Chapter XVII: Part 17

In the early years of her married life the Empress was heartily admired by the French people. She was certainly beautiful, and she filled her position with unexpected dignity and grace. Her kindness of heart was great and unaffected, and she inaugurated notable charitable enterprises with a judgment remarkably good. In most directions she was a better wife than Napoleon III. deserved, and she was an excellent mother. If the Court over which she presided was a frivolous, corrupt, and vulgar one, it was perhaps not altogether her fault. The Paris tradesmen assuredly had no reason to turn against her, for her craze for dress and show kept a stream of gold running through their shops, and there was always something on the carpet with which to amuse the crowd. The Church, too, had reason to think well of her, for she was ever its devout, not to say bigoted, adherent. Whenever she meddled with politics she was mischievous, even absurd. She was bitter in her hatreds, and foolish in many of her friendships. It is to her credit that she always showed great respect for brains, and admired even those who attacked her in print if they did it cleverly. Her literary tastes were not profound nor otherwise unusual, but they were far from contemptible. She had some taste in art—but not enough, be it remembered, to prevent her from introducing the most hideous abomination of modern times, the enormous crinoline. She set the pace in fashion towards the novel rather than the beautiful, and the feminine world has not yet, in truth, fallen out of step. She was never a thoroughly happy woman, even when the world seemed to offer her most. The sharpest thorn in her lot was her consciousness that she was not born in the purple, and she felt to the depths of her being the slights she received from those more fortunately placed. Her grandfather, Kirkpatrick, who hailed from the north of Ireland, settled in Malaga, and engaged in a large grocery trade. Eventually he married Mlle. Grevigny, the daughter of a wealthy grocer of Bruges, Belgium. They had two remarkably handsome daughters, one of whom married Count de Teba, afterward Count Montijo. The Montijos are a very ancient Spanish house. The origin of the family goes back farther than the institution of nobility in Spain, and among its ancestors are Alfonso Perez de Guzman, that hero of the thirteenth century whose exploits are still recounted by Spanish peasants, as well as Gonsalvo de Cordova, the great general and friend of Columbus.

FEMALE POISONERS

One of the commentators on the works of the ancient Greek writers, says, “Among the Greeks, women appear to have been most addicted to criminal poisoning, as we learn from various passages in ancient authors.” The author most frequently quoted is Antiphon, whose discourses on judicial procedure in Athens in criminal prosecutions, which appeared about four hundred and thirty or forty years B. C., are still preserved. Dr. Witthaus, the toxicologist, in repeating this observation, supplements it with an assumption which may or may not be warrantable. He says, “Women appear to have been most addicted to the crime of poisoning in the Grecian period, _as they are at the present time_.” A repetition may also be noted in Dr. Smith’s Dictionary of Antiquities, under the term _Veneficium_, the crime of poisoning. Referring to its frequent mention in Roman history, Smith says, “Women were most addicted to it.”

This crime has furnished a theme for novelists and dramatists all the way from the Poison Maid or Bisha-Kanya of India, in the Hindu story of the “Two Kings;” in the “Secretum Secretorum” of Aristotle (XXVII.); and in the “Gesta Romanorum” (XI.), to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story of “Rappacini’s Daughter.” Our modern fiction writers generally select their culprits from the male sex,—as for example, Charles Dickens in his “Hunted Down,” and Charles Reade in “Put Yourself in His Place.” Frequent references in Shakespeare’s dramatic works, such as the poisoning of Regan, daughter of King Lear, by her sister Goneril, or the removal of Leonine by Cleon’s wife in Pericles, show that this, as all else in human character and conduct, could not escape the grasp of the master spirit. He makes Richard II. say,—

“Let us sit upon the ground,
And tell sad stories of the death of kings:—
How some have been deposed, some slain in war;
Some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping killed;
All murdered.”

In Cymbeline, the king’s physician, in announcing the death of the queen, surprises and startles the monarch with the revelation of her fiendish purpose to destroy both him and his daughter by a former queen, in order to clear the way for her ambitious projects:

“Your daughter, whom she bore in hand to love
With such integrity, she did confess
Was as a scorpion to her sight; whose life,
But that her flight prevented it, she had
Ta’n off by poison.

“More, sir, and worse, she did confess she had
For you a mortal mineral, which, being took,
Should by the minute feed on life, and lingering,
By inches waste you: In which time she purposed
By watching, weeping, tendance, kissing, to
O’ercome you with her show,” etc.

Sanskrit medical writings, which date back several hundred years before Christ, testify that the Hindus of that early period were familiar with poisons—animal, vegetable and mineral—together with their antidotes. Passages like the following show that criminal poisoning was guarded against:

“It is necessary for the practitioner to have knowledge of the symptoms of the different poisons and their antidotes, as the enemies of the Raja (sovereign)—bad women and ungrateful servants—sometimes mix poison with food.”

To various warnings which follow is added the precaution, “Food which is suspected should be first given to certain animals, and if they die, it is to be avoided.”

There is abundant evidence that the Persians and Egyptians, as well as the Hindus, were familiar with poisonous substances, such as the venom of serpents, the hydrocyanic acid of the peach kernel, mineral corrosives or irritants, and vegetable narcotics. In the Grecian mythology there is occasional reference to the removal of inconvenient husbands by goddesses who are familiar with the deadly properties of aconite. The manner in which Ulysses neutralized the enchantments of Circe, as related in the Odyssey, shows that attention was given at an early period to the application of antidotes. Homer also tells us of the voyage of Ulysses to Ephyra,

“to learn the direful art
To taint with deadly drugs the barbed dart;”

and Ovid relates that the arrows of Hercules were tipped with the venom of serpents, differing in that respect from the modern South American poison, _curare_, which is a vegetable extract. Poisoned arrows are referred to in the sixth chapter of Job, but there is no reference either in the Old or New Testament to the use of poison for taking away life.

Of the poisons used in Greece in the historical period, and mentioned by Nicander, the favorite appears to have been hemlock. Whether it was the _Conium maculatum_, or the _Cicuta virosa_ or _aquatica_, is a matter of controversy. Haller contends that the water-hemlock was the _conium_ of the Greeks. It may be noted, however, that Pliny says that the generic term _Cicuta_ was not indicative of a particular family of plants, but of vegetable poison in general.

For the first circumstantial report of an instance of the class under consideration, we must go back to Antiphon, who, as already noted, lived more than twenty-three centuries ago. In one of his discourses he gives a short speech, entitled “Against a Stepmother, on a Charge of Poisoning.” It treats of a case which was brought before the famous court known as Areopagos. The speaker, a young man, is the son of the deceased. He charges his stepmother with having poisoned his father several years before through the instrumentality of a woman who was her dupe. The deceased and a friend, Philoneos, the woman’s lover, had been dining together, and she was persuaded to administer a philtre to both, in hope of recovering her lover’s affection. Both the men died, and the woman—a slave—was put to death forthwith. The accuser now asks that the real criminal—the true Clytemnestra of this tragedy—shall suffer punishment.

During the Renaissance in Italy, poisoning became a fine art; the victims were numbered by thousands, and the female fiend was everywhere in evidence. In the seventeenth century the use of poison as an instrument of secret murder became so common as to warrant a violation of the confessional. In 1659 the priests of Rome informed the Pope, Alexander VII., of the great number of poisonings revealed to them in the confessions of young widows. Investigation led to the discovery of a secret society of women which met at the house of Hieronyma Spara, a fortune-teller, who dispensed an elixir or “acquetta” for the dissolution of unhappy marriages. After a large number of victims had been sacrificed, La Spara’s practices were detected through cunning police artifice. She and thirteen of her companions were hanged; others were publicly whipped half-naked through the streets of Rome, and those of the highest rank were banished.

There was a similar society of married women in Naples headed by a Sicilian woman named Tofana, who devised the arsenical solution known as the Aqua Tofana, Acquetta di Napoli, or Aqua di Perugia. It was usually labeled “Manna of St. Nicholas of Bari.” Eventually the nature of her transactions was discovered and she was cast into prison. It is said that she was strangled, but whatever her end, it is certain that she confessed, under torture, to instrumentality in six hundred murders by poison, including two popes, Pius III and Clement IV.

Murrell says that the Aqua Tofana was made by rubbing white arsenic into pork, and collecting the liquid which drained from it during decomposition. To an irritant mineral poison was therefore added, by this vile process, a ptomaine or cadaveric alkaloid possessing properties of the highest degree of toxicity. Be this as it may, there is well-grounded belief that corrosive sublimate and opium were sometimes added to the arsenic.

In other countries there was similar activity in this line. Thierry, the historian of the Norman conquest, for example, tells us of one queen of the Franks, Fridegonde, in the sixth century, whose life “could be summarized in a chronological table of assassinations by steel or poison”; and of another, Brunhilde, who poisoned her grandson and ten kings or sons of kings.

In Russia, Catherine I., wife of Peter the Great, noted for her scandalous misconduct, is believed to have poisoned her husband; and in France, Francis II. and Charles IX. were poisoned with the connivance of Catherine de Medici, wife of Henry II., who instigated the massacre of St. Bartholomew, to say nothing of the prompting of the assassination of Henry of Guise and his brother the cardinal. Catherine had in her employ a Milanese named Reni, who served her in the double capacity of perfumer and poisoner. Here, again, the backward swing of the iconoclastic pendulum has challenged the verdict of history, but historic judgment is still firm and impregnable.

In England the most noteworthy case in high life was that of the Countess of Somerset, who poisoned Sir Thomas Overbury, in the Tower of London, in 1613, with corrosive sublimate. As Lady Essex she had procured a divorce from her husband in order to marry Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset. Overbury was in possession of incriminating facts concerning Lady Essex which would have been fatal to her success, and he was put out of the way ten days before the decree of divorce was pronounced. More than two years elapsed before circumstances led to the discovery of her crime. She was found guilty, but was pardoned by James I. This leniency was in marked contrast with the treatment of those who had no friends at Court. A statute of Henry VIII. ordered prisoners to be boiled to death, and in accordance therewith, it is related that a young woman who had poisoned three families at Smithfield was boiled alive.

In the course of the latter half of the seventeenth century a mania for secret poisoning was developed in France, which extended to all classes of society. La Spara and Tofana had fitting types and imitators in Paris in two midwives and fortune-tellers named Lavoison and Lavigoreux. So great was their traffic in poisons, and it may be said, so fashionable, that their houses were thronged with purchasers, both of high and low degree, from Paris and the provinces. The usual motives and incentives were in full play, jealousy, revenge, avarice, court intrigue, political enmity, and removal of all obstacles that stood in the way of iniquitous plans and projects. To suppress and punish this class of offenders, a special tribunal was established in the reign of Louis XIV., known as the “Chambre Ardente.” Lavoison and her confederate were condemned and executed in 1680, and their accomplices in various cities of France, to the number of more than one hundred, were burned or beheaded.

Of the prisoners of the aristocratic class of that period, none commanded such widespread interest, and none is so well remembered as Marie-Marguerite d’Aubray, la Marquise de Brinvilliers. Here was a woman with every advantage of high birth and position, of large wealth, of influential connections, of singular beauty, fascinating manners and elegant accomplishments, recklessly throwing all away in the attempt to substitute a scoundrelly lover for a reprobate husband. This lover, Gaudin de St. Croix, who, while incarcerated in the Bastille, in company with the Italian chemist, Exili, had learned from him the preparation and application of poisons, so far as then known, became in turn the instructor of the marchioness. This Jezebel, in order to test the efficacy of the materials which St. Croix supplied, and to qualify herself for the sure destruction of her father and her two brothers, who antagonized her shameful amour, visited the hospitals, particularly the Hôtel Dieu, day after day, in the guise of a sister of charity, to experiment upon helpless invalids. In the course of this diabolical work she often produced effects as mere aggravated symptoms of the maladies she was ostensibly endeavoring to alleviate, and while outwardly gentle, tender, compassionate, and sympathetic, she succeeded in sending a large number to the deadhouse without incurring suspicion. St. Croix afterwards lost his life by inhaling deadly fumes in his laboratory; letters compromising the marchioness were found in his cabinet, and she escaped to Liège, but was eventually decoyed from a convent in which she had taken refuge, and brought back to Paris, tortured into confession, and beheaded on the scaffold in the Place de Grève. The best narrative of her romantic career may be found in the admirable historical novel of Albert Smith, better known as an entertaining writer than as an English surgeon.

With respect to social position, there is a wide gulf between coarse and vulgar reprobates and such society leaders as the Belgian aristocrat, Madame Marie Thérèse Joniaux, whose trial at Antwerp, several years ago, for the murder of her sister, brother, and uncle, all insured in her favor, created a profound sensation. She was the daughter of General Ablay, a distinguished cavalry officer; had been brought up in an atmosphere of refinement and cultivated taste; had been twice married to men of superior rank, and had moved among the best social circles of Brussels and Antwerp. But down in the depths of her moral sense she proved to be as depraved, as vicious, as impenitent as the low-born wretches to whom we have referred. Her love of luxury and display and her passion for cards exhausted her fortune, and her nearest relatives were sacrificed to repair it. Yet she was so far above suspicion that it was only the rapidity with which the claims successively matured, and the impetuous and indecent haste with which payment was claimed, that led to her betrayal.

A case which attracted widespread attention was that of Madeline Smith, of Glasgow, who was tried in July, 1857, for the murder of her lover and seducer, Pierre Emile L’Angelier. He sought to crown his perfidious conduct with marriage, but her parents not knowing of their illicit relations, forced an engagement to marry a man of their choice, Mr. Minnoch. Thereupon the revengeful scoundrel exposed to friends of the family Madeline’s piteous letters to him with reference to her _enceinte_ condition, and drove her to desperation. The indictment read, “administering arsenic or some other poison in coffee, cocoa, or some other food or drink, in February, 1857.” The trial ended with the Scotch verdict, “not proven,” to the great relief of the community, everybody being in sympathy with the defendant. In the course of the analytical evidence, several chemico-legal questions were involved, one of the most important of which related to the degree of solubility of arsenic. In the stomach of the deceased the chemists found ninety grains of arsenic either dissolved or suspended, and there was arsenic enough in the intestines to cause violent purging. This, by the way, was seized upon by the defence as consistent with the theory that the deceased died of cholera morbus. But while the crown contended that the arsenic had been administered in coffee or chocolate, the defence claimed that it was impossible that such a quantity could have been taken unconsciously by the deceased in these or any other liquid media. With reference to this view, Witthaus very properly notes that it presupposes that solution is a requisite to secret administration, but while this may be true of a transparent medium, and where the victim is in the possession of his senses, it must not be forgotten that a much larger quantity than could be dissolved may be stirred into a thick and opaque liquid, and taken without producing any effect upon the senses, except possibly a rough taste or gritty sensation.

No case of arsenical poisoning in recent times has attracted so much attention, aroused so much interest, and provoked so much discussion as that of Mrs. Florence Maybrick. The fact that James Maybrick was in the habit of taking arsenic as a tonic in fractional doses, and the insufficiency of such alleged motives as the life insurance, and the attachment to Brierly, were points in favor of the defence. On the other hand, the repeated investigation of the Home Secretary, and his stubborn resistance to appeals for pardon from England and America, strengthened the presumption of guilt. But even those who were unconvinced of the prisoner’s innocence of criminal intent gladly acquiesced in the release from long imprisonment which finally came in response to persistent demand.

BREVITIES

Lines on observing a sunbeam glittering on a mass of snow:

“Mark, in yon beam the world’s destructive guile,
It melts us into ruin with a smile.”

When Socrates was asked what a man gains by telling lies, he answered, “not to be believed when he speaks the truth.”

I do not call the sod under my feet my country. But language, religion, laws, government, blood,—identity in these makes men of one country.—COLERIDGE.

The observation of hospitality, even towards an enemy, is inculcated by a Hindu author: “The sandal tree imparts its fragrance even to the axe that hews it.”

An Eastern sage being desired to inscribe on the ring of his Sultan a motto, equally applicable to prosperity or adversity, returned it with these words engraved upon it: “And this, too, shall pass away.”

Affection, like melancholy, magnifies trifles; but the magnifying of the one is like looking through a telescope at heavenly objects; that of the other, like enlarging monsters with a microscope.

It is very piteous to look at blind people; but it is observed that they are generally cheerful because others pay them so much attention; and one would suffer a good deal to be continually treated with love.—LEIGH HUNT.

Yet courage, soul! Nor hold thy strength in vain,
In hope o’ercome the steeps God sets for thee;
Beyond the Alpine summits of great pain
Lieth thine Italy.—ROSE TERRY COOKE.

A tender child of Summers three,
Seeking her little bed at night,
Paused on the dark stair timidly;
“Oh, mother! take my hand,” said she,
“And then the dark will all be light.”
WHITTIER.

Books are the legacies that genius leaves to mankind, to be delivered down from generation to generation, as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.—ADDISON.

Virtue and talents, though allowed their due consideration, yet are not enough to procure a man a welcome wherever he comes. Nobody contents himself with rough diamonds, or wears them so. When polished and set, then they give a lustre.—LOCKE.

Pierpont says of the ballot,—

“A weapon that comes down as still
As snowflakes fall upon the sod;
But executes a freeman’s will,
As lightning does the will of God.

Reason is the triumph of the intellect, faith of the heart; and whether the one or the other shall best illumine the dark mysteries of our being, they only are to be despaired of who care not to explore.—SCHOULER.

If there be no nobility of descent, all the more indispensable is it that there should be nobility of ascent—a character in them that bear rule so fine and high and pure, that as men come within the circle of its influence they involuntarily pay homage to that which is the one preeminent distinction, the Royalty of Virtue.—BISHOP POTTER.

“Love gives itself; and, if not given,
No genius, beauty, worth, nor wit,
No gold of earth, no gem of heaven
Is rich enough to purchase it.”
ALEXANDER SMITH.

Who is there in this world who has not, hidden
Deep in his heart, a picture, clear and faint,
Veiled, sacred, to the outer world forbidden,
O’er which he bends, and murmurs low, “My Saint?”

Be good, my dear, and let who will, be clever;
Do noble things, not dream them all day long;
And so make life, death, and the vast Forever
One great, sweet song.—CHARLES KINGSLEY.

Do right, though pain and anguish be thy lot,
Thy heart will cheer thee when the pain’s forgot;
Do wrong for pleasure’s sake,—then count thy gains,—
The pleasure soon departs, the sin remains.

The wisest man in a comedy is he that plays the fool, for a man must be no fool to give a diverting representation of folly.—S. Viar, ix. 1.

TOASTS AND MOTTOES

_The Pilgrim Fathers_

The physical daring and hardihood with which amidst the times of savage warfare, the Pilgrims laid the foundation of mighty States, and subdued the rugged soil, and made the wilderness blossom; the vigilance and firmness with which under all circumstances they held fast their chartered liberties and extorted new rights and privileges from the reluctant home government, justly entitle them to the grateful remembrance of a generation now reaping the fruit of their sacrifices and toils.—JOHN G. WHITTIER.

_Independence Day_

It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion, from one end of the continent to the other.—JOHN ADAMS.

_Our Country_

A goodly heritage.—Psalm xvi.

Upon this land a thousand, thousand blessings.
SHAKESPEARE, “Henry VIII.”

On thy brow
Shall set a nobler grace than now,
Deep in the brightness of the skies
The thronging years of glory rise.—BRYANT.

The materials by which any nation is rendered flourishing and prosperous are its industry, its knowledge or skill, its morals, its execution of justice, its courage, and the national union in directing these powers to one point, and making them all centre in the public benefit.

EDMUND BURKE.

It is to self-government, the great principle of popular representation and administration—the system that lets in all to participate in the counsel that are to assign the good or evil to all—that we may owe what we are and what we hope to be.—DANIEL WEBSTER.

Perpetual Peace and Happiness to the United States of America!—General Washington’s Toast, Newburgh, New York, April 19, 1783.

_The American Commonwealth_

Seeming parted, but yet a union in partition.
SHAKESPEARE, “Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

That is the very best government which desires to make the people happy.—MACAULAY, “Essays.”

_The President of the United States_

Yea, the elect of the land.
SHAKESPEARE, “Twelfth Night.”

The special head of all the land.
SHAKESPEARE, “Henry IV.”

The office of President is not a little honorable, but jointly therewith very tedious and burdensome.

ANTONIE, “Familiar Letters.”

Let him join himself to no party that does not carry the flag, and keep step to the music of the Union.

RUFUS CHOATE.

_The Flag of Our Union_

A song for our banner! The watchword recall
Which gave the Republic her station;
United we stand—divided we fall;
It made and preserves us a Nation.
GEO. P. MORRIS.

_The Army_

They who stand side by side in struggle, share the peril, and do battle for the maintenance of the integrity of the government.—GEN. GEORGE G. MEADE.

Where are warriors found
If not on our Republic’s ground?
SCOTT, “Lord of the Isles.”

Defenders of our soil,
Who from destruction save us; who from spoil
Protect the sons of peace.—CRABBE.

_The Navy_

It doth command the empire of the sea.
SHAKESPEARE, “Antony and Cleopatra.”

Naval strategy has for its end to found, support, and increase, as well in peace as in war, the sea power of the country.—CAPT. A. T. MAHAN.

Hearts of oak are our ships,
Hearts of oak are our men.
DAVID GARRICK.

_The City_

The union of men in large masses is indispensable to the development and rapid growth of the higher faculties of men. Cities have always been the first places of civilization whence light and heat radiated out into the dark cold world.—THEODORE PARKER.

_The Pulpit_

That to believing souls
Gives light in darkness, comfort in despair.
SHAKESPEARE, “2 Henry VI.”

His preaching much, but more his practice wrought,
A living sermon of the truths he taught.—DRYDEN.

_The Law_

When we’ve nothing to dread from the law’s sternest frowns,
We all laugh at the barrister’s wigs, bags, and gowns;
But as soon as we want them to sue or defend,
Then their laughter begins, and our mirth’s at an end.
Old Epigram.

“Whate’er is best administered is best,” may truly be said of a judicial system, and the due distribution of justice depends much more upon the rules by which suits are to be conducted than on the perfection of the code by which rights are defined.—LORD CAMPBELL, “Lives of the Chancellors.”

_Medicine_

Physicians mend or end us,
_Secundum artem_; but although we sneer
In health—when ill, we call them to attend us,
Without the least propensity to jeer.
BYRON, “Don Juan.”

He professed a higher opinion of the medical, or rather the surgical profession, than any other. “Their mission,” said he, “is to benefit mankind, not to destroy, mystify, or inflame them against one another, and they have opportunities of studying human nature as well as science.”—“Mémoires de l’Empereur Napoléon.”

_Woman_

For where thou art, there is the world itself;
With every several pleasure in the world;
And where thou art not, desolation.
SHAKESPEARE, “Henry VI.”

O woman! lovely woman! nature made thee
To temper man; we had been brutes without you.
Angels are painted fair, to look like you;
There’s in you all that we believe of heaven;
Amazing brightness, purity and truth,
Eternal joy, and everlasting love.
THOMAS OTWAY, “Venice Preserved.”

Not she with trait’rous kiss her Saviour stung,
Not she denied him with unholy tongue;
She, while apostles shrank, could danger brave,
Last at his cross, and earliest at his grave.
E. B. BROWNING.

The woman of the coming time—
Shall man to vote appoint her?
Well, yes or no; your bottom dime
He’ll do as she’s a mind ter!

We know she “will” or else she “won’t,”
‘Twill be the same as now;
And if she does, or if she don’t,
God bless her, anyhow!

When pain and anguish wring the brow
A ministering angel thou.—SCOTT, “Marmion.”

_Christian Charity_

“O my leddie! when the hour o’ trouble comes that comes to mind and body, and the hour o’ death comes that comes to high and low, it is no’ what we ha’ done for ourselves but what we ha’ done for others, that we think on maist pleasantly.”—EFFIE DEANS, “_The Heart of Midlothian_.”

_Sexual Affinity_

As unto the bow the cord is,
So unto the man is woman:
Though she bends him, she obeys him;
Though she draws him, yet she follows;
Useless each without the other.
LONGFELLOW, “Hiawatha.”

Not like to like, but like in difference:
But in the long years liker must they grow;
The man be more of woman, she of man;
He gain in sweetness and in moral height,
Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world;
She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care
Till at the last she set herself to man
Like perfect music unto noble words;
And so these twain, upon the skirts of Time,
Sit side by side, full-summed in all their powers,
Dispensing harvest, sowing the To be
Self-reverent each and reverencing each,
Distinct in individualities,
But like each other, even as those who love.
TENNYSON, “Princess.”

_Temperance_

Honest water is too weak to be a sinner; it never left man in the mire.

SHAKESPEARE, “Timon of Athens,” i. 2.

_The Press_

There various news I heard of love and strife,
Of peace and war, health, sickness, death and life,
Of loss and gain, of famine, and of store,
Of storm at sea and travel on the shore,
Of turns of fortune, changes in the state,
Of fall of favorites, projects of the great,
Of old mismanagements, taxations new;
All neither wholly false, nor wholly true.
ALEXANDER POPE, “Temple of Fame.”

_Modern Transportation_

Of all inventions, the alphabet and printing-press excepted, those inventions which abridge distance have done most for the civilization of our species. Every improvement of the means of locomotion benefits mankind morally and intellectually as well as materially, and not only facilitates the interchange of the various productions of nature and art, but tends to remove national and provincial antipathies, and to bind together all the branches of the great human family.—MACAULAY, “History of England.”

_Erskine’s Toast_

Sink your pits, blast your mines, dam your rivers, consume your manufactures, disperse your commerce, and may your labors be in _vein_.

_Our Dead_

Alexander the Great, before giving signal for the banquet to be served, looked searchingly around upon the faces of all present and called out: “Are all here who fought at Issos?” After a pause Clitus answered, “All, Alexander, but those who fell there.” Which was thought to be an ill response for such an occasion, but to which Alexander quickly replied: “Then all who fought at Issos are here, since the glorious dead are always in our memory.”—CTESIPPUS TO ARISTOTLE.

_Good-Night_

At the supper parties at Abbotsford Scott was fond of telling amusing tales, ancient legends, ghost and witch stories. When it was time to go, all rose, and, standing hand in hand round the table, Scott taking the lead, they sang in full chorus:

Weel may we a’ be;
Ill may we never see;
Health to the King
An’ the gude companie.

FINIS CORONAT OPUS

_The Burial Places of Europe_

According to the XII Tables (the earliest code of Roman Law), burial within the walls of ancient Rome was strictly prohibited, though the Senate reserved the right, in rare instances, to make exception as a mark of special honor. Many of the Roman families preferred cremation, while others adhered to the custom of unburnt burial. To accommodate the former, large chambers, filled with niches or recesses, called _Columbaria_, were provided, as receptacles for the vases containing the ashes left after burning. For the latter, the sarcophagus, the mausoleum, the catacomb, the excavation in the tufa rock, furnished the usual sepulture. These burial places lined the roads leading out of Rome, and many of them still remain along the Appian Way. The frontage of the principal roads became so valuable for burial purposes that it was customary to add after the inscription of names and dates on the monuments a record of the number of feet in the front and depth of every lot. The most ancient of the Roman burial places still in existence is the tomb of the Scipios, in the fork between the _Via Appia_ and the _Via Latina_, and the most magnificent mausoleum was that of Hadrian, which was lined throughout with Parian marble, and surrounded by rows of statues between columns of variegated Oriental marbles. Its chambers were rifled by the Goths under Alaric; it was afterwards converted into a fortress by Belisarius; and for centuries it has been known as the Castle of S. Angelo.

The Campo Santo of Pisa is the prototype of the covered or cloistered cemetery, having been constructed in the thirteenth century. The vast rectangle within this singular structure is surrounded by arcades of white marble, and within their enclosed spaces the walls are covered with historic paintings by famous Tuscan artists. Aside from its strange-looking sarcophagi, its antique devices, and its curious inscriptions, there are two objects of more than passing interest. The earth, to the depth of several feet, was brought from Palestine, not so much from sentimental considerations, as because, of supposed antiseptic and rapidly decomposing properties. The other, hanging on the west wall, is the enormous blockading chain that was used in the harbor of Pisa. It was captured by the Genoese forces in 1362, and restored to Pisa in 1848.

The southern cemetery of Munich, just outside the Sendling Gate, is another cloistered rectangular structure, or campo santo, less attractive historically than that of Pisa, being quite modern, but in point of decorative art, inasmuch as Munich is one of the favored centres of the fine arts, infinitely superior. It is a museum of tombs, most of whose occupants were wealthy enough to obtain from the best sculpture of the day “a bond in stone and everduring bronze” to perpetuate their memories. In the Leichenhaus (dead house) adjoining may be seen through glass windows the bodies which are customarily deposited there for three days before burial. They are placed in their coffins in easy and natural postures, they are arrayed as usual in life, and flowers and other accessories are so arranged as to make them appear as if asleep. There is a similar Leichenhaus in Frankfort, and the primary object is the same in both, to obviate the danger of premature interment. On one of the fingers of each corpse is placed a ring attached to a light cord connected with a bell in the room of the warder, who is always on the watch.

Among the various modes of burial on the continent, none are so revolting to an Englishman or an American as the use of a common _fosse_, or pit. In one of the cemeteries of Naples is a series of 365 pits, one for every day of the year. One pit is opened each day, the dead of that day are laid in it, and it is filled with earth containing a large quantity of lime. A year afterwards this earth with its decomposed contents is removed, and the pit placed in readiness for the annual repetition of the burial of new bodies with fresh earth and fresh lime.

In the basement of the Capuchin Church in Rome is the charnel-house or cemetery of the Friars. It is divided into recesses, and the walls are festooned with the bones of disinterred Capuchins, arranged in fanciful forms, such as stars, crosses, crowns, shields, lamps, etc. The arrangement of the bones is ingenious, and more grotesque than horrible. Here and there, in niches, entire skeletons are placed in various attitudes. At the death of a friar the body is deposited in the oldest grave, and the bones of the former occupant are removed to the _ossuarium_, and prepared for the additional decoration of the vaults. In the Church of St. Ursula, in Cologne, are preserved the bones of eleven thousand virgins—more or less—who were barbarously massacred by the Huns because they refused to break the vows of chastity. These osseous relics are piled on shelves built in the walls for their accommodation and display. It is hard for an American, whether churchman or heretic, to comprehend the meaning or purpose or taste of such a strange anatomical exhibition.

There are Americans who go to Nuremberg without visiting the _Johannisfriedhof_, the church-yard of St. John. They miss many things worth seeing in this extremely quaint spot,—monumental designs, intricate iron work, bronze tablets on horizontal stones, which have no parallels or imitations elsewhere. They miss the “Emigravit,” etc. inscribed on the tombstone of Albert Dürer, and referred to by Mr. Longfellow in his lines descriptive of Nuremberg; they miss the strange monument to Hans Sachs; and they miss the mortuary chapel of the Holzschuher family which contains some of the finest works of the old sculptor, Adam Krafft. But people have differing tastes, and those of our countrymen referred to as not caring a fig for the queer bronze bas-reliefs in the church-yard of St. John, make it a point to include the catacombs of Rome and Paris within the range of their visits in these cities. In Paris it is much easier to trace the course of the catacombs on charts, to learn above ground the history of the transformation of the old quarries into subterranean charnel-houses, and to accept the statistical statement that three millions of skeletons are deposited there, without verifying the assertion by descending into the excavations and counting the bones. Faithfully “doing” the crypts of the churches in Paris, as elsewhere, is fatiguing enough. It is well to stand by the coffin of Victor Hugo in the lower recesses of the Pantheon, or on the spot in the _Chapelle Expiatoire_, where Marie Antoinette was originally buried, or near the ashes of the celebrities in the undercroft of St. Denis, but fatigue eventually draws the line.

There is one crypt of which no one ever tires, no matter how frequent the visits may be repeated. It is directly beneath the gilded dome of the _Invalides_, and holds the porphyry monolith in which repose the remains of Napoleon. Around the top of the portico is a circular marble balustrade over which the visitor looks down at the colossal bronze caryatides and marble statues which surround the tomb. The height of the dome is 323 feet. Through an ingenious arrangement of an upper window a flood of golden light is made to strike the high altar near the tomb in a singularly effective manner. As one glances from that altar to the magnificent frescoes around, from the splendid statuary to the glories of the torn and faded battle flags, from the mosaic laurels on the floor of the crypt to the grandeur of the dome, he feels that this is art’s supreme effort to make the resting place of the warrior at once the most beautiful and the most majestic tomb that has ever been reared to a mortal.

What a broad contrast between this imperial magnificence and the simple and quiet grave of Thomas Gray in the church-yard of Stoke Pogis, the scene of his immortal Elegy; or the ivy-covered tomb of Walter Scott in a sheltered nook of the ruins of Dryburgh Abbey; or the vault in the chancel of the parish church on the bank of the Avon, at Stratford, which holds the ashes of William Shakespeare. Visitors to Naples hesitate to climb the steep rocks near the Grotto of Posilipo, to visit the alleged tomb of Virgil, because authoritative writers doubt whether the author of the Æneid was buried there. But we know that in that quiet spot at the southeast corner of the venerable church of Stoke manor, Gray was buried, and we are told that on the evening before the capture of Quebec and the overthrow of the French dominion in Canada, General Wolfe said, “I would rather be the author of the Elegy in a Country Church-yard than to win a victory to-morrow.” And we might ask, who would not rather be the author of Hamlet than the victor of Austerlitz or Marengo?

“Such graves as theirs are pilgrim shrines,
Shrines to no code or creed confined;
The Delphian vales, the Palestines,
The Meccas of the mind.”

What Santa Croce is to Italy, what the Valhalla is to Germany, what the Pantheon was intended to be to France—the shrine of genius—Westminster Abbey is to England. Scores of kings and queens are buried in this National Sanctuary, but though it is still the place for the coronation, it is no longer the place for the interment of royalty. It has become the sepulchre of the kings of great thought and of grand action. Says Dean Stanley in his Historical Memorials of the Abbey, “As the Council of the nation and the Courts of Law have pressed into the Palace of Westminster, and engirdled the very Throne itself, so the ashes of the great citizens of England have pressed into the sepulchre of the Kings and surrounded them as with a guard of honor after their death.... Let those who are inclined to contrast the placid dignity of our recumbent Kings with Chatham gesticulating from the Northern Transept, or Pitt from the western door, or Shakespeare leaning on his column in Poets’ Corner, or Wolfe expiring by the Chapel of St. John, look upon them as in their different ways keeping guard over the shrine of our monarchy and our laws.”

The Abbey does not monopolize the ashes of England’s greatest dead. Many who were illustrious in arms, in arts, in song, in statesmanship, rest in another Valhalla, St. Paul’s Cathedral. Notwithstanding the passionate exclamation of Nelson, “A peerage, or Westminster Abbey,” he was buried in the crypt of St. Paul’s, and so, half a century later, was Wellington. But a mile to the eastward there is a burial place of far more curious interest to the student of English history. It is in the grounds of that gloomy aggregation of buildings, the Tower of London, the fortress, prison, and palace, which dates back to the Norman Conquest. In point of historic reminiscence there is not a more interesting, certainly not a sadder spot than the Chapel of St. Peter in the Tower. Here rest the distinguished victims of the remorseless axe,—Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard, Lady Jane Grey, Sir Thomas More, Essex, Somerset, Northumberland, and all the rest of noble martyrs who were beheaded near the Beauchamp Tower, a few yards from where their remains have mouldered to dust. Macaulay says of this burial place: “Death is there associated, not as in Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s, with genius and virtue, with public veneration and with imperishable renown; not, as in our humblest churches and church-yards, with everything that is most endearing in social and domestic charities, but with whatever is darkest in human nature and in human destiny, with the savage triumph of implacable enemies, with the inconstancy, the ingratitude, the cowardice of friends, with all the miseries of fallen greatness and of blighted fame.”

_The Loved and Lost_

“The loved and lost!” why do we call them lost?
Because we miss them from our outward road,
God’s unseen angel o’er our pathway crost
Looked on us all, and loving them the most,
Straightway relieved them from life’s weary load.

They are not lost; they are within the door
That shuts out loss and every hurtful thing—
With angels bright, and loved ones gone before,
In their Redeemer’s presence evermore,
And God himself their Lord, and Judge, and King.

And this we call a loss! O selfish sorrow
Of selfish hearts! O we of little faith!
Let us look round, some argument to borrow,
Why we in patience should await the morrow,
That surely must succeed the night of death.

Aye, look upon this dreary, desert path,
The thorns and thistles wheresoe’r we turn;
What trials and what tears, what wrongs and wrath,
What struggles and what strife the journey hath!
They have escaped from these; and lo! we mourn.

Ask the poor sailor, when the wreck is done,
Who, with his treasure, strove the shore to reach,
While with the raging waves he battled on,
Was it not joy, where every joy seemed gone,
To see his loved ones landed on the beach?

A poor wayfarer, leading by the hand
A little child, had halted by the well
To wash from off her feet the clinging sand,
And tell the tired boy of that bright land
Where, this long journey past, they longed to dwell,

When lo! the Lord, who many mansions had,
Drew near and looked upon the suffering twain,
Then pitying, spake, “Give me the little lad;
In strength renewed, and glorious beauty clad,
I’ll bring him with me when I come again.”

Did she make answer selfishly and wrong—
“Nay, but the woes I feel he too must share!”
Or, rather bursting into grateful song,
She went her way rejoicing and made strong
To struggle on, since he was freed from care.

We will do likewise. Death hath made no breach
In love and sympathy, in hope and trust;
No outward sigh or sound our ears can reach,
But there’s an inward, spiritual speech,
That greets us still, though mortal tongues be dust.

It bids us do the work that they laid down—
Take up the song where they broke off the strain;
So journeying till we reach the heavenly town,
Where are laid up our treasures and our crown,
And our lost, loved ones will be found again.

_At Last_

When on my day of life the night is falling,
And, in the winds from unsunned spaces blown,
I hear far voices out of darkness calling
My feet to paths unknown.

Thou who hast made my home of life so pleasant,
Leave not its tenant when its walls decay;
O love divine, O helper ever present,
Be thou my strength and stay!

Be near me when all else is from me drifting,
Earth, sky, home’s picture, days of shade and shine,
And kindly faces to my own uplifting
The love which answers mine.

I have but Thee, O Father! Let Thy Spirit
Be with me then to comfort and uphold;
No gate of pearl, no branch of palm, I merit,
Nor street of shining gold.

Suffice it if—my good and ill unreckoned,
And both forgiven through Thy abounding grace—
I find myself by hands familiar beckoned
Unto my fitting place;

Some humble door among Thy many mansions,
Some sheltering shade where sin and striving cease,
And flows fore’er through heaven’s green expansions
The river of Thy peace.

There from the music round about me stealing,
I fain would learn the new and holy song,
And find, at last, beneath Thy trees of healing,
The life for which I long.
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.

_Auld Lang Syne_

Under this title, though sometimes called a “hymn of comfort,” Rev. John W. Chadwick wrote the following lines for the twenty-fifth anniversary of his church:

It singeth low in every heart,
We hear it each and all—
A song of those who answer not,
Forever we may call;
They throng the silence of the breast,
We see them as of yore—
The kind, the brave, the true, the sweet
Who walk with us no more.

’Tis hard to take the burden up
When these have laid it down;
They brightened all the joy of life,
They softened every frown;
But oh, ’tis good to think of them,
When we are troubled sore!
Thanks be to God that such have been,
Although they are no more!

More homelike seems the vast unknown,
Since they have entered there;
To follow them were not so hard,
Wherever they may fare;
They cannot be where God is not,
On any sea or shore;
Whate’er betides, Thy love abides,
Our God, for evermore.

_In a Rose Garden_

Under the above title, John Bennett, of Charleston, S. C., wrote the following verses:

A hundred years from now, dear heart,
We will not care at all;
It will not matter then a whit,
The honey or the gall.
The Summer days that we have known
Will all forgotten be and flown;
The garden will be overgrown
Where now the roses fall.

A hundred years from now, dear heart,
We will not mind the pain;
The throbbing, crimson tide of life
Will not have left a stain.
The song we sing together, dear,
The dream we dream together here,
Will mean no more than means a tear
Amid a Summer rain.

A hundred years from now, dear heart,
The grief will all be o’er;
The sea of care will surge in vain
Upon a careless shore.
These glasses we turn down to-day,
Here at the parting of the way,
We shall be wineless then as they,
And will not mind it more.

A hundred years from now, dear heart,
We’ll neither know nor care
What came of all life’s bitterness,
Or followed love’s despair.
Then fill the glasses up again,
And kiss me through the rose-leaf rain;
We’ll build one castle more in Spain
And dream one more dream there.

“_Now I Lay Me_”

The Mothers’ Club, which is revolutionizing the training of children, wants a revision of the child’s evening prayer which is in universal use. A grandmother relates a newly-awakened experience upon the occasion of a visit to her daughter. On the night after her arrival, the little five-year-old grandson insisted that his grandmother should put him to bed. When he was ready to be tucked in, he repeated the Lord’s Prayer, but when asked to follow it with “Now I lay me down to sleep,” she found that he had never learned it. On asking her daughter why, the child’s mother replied: “Why, mother dear, that belongs to the past, like teaching children to kneel, and many other things. Do we want our children to kneel when they ask us for anything? The Mothers’ Club has taught us that ‘Now I lay me’ is highly objectionable, with the suggestion in the line, ‘if I should die before I wake.’ How cruel to implant such a thought in the child’s mind! I remember too well the long hours I have lain awake lest I should die in my sleep. The model parent of to-day has advanced beyond the convictions of the model parent of yesterday, when to impress upon a child a fear of death and to keep in his remembrance that he must surely die was the duty of every good father and mother.

“Think of the funerals children were made to attend when you were a child—the funeral selections of the old-school readers, the horrible gloom that fell upon a home whenever death crossed the threshold, the clocks stopped, the pictures covered, or turned to the wall, and all the rest. Perhaps the fulfilment of the promise ‘There shall be no more death,’ is nearer than many suppose; for what is death when robbed of the fear of it—that fear which has been a positive cult for centuries? I, for one, believe that the blessed day is coming when to die will be simply passing on, and, outside of the circle of the dear ones of the departed, it will be almost ‘without observation.’ Certainly there will be a welcome absence of funeral pageants, the complete annihilation of the ashes after cremation, doing away in time with sepulchral urns and chapels for their preservation. Memorial monuments will then be in some form contributing to the world’s betterment. The wearing of mourning will be a thing of the past, and that blemish on many a fair rural landscape, the neglected old graveyard, will have disappeared. Funeral processions will no more go about the streets.”

When the old-fashioned grandmother recovered somewhat from her amazement at such a line of argument, she ventured to suggest a revision to avoid the condemnation of the Mothers’ Club. So now the little fellow is saying:

Now I lay me down to sleep;
I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to keep;
When in the morning light I wake,
Lead Thou my feet, that I may take
The path of love for Thy dear sake.

A call in the New York _Evening Post_ for a Child’s Morning Prayer brought several responses, among which are the following:

I.

My thanks, my God, I give to Thee
That I another morning see;
This day into Thy keeping take
My soul, my all, for Jesus sake.

II.

Father, keep me all the day,
While I work or while I play;
Make me feel and do what’s right
’Till I lay me down at night.

III.

Be with me, Lord, all through this day,
Both in my work and in my play,
That I by word and deed may be
Worthy of love, of Heaven, and Thee.

John Quincy Adams, “the old man eloquent,” said at the close of fifty years of crowded public life, beginning in 1798 and ending with his death in 1848, that he had never retired at night without repeating the little prayer that his mother taught him, “Now I lay me down to sleep.” He further said it had been his practice to spend an hour each day in reading the Holy Scriptures.

_Thanatopsis_