Chapter VIII: An Arrival (9)

Who has not heard of the Rock of Cashel――Cashel of the Kings? “The first object,” exclaimed Richard Lalor Sheil, “that in childhood I learned to admire was that noble ruin, an emblem as well as a memorial of Ireland, which ascends before us, at once a temple and a fortress, the seat of religion and nationality; where councils were held, where princes assembled; the scene of courts and of synods; and on which it is impossible to look without feeling the heart at once elevated and touched by the noblest as well as the most solemn recollections.” From whatever side the traveller approaches the ancient metropolis and residence of the kings of Munster, the first object to meet his eye is the Rock, which lifts itself above the surrounding country, as proud to wear its monumental crown. From the earliest times this hill seems to have been dedicated to religion. Its Round Tower, which is still entire, would lead us to associate it with the pagan rites of the ancient Irish; and the tradition which designates the Rock as the place where the kings of Munster were proclaimed confirms this view. It is certainly associated with the early dawn of Christianity in Ireland; for St. Patrick, St. Declan, St. Ailbe, St. Kiran, and other holy men held a synod in Cashel.

St. Patrick’s visit was in 448; he baptized Prince Ængus and held solemn feast in Cashel of the Kings “till all the land was clothed with Christ.” Here on the Rock he gave the shamrock its immortal fame:

“From the grass
The little three-leaved herb, stooping, I plucked,
And preached the Trinity.”

Without entering into the controversy concerning the origin of the Round Towers, we will take Cormac’s Chapel to be the most ancient Christian ruin on the Rock.

This stone-roofed church was built, as is generally supposed, by Cormac McCullenan, the famous king-bishop, who began to reign in the year 902. But Petrie is of opinion that we owe this chapel to Cormac MacCarthy, King of Munster, and that it is the Teampul Chormaic of whose solemn consecration by the archbishops and bishops of Munster, in presence of the priests, princes, and people, the Annals of Innisfallen make mention in 1134.

However this may be, all agree that the chapel is one of the most curious and interesting specimens of early Christian architecture in Ireland. Like all the stone-roofed chapels of the primitive Irish Church, it is divided into nave and chancel, with a tall, square tower at their northern and southern juncture. Within the southern tower, which on the outside is ornamented with six projecting bands, there is a stone staircase leading to apartments above the chapel said to have been occupied by King Cormac. These rooms receive the light through windows which are circular on the outside, but square within, and were heated by hot air, conveyed into them through flues in the wall――the first instance known to us of the use of a method of warming houses generally thought to be of very recent invention. The doorways leading into the chapel are in its northern and southern walls, and are richly adorned with columns, capitals, mouldings, and sculptured figures. On the lintel of the northern entrance there is a group in basso-relievo representing a Centaur in the act of shooting a lion which is about to devour some smaller animal that is crouching at its feet. This is supposed to represent the contest between paganism and Christianity for the possession of Ireland during the repeated invasions of the Danes.

The cathedral stands between the Round Tower and Cormac’s Chapel, embracing them in such way that they all seem to be but parts of one magnificent ruin. This church, which consists of a choir, nave, and transepts, with a square tower in the centre, was built by Donald O’Brien, King of Limerick, in the year 1169. Its greatest length from east to west is two hundred and ten feet, and the breadth of the transepts is a hundred and seventy feet. It is both a fortress and a church――true symbol of the perfect union of the national and the religious spirit in Ireland. The walls, which are of great thickness, are hollow, so as to afford a safe passage from one part of the building to another in case of danger. At the western end, instead of the great doorway usually found in churches, there is a massive square guard-tower of great height, resembling the fortified castles which are common throughout the kingdom.

This formerly contained a vaulted apartment having no exterior windows, and but one small entrance. Over this vault was the great room of state, which could be reached only by stairs within the walls, barely wide enough to admit one person. The roof was surmounted by battlements and a parapet. The monuments whose ruins crown the Rock of Cashel were all built before the Saxon had set foot in Ireland, and it is impossible to look upon them without admiration for the men who called them into existence. They certainly had little to learn, in architecture at least, from the rude Norman barons who, taking advantage of the internal feuds which distracted the people, overran and subjugated the country.

It was in the year 1101 that Murtogh O’Brien, King of Munster, convened a great assembly of the clergy and people of Ireland at Cashel, “and made such an offering as king never made before him――namely, Cashel of the Kings, which he bestowed on the devout, without the intervention of a laic or an ecclesiastic, for the use of the religious of Ireland in general.” We have a letter of St. Anselm to Murtogh O’Brien, in which he praises him for his excellent administration of the kingdom. His successor, Cormac MacCarthy, by whom the chapel was built, was the intimate friend of St. Malachi.

Driven from his throne by Turlough O’Conor, King of Connaught, he refused to take up arms to regain it, but withdrew from strife and placed himself under the direction of this great saint. In his society he led a penitential life, taking no nourishment but bread and water, and wholly absorbed in heavenly contemplation. After some years he was replaced upon the throne, and, in gratitude, built two churches at Lismore, where he had been the companion of St. Malachi, and one at Cashel of the Kings.

The most famous of the bishops of Cashel was Cormac McCullenan, who was at the same time King of Munster, and who has been considered as the founder of the chapel on the Rock which still bears his name. In his reign, which began in 902, the throne of Cashel had become almost in every respect the equal of that of Tara. No longer content with his own provincial resources, he put forth a claim to tribute from the whole southern half of Ireland. This involved him in war with the people of Leinster, who, supported by the supreme monarch, met Cormac in battle and routed his army. The king himself was slain, and his body was conveyed to Cashel for interment.

In the northern wall of the chapel there is a recess, once filled by a sarcophagus which is now in the cathedral. Upon the slab which covered this tomb the name of Cormac, King and Bishop of Munster, was inscribed in Irish characters. Within the tomb itself, when opened some years ago, there was found a bronze crosier with gilt enamel, of great beauty and exquisite finish, which from its form and style of workmanship there is good reason for believing to be as old as the chapel itself; and this has led Petrie and other Irish antiquarians to maintain that King Cormac MacCarthy was also a bishop, though the tradition is that the tomb is not his, but that of the great Cormac McCullenan.

After Murtogh O’Brien’s gift of Cashel to the church in the year 1101, its bishops gained in importance and power. In the latter half of the twelfth century the see was filled by Donald O’Heney, who was of the royal family of the Dalcassians. The Four Masters declare that he was the fountain of religion in the western part of Europe, that he was second to no Irishman of his day in wisdom and piety, and that in the Roman Law he was the most learned doctor in the whole kingdom. He took part in a council held in 1097, in which Waterford was erected into a bishopric, and died in the following year.

In 1152 Pope Eugene III. sent Cardinal Paparo as legate to Ireland with authority to confer the pallium upon four of the Irish prelates. One of these was Donat O’Lonargan, Archbishop of Cashel, during the lifetime of whose immediate successor Henry II. invaded Ireland. He landed at Waterford on the 18th of October, 1171, with five hundred knights and four thousand men-at-arms, and appeared rather as a protector than as an enemy of the Irish people. From Waterford he marched with his army to Lismore, and thence to Cashel. Early in the following year, by his order, a synod was held in Cashel for the purpose of regulating ecclesiastical matters in Ireland. The chief pretext, as is known, for the Norman invasion was the correction of abuses in the Irish Church, and it was ostensibly with a view to effect this that the council was called. Its decrees have been preserved by Giraldus Cambrensis, the eulogist of Henry and the enemy of the Irish, and, far from confirming the prevailing notion concerning the existence of grave disorders, they furnish the strongest argument in favor of the purity of the Irish Church at that time; and even had there been serious abuses, the murderer of St. Thomas of Canterbury was, one would think, hardly a fit instrument for doing away with them.

Giraldus himself, the avowed partisan of the English and the author of innumerable falsehoods relating to Irish history, was forced to admit that the clergy were faithful in the discharge of their spiritual duties, pre-eminent in chastity, and remarkable for their exceeding abstinence from food.

“The clergy,” he says, “of this country are very commendable for religion, and, among the divers virtues which distinguish them, excel and are pre-eminent in the prerogative of chastity. They attend also diligently to their psalms and hours; to reading and prayer; and, remaining within the precincts of the churches, do not absent themselves from the divine offices to the celebration of which they have been appointed. They likewise pay great attention to abstinence and sparingness of food; so that the greatest part of them fast almost every day until dusk, and until they have completed all the canonical offices of the day.”

As an off-set to this confession, drawn from him unwillingly, he accuses the Irish clergy of drinking at night more than is becoming (_plusquam deceret_), but does not go the length of saying that they drank to inebriation, which, indeed, would be altogether incompatible with the virtues which he is forced to admit they possessed. Felix, Bishop of Ossory, who was present when Giraldus made this statement, resented as false his allusion to the indulgence of the Irish clergy in wine. But, even taking the account of Giraldus in its full extent, we must admit that the Irish priests, at the time of the Norman invasion, had nothing to learn from the example of the ecclesiastics who had followed the conquerors from England; and we are inclined to hold with Lanigan that there was in that day no church in Christendom in which there were fewer abuses.

It was to Maurice, Archbishop of Cashel, who died in 1191, that Giraldus made the objection that Ireland had never had any martyrs. “It is true,” replied the archbishop; “for, though the Irish are looked upon as barbarous and uncultivated, yet have they always paid reverence and honor to priests; nor have they ever raised their hands against the saints of God. But now there is come amongst us a people who know how and are accustomed to make martyrs. Henceforth Ireland, like other nations, shall have her martyrs.”

Giraldus has himself recorded this retort as a sharp saying. His heart would have failed him could he have looked into the future and beheld the whole people weltering in their martyr-blood; the sword always uplifted ready to strike, the land made desolate, the populous cities empty, the solemn cathedrals in ruins, the monasteries sacked and burned, until Ireland, that made no martyrs for Christ, became, for him, the great martyr-nation of all time. Cashel itself was to have its martyrs, chosen some of them from among its archbishops. Maurice Fitzgibbon, of the noble family of the earls of Desmond, filled this see when Elizabeth ascended the throne. His birth was not more eminent than his virtue. Every effort was made by the queen to induce him to prefer honors to conscience. But in vain. He spurned the royal favor which could be obtained only by the sacrifice of his faith, was arrested for refusing to take the oath of supremacy, and thrown into prison in Cork, where, after years of suffering and cruel treatment, he died on the 6th of May, 1578. His successor was Archbishop O’Hurley, who, through his mother, Honora O’Brien, was descended of the house of Thomond. A wretched informer was set to watch him, but, through the timely warning of a friend, he escaped just as he was on the point of being delivered into the hands of the officers of the government, and found an asylum in the castle of Slane. His place of refuge was soon discovered, and Lord Slane was ordered under the heaviest penalties to bring the archbishop with the least possible delay to the Castle of Dublin. On his trial he was put to torture, in the vain hope that his excruciating sufferings might bring him to renounce his faith. In the midst of his torments his only sister was sent into his prison to add her prayers to the cruelties of his tortures. He implored her to fall upon her knees and ask pardon for so great a crime. As a last resort he was offered pardon with the promise of high honors if he would yield. The heroic martyr replied that when he had health to enjoy the world, such things had not power to move him; and now that he was weak and broken, it would be folly to deny his God for pleasures which he could not enjoy. Sentence was then passed upon him, and on the 6th of May, 1583, in the sixty-fifth year of his age, he was dragged to the place of public execution in Stephen’s Green, and there hanged. His head was then cut off, and his body quartered and placed upon the four gates of the city.

The first Protestant Archbishop of Cashel was the notorious Miler Magragh, who apostatized during the reign of Elizabeth, and whom Camden calls “a man of uncertain faith and credit, and a depraved life.” During the fifty-two years of his occupancy of this see he squandered its revenues, alienated its lands, and, lest the memory of his misdeeds should perish, took care to erect in the cathedral a monument to himself to recall to succeeding generations the lavish manner in which he spent the ill-gotten goods of apostasy and servility. The epitaph, which he wrote himself, records among other things that for fifty years he worshipped England’s sceptre and pleased her princes. When Donald O’Brien’s grand cathedral passed into the hands of Protestant bishops, it began to be neglected. In 1647 Lord Inchiquin, one of Cromwell’s generals, laid siege to it, and, after a severe bombardment, took it by storm. Twenty priests who had taken refuge in the castle retired into the vault, and the soldiers, not being able to break in the door, brought turf and made a fire, by which they were either roasted or suffocated. The western tower, which was directly exposed to the battery of Inchiquin, was greatly damaged, and after the capture the roof of the cathedral was blown off with cannon. When the troubled times of the Commonwealth had passed away, the choir was again fitted up and used for religious worship, until in 1749 the Protestant Archbishop Price abandoned this hallowed sanctuary altogether, leaving it to the mercy of time and the elements. The groined arch underneath the belfry was broken down, and the bells were carried off to Fethard and Clonmel. The interior of the church was filled with the fragments of the fallen roof, beneath which were buried tombstones, capitals, corbels, and pillars; and the noble Rock where for ages the heroes and saints of Ireland had dwelled and prayed, abandoned of men, was given up to the owl and the bat. In 1848, while the people were dying from hunger, the great tower, that had been battered by Cromwell’s cannon, opened, and the southern half fell to the ground with a terrific crash; but so excellent was the mortar which had been used in the building that it remained firm while the stones were shattered. The walls of the cathedral still stand firm and unshaken as the Rock on which they are built. There is no nobler ruin in Great Britain. The abbeys of Melrose, Dryburgh, and Holyrood are contemptible when compared with the Rock of Cashel. Even in its fallen state it has the lofty bearing of a king.

“They dreamed not of a perishable life
Who thus could build.”

When Cromwell beheld it he exclaimed: “Ireland is a country worth fighting for.”

A fairer country, in truth, could not easily be found than that which unfolds itself beneath the eye of the traveller who ascends the pentagon tower of the ancient castle of the kings of Munster. To the west the Golden Vale expands in tracts of emerald and gold; to the east rich pastures and well-cultivated uplands gradually rise towards the distant hills of Kilkenny; and on the north and the south the glorious prospect is bounded by the Slieve Bloom and Galty Mountains. In the distance, under the hill of Knockgrenagh, is the ruin which sheltered Sarsfield the night before he fell upon and destroyed the siege-train of William of Orange, which was on its way from Cashel to Limerick. In the vale under the Rock lies the noble ruin of Hore Abbey, originally founded by Benedictine monks, but transferred in 1272, by Archbishop McCarvill, to the Cistercians. He also united with it the hospital for lepers built by David le Latimer in 1230, the ruins of which may still be seen standing in a field on the road to Cahir. In 1561 Queen Elizabeth, having expelled the monks, gave the abbey with its appurtenances to Henry Radcliffe, and to-day only the roofless walls remain. While the Penal Code was in vigor no Catholic was allowed to dwell within the limits of the town of Cashel. At present, in a population of six thousand, there are but a hundred and eighty Protestants. Nevertheless, the venerable ruins of the Rock are still in the hands of the dignitaries of the Church of England. It is certainly a short-sighted and unwise policy which thus commits the ancient sanctuaries of Ireland, so dear to the hearts of her people, to the custody of those who look upon them as relics of a superstitious faith, and prize them only as trophies of conquest. The Irish people cling to memories and are governed more than others by their affections; and so long as the English government persists in maintaining a state of affairs which constantly places before their eyes the wrongs and outrages of which they have been the victims, so long will they be restless and dissatisfied.

To continue to allow an ecclesiastical establishment, which has never been and can never be anything else than a political contrivance for the humiliation and oppression of the Irish people, to retain possession of these shrines of religion, is a wanton insult to the double love they bear to their country and their faith. It was this twofold love, flowing in one channel, that upheld them in all the dark centuries of woe; and now that brighter days have come, England cannot fail to recognize the increasing strength of Irish patriotism and Irish faith.

Let the Rock of Cashel, with its holy ruins, its sacred tombs of kings and bishops, be given back to the people to whom it belongs. It is valueless except for its associations, and these associations are without value to the persons in whose hands it is allowed to remain. Let the glory of other days come back to these sacred walls. Millions of Catholics in the United States would consider it an honor and a privilege to be permitted to rebuild this sanctuary of God. Again on the holy mount let the lamp of Christ’s real presence burn as glowed the light that for a thousand years burned before St. Bridget’s shrine. Let the swelling notes of the deep-toned organ lift again the soul to God, while mitred bishops and surpliced priests, with all the believing throng, sing forth the song of thanks and praise. In the resurrection of a people, in the new rising of a faith, let this temple, given back to God and to Ireland, stand as a commemoration.

Seven miles north of Cashel, and three miles south of Thurles, on the banks of the river Suir, lie the ruins of the Abbey of Holy Cross. A convent was built on this spot at a very early period of the Christian history of Ireland. The fame of the sanctity of the monks attracted members to the community, and also pilgrims from a distance. In 1169, two years before the Norman invasion, Donald O’Brien, King of Limerick, accompanied by a brilliant retinue, visited the place, and was led by his devotion to found and endow the abbey. The charter of foundation, one of the witnesses to which was Maurice, Archbishop of Cashel, of whom we have already made mention, opens with these words: “Donald, by the grace of God, King of Limerick, to all kings, dukes, earls, barons, knights, and Christians of whatsoever degree, throughout Ireland, perpetual greeting in Christ.” This charter was afterwards confirmed by the English kings John, Henry III., Edward III., and Richard II. The abbey received its name from the possession of a portion of the true cross which was given in 1110, by Pope Pascal II., to Donough O’Brien, King of all Ireland and grandson of Brian Boru. Princes and bishops were eager to enrich this monastery, and the fame of the miracles wrought by the sacred relic drew to it crowds of worshippers. With increasing wealth, the buildings grew in splendor and extent. The church is built in the form of a cross, with nave, chancel, and transept. At the intersection of the cross there is a lofty square tower, and in the transepts two beautifully-groined chapels. In the monastery there were eight dormitories for the monks, besides numerous chambers for the entertainment of visitors attracted by devotion; for the laws of hospitality were never forgotten. The abbot, who was mitred, was a peer of Parliament and secular lord of the county of “The Cross of Tipperary.” When Henry VIII. suppressed the great abbeys of Ireland, he granted Holy Cross, with its temporalities and also the spiritual jurisdiction, to James, Earl of Ormond and Ossory, whom he regarded with special favor. Elizabeth confirmed this grant to Thomas, Earl of Ormond, who, though educated in the Anglican schism, became a Catholic several years before his death, and left his estates to Earl Walter, a stanch defender of the faith.

The monks who had been expelled from the abbey still lingered in its neighborhood, in the hope that they might somehow be permitted to return and end their days in the sacred cloisters in which they had given to God the best part of life. At times they met by night within the hallowed enclosure to offer up the divine Sacrifice; and when Mary ascended the throne, they once more took possession, but were again expelled by Elizabeth, and finally dispersed. The cells, dormitories, and guest-chambers, so long consecrated to meditation and all holy exercise, were converted into stables for the housing of cattle. The church, which contained the tombs of many noble families, escaped desecration, but not the ravages of time and neglect. From the year 1580 to the close of the century no priest dared appear in public throughout the province of Munster, and even the most careful disguises were not sufficient to hide them from the fury of their enemies; but in 1600 Hugh O’Neil turned his army towards the south of Ireland, and, proceeding by slow marches, finally encamped “at the gate of the monastery of Holy Cross.”

“They were not long there,” say the Four Masters, “when the holy Rood was brought to them, and the Irish gave large presents, alms, and offerings to its conservators and monks in honor of Almighty God; and they protected and respected the monastery, with its buildings, the lands appropriated for its use, and its inhabitants in general.”

The monks remained in possession of the abbey for several years, and for the first time since its suppression in 1536 an abbot of Holy Cross was chosen. The succession was kept up till the beginning of the eighteenth century, and expired in the first dark years of the Penal Code with Thomas Cogan, the last of the abbots of Holy Cross, who died on the 10th of August, 1700, and was buried in the choir of the old church, in the tomb where the bones of his predecessors are awaiting the day of resurrection.

O gray walls, sacred ruins of Holy Cross! ye have a spirit’s feeling, and work upon the soul till it forgets all glad and pleasant scenes to blend with the gloom and desolation that have come to abide with you. The gentle river still flows by, but where is the great strong life-current of faith and love that here was fed from God’s eternal fount? Cold are the burning lips of love that wore the pavement smooth; cold the great warm hearts that beat with highest impulse of divine charity. No more from their chalices mysterious monks drink deep love of God and men; no more at early morn is heard their matin song; no more to heaven ascends their evening hymn. Gone is the dim religious light that shone through mystic windows. The tapers are quenched, the belfries mute. No more floats on the breeze

“The heavenliest of all sounds
That hill or vale prolongs or multiplies.”

The dead only are here, and around them the silence they so loved and broken walls, which, if they mourn not, make others grieve.

“Once ye were holy: ye are holy still;
Your spirit let me freely drink and live.”

As a monastic ruin the Abbey of Holy Cross is, in the estimation of the people, second to no other in Ireland; and it owes this celebrity less to the beauty of its architecture than to the possession of the holy Rood.

The marble shrine in which this famous relic was preserved may still be seen in the southern transept of the church. The relic itself, at the time of the suppression of the abbey, passed into the hands of the Earl of Ormond, in whose family it remained for nearly a century, when Earl Walter gave it for safe-keeping to Dr. Fennell, who left it to James, second Duke of Ormond. It was finally deposited, in the early part of the present century, in a shrine in the chapel of the Ursuline Nuns at Blackrock, near Cork, where it is to remain “until such time as the church of the Holy Cross, with the monastery of Cistercian monks attached thereto, shall be rebuilt.”

Though Holy Cross is a ruin and in the hands of Protestants, the Cistercian Order still survives in Ireland in the monastery of Mount Melleray. It was, a few months ago, our privilege to pass a brief time in this sanctuary of religion, where the most unworldly life is made to subserve the highest social ends.

Mount Melleray is but a few hours’ ride from Cork. The excursion is made by railway to Youghal, an ancient town, once famous in Irish history, lying near the mouth of the Blackwater. At the entrance to its splendid and picturesque harbor, now almost entirely abandoned, there stands a ruined tower, which was formerly part of a convent of nuns who at night kept torches blazing in this lighthouse to enable vessels to enter port with safety. Near the town the house which Sir Walter Raleigh owned, and in which he lived for several years, is still pointed out to the traveller. In his garden here he planted in 1586 the first potatoes grown in Ireland.

A boat leaves Youghal twice a day and ascends the Blackwater as far as Cappoquin. The trip is made in about two hours. The scenery is unsurpassed even in Ireland. There is nothing finer on the Rhine. The river winds through fertile valleys with rich meadows and fields of waving corn, until a sudden turn brings us into the presence of barren mountains, which, in their desolation, seem to mock the smiling prospect below. From almost every jutting rock ruined castles or churches look down upon us. In these mountains above Cappoquin, and overlooking the Blackwater, lies the Trappist monastery of Mount Melleray.

Forty-five years ago a few poor monks, driven from their peaceful home, settled here in the midst of a dreary wilderness. They had obtained from the Protestant landlord of the place six hundred acres of mountain peat-land on a lease of ninety-nine years. No one but an Irish landlord would have thought of demanding rental for what had always been a desert, and, so far as he was concerned, might for ever remain a desert. The monks, however, paid him his price and set to work to make the desert bloom. On their land there was not a tree or blade of grass, and before they could begin to plough or dig they had to go over the ground and pick up the stones with which it was covered. But for them a life of solitude was to be a life of labor, and they were not discouraged. They knew that half the soil of Europe had been reclaimed and brought under cultivation by monks, whose lives were none the less consecrated to prayer and study. Half a century has not yet passed, and the barren waste is covered with rich fields of corn and green meadows. With their own hands the monks have built a large monastery and church, whose tall spire is seen from the whole surrounding country. In their gardens the finest vegetables grow, and in their dairy the best butter is made. A few years ago they opened a college, in which they give an excellent classical education to youths whose parents may not be able to pay the higher pensions of other institutions. The buildings are large and well provided with whatever is necessary to the health and comfort of the students; and the food, though plain, is of the best quality. A part of the monastery is fitted up for the accommodation of guests; and, as the hospitality of the monks is well known, they are rarely without visitors, drawn thither sometimes by curiosity, but oftener by the desire of spending a few days in solitude in communion with God. In the guests’ book we found the names of persons from almost every part of Europe and America. We have visited the monasteries of the Trappists in other countries, but nowhere else have we received the impressions made upon us at Mount Melleray. It was Edmund Burke who said that to his mind the Catholic Church of Ireland bore a closer resemblance than any other to the church of the apostles; and we could not help reflecting that these monks were more like the Fathers of the Desert than any men whom we had ever seen. How terrible is this place! How this life of honest religion lays bare the shams and pretexts with which weak and soft worldlings would hide the atheism of their faith! If God is all in all, and the soul more than the body, a Trappist is greater than a king. To these men the future world is more real than the present. The veil of time and space has fallen from their eyes; the immeasurable heavens break open, and God’s kingdom is revealed. Divine power of the love of Christ, which makes the desert beautiful, and solitude a perpetual feast! What heavenly privilege to forget the world and to be with God only; to turn from men, not in loathing or hate or bitterness, but with a heart as sweet as a child’s, and to follow Christ into the mount where the celestial glory encircles him! With St. Peter we exclaim: It is good to be here! A single day, O Lord! spent in thy tabernacles is more precious than a thousand years.

In this life in death is found a life the world dreams not of, as

“Chords that vibrate sweetest pleasure
Thrill the deepest notes of woe”;

as in the presence of the dying we see only the blackness and the gloom, when the soul already hears God’s angels sing, and beholds the light that never fades.

The highest joy is of the soul, and the more it lifts itself from flesh and earth the greater is its delight. In these solemn walls, with their silent monks clad in white, it seemed to us that we were upon the threshold of another world, far away from the ebb and flow of men’s affairs. We felt no more the feverish throb of the great world’s pulse, nor heard the noisy hum of commerce or the nations’ angry battle-cry. The blatant shout of Progress no longer deafened us. We were in the mood to ask ourselves: Is it not, after all has been said, progress towards death that men speak of? Do not all the lines along which they advance converge until they meet in the grave? But we crave life, not death. Is there no hope? Must we join the rabble, the common herd, that stands in wonderment in the world’s great toy-shop, eagerly peering at stones and metals and skins of beasts, gazing at blank walls and rattling machinery, and shouting: Ha! this is progress? Is there no room for the soul, no hope of life? Is mechanism all in all, and is all progress mechanical? Here, at least, were men who believed in the soul; who, despising all the counsels of fear and cowardice, had turned from the world and set their faces towards the life that is and is to be. They never speak except in prayer and psalmody. They rise in the night and spend hours in the thought of God and the soul. Silently they go forth to their work, and in silence return to pray. Their bed is a board, their food bread and coarse vegetables. And so from day to day and from year to year in their hearts they make the ascent to God.

It is easy for us to deride the life which we have not the courage or the strength to lead. These, at least, are men with brave hearts and great thoughts. They are not the creatures of circumstance, the slaves of routine, the self satisfied and unconscious victims of the universal tyrant. They are not held by bonds of flesh and blood. No mean ambition moves them. A king’s crown is but a bauble, like the toy of a child; and whatever ceases to be has no kindred with the soul that was not born to die. They wage battle for the possession of the infinite, and in the divine struggle take on the heroic mood that makes all things possible. And we who stood for a moment on this heavenly battle-ground, a looker-on, unfit to take part in such celestial warfare, would fain have lingered on the hallowed spot, knowing full well that the world to which we turned again has no happiness even to promise like that which is found in this holy mountain where God is seen and loved.

A STORY OF THE FAR WEST.

Gold City they had called it in its palmy days, though even then it was a city in name only. It was known as Gomorrah now; and its few inhabitants gloried in the title, for Edverson had struck a vein of gold there in the first flush of the mining fever, and a crowd of fortune-hunters flocked to the place, only to discover, when it was too late, that the first “lucky find” was the last. Then the tide of population ebbed away, leaving behind it the refuse――those who were too poor, too discouraged, too sunk in idleness or sin, to try for anything better. The houses were no more than shanties, which the women made no attempt to keep tidy; children lived and died there who never heard God’s holy name except in curses; to most of them even the day of the week was unknown.

Three men ruled the place, one by fear, one by kindness, one because he was tavern-keeper. They were familiarly known as the Lawyer, the Doctor, and the Parson. One day, worthy to be marked with red ink joyfully in the sad annals of Gomorrah, the Lawyer――most evil soul there, and most dreaded――announced his intention of going to England, and, when the next day dawned, he had departed with no more warning and with no word of farewell. Men, women, and children drew a long breath of relief, yet spoke of him for weeks afterwards in whispers and guarded words, as if they feared at any moment to see his hated presence among them once again, and feel his heel of iron on their necks.

One afternoon, early in November, his two associates sat together in the door-way of the tavern, the only decent dwelling within sight. He who was known as the Parson was a short, stout man, who boasted a collegiate and theological education of some sort, no one knew what, and a pastoral charge of five years, no one knew where. But it was a fact undisputed, either by himself or others, that he was now the very minister of Satan. Both he and the Lawyer knew how to sin as deeply as any one, but kept a kind of control over themselves. The man who was their boon companion, and yet hated them both with an impotent hatred, had no such power.

He was far superior to them in most respects. Gentle born, with wealthy surroundings, he had received a superior education, and gave promise of superior excellence in his profession, but had never been taught to curb a single passion. From one level to another he fell, till in Gomorrah he hid himself from all who had known him or his in his brighter days. Yet no man there was so liked and did so much to help as he. The love of his profession clung to him through everything, and it was impossible for him to see disease and accident without trying to alleviate the trouble. Boys and girls playing and quarrelling in the streets would stop the maddest sport, the bitterest fight, to help the Doctor home as he came reeling from the tavern, or to cover his face from the hot sun as he lay like a log by the roadside; would do it with a grateful remembrance of the time when “he nursed me in the fever” or “he splintered my broken leg”; and often he was saved from a midnight carousal by a call to some forlorn bedside, where he waited on filthy wretches with as quick skill and attention as once he had served the finest ladies in his great city home. No one knew how he hated the place in which he lived, and above all the man with whom he sat that autumn afternoon; but he had lost all hope of better things.

Through their gloomy silence and the clouds of tobacco-smoke the Parson and the Doctor beheld a sight which had not been seen in Gomorrah for many a day――the white cover of an emigrant wagon.

“Tom Townsend, from High Bend,” exclaimed Syles, “the Lawyer’s old chum there. Who’s he got with him?”

The Doctor made no reply, but stepped forward to meet the strangers. Behind the driver sat a young man with a good, kindly face, but lacking in practicality and force. On his arm he supported a woman, whose broad forehead, square chin, and firm mouth bespoke strong character, if one was able to think of that in noticing the serene holiness of the eyes and expression. Her face was pale as death.

“You’re wanted here, Doctor,” called the driver. “Here’s a case of chills and fever that’s not a common one, and I’ve seen ’em by hundreds.”

“Are you the Doctor?” the young man asked with a look of relief, as if he had heard of him before; and together they carried into the tavern and laid upon the settle the powerless form of the woman.

“Not this place!” the man exclaimed, lifting his head when he had laid his precious burden down. “Where is Mr. Dalzell’s house?”

“Mr. Dalzell?” the Doctor repeated. “I do not know what you mean.”

“Why, surely――yes, we must be right. He came from here, he said.”

“Who? What?” his hearers asked, with a grim suspicion in their hearts. “Where are you from, sir?”

“I am Reuben Armstrong, from Suffolk, England. A Mr. Dalzell sold me his house and claim in Gold City. Where are they?”

The Doctor’s eyes fell, and Syles slunk into the shadow of the door. It was long before they could make him understand the truth; and when at last he comprehended it, Syles stole out of his presence with a sense of shame such as he had never felt before, leaving the Doctor to give the almost heart-broken fellow the only reason for courage that he knew how to give him――to bear up bravely for his wife’s sake.

It was but too easy to grasp the sad story. Armstrong had been a well-to-do gardener, with a pleasant little house and a snug sum of money in the bank; but, as the Doctor inferred even then, he had married a woman much his superior in character and station, whose friends looked down upon him, and thought he could never do anything worthy of her. When the Lawyer told his plausible story and showed his well-planned map――when he described his possessions, to be sold at a very low figure, because, as the evil owner dared to affirm, he must be with his aged parents in Nottinghamshire during their declining years――Reuben was only too ready to drop into the net.

They told his wife――his “poor Esther”――nothing that night. Indeed, she was too ill to notice that they moved her from the tavern to the cabin next door, which was their home. In that tavern Reuben declared she should not stay one hour.

That night the first snows fell, shutting off Gomorrah for the winter from any intercourse with the outer world, and for weeks the Doctor strove against all odds to save Esther Armstrong’s life. But for her Reuben would soon have sunk to the level of his neighbors――not in sin, but in inertia. He seemed to have no courage left to begin life over again; he was sure that Esther must die, and then there would be no use of his living. He spent his time in watching beside her, doing everything about the house for her that was possible; refusing all help save the physician’s, and only accepting that because he could not avoid it.

When the Doctor came in to see Esther on the morning after her arrival, Reuben had made the room as comfortable as he could with the furniture which they had brought from home, and Esther was lying in her bed, everything white about her, and she herself looking more pure and white than even the falling snow without.

“Am I very ill?” she asked calmly; and before the grave eyes bent upon him the Doctor could return no answer but the truth.

“You are a very sick woman, Mrs. Armstrong,” he said, “but I hope we may see you pull through bravely yet.”

“Will you ask the priest to come to me?” she said.

The Doctor started to his feet and made a rapid stride across the room. It brought him face to face with a crucifix, a picture, and a rosary.

“Madam,” he said reverently――she seemed to him like a saint as she lay there――“do you know what sort of a place you are in? We have no such beings as priests here.”

“Oh!” she replied serenely, “you must mistake. Mr. Lazell certainly told us that there was one. We would never have come else.”

The Doctor bit his lip to keep back the oath which rose. “Mr. Lazell, as you call him, lied, madam.”

She asked no questions, but her searching eyes drew the truth from him. Sooner or later she must know all. Before that holy calm a tempting desire came over him to try how deep her religious feeling really was.

“Madam,” he said, “you call this place Gold City, but we know it as Gomorrah. There is no priest within miles of us. God isn’t here at all.”

She pressed her hands hard against her heart. He felt that she shrank from him inwardly.

“Is there any woman who will come to me?” she asked.

“There is not one who is fit to touch you,” he replied――“not one. We do not know what goodness is. You have been deceived into coming here. Now, if you love your husband, live for him; for nothing else can keep him from being like the rest of us.”

“You are mistaken,” she said gravely. “You do not know my husband. But, Doctor, if I must die, will you promise me to send in time for a priest?”

The Doctor bit back an oath. If “Mr. Lazell” had been there at that moment, not even Esther’s presence could have saved him from the hatred of nine wretched years kindled that day into relentless fury. The Doctor had known enough of Catholics at home――God help him! but his had been Catholic baptism in his babyhood――to fear the effect on her of what he had to say. Had it been of any use, he would have lied to her; but the next neighbor entering would have revealed all.

“There is no priest near us,” he replied, “and it is impossible to get one in the winter.”

She put her hand quickly to her heart again. “God’s will be done,” she said slowly; “God’s will be done” over and over and over again. They could not stop her. Reuben begged her to hear him, to rest, to grow calm, but it was of no avail. All day long, and far into the night, she tossed in fever, delirious always, but her holy self even in her delirium. Now she sang snatches of hymns; and now an exquisite strain of some old chant, which the Doctor had heard in great cathedrals, rose upon Gomorrah’s tainted air; but oftenest she called for a priest, or said: “God’s will be done.” Late that night the fever abated a little, and she opened her eyes calmly; but it was only to hear the clamor upon the night air of stamping feet, ringing sounds like tankards dashed on table or floor, the twang and clash of noisy instruments, scraps of vile song, brawls and oaths and blows.

“What is it?” she cried. “Where are we? Oh! I know”; and then sank into delirium again.

So for a week it lasted; then the fever died away, leaving her like a shadow. She made no complaint, never asked again for a priest, never spoke again of death; yet the Doctor knew, as well as if he had seen it, that hers was a broken heart. But another life was bound up with her life, and for its sake, as well as for Reuben’s, she tried and prayed to live. It was plain that her affection for her husband was intense; no matter what his weakness and imprudence had made her suffer, no one ever knew her fail in her honor and her love, and he seldom saw her otherwise than outwardly cheerful for his dear sake. What she endured perhaps only the Doctor truly fathomed, and his sounding-line was far too short. Reuben was too engrossed in her to care much personally for what passed about them; but the Doctor judged by what the place had been and was to him, even in his degraded life. Fallen as he was, he loathed it from the very bottom of his heart; still, with every gentlemanly instinct that was left in him, he shrank from the outcasts whom he lived with daily, though knowing himself to be fallen yet lower than they. By his own suffering, from which he did not try to escape; by his own horror of the pit whose vileness sickened him while still he chose to sink even deeper in it, he knew something of what it must be to Esther’s pure heart to live in Gomorrah. Something――that was all.

He and Reuben strove to keep sight and sound of evil from her; yet all their care could not banish at times strange visitors from her bedside――haggard women, flaunting women, all of them with evil tongues; no care could keep the children always from door or window, and often she saw, by frosty dawn or at high noon or in the early twilight, wild, wolfish eyes staring at her, gaunt fingers pointing, and heard children’s voices speak of her in terms wherewith oaths and low epithets were mixed――not through malice, but because they knew no other way.

No one knew what hours she lay awake by day and night in one agony of intercession; and she herself, praying often and hoping against hope for the sacraments to prepare her soul for death, never knew here into what union with her Lord that passion of prayer for souls was bringing her, as hour by hour the awful days wore on.

The Doctor saw her face, as it grew more sharp and thin, grow more holy, till he often felt unworthy to look upon it, and wondered how Reuben Armstrong had ever won a treasure of which it seemed to him no mortal man was worthy.

A poor, weak soul was Reuben’s, truly, in man’s sight. But God and the angels must have loved it with a special love. God knew how earnestly that sorrowful heart implored that the light of its eyes might be taken from it, if so Esther might escape from suffering and enter into peace; and when night shut him in with her alone, the angels heard how he strove to drown the riot next door by prayers and litanies beside her, till often he slept exhausted on the hard floor by her bed.

But the children most of all weighed heavily upon Esther’s soul. Even when she could not see them she heard their voices; even when she could not hear them, she fancied how their lives were spent, though even her keen fancy did not reach the whole of the painful truth; and as the birthday of the Holy Child drew nearer, she felt more keenly their ignorance of all sacred things, shuddered to think of her own child being born in such an atmosphere, then came to love those little ones as if they were her very own, and to plead for them with a mother’s insatiable pleading.

Eight days before Christmas they laid her baby in her arms and saw her smile a happy mother’s smile. Eight days they lived in trembling hope. On Christmas morning the Doctor saw the dreaded, unmistakable sign of fever. She had wakened very bright, Reuben said, and very early, with words of Christmas joy, as if she had forgotten where they were, and fancied it was home. Then some sound from the tavern had brought back the truth; there had come the quick pain at her heart, and then delirium. All day long she talked――there was no possibility of silencing her. She, so tender of others, now with no control over herself, laid her whole heart bare; and they, who thought they had known and prized her well, knew as if for the first time what a saint of God had been among them――prayers for her husband and for her baby, but not for them alone: prayers for every soul in that place of death; people named by name of whom they would have supposed she had never heard, but for whom she pleaded as if for her own flesh and blood; eager, loving, most frequent supplication for the little children; prayers for the very man who had lured them from their happy home; intensest pleading for pity and pardon for his and all these souls.