Chapter III: Part 3

A rhythmical dispute between two children, entitled a "Sabbath Dialogue," brings to our mind a similar farce at Ferrara, which we have formerly described. In this lively piece of absurdity, the naughty boy invites the good one to play instead of going to church, and, waxing warm as the other proves intractable, at length becomes absolutely abusive on finding he is not to prevail.

Once again. Behold a class of children with the picture of a sheep before them--to be taught, one would have supposed, the natural history of that animal, and to learn something about the material of which their little flannel petticoats and worsted stockings are made; when lo! in place of this, they are informed that "though their sins are red as crimson, they shall be as _wool_!!" If it were necessary to use any interjection here, surely a loud ovine _bah!_ would be the most appropriate and natural. But _revenons à nos moutons_, for presently afterwards occurs this question--"What does the Bible tell us about wool?" Answer: "Gideon wrung a fleece!" Bah! again, for what other _commentary_ can be made on such _instruction_ as this? Why, Jason filched one; and the Lord Chancellor sits upon a woolsack; and either of these answers would convey as much useful knowledge to a child's mind, though they are not to be met with in the Bible.

[E] Notwithstanding their number, we would suggest one more, the
"corrective alphabet," in which all the symbols should stand
representative for objects agreeable to babes, and, _ex._ _gr._, after
their innocent lips have been made to falter out Herod's formidable
name, we would point to ours, where--

_H_ stands for honey, so sweet and so good.

These unfortunate babes are to know a little of every thing: so, after going through _versified_ weights and measures--arithmetic, including the higher branches--geometry--we hardly know what is _omitted_ in this most comprehensive miscellany--they arrive at philosophy, and learn a great deal to the tune of "Miss Bailley." We give one stanza out of many, as an example:--

"The wondrous globe on which we live,
Is close surrounded every where
By something quite invisible,
And callèd _atmospheric air_!

This air is fluid, light and thin,
And formed of _gases_ well _combined_!
It carries sound and odour well,
But put in motion it is _wind_!"

At the end of each verse, the infant chorus repeats with enthusiasm, not "Poor Miss Bailley! unfortunate Miss Bailley!" &c., but--

"Oh how curious,--wonderfully curious,
The _laws of nature_ are indeed
Most wonderfully curious!"

The geography is as good as the physics:--

"A _channel_ is a passage wide
That flows from sea to sea;
When narrow it is call'd a _strait_,--
_Thanks to Geography_!"

. . . . .

"When wise and older I am grown,
I'll try and tell you more,
But Teacher says _enough is known_
An infant's mind to _store_!"

No doubt of it! enough and to spare! This is a fine specimen of the class of truths called _unquestionable_. There is, moreover, a pleasing _enjouement_ about this last line, which recommends it to our regard. The teacher seems to be expostulating with her young charge, and saying, "My dear little four-year-old, eager for instruction beyond your years, but fearful of _learning up_ every thing at school,--don't be frightened; the world will always find science sufficient to employ all good little boys like you." But though this _truth_ be unquestionable, we doubt whether the line which conveys it be genuine; and rather fancy, should the original manuscript turn up, it would be found to run--

"_Enough's enough_ an infant's mind to store!"

which, though somewhat harsh to the ear, conveys an excellent meaning. Should this be thought to make the verse too rugged, we have yet a second various reading to propose, and that is simply to change the last word into _bore_, by which means the easy flow of the verse is preserved, and the _significatio prœgnans_ of the original, though somewhat modified, is maintained.

Notwithstanding these blemishes--which, after our strictures on foreign classes, we felt bound to point out--our English schools are very far superior to the Italian for the same rank. With us, the attention of government and of the public is roused, and directed to their improvement; laymen join with the clergy in forwarding the same scheme; great part of the tuition devolves upon females--and who so fitted as woman to form the mind at an early age? It is no small advantage, too, that authoresses of talent and judgment should have devoted their time to the composition of exclusively moral and religious tales and histories for the young. Lastly, with us, there is none of that masquerading and display, which we reprobate as forming so prominent a part in all Italian tuition. In these schools, women are excluded from their natural office of teaching; there are no books adapted to infant minds; the whole business is vested in the hands of the priests; and they, in strict compliance with the spirit of their Church, train the pupils in passive obedience to authority, and teach them very little besides. We fear it will be long before any revolution can reach these seminaries. The sense of personal importance attaching--not only to the children themselves, but to their parents--from these contemptible yearly exhibitions, added to the interested motives which induce the Church to foster such vanity, would render any considerable alteration for the better extremely difficult, even were the evil more generally _felt_ than we fear it is likely to be under the present system of things. We state this opinion with regret; for what is the tendency of such education? Can it inculcate that real humility, not abasement of mind, which should characterise the true disciples of our blessed Saviour? Nay, must it not rather, by holding out, as it does, a premium to natural quickness and a superficial acquaintance with the dogmas of theology, tend to foster pride and selfishness--those monster evils which it is the prime object of religion to eradicate--whilst the heart remains untouched and the moral sense unexercised? and will not the poor children, who are its victims, learn to prize a few dry leaves from the Tree of Knowledge, beyond the fair fruit of the Tree of Life?

LA CARA VITA.

"Mais où sont les vertus qui dementent les tiennes?
Pour éclipser ton jour quel nouveau jour parait?
Toi qui les remplaças,[F] qui te remplacerait?"

[F] (Les faux dieux.)

DE LAMARTINE, _Harmonies, Hymne au Christ_.

The Cara Vita is a small church situated in the Corso, and not possessing within itself any thing to attract the stranger's particular attention. It is interesting, however, from the solemn services which take place there every Friday in Lent. On these occasions, after an exciting harangue from the officiating priest, the lights are extinguished, knotted scourges are handed round by the sacristan, and each individual of the congregation takes one and begins to flagellate himself. We have been told--for we were never present at these exhibitions--that the noise and excitement are terrible--every penitent seeking to ease his inner at the expense of his outer man, and proportioning the amount of his physical suffering to that of the moral evil which it is intended to counteract. But all the ceremonies in the Cara Vita are not of this character; and the same friend who described the above, informed us that the preaching there was often eloquent, and the music always fine; so, when we read in the _Diario di Roma_, that at twelve o'clock on Good Friday there was to be a solemn _funzione_, or Service in commemoration of our Saviour's Passion, and that in all probability the church would be crowded, we repaired thither on that day an hour before the time mentioned in the paper, in order to secure a place. Doubtful of the propriety of witnessing, as a pageant, a representation of the most awful and affecting scene that the mind of man can contemplate, yet fearing, from some experience in Roman ceremonies, that our visit might issue merely in _that_, we lingered some time about the porch; then, pushing aside the heavy curtain, irresolutely entered; and what a contrast presented itself between the two sides of that matted door! It seemed the portal between life and death: light, noise, confusion, reigned without; within, all was dark, solemn, still. The ear that had been stunned by the babel of the streets, was startled at the unwonted calm; and the eye, dazzled by the splendour of the meridian sun upon the pavement, experienced a temporary blindness, and required some time before it could accommodate its powers to the obscurity of the interior. By degrees, however, it was, apparent that the church, notwithstanding the voiceless quiet which prevailed, was full. The whole assembly sat as if spell-bound; not a whisper was to be heard; an awful curiosity tied every tongue. The business and pleasures of life were forgotten; the sexes exchanged no furtive glances; men and women, alike unobservant of their neighbours, counted their beads and bent their eyes upon the ground; while each new comer, awed by the deep silence, entered with cautious tread, and took his seat noiselessly. When our eyes had become somewhat familiarised with the artificial light, they were attracted to two elevated extempore side-boxes, brilliantly illuminated with wax, and filled with choristers in full costume. Between them was stretched a voluminous curtain, not so opaque but that a number of tapers might be seen faintly glimmering through it; and before this curtain a dark temporary stage was erected. The, religious calm that prevailed around was at length gently broken by some soft and plaintive notes, proceeding from the white-robed choir. In a few minutes these died away again upon the ear, and a figure, suddenly rising from the stage, exclaimed in a voice of strenuous emotion--"Once again, ye faithful ones! ye are assembled here to accompany me to Calvary! Yes! another Good Friday has come round, another anniversary of the day announced by God himself for man's deliverance from the wages of his sin; this is the great day when typical sacrifice was done away with, and our blessed Lord made of 'himself a full and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the' _faithful_. But in order to triumph, my brethren, we must conquer--to conquer we must contend; there is no warfare without wounds, and our Saviour, while in the flesh, must partake of our infirmities: he must be 'the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,' before he can 'lead captivity captive, and receive gifts' _for his holy Church_; the ransom of his faithful followers must be at the expense of his own blood. He bled, as you know, on Good Friday; and accordingly, we are met here--not to celebrate a triumph, but to learn humility, patience, and forgiveness of injuries at the foot of the cross, in order that _we_, like our great Head, may become perfect _through suffering_. Permit me, then, to ask you, with the Psalmist, 'Are your hearts set upon righteousness, O ye congregation?' and are your minds prepared to follow the Lord to Calvary? Have you, for instance, been studying lately his sufferings at _the different stations of the cross_? have you been thinking at all upon his passion? thinking what it must have been to be hooted at, spit upon, reviled, buffeted, and friendless upon earth? If not, ponder well these things now; _now_, at _this moment_; for are we not arrived at the most sacred _hour_ of this most sacred but sad and solemn day? About this hour was the Saviour condemned by his unjust judge, delivered up to the rabble to be crucified. Go back in your minds to that moment; see him crowned with thorns, and bearing the cross upon his shoulder, till, lo! he faints under its weight, and his persecutors compel a stranger to carry it to the fatal spot. Then see him toiling onward, surrounded by his deadly enemies; his chosen friends have forsaken him and fled! a few women follow him afar off, bewailing his fate; he turns and speaks; listen to his words--'Daughters of Jerusalem! weep not for me, but weep for yourselves and _for your children_!' Well might the merciful Saviour speak thus, when he had just heard the mad shout of the multitude, 'his blood be upon us and _upon our children_.' The crowd approaches Golgotha! they halt to rear the fatal tree; methinks I hear the exulting outcries of his vindictive murderers as they fix it in the ground!" Here the curtain drawn between the preacher and the back of the stage fell, revealing three wooden crucifixes lit up by a lurid red light from above. The effect was startling, and produced a shudder of horror throughout the whole auditory. After a breathless pause, the preacher, turning towards the cross, exclaimed, "What! are we too late for the beginning of this tragedy! Is the Redeemer of mankind already nailed to the cross? Oh, cruel and fiendlike man, is this your triumph! surely he who came to save will reject you now! Such might be our feelings, but they were not Christ's. No, my brethren, far from it. Oh, let us contemplate, for our own future guidance, the behaviour of Jesus to his murderers, not _after_ but at the _moment_ of his extreme torture; and may the Holy Spirit give us grace to profit by the exercise. Look on your crucified Redeemer writhing and maddened with suffering; and listen to the first words uttered in the depth of his agony: he imprecates no curse upon these guilty men, but exclaims, 'Father, forgive them; they know not what they do!' _Caro Jesu!_" Here there was much emotion both in the preacher and in the congregation; when it had subsided, he added persuasively, "You have heard Christ pray that his _murderers_ may be forgiven, and shall you hesitate to forgive one another?" Then, taking the words of our Saviour for a text, he delivered a short animated sermon upon the forgiveness of injuries; after which came a prayer for grace to perform this duty; the pause which succeeded being filled with music and chanting. Then again the dark form of the preacher rose up. "What, my brethren! did not Christ pass _three hours_ in his agony, and shall we leave him in the midst? He has still more gracious words in store. My dear brethren and fellow sinners, now hear his dying address to the penitent thief, 'Verily I say unto thee, to-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise!' _Ladro felice!_ but was _he_ then _predestinated_ to salvation, and his companion to be the victim of God's wrath? _Niente, niente_; believe, not a word of this false and heretical creed." Then followed a second discourse, with a diatribe against Calvin (who deserved it!) and _all_ heretics (who might not deserve it), with an anathema against heresy in general, and a prayer for the pardon and acceptance of the true Catholic, _id est_ ROMAN, Church. In like manner the preacher continued to set before his hearers all the circumstances of our Saviour's passion; pronouncing a short discourse upon every sentence uttered by him in his agony. Each sermonette was succeeded by prayer; and that by an interlude of music and chanting, which enabled him to recover himself, and proceed with undiminished energy during a three hours' service. We had listened attentively, not always agreeing with his doctrine, but without any great shock to our Protestant principles, when, in conclusion, he exclaimed, "Now, brethren, before we disperse, let us do homage to the blessed Virgin, and sympathise with the afflicted and inconsolable Mother of our Lord. Think of her sufferings to-day; think and weep over them; and forget not the worship due to her holy name; whom Christ honoured, shall not we honour too? Sons of the blessed Virgin! is not your brother Christ her son also? make her then your friend; propitiate her, in order to obtain pardon from him! Let us all, then, fall down upon our knees before the _Indolorata_." A long prayer to the Madonna followed, then a hymn in her honour; and after a last glorious outburst of the organ, accompanying the ardent and sustained Hallelujahs of both choir and congregation, the curtain falls, the doors are thrown open, daylight rushes in through the no longer darkened windows; and presently the thronged and noisy Corso has absorbed the last member of the much moved, slowly dispersing crowd.

A heartfelt and affecting ceremony was that we had just witnessed; every body had shed tears, and there had been evidently great _at_trition, and probably some _con_trition also. The strong appeals of the priest had _told_, though they were not legitimate; for what could be less so than, in the end, his misdirecting the thoughts from the _true_ object of worship, to _her_, who was, after all, but a mere mortal like ourselves?

Yet devotional feelings had been called forth, and in this it was unlike, and surely better than, the ordinary cold, formal, glittering, shifting pantomimic service of Te-Deums, and high masses, which, instead of "filling the hungry with good things," send all "empty away;" or worse, _satisfied_ with "that which is not bread." Could piety really be appealed to through the senses, then might the ceremonies of the Romish Church hope to reach it, captivating as they are to most of them. The ear is pleased with exquisite music; the eye is dazzled with pictures, processions, scenic representations, glittering colours, gorgeous robes, rich laces, and embroidery; and even the nostril is propitiated by the grateful odour of frankincense; but the only address to the heart and intellect is a barbarous Latin prayer, unintelligible (were it to be heard) to most of the congregation, and rendered so to all by the mode in which it is gone through. On returning from such exhibitions as these, we feel more forcibly than ever, how much reason we have to thank those pious compilers of our expurgated English prayer-book, who, renouncing an _unknown tongue_, and rejecting all unscriptural interpolations, drew from the rich stores of Rome herself, and from the primitive Church, an almost faultless Liturgy,[G] where every desire of the human heart is anticipated, and every expression so carefully weighed, that not an unbecoming phrase can be found in it.

[G] "We were not" (says Jeremy Taylor) "like women and children when
they are affrighted with fire in their clothes; we shook off the coal,
indeed, but not our garments; lest we should expose our Church to that
nakedness which the excellent men of our sister Churches complained to
be among themselves."

It is impossible for any one who has been much in Roman Catholic countries, to avoid drawing comparisons between the two services; and especially at this time, when many of our countrymen are halting between two opinions, and almost persuading themselves that there was no need of a Reformation, it behoves those not under the influence of

"That dark lanthorn of the Spirit
Which none see by but those that bear it;"

nor yet led away

"By crosses, relics, crucifixes,
Beads, pictures, rosaries, and pyxes;
Those tools for working out salvation
By mere _mechanic_ operation,"

to protest against the return of Popery to this land, to the surrender of our consciences and our Bibles again into the hands of a fellow sinner.[H] "Quis custodet custodem?"--who shall watch our watcher?--was a question that men had been asking themselves for many years in England, but hitherto without result; till our pious Reformers, addressing themselves to the study of the Scriptures, received the sword of the Spirit, with which they were enabled to wage successful war against that wily serpent, coiled now for centuries round the Church of Christ, and waiting but a little further _development_ to crush her in his inextricable folds. Alike unallured by concessions and unterrified by threats, they boldly denounced the _heretical_ usurpation of Rome; opposing an honest conscience, and Christ the only mediator, to the caprice of councils, and the false unity of a pseudo-infallible head;[I] refusing to purchase their lives by rendering homage to any Phalaris of the Triple Crown.

[H] Bellarmine asserts (and who but a heretic shall dispute it with
him?) that men are bound so far to submit their consciences to the
Pope, as even to believe _virtue_ to be _bad_ and _vice_ to be _good_,
if it shall please his Holiness to say so. (BELLAR. _de Rom. Pontif_,
lib. iv. cap. v.) When things came to this pass, were we not justified
in the insertion of that rough deprecatory clause that stood in our
Litany--"From the tyranny of the Bishop of Rome, and all his
detestable enormities, Good Lord deliver us!"

[I] "We must seek to enter into the real divine unity; if not, the
_pseudo_ unity to which Mr Newman would bring us back will be
attempted once more among us; only to be followed, when its
hollowness, its nothingness, its implicit infidelity, is laid bare, by
an explicit infidelity, an anarchical unity, without a centre, without
a God." (MAURICE'S _Lectures on the Epistle to the Hebrews_, p. 111.)

Their perjured faith, though zealot Popes command,
Point to _their_ Bull, and raise the threatening hand:
They deem'd those souls consummate guilt incurr'd,
At conscience' fearful price, who life preferr'd:
No length of days for bartered peace can pay,
And what were life, take life's great end away?[J]

[J] Imitated from JUVENAL, _Satire_ viii.

THE BEATIFICATION.

"_Sanctis_ Roma, suis jam tollere gestit ad astra,
Et cupit ad _superos_ evehere usque deos."

MILTON'S _Sonnets_.

To receive Beatification, which is the first step towards Canonisation, and may in time lead to a fellowship with the saints,--to be pronounced "blessed" by him who arrogates to himself the title of _Holy_, and must therefore know the full value of the dignity he confers--_sic laudari a laudato_, and that too in the finest church in Christendom, before the eyes of a countless assembly of all the nations of Europe,--is an honour indeed! No wonder, then, that every promotion should be jealously canvassed, and that sometimes the rumour of "unfairness," or "favouritism," should be heard among the people, when each fresh brevet comes out. For example--"Who's this third St Anthony? Are not two enough in the Calendar? The great St Antonio, and he of the pig!--(_del porco_,)--another will only create confusion;" or else, "Surely the _Beata_ _Ernestina_ has not been long enough dead to have attained to such an 'odour of sanctity;'" or, "Though the good Pasquale might deserve the title, the pious Teodoro's miracles are as well attested, and much more numerous, and should therefore have been first recognised." Of such sort are the comments of the crowd. All this grumbling, however, is at an end, when once the _Festa_ comes round; the Church, by the brilliancy of her exhibitions, wins over her discontented children, and the installation is sure to be well attended. Sometimes the saint expectant stops short of true canonisation; and, having gained one step, finds himself like a yellow admiral, placed on the shelf without chance of further promotion. (This by the way.) No one can say precisely what entitles the dead to these honours. Large bequests alone are not always sufficient; witness the rejection of a certain distinguished Begum, who left much of her enormous wealth to the Pope, with a well-known view to this distinction. Some imagine that eminent piety is a necessary condition; but no! there is very little talk of religion. It seems chiefly to be the attestation of a sufficient number of miracles at a tomb, which confers the title of Beatus on its tenant, and converts it into a shrine, sure ever after to be profusely hung with glass eyes, wax fœtuses, silver hearts, discarded crutches, votive shipwrecks, &c., &c.,[K] in token of cures and deliverances which have emanated from it. Next to miracles, perhaps, we may reckon _dates_--_seniores priores_--first buried, first beatified, and no superannuation here: on the contrary, holiness, like many other good things, requires time to ripen its virtues and to bring it to perfection; and it is a rule of the Church that chemistry must disintegrate the mortal before she can build up the saint. Thus it happens of two candidates of equal merit; he whose dissolution took place half a century or so before his rival, obtains the preference. The first steps are taken by the lawyers; one being retained to advance the merits of the aspirant saint, another to asperse them if possible. Should the election be contested, much special pleading is then resorted to. Both sides are paid by the Church, but he who opposes the nomination is termed the _devil's_ counsel. This title, however, is a legal or rather a theological fiction; the miracles alleged to have been performed by the defunct being only more triumphantly established and set off by the apparent disposition of the rival pleader to deny their reality; who, after a proper show of resistance and incredulity, allows himself to be foiled. This is indeed beating Satan with his own weapons; but the advocates of saints belong to that party who

"E'en to the Devil himself will go,
If they have motive thereunto;
And think, as there is war between
The Devil and them, it is no sin
If they by subtle stratagem
Make use of him as he does them."

[K] It is singular to observe how the "_votiva paries_," in the
churches of Papal Rome, are hung with similar offerings to those which
formerly ornamented her temples in Pagan times. We possess several of
these ancient offerings; _inter alia_--a _uterus_ and a _mamma_, in
_terra cotta_, from the Temple of _Elvina Ceres_ at Aquinum, and an
_abortion_, in lead, from the same source.

We had never witnessed a Beatification: so, when the Pope, in his character of umpire, had pronounced his fiat in favour of "good sister Frances," and all that remained to be done was the church ceremonial necessary to admit her to piety's peerage, we procured one of the many thousand tickets printed for the occasion, and followed the crowd to St Peter's. Here all was prepared to give due effect to the scene: the interior was studiously darkened, that the rich upholstery might be set off by a grove of countless wax lights, thick and tall as young pine trees. The workmen, after a whole fortnight of bustle and activity, had done their part well. Curtains had been hung and carpets spread; organs wheeled up towards the throne of St Peter; and a whole gallery of villanously painted historical pictures, blasphemous and absurd, were suspended round, representing the miracles for which the new "beatified" was to receive her first degree towards sainthood; and showing amongst other wonders, how in one case her blood, in another her image, restored a blind man to sight, and so completely cured the palsy of one Salvator di Sales, that he is dancing a hornpipe on his recovery, while a priest is looking on approvingly. We were too early for the ceremony; and after curiously scanning these preparations, our attention was attracted to a group near, eagerly listening to the recital of a bare-footed Capuchin. On approaching, we found that he was discoursing on the virtues of a picture of the Virgin, known by the name of _Sta Maria del Pianto_, a fresco daub, painted in a very dirty back street. He was affirming that it had lately taken to _winking_, and had also been seen to shed tears over the body of a man recently found murdered under the lamp. "Who saw her weep?" inquired one of his hearers. "Do you doubt the miracle, my son?" said the friar. "No indeed, father," returned he; "but why did she not call out to the assassin; and what is the use of weeping over a dead man?" "It was owing to the gentleness of her sex," said another, who appeared interested in proclaiming the notoriety of the shrine: he proceeded, therefore, to inform the attentive listeners, that he had the face newly painted some months back, since which operation there was no end to the miracles performed by it. Several persons round hereon testified to having heard repeatedly of these wonders. "Ah!" said a sceptical craftsman, "I dare say you live in another quarter of the city, for it is well known that those at a distance see these things more clearly than the neighbours, unless, like our friend here," nodding to the restorer of the shrine, "they hope to attract customers to the shop by drawing votaries to the shrine." "I don't believe a word of it," said we, taking part in the colloquy. "_Caro lei_--who can help that? we can only pity your unbelief," said the good-humoured Capuchin, offering us, however, a pinch out of his snuff-box. "_You_," continued he, "should call to mind '_in dubiis fides_;' and _we_, in compassion to your being a heretic, will remember '_in omnibus caritas_.'" We accepted the good man's courtesy, albeit no snuff-taker; and he was resuming the interrupted narrative, when a stir among the crowd outside announced the near approach of the procession, and every one hastened to secure a good seat. Presently the Swiss guards enter, the choristers take their places, in come priests, bishops, cardinals, all sumptuously arrayed; at length the Pope himself arrives and assumes his throne. Mass commences.

And here the reader doubtless expects, if not a full description of the ceremony of canonisation, at least an accurate detail of the various steps of the process by which it was effected; but, as we have stated above, the incubation had been completed six weeks before in a private Eccaleiobion, and the pageant to-day was merely to give publicity to the metamorphosis--to read in, and to enrol among the saints the Beata Francesca. As we cannot give a particular account of the _funzione_, we give a general one of all masses:--

High mass! The stall'd and banner'd quire--
White canons--priests in quaint attire--
The unfamiliar prayer:
The fumes that practised hands dispense,
The tinkling bells, the jingling pence,
The tax'd but welcome chair:
The beams from ruby panes that glow,
Of rhythmal chant the ebb and flow:
The organ, that from boundless stores
Its trembling inspiration pours
O'er all the sons of care;
Now joyous as the festal lyre,
When torch and song and wine inspire;
Now tender as Cremona's shell,
When hush'd orchestras own the spell
And watch the ductile bow--
Now rolling from its thunder-cloud,
Dark peals o'er that retiring crowd,
And now has ceased to blow.

CRIMES AND REMARKABLE TRIALS IN SCOTLAND.

INCIDENTS OF THE EARLIER REIGNS--AN INQUIRY INTO THE CHARACTER OF MACBETH.

The sunshine and the green leaves embrace not all that we should know of physical nature. Storm and darkness have their signs, which we do well to study; and in the tempests of the tropics, or the long winter darkness of the poles, we have types of the character of different sections of the globe, more marked than the varying warmth of the sun, or the character of the vegetation--but not perhaps so pleasing. Even so, the storm and darkness of the human soul--the criminal nature of man, provide their peculiar food for the thinker and inquirer. The annals of virtue have their own elevations and delights; but those of vice are no more to be passed over than the dark and stormy hours in the history of each revolution round the sun. "While some affect the sun, and some the shade," there may even be those whose most deeply cherished associations are with these unlit hours--who prefer the night thoughts to the day dreams. But to all, the crimes peculiar to different nations are a large part of the knowledge which man may profitably have of his race. In the history of its great criminals, a nation's character is drawn, as it were, colossally, with the broadest brush, and in the deepest shadows. National virtues have delicate and subtle tints, and exquisitely minute shadings, inviting to a nearer view--like Carlo Dolci's Madonnas, or Constable's forest landscapes: the crimes of a nation present the character of its people, as they rise from the dead in Michael Angelo's Last Judgment. The _ordinary_ vices of men have a certain vulgar air of uniformity; but each great crime is a broad dash of the national character of the people among whom it was committed. The Cenci, and Joanna of Naples were of Italy. It was in Holland that two great and virtuous statesmen were torn to pieces by the mob. The dirk, long buried beyond the Grampians, has re-appeared across the Atlantic in the shape of the bowie-knife. The country of Woldemar and the sorrows of Werther produced that most amiable and sentimental of murderesses, Madame Zwanziger, who loved and was beloved wherever she went; so sensitive, so sympathising, so sedulous, so studious of the wants of those by whom she was surrounded, so disinterestedly patient; she had but one peculiarity to distinguish her from an angel of light--it was an unfortunate propensity to poison people! We read in the _Causes Célèbres_, of a Bluebeard who slew a succession of wives by tickling them till they died in convulsions; and at once we are reminded of that populace who are said to partake of the natures of the ape and the tiger. The people who, for more centuries than are included in the events of European history, have been resolved into the mysterious classification of castes, produced those equally mysterious criminals the Thugs, for whose deeds our so utterly different habits and ideas are quite incapable of finding or conceiving a motive. Our own country produced the assassinations of Rizzio, Regent Murray, and Archbishop Sharpe--all pregnant with marked national characteristics; aristocratic pride, revenge of wrong, and fanatical fury. We propose to offer for the amusement or instruction--which he pleases--of our reader, a few more records of Scottish crimes, not probably all so conspicuously known to the general reader as the three we have just alluded to, yet not, we trust, without something to commend them to notice, as characteristic of the country and the age in which they were respectively enacted.

The raw materials from which we propose to work out our little groups, are the records of our criminal trials; and yet we feel an insuperable inclination to begin with a name not certainly unknown, yet not to be found in the proceedings of the Court of Justiciary--Macbeth, King of Scotland. Perhaps we might consider it a sufficient reason for holding his case equivalent to a trial, that before a tribunal called the Public Opinion, he has been tried, and that at the instance of such a public prosecutor as never opened his lips in any court of law--one whose accusation has carried a conviction deep into the very heart of literature, whence no archæological evidence, and no critical pleading will ever eradicate it. Nor would we desire to touch it: let Macbeth the murderer remain to all time the most powerful picture of temptation, leading its victim through crime into the hideous shadows of remorse, that human pen has ever drawn. But there was an actual prose Macbeth, as different from the ideal as the canvass bought by Raphael of some respectable dealer in the soft line, was from the Transfiguration which he afterwards painted on it. With _him_, being but a simple historical king, we may take liberties; and the liberty we propose to take on the present occasion is that of vindicating his character. Vindications are fashionable; and since Catiline and Machiavelli, Richard III., and Philip II. have been vindicated, why not Macbeth? We shall say 'tis our humour to whiten him, and no man can say it is a criminal or mischievous one.

The main question is, did Macbeth murder Duncan? It was an older story in Shakspeare's time than the murder of Darnley is now, and he may have taken a false view of it. We shall approach the question by an inquiry who Duncan and Macbeth were, and in what relation they stood to each other. About the end of the eleventh century, there reigned in Scotland a king called Kenneth III. Like all the other Scottish monarchs of the period, the chroniclers have given him his own peculiar tragic history, in this wise: he was induced to poison the young prince Malcolm Duff, who might possibly show a title to the throne enabling him to compete with Kenneth's own offspring. This troubled his conscience. He "ever dreaded in his mind," in the expressive words of old Bellenden, that it "should come some time to light: and was so full of suspicion, that he believed when any man rounded to his fellow, that they spake evil of him; for it is given by nature to ilk creature, when he is guilty of any horrible crime, by impulsion of his conscience, to interpret every thing that he sees to some terror of himself." He was one night appalled by a terrific vision, and next morning making his confession, he was sentenced to a pilgrimage to the tomb of St Palladius at Fordun. When the pilgrimage was over, he was invited to partake of the hospitalities of a lady named Fenella--a very neat name for a romance--at her fortalice of Fettercairn. In the civil conflicts or the administration of justice during his reign, some of the relations of this lady had been slain; among the rest her son. Having got the king into her toils, she resolved to put him to death; and the method which the chroniclers make her adopt, shows a superfluous ingenuity ridiculous enough to strip a murder of all its horrors. Kenneth was taken to see a tower of the castle "quhilk was theeket with copper, and hewn with maist subtle mouldry of sundry flowers and imageries, the werk so curious, that it exceeded all the stuff thereof." In the middle of this tower stood an image of Kenneth himself, in brass, holding in his hand a golden apple studded with costly gems. "That image," said the lady, "is set up in honour of thee, to show the world how much I honour my king; the precious apple is intended for a gift for the king, who will honour his poor subject by taking it from the hand of the image." Now matters were so arranged, that the removal of the apple caused certain springs to touch the triggers of a series of bent cross-bows pointed to the spot, and so, when the unsuspecting monarch went to take the gift, a whole sheaf of arrows penetrated to his heart. On the death of this king, though he left a son called Malcolm, the succession went to a rival line. His immediate successor was Constantine, who was killed by another Kenneth, called IV., who in his turn was killed by Malcolm, who thus regained the throne his father had filled. "The gracious Duncan" was the son of a daughter of this Malcolm. His father, strangely enough, appears to have been a priest; he is called in the old dry chronicles, which are the only ones to be depended on, Duncan the son of Trini, or Trivi, abbot of Dunkeld. Now the Kenneth IV. of the rival line, who had been slain by Duncan's grandfather, left behind him a son, and that son left a daughter, whose name was Gruach, and in whom the reader, though certainly in an unusual shape, must welcome Lady Macbeth herself. There being thus two rival races, alternately seizing the throne: while Duncan was the son of a daughter of one king, _she_ was the daughter of the son of another. This gave her no contemptible title to the throne, and when she married Macbeth, or Machaboedth, as he is called by the chroniclers, she had a husband who, possessing the almost independent principality of Ross, might be able to fight her battles. It is somewhat remarkable that, in an ecclesiastical record still preserved, in which a royal grant is made to a religious house, dedicated to St Servanus, Macbeth's wife appears along with himself, as granter of the deed; and they are called, "Machabet filius Finlach, et Gruach filia Bodhae--Rex et Regina Scotorum;"[L] an equal juxtaposition, only to be accounted for by the supposition that Macbeth was king in right of his wife. As to Macbeth himself, his origin, save in the supernatural legend we shall hereafter notice, appears not to have been known; but Fordun seems to intimate, that he was a descendant of that same Fenella who had so curiously murdered Duncan's great-grandfather. If we were disposed, indeed, to take a proper antiquarian partisanship of the one dynasty against the other, we might speak of Duncan as a treacherous usurper, and Lady Macbeth as an injured and insulted queen, whose cause is heroically adopted and vindicated by a true knight, who, while redressing her wrongs, wins her heart and hand.

[L] _Registrum Prioratus Sancti Andreæ_, 114.

Let us now look to the manner in which the death of Duncan is spoken of by the most ancient authorities. Old Andrew Wyntoun, Prior of St Serfs on Lochleven, who has never yet, to our great wonder, been upheld as one of the greatest poets of his own or any other age,--perhaps we may undertake the task some day, let our readers judge by the extracts on the present occasion with what prospect of success:--Wyntoun narrates the event with the true simplicity of genius, in these two lines:--

"He murthrified him in Elgyne,
His Kynrik he usurped syne."

This is distinct enough, in all truth: there is no ambiguity, or room for critical doubt; nor is his fellow annalist, Fordun, less distinct, for he speaks of the slain monarch as _occisus scelere_. But these chroniclers wrote between three and four centuries after the event they commemorate, standing chronologically almost as near our own day as Macbeth's; and when we look into those far older, if not contemporary, annals, which narrate successive events in the briefest possible shape, we find that they contain nothing to indicate that Duncan's death took place in any more atrocious manner than the multitudinous slaughters of kings, with which their narratives are often as crowded as a Peninsular campaign gazette with killed officers. Thus, the register of the Priory of St Andrews simply states, that Duncan _interfectus est_. It is true that the Latin language is deficient in any word to express murder as distinguished from other kinds of slaughter. _Trucido_ is the verb we have been accustomed to associate most nearly with the idea of assassination; but in one of the most circumspect and prosaic of the old annals, that of Tighernac, this very word is applied to the death of Macbeth himself. Blackstone notices the circumstance that the English lawyers had to coin, for their own special use, the substantive _murdrum_ and the verb _murdrare_; equally creditable to their good taste in Latinity and to the social condition of their country. In fact, the Romans looked upon death, in any form, as so bad a business, that they cared little for making nice distinctions about the motive that had occasioned it, or the manner in which it was effected; and it was a condition so generally disliked, that, if any man was absurd enough voluntarily to place himself in it, neither the law nor public opinion troubled itself to express disapproval, either by driving a stake through the body or in any other way. Undoubtedly there were justifiable slaughters and unjustifiable; but the practice of single combat had not arisen to draw a strong and distinct line between death in a fair tournament or duel, and secret assassination. A recollection that this was also the social state of Scotland in the days of Macbeth, will help us far better towards the truth than a criticism on the ambiguous Latin words. It was between that age and the period of Wyntoun and Fordun that single-combat chivalry and the laws of honour had grown up; so, while the older chroniclers had simply to say that the man was killed, without troubling themselves about the manner, those of later date were moved to divide the deaths into two departments--the killed in combat and the murdered. More, probably, by chance than design, the fate of Duncan was put into the latter category; and then a super-structure of particulars was raised upon it--for it must be observed, that the romantic incidents of the slaughter were added at a still later period than that of Fordun or Wyntoun--by Boece and Hollinshed. Here, then, is our case, as lawyers say: Macbeth, in right of his wife, was a claimant of the crown. He kills the existing holder; but there is nothing in the older accounts of the affair to show that he did so otherwise than in the fair course of war. It was what the old civilians would have called a _casus belli_,--an expression which, by the way, we find some accomplished editors using as the Latin for a justification of war. The murder is found only in the later chronicles, which, in all parts of their narrative, have covered their more sober predecessors with a coating of fabulous details like the stalactites of a dripping cave. However the real fact may have stood, we have no _statement_ of Macbeth having murdered Duncan until between three and four centuries after the event. Why,--the case looks vastly better than we thought it did when we began with it; we have some thoughts of believing our own theory, which is more than ever we knew a historical critic do, within the range of our personal observation.

Having so disposed of this question, we are inclined to amuse our readers with some further notices--real and unreal--about Macbeth. Wyntoun gives us a strange wild legend of his supernatural parentage, beginning

"Bot, as we fynd be some stories,
Gotten he was in fairly wys;
His modyr to woods made oft repaire,
For the delyte of halesome air;
Swa sho passed upon a day
'Til a wood her for to play,
Scho met of cas with a fair man
(Never nane so fair as sho thought than
Before than had sho seen with sight)
Of beauty pleasand, and of hycht
Proportioned wele in all measure,
Of limb and lyth a fair figure."

Such is the description of the putative father of Macbeth. In the sententious explanation of Wyntoun, who scorned expletives, "he the devil was;" and so he told the wandering damsel--

"And bade her nought fleyed to be of that,
But said that her son should be
A man of great state and bounty;
And na man sould be born of wife
Of power to reve him of his life.
And of that deed in taknyng,
He gave his leman then a ring,
And bade her that sho sould keep that wele,
And hald for his love that jewel."

Wyntoun's melodious verses were lying in a dusty parchment manuscript when Shakspeare wrote; we know not if he had access to the volume, nor have we any strong reason for presuming that he would have perused it if he had. It would be too adventurous to predict whether, knowing the legend, he would have considered any reference to it as consistent with the character of his drama; but it is curious to observe, that the tale appears to have been in the eye of Sir Walter Scott, when he wrote the history of Brian the Hermit, in the _Lady of the Lake_, beginning--

"Of Brian's birth strange tales were told:
His mother watch'd a midnight fold."

We shall now indulge our readers with a glance at a totally different feature in the career of Macbeth. It appears that he was a very able financier. We presume that he was his own First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer: yet in his days there was no pressure on the money-market; there was no drain of gold; there was no restriction of issue; no great houses suspended payment; there were no rumours of turns-out and distress in the manufacturing districts; there was no Highland destitution. Our proof of this position lies in two lines of our illustrious poet Wyntoun, which contain as much as a smaller genius could have crowded into a volume on "The state and progress of Scotland during the reign of Macbeth; with an account of the arts, industry, and manufactures of the country; returns of the exports and imports, and of the goods entered for home consumption, with the annual gross and net revenue from customs and excise, post-office, assessed taxes, hereditary revenue, and other miscellaneous sources, during that reign: dedicated, by permission, to the Statistical Society." Wyntoun's simple statement is--

"All his time was great plenté,
Abundant both by land and sea."

What more is necessary? It is true, that on another occasion we have repudiated Wyntoun as an authority; but it is the privilege of the antiquarian speculator to found on an author when he is right, and repudiate him when he is wrong.

We now come to a subject on which really, jocularity apart, we stand upon firm and secure ground--the spot where Macbeth fell. All the chroniclers with one voice state that it was at a place called Lunfanan. Even Raphael Hollinshed, whose version, it is universally admitted, was the one perused by Shakspeare,--after he tells how the beleaguered fugitive beheld the miraculous forest with which his doom was involved approaching him, continues to say--"Nevertheless, he brought his men in order of battle, and exhorted them to do valiantly: howbeit, his enemies had scarcely cast from them their boughs, when Macbeth, perceiving their numbers, betook him straight to flight, whom Macduff pursued with great hatred, even till he came to Lunfannane." Perhaps Shakspeare, not knowing precisely where Lunfanan lay, supposed that it was some spot close to Dunsinane, and did not wish to burden his action with the particularity of an unimportant movement. Lunfanan is, however, north of the Dee, and distant full fifty miles in a straight line from Dunsinane, the rough mountains of the Braes of Angus lying between the two places; so that the two parties must have had a pretty long running fight, and Macbeth stood out even harder game than he has generally credit for. Our favourite poet describes the chase across the broad valley of Strathmore, through the rocky glens of Clova, over the Isla and the Esk, down through the hoary forest of Glentanner, across the raging Dee, and up again through mountain and forest, in this sententious and emphatic couplet,

"And our the Month they chaised him than
'Till the wood of Lunfanan."

When the victory was completed, we are told that they cut off his head, and bore it to King Malcolm at Kincardine--a pleasant village on the banks of the Dee, about ten miles from Lunfanan.

This same Lunfanan is a spot which it requires particular taste to love, and yet we have perambulated it not without interest. The Chroniclers speak of it as a forest, but the highest elevations are now generally bare of trees, save where in a few sheltered hollows the birches cling to the rocks. The hills are of considerable height, but round and bare, with few precipices, and little character of outline; but the glens between the hills are sheltered and well cultivated, each is enlivened by a small stream, and still more enlivened by the scanty population seeking the shelter of the recesses of the glen, and making it populous amid the waste. But we shall afford a better description than our own, in a few lines from "The Fortunate Shepherdess," by a poet who lived in a glen not far distant--Alexander Ross. It will be admitted, by the way, that our poetical quotations to-day are not of a hackneyed kind, whatever other censure they may incur.

"The water keely on a level sleed,
Wi' little din, but couthy what it made:
On ilka side the trees grew thick and strang,
And wi' the birds they a' were in a sang;
On ev'ry side, a full bow-shot and mair,
The green was even, gowany, and fair;
With easy sklent, on ev'ry hand, the braes,
To right well up, wi' scattered busses raise,
Wi' goats and sheep aboon, and ky below,
The bonny braes a' in a swarm did go."