vain to make out who she was. His discourse was on the history of poor Bridget, who lay before them. It ran something after this fashion: "My friends, as we pass through life, and the actions and thoughts of real human beings come under our notice, one reflection seems to strike us more forcibly than all the rest; it is this: that the real heroism of the earth is often overlooked, not only by the world at large, but also by the actors themselves. The greatest acts of virtue are performed by those who are unconscious of their greatness—the greatest works done in this miserable world are done by those who never dream that they are heroines at all. A lady is thought wondrously condescending if, from charity, she sit for a few hours in an atmosphere which the poor one she is tending endures always. She is deemed charitable if, from her abundance, she bestows alms on the naked and starting. Now, all this is well, very well; I would encourage such efforts to the utmost; they bring a blessing both to the giver and receiver: but for heroism, it is oftenest with the sufferer. I will relate to you a history with which I have only been made acquainted within these few hours. I had it from the lips of a friend who arrived from Ireland two days ago, in search of her who now lies before us. Bridget Norton was the daughter of an Irish farmer, who was somewhat better off than the majority; the farm-house was well kept; the dairy was a picture of neatness. Everything around the place was so fixed that they added to the completeness of the landscape. Bridget was a fine handsome girl, sought after by many, and unfortunately among her suitors was one base enough to vow revenge for the preference she gave to the man she married. Bad times came; the rejected suitor became agent for the landlord, and he perpetually harassed Norton for cash on every possible pretense; while he made base proposals to the wife, which were rejected with the scorn they deserved, and the rage of the deceiver increased. The landlord was unluckily a proselytizer. He conferred great gifts to all who would go to the English church, but was relentless against all who held out. Young Norton took sick; when he was at the worst, the agent found a flaw in his lease, and served an ejectment on the family at the very time that the husband was unable to leave his bed. Then his cattle died, some said by poison, and his crops failed. The man sank under these reverses, and died. The landlord made many offers to Bridget of assistance if she would send her children to his school and to church, and the agent contrived many species of persecution to get her into his power. Bridget fled to Liverpool, and by sheer hard work contrived to maintain her family decently for some time; but her persecutor traced her, followed her, blackened her character, so that she lost her employment. Again she fled, but sickness overtook her ere she had made herself known; she lost one of her children by sickness also, and, lastly, was compelled to sell her little furniture to buy bread; last week she moved to the cellar where she died. You know in what state she was found there. Yet throughout these trials her confidence in God never has faltered; she has for the last five years suffered hardship, penury, want, and persecution. Amid all she has kept faithful to God, forgiven her enemy, and taught her children the catechism. They have often wanted food, but never missed their prayers; they have often been clothed in rags, but never neglected a mass of obligation. This, for one brought up as Bridget had been to love neatness and take pride in appearing respectable, argues no small victory over human respect. But the love of God was deeply rooted in her heart; she knew that exercise elicits virtue; she felt herself at school to an all-wise Father, who appointed for her the lessons best suited to bring out that unfailing trust which was conspicuous in her character, and which, in spite of her many trials, bore her cheerily throughout them all. Yes, cheerfulness was (as is attested by all who knew her) Bridget's most amiable characteristic, and it proceeded from her implicit trust in God. She had a martyr's courage and a martyr's love, and I think it would be risking little to suppose that even now she may be wearing in heaven the martyr's crown. Yet she passed through the world unnoticed, and certainly was not counted among its heroines."

Chapter XXIX.

Immediately after the funeral Adelaide called on the abbé, according to her promise. She was accompanied by Hester.

"Well," said the good father as soon as the preliminary compliments had passed, "as you have taken possession of four of my spiritual children, to whom I am in some sort a guardian, you must allow me to ask your name and state. You are a stranger in this city, it appears.'

"I am. My name is Adelaide: I am a widow."

"And the name of your husband?"

"My husband was the late Duke of Durimond."

The father started: he looked again. "That accounts for my fancy," he said. "I was sure I had seen you before. I recognize you perfectly now:' but what can bring your grace hither, and in this guise?"

"Father," said Adelaide, "I came to apologize to you for my conduct on that dreary occasion that you know of; to beg your pardon and your prayers."

The good priest raised the lady, for Adelaide had knelt to him as she uttered the last words. "You have my prayers, my child," he said; "you have long had them: it was his last request that I should daily pray for you. And as for pardon, such an act of humility would redeem a worse offence. Be at peace, I beg of you."

"And did the duke really interest himself on my account?"

"He did, and most sincerely; it was a constant topic with him. He ever maintained that, with your nobility of character, you must eventually follow in your brother's footsteps. I presume I may conclude you have now done so."

"Not so, father. Hester (whom you probably also recognize) and myself are but inquirers as yet, and the difficulty is that our inquiry must not be suspected just now. We came to request assistance from your charity; but we beg you not to name us otherwise than as ladies of your acquaintance. The Misses Godfrey will pass unheeded by, but if you address me as your grace again, you will bring upon us the attention we are trying to avoid."

"I will try to remember Miss Godfrey; it will be a little difficult, I fear, but I need not tell you my services are at your disposal."

"This is indeed returning good for evil," said Adelaide.

"Do not speak of it; good has already come of that to which you allude, as is usually the case if we wait long enough. Let the past be past. But surely I have seen you both at mass; you have, then, lost your prejudice against the church."

"Indeed, yes," said Adelaide. "Our great regret is that we have not faith. The system which you propose is beautiful in all its bearings. It is our torment to feel that all that is beautiful in poetry or in art, nay, even in ethics, belongs to Catholicity, yet we do not belong to it. A hall of sculpture representing the Catholic ideal, as the figures of the duke's pantheon represent the pagan myth, would form the most sublime elucidation of the high triumphs of soul over self that could be imagined. There is no act of heroism, mental, moral, or physical, that would not find a representative in some authenticated historic personage. From martyrdom endured to maintain the truth of alleged facts, to voluntary poverty chosen as the best preservative of the disposition to receive and maintain truth, there is a regular chain of virtue personified. There is a reality about Catholicity (in books at least) which we find nowhere else."

"Where is your difficulty, seeing that you admit all this?"

"I can hardly explain it, yet it seems to shape itself thus: Why, if men are so blessed with a divine religion, is the world so bad? History gives us saints, sublime ones, who make our very souls thrill with the recital of their unselfish spirt, exemplified in act; but, on the other hand, the same history tells us of multitudes of bad men for one good one. The men who attempted to poison St. Benedict, were monks, men who had renounced all for Christ; and the multitudes were Catholic up to the fifteenth century, yet what fearful struggles for power, and indulgence of luxury in high places, and of crime among all, high and low! Most of the saints were reformers, combating with their fellow-Catholics for virtue; and now, are all Catholics unselfish, unworldly?"

"It seems," said Hester, "that a very definite amount of good has been achieved by Christianity, in giving an impetus to the spirit of the masses to claim intellectual rights by the recognition of man's spiritual equality before God; and to strip off illegitimate uses of power from the sense of justice thus evolved. It has also placed our sex on a footing permitted by no other religion—this is much, very much; but here it seems to stop, and these are but indirect results. Religion professes to inculcate higher motives than the improvement of earthly position, desirable as this may be. Men are now selfish in their avowed principle, and this, I think, must ultimately destroy all that has been achieved. Self-gratification as a motive, and the only motive recognized, must lead back to want of discipline, and from that the step to barbarism is easy. Only under the Christian dispensation has labor been honored; in all other civilizations, slaves, captives of the sword and spear, have performed by compulsion the work of tilling the soil and so forth; and yet men now seek to avoid labor, the real labor of producing, as if they still thought it fit for slaves only; any other kind of occupation is preferred, as more noble. If this is the result of eighteen hundred years of Christian teaching, I own it puzzles me. Where are the direct results of unselfishness and of corporal sacrifice for the attainment of spiritual good, that books teach us to expect?"

"These are very painful facts," said the abbé, "which distress the heart of many a Catholic priest; but with reference to their influence on faith, I think a little reflection will explain most of the phenomena without prejudice to such souls as are earnestly seeking truth. We must remember that there was a time when whole nations suddenly assumed the name of Christians under the influence of the ruling powers. The majority of these people were not only ignorant, but many did not care to learn high spiritual truths; the conversion was necessarily partial, even that which was genuine. But because all divine truth is positive and co-relative to natural truth, some degree of enlightenment followed even in the natural order; and worldly minds, who had no affinity for spiritual revelations laid hold, notwithstanding this, of the types that presented spiritual truths, and, finding they bore an earthly signification also (as all real enlightenment does, the body being the mate for the soul), they seized on the lower meaning, and hence the civilization of that ilk. This is not wrong, but it is defective; as far as it is moral, it is the material expression of a spiritual idea; but it does not touch the first step of the ladder by which we rise to God—it is the lesser influence of a principle comprehending affinities of an infinitely higher character."

"But this does not explain the corruption in high places."

"Power and greatness and wealth do not confer spirituality; no, nor does intellect. When the church grew wealthy and powerful, many a wolf entered in sheep's clothing for the sake of the perquisites. The miracle is that the church survived such destructive influences, not that she suffered by them."

"And the more immediate trouble with the present conduct of Catholics?"

"May be referred to similar causes. They inherit their religion without giving its real conditions a thought; to this may be added the fact that, for the last three hundred years, the attention of immense numbers has been directed to polemics instead of to the requirements of religion. There have been so many disputes about which is the true faith, that practically faith has been assumed to mean 'holding a correct intellectual creed.' Now, without derogating, in the least degree, from the importance of holding the right faith, even in this light, it is certain that these controversies have drawn the soul from that more serious business to which a right intellectual creed is but the first step, though an important, a very important one. The object of religion is, the union of the soul to the will of God. This is an individual matter, one which cannot be laid hold of en masse, but must be personally brought home to every individual. To effect this, there must be;

1. Desire of good—real, earnest, sincere.
2. Prayer for good, arising from the firm conviction that in God only resides all good—from him only all good can come.
3. Co-operation in act, including not only correct moral action, but a constant endeavor to instruct ourselves, more and more, in divine lore, with an earnest zeal of rising continually in spiritual life.

Now, if you examine these conditions, you will find that few observe them, compared with the numbers who bear the name of Catholics—and the power of Catholicity must he judged of by its effect on those who observe its precepts, not by the multitudes who conform by halves, or by less than that proportion, to its teachings. You would not judge of the effect of a medicine by those who keep it in their houses, but by those who take it."

"Are not those Catholics, then, who do not act up to their religion?"

"In as far as they neglect their religion they are imperfect Catholics. It would, however, be very dangerous for us to judge how far their imperfections arise from culpability on their part. All men are wounded by the fall in some shape or other; some have this faculty impaired, some that; consequently there will be gradations of virtue apparent everywhere, the cause of which we cannot fathom, and the delinquencies of which we cannot judge. As regards judgment, all we have to do with is with ourselves; our faculties, great or little, with imperfections greater or less, must, as far as in us lies be devoted to God—be improved for him—be exercised in accordance with his will as manifested to us. 'This do and ye shall live.'"

Chapter XXX.
An Interview And A Letter.

It were superfluous to reiterate the instructions given by the good abbé to the neophytes under his guidance; where the instructor is learned, patient, and gentle, and the learner docile and humble, the result may be easily predicted. One day, in the course of conversation, the abbé said to Adelaide: "If you are looking for examples in Christian life, I could name one living in this neighborhood, living so simple and beautiful a life, that those who have the happiness of knowing her, half believe her to be an angel in disguise."

"I think I know whom you mean," said Adelaide; "already have I paused at the threshold of her dwelling, wishing to enter, but hardly knowing whether I dared."

"She will be glad to see you. She has a better memory than I; she recognized you at church, and has interested herself warmly in your conversion."

Thus encouraged Adelaide ventured on the visit. The greeting between the two ladies was that of sisters; they wept together, clasping each other's hand in silence. We pass over the exciting scene. Adelaide was completely fascinated by all she saw. For the first time in her life she felt that glow of thrilling interest that binds heart to heart, and makes us know what real love is, when that love is founded in God. Ellen was one of those happy temperaments, so rare on earth, that seem formed to dispense the sunshine of happiness on all who came under their influence. Heaven seemed to have descended to earth to dwell with her, and in that heaven she had learned to live—out of herself altogether. Her life was passed in doing good, but, so unconsciously to herself was that good done, that she seemed but to be following her own pleasure all the time. The one great sorrow of her life surmounted, she had resigned herself (no! resignation would not express the depth of her devotedness); rather had she thrown her whole being into the profound abyss of the mystery of God, seeking only his will, mysterious as it was to her. She came at last to live as a child on the daily promise, forming no plans, asking nothing of the morrow, but ever seeking to pour out her great love in making others happy. The poor, the sick, the wretched, were her friends, her children, the objects of her tenderness, and her presence was to them as a ray of sunshine to lighten every woe. There are few Ellens on this weary earth, for nature and grace seemed to combine in her to diffuse their charms. Those who knew her asked themselves, where was her share of the original taint, "of that trail of the serpent which is over us all"? Though Adelaide's senior by many years, she had so youthful, so buoyant an expression, albeit chastened by the atmosphere of purity and sanctity in which she moved, that you could not connect the idea of age with her frame at all. Adelaide felt that she had obtained a friend, a sister, a guide for the future, and a friendship was quickly cemented between the two that ended but with life.

Meantime the hour approached when the sisters were to be received into the church. Hester was not a little agitated as she thought of the effect that would be produced upon her father: it was as much as Adelaide and Ellen could do with their united efforts to calm her fears. Adelaide's firm mind bade her take her resolution according to her conviction, and face the consequences like a soldier.

"Yes, if they were consequences to myself," sighed Hester; "but my future, will it not suffer from it? Suppose he should sicken as my mother did!"

"Dear Hester," said Ellen, "you must leave off trusting yourself, in this manner, and apprehending consequences, as if you had the control of events. Do you not believe God reigns omnipotent?"

"Why, yes, certainly I do."

"Then let your first offering to him be a practical recognition of that belief; trust him for your father as well as for yourself."

Hester had had deeds prepared, restoring, as best she might, the property which had been appropriated to her experiments, to its former destination. To her father during life was the income of the estate assigned; to her brother the reversion. For herself she reserved only that portion which she had a right to consider as her share.

The deeds were handed to Eugene for his inspection the night on which he arrived at the abbé's abode, on the day previous to that on which the ceremony was to take place.

"This was not necessary," he said to the abbé, "I had already given up my right, and was reconciled to the result."

"That is a question for you to settle with your sister, my young friend," said the abbé. "The young lady has acted on her own sense of what was fitting in the matter. She did not consult me, and if she had I should have declined interference in family matters; but I think you will hurt her feelings if you make objections. Wait at least till her mind is more composed; she is just now agitated on her father's account: best let the first excitement pass away, ere you disturb her mind again."

The ceremony was a private one, for it was a matter yet to be considered how to break the matter to Mr. Godfrey. After its performance, the brother and sisters were yet in consultation about the advisability of setting out at once for London, when a courier was announced from the Marquis de Villeneuve, with a letter to Hester. The young lady glanced over the contents, then suddenly rose, and locked herself in her own room. Eugene invited the man to wait. But it was some hours ere Hester admitted even her sister to her apartment. Thus ran the letter:

To Miss Hester Godfrey.
"Most Honored Lady:

I have been many times at H*** lately, but dared not ventured to see you, although from some words which my friend the abbé let fall, I rejoiced to learn that the object of your visit was the realization of anticipations I had long indulged in. I have long felt convinced that a mind so earnest as yours must finally seek refuge in the ark of the true church. I dared not disturb your retreat; I dared not intrude on the visible work of God. But let me be the first to offer my congratulations; let me now express the high regard, esteem, nay, may I use a softer word, and say love, with which I have long regarded you.

"Lady, I will not speak to you in the language of passion; for a long time past I have had to keep my feelings under control, for deep as has been my admiration of yourself I dared not make you aware of it while the obstacle of faith stood between us. A Catholic man seeks in marriage a HELP-MEET for him, a partner in joy, a soother in sorrow, a confidant and co-operator in his views, a companion and a friend under every reverse. To set out with diverse sustaining powers would mar this idea in the outset, to say nothing of the want of that special blessing which God confers on those he himself joins together.

"Dear lady, when I came to Europe some few years ago, it was with the special intention of taking back a wife. When my friend De Meglior in that most solemn hour before his death confided to me the care of his daughter, I thought the companion I sought for was found; but Euphrasie soon showed herself so visibly the elected bride of heaven that all my anxiety was quickly directed to preserving her from sacrilege. You then came before me, with your earnest mind, your indomitable courage, your high intellect and intensity of zeal. From that time my heart was no longer my own, though I dared not give utterance to its desires. The obstacle which stood between us is removed, yet I dare not venture into your presence without your sanction; I should feel a repulse too keenly.

"Lady, my father was an enthusiast like yourself. He went to America in the hope of doing his part to sanctify the career of intelligence and of liberty opened for the first time in the world's history for the laboring classes as a body. He helped to build churches, to found schools in conjunction with ecclesiastical authority, and did whatever a secular could do to guide a movement which he respected and sympathized with, but one which he felt would be exposed to great peril, unless that divine principle which is the true source of government both in the family and in the state, could be brought to bear upon it. He feared that 'liberty' on a mere rationalistic principle, that is, standing on purely human strength, severed from the divine idea which gave it being, would, however beautiful in its poetry, soon degenerate into license; soon succumb beneath the empire of passion, and be led to tolerate laws subversive of true progress. It was the aim of his life to inculcate that 'Truth is one;' that the human idea cannot be disjoined from the divine idea without fatal results; that real earthly happiness, through differing in intensity, is the same in essence as that we look to enjoy hereafter in heaven. That all earthly intelligence, an earthly beneficence which seeks permanence, must be founded on the repression of such inordinate desire as impede and frustrate the development and employment of our higher faculties. For all beauty, harmony, and love must be brought out in accordance with that law of the spirit, which he has given us, as our rule of action, we being children of the spirit.

"The working out of this purpose is the legacy which my dear father, lately deceased, has bequeathed unto his children. To this purpose I have consecrated myself; and because I know your high power of intellect, because I have witnessed your zeal, your energy, your devotedness to good, I ask you to become the help-meet to carry out this purpose.

"In all ages of the church, since the first miracle was performed at the request of Mary, woman's aid has been in requisition for high purposes. The conversion of every nation of Europe is associated with the name of a woman, and woman gives the tone to society in every Christian land. I feel then that without the aid thus specially appointed for man, my father's purposes would lose more than half the influence necessary to carry them out. But working together, under the sanction of the church, surely two earnest minds might hope to effect something. If we cannot make an impression on a world of infidelity, it will yet be something if we are allowed to instill into the minds of Catholic children, that 'Credo' means something more than an intellectual assent to a series of metaphysical dogmas. If we can assist the self-sacrificing pastors of the church in rehabilitating the idea of the divine institution of the family and of the state which is fast vanishing beneath the crude notions of human progress which sanction so easily the dissolution of sacred ties—if we can throw whatever influence we do possess into the right scale, we shall then have ample reason to begin a rejoicing which shall last for ever. For there is the promise that however gloomy the appearance, error shall not ultimately prevail, and happy are they who here on earth shall have formed the royal guard of honor around the citadel of Truth, who shall have stood as sentinels appointed to watch beneath its glorious standard, when the combat is at highest.

"Dear lady, may I hope you will think this an object worthy of your ambition? may I hope you will regard with favor one who has loved you so long, though he dared not confess it until to-day?

"One word from you will bring me to your feet. May I hope that word will be spoken?

Edward De Villeneuve."

"Well," said Adelaide, when at length she gained admission, and had taken the letter from her sister's unresisting hand, "I think you have kept the courier waiting long enough, and 'tis not a long answer the poor man wants, since one word is all he asks."

"What will my father say, Adelaide?"

"The old marquis was my father's most dearly loved friend. He will accept the son for the father's sake; the question is, will you accept him?"

"I have never thought of marrying at all."

"No, but you admire this gentleman. Your eyes, your voice betray you. I shall send him the one word he asks for so prettily."

"You will do no such thing;" but Adelaide had glided from the room, and shortly after Eugene set forth with the courier in quest of his friend, whom he finally succeeded in persuading to return with him, without awaiting a response to his missive.

It is not our intention to present to our readers the details of the scenes that followed within the next few weeks; we leave to their more vivid imaginations to fancy the arguments by which M. de Villeneuve won the consent of his ideal lady. A few days more, and he was travelling to London with Eugene to obtain the formal consent of Mr. Godfrey.

"Is that the secret of Hester's dejection?" thought the father, and that thought made his consent the readier.

"But how can you, so staunch a member of the church, resolve to marry a heretic?"

"Hester it no heretic," replied the marquis.