Chapter X (2)

Heart and brain are the two lords of life. In the metaphors of ordinary speech and in the stricter language of science, we use these terms to indicate two central powers, from which all motives radiate, to which all influences converge. They rule the moral and the physical life: the moral owes to them its continuous supply of feelings and ideas; the physical its continuous supply of food and stimulus. All the composite material which serves to build up the bodily fabric, and repair its daily waste, is only so much "carted material" awaiting the architect, until it has twice passed through the heart--until having been sent by the heart to the lungs it has there received its plastic virtues, and returns to the heart to be thence distributed throughout the organism. So much is familiar to every one; but less familiar is the fact that this transmission of the blood from heart to lungs, and its distribution throughout the organism, are rendered possible and made effective only under the influence of the brain. Life is sustained by food and stimulus. The operation of nutrition itself is indissolubly connected with sensibility. Life is a plexus of nutrition and sensation, the threads of which may ideally be separated, but which in reality are so interwoven as to be indissoluble. This is a paradox which even many physiologists will reject; but it is only a paradox because biological questions have constantly been regarded from a chemical point of view.

To render my proposition free from ambiguity, it is needful to premise that the term heart, by a familiar device of rhetoric, here expresses the whole of that great circulatory apparatus of which it is only a part; and in like manner the term brain here expresses the whole of the sensory apparatus. The reader knows perfectly well that in strict anatomical language the heart is only one organ having a definite function; and that the brain--although the term is used with considerable laxity--is only one portion of the complex nervous mechanism, having also its definite functions. But I am not here addressing anatomists, and for purposes of simplification I shall generally speak of the heart as if it were the whole of the vascular system, and of the brain as if it were the whole of the nervous system. And there is a philosophic truth suggested by this departure from the limitations of anatomical definition, namely, that if the brain as a nervous centre requires to be distinguished from all other nervous centres, it also requires to be affiliated on them: it has its special functions as an organ, but it has also a community of property--_i.e._, sensibility--with all other nervous centres.

In the study of animal organisms, the scientific artifice called analysis, which separates ideally what nature has indissolubly united, isolating each portion of a complex whole to study it undisturbed by the influences of other portions, has established a division of life into animal and vegetable. The division is as old as Aristotle, but has become the common property of science only since the days of Bichat. It is not exact, but it is convenient. As an artifice it has proved its utility, but like all such distinctions it has a tendency to divert the mind from contemplation of the real synthesis of nature. Even as an artifice the classification is not free from ambiguities; and perhaps it would be less exceptionable if {624} instead of vegetal and animal we were to substitute nutritive and sensitive. All the phenomena of growth, development, and decay--phenomena common to plants as to animals--may range under the laws of nutrition. All the phenomena of feeling and motion which specially distinguish animals, will range under the laws of sensibility. Plants, it is true, manifest motion, some few of them even locomotion; but in them it is believed that these phenomena are never due to the stimulus of sensibility.

Viewing the animal organism as thus differentiated, we see on the one hand a complex system of organs--glands, membranes, vessels--all harmoniously working to one end, which is to build up the body, and silently repair its continual waste. They evolve the successive phases of development. They prepare successive generations. On the other hand, we see a complex system of organs--muscles, tendons, bones, nerves, and nerve-centres--also harmoniously co-operative. They stimulate the organs of nutrition. They work first for the preservation of the individual in the struggle of existence; next, for the perfection of the individual in the development of his highest qualities.

But it is important to remember that this division is purely ideal--a scientific artifice, not a reality. Nature knows of none such. In the organism the two lives are one. The two systems interlace, interpenetrate each other, so that the slightest modification of the one is followed by a corresponding change in the other. The brain is nourished by the heart, and were it not for the blood which is momently pumped into it by the heart, its sensibility would vanish. And the heart in turn depends upon the brain, not for food, but for stimulus, for motive power, without which food is inert. That we may feel, it is necessary we should feed; that we may feed, it is necessary we should feel. Nutrition cannot be dissociated from sensation. The blood which nourishes the brain, giving it impulse and sustaining power, could never have become arterial blood, could never have reached the brain, had not the heart which sent it there been subjected to influences from the brain. The blood itself has no locomotive impulse. The heart has no spontaneous power: it is a muscle, and like all other muscles must be stimulated into activity. Unless the sensitive mechanism were in action, the lungs could not expand, the blood would not become oxygenated, the heart would not pump. Look on the corpse from which the life has just vanished. Why is it inert? There is food within it. It has blood in abundance. There is air in the lungs. The muscles are contractile, and the tendons elastic. So little is the wondrous mechanism impaired, that if by any means we could supply a stimulus to awaken the dormant sensibility, the chest would expand, the heart would beat, the blood would circulate, the corpse would revive.

It is unnecessary to point out in detail how dependent the brain is upon the heart; but mention may be made of the fact that more blood is sent to the brain than to any other organ in the body: according to some estimates a fifth of the whole, according to others a third. Not only is a large quantity of blood demanded for the continuous activity of the brain, but such is the peculiar nature of this great nervous centre, that of all organs it is the most delicately susceptible to every variation in the quality of the blood sent to it. If the heart pumps feebly, the brain acts feebly. If the blood be vitiated, the brain is lethargic; and when the brain is lethargic, the heart is weak. Thus do the two great centres interact. They are both lords of life, and both mutually indispensable.

There are two objections which it may be well to anticipate: Nutrition, it may be objected, cannot be so indissolubly blended with sensation as I have affirmed, because, in the first place, most of the nutritive processes go on without the intervention of {625} sensibility; and in the second place, the nutritive life of plants is confessedly independent of sensation, since in plants there is no sensitive mechanism whatever. Nutrition is simply a chemical process.

The answers to these objections may be very brief. Nutrition is a biological not a chemical process: it involves the operation of chemical laws, but these laws are themselves subordinated to physiological laws; and one of these laws is the necessary dependence of organic activity on a nervous mechanism wherever such a mechanism exists. Although popular language, and the mistaken views (as I conceive) of physiologists, allow us to say, without any apparent absurdity, that the processes of respiration, digestion, circulation, and secretion go on without feeling or sensation--because these processes do not habitually become distinct in consciousness, but are merged in the general feeling of existence--we have only to replace the word feeling, or sensation, by the phrase "nervous influence," and it then becomes a serious biological error to speak of nutrition as dissociated from the stimulus of nervous centres, as capable of continuance without the intervention of sensibility. The chemical combinations and decompositions do not of course depend on this intervention, but the _transport_ of materials does. All the disputes which have been waged on this subject would have been silenced had the disputants borne in mind this distinction between the chemical and organic elements in every nutritive process. It is not the stoker who makes the steam; but if the stoker were not to supply the fire with coals, and the safety-valve were not to regulate the amount of pressure, steam might indeed be generated, but no steam-engine would perform its useful work. In like manner, it is not the vascular system which makes a secretion; but if the blood did not supply the gland with materials, the secreting process would quickly end, and the blood can only be brought to the gland through the agency of muscular contractions stimulated by nervous influence.

Granting that plants have no sensibility, and that in them the process of nutrition must go on without such an intervention, we are able to demonstrate that in animals in whose organism the sensitive apparatus is an integral portion, the processes of nutrition are more or less under the influence of this apparatus. In saying "more or less," I indicate the greater or less perfection of the organism; for, as every one knows, the perfection of each type is due to the predominance of its sensitive mechanism. In some of the lowest types, no trace of a nervous mechanism can be discovered. A little higher in the scale, the mechanism is very slight and simple. Still higher, it becomes complex and important. It culminates in man. Corresponding with this scale of complexity in the sensitive life is the scale of complexity in the nutritive life. As the two rise in importance they rise in the scale of dependence. Thus a frog or a triton will live long after its brain is removed. I have kept frogs for several weeks without their brains, and tritons without their heads. Redi, the illustrious Italian naturalist, kept a turtle alive five months after the removal of its brain. Now it is needless to say that in higher animals death would rapidly follow the loss of the brain. A somewhat similar parallelism is seen on the removal of the heart. None of the higher animals can survive a serious injury to the heart; but that organ may be removed from a reptile, and the animal will crawl away seemingly as lively as ever. A frog will live several hours without a heart, and will hop, swim, and struggle as if uninjured. Stilling once removed all the viscera from a frog, which, however, continued for one hour to hop, defend itself, and in various ways manifest its vivacity. [Footnote 124]

[Footnote 124: Stilling, _Untersuchungen ueber die Functionen des
Rueckenmarks_, p. 38. ]

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In spite of these evidences of a temporary independence of brain and heart, as individual organs, there is nothing more certain than the intimate interdependence of the sensitive and circulating systems; and if in lower animals the interdependence of the two great central organs is less energetic than in the higher, the law of the intervention of sensibility in all processes of nutrition is unaffected. In fact, wherever the motor mechanism is muscular, as it is in all but the simplest animals, the necessary intervention of sensibility is an _a priori_ axiom. Every action in the organs of such animals is a manifestation of muscular contractility, and there is no known means of exciting this contractility except by the stimulus of a nerve.

The heart is a muscle. Some years ago there was a school of physiologists advocating the hypothesis that the action of the heart was due to the irritability of its muscular tissue, which was stimulated by the presence of blood. The great Haller was the head of this school, and his _"Memoires sur la nature sensible et irritable des parties"_ [Footnote 125] is still worthy the attention of experimentalists. And, indeed, when men saw the heart continue its pulsations some time after death, and even after removal from the body, and saw, moreover, that after pulsation had ceased it could be revived by the injection of warm blood, there seemed the strongest arguments in favor of the hypothesis. Unhappily for the hypothesis, the heart continues to beat long after all the blood has been pumped out of it, consequently its beating cannot be due to the stimulus of the blood.

[Footnote 125: Lausanne, 1756, in 4 vols. ]

In our own day the difficulty has to a considerable extent been removed by the discovery of a small nervous system specially allotted to the heart,--nerves and ganglia imbedded in its substance, which there do the work of nerves and ganglia everywhere else. Cut the heart into pieces, and each piece containing a ganglion will beat as before; the other pieces will be still. Beside this special cardiac system which influences the regular pulsations, there is the general nervous system, which accelerates and arrests these pulsations at every moment of our lives. The heart is thus connected with the general organism through the intervention of the great sensory apparatus. Filaments of what are called the pneumogastric nerves connect the heart with the spinal chord and cerebral masses; but it is not the influence of these filaments which causes the regular beatings of the heart (as physiologists formerly supposed), and the proof is that these filaments may all be cut, thus entirely isolating the heart from all connection with the great nervous centres, and yet the heart will continue tranquilly beating. What causes this? Obviously the stimulus comes from the heart's own nerves; and these are, presumably, excited by the molecular changes going on within it.

Physiologists, as we said just now, supposed that the filaments of the pneumogastric nerves distributed to the heart caused its beating. What then was their surprise, a few years since, when Weber announced that the stimulation of these fibres, instead of accelerating the heart's action, arrested it! Here was a paradox. All other muscles, it was said (but erroneously said), are excited to increased action when their nerves are stimulated, and here is a muscle which is paralyzed by the stimulation of its nerves. The fact was indisputable; an electric current passed through the pneumogastric did suddenly and invariably arrest the heart. Physiologists were interested. The frogs and rabbits of Europe had a bad time of it, called upon to answer categorically such questions put to their hearts. In a little while it appeared that although a strong electric current arrested the pulsations--and in mammals instantaneously--yet a feeble current accelerated instead of arresting them. The same opposite results followed a powerful and a gentle excitation of the upper region of the spinal chord.

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To these very important and suggestive facts, which throw a strong light on many phenomena hitherto obscure, let us add the interesting facts that in a healthy, vigorous animal, the heart quickly recovers its normal activity after the withdrawal of the electric stimulus; but in a sickly or highly sensitive animal the arrest is final.

Who does not read here the physiological explanation of the familiar fact that powerful mental shocks momently arrest the heart, and sometimes arrest it for ever? That which a powerful current will do applied to the pneumogastric nerve, will be done by a profound agitation of grief or joy--truly called a heart-shaking influence. The agitation of the great centres of thought is communicated to the spinal chord, and from it to the nerves which issue to various parts of the body: the limbs are violently moved, the glands are excited to increased activity, the tears flow, the facial muscles contract, the chest expands, laughter or sobs, dances of delight and shouts of joy, these and the manifold expressions of an agitated emotion, are the after results--the first effect is an arrest, more or less fugitive, followed by an increase of the heart's action. If the organism be vigorous, the effect of a powerful emotion is a sudden paleness, indicating a momentary arrest of the heart. This may be but for an instant; the heart pauses, and the lungs pause with it--"the breath is taken away." This is succeeded by an energetic palpitation; the lungs expand, the blood rushes to face and brain with increased force. Should the organism be sickly or highly sensitive, the arrest is of longer duration, and fainting, more or less prolonged, is the result. In a very sensitive or very sickly organism the arrest is final. The shock of joy and the shock of grief have both been known to kill.

The effects of a gentle stimulus we may expect to be very different, since we know that a feeble electric current stimulates the heart's action. The nature of the stimulus is always the same, no matter on what occasion it arises. It may arise from a dash of cold water on the face--as we see in the revival of the heart's action when we throw water on the face of a fainting person. It may arise from inhaling an irritant odor. It may arise from the pleasurable sight of a dear friend, or the thrill of delight at the new birth of an idea. In every case the brain is excited, either through an impression on a sensitive nerve, or through the impulses of thought; and the sensibility thus called into action necessarily discharges itself through one or more of the easiest channels; and among the easiest is that of the pneumogastric nerve. But the heart thus acted on in turn reacts. Its increased energy throws more blood into the brain, which draws its sustaining power from the blood.

Experimentalists have discovered another luminous fact connected with this influence of the brain upon the heart, namely, that although a current of a certain intensity (varying of course with the nature of the organism) will infallibly arrest the heart, if applied at once, yet if we begin with a feeble current and go on gradually increasing its intensity, we may at last surpass the degree which would have produced instantaneous arrest, and yet the heart will continue to beat energetically.

The effect of repetition in diminishing a stimulus is here very noticeable. It will serve to explain why, according to the traditions of familiar experience, we are careful to break the announcement of disastrous news, by intimating something much less calamitous, wherewith to produce the first shock, and then, when the heart has withstood that, we hope it may have energy to meet the more agitating emotions. The same fact will also serve, partly, to explain why from repetition the effect of smoking is no longer as it is at first to produce paleness, sweating, and sickness. The heart ceases to be sensibly affected by the stimulus.

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Returning to the effects of a gentle stimulus, we can read therein the rationale of change of scene, especially of foreign travel, in restoring the exhausted energies. The gentle excitement of novel and pleasurable sights is not, as people generally suppose, merely a mental stimulus--a pleasure which passes away without a physical influence; on the contrary, it is inseparably connected with an increased activity of the circulation, and _this_ brings with it an increased activity of all the processes of waste and repair. If the excitement and fatigue be not too great, even the sickly traveller finds himself stronger and happier, in spite of bad food, irregular hours, and many other conditions which at home would have enfeebled him. I have heard a very distinguished physician (Sir Henry Holland) say that such is his conviction of the beneficial influence of even slight nervous stimulus on the nutritive processes, that when the patient cannot have change of scene, change of room is of some advantage--nay, even change of furniture, if there cannot be change of room!

To those who have thoroughly grasped the principle of the indissoluble conjunction of nutrition and sensation, such effects are obvious deductions. They point to the great importance of pleasure as an element of effective life. They lead to the question whether much of the superior health of youth is not due to the greater amount of pleasurable excitement which life affords to young minds.

Certain it is that much of the marvellous activity of some old men, especially of men engaged in politics or in interesting professions, may be assigned to the greater stimulus given to their bodily functions by the pleasurable excitement of their minds. Men who vegetate sink prematurely into old age. The fervid wheels of life revolve upon excitement. If the excitement be too intense, the wheels take fire; but if the mental stimulus be simply pleasurable, it is eminently beneficial.

Every impression reacts on the circulation, a slight impression producing a slight acceleration, a powerful impression, producing an arrest more or less prolonged. The "shock" of a wound and the "pain" of an operation cause faintness, sometimes death. Indeed, it is useful to know that many severe operations are dangerous only because of the shock or pain, and can be performed with impunity if the patient first be rendered insensible by chloroform. On the other hand, the mere irritation of a nerve so as to produce severe pain will produce syncope or death in an animal which is very feeble or exhausted. It is possible to crush the whole of the upper part of the spinal chord (the _medulla oblongata_) without arresting the action of the heart, if the animal has been rendered insensible by chloroform; whereas without such precautions a very slight irritation of the medulla suffices to arrest the heart.

A moment's reflection will disclose the reason of the remarkable differences observed in human beings in the matter of sensitiveness. The stupid are stupid, not simply because their nervous development is below the average, but also because the connection between the two great central organs, brain and heart, is comparatively languid; the pneumogastric is not in them a ready channel for the discharge of nervous excitement. The sensitive are sensitive because in them the connection is rapid and easy. All nervous excitement must discharge itself through one or more channels; but _what_ channels, will depend on the native and acquired tendencies of the organism. In highly sensitive animals a mere prick on the skin can be proved to affect the beating of the heart; but you may lacerate a reptile without sensibly affecting its pulse. In like manner, a pleasurable sight or a suggestive thought will quicken the pulse of an intelligent man, whereas his stupid brother may be the spectator of festal or solemn scenes and the auditor of noble eloquence with scarcely a change.

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The highly sensitive organism is one in which the reactions of sensibility on the circulation, and of the circulation on the sensibility, are most direct and rapid. This is often the source of weakness and inefficiency--as we see in certain feminine natures of both sexes, wherein the excessive sensitiveness does not lie in an unusual development of the nervous centres, but in an unusual development of the direct connection between brain and heart. There are men and women of powerful brains in whom this rapid transmission of sensation to the heart is not observable; the nervous force discharges itself through other channels. There are men and women of small brains in whom "the irritability" is so great that almost every sensation transmits its agitating influence to the heart.

And now we are in a condition to appreciate the truth which was confusedly expressed in the ancient doctrine respecting the heart as the great emotional organ. It still lives in our ordinary speech, but has long been banished from the text-books of physiology, though it is not, in my opinion, a whit more unscientific than the modern doctrine respecting the brain (meaning the cerebral hemispheres) as the exclusive organ of sensation. That the heart, as a muscle, is not endowed with the property of sensibility--a property exclusively possessed by ganglionic tissue--we all admit. But the heart, as the central organ of the circulation, is so indissolubly connected with every manifestation of sensibility, and is so delicately susceptible to all emotional agitations, that we may not improperly regard it as the ancients regarded it, in the light of the chief centre of feeling; for the ancients had no conception of the heart as an organ specially endowed with sensibility--they only thought of it as the chief agent of the sensitive soul. And is not this the conception we moderns form of the brain? We do not imagine the cerebral mass, as a mere mass, and unrelated to the rest of the organism, to have in itself sensibility; but we conceive it as the centre of a great system, dependent for its activity on a thousand influences, sensitive because sensibility is the form of life peculiar to it, but living only in virtue of the vital activities of the whole organism. Thus the heart, because its action is momently involved in every emotion, and because every emotion reacts upon it, may, as truly as the brain, be called the great emotional centre. Neither brain nor heart can claim that title exclusively. They may claim it together.

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[Transcriber: Read this section with a fixed pitch font so the two columns are correctly aligned.]

From The Month.

THE DREAM OF GERONTIUS.

BY JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, D.D.

[Concluded.]

Sec.4.

SOUL.

But hark! upon my sense
Comes a fierce hubbub, which would make me fear,
Could I be frighted.

ANGEL.

We are now arrived
Close on the judgment-court; that sullen howl
Is from the demons who assemble there.
It is the middle region, where of old
Satan appeared among the sons of God,
To cast his jibes and scoffs at holy Job.
So now his legions throng the vestibule,
Hungry and wild, to claim their property,
And gather souls for hell. Hist to their cry.

SOUL.

How sour and how uncouth a dissonance!

DEMONS.

Low-born clods
Of brute earth, They aspire
To become gods,
By a new birth, And an extra grace,
And a score of merits,
As if ought Could stand in place
Of the high thought, And the glance of fire
Of the great spirits,
The powers blest, The lords by right,
The primal owners
Of the proud dwelling And realm of light,
Dispossessed, Aside thrust,
Chucked down,
By the sheer might
Of a despot's will,
Of a tyrant's frown,
Who after expelling Their hosts, gave,
Triumphant still,
And still unjust,
Each forfeit crown
To psalm-droners
And canting groaners,
To every slave,
And pious cheat,
And crawling knave,
Who licked the dust
Under his feet.

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ANGEL.

It is the restless panting of their being;
Like beasts of prey, who, caged within their bars,
In a deep hideous purring have their life,
And an incessant pacing to and fro.

DEMONS.

The mind bold
And independent,
The purpose free,
So we are told,
Must not think
To have the ascendant, What's a saint?
One whose breath Doth the air taint
Before his death; A bundle of bones,
Which fools adore, Ha! ha!
When life is o'er,
Which rattle and stink,
E'en in the flesh. We cry his pardon!
No flesh hath he;
Ha! ha! For it hath died,
'Tis crucified
Day by day,
Afresh, afresh, Ha! ha!
That holy clay,
Ha! ha!
And such fudge,
As priestlings prate, Is his guerdon
Before the judge,
And pleads and atones
For spite and grudge,
And bigot mood,
And envy and hate And greed of blood.

SOUL.

How impotent they are! and yet on earth
They have repute for wondrous power and skill;
And books describe, how that the very face
Of th' evil one, if seen, would have a force
To freeze the very blood, and choke the life
Of him who saw it.

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ANGEL.

In thy trial state
Thou hadst a traitor nestling close at home,
Connatural, who with the powers of hell
Was leagued, and of thy senses kept the keys,
And to that deadliest foe unlocked thy heart.
And therefore is it, in respect of man,
Those fallen ones show so majestical.
But, when some child of grace, angel or saint,
Pure and upright in his integrity
Of nature, meets the demons on their raid,
They scud away as cowards from the fight.
Nay, oft hath holy hermit in his cell,
Not yet disburdened of mortality,
Mocked at their threats and warlike overtures;
Or, dying, when they swarmed like flies, around,
Defied them, and departed to his judge.

DEMONS.

Virtue and vice, A knave's pretence.
'Tis all the same; Ha! ha! Dread of hell-fire,
Of the venomous flame, A coward's plea.
Give him his price, Saint though he be, Ha! ha!
From shrewd good sense He'll slave for hire;
Ha! ha! And does but aspire
To the heaven above
With sordid aim, Not from love. Ha! ha!

SOUL.

I see not those false spirits; shall I see
My dearest Master, when I reach his throne?
Or hear, at least, his awful judgment-word
With personal intonation, as I now
Hear thee, not see thee, angel? Hitherto
All has been darkness since I left the earth;
Shall I remain thus sight-bereft all through
My penance-time? if so, how comes it then
That I have hearing still, and taste, and touch,
Yet not a glimmer of that princely sense
Which binds ideas in one, and makes them live?

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ANGEL.

Nor touch, nor taste, nor hearing hast thou now;
Thou livest in a world of signs and types,
The presentations of most holy truths,
Living and strong, which now encompass thee.
A disembodied soul, thou hast by right
No converse with aught else beside thyself;
But, lest so stern a solitude should load
And break thy being, in mercy are vouchsafed
Some lower measures of perception,
Which seem to thee, as though through channels brought,
Through ear, or nerves, or palate, which are gone.
And thou art wrapped and swathed around in dreams,
Dreams that are true, yet enigmatical;
For the belongings of thy present state,
Save through such symbols, come not home to thee.
And thus thou tell'st of space and time and size,
Of fragrant, solid, bitter, musical,
Of fire, and of refreshment after fire;
As (let me use similitude of earth,
To aid thee in the knowledge thou dost ask)--
As ice which blisters may be said to burn.
Nor hast thou now extension, with its parts
Correlative,--long habit cozens thee,--
Nor power to move thyself, nor limbs to move.
Hast thou not heard of those, who after loss
Of hand or foot, still cried that they had pains
In hand or foot, as though they had it still?
So is it now with thee, who hast not lost
Thy hand or foot, but all which made up man.
So will it be, until the joyous day
Of resurrection, when thou wilt regain
All thou hast lost, new-made and glorified.--
--How, even now, the consummated saints
See God in heaven, I may not explicate:--
Meanwhile let it suffice thee to possess
Such means of converse as are granted thee,
Though till the beatific vision thou art blind;
For e'en thy purgatory, which comes like fire,
Is fire without its light.

SOUL.

His will be done!
I am not worthy e'er to see again
The face of day; far less his countenance,
Who is the very sun. Natheless, in life,
When I looked forward to my purgatory,
It ever was my solace to believe,
That, ere I plunged into th' avenging flame,
I had one sight of him to strengthen me.

ANGEL.

Nor rash nor vain is that presentiment;
Yes,--for one moment thou shalt see thy Lord.
Thus will it be: what time thou art arraigned
Before the dread tribunal, and thy lot
Is cast for ever, should it be to sit
On his right hand among his pure elect,
Then sight, or that which to the soul is sight,
As by a lightning-flash, will come to thee,
And thou shalt see, amid the dark profound,
Whom thy soul loveth, and would fain approach,
One moment; but thou knowest not, my child,
What thou dost ask: that sight of the Most Fair
Will gladden thee, but it will pierce thee too.

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SOUL.

Thou speakest darkly, angel; and an awe
Falls on me, and I fear lest I be rash.

ANGEL.

There was a mortal, who is now above
In the mid glory; he, when near to die,
Was given communion with the Crucified,--
Such, that the Master's very wounds were stamped
Upon his flesh; and, from the agony
Which thrilled through body and soul in that embrace,
Learn that the flame of the Everlasting Love
Doth burn, ere it transform. . . .

Sec. 5.

. . . Hark to those sounds!
They come of tender beings angelical,
Least and most childlike of the sons of God.

FIRST CHOIR OF ANGELICALS.

Praise to the Holiest in the height, And in the depth be praise:
In all his words most wonderful; Most sure in all his ways!

To us his elder race he gave To battle and to win,
Without the chastisement of pain, Without the soil of sin.

The younger son he willed to be A marvel in his birth:
Spirit and flesh his parents were; His home was heaven and earth.

The Eternal blessed his child and armed, And sent him hence afar,
To serve as champion in the field Of elemental war.

To be his vice-roy in the world Of matter, and of sense;
Upon the frontier, toward the foe, A resolute defence.

ANGEL.

We now have passed the gate, and are within
The house of judgment; and whereas on earth
Temples and palaces are formed of parts
Costly and rare, but all material,
So in the world of spirits nought is found,
To mould withal and form a whole,
But what is immaterial; and thus
The smallest portions of this edifice,
Cornice, or frieze, or balustrade, or stair,
The very pavement is made up of life--
Of holy, blessed, and immortal beings,
Who hymn their Maker's praise continually.

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SECOND CHOIR OF ANGELICALS.

Praise to the Holiest in the height, And in the depth be praise:
In all his words most wonderful; Most sure in all his ways!

Woe to thee, man! for he was found A recreant in the fight;
And lost his heritage of heaven, And fellowship with light.

Above him now the angry sky, Around the tempest's din
Who once had angels for his friends, Has but the brutes for kin.

O man! a savage kindred they: To flee that monster brood
He scaled the sea-side cave and clomb The giants of the wood.

With now a fear and now a hope, With aids which chance supplied,
From youth to old, from sire to son, He lived, and toiled, and died.

He dreed his penance age by age; And step by step began
Slowly to doff his savage garb, And be again a man.

And quickened by the Almighty's breath, And chastened by his rod,
And taught by angel-visitings, At length he sought his God;

And learned to call upon his name, And in his faith create
A household and a fatherland, A city and a state.

Glory to him who from the mire, In patient length of days,
Elaborated into life A people to his praise!

SOUL.

The sound is like the rushing of the wind--
The summer wind--among the lofty pines;
Swelling and dying, echoing round about,
Now here, now distant, wild and beautiful;
While scattered from the branches it has stirred,
Descend ecstatic odors.

THIRD CHOIR OF ANGELICALS.

Praise to the Holiest in the height, And in the depth be praise:
In all his words most wonderful; Most sure in all his ways!

The angels, as beseemingly To spirit-kind was given,
At once were tried and perfected, And took their seats in heaven.

For them no twilight or eclipse; No growth and no decay:
Twas hopeless, all-engulfing night, Or beatific day.

But to the younger race there rose A hope upon its fall;
And slowly, surely, gracefully, The morning dawned on all.

And ages, opening out, divide The precious and the base,
And from the hard and sullen mass Mature the heirs of grace.

O man! albeit the quickening ray Lit from his second birth,
Takes him at length what once he was, And heaven grows out of earth;

Yet still between that earth and heaven-- His journey and its goal--
A double agony awaits His body and his soul.

A double debt he has to pay-- The forfeit of his sins:
The chill of death is past, and now The penance-fire begins.

Glory to him, who evermore By truth and justice reigns;
Who tears the soul from out its case, And burns away its stains!

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ANGEL.

They sing of thy approaching agony,
Which thou so eagerly didst question of:
It is the face of the incarnate God
Shall smite thee with that keen and subtle pain;
And yet the memory which it leaves will be
A sovereign febrifuge to heal the wound;
And yet withal it will the wound provoke,
And aggravate and widen it the more.

SOUL.

Thou speakest mysteries; still methinks I know
To disengage the tangle of thy words:
Yet rather would I hear thy angel voice,
Than for myself be thy interpreter.

ANGEL.

When then--if such thy lot--thou seest thy Judge,
The sight of him will kindle in thy heart
All tender, gracious, reverential thoughts.
Thou wilt be sick with love, and yearn for him,
And feel as though thou couldst but pity him,
That one so sweet should e'er have placed himself
At disadvantage such, as to be used
So vilely by a being so vile as thee.
There is a pleading in his pensive eyes
Will pierce thee to the quick, and trouble thee.
And thou wilt hate and loathe thyself; for, though
Now sinless, thou wilt feel that thou hast sinned,
As never thou didst feel; and wilt desire
To slink away, and hide thee from his sight;
And yet wilt have a longing aye to dwell
Within the beauty of his countenance.
And these two pains, so counter and so keen,--
The longing for him, when thou seest him not;
The shame of self at thought of seeing him,--
Will be thy veriest, sharpest purgatory.

SOUL.

My soul is in my hand: I have no fear,--
In his dear might prepared for weal or woe.
But hark! a deep, mysterious harmony
It floods me, like the deep and solemn sound
Of many waters.

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ANGEL.

We have gained the stairs
Which rise toward the presence-chamber; there
A band of mighty angels keep the way
On either side, and hymn the incarnate God.

ANGELS OF THE SACRED STAIR.

Father, whose goodness none can know, but they
Who see thee face to face,
By man hath come the infinite display
Of thine all-loving grace;
But fallen man--the creature of a day--
Skills not that love to trace.
It needs, to tell the triumph thou hast wrought,
An angel's deathless fire, an angel's reach of thought.

It needs that very angel, who with awe
Amid the garden shade,
The great Creator in his sickness saw,
Soothed by a creature's aid,
And agonized, as victim of the law
Which he himself had made;
For who can praise him in his depth and height,
But he who saw him reel in that victorious fight?

SOUL.

Hark! for the lintels of the presence-gate
Are vibrating and echoing back the strain.

FOURTH CHOIR OF ANGELICALS.

Praise to the Holiest in the height, And in the depth be praise
In all his words most wonderful; Most sure in all his ways!

The foe blasphemed the holy Lord, As if he reckoned ill,
In that he placed his puppet man The frontier place to fill.

For even in his best estate, With amplest gifts endued,
A sorry sentinel was he, A being of flesh and blood.

As though a thing, who for his help Must needs possess a wife,
Could cope with those proud rebel hosts, Who had angelic life.

And when, by blandishment of Eve, That earth-born Adam fell,
He shrieked in triumph, and he cried, "A sorry sentinel.

The Maker by his word is bound, Escape or cure is none;
He must abandon to his doom, And slay his darling Son."

ANGEL.

And now the threshold, as we traverse it,
Utters aloud its glad responsive chant.

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FIFTH CHOIR OF ANGELICALS.

Praise to the Holiest in the height, And in the depth be praise:
In all his words most wonderful; Most sure in all his ways!

O loving wisdom of our God! When all was sin and shame,
A second Adam to the fight And to the rescue came.

O wisest love! that flesh and blood Which did in Adam fail,
Should strive afresh against the foe, Should strive and should prevail.

And that a higher gift than grace Should flesh and blood refine,
God's presence and his very self, And essence all-divine.

O generous love! that he who smote In man for man the foe,
The double agony in man For man should undergo;

And in the garden secretly, And on the cross on high,
Should teach his brethren and inspire To suffer and to die.

Sec. 6.

ANGEL.

The judgment now is near, for we are come
Into the veiled presence of our God.

SOUL.

I hear the voices that I left on earth.

ANGEL.

It is the voice of friends around thy bed,
Who say the "Subvenite" with the priest.
Hither the echoes come; before the throne
Stands the great angel of the agony,
The same who strengthened him, what time he knelt
Lone in the garden shade, bedewed with blood.
That angel best can plead with him for all
Tormented souls, the dying and the dead.

ANGEL OF THE AGONY.

Jesu! by that shuddering dread which fell on thee;
Jesu! by that cold dismay which sickened thee;
Jesu! by that pang of heart which thrilled in thee;
Jesu! by that mount of sins which crippled thee;
Jesu! by that sense of guilt which stifled thee;
Jesu! by that innocence which girdled thee;
Jesu! by that sanctity which reigned in thee;
Jesu! by that Godhead which was one with thee;
Jesu! spare these souls which are so dear to thee,
Who in prison, calm and patient, wait for thee;
Hasten, Lord, their hour, and bid them come to thee,
To that glorious home, where they shall ever gaze on thee.

{639}

SOUL.

I go before my Judge. Ah! . . . .

ANGEL.

.... Praise to his name!
The eager spirit has darted from my hold,
And, with the intemperate energy of love,
Flies to the dear feet of Emmanuel;
But, ere it reach them, the keen sanctity,
Which with its effluence, like a glory, clothes
And circles round the Crucified, has seized,
And scorched, and shrivelled it; and now it lies
Passive and still before the awful throne.
O happy, suffering soul! for it is safe,
Consumed, yet quickened, by the glance of God.

SOUL.

Take me away, and in the lowest deep
There let me be,
And there in hope the lone night-watches keep,
Told out for me.
There, motionless and happy in my pain,
Lone, not forlorn,--
There will I sing my sad perpetual strain,
Until the morn.
There will I sing, and soothe my stricken breast,
Which ne'er can cease
To throb, and pine, and languish, till possessed
Of its sole peace.
There will I sing my absent Lord and love:--
Take me away,
That sooner I may rise, and go above,
And see him in the truth of everlasting day.

Sec. 7.

ANGEL.

Now let the golden prison ope its gates,
Making sweet music, as each fold revolves
Upon its ready hinge. And ye, great powers,
Angels of purgatory, receive from me
My charge, a precious soul, until the day,
When, from all bond and forfeiture released,
I shall reclaim it for the courts of light.

{640}

SOULS IN PURGATORY.

1. Lord, thou hast been our refuge: in every generation;

2. Before the hills were born, and the world was:
from age to age thou art God.

3. Bring us not, Lord, very low: for thou hast said,
Come back again, ye sons of Adam.

4. A thousand years before thine eyes are but as yesterday:
and as a watch of the night which is come and gone.

5. Though the grass spring up in the morning;
yet in the evening it shall shrivel up and die.

6. Thus we fail in thine anger; and in thy wrath we are troubled.

7. Thou hast set our sins in thy sight:
and our round of days in the light of thy countenance.

8. Come back, O Lord! how long? and be entreated for thy servants.

9. In thy morning we shall be filled with thy mercy:
we shall rejoice and be in pleasure all our days.

10. We shall be glad according to the days of our humiliation;
and the years in which we have seen evil.

11. Look, O Lord, upon thy servants and on thy work;
and direct their children,

12. And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us:
and the work of our hands direct thou it.
Glory be to the father and to the Son: and to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be;
world without end. Amen.

ANGEL.

Softly and gently, dearest, sweetest soul
In my most loving arms I now enfold thee,
And, o'er the penal waters, as they roll,
I poise thee, and I lower thee, and hold thee.

And carefully I dip thee in the lake,
And thou, without a sob or a resistance,
Dost through the flood thy rapid passage take
Sinking deep, deeper, into the dim distance.

Angels, to whom the willing task is given,
Shall tend, and nurse, and lull thee, as thou liest;
And masses on the earth, and prayers in heaven,
Shall aid thee at the throne of the Most Highest.

Farewell, but not for ever! brother dear,
Be brave and patient on thy bed of sorrow;
Swiftly shall pass thy night of trial here,
And I will come and wake thee on the morrow.

----

{641}

From The Edinburgh Review. (Abridged.)

THE CHURCH AND MOSQUE OF ST. SOPHIA.

1. _Byzantine Architecture; illustrated by Examples of Edifices erected in the East during the earliest ages of Christianity_. With Historical and Archaeological Descriptions. By C. TEXIER and E. P. PULLAN. Folio. London: 1864.

2. _Epigraphik von Byzantium und Constantinopolis, von den aeltesten Zeiten bis zum J._ 1453. Von Dr. S. A. DETHIER und Dr. A. D. MORDTMANN. 4to. Wien: 1864.

3. _Acta Patriarchates Constantinopolitani_, 1305-1402, _e Codice MS. Bibliothecae Palat. Vindobonensis; edentibus_ D. D. MIKLOVISCH et MULLER. 8vo. 2 vols. Viennse: 1860-2.

4. _Die alt-christliche Baudenkmale Konstantinopels von V. bis XII. Jahrhundert. Auf Befehl seiner Majestaet des Koenigs aufgenommen und historisch erlaeutert von_ W. SALZENBERG. _Im Anhange des Silentiarius Paulus Beschreibung der heiligen Sophia und der Ambon, metrisch uebersetzt und mit Anmerkungen versehen, von_ Dr. C. W. KORTUeM. Fol. Berlin: 1854.

5. _Aya Sofia, Constantinople, as recently restored by Order of H. M. the Sultan Abdul Medjid_. From the original Drawings of Chevalier GASPARD FOSSATI. Lithographed by Louis HAGHE, Esq. Imperial folio. London: 1854.

There is not one among the evidences of Moslem conquest more galling to Christian associations than the occupation of Justinian's ancient basilica for the purposes of Mohammedan worship. The most commonplace sight-seer from the west feels a thrill when his eye falls for the first time upon the flaring cresent which surmounts "Sophia's cupola with golden gleam;" and this emotion deepens into a feeling of awe at the mysterious dispensations of Providence, when he has stood beneath the unaltered and still stately dome, and

"surveyed
The sanctuary, the while the usurping Moslem prayed."

For oriental Christians, this sense of bitterness is hardly second to that with which they regard the Turkish occupation of Jerusalem itself. In the latter, however they may writhe under the political supremacy of their unbelieving master, still, as the right of access to those monuments which form the peculiar object of Christian veneration is practically undisturbed, they are spared the double indignity of religious profanation super-added to social wrong. But the mosque of St. Sophia is, in Christian eyes, a standing monument at once of Moslem sacrilege and of Christian defeat, the sense of which is perpetuated and embittered by the preservation of its ancient, but now desecrated name.

To an imaginative visitor of the modern mosque, it might seem as if the structure itself were not unconscious of this wrong. The very position of the building is a kind of silent protest against the unholy use to which its Turkish masters have perverted it. Like all ancient Christian churches, it was built exactly in the line of east and west; and, as the great altar, which stood in the semicircular apse, was directly at the eastern point of the building, the worshippers in the old St. Sophia necessarily faced directly eastward; and all the appliances of their worship were arranged with a view to that position. Now, in the exigencies of Mohammedan ecclesiology, since the worshipper must turn to the Kibla at Mecca (that is, in Constantinople, to the south-east), the _mihrab_, or sacred niche, in the modern St. Sophia is {642} necessarily placed out of the centre of the apse; and thus the _mimber_ (pulpit), the prayer carpets, and the long ranks of worshippers themselves, present an appearance singularly at variance with every notion of architectural harmony, being arranged in lines, not parallel, but oblique, to the length of the edifice, and out of keeping with all the details of the original construction. It is as though the dead walls of this venerable pile had retained more of the spirit of their founder than the degenerate sons of the fallen Rome of the east, and had refused to bend themselves at the will of that hateful domination before which the living worshippers tamely yielded or impotently fled!

The mosque of St. Sophia had long been an object of curious interest to travellers in the east. Their interest, however, had seldom risen beyond curiosity; and it was directed rather toward St. Sophia as it is, than to the Christian events and traditions with which it is connected. For those, indeed, who know the grudging and capricious conditions under which alone a Christian visitor is admitted to a mosque, and the jealous scrutiny to which he is subjected during his visit, it will be easy to understand how rare and how precarious have been the opportunities for a complete or exact study of this, the most important of all the monuments of Byzantine art; and, notwithstanding its exceeding interest for antiquarian and artistic purposes, far more of our knowledge of its details was derived from the contemporary description of Procopius [Footnote 126] or Agathias, [Footnote 127] from the verses of Paulus Silentiarius, [Footnote 128] from the casual allusions of other ancient authorities, and, above all, from the invaluable work of Du Gauge, which is the great repertory of everything that has been written upon ancient or mediaeval Byzantium, than from the observation even of the most favored modern visitors of Constantinople, until the publication of the works named at the head of these pages.

[Footnote 126: _De Edificiis_, lib. i. c. i. ]

[Footnote 127: Pp. 152-3.]

[Footnote 128: A very good German version, with most valuable notes,
is appended to the text of Saltzenberg's _Baudenkmale._]

For the elaborate account of the present condition of the mosque of St. Sophia which we now possess, we are indebted to the happy necessity by which the Turkish officials, in undertaking the recent restoration of the building, were led to engage the services of an eminent European architect, Chevalier Fossati, in whose admirable drawings, as lithographed in the "Aya Sofia," every arch and pillar of the structure is reproduced. The archaeological and historical details, which lay beyond the province of a volume mainly professional in its object, are supplied in the learned and careful work of M. Salzenberg, who during the progress of the restoration was sent to Constantinople at the cost of the late King of Prussia, for the express purpose of copying and describing exactly every object which might serve to throw light on Byzantine history, religion, or art, or on the history and condition of the ancient church of St. Sophia, the most venerable monument of them all.