The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
A
MONTHLY MAGAZINE
OF
General Literature and Science.
VOL. XVIII.
OCTOBER, 1873, TO MARCH, 1874.

NEW YORK:
THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION HOUSE.
9 Warren Street.

1874.

CONTENTS.

• Archbishop Spalding, [512].
• Are Our Public Schools Free? [1].
• Block of Gold, A, [855].
• Brittany, More about, [111].
• Catharine, S., of Ricci, [420].
• Cathedral of Chartres, The, [235].
• Catholic Literature in England Since the Reformation, [261], [363].
• Catholic Young Men's Associations, [269].
• Christmas Story, A, [479].
• Como, A Week at the Lake of, [137].
• Confiscation Laws, Italian, [30].
• Court of France in 1830, The, [403].
• Crime—Its Origin and Cure, [55].
• Daniel O'Connell, [208].
• Dubois' Madame Agnes, [68], [195].
• English Christmas Story, An, [479].
• English Maiden's Love, An, [694].
• English Sketches: An Hour in Jail, [279].
• English Sketches: Ruins of an Old Abbey, [398].
• Epiphany, The, [590].
• Evangelical Alliance, The, [353].
• Farm of Muiceron, The, [171], [338], [442], [627], [734].
• Father Sebastian Rale, S.J., [541].
• France, The Court of in 1830, [403].
• French Poet, A, [94].
• Fur Trader, The, [412], [502].
• Grace Seymour's Mission, [668], [806].
• Grande Chartreuse, A Visit to the, [118].
• Grapes and Thorns, [10], [220], [303], [591], [772].
• Hester Hallam, [473].
• Hour in a Jail, An, [279].
• How George Howard was Cured, [40].
• Italian Confiscation Laws, [30].
• Jansenist Schism in Holland, The, [686], [838].
• John Stuart Mill, [721].
• Laus Perennis, [388].
• Literature, Catholic, in England, [261], [363].
• Looker-Back, A, [711], [848].
• Love of God, The, [93].
• Madame Agnes, [68], [195].
• Madame de Staël, [532].
• Metaphysics, A Talk on, [289].
• More about Brittany: Its Customs, Its People, and Its Poems, [111].
• My Friend and His Story, [87].
• Nano Nagle, [658].
• Napoleonic Idea and Its Consequences, The, [79].
• Odd Stories, [142].
• O'Connell, Daniel, [208].
• One Chapter from Hester Hallam's Life, [473].
• Our Masters, [702].
• Paris Hospitals, [124].
• Philosophical Terminology, [184], [753].
• Principles of Real Being, The, [433], [577], [824].
• Public Schools, Are they Free? [1].
• Rale, Father Sebastian, S.J., [541].
• Real Being, The Principles of, [433], [577], [824].
• Religious Policy of the Second Empire, [793].
• Ruins of an Old Abbey, [398].
• See of S. Francis of Sales, The, [249].
• Son of God, The, Archetypal Beauty, [165].
• Song of Roland, The, [378], [488].
• Spalding, Archbishop, [512].
• Spiritualism, [145], [318], [606].
• Staël, Madame de, [532].
• Tale of the Northwest, A, [412], [502].
• Talk on Metaphysics, A, [289].
• Terminology, Philosophical, [184].
• Travels with a Valetudinarian, [522].
• Visit to the Grande Chartreuse, A, [118].
• Week at the Lake of Como, A, [137].
• Year of Our Lord 1873, The, [558].
• Young Men's Associations, Catholic, [269].
• POETRY.
• Child Restored, The, [531].
• Church Postures, [9].
• Cui Bono? [684].
• Dante's Purgatorio, [166], [299], [587].
• Epigrams, [298], [657].
• From Egypt to Chanaan, [557].
• Greatest Grief, The, [425].
• In Thy Light shall we see Light, [248].
• Late Home, [771].
• Little Chapel, The, [756].
• Lute with the Broken String, The, [285].
• Mary, [110].
• Nature, To, [123].
• Ordinandus, [472].
• Priest, The, [219].
• Recent Poetry, [54].
• Self-Love, [194].
• Serious "Vive la Bagatelle," The, [441].
• Sleep, [317].
• Trouvere, The, [67].
• Venite, Adoremus, [501].
• Vigil, [857].
• NEW PUBLICATIONS.
• Acts of the Early Martyrs, The, [576].
• Arena and the Throne, The, [575].
• Ark of the People, The, [573].
• Augustine, S., Works of, [860].
• Baron of Hertz, [574].
• Bible History, [430].
• Byrne's Irish Emigration, [288].
• Catholicity and Pantheism, [426].
• Christian Doctrine, The Enchiridion, etc., [860].
• Christian Trumpet, The, [427].
• De Concilio's Catholicity and Pantheism, [426].
• De Smet's Voyages aux Montagnes Rocheuses, etc., [287].
• Divine Sequence, The, [286].
• Dove of the Tabernacle, The, [859].
• Essays on Various Subjects, [429].
• Ewing, Thomas, Memorial of, [859].
• Fastré's Acts of the Early Martyrs, [576].
• Fullerton's Life of Luisa de Carvajal, [286].
• Fullerton's Seven Stories, [574].
• Goldie's Life of B. John Berchmans, [720].
• Good Things for Catholic Readers, [288].
• Gordon Lodge, [574].
• Historical Sketches, [144].
• Holy Mass, The, [858].
• House of Gold, and the Saint of Nazareth, [287].
• Idea of a University, [144].
• Illustrated Catholic Family Almanac, [431].
• Irish Emigration to the United States, [288].
• Jesuits in Conflict, [719].
• Kinane's The Dove of the Tabernacle, [859].
• Kirkpatrick's Spain and Charles VII., [429].
• Labadye's Baron of Hertz, [574].
• Lascine, [574].
• Lectures on S. John, [860].
• Lectures upon the Devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ, [720].
• Lefebvre's Louise Lateau, [857].
• Lenten Sermons, [859].
• Life of Luisa de Carvajal, [286].
• Life of S. Alphonsus Liguori, [718].
• Life of S. Alphonsus Liguori, by Bishop Mullock, [718].
• Life of the B. John Berchmans, [720].
• Life of the Most Rev. M. J. Spalding, [432].
• Life of the Ven. Anna Maria Taigi, [858].
• Lives of the Irish Saints, [718].
• Marie and Paul, [574].
• Meditations for the Use of the Clergy, [431].
• Memorial of Thomas Ewing, [859].
• Moscheles' Recent Music and Musicians, [432].
• Müller's The Holy Mass, [858].
• Mullock's Life of S. Alphonsus Liguori, [718].
• Newman's Historical Sketches, [144].
• Newman's Idea of a University, [144].
• O'Hanlon's Lives of the Irish Saints, [718].
• O'Leary's Bible History, [430].
• O'Reilly's Songs from the Southern Seas, [431].
• Pleadings of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, [859].
• Poetical Life of S. Joseph, [287].
• Potter's Sacred Eloquence, [144].
• Pratt's Rhoda Thornton's Girlhood, [575].
• Preston's Lectures upon the Devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ, [720].
• Pronouncing Handbook of 3,000 Words, [287].
• Real Presence, The, [574].
• Recent Music and Musicians, [432].
• Rhoda Thornton's Girlhood, [575].
• Rituale Romanum Pauli V. Pontificis Maximi Jussu Editum et a Benedicto XIV. Auctum et Castigatum, etc., [575].
• Sacred Eloquence, [144].
• Sacred Heart of Jesus, Pleadings of the, [859].
• Saxe Holm's Stories, [574].
• Scotti's Meditations for the Use of the Clergy, [431].
• Segneri's Lenten Sermons, [859].
• Seven Stories, [574].
• Songs from the Southern Seas, [431].
• Soule and Campbell's Pronouncing Vocabulary, [287].
• Spain and Charles VII., [429].
• Spalding's Life of Archbishop Spalding, [432].
• Story of Wandering Willie, The, [432].
• Thompson's The Life of the Ven. Anna Maria Taigi, [858].
• Tissot's Real Presence, [574].
• Townsend's Arena and the Throne, [575].
• Voyages aux Montagnes Rocheuses et Sejour ches les Tribus Indiennes de l'Oregon, [287].
• White's Gordon Lodge, [574].
• Wiseman's Essays on Various Subjects, [429].

THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XVIII., No. 103.—OCTOBER, 1873.[1]

ARE OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS FREE?

"Give Catholics their full rights; ask nothing of them you would not willingly concede if you were in their place."—New York Journal of Commerce.

The subject of education, the method and extent of it, is undoubtedly one of the foremost topics of discussion to-day, and will be more conspicuous than ever in the immediate future. And, while all men are agreed that a sound and sufficient education of the entire people is our only ground of hope for the perpetuity of our rights and liberties—that, in truth, it is vital—it is not to be wondered at that men differing in the depth as well as extent of their individual culture, should also widely differ as to the constituent elements of a sound and sufficient education. There are, for instance, some, as yet happily few in number, who, in the maze of confusion and Babel-like discussions of sectarians and false teachers turn their faces away in hopeless, helpless uncertainty, and suggest that religion of every name and kind must be excluded and the Deity himself ignored in our public schools, so that public education shall be secular; and however much of "religion" of any and every sort may be taught, it must be in private. This is natural enough in those unfortunate persons who so far lack a positive faith that they see no safety except in uncertainty, and hence adopt a kind of eclecticism which, embracing some abstract truth, may confessedly also contain something of error.

The early settlers of this country—this "land of liberty"—however, had no idea of excluding religion from the schools; and if any among them or their immediate successors entertained even any peculiar notions as to what constituted religion, they were very summarily "squelched out."

Even "the great expounder of the constitution" was in the habit of adjuring his fellow-citizens "not to forget the religious character of our origin," and to remember that the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" is guaranteed to us in that epitome of human wisdom which the great New Englander was born to defend. That right it is the privilege and the duty of each one of us also to maintain, especially when it is threatened under the specious pretext of reform.

These and other reflections are suggested by the perusal of a pamphlet, a sort of campaign document, issued by the "New York City Council of Political Reform," first published in 1872, and thought to be of consequence enough to be reissued in the present year of grace 1873. This document contains among others a report entitled "Sectarian Appropriations of Public Money." The very title of this report at once alarms and arouses us. We are alarmed at the dangers that menace, and we are aroused to defend, our rights as Americans. In this defence we invoke the genius of liberty and the spirit of "equal rights," and shall fight under the "Stars and Stripes," the flag of freedom, till we succeed in repelling the open as well as insidious assaults of the enemies of that truth which only can make us FREE.

The ostensible and praiseworthy purpose of the pamphlet in question is to expose the frauds upon the city treasury perpetrated by the late "Tammany Ring," which, in the person of the "boss thief of the world," is now on trial, in a sort, before the courts, charged with robbery, theft, and perjury, but the real purpose, the iniquitous and damnable purpose, is intimated in the following words of the report upon "Sectarian Appropriations, etc.": "Over $2,273,231 taken from the treasury in 1869, 1870, 1871. One sect gets in cash $1,915,456 92; besides public land, $3,500,000. Total to a single sect, $5,415,456 92." And further (on page 10 of the same report): "Nearly $2,000,000 of the money raised by taxes abstracted from the public treasury of the city and county of New York in the last three years alone for sectarian uses. A single sect gets $1,396,388 51, besides a large slice of the city's real estate."

This "sect" means the Catholic Americans of the city of New York, in numbers somewhere about 500,000, or nearly half the population of the city; of whom we are told elsewhere in this same report (page 4) that, "as a sect," it has during the last three years, by an alliance with the Tammany Ring drawn (taken, abstracted) from the public treasury, in cash, for the support of its convents, churches, cathedrals, church schools, and asylums, the enormous sum of $1,396,388 51.

It is hardly worth while for our present purpose to verify or to contradict this total or the particulars of it, for the errors into which the report or its author has perhaps ignorantly fallen, though not inconsiderable in magnitude, hardly affect our main purpose; and after all, these "inaccuracies" may not, it is hoped, be the result of carelessness solely, but are due in some measure to the fact that many of the "sects," while they parody our practices, appropriate also our names, and so may conveniently be confounded with our Catholic institutions.

We will, however, point out some which may readily be investigated. For instance, on page 10 of the report just mentioned, we find that the "House of Mercy," Bloomingdale, with a $5,000 "abstraction" in 1869, is classed as Roman Catholic, and it happens to be a Protestant institution; the "Sisters of Mercy" also, with an "abstraction" of $457, is Protestant; "German-American School, S. Peter's Church," with its "abstraction" of $1,500, is Protestant; and the "German-American Free School," with its "abstraction" of $14,000 in 1869, $2,496 in 1870, and $1,960 in 1871, is Protestant; and the "German-American School, Nineteenth Ward," with its "abstraction" of $3,150 in 1869 and $2,700 in 1870, is Protestant; and the "Church of Holy Name or S. Matthew," with its "abstraction" of $463 12, is also Protestant; and the "Free German School," with its "abstraction" of $5,000 in 1869, $3,600 in 1870, and $4,480 in 1871, is also Protestant; and the "German Mission Association," with its "abstraction" of $5,000 in 1869, and $10,000 in 1870 and 1871, is also Protestant; besides others, perhaps, improperly classed as Roman Catholic. In some other instances, the sums "abstracted" were simply amounts of assessments improperly laid and subsequently refunded.

And in connection with this suggestion of errors may be noted, also, among the omissions (suppressions, may we not say?) the instance of "The Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents" which is mentioned (on p. 16 of the report in question) as receiving an "abstraction" of $8,000 in 1870 and nothing in 1871. This is a Protestant institution, and so classed in the Report—to show, we suppose, how small an "abstraction" comparatively it "took." But will the author of the report tell us how large an "abstraction" that society "took" of "public money"? As he has not, and perhaps does not know, we refer him to its annual report, where he will find as follows, viz.:

making a pretty total of $70,218 53 for 1870 and $45,766 91 for 1871.

There is also the "New York Juvenile Asylum," a Protestant institution, which does not seem to be mentioned in the report in question, but it will be found that in 1871 it "abstracted"

There are other "omissions"—that of the "abstraction" by the "Children's Aid Society," for instance—but these are enough for the purpose, although it may be added that in 1872 this institution "took" from the city $106,238 90.

Our objection is not so much to the amount "in cash" stated to have been "taken," because the report admits that it has not been expended for individual or selfish purposes, but in the maintenance and working of schools and other beneficent institutions. We wish, however, that the "New York City Council of Political Reform" had used the means at its command to give an accurate and complete statement, and we think it would have been wiser to do so, inasmuch as, while professedly carrying on the purpose proclaimed in its motto on page 1 of the report in question, to "CHERISH, PROTECT, AND PRESERVE THE FREE COMMON SCHOOLS," it has seen fit so unmistakably to attack the "single sect." Certainly, we object to the manner in which the "sect" is charged to have acquired its money, although having used it so wisely. This "single sect," comprising as it does more than two hundred millions (or two-thirds) of the Christian population of the world, rather objects to the term "sect" as applied. And if the author will take the trouble to consult the other Webster—not Daniel, whom we have already quoted—but him of the more venerable baptismal name, he will learn, very likely, however, not for the first time, that the term "sect" means "a denomination which dissents from an established church." And Catholics are certainly not aware that they are "dissenters" in the hitherto recognized sense of the word among polemical writers. Whether his application of the term is malicious or simply the result of ignorance, makes little difference; it suited him, and is of no particular importance just now to us.

But surely the author of the report cannot think the amount, even as overstated by him, to be disproportionate to the end to be attained—"to cherish, protect, and preserve the free common schools," when it is added that our purpose is also "to extend" and to make our common schools "free" indeed to all, whether Jew or Gentile. All that we ask is to have our equal rights in this land of equal rights, and to extend in the broadest manner the freedom of the public schools, so that the rights and consciences of none may be restricted or violated. We ask simply that the "money raised by taxes," so large a portion of which we are charged to have "abstracted," shall be divided pro rata, and so, by dividing the difficulty, conquer it! In the report, it is admitted (p. 4) that the "enormous sum" alleged or intimated to have been surreptitiously "taken" or "abstracted," was not "taken" for the purpose of individual gain, but for "the support of convents, churches, cathedrals, and church schools." What sum, thus expended, can be too great? In what is it enormous? Is it enormous because disproportioned to the amount expended by other "sects"? Or is it so because expended for the support of schools kept in "damp basements of churches, so dark that gas has to be used on the brightest days," rather than in the "educational palaces" where Catholics cannot go without a violation of conscience, and from which they are practically excluded?

And here it is notable that in the report now under consideration (p. 2) is printed the following, purporting to be an extract from a report of the "Secretary of Commissioners of Charities" to the Legislature in 1871, wherein it is said the secretary "refers very truthfully to the already marked injury to the public schools of the city of New York caused by building up and supporting from the public treasury so large a number of rival sectarian schools" (see Rep. pp. 99, 100). The italics are not ours.

Now, in the report of the Hon. Abram B. Weaver, Superintendent of Public Education, made in the same year (1871), he says: "The aggregate and the average attendance was greater absolutely, and in proportion to population, than in any former year"—"... 11,700 schools were maintained, 17,500 teachers were employed, and about $10,000,000 were expended" (Rep. Com. of Education, 1871, p. 291). "The average number of pupils for the whole state in attendance each day of the entire term in 1870 was 16,284, more than in 1869, etc." (p. 292). And in New York City, we are told in the same report (p. 301 of Report of Commissioners of Education, 1871), "It is interesting to note, as evidence of the substantial progress of free schools in New York City, that, while the whole population of the city has increased but about 14 per cent. in the last ten years, the average attendance of pupils has increased nearly 54 per cent. in the same time." Now, wherein consists the injury complained of? While the average attendance on the "free public schools" was actually increasing, whence came the children attending in these "damp basements of churches," and what necessity drove them from the "educational palaces"? Is the condition, in certain respects, of our public schools such as is pictured by the writer of the following, taken from the New York Herald of Feb. 9, 1873:

"PUBLIC-SCHOOL ABUSES.

"To the Editor of the Herald:

"Your articles on school ventilation have my hearty approval. I have sent my two youngest boys for two successive winters to the boys' school on Thirteenth street, near Sixth avenue (primary department), but each time they remained from one to two weeks, and then had to remain home, owing to a severe cold or inflammation of the lungs, which kept them away for weeks. Having tried the school thus I was compelled to remove them this winter to a private school, where they have attended regularly and have been in good health. No judgment is used in that department in regard to ventilation. Sometimes the room is excessively warm; at other times the windows on both sides of the house are opened, and the current of cold air descending on the heads of the children causes catarrhal affections and pneumonia.

"Such complaints as the following have been made about the girls' school, Twelfth street, near University place. A continual system of stealing is going on after they leave in the afternoon. The desks locked up are opened and articles removed, even books as well as other things, and if anything is accidentally left by the scholars it is always gone before morning. Nothing is safe in that school, and the question is, who steals it? Complaints, I understand, have been made, but no steps taken to correct it again.

"The Board of Education is frequently applied to for necessary books and material for conducting the school, and they are not supplied. No notice is taken. The teachers have to purchase themselves the necessary articles, or go without. At present, to my knowledge, an important part of a teacher's duty is prevented being fulfilled by reason of not having the necessary material. Teachers are afraid of complaining for fear of losing their situations.

Amicus."

Or this, taken from the New York Telegram of February 13, 1873:

"An association has been formed by the women of Washington, called 'The Society for Moral Education,' which has for its object the proper education and mental development of the children of the country. The society holds regular meetings, and proposes to become a national organization. Mrs. L. B. Chandler, of Boston, is the inspiring genius of the movement. The members of the society, in an appeal for support, say: 'As women, teachers, and mothers, we feel it incumbent upon us, in view of the alarming prevalence of intemperance and various frightful social vices, the increase of pernicious knowledge among children and youth, the general ill-health of women, the large number of diseased, deformed, idiotic children born, and the appalling mortality of infants, to seek the means whereby future generations may be blessed with better knowledge of the laws of life, wiser and stronger parents, and a purer social state."

Or this, from Prof. Agassiz, embodied in an editorial article of the Boston Herald of October 20, 1871:

"Year after year the chief of police publishes his statistics of prostitution in this city, but how few of the citizens bestow more than a passing thought upon the misery that they represent! Although these figures are large enough to make every lover of humanity hang his head with feelings of sorrow and shame at the picture, we are assured that they represent but a little, as it were, of the actual licentiousness that prevails among all classes of society. Within a few months, a gentleman (Prof. Agassiz) whose scientific attainments have made his name a household word in all lands, has personally investigated the subject, and the result has filled him with dismay, when he sees the depths of degradation to which men and women have fallen; he has almost lost faith in the boasted civilization of the XIXth century. In the course of his inquiries, he has visited both the well-known 'houses of pleasure' and the 'private establishments' scattered all over the city. He states that he has a list of both, with the street and number, the number of inmates, and many other facts that would perfectly astonish the people if made public. He freely conversed with the inmates, and the life histories that were revealed were sad indeed. To his utter surprise, a large proportion of the 'soiled doves' traced their fall to influences that met them in the public schools, and although Boston is justly proud of its schools, it would seem from his story that they need a thorough purification."

Or are we driven to the conclusion that the "injury" complained of is like that which was chronicled so long ago, as suffered by Haman at the hands of Mordecai?

"A single sect gets $1,396,388.51, besides a large slice of the city's real estate." This, of course, refers to the cathedral lots. That this "large slice" was fairly obtained, in the customary way of business, more than half a century ago, and at a time when no "Tammany Ring" existed, and when this "same sect" had no regularly consecrated place of worship in this city, so insignificant were its numbers, is notoriously a matter of record—known, indeed, of all men who choose to know; and the statement made in the "report" has been so often refuted, that the repetition of it now is disgraceful, and is simply a lie "well stuck to." As to the other leases mentioned "at a nominal rental," what matters it to anybody but Haman so long as the property, however now increased in value for building sites or other material advantage to the "money-changers," is devoted, as the report in question expressly admits, to the cause of education—of the education of "the children whose poverty prevented them from attending the public schools for want of clothing, and in many cases even of food"—as we are told in the following extract from the last published Report of the Board of Public Instruction (city of New York) for 1871 (page 14): "It will be seen from the preceding statement" (showing the average attendance at the schools under the jurisdiction of the Board to be, for 1871, 103,481, and in 1870, 103,824) "that the attendance at the public schools has not increased, which is readily explained by the fact that many benevolent and charitable institutions have entered the educational field. In these institutions the children whose poverty prevented them from attending the public schools for want of clothing, and in many cases even of food, are provided for."

In the same pamphlet from which we have quoted is also another "Document," designated "No. 4," embodying what purports to be a report made to the "State Council of Political Reform" in 1870 by "the Committee on Endowment and Support by the State of Sectarian Institutions." This "report" contains, among other quotations from Aristotle, Washington, Jay, De Witt Clinton, Chancellor Kent, Milton, Lord Brougham, Guizot, and Horace Mann, many of which are so generally known and accepted as to have become truisms, one notable extract from Thomas Jefferson, which embodies very nearly all that Catholics desire and are contending for. Jefferson says: "A system of general instruction which shall reach every description of our citizens from the richest to the poorest ... give it to us in any shape." This is what we ask. We make no war; we have no "plan of attack" upon the public schools, as charged upon page 5 of this Document No. 4; our chief desire is simply that expressed in the words already quoted from Thomas Jefferson; and, with the "sectarians," we deny that the system now in use is sufficiently "general" to accomplish the purpose intended, or that it can be called a general system while it excludes any class whose positive religious convictions must necessarily be daily interfered with by what is called an "unsectarian" method of instruction. We believe, as did the Puritan fathers, that a knowledge of and an obedience to the divine government are essential in fitting each child "to be a citizen of a free and tolerant republic." We believe in our right to say how and by whom such knowledge shall be given and such obedience shall be taught, and we also believe that we are quite as competent to determine our methods and to select our teachers as is any political party now in being or ever likely to be. We are quite as strongly opposed to the establishment of any "state religion" as this self-elected body of political reformers are or affect to be; and, to quote and apply to this body the words of "Document No. 4," "we cannot yield one jot or tittle of their demand, for it involves a principle to us sacred and vital. It means the union of church and state." And we refer to history for the proof that the Catholic has never been a state church, but has been more frequently found in antagonism to the civil power than in alliance with it; always on the side of liberty and the rights of the people; shielding them from oppression, even to the deposing of unjust rulers; enforcing their rights, even to the extent of aiding to make war upon tyrants; and yet, despite this teaching of history, we are told (on page 8 of the Document first referred to), under the pretence of saying why we "make war upon the public schools," as follows: "But a single sect is taught by its head, a foreign and despotic ecclesiastical prince, that the civil authorities in a republic have not the right to direct and control the course of study, and the choice and appointment of teachers in the public schools, open alike to the youth of all classes, but that this right belongs to the church." Now, this is merely a specious falsehood. For, let us ask what is here meant by "the civil authorities"? Does the phrase mean "the state," which, we are also told, is a better educator than the church; or does it mean that aggregation of individuals, each being represented and having an equal voice, composing "the state"? If the latter is the meaning, what Catholic American denies the right or asserts it for "the church" exclusively? We are yet to meet him.

Catholics, and others not Catholics, do deny that "the state" is the best educator, to the exclusion of the church; and they do their best to maintain the rights of minorities as against the tyranny of majorities.

There are certain words and phrases used in this "Document No. 4" which we do not altogether like; as, for instance: "The state a better educator than the church"; for, in the light of certain events not long since occurring here and in Washington, "the state" has come to be used, and perhaps understood, in a sense of which we are somewhat suspicious. The doctrine of "centralization" is slowly becoming something more than theory with a certain class of politicians and office-holders; and the words, "the state," the "civil authorities," and the "government," are beginning to have an ominous ring in our ears.

To be sure, when we are told, in a somewhat dogmatic way, that "the state is a better educator than the church," we may infer from the text illustrating the dogma (page 8, Document No. 4) that in this connection the state is manifest in the persons of the public-school authorities, and that they are a power in opposition to "a sect" or to "sects." And when our public schools are "open alike to youth of all classes," of all creeds, and Catholics are fairly represented among "school authorities," and are allowed an equal voice in direction and control, and in the choice of teachers—in short, when they have their rights as component parts and members of "the state," we shall probably hear no more about this "war upon the public schools," but until then probably this clamor for their rights will still be heard.

All this talk, however, about secularizing education means nothing more nor less than the divorcement of religion from all public education; and it remains to be seen how far the descendants and the heirs of that people who asserted that liberty of conscience and freedom to worship God (even in the school-room) meant something, and are paramount, will tolerate this "new departure."

The Catholic barons of England wrung from King John at Runnymede the famous Magna Charta, and the Catholic settlers of Maryland gave the first constitution recognizing equal rights for all men; and the "Church of Rome," as a British Presbyterian writer has said, "has always been an 'independent, distinct, and often opposing power'; and that civil liberty is closely connected with religious liberty—with the church being independent of the state." Every school-boy might and ought to be taught these and other like facts, for history mentions them; and the assailants of the Catholic Church ought to be ashamed to ignore or deny them. And yet such ignorance and such denials are the capital in trade of the bigots and the fanatics who fear and affect to see in the spread of Catholicism a menace to our liberties.

On page 5 of this "Document No. 4" we are told that "the moment the state takes under its protection any church, by appropriating public money or property to the uses or support of that church, or the teaching of its peculiar tenets or practices, it in that act, and to that extent, unites church and state. The union of church and state, in all ages and in all countries, has led to oppression and bloodshed." Now, if this is not arrant nonsense, what is?

The practice of "appropriating public money or property" to churches, so called, is coeval with our national birth. And in this country church and state have, according to the logic of this statement, been very much united—very much married, like Brigham Young and his multitudinous wives—and yet the "oppression and bloodshed" sure to follow have not yet come upon us—in fact, "churches" and state have always in this country been united, and we did not know it! Through what unknown dangers have we passed!

This "Document No. 4" is not honest in this kind of talk—the union of church and state means a form of religion established by law, and pains and penalties inflicted upon dissenters.

Not a great many years ago, in Prussia, of which we hear so much upon the "educational question," by command of the king, the "Prussian Calvinist and Lutheran, who had quarrelled for three hundred years about the real presence and predestination, abandoned their disputes, denied their faith, and became members of the 'Evangelical Church of Prussia'"—a church whose simple creed is thus stated: "Do ye believe in God? then must ye believe in Christ. Do ye believe in Christ? then must ye believe in the king. He is our head on earth, and rules by the order of God. The king has appeared in the flesh in our native land!" This was a state religion—a union of church and state, and is about as likely to be established here as that the "Document No. 4" is to be adopted as a text-book in our public schools. This union of church and state is about as sensible a cry, and quite as malignant, as the old "No Jews, no wooden shoes!" addressed to the mob in England, and is framed and uttered in the spirit of the same "sectarian" and bigoted hate.

Now, one word as to "secular education"—there is no such thing, if God's work is our work. If his glory requires the dedication of all the powers he has given us, it is preposterous to talk about an education from which he and his existence, and the knowledge of him and his purposes and laws, are excluded. We may endow, and send our children to colleges where no priest or clergyman shall ever come, and no creed shall be taught or even mentioned, and call the education there received secular and unsectarian, as was intended to be done at the "Girard College" at Philadelphia, and yet we shall find the education unsatisfactory, and no "state" has yet adopted the plan.

In conclusion, we demand, in the language of the resolutions "unanimously adopted" and appended to the report in "Document No. 4," "... free of cost, to every child in the state, a generous and tolerant education—such an education as qualifies him for the duties of citizenship"; and, moreover, such an education as shall recognize and protect the first and most important of all the rights of citizenship—the right of conscience, which is grossly violated by the system of atheistical education.

CHURCH POSTURES.

Ye would not sit at ease while meek men kneel
Did ye but see His face shine through the veil,
And the unearthly forms that round you steal
Hidden in beauteous light, splendent or pale
As the rich Service leads. And prostrate faith
Shroudeth her timorous eye, while through the air
Hovers and hangs the Spirit's cleansing Breath
In Whitsun shapes o'er each true worshipper.
Deep wreaths of angels, burning from the east,
Around the consecrated Shrine are traced,
The awful Stone where by fit hands are placed
The Flesh and Blood of the tremendous Feast,
But kneel—the priest upon the altar-stair
Will bring a blessing out of Sion there.

—Faber.

GRAPES AND THORNS

BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE HOUSE OF YORKE."

CHAPTER V.
SHADOWS AND LILIES.

Mr. Schöninger came early to the rehearsal that evening, and, in his stately fashion, made himself unusually agreeable. There was, perhaps, a very slight widening of the eyes, expressive of surprise, if not of displeasure, when he saw Miss Ferrier's critics, but his salutation did not lack any necessary courtesy. He did not lose his equanimity even when, later, while they were singing a fugue passage, a sonorous but stupid bass came in enthusiastically just one bar too soon.

"I am glad you chose to do that to-night instead of to-morrow night, sir," the director said quietly. "Now we will try it again."

And yet Mr. Schöninger was, in his profession, an object of terror to some of his pupils, and of scrupulous, if not anxious, attention to all; for not only did he possess notably that exalted musical sensitiveness which no true artist lacks, but he concealed under an habitual self-control, and great exactness in the discharge of his duty, a fiery impatience of temper, and a hearty dislike for the drudgery of his profession.

"If your doctrines regarding future punishments are true," he once said to F. Chevreuse, "then the physical part of a musician's purgatory will be to listen to discords striving after, but never attaining to, harmony, and his hell to hear sublime harmonies rent and distorted by discords. I never come so near believing in an embodied spirit of evil as when I hear a masterpiece of one of the great composers mangled by a tyro. I haven't a doubt that Chopin or Schumann might be played so as to throw me into convulsions."

And F. Chevreuse had answered after his kind: "And your spiritual purgatory, sir, will be the recollection of those long years during which you have persisted in playing with one thumb, as a bleak monody, that divine trio of which all the harmonies of the universe are but faint echoes."

Nothing of this artistic irritability appeared to-night, as we have said. In its stead was a gentleness quite new in the musician's demeanor, and so slight as to be like that first film of coming verdure on the oak, when, some spring morning, one looks out and doubts whether it is a dimness of the eyes or the atmosphere, or a budding foliage which has set swimming those sharp outlines of branch and twig.

"He is really human," Annette whispered to Miss Pembroke; and Honora smiled acquiescence, though she would scarcely have employed such an expression for her thought. She had already discovered in Mr. Schöninger a very gentle humanity.

Low as the whisper was, his ears caught it, and two sharp eyes, watching him, saw an almost imperceptible tremor of the eyelids, which was the only sign he gave. The owner of these eyes did not by any means approve of the manner in which their leader had given Miss Pembroke her music that evening, leaving the other ladies to be served as they might; still less did she approve of the coldness with which her own coquettish demands on his attention had been met. It was scarcely worth while to submit to the drudgery of rehearsing, in a chorus too, if that was to be all the return. Rising carelessly, therefore, and allowing the sheet of music on her lap to fall unheeded to the floor, Miss Carthusen sauntered off toward where Miss Ferrier's two critics sat apart, talking busily, having, apparently, as she had anticipated, written their reports of the rehearsal before coming to it.

These critics were a formidable pair, for they criticised everybody and everything. One of them added to a man's sarcasm a woman's finer malice, which pricks with the needlepoint. Dr. Porson was a tall, aquiline-faced, choleric man, with sharp eyes that, looking through a pair of clear and remarkably lustrous glasses, saw the chink in everybody's armor. Those who knew him would rather see lightning than meet the flash of his glasses turned on them, and feel the probing glances that shot through, and thunder would have been music to their ears compared to the short laugh that greeted a sinister discovery.

The other was Mr. Sales, the new editor of The Aurora, a little wasp of a man. He had twinkling black eyes that needed no lens to assist their vision, and a thin-lipped mouth with a slim black moustache hanging at either corner, like a strong pen-dash made with black ink. Dr. Porson called them quotation-marks, and had a way of smoothing imaginary moustaches on his own clean-shaven face whenever the younger man said any very good thing without giving credit for it.

"A clever little eclectic," the doctor said of him. "He pilfers with the best taste in the world, and, with the innocence of a babe, believes everybody else to be original. He never writes anything worth reading but I want to congratulate him on his 'able scissors.' 'Able scissors' is not mine," the doctor added, "but it is good. I found it in Blackwood's."

These two gentlemen had arrived early, and, seated apart, in a side-window of the long drawing-room, crunched the people between their teeth as they entered. Between the morsels, the doctor enlightened his companion, a new-comer in the city, regarding Crichton and the Crichtonians.

"There's little Jones, the most irritating person I know," the doctor said. "By what chance he should have that robust voice I cannot imagine. Sometimes I think it doesn't come out of his own throat, but that he has a large ventriloquist whom he carries about with him. I shouldn't wonder if the fellow were now just outside that open sash. Did you see the way he marched past us, all dickey and boot-heels? A man who is but five feet high has no right to assume six-foot manners; he has scarcely the right to exist at all among well-grown people. Besides, they always wear large hats. Not but I respect a small stature in a clever person," he admitted, with a side glance at Mr. Sales' slight figure. "We don't wish to have our diamonds by the hundredweight. But common, pudding-stone men must be in imposing masses, or we want them cleared away as débris."

"Is Mr. Schöninger a pudding-stone man?" the young editor asked, when that gentleman had passed them by.

Dr. Porson's face unconsciously dropped its mocking. "If you should strike Mr. Schöninger in any way," he said, "you would find him flint. The only faults I see in the man are his excessive caution and secretiveness. He is here, evidently, only to get all the money he can, and, when he has enough, will wash his hands of us; therefore, wishes for no intimacies. That is my interpretation. He is a gentleman, however. A man must have the most perfect politeness of soul to salute Mme. Ferrier as he did. While they were speaking together, she actually had the air of a lady. See her look after him. It is an art which we critics cannot learn, sir, that of setting people in their best light. Of course it would spoil our trade if we did learn it; but, for all that, we miss something. Schöninger is a Jew, to be sure, but that signifies nothing. Each one to his taste. We no longer trouble ourselves about people's faith. When you say that a man believes this or that, it's as though you said, he eats this or that. The world moves. Why, sir, a few years ago, we wouldn't have spoken to a man who ate frogs any more than to a cannibal; and now we are so fond of the little reptiles that there isn't a frog left to sing in the swamps."

"But," Mr. Sales objected, "society has established certain rules—" then stopped, finding himself in deep water.

"Undoubtedly," the doctor replied, as gravely as though something had been said. "The Flat-head Indians now, who seem to have understood the science of phrenology, think it the proper thing to have a plateau on the top of the head. Their reason is, probably, a moral rather than an æsthetic one. They know that the peaceful and placable qualities, those which impel a man to let go, are kept in little chambers in the front top of the brain. They have other use for their attics. So they just clap a board on the baby's soft head, and press the space meant for such useless stuff as benevolence and reverence back, so as to increase the storage for the noble qualities of firmness and self-esteem. That is one of the rules of their society; and I have always considered it a most striking and beautiful instance of the proper employment of means to an end. There is a certain sublime and simple directness in it. No circuitous, century-long labor of trying to square the fluid contents of a round vessel, but just a board on the head. That, sir, should be the first step in evangelizing the heathen—shape their heads. When you want a man to think in a certain way, put a strong pressure on his contradictory bumps, and preach to him afterwards. That's what I tell our minister, Mr. Atherton. There he is now, that bald man with the fair hair. He is a glorious base. His great-grandfather was a conceited Anglo-Saxon, and he's the fourth power of him. The reason why he does not believe in the divinity of Christ is because he was not of Anglo-Saxon birth."

Here, across the pianissimo chorus which made the vocal accompaniment of an Alp-song, Miss Ferrier's brilliant voice flashed like lightning in clear, sharp zigzags, startling the two into silence.

"That wasn't bad," the doctor said when she ended.

The younger gentleman applauded with such enthusiasm that Annette blushed with pleasure. "She needs but one thing to make her voice perfect," he said, "and that is a great sorrow."

"Yes, as I was telling you some time ago," the doctor resumed, "we are a liberal and hospitable people in Crichton. We have no prejudices. Everybody is welcome, even the devil. We are æsthetic, too. We admire the picturesque. We wouldn't object to seeing an interesting family of children shot with arrows, provided they would fall with a grace, and their mother would assume the true Niobe attitude. In literature, too, how we shine! We have reached the sublime of the superficial. There's your Miss Carthusen, now, with her original poetry. How nicely she dished up that conceit of Montaigne's, that somebody is peculiar because he has no peculiarities. I've forgotten, it is so long since I read him. I haven't looked over the new edition that this poetess of ours has peeped into and fished a fancy out of. But yesterday I was charmed to see it scintillating, in rhymed lines, in the Olympian corner of The Aurora, over the well-known signature of Fleur-de-lis."

The young man looked mortified. He had never read Montaigne, and had announced this production as original and remarkable, firmly believing the writer to be a genius. But he did not choose to tell Dr. Porson that.

"What would you?" he asked, raising his eyebrows and his voice in a philosophical manner. "I must fill the paper; and it is better to put in good thought at second-hand than flat originals. How many know the difference?"

Here Annette's voice stopped them again.

"Strange that girl sings so well to-night," said the doctor, adjusting his glasses for a clearer glance. "She looks well, too. Must be the inspiration of her lover's presence. That's the kind of fellow, sir, that a woman takes a fancy to—a pale, beautiful young man with a slouched hat and a secret sorrow, the sorrow usually having reference to the pocket."

Lawrence Gerald sat near his lady, and seemed to be absorbed in his occupation of cutting a rosebud across in thin slices with his pocket-knife, a proceeding his mother viewed with gentle distress. But when the song was ended, he looked up at Annette and smiled, seeming to be rather proud of her. And, looking so, his eyes lingered a little, expressing interest and a slight surprise, as if he beheld there something worth looking at which he had not noticed before. Had he cared to observe, he might have known already that Miss Ferrier had moments of being beautiful. This was one of them.

There is a pain that looks like delight, when the heart bleeds into the cheeks, the lips part with a smile that does not touch the eyes, and the eyes shine with a dazzling brilliancy that may well be mistaken for joyousness. With such feverish beauty Annette was radiant this evening, and the excitement of singing and of applause had added the last touch of brightness.

The programme for the concert was chiefly of popular music, or a kind of old-fashioned music they were making popular, part-songs and glees. They had attained great finish and delicacy in executing these, and the effect was charming, and far preferable to operas and operatic airs as we usually hear them. It would have been a bold woman who would have asked Mr. Schöninger's permission to sing a difficult aria. Annette had once made such a request, but with indifferent success.

"Mademoiselle," the teacher replied, "you have a better voice than either of the Pattis; but a voice is only a beginning. You must learn the alphabet of music before you can read its poems. When you are ready to be a Norma, I will resign you to some teacher who knows more than I do."

The singing was at an end, and the singers left their seats and wandered about the house and garden. Only Mr. Schöninger lingered by the piano, and, seeing him still there, no one went far away, those outside leaning in at the window.

He seated himself presently, and played a Polonaise. He sat far back, almost at arm's length from the keys, and, as he touched it, the instrument seemed to possess an immortal soul. One knew not which most to admire, the power that made a single piano sound like an orchestra, or the delicacy that produced strains fine and clear like horns of fairyland.

When he had finished, he went to ask Mrs. Gerald how the singing had gone.

"I observed that you listened," he remarked, being within Dr. Porson's hearing.

Mrs. Gerald had been sitting for the last half-hour beside Mrs. Ferrier, and the time had been penitential, as all her intercourse with Annette's mother was. It was hard for a fond mother and a sensitive lady to listen to such indelicate complaints and insinuations as Mrs. Ferrier was constantly addressing to her when they were together without uttering any sharp word in return. To be reminded that Lawrence was making a very advantageous marriage without retorting that she would be far more happy to see him the husband of Honora Pembroke, required an effort; and to restrain the quick flash, or the angry tears in her fiery Celtic heart when she heard him undervalued, was almost more than she could do. But she had conquered herself for God's sake and for her son's sake, perhaps a little for pride's sake, had given the soft answer when she could, and remained silent when speech seemed too great an effort.

That coarse insolence of mere money to refined poverty, and the mistaking equality before the law for personal equality, are at any time sufficiently offensive; how much more so when the victim is in some measure in the tormentor's power.

Mrs. Gerald's face showed how severe the trial had been. Her blue eyes had the unsteady lustre of a dew that dared not gather into tears, a painful smile trembled on her lips, and her cheeks were scarlet. Had she been at liberty, this lady could perfectly well have known how to ignore or reprove impertinence without ruffling her smooth brow or losing her tranquil manner; but she was not free, and the restraint was agitating. This rude woman's rudest insinuation was but truth, and she must bear it. Yet, mother-like, she never thought of reproaching her son for what she suffered.

"I never heard music I liked so well," she said to Mr. Schöninger's question. "We are under obligation to you for giving us what we can understand. The composition you have just played delighted me, too, though it is probable that I do not at all appreciate its beauties. It made me think of fairies dancing in a ring."

"It was a dance-tune," Mr. Schöninger said, pleased that she had perceived the thought; for it required a fine and sympathetic ear to discern the step in that capricious movement of Chopin's.

The fact that he was a Jew had prevented her looking on this man with any interest, or feeling it possible that any friendship could exist between them; but the thought passed her mind, as he spoke, that Mr. Schöninger might be a very amiable person if he chose. There was a delicate and reserved sweetness in that faint smile of his which reminded her of some expression she had seen on Honora's face, when she was conversing with a gentleman who had the good fortune to please her.

Meantime, Lawrence had been having a little dispute with Annette. "What's this about the wine?" he whispered to her. "John says there isn't any to be had."

He looked astonished, and with reason, for the fault of the Ferrier entertainments had always been their profusion.

"I meant to have told you that I had concluded not to have wine," she said. "Two gentlemen present are intemperate men, who make their families very unhappy, and when they begin to drink they do not know where to stop. The last time Mr. Lane was here he became really quite unsteady before he went away."

"But the others!" Lawrence exclaimed. "What will they think?"

"They may understand just why it is," she replied; "and they may not think anything about it. I should not imagine that they need occupy their minds very long with the subject."

"Why, you must know, Annette, that some of them come here for nothing but the supper, and chiefly the wine," the young man urged unguardedly.

She drew up slightly. "So I have heard, Lawrence; and I wish to discourage such visitors' coming. People who are in the devouring mood should not go visiting; they are disagreeable. I have never seen in company that liveliness which comes after supper without a feeling of disgust. It may not go beyond proper bounds, but still it is a greater or less degree of intoxication. I have provided everything I could think of for their refreshment and cheering, but nothing to make them tipsy. I gave you a good reason at first, Lawrence, and I have a better. My father died of liquor, and my brother is becoming a slave to it. I will help to make no drunkards."

"Well," the young man sighed resignedly, "you mean well; but I can't help thinking you a little quixotic."

"The Ferriers are giving us eau sucrée instead of wine to-night," sneered one of the company to Mr. Schöninger, a while after.

"They show good taste in doing so," he replied coldly. "There are always bar-rooms and drinking-saloons enough for those who are addicted to drink. I never wish to take wine from the hand of a lady, nor to drink it in her presence."

The night was brilliantly full-moonlighted, and so warm that they had lit as little gas as possible. A soft glow from the upper floor, and the bright doors of the drawing-room, made the hall chandelier useless. Miss Ferrier's new organ there was flooded with a silvery radiance that poured through a window. Mr. Schöninger came out and seated himself before it.

"Shall I play a fugue of Bach's?" he asked of Miss Pembroke, who was standing in the open door leading to the garden.

She took a step toward him, into the shadow between moonlight of window and door, and the light seemed to follow her, lingering in her fair face and her white dress. Even the waxen jasmine blossoms in her hair appeared to be luminous.

"Yes," she said, "if you are to play only once more; but, if more than once, let that be last. I never lose the sound and motion of one of Bach's fugues till I have slept; and I like to keep the murmur it leaves, as if my ears were sea-shells."

She went back to stand in the door, but, after a few minutes, stepped softly and slowly further away, and passed by the drawing-room doors, through which she saw Annette talking with animation and many gestures, while her two critics listened and nodded occasional acquiescence, and Lawrence withdrawn to a window-seat with Miss Carthusen, and Mrs. Ferrier the centre of a group of young people, who listened to her with ill-concealed smiles of amusement. At length she found the place she wanted, an arm-chair under the front portico, and, seated there, gathered up that strong, wilful rush of harmony as a whole. It did not seem to have ceased when Mr. Schöninger joined her. She was so full of the echoes of his music that for a moment she looked at him standing beside her as if it had been his wraith.

He pointed silently and smiling to the corner of the veranda visible from where they sat. It was on the shady side of the house, and still further screened by vines, and the half-drawn curtains of the window looking into it allowed but a single beam of gaslight to escape. In that nook were gathered half a dozen children, peeping into the drawing-room. They were as silent as the shadows in which they lurked, and their bare feet had given no notice of their coming. Their bodies were almost invisible, but their eager little faces shone in the red light, and now and then a small hand was lifted into sight.

"It reminds me," he said, "of a passage in the Koran, where Mahomet declares that it had been revealed to him that a company of genii had listened while he was reading a chapter, and that one of them had remarked: 'Verily, we have heard a most admirable discourse.' That amused me; and I fancied that an effective picture might be made of it: the prophet reading at night by the light of an antique lamp that shone purely on his solemn face and beard, and his green robe, with, perhaps, the pet cat curled round on the sleeve. The casement should be open wide, and crowded with a multitude of yearning, exquisite faces, the lips parted with the intensity of their listening. As I came along the hall just now, I saw one of those children through the window, and in that light it looked like a cameo cut in pink coral."

"I fancy they are some of my children," Miss Pembroke said, and rose. "Let us see. They ought not to be out so late, nor to intrude."

"Oh! spare the poor little wretches," Mr. Schöninger said laughingly, as she took his arm. "We find this commonplace enough, but to them it is wonderful. I think we might be tempted to trespass a little if we could get a peep into veritable fairyland. This is to them fairyland."

"That anything is a strong temptation is no excuse for yielding," the lady said in a playful tone that took away any appearance of reproof from her words. "We do not go into battle in order to surrender without a struggle, nor to surrender at all, but to become heroes. I must teach my little ones to have heroic thoughts."

The children, engrossed in the bright scene within, did not perceive any approach from without till all retreat was cut off for them, and they turned, with startled faces, to find themselves confronted by a tall gentleman, on whose arm leaned a lady whom they looked up to with a tender but reverent love.

These children were of a class accustomed to a word and a blow, and their instinctive motion was to shrink back into a corner, and hide their faces.

"I am sorry to see you here, my dears," she said. "Please go home now, like good children."

That was her way of reproving.

She stood aside, and the little vagabonds shied out past her, each one trying to hide his face, and scampering off on soundless feet as soon as he had reached the ground.

"So you have a school?" Mr. Schöninger asked, as they went round through the garden.

They came out into the moonlight, and approached the rear of the house, where a number of the company were gathered, standing among the flowers.

"Yes, I have fifty, or more, of these little ones, and I find it interesting. They were in danger of growing up in the street, and I had nothing else to do—that is, nothing that seemed so plain a duty. So I took the largest room in an old house of mine just verging on the region where these children live, and have them come there every day."

"You must find teaching laborious," the gentleman said.

"Oh! no. I am strong and healthy, and I do not fatigue myself nor them. The whole is free to them, of course, and I am responsible to no one, therefore can instruct or amuse them in my own way. As far as possible, I wish to supply the incompetency of their mothers. If I give the little ones a happy hour, during which they behave properly, and teach them one thing, I am satisfied. One of the branches I try to instruct them in is neatness. No soiled face is allowed to speak to me, nor soiled hands to touch me. Then they sing and read, and learn prayers and a little doctrine, and I tell them stories. When the Christian Brothers and the Sisters of Notre Dame come, my occupation will of course be gone."

"I wish I might some time be allowed to visit this school of yours," Mr. Schöninger said hesitatingly. "I could give them a singing-lesson, and tell them a story. Little Rose Tracy likes my stories."

Miss Pembroke was thoughtful a moment, then consented. She had witnessed with approval Mr. Schöninger's treatment of Miss Carthusen that evening, and respected him for it. "The day after to-morrow, in the afternoon, would be a good time," she said. "It is to be a sort of holiday, on account of the firemen's procession. The procession passes the school-room, and I have promised the children that they shall watch it."

They went in to take leave, for the company was breaking up.

"Oh! by the way, Mr. Schöninger," Annette said, recollecting, "did you get the shawl you left here at the last rehearsal? It was thrown on a garden-seat, and forgotten."

"Yes; I stepped in early the next morning, and took it," he said. His countenance changed slightly as he spoke. The eyelids drooped, and his whole air expressed reserve.

"The next morning!" she repeated to herself, but said nothing.

Lawrence went off with Miss Carthusen; and as Mrs. Gerald and Honora went out at the same time with Mr. Schöninger, he asked permission to accompany them.

"How lovely the night is!" Mrs. Gerald murmured, as they walked quietly along under the trees of the avenue, and saw all the beautiful city bathed in moonlight, and ringed about with mountains like a wall. "Heaven can scarcely have a greater physical beauty than earth has sometimes."

"I do not think," the gentleman said, "that heaven will be so much more beautiful than earth, but our eyes will be opened to see the beauties that exist."

He spoke very quietly, with an air of weariness or depression; and, when they reached home, bowed his good-night without speaking.

The two ladies stood a moment in the door, looking out over the town. "If that man were not a Jew, I should find him agreeable," Mrs. Gerald said. "As it is, it seems odd that we should see so much of him."

"I am inclined to believe," Honora said slowly, "that it is not right for us to refuse a friendly intercourse with suitable associates on account of any difference of religion, unless they intrude on us a belief or disbelief which we hold to be sacrilegious."

"Could you love a Jew?" Mrs. Gerald asked, rather abruptly.

Honora considered the matter a little while. "Our Lord loved them, even those who crucified him. I could love them. Besides, I do not believe that the Jews of to-day would practise violence any more than Christians would. We are friendly with Unitarians, yet they are not very different from some Jews. I think we should love everybody but the eternally lost. I could more easily become attached to an upright and conscientious Jew, than to a Catholic who did not practise his religion."

Mr. Schöninger, as soon as he had left the ladies, mended his pace, and strode off rapidly down the hill. In a few minutes he had reached a lighted railroad station, where people were going to and fro.

"Just in time!" he muttered, and ran to catch a train that was beginning to slip over the track. Grasping the hand-rail, he drew himself on to the step of the last car, then walked through the other cars, and, finally, took his seat in that next the engine. Once a week he gave lessons in a town fifteen miles from Crichton, and he usually found it more agreeable to take the night train down than to go in the morning.

In selecting this car he had hoped to be alone; but he had hardly taken his seat when he heard a step following him, and another man appeared and went into the seat in front of him—an insignificant-looking person, with a mean face. He turned about, put his feet on the seat, stretched his arm along the back, and, assuming an insinuating smile, bade Mr. Schöninger good evening. He had, apparently, settled himself for a long conversation.

Mr. Schöninger's habits were those of a scrupulous gentleman, and he had, even among gentlemen, the charming distinction of always keeping his feet on the floor. This man's manners were, therefore, in more than one way offensive, and his salutation received no more encouraging reply than a stare, and a scarcely perceptible inclination of the head.

Mr. Schöninger seemed, indeed, to regret even this slight concession, for he rose immediately with an air of decision, and walked forward to the first seat. The door of the car was open there as they rushed on through the darkness, and, looking forward, it was like beholding the half-veiled entrance of a cavern of fire. A cloud of illuminated smoke and steam swept about and enveloped the engine with a bright atmosphere impenetrable to the sight, and through this loomed the gigantic shadow of a man. This shadow sometimes disappeared for a moment only to appear again, and seemed to make threatening gestures, and to catch and press down into the flames some unseen adversary. Mr. Schöninger's fancy was wide awake, though his eyes were half asleep, and this strange object became to him an object of terror. Painful and anxious thoughts, which he had resolutely put away, left yet a dim and mysterious background, on which this grotesque figure, gigantic and wrapped in fire, was thrown in strong relief. He imagined it an impending doom, which might at any moment fall upon him.

Finding these fancies intolerable at length, he shook himself wide awake, rose, and walked unsteadily up and down the car. In doing so, he perceived that his fellow-passenger had retreated to the last seat, and was, apparently, sleeping, his cap drawn low over his forehead. But Mr. Schöninger's glance detected a slight change in the position of the head as he commenced his promenade, and he could not divest himself of the belief that, from under the low hat-brim, a glance as sharp as his own was following his every movement.

In an ordinary and healthy mood of mind he would have cared little for such espionage; but he was not in such a mood. Circumstances had of late tried his nerves, and it required all his power of self-control to maintain a composed exterior. Did this man suspect his trouble, and search for, or, perhaps, divine, or, possibly, know the cause of it? He would gladly have caught the fellow in his arms, and thrown him headlong into the outer darkness.

He returned to his place, and, leaning close to the window, looked out into the night. If he had hoped to quiet himself by the sight of a familiar nature, he was disappointed, for the scene had a weird, though occasionally beautiful aspect, very unlike reality. The moon had set, leaving that darkness which follows a bright moonlight, or precedes the dawn of day, when the stars seem to be confounded by the near yet invisible radiance of their conqueror, and dare not shine with their own full lustre. Only this locomotive, dashing through the heart of the night, rendered visible a flying panorama. Groves of trees twirled round, surprised in some mystic dance; streams flashed out in all their windings, red and serpent-like, and hid themselves as suddenly; wide plains swam past, all a blur, with hills and mountains stumbling against the horizon. Only one spot had even a hint of familiarity. Framed round by a great semi-circle of woods, not many rods from the track, was a long, narrow pond, with a few acres of smooth green beyond it, and a white cottage close to its farthest shore. This little scene was as perfectly secluded, apparently, as if it had been in the midst of a continent otherwise uninhabited. No road nor neighboring house was visible from the railroad. The dwellers in that cottage seemed to be solitary and remote, knowing nothing of the wide, busy world save what they saw from their vine-draped windows when the long, noisy train, crowded with strangers, hurried past them, never stopping. What web that clattering shuttle wove they might wonder, but could not know, could scarcely care as they dreamed their lives away, lotos-eating. For the lotos was not wanting.

Mr. Schöninger recollected his first glimpse of that place as he had whirled past one summer morning, and swiftly now he caught the scene between his eyelids, and closed them on it, and dreamed over it. He saw the varied green of the forest, and the velvet green of the banks, and the blue and brooding sky. Like a sylvan nymph the cottage stood in its draping vines, and tried to catch glimpses of itself in the glassy waters at its feet, half smothered in drifting fragrant snow of water-lilies.

What sort of being should come forth from that dwelling of peace? Mr. Schöninger asked himself. Who should stretch out hands to him, and draw him out of his troubled life, approaching now a climax he shrank from? His heart rose and beat quickly. The door under the vines swung slowly back, and a woman floated out over the green, as silent and as gracious as a cloud over the blue above. The drapery fluttered back from her advancing foot till it reached the first shining ripple of the pond, and then she paused—a presence so warm and living that it quickened his breathing. She stretched her strong white arms out toward him over the lilies she would not cross, and the face was Honora Pembroke's. The large, calm look, the earnest glow that saved from coldness, the full humanity steeped through and shone through by spiritual loveliness—they were all hers.

He started, and opened his eyes. Their pace was slackening, the great black figure in its fiery atmosphere was in some spasm of motion, and walls of brick and stone were shutting them in.

The cars stopped at the foot of an immense flight of stairs that stretched upward indefinitely, a dingy Jacob's ladder, without the angels. Mr. Schöninger slowly ascended them, heavyhearted again, and therefore heavy-footed; and, not far behind, a man with a skulking step and a mean face followed after. There was nothing very mysterious in this walk. It led merely through a deserted business street, by the shortest route, to a respectable hotel. Mr. Schöninger called for a room, and went to it immediately; the little man lingered in the office, and hung about the desk.

"That gentleman comes down here pretty often in the night, doesn't he?" he asked of the clerk.

The man nodded, without looking up.

"Does he always record his name when he comes?" pursued the questioner.

"Can't say," was the short answer, still without looking up.

"Comes down every Wednesday night, I suppose?" remarked the stranger.

The clerk suddenly thrust his face past the corner of the desk behind which his catechiser stood. "Look here, sir, what name shall I put down for you?" he asked sharply.

The man drew back a little, and turned away. "I'm not sure of booking myself here," he replied.

The clerk came down promptly from his perch. "Then it's time to lock up," he said.

And when he had locked the door, and pulled down the curtains, with a snap that threatened to break their fastenings, he put his hands in his pockets, and made a short and emphatic address to an imaginary audience.

"I don't believe there is any redemption for spies," he said; "and I would rather have a thief in my house than a sneak. You sometimes hear of a criminal who repents; but nobody ever yet heard of one of your prying, peeping, tattling sort reforming."

There being no other person present, no one contradicted him, a circumstance which seemed to increase the strength of his convictions. He paced the room two or three times, then returned to his first stand, removing his hands from his pockets to clasp them behind his back, as being a more dignified attitude for a speaker.

"If I had my will," he pursued, "every nose that poked itself into other people's affairs would be cut off."

Bravo! Mr. Clerk. You have sense. But if you had also that sanguinary wish of yours, what a number of mutilated visages would be going about the world! How many feminine faces would be shorn of their retroussé, or long, rooting feature, or clawing, parrot beak, and how many men would be incapacitated for taking snuff!

Having delivered himself of his rather extreme opinion, this excellent man shut up the house and retired.

Mr. Schöninger looked forward with interest to his promised visit to Miss Pembroke's school, and was so anxious that she should not by any forgetfulness or change of plan deprive him of it, that he reminded her as they came out of the hall, after their concert, of the permission she had given him for the next afternoon.

"Certainly!" she replied smiling. "But how can you think of such a trifle after the grand success of this evening?"

For their concert had been a perfect success, and Mr. Schöninger himself had been applauded with such enthusiasm as had pleased even him. It was the first time he had played in public in Crichton, and, respectable as he held their musical taste to be, he had not been prepared to see so ready an appreciation of the higher order of instrumental music.

"I never saw a more appreciative audience," he said. "They applauded at the right places, and it was a well-bred applause. How delicate was that little whisper of a clapping during the prelude! It was like the faint rustling of leaves in a summer wind, and so soft that not a note was lost. I have never seen so nearly perfect an audience in any other city in this country."

"Do not we always tell you that Crichton is the most charming city in the world?" laughed Annette Ferrier, who had caught his last remark.

She was passing him, accompanied by Lawrence Gerald. Her face was bright with excitement, and the glistening of her ornaments and her gauzy robe through the black lace mantle that covered her from head to foot gave her the look of a butterfly caught in a web. She had sung brilliantly, dividing the honors of the evening with Mr. Schöninger, and Lawrence, finding her admired by others, was gallant to her himself. On the whole, she was radiant with delight.

"Do not expect too much of my little ones," Miss Pembroke said, recurring to the proposed visit. "Recollect, they are all poor, and they have had but little instruction."

Mr. Schöninger did not tell her that his interest was in her more than in the children, and that he desired to see how she would conduct herself in such circumstances rather than take any note of the persons and acquirements of her pupils. To his mind it was very strange that a lady of her refinement should wish to assume such a work without necessity. His conception of the character of teachers of children was not flattering; he thought a certain vulgarity inseparable from such persons, a positiveness of speech, an oracular tone of voice, and an authoritative air, which the employment conferred on successful teachers, if it did not find them already possessed of. It amused him to fancy these fifty children swarming about Miss Pembroke, like ants about a lily, and it annoyed him to think that she might receive some stain from them.

"I like ladies to be charitable," he said to himself, as he went homeward; "but there are kinds of rough work I would prefer they should delegate to others."

He was thinking of the physical part of the work; Honora of the spiritual.

The school-room was the lower floor of a house at the corner of two streets, and had been used as a shop, the two wide show-windows at either side of the door giving a full light. The upper floors were occupied as a dwelling-house. These windows looked out on a wide and respectable street; but the cross street, beginning fairly enough, deteriorated as it went on toward the Saranac, through the poorest section of the city, and ended in shanties and a dingy wharf where lobsters were perpetually being boiled in large kettles in dingy boats, and crowds of ragged children seemed to be always hanging about, sucking lobster-claws, or on the watch for them. Miss Pembroke's charge were from this class of children, and one of her great difficulties was to keep her school-room from having the fixed odor of a fish-market.

The room was severely clean and spotless, and, but that the side-walls were nearly covered with maps, bookcases, and blackboards, would have been glaring white; for the walls and ceiling were white-washed, the wood-work painted white, and the floor scoured white. Two rows of oak-colored benches extended across the room, the backs toward the windows. The sun shone in unobstructed all the afternoon. Only when it began to touch the last row of benches were the green worsted curtains drawn down far enough to keep it within bounds. Miss Pembroke's chair, table, and piano were in the space opposite the door. On the centre of the wall behind her hung a large crucifix, and on a bracket beneath it a marble Child Jesus stretched out his arms to the little ones. On larger brackets to right and left stood an Immaculate Lady and a S. Joseph. They were thus in the midst of the Holy Family.

These images were constantly surrounded by wreaths, arches, and flowers, so that the end of the room had quite the appearance of a bower; and on all his festivals, and whenever prayers were said, a candle was lighted before the Infant Jesus, who was the patron of their school, and the dearest object of their childish devotion. It was delightful to them to know that they need not always approach their God in the language, to them, often inexplicable, of the mature and the learned, but that they could whisper their ingenuous petitions and praises into the indulgent ear of a holy Child, using their own language, and asking him to be their interpreter. S. Joseph with the lily and the white Lady with her folded hands they worshipped with awe; but they were not afraid of the dear Infant who stretched out his arms to them.

Fifty little faces, all brown, but otherwise various, looked straight at their teacher—blue eyes and brown eyes, black eyes and grey, large eyes and small eyes, bright and dull eyes; and fifty young souls were at that instant occupied with one thought. The first faint thrilling of the silence with martial music was heard, and they were eager to take their places to see the advancing procession. But Miss Pembroke waited still. She had told Mr. Schöninger to come at three o'clock, and it lacked five minutes of that. Just as she was thinking that she would give him two minutes' grace, he appeared.

She went at once to place the children, and he watched with a smile of pleasure and amusement the soldierly precision of the performance. The door was opened wide, and two of the largest boys carried out and placed a bench near the edge of the upper step. At the motion of a finger, the smallest boys filed out and seated themselves on this bench, and an equal number of larger ones stood behind keeping guard. Then the door was closed. At the next silent gesture the smallest of the boys and girls remaining seated themselves in the low, broad ledge of the windows, the next size placed a bench across each window recess for themselves, and the largest again stood behind the benches. Not a word had been spoken, not a child had turned its head, not the slightest noise nor confusion had occurred, and all were perfectly well placed to see.

"What admirable order!" the gentleman exclaimed. "You must have drilled them thoroughly."

"It did not seem to me wasting time," Miss Pembroke replied. "I wish to impress on them the necessity of a decorous and reserved manner in public. They are too prone to presume, and be more than ordinarily lawless on such occasions. Besides, it teaches them self-control."

The two sat back at a little distance. The children began to stretch their heads forward, and whisper exclamations to each other. The air resounded with martial sounds, and a solid front of superb grey horses appeared, well-caparisoned and well-ridden, the full crimped manes tossed over their arching necks. Behind them another and another line pressed, making a living wall.

"I think one feels the influence of such a mass of strong life and courage," Miss Pembroke remarked. "It seems to me it would invigorate a weak person to be near those horses."

Mr. Schöninger had been thinking nearly the same thing. "I have fancied it not unlikely," he said, "that in a bold cavalry charge the horses may help to inspire the riders. The neighborhood of strong animal life is, no doubt, invigorating. It would be fine to stand face to face with a herd of wild cattle, if they could be surely stopped in mid-career, to feel the air stirring with their breaths, and see their eyes glaring through heaps of rough mane. There would be something electrical in it, as there is in a crowd of men; and in both cases it is a merely physical excitement."

"But a crowd of men may be electrified by some great thought," suggested Honora.

"Not unless each had the thought in his single mind before, either latent or conscious. I do not believe that any crowd or excitement, however immense, can put a great thought into a little soul. I can never act with an excited crowd, can hardly look at one with respect." His lip expressed contempt. "It is true that an eloquent leader may have the power of inciting people to some good deed; but even so, they are only a machine which he works. Great thoughts are not vociferous. They float in air, with no sound, unless it is the sound of wings."

Honora checked the words that rose to her lips so suddenly that a deep blush bathed her face. She had been thinking of the crowd that roared "Crucify him!" and had recollected only just in time that they were this man's remote ancestors. But she recollected also that it was to him as original sin was to her, an hereditary, but not a personal, stain, and that baptism could wash both away. Her charity began at home, in the great Christian family, but it stayed not there: it overflowed to all living creatures.

"I have almost an enthusiasm for firemen," she said hastily. "They sometimes perform such wonders, and run such terrible risks for scarcely a reward. Unlike soldiers, they save without destroying anything. How beautiful their engines are!"

The procession was a long and very brilliant one, and the companies had vied with each other in decoration. The engines shone as if made of burnished gold and silver, and wreaths and bouquets of green and flowers decked them.

"These processions, more than any others I have seen, remind me of descriptions of pageants in the old time," remarked Honora, when they had been silent a while. "There is so much show and glitter in them, and the costumes are so gay. How I would like to be transported back to that time for one year!"

Her thoughts had taken a flight between the first and last words, and she was thinking of mediæval religion, with its untroubled faith and its fiery zeal.

Mr. Schöninger did not share her enthusiasm. Those had been bitter days for his people, and perhaps he was thinking so.

"I imagine you would ask to be transported back again before the year was over," he said quietly. "Those times look very picturesque at this distance, with their Rembrandt shading. But there was no more heroism then than there is to-day. I far prefer the hero of to-day. He is a better bred man, not so blatant as the mediæval. It seems to me that the admirers of that time are chiefly the poets, who sacrifice everything to the picturesque; ambitious men, who covet power; and—pardon me!—devout ladies who have been captivated by legends of the saints, and stories of ecclesiastical pageantry, but who take little thought for humanity at large."

"But in those days," said Miss Pembroke, "men had some respect for authority and law, and now they despise it."

"It is the fault of authority if it is despised," Mr. Schöninger replied with decision. "License is the inevitable reaction from tyranny, and is in proportion to it. So long as man retains any vestige of the image of the Creator, tyranny will always, in time, produce rebels. The world is now inebriated with freedom; let those whose abuse of authority created this burning thirst share the opprobrium of its excesses. Some day the equilibrium will be found. We cannot force it; it is a question of growth; but we can help. You are helping it," he added, smiling.

"What you have said sounds just," she replied, thoughtfully; "and I like justice. Perhaps the abuse of legitimate authority is a greater sin than rebellion against it, since the ruler should be wiser and better than the ruled."

They were again silent awhile, the gentleman hesitating whether to speak his thought, and finally speaking.

"Trust one who has studied the world well," he said earnestly. "Instead of being determined not to believe, mankind at this time is longing to believe. But it is determined not to be duped. The sceptic of to-day was made by the hypocrite of yesterday, and half the scepticism is affected, as half the piety was affected. Men are ashamed and afraid to be caught in a trap, and they pretend to disbelieve, when in fact they only doubt. You must now prove to them that truth itself is true, since they have so often been deceived by falsehood in the garb of truth. Let a man or a measure prove to be sincere and honest, and there was never a period in the history of the world when either would win more hearty approval than now. It is true that the childlike trustfulness of mankind is gone, partly from growth, partly because it has been abused; but the nobler powers are maturing. To believe this, you need not give up your faith. I have seen the eyes of one of the most bitter of scoffers fill with tears, and his lips tremble, at a proof of ardent and pious devotion which was not meant to be known. That man was a scoffer because his common sense and sentiment of justice had been insulted by pious pretenders. If he could believe, he would be a saint."

Honora Pembroke's face was troubled. There could be no doubt that the man was honest and sincere in what he said, and that much of what he said was true. But was a Jew to teach a Christian? She could not be sure that his judgment was unbiased, and that one more learned than she would not be able to refute him. She said the best thing she could think of.

"False professors do not make false doctrines. And if the human mind is becoming so adult and strong, it should judge the truth by itself, not by the person who professes it."

"You are quite right," Mr. Schöninger answered. "And that is precisely what people are learning to do. It is also what many, who wish truth to be believed on their own testimony, object to their doing. I repeat"—he glanced with anxiety into her clouded face—"I earnestly assure you that I have not uttered a word which conflicts with your creed, though it is not mine. If I were to-day to become a Catholic, I should only reiterate what I have said on this subject."

The cloud passed from her face, but still she did not speak. She was not gifted in argument, and this subject was complex, and, moreover, a bone of contention.

"It has occurred to me," he said presently, "that the people in Crichton, though they appear to be very liberal, may still have a prejudice against me as a Jew. That would be of no consequence to me in the case of most of them; but there are a few whom I should be sorry to know had such a feeling. The Jews are much misunderstood and slandered, though people have an opportunity of learning their true character if they would. The majority seem to look on every Jew as a probable or possible usurer and dealer in old clothes, and a person capable of joining a rabble at any moment, and pursuing an innocent man to death. I do not, of course, fancy for an instant that you have any sympathy with such people; but I think it possible that you may misunderstand my attitude toward your church. I have not the slightest feeling of enmity against it as long as it does not do violence to me or mine, and while its members are true to the doctrines of peace and charity which they profess. As an artist I admire it. Its theology is the only one which still retains binding and implacable obligations of form, consequently, the only one that can inspire high art. I do not count the old Jews, who are rapidly melting away. I am of the reformed Jews."

"You no longer expect the coming of the Redeemer, nor the return to Jerusalem, nor the triumph of your people?" she asked, looking at him in astonishment.

"We no longer believe in them," he replied.

"What, then, is left you?" she exclaimed.

He smiled slightly. "I expect and long for the redemption of mankind by the spirit of God, and I believe that truth and charity will prevail, though they may not descend from heaven to become incarnate in one form. The Jerusalem my people will return to is the spiritual city of the children of God. Is it not nobler than the pretty myths which have been wasting our energies and dividing the brotherhood of men into petty clans, all hating each other even while they professed that love was their prime virtue?"

"But sacrifice," she said, "what did you mean by that?"

"We had truth and error mingled. The sacrifice was merely a remnant of heathen customs. Peoples who knew nothing of Judaism nor of Christianity had their offerings and sacrifices. The Jews were the chosen people, finer and more spiritual than any other; and to the souls of the chosen among them the Creator revealed his truths. They renounced all heathenish doctrines, and into the few ceremonies and customs they retained they infused a spiritual significance. As the race deteriorated, this spiritual meaning was misinterpreted, and became more and more literal and gross. The people fell into sin, and for this the Creator punished them by taking away their power and pre-eminence, and by scattering them over the face of the earth."

Honora listened intently; and when he had finished, she uttered but one word. Clasping her hands and lifting her eyes, her heart seemed to burst upward like a fountain, tossing that one word into air, "Emmanuel!"

Not the primeval Creator alone, distant and awful, but God with us! Into this vast and terrible void which had been spread out before her, she invoked with passion the incarnate, the lowly, the pitiful, the suffering God.

"We hold that sacrifice is a practice of divine institution retained from our first parents, not an originally heathen custom," she added after a moment, regaining her composure. "You are, however, obliged to give up your belief in it, or be inconsistent. I can see now that if you hold to the sacrifice, you must hold to the Redeemer; if to the Redeemer, then you must believe in Christ, since the time is gone by for expectation; and if you accept the Christ, you must be a Roman Catholic."

"Precisely!" said the Jew. He had felt a momentary electric shock at the passion of her first exclamation, and had seen with emotion the flush and fire in her countenance. Now he smiled at her concise statement of the case.

Miss Pembroke rose, for the last of the procession was passing. The children were called back to their seats in the same order in which they had left them, and a few simple exercises were gone through with at the request of their visitor. All was well calculated to unfold and inform their young minds, but nothing was for show.

Mr. Schöninger blushed for the mistake he had made in fancying that any occupation on earth could be more refined and noble than Miss Pembroke's, when it was conducted in Miss Pembroke's manner. It seemed an occupation for angels. She possessed, evidently, in a preeminent degree, the power to understand and interest children, and she used that power to perfect ends. There was none of that personal familiarity which he had dreaded to see, that promiscuous fondness and caressing by which some women fancy they please children, when, in fact, the finer sort of children are oftener than not displeased with it. A kind touch of her fingers was to them an immense favor, and a kiss would have been remembered for ever. But while they treated her with profound respect, they approached her with perfect confidence and delight. They gathered about her, and gazed into her sympathetic face, bright and transparent with love from a bountiful woman's heart. They looked at her as a sky full of little stars may look into a smooth lake, and each saw its own reflection there, and was happy. In her soul all innocent infantile thoughts and fancies were condensed, as cloud and spray are condensed into water, and not only could she remember the process, but she could reverse it at will, could evaporate a thought or truth too strong for childish intellects, and give it in the form of rosy clouds to wide, grasping, childish imaginations.

Only one exercise failed at first. The children were shy of singing before the stranger. All their voices faltered into silence but one, a rather fair voice of a little boy who was perfectly self-confident, and who evidently expected applause.

Mr. Schöninger took no notice of the child. Its vanity and boldness displeased him. "A shallow thing!" he thought; and said, "I see that I must hire you to sing for me. You like fairy-stories, surely. Well, sing me but one song, and I will tell you the story."

His voice and smile reassured them. Moreover, a gentleman, no matter how splendid he might be, who could tell fairy-stories, could not be very dreadful. They exchanged smiles and glances, took courage, fixed their eyes on their teacher, and sang a pretty hymn in good time and tune, and with good expression.

In their first essay the musician had caught a faltering little silvery note, which had failed as soon as heard. In the second it came out round and clear, a voice of surprising beauty. He marked the singer, and called him forward as soon as the hymn was over. The boy came awkwardly and blushing. He was the ugliest and most dingy pupil there. Only a pair of melancholy, dark, and lustrous eyes, habitually downcast, and a set of perfect teeth, redeemed the face from being disagreeable. Through those eyes looked a winged soul that did not recognize itself, still less expect recognition from others, but felt only the vague weight and sadness of an uncongenial life. He gave the impression of a beautiful bird whose every plume is so laden with mire it cannot fly.

"You have a good voice, and should learn how to sing," Mr. Schöninger said to him kindly. "I will teach you, if Miss Pembroke approves, and will make the arrangements. Of course it will cost you nothing."

"He needs encouragement," the musician remarked when the boy had returned to his seat; "and he needs to have his position defined before the others. Do you not perceive that they despise him? He has the voice of an angel, and he looks remarkable. And now for my story."

The children's eyes sparkled with anticipation, and the teacher leaned smilingly to listen. Let us listen also, and become better acquainted with Mr. Schöninger.

"Once upon a time, there was a great wrangle in a certain street," the story-teller began. "Five little boys and girls were quarreling, and two dogs were barking. The neighbors put their heads out their windows, and the policeman stopped. Mrs. Blake put her two forefingers in her two ears, for the noise was near her step, and the five boys and girls were all telling her together what the matter was, and whose fault it was. Then the mothers called their children home, and two went into Mrs. Blake's, for they were hers. This was the story she drew from them: Anne Blake had said a cross word to one of the others, that other had made a face at the next, the third had slapped the fourth, and it went round the circle. So it seemed that Anne started the whole by speaking a cross word.

"'Since you are sorry, I will talk no more to you about it,' her mother said. 'But I wish you to go up to your chamber and sit alone a little while, and think over a Chinese proverb which is written on this slip of paper. You are ten years old, and must begin to think.'

"Anne went slowly up-stairs to her chamber, shut the door after her, and sat down in a little cushioned chair by the window to read her proverb. Its being Chinese did not prevent it from being good. This is what she read: 'A word once spoken, a coach and six cannot bring it back again.'

"The day was warm, and the curtain at the window swung with a lulling motion, giving glimpses of blue sky with white clouds sailing over, and, below, of the top of a grape-vine full of leaves and small green grapes.

"Anne gazed at the sky till it made her feel sleepy—gazing at bright things does make one sleepy—then she gazed at the grape-vine. Presently, she saw something in this vine that looked like a tiny ladder, hidden among the leaves. It looked so much like a ladder that she leaned forward and pulled the curtain aside, to see more plainly. Sure enough! It was the loveliest ladder, or stairway, winding down and down. Its steps were dark, like vine branches, and there was a railing at each side of twigs and tendrils, and it wound down and down, in sight and out of sight. And, more wonderful still, it was no longer a yard, with the city about, she saw, but a great vine covering all the window, and glimpses of a moonlighted forest down below.

"'I must go down,' says Anne; and so down she went on the beautiful stairs.

"Lights and shades fluttered over her, and the leaves clapped together, and little tendrils caught at her dress in play. And by-and-by she stepped on to the brightest greensward that could be, full of blue and white violets. The trees arched over her, the air was sweet, and there was a smooth pond near by. The water was so very smooth that she would never have known it was water if the banks had not turned the wrong way in it, and the trees grown down instead of up. A little white boat, too, had another little white boat under it, the two keel to keel. Swans ran down the shore as she looked, and splashed into the water, dipping their heads under, and making the whole surface so full of motion that the upside-down trees and banks and boat disappeared. Words cannot describe how beautiful the place was. There was every kind of flower, and hosts of birds, and the moonlight was so bright that all could be distinctly seen. There were also a great many splendid moths that looked like flowers flying about, and flapping their petals.

"But the most beautiful part was that everything seemed to breathe of peace and love. The birds sang and cooed to each other, the blossoms leaned cheek to cheek, the water laughed at the stones it ran over, and the wet stones smiled back, the gray old rocks held tenderly the flowers and mosses that grew in their hollows, and the mosses and flowers held on to the rocks with their tiny roots, like little children clinging to old people who are fond of them.

"'How beautiful it is to see them so loving,' Anne said. 'They are a sort of people, too; for they look alive. I wish other folks would be as good. I'm sure I try; but then somebody always comes along and says something ugly; and then, of course, I can't help being ugly back again.'

"'Oh! yes, you can,' said a sweet voice close by.

"Anne looked and saw a charming little lady standing beside her. She was so beautiful that words cannot describe her, and she carried a pink petunia for a parasol to preserve her complexion. For she was exquisitely fair, and the moonlight was really very bright.

"'Oh! yes, you can,' she repeated when Anne looked at her. 'You can give a pleasant answer, and then people will stop being ugly.'

"'I could do it if everybody else would,' Anne said. 'The beginning is the trouble. How nice it would be if there were a king over all the world, and he would say, Now, after I have counted three, all of you stop being cross, and begin to love each other, and keep on loving a whole hour. If you don't, I'll cut your heads off!'

"'That would not be love; it would be a make-believe to save their heads,' the little lady answered. 'But there is such a king, and he has commanded us to love each other, and....'

"Here she was interrupted by a loud flapping of wings and a terrible croaking, and a great black bird, something like a bat, flew by; and wherever it struck its wings other bats flew out, and the air grew dark with them, and all the beautiful forest was changed. The stones tried to stop the brook, and the brook tried to upset the stones; the leaves struck each other, the swans and little birds began to pull each other's feathers out. All was discord.

"And then there was a rolling of wheels, and a trampling of hoofs, and a great yellow coach appeared drawn by six horses covered with foam. The coachman looked as if he were driving for his life, and there was a head thrust from each window of the coach, telling him to drive faster. All the heads wore caps like dish-covers, and had long braids of hair hanging down their necks, though they were men; and their eyes slanted down toward their noses, instead of going straight across their faces.

"'We are trying to catch a wicked word that is ruining all the place,' they said, 'but we cannot. A wicked word has wings.'

"'So has a kind word wings,' said the little lady. 'Send a kind word after the cross one, and perhaps it may bring it back.'

"'You are right, madam,' said one of the Chinamen; and he nodded his head till the long braid at the back of it wagged to and fro. And he kept on nodding so queerly that Anne felt obliged to nod too, and so he nodded, and she nodded, till he nodded his head off. And then she nodded her head off—no, not quite off; but she nodded so that she waked herself up. For she had been dreaming.

"Then she jumped up and ran down-stairs and out doors as fast as her feet would carry her. And in ten minutes she was back again, all out of breath, and full of excitement. 'Mother,' she said, 'a coach and six can't do it, but a kind word can. I told Jane I was sorry, and she told—and we all told each other that we were sorry, and then we were glad.' The words were rather mixed up, but the meaning was all right."

"I am truly grateful to you for allowing me to come this afternoon," Mr. Schöninger said on taking leave. "My visit has been to me like a drop of cold water to one in a fever, or like the sound of David's harp to Saul. I am refreshed."

He looked both sad and pleased. "I was about to thank you for coming," Honora answered. "You have given me and the children much pleasure."

And so, with a friendly salutation, they separated.

She mused a moment. "If he could believe in the sacrifice, all would follow," she thought.

Then she called the children to their prayers, but first said a word to them.

"There is something, my dear children, that I want very much," she said. "Oh! I long for it. I shall be unhappy if I do not have it. And I want all of you to ask the Infant Jesus to give it to me for his dear mother's sake. Ask with all your hearts. I will tell him what I wish for."

Her wish was that Mr. Schöninger might believe that sacrifice was a divine revelation, not a heathenish custom.

"That is all he needs from me," she thought. "I trust him. If he has that to begin with, he will himself ask God for the rest."

ITALIAN CONFISCATION LAWS.

REVIEWED FROM AN AMERICAN STAND-POINT.

BY A LAWYER.

"No state shall pass any ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts."[2]

This is indeed a moral law, and has been recognized as such by all civilized nations.

Justice Curtis, in his Life of Webster (vol. i., chap. 7, p. 165) thus notices the decision in the Supreme Court which first gave the scope and meaning of this clause in regard to charters of private corporations:

"The framers of the Constitution of the United States, moved chiefly by the mischiefs created by the preceding legislation of the states, which had made serious encroachments on the rights of property, inserted a clause in that instrument which declared that 'no state shall pass any ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts.' The first branch of this clause had always been understood to relate to criminal legislation, the second to legislation affecting civil rights. But before the case of Dartmouth College v. Woodward occurred, there had been no judicial decisions respecting the meaning and scope of the restraint in regard to contracts, excepting that it had more than once been determined by the Supreme Court of the United States that a grant of lands made by a state is a contract within the protection of this provision, and is, therefore, irrevocable. The decisions, however, could go but little way toward the solution of the questions involved in the case of the college. They did, indeed, establish the principle that contracts of the state itself are beyond the reach of subsequent legislation equally with contracts between individuals, and that there are grants of a state that are contracts. But this college stood upon a charter granted by the crown of England before the American Revolution. Was the state of New Hampshire—a sovereign in all respects after the Revolution, and remaining one after the federal constitution, excepting in those respects in which it had subjected its sovereignty to the restraints of that instrument—bound by the contracts of the English crown? Is the grant of a charter of incorporation a contract between the sovereign power and those on whom the charter is bestowed? If an act of incorporation is a contract, is it so in any case but that of a private corporation? Was this college, which was an institution of learning, established for the promotion of education, a private corporation, or was it one of those instruments of government which are at all times under the control and subject to the direction of the legislative power? All these questions were involved in the inquiry, whether the legislative power of the state had been so restrained by the constitution of the United States that it could not alter the charter of this institution, against the will of the trustees, without impairing the obligation of a contract. If this inquiry were to receive an affirmative answer, the constitutional jurisprudence of the United States would embrace a principle of the utmost importance to every similar institution of learning, and to every incorporation then existing, or thereafter to exist, not belonging to the machinery of government as a political instrument....

"On the conclusion of the argument the Chief-Justice (Marshall) intimated that a decision was not to be expected until the next term. It was made in February, 1819, fully confirming the grounds on which Mr. Webster had placed the cause. From this decision, the principle in our constitutional jurisprudence which regards a charter of a private corporation as a contract, and places it under the protection of the Constitution of the United States, takes its date."

We add a passage from Mr. Webster's speech in this case, as quoted by the same author from a letter of Prof. Goodrich, of Yale College, to Rufus Choate:

"This, sir, is my case. It is the case not merely of that humble institution; it is the case of every college in our land. It is more. It is the case of every eleemosynary institution throughout our country—of all those great charities founded by the piety of our ancestors to alleviate human misery and scatter blessings along the pathway of life. It is more! It is, in some sense, the case of every man among us who has property of which he may be stripped, for the question is simply this: Shall our state legislatures be allowed to take that which is not their own, to turn it from its original use, and apply it to such ends or purposes as they in their discretion shall see fit?"

The charitable and religious institutions of Italy and the States of the Church were founded under guarantees as strong at least as those which assured the perpetuity of Dartmouth College, and were entitled to as much immunity from confiscation and intrusion for all coming time.

When a law is in its nature a contract, and absolute rights have vested under that contract, a repeal of the law cannot divest those rights, nor annihilate or impair a title acquired under the law. A grant is a contract according to the meaning given to the word by jurists. A grant is a contract executed, and a party is always estopped by his own grant. A party cannot pronounce his own act or deed invalid, whatever cause may be assigned for its invalidity, and though that party be the legislature of a state. A grant amounts to an extinguishment of the right of the grantor, and implies a contract not to reassert that right. A grant from a state should be as much protected as a grant from one individual to another; therefore, a state is as much inhibited from impairing its own contracts, or a contract to which it is a party, as it is from impairing the obligation of contracts between two individuals. A grant once made by the ruling or competent power, creates an indefeasible and irrevocable title. There is no authority or principle which could support the doctrine that such a grant was revocable in its own nature, and held only durante bene placito. For no ruling power, be it kingly, legislative, or otherwise, can repeal a law or grant creating a corporate body, or confirming to them property already acquired under the faith of previous laws or edicts, and by such repeal vest the property in others without the consent or default of the corporators. Such a procedure would be repugnant to the principles of natural justice. A society or order of religious people holding property in common or in solido, may be considered in the character of a private eleemosynary institution endowed with a capacity to take property for objects unconnected with government: it receives gifts or devises, and other private donations bestowed by individuals on the faith of its perpetuity and usefulness—such a corporation not being invested with any political power whatever, or partaking in any degree in the administration of civil government. It is merely an institution or private corporation for general charity. It is established under a charter, which was a contract, to which the donors, the trustees of the corporation, and the governing power were the original parties, and it was granted for a valuable consideration—for the security and disposition of the property necessary for the existence of the community, order, or society.

The legal interest, in every such literary and charitable institution, is in trustees, and to be asserted by them, which they claim or defend on behalf of the society or community for the object of religion, charity, or education, for which they were originally created, and the private donations made. Contracts of this kind, creating such charitable or educational institutions, should be at all times protected by the state, and their rights maintained by the courts administered by a pure and just judiciary. Conquests or revolutions cannot change the rights acquired under such contracts, and no state should by any act transfer the rights of property theretofore acquired, nor transfer from the trustees appointed according to the will of the founders or donors. The will of the state should not be substituted for the will of the donors, or convert an institution, moulded according to the will of its founders, and placed under the control of people of their own selection, into government property. Such action is of course subversive of the original compact on the faith of which the donors invested their gifts, donations, or devises, and is, therefore, repugnant to every idea of honesty and good morals, for enforcing which governments are instituted.

A grant to a private trustee, for the benefit of a particular cestui que trust, or for any special, private, or public charity, cannot be the less a contract because the trustee takes nothing for his own benefit. Nor does a private donation vested in a trustee for objects of a general nature thereby become a public trust, which a government may at its pleasure take from the trustee. A government cannot even revoke a grant of its own funds, when given to a corporation or private person for special uses. It has no other remaining authority but what is judicial to enforce the proper administration of the trust. Nor is such a grant less a contract though no beneficial interest accrues to the possessor. All incorporeal hereditaments, as immunities, dignities, offices, and franchises, are rights deemed valuable in law, and whenever they are the subject of contract or grant they should be held as legal estates. They are held as powers coupled with interests, and consequently are vested rights, and of which the possessors should not be divested by any legislative body without their consent.

Chief-Justice Marshall (in U. S. v. Percheman, 7 Peters 86) says: It is unusual, even in cases of conquest, for the conqueror to do more than to displace the sovereign and assume dominion over the country; and that the modern usage of nations, which has become law, would be violated; that sense of justice and right which is acknowledged and felt by the whole civilized world, would be outraged if private property should be generally confiscated and private rights annulled.

Justice Sprague (Amy Warwick, 2 Sprague 150) says: Confiscations of property, not for any use that has been made of it, which go not against an offending thing, but are inflicted for the personal delinquency of the owner, are punitive, and punishment should be inflicted only upon due conviction of personal guilt.

The communities whose rights are now invaded and whose property is confiscated, ought to be protected under the law of nations. For, by this law is understood that code of public instruction which defines the rights and prescribes the duties of nations in their intercourse with each other. The faithful observance of this law is essential to national character and the happiness of mankind. According to Montesquieu, it is founded on the principle that different nations ought to do each other as much good in peace, and as little harm in war, as possible. The most useful and practical part of the law of nations is instituted or positive law, founded on usage, consent, and agreement. It is impossible to separate this law from natural jurisprudence, or to consider that it does not derive much of its force and dignity from the same principle of right reason, the same views of the nature and constitution of man, and the same sanction of divine revelation, as those from which the science of morality is deduced. There is a natural and a positive law of nations. By the former, every state in its relations with other states is bound to conduct itself with justice, good faith, and benevolence; and this application of the law of nature has been called by Vattel the necessary law of nations, because nations are bound by the law of nature to observe it; and it is termed by others the internal law of nations, because it is obligatory upon them in point of conscience.

That eminent jurist, Chancellor Kent, says that the science of public law should not be separated from that of ethics, nor encourage the dangerous suggestion that governments are not strictly bound by the obligations of truth, justice, and humanity in relation to other powers, as they are in the management of their own local concerns. States or bodies politic are to be considered as moral persons, having a public will, capable and free to do right and wrong, inasmuch as they are collections of individuals, each of whom carries with him into the service of the community the same binding law of morality and religion which ought to control his conduct in private life.

The law of nations consists of general principles of right and justice, equally suitable to the government of individuals in a state of natural equality and to the relations and conduct of nations; the conduct of nations should be governed by principles fairly to be deduced from the rights and duties of nations and the nature of moral obligation; and we have the authority of lawyers of antiquity, and of some of the first masters in the modern school of public law, for placing the moral obligations of nations and of individuals on similar grounds, and for considering individual and national morality as parts of one and the same science.

The law of nations, as far as it is founded upon the principles of natural law, is equally binding in every age, and upon all mankind.

The law of nature, by the obligations of which individuals and states are bound, is identical with the will of God, and that will is ascertained by consulting divine revelation, where that is declaratory, or by the application of human reason where revelation is silent. Christianity is an authoritative publication of natural religion, and it is from the sanction which revelation gives to natural law that we must expect respect to be paid to justice between nations. Christianity reveals to us a general system of morality, but the application to the details of practice is often left to be discovered by human reason.

Justice is of perpetual obligation, and is essential to the well-being of every society. The great commonwealth of nations stands in need of law, and observance of faith, and the practice of justice.

If the question was one to be decided by the civil courts according to the American rules concerning rights to property held by ecclesiastical bodies, the points involved might be presented as follows:

1. Where the property which is the subject of controversy is, by the express terms of the deed or will of the donor or other instrument under which it is held, devoted to the teaching, support, or spread of a specific form of religious doctrine and belief.

2. Where the property is held by a religious congregation, which by the nature of its organization is strictly independent of other ecclesiastical associations, and, so far as church government is concerned, owes no fealty or obligation to any higher authority.

3. The third is where the religious congregation or ecclesiastical body holding the property is but a subordinate member of some general church organization in which there are superior ecclesiastical tribunals with a general and ultimate power of control, more or less complete, in some supreme judicatory over the whole membership of that general organization.

Respecting the first of these classes, it does not admit of a rational doubt that an individual or an association of individuals may dedicate property by way of trust to the purpose of sustaining, supporting, and propagating definite religious doctrines or principles, provided that in doing so they violate no law of morality, and give to the instrument by which their purpose is evidenced the formalities which the law requires.

And it is then the duty of a court of law, in a case properly brought before it, to see that the property so dedicated is not diverted from the trust which is thus attached to its use. So long as there are persons qualified within the meaning of the original dedication, and who are also willing to teach the doctrines or principles prescribed in the act of dedication, and so long as there is any one so interested in the execution of the trust as to have a standing in court, it must be that they can prevent the diversion of the property or fund to other and different uses.

This is the general doctrine of courts of equity as to charities, and it is also applicable to ecclesiastical matters.

In such case, where the trust is confided to a religious congregation or church government, it is not in the power of the majority of that congregation, however preponderant by reason of a change of views on religion, to carry the property so confided to them to the support of new and conflicting doctrine.

A pious man building and dedicating a house of worship to the sole and exclusive use of those who believe in the doctrines of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, and placing it under the control of those who at the time held the same belief, has a right to expect that the law will prevent that property from being used for any other purpose whatsoever. The law should throw its protection around the trust, and it is the duty of courts of law to enforce a trust clearly defined, and to inquire whether the party accused of violating the trust is using the property so dedicated as to defeat the declared objects of the trust. In such cases, the right to the use of the property must be determined by the ordinary principles which govern voluntary associations.

The same rule prevails as to the class of cases coming within the view of the third proposition, as to property acquired in any of the usual modes for the general use of a religious congregation which is itself part of a larger and general organization, with which it is connected by religious views and ecclesiastical government, and which appeals to the courts to determine the right to the use of the property so acquired. That is, where property has been purchased for the use of the congregation, and so long as any such body can be ascertained to be of that congregation, and is under its control and bound by its orders and judgments, or its regular and legitimate successor, it is entitled to the use of the property.

In this class of cases, the rule of action which governs the civil courts of the United States, as enunciated by the highest legal tribunal, the Supreme Court, is founded upon a broad and sound view of the relations of church and state, and is, that wherever questions of faith or of discipline, or ecclesiastical rule, custom, or law, have been decided by the highest of these church judicatories to which the matter has been carried, the legal tribunals must accept such decisions as final, and as binding on them in their application to the case before them.[3]

In delivering the opinion of the court in that case, the learned Mr. Justice Miller said: