Chapter II: The Slaves' Feast (2)

Of the effect of these introduced European plants in destroying the native vegetation, I have given examples in an article that appeared in the Natural History Review, (January, 1864,) from which I quote the following:

In Australia and New Zealand, the noisy train of English emigration is
not more surely doing its work than the stealthy tide of English weeds,
which are creeping over the surface of the waste, cultivated, and virgin
soil, in annually increasing numbers of genera, species, and individuals.
Apropos of this subject, a correspondent, (W. T. Locke Travers, Esq.,
F.L.S.,) a most active New Zealand botanist, writing from Canterbury,
says: "You would be surprised at the rapid spread of European and other
foreign plants in this country. All along the sides of the main lines of
road through the plains, a _Polygonum_, (_aviculare_,) called
'cow-grass,' grows most luxuriantly, the roots sometimes two feet in
depth, and the plants spreading over an area from four to five feet in
diameter. The dock (_Rumex obtusifolius_ or _R. crispus_) is to
be found in every river-bed, extending into the valleys of the mountain
rivers until these became mere torrents.
{543}
The sow-thistle is spread all over the country, growing luxuriantly
nearly up to 6,000 feet. The watercress increases in our still rivers to
such an extent as to threaten to choke them altogether; in fact, in the
Avon, a still, deep stream running through Christ Church, the annual cost
of keeping the river free for boat navigation and for purposes of
drainage exceeds £300. I have measured stems twelve feet long and three
quarters of an inch in diameter. In some of the mountain districts, where
the soil is loose, the white clover is completely displacing the native
grasses, forming a close sward. Foreign trees are also very luxuriant in
growth. The gum-trees of Australia, the poplars, and willows particularly
grow most rapidly. In fact, the young native vegetation appears to shrink
from competition with these more vigorous intruders."

Dr. Haast, F.L.S., the eminent explorer and geologist, also writes to me as follows:

"The native (Maori) saying is, 'As the white man's rat has driven away
the native rat, as the European fly drives away our own, and the clover
kills our fern, so will the Maoris disappear before the white man
himself." It is wonderful to behold the botanical and zoological changes
which have taken place since first Captain Cook set foot in New Zealand.
Some pigs, which he and other navigators left with the natives, have
increased and run wild in such a way that it is impossible to destroy
them. There are large tracts of country where they reign supreme. The
soil looks as if ploughed by their burrowing. Some station-holders of one
hundred thousand acres have had to make contracts for killing them at
sixpence per tail, and as many as twenty-two thousand on a single run
have been killed by adventurous parties without any diminution being
discernible. Not only are they obnoxious by occupying the ground which
the sheep farmer needs for his flocks, but they assiduously follow the
ewes when lambing, and devour the poor lambs as soon as they make their
appearance. They do not exist on the western side of the Alps, and only
on the lower grounds on the eastern side where snow seldom falls, so that
the explorer has not the advantage of profiting by their existence, where
food is scarcest. The boars are sometimes very large, covered with long
black bristles, and have enormous tusks, resembling closely the wild boar
of the Ardennes, and they are equally savage and courageous,

"Another interesting fact is the appearance of the Norwegian rat. It has
thoroughly extirpated the native rat, and is to be found everywhere, even
in the very heart of the Alps, growing to a very large size. The European
mouse follows it closely, and, what is more surprising, where it makes
its appearance, it drives, in a great degree, the Norway rat away.
Amongst other quadrupeds, cattle, dogs, and cats are found in a wild
state, but not abundantly.

"The European house-fly is another importation. When it arrives, it
repels the blue-bottle of New Zealand, which seems to shun its company.
But the spread of the European insect goes on very slowly, so that
settlers, knowing its utility, have carried it in boxes and bottles to
their new inland stations."

But the most remarkable fact of all has been communicated to me since the above was printed, namely, that the little white clover and other herbs are actually strangling and killing outright the New Zealand flax, (_Phormium tenax_,) a plant of the coarsest, hardest, and toughest description, that forms huge matted patches of woody rhizomes, which send up tufts of sword-like leaves six to ten feet high, and inconceivably strong in texture and fibre. I know of no English plant to which the New Zealand flax can be likened so as to give any idea of its robust constitution and habit to those who do not know it; in some respects the great matted _tussocks_ of _Carex paniculata_ approach it. {544} It is difficult enough to imagine the possibility of white clover invading our bogs, and smothering the tussocks of this carex, but this would be child's play in comparison with the resistance the phormium would seem to offer.

The causes of this prepotency of the European weeds are probably many and complicated; one very powerful one is the nature of the New Zealand climate, which favors the duration of life in individuals, and hence gives both perennials and annuals a lengthened growing season, and, in the case of some, more than one seed crop in the year. This is seen in the tendency of mignonette and annual stocks to become biennial and even perennial, in the indigenous form of _Cardamine hirsuta_ being perennial, and in the fact that many weeds that seed but once with us seed during a greater part of the year in New Zealand. Another cause must be sought in the fact that more of their seeds escape the ravages of birds and insects in New Zealand than in England; the granivorous birds and insects that follow cultivation not having been transported to the antipodes with the weeds, or, at least, not in proportionate numbers.

Still the fact remains as yet unaccounted for, that annual weeds, which, except for the interference of man, would with us have no chance in the struggle with perennials, in New Zealand have spread in inconceivable quantities into the wildest glens long before either white men or even their cattle and flocks penetrate to their recesses. Such is the testimony of Drs. Haast and Hector, and Mr. Travers, the original explorers of large areas of different parts of the almost uninhabited middle island, and who have sent to me, as native plants, from hitherto unvisited tracts, British weeds that were not found in the island by the careful botanists (Banks, Solander, Forster, and Sparrmann) who accompanied Captain Cook in his voyages; and which were not found by the earlier missionaries, but which of late years have abounded on the lowlands near every settlement.

This subject of the comparative great vis-vitae of European plants, as compared with those of other countries, involves problems of the highest interest in botanical science, and the subject is as novel as it is interesting; it is quite a virgin one, and requires the calmest and most unprejudiced judgment to treat it well. It cannot be doubted that the progress of civilization in Europe and Asia has, whilst it has led to the incessant harassing of the soil, led also to the abundant development of a class of plants, annual, biennial, and perennial, which increase more rapidly and obtain a greater development when transplanted to the Southern hemisphere than they have hitherto done in the Northern, and that, in this respect, they contrast strikingly with the behavior of plants of the Southern hemisphere when transplanted to the Northern; and hitherto no considerations of climate, soil, or circumstance have sufficed to explain this phenomenon.

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{545}

Original.

The Leaf of Last Year

I know I am dry and decayed;
My skin is all yellow and sere;
I know I ought not to have staid
To become an old leaf of last year.

You are youthful, and merry, and green.
I feel like a stranger up here;
And can see you're ashamed to be seen
By the side of a leaf of last year.

My wrinkled and shrivelled up face
Excites you to laugh and to sneer;
And the branch thinks that this is no place
For an old-fashioned leaf of last year.

I can tell, as you toss your proud heads,
What you whisper in each other's ear:
"Old leaves should be gone to their beds,
'Tis no time for a leaf of last year."

You may flirt with the amorous winds;
With your joys I will not interfere:
But I'm sad; for my heart it reminds
How they jilted a leaf of last year.

Ay! flatter and laugh with the breeze,
You may think that its love is sincere,
But I know what it said to the trees
When I was a young leaf last year.

"Each one of these silly green leaves
Is so flattered if I but come near,
That she dances, and smiles, and believes
I most surely will wed her this year.

"With soft kisses the hours I beguile;
And their prattling is pleasant to hear.
When I tire, I depart with a smile
And a promise to meet them next year."

Then it came to my side with a bow,
Embraced me, and called me its 'dear.'
I was foolish to trust it, and now
It forgets its old love of last year.

{546}

Away the false summer breeze hied;
And my fibres all quivered with fear.
One by one my mates withered and died,
And left me alone till this year.

Soon autumn will come with its blast.
And your beauty will, too, disappear.
When you think on the joys that are past,
You'll remember the leaf of last year.

This morn, when the sun rose, I wept;
On my cheek lingers yet a bright tear:
'Twas a dew-drop fell there whilst I slept
And was dreaming about the last year.

Not long will I cumber the tree,
For my hour of departure is near;
And your beautiful branch will be free
Of its faded old leaf of last year.

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Original.

The Influence of the Catholic Church Upon Modern Art.

As in many a sacred painting the divine persons are seen descending upon earth, attended by angels who, with trumpets, unheard by men, announce the visitation; so religion, revealed to prepare men for the next world, sits enthroned in this with all the arts, its ministers and servants. It is a glory of the Catholic Church that it has recognized to the utmost the spirituality of art. It has denied the dogma, of all dogmas the most absurd, that with the use of the highest powers of the imagination, and with delight in the beauty with which God has clothed the world, his worship is incompatible. It has not made piety a thing ugly, repulsive, barren; a mere assent of the will to an abstraction. The child of the church, standing in a world where the rainbow bends above him, and sunset opens the burning gates of heaven, is not taught to believe the seven colors the seven sins, or, at least, but secular beauty, to be banished from the house of worship; with the voices of birds' and winds, and waters, and the gothic grandeur of forests around him, he is not taught that music and architecture interfere with piety, or, if used at all in worship, must be limited to their lowest and simplest forms. Of creeds I do not need to speak; but this much it is necessary to say in the strict limits of my subject, that the world owes to Catholicism so much of its music, and painting, and architecture, that, had the world been without the church, these arts, though of human origin, and though highly developed before the Christian era, would in their modern forms probably be still in their infancy. In sculpture, undoubtedly, the Greeks surpassed even Michael Angelo; the statues of Phidias, though in ruins, are the wonder and despair of artists. The Roman empire built temples, roads, aqueducts, the Colosseum, and, when it fell, the arts, even in these less imaginative forms, seem to have fallen with it. {547} For a long time there was no art worthy of the name in Europe. Apollo, blind and dumb, wandered without a home or a temple; for, though in those centuries there must have been men born to be composers, or painters, or sculptors, they were born too soon or too late. Athens had fallen; Christian Rome had not arisen to her destined greatness. So the world slumbered in darkness till the Catholic Church wrought the miracle by which the arts were raised from their tombs and made her interpreters and ministers. This cannot be denied, that she gave the impulse to the revival of art, encouraged its development, inspired it with energy, and purpose, and faith, and so sent it forth to bless and transfigure the world. In every city in Europe she built a cathedral. In Rome, St. Peter's; in Paris, Notre Dame; in Vienna, the Dom Kirche; in Milan, La Duomo. No town was without its church, few of them, without beauty, many monuments of the genius of their builders. Because the Saviour was born in a stable, it was not held an article of faith that he should be worshipped in barn. The church believed that the temple should show that it was built not for the service of man, but of God. To adorn these majestic buildings she summoned the sister arts. Through the stained windows,

"The panes
Of ancient churches, passionate
With martyred saints, whom angels wait,
With Virgin and with Crucified,"

the light shone holier for that transfiguration. There the painter told in language all could read the solemn story of the religion they believed. How in a manger the Christ was born, and worshipped by the wise men whom the mysterious star had led from the Chaldean plains; how the holy mother journeyed with Joseph into Egypt, bearing in her arms the babe who came into the world himself to bear the burden of its grief; how he taught the poor and healed the sick, raised Lazarus from the grave, and bade the Magdalene sin no more; how he spake with God upon the mount, and was tempted by the fiend, betrayed by Judas, tried by Pilate, and crucified upon Calvary; how at the foot of the cross the Marys wept all night; and how, when he was buried, angels rolled away the stone from the sepulchre, and apostles beheld him ascend into the depths of heaven. Upon the sacred walls, which were to these pious, worshippers as windows opening into the Holy Land, they saw miracles, transfigurations, ascensions, the agonies of martyrs, the adorations of saints, and--vision of all visions fairest--the tender face of the Virgin bending in prophetic sadness above the infant Christ. But with other than silent teachers the church appealed to the soul. Music, whose miraculous voice utters all passions, pains, delights, and truths, breathed her beautiful religion on the air. She sang of what Raphael and Titian painted; of the birth, and the death, and the resurrection; of the prayers of penitence, the anguish of strife, the rapture of heaven, the torments of hell; and in her voice were heard sobs, and cries, and supplications, thunders of divine wrath, trumpets of doom and of redemption, and choruses upon choruses of angels proclaiming the glory of God. In all the arts the church embodied Christianity; as she converted souls, so she converted music and painting. By the twelfth century, nay, before that, all the art of Europe was Catholic. In Italy, Spain, Germany, wherever a school of art existed, however humble, its highest aspirations were through the Catholic Church. The ideality of art, as we may see in its remaining works, was then almost exclusively religious; to be imaginative was to be pious. Centuries before the dawn of modern painting, in the silence and seclusion of cloisters, laborious monks, slowly perfecting their wonderful illuminated missals, were unawares preparing the advent of Cimabue and Giotto. The tradition that St. Luke was a painter was carefully cherished by his disciples, who may have found inspiration in the legend that he painted the portrait of the Saviour. {548} Thus it is probable, and other reasons might be cited, that modern art was not adopted by the church, but, born within its monasteries, was cherished till it grew too great for them alone, and then, as the child of the church, turned in natural faith and gratitude to the service of its parent.

The church was the chief patron of the early painters; it furnished not only their inspiration, but their occupation. There is little trace of the earliest Christian art; but Eusebius, whose history was written in the reign of Constantine, mentions that images of Christ were then common. In the third century pictures had been generally introduced in the churches of Palestine. But it was scarcely before the twelfth century that Catholic art gave promise of that splendor which in later days exalted it above all rivalry. We find Cimabue famous about the year 1250, and after him Giotto, almost the father of Italian art, whose portrait of Dante, recently discovered, is acknowledged as the best likeness we possess of the author of the greatest Christian poem. He painted the Last Supper of Christ, at Florence, and an idea of his influence may be formed from the fact that he had one hundred pupils, some of whom were afterward renowned. To catalogue the painters of this period would be unnecessary, but their close sympathy with the church, and the encouragement they received from it, are unquestionable. In 1308, Duccio, an artist of Sienna, was called upon to paint an altar-piece, and in his contract pledged himself thus: "I will execute it according to my best ability, and as the Lord shall grant me skill." The picture when completed was carried in solemn procession to the church. When, in 1438, it was proposed to build the Sienna Cathedral, it was ordained that "no one even suspected of immorality shall be eligible" to the position of its architect. A more earnest expression of the faith of the early artists in the dignity of their work, and their religious duty, is found in the rules adopted by the painters of Sienna in 1335. They held that, "since we are teachers to ignorant men, and since in God every perfection is united, we will in our work earnestly ask the aid of the divine grace." This spirit of devotion gave a higher direction to genius that might without it have wasted itself in empty and unmeaning tasks; and, whatever the artist was born to do, he found in the church his opportunity. To paint, in those days, for the best of those men, was to serve God; to build, was to build his temples. The purpose ennobled the work. Not merely with intellect Lorenzo Gbiberti labored when he wrought the doors of the baptistery in the rear of the cathedral at Florence--doors of which Michael Angelo exclaimed in his enthusiasm, "Worthy to be the gates of paradise!" Casts of these wonderful carvings of scriptural subjects, are exhibited in the Academy of the Fine Arts at Philadelphia. These artists were the worthy forerunners of greater men--of Domenichino, of Guido, of Titian, of Murillo, of Correggio, and of Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michael Angelo. The greatest works of the three latter were upon Christian themes. The Las Supper, painted by Da Vinci, in 1497, for the Dominican convent at Milan, is accepted as the crowning proof of genius. The statue of Moses in St. Peter's, the Last Judgment, and the Dome of St. Peter's are the master works of the mighty Angelo. Raphael, who began his beautiful career by painting altar-pieces, in the Transfiguration reached its highest point, and questionings of the model who sat for his divine madonnas is idle, for not the loveliness of the face, but the holiness of the spirit gives them immortality. But I need cite no other instances. The highest subjects of the Italian painters were found in their religion, and the church was their most generous patron. {549} And not only was this dedication of art to spirituality of direct value to its intellectual progress, but indirectly it ennobled art that aimed merely to paint the things of earth and not the dreams of heaven. The less gained dignity from the sacred office of the greater, and art became more strongly rooted in that which was of the world, because of its aspiration to that which was celestial.

The vast influence of religion upon art is signally exhibited in the history of English art. Neither painting nor architecture, it is true, had made much progress in England up to the seventeenth century, as compared with their success on the continent; for, when Italy was civilized, Great Britain was still rude, and in certain respects barbarian. Yet the cathedrals which still exist in ruins, monuments of Gothic grandeur, were the expressions of a national art in close relation with religion. In England as in all other countries the Catholic Church gathered around her the arts. But with a religion which professed to see in images nothing but idols, in paintings of Christ and the apostles and the prophets nothing but profanity and blasphemy, came desolation and destruction. The Roundhead was not satisfied with the downfall of a throne, with the death of one Stuart and the banishment of that royal line, nor with the proscription of the Catholic religion. The men who followed Cromwell were iconoclasts, who destroyed Christian images to set up in their stead an idol of barbarian bigotry. They fired the churches, they shattered the statues, they made war upon the pictures of madonnas and martyrs without remorse or fear. They had driven out the Cavaliers, they were resolved to drive out the saints; and, as they had banished the church, they were bent upon sending art to keep it company. They succeeded but too well. Puritan enmity to the employment of painting in church decoration--the sweeping principle that art and religion could not be united and had different aims struck a blow at English art which almost ended it for three reigns. It did not, indeed, fully recover from the effect until near the close of the eighteenth century, when, as little more than portraiture, it was re-established by Gainsborough and Sir Joshua Reynolds. To this day it is only in portraiture and in landscape that a great English school exists. There are many fine Vandykes, and Lelys, and Reynolds in the galleries of England, and many landscapes and marines by Gainsborough, Wilson, and Turner; but where is the historical painter who can be compared with Turner? Haydon, who bitterly complained that historical painting was not appreciated in England, and that those who by their wealth and position should have encouraged it cared only for their own faces on canvas, might have found the cause of its decline in the absence of any religious inspiration in English art. He admitted this truth, unconsciously perhaps, when he chose for his own subjects of "high art" Christ in the Temple and Lazarus coming from the Tomb. In the landscapes and marines of Turner there is imagination grander than Claude, or Poussin, or Salvator Rosa possessed; in Wilkie unsurpassed character is given to humble themes. But the English historical school is infinitely below English landscape and portraiture. The Boydell gallery, in which the best artists of the time were employed to illustrate Shakespeare, is an utter failure. Fuseli was fanciful and coarse; and, though I know little of Blake's pictures, it is safe to presume they were not equal to his strange and beautiful poetry. Did he ever realize with the brush such verses as

"Tiger, Tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night"?

Reynolds failed when he sought to be imaginative, as the Death of Dido and the Deathbed of Cardinal Beaufort are proof. {550} The defeat of the repeated efforts to establish an historical school of art in England must not be ascribed solely to a deficiency of genius in the men or in the character of the nation. Art and religion were divorced. Men worshipped God in one way, and painted in another. It is a significant fact that the pre-Raphaelite school, however objectionable in some respects, owes its highest success to the religious element which inspires it. Millais and Hunt proclaim that the rudest art must be spiritual, and thus seek to atone for centuries of infidelity to that truth.

Upon music the influence of the church has probably been even greater than upon painting, certainly as great. With no exaggeration, it may be said that to write the history of the composers who have written for the church is to write the history of modern music. What this fact implies will be understood by those who know that in none other of the arts has the term modern such significance; for, while ancient painting, sculpture, and architecture were based upon the same general laws which are now recognized as absolute, the principles of music, like her own sweet sounds, have changed and passed away from age to age. There is a known difference between what may be called the musical ear of this century and that of the sixteenth. What was then felt to be harmony, and embodied in the works of the great masters, is now discord. There was a time when consecutive fifths were common, a fact almost incredible to the musician of to-day. If such changes have occurred within four or five hundred years, the gulf which divides ancient and modern music must be deep and wide; and the latter, having little visible connection or known sympathy with the former, and originating in Christian Europe, must inevitably owe much of its character to Catholic civilization.

The oldest form of music known to us belongs to the church; it is the Ecclesiastical Chant of St. Ambrose and St. Gregory. The former, near the close of the fourth century, endeavored to give a fixed form to church music, and we may judge of his success from his Te Deum. The words and the the music of this noble canticle are still sung. Of the Ambrosian chant, St. Augustine wrote: "As the voices flowed into mine ears, truth was instilled into my heart, and the affections of piety overflowed in tears of joy." It is said that St. Ambrose composed the Te Deum upon the conversion of St. Augustine. Two centuries later Pope Gregory vastly improved the system of sacred music; from him we have the celebrated Gregorian chant, solemn, severe, and pure, and still heard in Lent and in the Holy Week. Such value did St. Gregory place upon music that he established a school for singers at Rome, which flourished till the tenth century. After the Gregorian chant little reformation in music was accomplished for centuries; but the next step was also taken within the church when Guido, a Benedictine monk, early in the eleventh century, discovered the musical scale now used. Modern rhythm was invented by a French priest about the same time, and for many years music owed all its progress to religious enthusiasm. Thus, Odington, an English Benedictine monk, in 1240, wrote De Speculatione Musicae, and John Muris in the fourteenth century did much to establish fixed rules of harmony. Counterpoint was slowly developed; the canon and the fugue were introduced; and the laws of music were gradually established as the basis of the grander and more ideal genius of the strictly modern system. We need not follow the history of the art from that great master Palestrina through the long succession of famous names destined to be remembered when those of kings are half forgotten.

From the first it has been seen the church recognized the sacred offices of music, and did not merely permit, but authorized and developed its use. It is true that at one time use led to abuse. In the sixteenth century composers for the church frequently forgot religion in science. {551} "In this kind of composition," says Alexander Cheron, "the meaning of the words was entirely overlooked, and its tendencies were only to the display of the genius of the composers or the powers of the singers." The evil became so great that the Council of Trent even deliberated upon the suppression of music in religious service. Pope Marcellus II. had, indeed, resolved to banish all music but the Gregorian chant, when Palestrina composed a mass which made that step unnecessary. It was a revolution. Solemnity, grandeur, and purity were the elements of the new style, from which mere bravuras and all levities were excluded. Thus the power which authorized the employment of music had the influence to redeem it from degradation, till now the sacred music we possess embodies the genius of three centuries, and will, perhaps, endure longer than the finest lyric dramas. That the religious purposes of great masters have had vast influence upon the merely lyric composition is not to be doubted. We cannot raise one form of art without raising all. The author of Don Giovanni might not have achieved the full grandeur of that work had he not also composed his marvellous masses. Of the influence of Catholic music upon such minds, an incident in Mozart's life is proof. In his youth he heard the famous Miserere sung in the Sistine chapel at Rome--that strange and solemn harmony, composed two hundred years ago by Gregorio Allegri, for the sublime ceremonial of the Passion week. Pontiff and cardinals, when the Miserere begins, kneel around the altar, the church is darkened, the voices swell in tenor, and die into silence. Mozart twice heard this wonderful work, and then reproduced it note for note, and sang it with the exact method and feeling of the Sistine choir. And it is said that the effect of this Miserere upon him may be traced in all his other works. Haydn's piety is found in all of his music, chiefly in those masses which are known to all lovers of music. "In nomine Domini," "Soli Deo Gloria," he invariably wrote at the beginning of his scores, and "Laus Deo" at their end. When composing, if his imagination failed, he repeated his rosary, and, before beginning his greater works, he prayed to God for inspiration to praise him worthily. Of the composers inspired by religion, the list is long; longer, perhaps, that of those who unconsciously were influenced by it. When Haydn was asked which of his works he considered the greatest, he replied, The Seven Words. It was written for the service called the "Funeral of the Redeemer" at Madrid, in which the seven words uttered by the Saviour on the cross were uttered by the bishop, who explained each, and between each exposition Haydn's music in sympathy with the word was given. Upon his masses he lavished his pains, and generally required twice the time for a mass that he needed for a symphony.

Palestrina, Porpora, Clementi, Haydn, Mozart, Rossini, Beethoven, are but a few of the illustrious masters whose sacred music was dedicated to the Catholic Church. Handel's religious music was chiefly written for the English, and is embodied, as well as that of Mendelssohn, in oratorio. But, for my part, I do not think the form of the oratorio as well fitted for sacred music as that of the mass. An oratorio is generally sung in a concert-room; the words are frequently poor adaptations of the language of the Scriptures; its auditors expect to be entertained. Therefore, though the music may be perfect in itself, as in the "Total Eclipse" or "I know that my Redeemer liveth" of Handel, it does not seem that the form is suited to express the deepest emotions of worship. It is in the Catholic Church alone that music and religion are wedded. Who can translate into words the profound devotion inspired by the solemn mass in the cathedral service? Over the kneeling worshippers, the illuminated altar, the pictures of the crucifixion and the ascension, the intonation of the priest, "the dim religious light" shining through the stained windows, Music breathes her voice. {552} As the great organ swells, and the deep-toned choir utters the despair of the Miserere, the heavenly beauty of the Agnus Dei, the exultation of the Gloria, the devotion of the Credo, etc., what soul is not bowed in sympathy with grief, raised with gratitude, or bathed in heavenly peace? I know no music that has a more profound effect. It is a part of worship. It expresses something to which words the most eloquent are inadequate. It is the glory of the Catholic Church, I repeat, that she has so freely recognized the spirituality of this act, and these who reject her creed are compelled to admit the propriety and supremacy of her service. How cold are the musical exercises of other churches, how little they express of this intense and passionate devotion. I do not think God is served by the exclusion of his greatest gifts from the ceremonial of worship, and that point is conceded by all sects which sing his praise. But, if any music is used, why not the best? If a hymn, why not a mass? If an organ, why not an orchestra? The objection that the Catholic Church would have its choirs composed of the best voices, its music written by the greatest composers, is too absurd to be answered; for, if the highest art is unfit for the purposes of worship, then by inevitable logic it must be shown that all art is unfit; those who hold such objections should consistently agree with the Quakers, and banish the simplest hymn. [Footnote 174]

[Footnote 174: The writer of this article is not a Catholic.--ED. C.W.]

More than this, if music may be worthily used, why not painting? The value of architecture is universally admitted, ever since it was shown by the Catholic Church, and music is more or less accepted as a mode of adoration by nearly all sects. Pictures, however, are admitted into Catholic churches alone. Is, then, the genius of Titian and Raphael less holy than that of Beethoven or Mozart? Is it right to sing the praise of God in his temple, wrong to paint the story of the Son of God upon the consecrated walls? We need not answer such questions, which are only introduced to show how it is by the Catholic Church alone that the religious influences of the arts have been first and fully understood, and by it alone that they have been made agencies of worship.

Further examination of this important subject cannot now be made, for in these limits it can be little more than suggested. If we generalize, we discover that all the great artists, in architecture, painting, and music have found their highest employment in the church, and that its history includes their biographies. Of its present influence it is unnecessary to speak, but it is felt most in architecture, at least in this country; the noblest church edifice in Philadelphia, perhaps in any American city, is incomparably the new cathedral. From what has been said, the depth, and extent, and value of the influence of the church upon art may be inferred; but no one can imagine the condition of our art had it been without the inspiration of religion. Majestic and venerable stands the Church of Rome; upon her walls the arts have registered their victories; for her the muses have forsaken the summits of Parnassus; to her the poet, painter, and musician have dedicated their genius; and, giving all they brought to her humblest and poorest worshipper, she has repaid the masters with perpetual recognition and universal fame. Far as her realm extends are known the glories of Raphael, and Angelo, and Mozart.

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{553}

Original.

Adelaide Anne Procter.

Next to imagination, genius is, perhaps, the faculty of the human mind about which we have had the most instructiveness and the least instruction. Yet every one who knows anything of it at all knows the two great types of genius that appear in history--extremes between which lie all minds of mark. One is the familiar form that the word itself at once suggests--the regular fashion, as it were, of being exceptional. This is the erratic, fitful, uncontrolled, keen, brilliant, sensitive, sympathetic, eccentric character, who wears regardless collars, fights his publisher on less than no provocation, eats opium if he chooses, and sometimes chooses--or, if not opium, some other stimulant--has whims and moods and irritabilities, and the biggest heart, and the best tongue, and the most heedless head, with the most brilliant oddities in it, wherever he goes--a totally lopsided organism, where the soul cannot be kept from wearing its way through the body, and where a few faculties, preternaturally developed, domineer over a warped and stunted system, to the ultimate ruin of the whole man.

The other kind, calm, clear, broad, poised, equable, powerful, seems exactly the opposite of the first type. The strength of the one is in balance, the force of the other in overbalance. Yet the difference is only that the man of balance is symmetrically developed; it is the difference between the autumn maturity of the full-grown fruit and the hectic ripeness, with the worm at the core, of the August windfall.

Of these two types, the first is vastly the more frequent, the other the higher in history. The reason is simply this, that a moderate degree of uniform development gives neither more nor less than mediocrity, while disproportionate preponderance of the intellect, even where all the faculties are below the average, will reproduce in miniature all the phenomena of the overbalanced kind of genius. Between Byron Don-Juanning it over his gin-and-water, and the brilliant Bohemian who dashes off the cleverest leader of the next day, fresh from the convivial influences of a roystering champagne supper, and the gentle youth who floods the rural poet's corner with heaven-scaling hankerings inspired by green tea, the difference is not in kind, but in degree.

Men of this order are the ones who achieve fame and famine. Their blossoms of promise are bright, their early graves are green on all the paths of human progress. History kindles at their high hopes and deeds, and blushes for the petty failings that suffice to drag them down. Literature, above all, is a very Golgotha, all the ghastlier for its glory, of their self-conscious sensitiveness, their refined self-torture, their blasted lives and miserable deaths. Yet there is hardly one but has his little day, longer or shorter, but with always some little sunshine and flowers of popular favor. Stimulated to their utmost by susceptibility to praise, they are the most brilliant and _bizarre_ in effects, and the most blindly admired. Besides, their eccentricities are an advertisement in themselves, and very often first attract the attention which afterward discovers the powers underneath. The world, on the contrary, finds nothing about the other sort of genius to display any peculiar capabilities--a sort of pleasant self-completeness, it may be, but no salient points and queer angles--and passes on, to gape at the man with half the brains and nothing to balance them. {554} Byron woke up one morning and found himself famous: some one in Elizabeth's reign made a list (is it not D'Israeli who preserves it?) of the best writers of his day, whereon the _thirteenth_ name is that of the successful London manager and decidedly good fellow, William Shakspeare.

In fact, this latter type of genius is not only rare as all well-poised organisms are rare, but seems to evade public appreciation by some hidden inherent law of its nature. It has often happened with men of this order that not only their families--of course, it is the exception, if a man's family ever discover his powers till the rest of the world thunders his fame into their ears--but their daily acquaintance, their most intimate friends, nay, themselves, never suspect their greatness.

But, if such a man of genius is an event of his generation, and, with all a man's opportunities for appreciation, activity, acquaintance, and, above all, women and their ennobling influence, to bring out his best energies, often dies undiscovered, what chance is there for a woman of kindred abilities to struggle into the light of recognition? In literature, men are the severest judges of women possible, except, of course, their own sex. To the best of them the expression "woman of genius" is the mythical relic of some lost tradition as old as Sappho's day, and "women's thought" a contradiction in terms. All their experience teaches them to disbelieve in it utterly. The truth is, most women think very ill in print. The cause lies less in their nature than in their second nature of education. Their thought is beautiful enough--beauty is their mental as their bodily characteristic--but seldom strong, and then its strength is that of the tempered Toledo rather than the shearing Andrea Ferrara. It comes in April gleams from behind cloud after cloud. They lack concentration, terseness, sequence; in a word, training. This breeds, with mainly correct thought, constant loose digressions, diffuseness of expression, and dilution of ideas. (Hence that saddest thing on the earth, wherein women writers so abound, the _unexceptionable_ poem.) It seems as though women wrote as if conversing, forgetting how much of the charm is in themselves and evaporates on the pen. Every reader has noticed how the writings, and, above all, the poems, of really extraordinary women--women that men of mind looked up to--are to us such monuments of apparent mediocrity that we wonder what they found to worship. The most impartial critic's nose inclines involuntarily heavenward the moment a woman comes forward to claim any intellectual place of honor. And genius, the highest quality, man's special prerogative--horror of horrors! All reason says it cannot be; and underneath a subtle male _esprit de corps_ too often adds that it shall not be. Of course, the intruder cannot climb the heights, but to avoid accidents and disappointment she is seldom suffered to try. Such are the difficulties which beset the path of even the most favored female aspirant.

It ought not to surprise us, then, that Adelaide Anne Procter, even had she been the most pushing and irrepressible of blue-stockings, with every vantage-ground of circumstance, was not appreciated as she deserved. But, in addition to the original sin of being a woman, several reasons peculiar to herself concurred to render her, what we think she has been, one of the most underrated writers of her day.

First, she was an Englishwoman. Had she not been, she might never have been anything; but once being something, we do not think it was an utterly inestimable advantage. For, as being English, every one took for granted that she must be a Protestant, and every one was disappointed and provoked to find her a Catholic. Now one of the circumstances which mitigate the glory of being English is that there is very little _achromatic_ criticism in England. As a wise and keen analyst [Footnote 175] complains, each of the reviews has some set of theses nailed to its doors, whose upholding is the first thing, to which all their criticism proper must stand subordinate.

[Footnote 175: Matthew Arnold, Essays in Criticism.]

{555} English bigotry, under nineteenth century forms, is to-day as patent, as understood, as calculable a mainspring and motive of public judgment as in Archbishop Laud's era. Miss Procter's chance of any high praise was thus never very great. But appearing as she did on the scene of letters at a time when the Church of England was yet in the full sanctimoniousness of righteous reaction against the dismembering logic of the Puseyites, any good there was in her was very safe from discovery by most of the critics. Had she been a self asserting sectarian, cramming her dogmas, as some of us did their abolitionism, down her readers' throats, she might have been hunted down to fame by the indignant zeal of the saintly star-chamberers of letters, who lead public opinion much as the foam leads the wave. Unfortunately for this opening, Miss Procter was a lady, and such self-assertion the most foreign of traits to her nature. Not loud enough for martyrdom, she was just firmly Catholic enough for misjudgment, or rather for denial of judgment. While the tribunals of criticism could not avoid taking notice of a book by Barry Cornwall's daughter, still, with all the little good and ill the reviewers said of her, they never did her the one essential service they could render, of putting her name where the reading public would see it and pass judgment on her. There is a way of praising that keeps off, and a way of blaming that attracts, the mass of readers.

With the returning tide of ritualism, she has begun to be more appreciated, but it is only a beginning. We are so strongly inclined to think her poems at the outset of a new career in public favor, and we consider that so little justice has been done her in the critical journals of this country, that we cannot help feeling toward them accordingly; and so, in range of our attempted discussion of her merits, and copiousness of citation, we have treated her in all respects precisely as a new author.

For we believe sincerely that the clouds of circumstance and prejudice about Miss Procter's entrance into literary life have obscured from us poetical powers not only of no common order, but of that calm, self-centred kind we have spoken of as rare enough in man, and the feminine counterpart of which is almost unknown in literary history. Her mind is not Shakespeare's, nor Coleridge's, nor Goethe's, but the resistless river and the fountain of the rocks may both be the overflow of the same sunless reservoir in the deep bosom of the mountains. And her poetry is indeed a fountain of the rocks; pure, placid, deep of source, shaded yet sparkling, "making a quiet music all its own;" with no torrent nor show of force, yet musically passing all obstacles, and emerging, clear, bright, and beautiful, in the sunlight beyond. Most varied and versatile in her choice of subjects, she brings to all a poetic insight, a freedom and fancy of expression, a grasp of the topic, and, above all, a strange, noble earnestness, that altogether make up a style whose quiet charm we had rather easily illustrate than elaborately fail in describing.

The key-note of all her writings is thoughtfulness, and withal a peculiar kind of thoroughness of thought such as we have found in no other woman. Mrs. Browning (perhaps we ought to add the new Mrs. Augusta Webster, whose perceptive powers are the theme of the English reviews) is the only one who ever has analyzed nearly so well, and she and all the others seem only incidentally, while Miss Procter is habitually, analytical. Her entire superiority, indeed, is the consequence and corollary of this curious depth of mind. Bold in abstractions, tender in revealings of the heart, ingenious in incident and invention, she is sure to have a well-defined thought at bottom, always suggestive, often philosophic, sometimes profound. The rare combination of entire femininity with this thinking habit is an originality in itself. Very novel and very charming is the effect of seeing together with this strong, clear, searching introspection, all the woman's delicacy of touch.

{556}

But the reader is tired of our generalities, and would much rather see for himself how well Miss Procter thinks. So we give him a fair example in the poem called

Incompleteness.

Nothing resting in its own completeness
Can have power or beauty; but alone
Because it leads and tends to further sweetness,
Fuller, higher, deeper than its own.

_Spring's real glory dwells not in the meaning,
Gracious though it be, of her blue hours,
But is hidden in her tender leaning
To the summer's richer wealth of flowers.

Dawn is fair because the mists fade slowly
Into day, which floods the world with light;
Twilight's mystery is so sweet and holy
Just because it ends in starry night._

Childhood's smiles unconscious graces borrow
From strife that in a far-off future lies;
_And angel glances (veiled now by life's sorrow)
Draw our hearts to some beloved eyes._

Life is only bright when it proceedeth
Toward a truer, deeper life above;
Human love is sweetest when it leadeth
To a more divine and perfect love.

Learn the mystery of progression duly:
Do not call each glorious change decay;
But know we only hold our treasures truly,
When it seems as if they passed away.

Nor dare to blame God's gifts for incompleteness;
In that want their beauty lies; they roll
Toward some infinite depth of love and sweetness,
Bearing onward man's reluctant soul.

This poem holds one of the great principles in Miss Procter's very noble theory of life--a theory abundantly developed in her poems. Her cardinal axioms would seem to be three: The great rule of life is progression; its great agent, sorrow; its great fact and end, love. On these pillars she builds, and 'Incompleteness' is one of the most direct statements of one part of her creed. Another fine poem, in thought a kind of companion-piece to this, in which we readily recognize the same underlying thought, is

Beyond.

We must not doubt, or fear, or dread that love for
life is only given,
And that the calm and sainted dead will meet
estranged and cold in heaven:
Oh! love were poor and vain, indeed, based on so
harsh and stern a creed.

True that this earth must pass away
with all the starry worlds of light,
With all the glory of the day, and calmer tenderness
of night,
For in that radiant home can shine alone
the immortal and divine.

Earth's lower things--her pride, her fame,
her science, learning, wealth, and power,
Slow growths that through long ages came,
or fruits of some convulsive hour,
Whose very memory must decay--heaven is
too pure for such as they.

They are complete; their work done.
So let them sleep in endless rest.
Love's life is only here begun, nor is,
nor can be, fully blest;
It has no room to spread its wings,
amid this crowd of meaner things.

Just for the very shadow thrown upon its
sweetness here below,
The cross that it must bear alone,
and bloody baptism of woe,
Crowned and completed through its pain,
we know that it shall rise again.

So, if its flame burn pure and bright,
here where our air is dark and dense,
(And nothing in this world of night
lives with a living so intense,)
When it shall reach its home at length,
how bright its light! how strong its strength!

And while the vain weak loves of earth
(for such base counterfeits abound)
Shall perish with what gave them birth--
their graves are green and fresh around--
No funeral song shall need to rise
for the true love that never dies.

If in my heart I now could fear that,
risen again, we should not know
What was our life of life when here--the
hearts we loved so much below
I would arise this very day
and cast so poor a thing away.

But love is no such soulless clod;
living, perfected it shall rise,
Transfigured in the light, of God,
and giving glory to the skies:
And that which makes this life so sweet
shall render heaven's joy complete.

As a poem, this latter is superior, because it applies beautifully to a beautiful subject the principle which the other merely enunciates. And the style is not less remarkable than the ideas. Can anything be more clearly, calmly _right_ than the thought, more easy, lucid, _real_ than its utterance? And it is not the bald perspicuity, either, of mere logical disquisition, but full of suggestion and spirit; and it does not flag; especially in Beyond there is not a weak line nor lower thought. Now is not all this refreshing after the diffuse grace and dilute sweetness of female poetry in general? It is to the run of it as a copse of May's arbutus to a meadow strewn with buttercups.

_Apropos_ of this superiority, we find another poem which illustrates it even more strongly, because so very many women have fluttered about the same thought. {557} Every _femme incomprise_--and what poetess does not think she is one? is full of it; why have none of them said it so broadly and well as this?

Unexpressed.

Dwells within the soul of every artist
More than all his effort can express,
And he knows the best remains unaltered,
Sighing at what we call his success.

Vainly he may strive; he dare not tell us
All the sacred mysteries of the skies:
Vainly he may strive; the deepest beauty
Cannot be unveiled to mortal eyes.

And the more devoutly that he listens,
And the holier message that is sent,
Still the more his soul must struggle vainly,
Bowed beneath a noble discontent.