Chapter XI (2)

Is not this the witness of whom we have spoken above, the superhuman, the necessary witness for the solution of natural problems and the establishment of true religious dogmas? To say that such a man is more than a man, that he is a being apart from and superior to humanity, is not saying enough. We must learn what he really is. Let us open the candid narratives which preserve the story of his public mission, of his preaching though Judea; open the gospels, where the least incident of his acts, his words, his works, his sufferings, and his bitter agony are written. Let us see what he says of himself. Does he declare himself simply a prophet? Does he believe himself to be only inspired? No; he calls himself the Son of God, not as every other man, remembering Adam, could have been able to say it. No; he meant the Son of God in the exact and literal interpretation of the word, son born directly of the father, the son begotten of the same substance.

Try to force the meaning and distort the texts to make them say less than this, but you cannot succeed. The texts are plain, they are numerous, and without ambiguity. There are only two ways in which the divinity of this man can be denied: either his own testimony must be attacked, if the gospels are admitted to be true; or the gospels themselves must be rejected.

{472}

In order to attack his own evidence, it must be supposed that, by a lack of sagacity, he in good faith formed a wrong judgment about his own origin, or perhaps better, by a deceitful intention, he knowingly attributed to himself a false character. This being, whose incomparable intelligence forces you to place him above humanity, this is he who is not capable of discerning his father. And on the other side, this inimitable moralist, this chaste and beautiful model of all virtues, this is he whom you suspect of a disgraceful artifice. There is no middle course: either this mortal must be the Son of God, as he has declared, or you must put him in the last rank of humanity, among the innocent dupes or the cunning charlatans.

Or, on the contrary, do you wish to attack the gospels? Nothing is less difficult, if you remain at the surface. Arm yourself with irony, provoke the smile, treat everything in a superficial manner, and you will certainly gain the sympathy of the scoffers. But if you wish to investigate the things, and to take, in the name of science, an impartial view, you will be compelled to acknowledge that most of the facts in the gospels are historically established; that they are neither myths nor legends; that the place, the time, and the persons are absolutely put beyond all doubt. What right, then, has any one to refuse credence to this series of facts, where another series, which is admitted, is sustained by no better witnesses, nor more direct proofs, nor any other superiority, except a pretended probability which is determined by each for himself? Nothing can be more arbitrary and less scientific than this way of making a choice, deciding that this evangelist should be implicitly believed when he is mentioning such a speech, but that, when he tells us what he saw himself, he is no longer trustworthy; and that this one, on the contrary, falsifies the discourses that he reports, but that he announces certain facts with the certitude of an ocular witness. All this is only pure caprice. But it is certain that the gospels, however closely they may be examined, bear the criticism successfully, and ever remain imperishable. What book of Herodotus or of Titus Livius carries such an intrinsic evidence of good faith and veracity as the recitals of St. Matthew or of St. John? Are you not charmed with these two apostles, who frankly tell us what they have seen with their eyes and heard with their ears? If you, who were not there and who saw nothing of these things, believe that you can give them a lesson, and tell them, in virtue of your scientific laws, how all these things happened without their understanding them, and by what subterfuges their adorable Master deceived them, it will not be only the orthodox and faithful who will resent and controvert your boldness--voices that you dread more, from the midst of your own ranks, will openly proclaim your falsehoods. [Footnote 101]

[Footnote 101: "The human soul, as some one has said, is
great enough to enclose every contrast. There is room in it
for a Mohammed or a Cromwell, for fanaticism together with
duplicity, for sincerity and hypocrisy. It remains for us to
ascertain if this analogy should be extended to the Founder
of Christianity. _I do not hesitate to deny it_. His
character, when impartially considered, opposes every
supposition of this kind. There is in the simplicity of
Jesus, in his artlessness, in his candor, in the religious
feeling which possessed him so completely, in the absence of
all mere personal designs, of every egotistic end, and of all
cunning; in a word, there is in all that we know concerning
him something which entirely repels the historical
comparisons by which M. Rénan has allowed himself to be
governed."--M. Edmond Scherer, _Mélanges d'Histoire
Réligieuse_, pp. 93, 94.]

After all, suppose they were deceived, that the hero of this great drama was only a skilful impostor, what do you really gain by it? The miracles cannot be thrown aside. On the contrary, you have one miracle more, and one which is more difficult than all the others to explain. It is necessary to account for this most wonderful fact, that cannot be suppressed by any critic, the establishment of Christianity in the Roman Empire. {473} Take every sentence of the gospels, accept these supernatural facts without reservation, the cures, the exorcisms, the elements stilled, the laws of nature violated or suspended: all these things are not too much, rather they had hardly enough to make us understand the triumphant progress of such a doctrine, in such a time, and among such a people. Nothing less than miracles could transform the world in this manner, changing all the opinions commonly received, completely altering the moral and social state of the people, and not only giving them purer and more enlightened views, but truths which were entirely unknown to them. If, then, you tell the truth, if this stupendous revolution rests upon a comedy, if we must consider the partial miracles false which surround and explain the principal miracle, which precede and seem to prepare and open the way for the great miracle, what will be the result? You have not destroyed, and cannot destroy, the principal miracle: it has become still more miraculous.

IV.

Let us not lose sight of our argument. We were seeking a practical and popular way to solve the great problems of our destiny, and we have proven that human science alone is unequal to this task. We have seen that there is only one way for man to attain this end, that satisfactory solutions can only be derived from faith, that wonderful gift which under the authority of a superhuman witness makes us believe with certitude things which neither the eyes of the body nor the eyes of the mind could immediately comprehend. Has the witness which lies at the foundation of Christian convictions the wished-for authority? In other words, is it truly divine? We believe that we have established it, and the most hasty reading of a single page of the Bible will demonstrate it far more clearly than we have done. See also the admirable harmony of the Christian system, and the responses, as clear as they are sublime, it gives to questions so long unanswerable. It is by its capacity to penetrate mysteries to read the invisible, to explain the obscure, not less than by its miraculous victory, that Christianity demonstrates both the true character of its origin and the sincerity of its divine Founder.

We remember on this subject some moving sentences that we will be permitted to quote. They are from an author who recently received an eloquent tribute of regrets and praises, and who, for the past twenty years, has been remembered with grief by all the friends of sound philosophy. In a well-known lecture, when considering these same problems of human destiny, M. Jouffroy spoke thus:

"There is a little book that is taught to children, and upon
which they are questioned in the church. Read this little book,
which is the catechism. You will find in it a solution of all
the questions I have asked--of all, without an exception. Ask a
Christian the origin of the human race, what is its destiny,
and how it can attain it, and he can answer you. Ask that poor
child, who has scarcely thought of life and its duties, why he
is here below, what will become of him after death, and he will
make a sublime answer which he may not fully comprehend, but
which is not the less admirable. Ask him how the world was
created and for what end; why God has put animals and plants
upon it; how the world was peopled, if by one family or by
several; why men speak different languages, why they suffer,
why they combat, and how all these things will end; and he
knows it all.
{474}
Origin of the world, origin of man, questions about the
different races, destiny of man in this life and in the other,
relation of man to God, duties of man toward his fellow-men,
rights of man over creation, he is ignorant of none of these
things; and as he becomes matured, he will not hesitate to take
advantage of his natural and political rights, for he knows the
rights of the people, for these come, or, as it were, flow of
themselves, from Christianity. This is what I call a great
religion. I recognize by this sign that it leaves none of the
questions which interest humanity without an answer." [Footnote
102]

[Footnote 102: _Mélanges Philosophiques_,
par M. Th. Jouffroy. Vol. i. 1833, p. 470.]

We love to read again these words of a master and a friend, who in his youth was nourished with Christian truths, and who, perhaps, would have tasted them again if the trials of life had been prolonged for him. Without doubt, it is necessary to avoid indorsing opinions which are no longer our own sentiments; but certainly it can be permitted to preserve a faithful and complete remembrance of their spirit. Even at the time when M. Jouffroy doubted, when he left his pen and told us with assurance how Christian dogmas would die, there would have been but very little necessary to teach him to his cost how they perpetuate themselves! Faith has its evil days; its ranks seem decimated and its army dissolved, but it can never perish. In order to replace deserters, to recruit its strength unceasingly, has it not the sorrows and miseries of this world, the need of prayer, and the thirst of hope?

Let us leave this sweet and profound thinker whose brilliant career we love to trace; let us return to that great and firm soul who now engages our attention, and to whom we are attached by so many friendly ties and remembrances. Without having followed him step by step, we have not lost sight of him. We have taken a hasty glance at his work in trying to express its spirit. We must now return to each of these meditations in detail. What things have escaped us! What brilliant passages, what keen observations, what profound thoughts! At most, we have only taken account of that part of the book where the limits of science, the belief in the supernatural, and especially the marvellous harmony between Christian dogmas and religious problems, that are innate to man, are treated with so much wisdom and authority. That which M. Jouffroy, in the remarks we have quoted, indicates in a single glance, M. Guizot establishes with convincing arguments by comparing each dogma with the natural problem to which it corresponds. No one has yet so accurately explained the harmonious relation of these questions and these answers. There are two _morceaux_ which demand particular attention: they are the two _meditations_ on the revelation and inspiration of the holy books. There are here ideas and distinctions of rare sagacity which point out what justly belongs to human ignorance, without allowing the reality of inspiration of the Bible to suffer the slightest suspicion. But the chief triumph of this work, that which gives it at once its most charming color and its sweetest perfume, are the last two meditations, _God according to the Bible, Jesus Christ according to the Gospels_.

{475}

These two pictures are in as different styles as the subjects they contrast. Nothing could be bolder, more striking, more truly Biblical, than the portrait of the God of the Hebrews; of that God "who has no biography, no personal events," to whom nothing happens, with whom nothing changes, always and invariably the same, immutable in the midst of diversity and of universal movement. "I am he who is." He has nothing else to say of himself; it is his definition, his history. No one can know more of him, even as no one can see him. And if he were visible, what a misfortune! His glance is death. Between him and man what an abyss!

It is a long distance to traverse between such a God and the God of the New Testament--from Jehovah to Jesus Christ. What novelty, what a transformation! The solitary God goes out from his unity; he completes everything, yet remains himself; the provoked God lays aside his anger, he is affected, he is pacified, he becomes gentle, he gives man his love, he loves him enough to redeem his fault with his Son's blood, that is, with his own blood. It is this victim, this Son, obedient even unto death, that M. Guizot endeavors to paint for us. Sublime portrait, attempted many times, but always in vain! Shall we say that he has succeeded in this impossible task? No; but he has made a most happy effort. He makes us pass successively before his divine model, by showing the attitudes, if we may be allowed the expression, which enable us to see the most touching aspects of this incomparable figure. Sometimes he places him amid his disciples only, that chosen and well-loved flock; sometimes in the Jewish crowd in the Temple, at the foot of the mountain, or on the border of the lake; sometimes among the fishermen or the sedate matrons; sometimes with artless children. In each of these pictures, he gathers, he brings together, he animates by reuniting them, the scattered characteristics of Jesus Christ. His sober and guarded style, powerful in its reasoning, brilliant in its contests, seems to be enriched with new chords by the contact with so much sympathy and tender love. It is not only the impassioned eloquence, but it is a kind of emotion, more sweet and more penetrating, that you feel while reading his thoroughly Christian pages.

We understand the happy effect that this book has already produced upon certain souls. Its influence, however, cannot descend to the masses. Its tone, its style, its thoughts, have not aspired to popular success; but from the middling classes and the higher circles of society, how many drifting souls there are to whom this unexpected guide will lend a timely aid! Such a Christian as he is must work this kind of cure. He is not the man of the workmen; he has neither gown nor cassock. It is a spontaneous tribute to the faith, and more than this, for it declares that he too has known and vanquished the anxieties of doubt. Every one, then, can do as he has done. No one fears to follow the steps of a man who occupies such a position in the empire of thought, who has given such proofs of liberty of spirit and of deep wisdom. It is not a slight rebuke to certain intelligent but careless Catholics to see such an example of submission and faith come from a Protestant.

There is yet a greater and more general service that these _Meditations_ seem to have fulfilled. During the eight or ten months since they were published, the tone of antichristian polemics has been much depressed. One would have expected a manifestation of rage, but there has been nothing of the kind. {476} The most vehement critics are reserved, and their attacks have principally consisted in silence. Hence a sort of momentary lull. Many causes, without doubt, contributed in advance to this result, if it were only the excess of the attack and the impertinence of certain assailants; but the book, or to speak more properly, the action of M. Guizot, has, in our opinion, its own good part in this work. So clear and vigorous a profession of faith could not be lightly attacked. In order to answer a man who frankly calls himself a Christian, it would be necessary to have resolved and to declare openly that one is antichristian; but those who are, no longer care to acknowledge it. It is well known that our day is pleased with half-tints; it has a taste for shadows, and is always ready to strike its flag when it sees an opponent's colors. Christianity itself gathers some profit from the little noise that is made about these _Meditations_. It is not the least reward of their author. May he continue in the same tone, compelling his adversaries to persevere in their silence. He will embarrass them more and more, while he will always add fresh courage and power to those who are sustaining the good cause.

--------

Saint Mary Magdalen.

From The Latin Of Petrarch.

The following lines were written by the great Italian poet, Petrarch, on the occasion of a visit to Sainte-Baume, near Marseilles, where tradition points out the tomb of Saint Mary Magdalen. He inscribed them on the grotto, in which she is said to have passed the last thirty years of her life.

Dulcis amica Dei, lacrymis inflectere nostris,
Atque meas attende preces, nostraeque saluti
Consule: namque potes. Neque enim tibi tangere frustra
Permissum, gemituque pedes perfundere sacros,
Et nitidis siccare comis, ferre oscula plantis,
Inque caput Domini pretiosos spargere odores.
Nec tibi congressus primos a morte resurgens
Et voces audire suas et membra videre,
Immortale decus lumenque habitura per aevum,
Nequicquam dedit aetherei rex Christus Olympi.
Viderat ille cruci haerentem, nee dira paventem
Judaicae tormenta manus, turbaeque furentis
Jurgia et insultus, aequantes verbera linguas;
Sed maestam intrepidamque simul, digitisque cruentos
Tractantem clavos, implentem vulnera fletu,
Pectora tundentem violentis candida pugnis,
Vellentem flavos manibus sine more capillos.
Viderat haec, inquam, dum pectora fida suorura
Diffugerent pellente metu. Memor ergo revisit

{477}

Te primam ante alios; tibi se priùs obtulit uni.
Te quoque, digressus terris ad astra reversus,
Bis tria lustra, cibi nunquàm mortalis egentem
Rupe sub hâc aluit, tarn longo tempore solis
Divinis contenta epulis et rore salubri
Haec domus antra tibi stillantibus humida saxis,
Horrifico tenebrosa situ, tecta aurea regum,
Delicias omnes ac ditia vicerat arva.
Hìc inclusa libens, longis vestita capillis,
Veste carens aliâ, ter denos passa decembres
Diceris, hìc non fracta gelu nec victa pavore.
Namque famem, frigus, durum quoque saxa cubile
Dulcia fecit amor spesque alto pectore fixa.
Hìc hominum non visa oculis, stipata catervis
Angelicis, septemque die subvecta per horas,
Coelestes audire choros alterna canentes
Carmina, corporeo de carcere digna fuisti.

Translation.

Sweet friend of God! my tears attend,
Hark to me suppliant and defend--
O thou, all-potent to befriend!

Not vain that care thou didst accord--
Thy hands, uplifted o'er thy Lord,
Upon his head sweet odors poured,

And touched his feet with unguents rare--
The kiss of love imprinted there--
And wiped them with thy beauteous hair.

Not vain, when he in majesty
Rose up from death, 'twas given to thee
The first to meet, to hear, to see.

This glory did the Lord divine,
The Christ august, to thee assign,
Made this unending splendor thine.

Unto his cross he saw thee cling,
Unawed by threat and buffeting--
The taunts the furious rabble fling;

For him he saw thee lashed with scorn,
Yet clasping, faithful and forlorn,
Those feet with nails now pierced and torn.

{478}

He watched thy tear-drenched face below--
Thy bosom stricken in thy woe--
Thy long fair hair's dishevelled flow.

All this he saw, while from his side
His other loved ones scattered wide,
And left alone their Crucified.

'Twas therefore, mindful of those sighs,
He, deigning from the tomb to rise,
Sought his first welcome from thine eyes.

And heavenward when from earth he sped,
Through thrice ten years for thee here spread
A feast by angels ministered.

This rugged cave obscure and lone,
Black rock-dews dripping down the stone.
For thee a regal palace shone.

No fields with harvest wealth besprent
Accord such manna as was sent;
Thy needs did heavenly gifts content.

Here through December's frost and sleet.
Thy long hair, falling to thy feet.
Enrobed thee in a robe complete.

No fear appalled; love made thee bold;
Love sweetened sufferings manifold.
The rock, the hunger, and the cold.

Here, hid from mortal eyes, to be
Cheered with celestial company.
Angelic bands encompassed thee.

And still a dweller in our sphere.
Seven hours each day rapt hence, thine ear
The alternate choirs of heaven could hear.

C. E. R

-------

{479}

Glimpses Of Tuscany.

Santa Maria Del Fiore--The Duomo.

I.

We are approaching Florence by rail from Pisa, a dismal, dripping February morning. It is twelve years since I first saw that famous Duomo of Santa Maria del Fiore. I came suddenly upon it, as I was trying to find my way alone to the opera at the Pergola, the first night I got to Florence. I shall never forget the impression it made on me--an honest, original impression, for I had never read or heard of the Piazza and its wonders. I only knew Giotto by his "O." Orgagna, Arnolfo, Brunelleschi, were names utterly unknown. But the beauty and immensity of that mighty square, asleep in the starlight, overwhelmed me. It was like a step, unawares, from time into eternity. No Pergola that night for me. I crept back to the hotel, bewildered and awed into something like earnestness; for the Lord seemed enthroned in that consecrated place, and I was afraid of him as he sat there, stern, conscious, omnipotent.

But I was younger then; disposed to go into raptures over everything artistic, especially Italian art. The decade between thirty and forty diminishes one's enthusiasm dreadfully. I am almost afraid to meet my old favorite now, lest the spell of a fine remembrance should be broken for ever. But the train is rushing on, the road curves, and there's the same Duomo, looking as if Our Lady of Flowers herself had settled down on the city, with Giotto's campanile, like an archangel, standing guard beside her. There she sits in her gray mantle, grayer through the mist and snow, queen of all the landscape--grander, lighter, lovelier than ever.

Here we are at the station, and now driving past the baptistery; but, far or near, that cupola ever full in view like a guardian presence. You do not wonder here, as before Saint Peter's, what has become of the cupola; you are not obliged to fall back a league to see what is nearly overhead. Nave, transept, and tribune go swelling up, with buttress and demi-cupola diminishing as they ascend, and all converging into one enormous drum from which springs the central dome. Dante could see it from his chair in its very shadow. Arnolfo and Brunelleschi may see it from their seats of marble scarce twenty yards from the foundation-stone. Angelo may see it from his home in Santa Croce. The masons of Fiesole can see it from their hills, the peasants of San Casciano from their vineyards; and, far down the Arno, the boatmen from Pisa look up to it as they plod wearily along.

I am domesticated in Florence; the slow Tuscan spring is passing into summer; and, from being simply a joy, this great cathedral has become a study. Arnolfo, son of Lapo, or Cambio, was the great stone-poet who traced that ground-plan, itself an epic. He was commissioned by those wonderful republicans to construct a church, as worthy as man could make it of the glory of God and the dignity of the city of Florence. {480} The inclination of Arnolfo's genius was toward the Gothic; but he was a many-sided and myriad-minded man. His walls of Florence suggest the Egyptian, his court of the Bargello the Saracenic, his Palazzo Vecchio a perfectly new idea. He has all the versatility of Shakespeare. Arnolfo's first conception of Santa Maria del Fiore may still be seen in fresco, copied from the last wooden model, in the Spanish Cloister of Santa Maria Novella. Up to the first cornice, the cathedral, as it now stands, is almost as purely Gothic as the campanile; and, by reference to the fresco, you will perceive that Arnolfo's original idea was to carry this Gothic treatment up to the very cross that crowns the lantern. For instance, the lantern in the fresco is without either ball or scroll, the clerestory buttressed, and with pointed instead of circular lights, the windows of the cupola pointed. Yet, as it is certain that Arnolfo lived to finish the clerestory, and to unite (_serrare_) the smaller cupolas and tribunes, it is clear these variations in his plan, these departures from the pointed, these approximations to the round, were deliberately made by Arnolfo himself, or by his direction. As the work advanced, he felt that something more must be conceded to the coming cupola. It was not enough to have it octagonal instead of spherical, and enrich its eight marble ribs with Gothic tracery; the antagonism between the two styles must be met and softened from the start. See how gradually this is done, and at what an early stage these concessions begin. In the fresco, the blind arches, both over the lower tribunal windows and just under the lower tribunal cornice, are slightly pointed; in the building itself they are round; the niches above the cornice, also, are pointed in the picture and round-topped in the stone. It is more than probable that these concessions were dictated by the greater prominence which the cupola was assuming in Arnolfo's new vision of his temple. Now is it impossible, that he might have nearly anticipated the exact plan of the heir of his inspiration and partner of his glory? The tendency is that way. But, with the completion of the clerestory and the unification of the smaller cupolas, Arnolfo departs, and, after an interval of a century and a quarter, Brunelleschi enters.

There they are, seated side by side in marble, close to the stone that marks where Dante, too, sat gazing at their Duomo. Arnolfo looks more like a dreamer than a doer, although he was both; in Ser Brunelleschi's face there is more of the mathematician than the poet. He could never have traced that ground-plan, never have dreamed that shining archangel called the campanile; but he did what neither the pupil of Cimabue nor the son of Cambio could perhaps have managed as well, he built that matchless cupola. Brunelleschi had his one great dream, the solution of a vast and novel architectural difficulty. What Arnolfo had hinted became his grand ideal. He nursed his dream for years at Rome, communing with the spirit of classic art; at last he told his dream in Florence, and with infinite difficulty got leave to act it out. Since that noble _carte blanche_ to Arnolfo, Florence had declined; she was no longer up to the proud standard of that earlier day. The superintendents are slippery and slow in engaging Filippo; and Filippo himself must _finesse_ more than a little to secure the engagement. {481} There is this difference, to be sure, that the Duomo was the culmination of Arnolfo's professional career and but the beginning of his successor's; that the latter, like all gallant adventurers, had to win his spurs before he could be fully trusted. Still, the two inseparable elements of self and gain are more conspicuous here than in the purer Christian ages, whose architects disdained or forbore to register their names; whose works preserve no personal memorial of their masters; "so that," says Vasari, "I cannot but marvel at the simplicity and indifference to glory exhibited by the men of that period." There is, unfortunately, no such simplicity to marvel at now.

As early as 1407, Filippo submitted an opinion to the superintendents of the works of Santa Maria del Fiore, and to the syndics of the guild of wool-workers, (powerful gentlemen in those days,) that the edifice above the roof must be constructed, not after the design of Arnolfo; but that a frieze, thirty feet high, must be erected with a large window in each of its sides. This suggestion, together with the additional thirty feet for the gallery, comprised the single, sublime conception to which the Duomo owes its crowning beauty; the rest of the task is chiefly mechanical. But such immense mechanics require immense genius. Filippo had supplied the idea, but there was no one found wise enough to execute it. The wardens and syndics were much perplexed; and Filippo, after laughing at them in his sleeve, returned to Rome. He had hardly gone before they wrote him to return. He came; and after patiently listening to the long array of difficulties which mediocrity always opposes to the inspiration of genius, admitted that the most enormous dome of ancient or modern times must present certain difficulties in its erection, like other great enterprises; that he was confounded no less by the breadth than by the height of the edifice; that if the tribune could be vaulted in a circular form, one might pursue the method adopted by the Romans in erecting the Pantheon; but that following up the eight sides of the building to a convergence, thus dove-tailing, and, so to speak, enchaining the stones, would be a most difficult and novel undertaking. "Yet"--and this touch is worthy of Arnolfo's age or any other--"yet, remembering that this is a temple consecrated to God and the Virgin, I confidently trust that, for a work executed in their honor, they will not fail to infuse knowledge where it is now wanting, and bestow strength, wisdom, and genius on him who shall be the author of such a project." Nothing can shake Filippo's joyous trust in himself; he acts as if he carries a divine commission in his pocket to finish what Arnolfo began, and can therefore afford to laugh at all human appointments or interference. With amazing confidence and magnanimity, he concludes his interview with their worships by exhorting them to assemble, on a fixed day within a year, as many architects as they can get together; not Tuscans and Italians only, but Germans, French, and all other nations, "to the end that the work may be commenced and intrusted to him who shall give the best evidence of capacity." The syndics and wardens liked Filippo's advice, and would also have liked him to prepare a model for their edification. But with all his piety and self-reliance, Ser Brunelleschi was a Florentine like their worships, and therefore keen enough to keep his model to himself. It then suddenly occurred to these grave gentlemen that money might be an object to Filippo, as it occasionally is to other men; and so they voted him a sum, not stated by Vasari, but not large enough to justify his remaining in Florence. So back to Rome once more marches the Ser Brunelleschi.

{482}

Meanwhile that noble city of Florence has ordered her merchants resident abroad to send her at any cost the best foreign masters. In the year 1420, these best foreign masters, and best Italian masters besides, and the syndics and superintendents, and a select number of distinguished citizens, and little Filippo himself, just returned from Rome, are all assembled in the hall of the wardens of Santa Maria del Fiore. After listening to a hundred absurd plans, Brunelleschi unfolds his own at full length. Whereupon the assembled syndics, superintendents, and citizens, instead of being at all edified by his remarks, proceeded to call him a simpleton, an ass, a madman, and bade him discourse of something else. Which he, instead of doing, stuck to his point, and finally lost his temper and flew in their faces. Whereupon they called him a fool and a babbler; and considering him absolutely mad, arose against him as one man, and incontinently turned him out of doors by the head and heels. Imagine the rage of Arnolfo the Goth, after such treatment; or Angelo the mighty, stalking down the Via Romana; or Dante, wandering ghost-like into eternal exile! The indomitable, practical Filippo did none of these things, but prudently shut himself up at home lest people in the streets should call out, "See where goes that fool!" "It was not the fault of these men," says the sympathetic Vasari, "that Filippo did not break in pieces the models, set fire to the designs, and in one half-hour destroy all the labors so long endured, and ruin the hopes of so many years." But Filippo was less a poet, enamoured of an inward vision of beauty, than an architect determined to solve an architectural problem. Plainly enough, since Arnolfo had set the example in the clerestory, the windows of the cupola were also to be circular instead of pointed. His inventive faculties were therefore restricted to the organization of that vast dream, to the determination of the ascending curves and the conception of the lantern. It was not the offspring of his soul, but of his mind, that Filippo had offered the syndics and superintendents; and the inventor of new combinations and possibilities of matter is apt to possess a more elastic temperament than the creator of new forms of beauty. Instead of fretting himself to death or cultivating the princely revenge of silence, Filippo, strong in his mission and calculating on the proverbial caprice of his native Florence, began to experiment on individuals instead of assemblies; so successfully, too, that another session was soon convened. Profiting by discomfiture, Filippo modified his tactics. He salutes the superintendents as "_magnificent_ signors and wardens," and condescends to be more explicit about his still hidden model. He even goes so far as to prove the dome-within-a-dome, which had so enraged their excellencies, a possibility. He spoke with such emphasis and confidence, that "he had all the appearance of having vaulted ten such cupolas." In a word, they surrendered at discretion; and, rather in despair than hope, made him principal master of the works. The man of talents was victorious where a mere man of genius would have been badly beaten. But--in these artistic complications there is always a but--Lorenzo Ghiberti, just famous for his doors of Paradise, was a favorite in Florence; so Florence resolved to associate Lorenzo with Filippo. This was a bitter pill to Ser Brunelleschi, but he swallowed it; and for two years they worked together at the twelve braccia to which their labors were limited by the wardens. {483} But--there was also a 'but' on the right side--when the closing in of the cupola toward the top commenced, and the masons and other masters were wailing in expectation of directions as to the manner in which the chains were to be applied and the scaffoldings erected, it chanced on one fine morning that Filippo did not appear at the works. On inquiry, it turned out that he had tied up his head, called for hot plates and towels, and gone to bed complaining bitterly. An attack of pleurisy. Most inopportunely; for at this most critical moment in the enterprise the whole burthen fell on Lorenzo. Lorenzo was besieged by practical questions; Lorenzo was persecuted with a thousand interrogatories; Lorenzo waded completely out of his depth into a sea of troubles; the masons and stone-cutters came to a stand, and finally the work stood still. At this juncture, the syndics and wardens resolved to pay the sick man a visit. They condoled with him in his illness and also lamented the disorder which had attacked the building. "Is not Lorenzo there?" asked the sufferer. "He will not do anything without you," replied the wardens. "_But I could do well enough without him_," murmured the invalid. The wardens withdrew, and sent Filippo a prescription in the shape of an announcement of their intention to remove Lorenzo. Filippo instantly recovered, but only to find his rival still in place and power. Whereupon he made one more prayer to their worships, namely, to divide the labor as they divided the salary, and give each his own separate sphere of action. This was granted: the chain-work assigned to Lorenzo, the scaffolding to Filippo. The scaffolding proved a miracle of success, the chain-work a monument of failure. The wardens, and syndics, and superintendents, and influential citizens, fairly driven to the wall, made Filippo chief superintendent of the whole fabric _for life_, commanding that nothing should be done in the work save by his direction. How much richer the world would now be in every department of art, had half its men of genius but possessed a tithe of Brunelleschi's elasticity and determination.

Left to himself, Filippo worked with so much zeal and minute attention, that not a stone was placed in the building which he had not examined. The very bricks, fresh from the oven, are said to have been set apart with his own hands. So conscientious were the builders of those days when art was supreme and religion a practical inspiration. The energy and resources of this model architect are inexhaustible. Nothing escapes him. Outlets and apertures are provided, both in security against the force of the winds, and against the vapors and vibrations of the earth. Wine-shops and eating-houses are opened in the cupola. High over Florence, Filippo is undisputed lord and master of a small town of his own.

And so, for twenty-six years, they wrought under his eyes at this architectural miracle. He lived to see the lantern carried to the height of several braccia: it was not finished till fifteen years after his death. He left plans for the gallery, which were either lost, stolen, or destroyed. That great, broad belt of dingy brick and mortar clamoring to earth and heaven for completion, ruins the effect of the dome and gives the whole edifice a shabby appearance. Only one of the eight sides is finished. {484} This was done in Carrara marble by Baccio d'Agnolo, and would have been carried all around the dome but for the interference of Michael Angelo, then omnipotent in Italy, who denounced it as a mere cage for crickets; adding that he himself would show Baccio what he _ought_ to do. The old art-dictator made a model accordingly, which, after long debate, was rejected. So our Lady of Flowers still lacks her girdle. It is much to be regretted, since Michael could suggest nothing better, that he did not hold his peace. The present model may not be faultless, but it is infinitely better than nothing; and no one else has suggested anything as good. It was condemned, not as defective in itself, but unequal to the magnificence of the building; and, also, because it seemed to violate some secret purpose of Brunelleschi's in cutting off, as it did, the line of stones which he had left projecting. Be this as it may, Filippo's purpose has never been divined and never can be; all the plans of the great masters are lost; and there seems to be small use in continuing the interdict of a much over-estimated authority till doomsday. That cestus of alternate head and garland just under the colonnade is abominable, but it is difficult to see how the present design could otherwise be improved. It harmonizes with all the windows, and niches, and arches in the tribune; it relieves the blankness of the perforations, and is in sympathy both with the windows of the lantern and the upper window of the campanile. It is the sub-dominant without which the blended Gothic and classic is a discord. Arnolfo might have done it better, but no one else. It is a poem which Baccio was as well qualified to trace as any of the rest of them.

Apart from his glorious consummation of the Duomo, I do not like Brunelleschi. He did more than any other man to repel the Gothic influences, which, under Arnolfo and others, were penetrating Tuscany; he insured the triumph of the round arch over the pointed, and paved the way to the monstrosities of the Renaissance. But his cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore is the supreme miracle of architecture. It exceeds the cupola of the Vatican, both in height and circumference, by eight feet; and although supported by eight ribs only, which renders it lighter than that of Saint Peter's, which has sixteen flanked buttresses, is nevertheless more solid and firm. Unlike the Roman dome, it has stood unassisted and unstrengthened from the first; so firmly grounded by the forethought of Arnolfo, so closely knit by the energies of Filippo, that it has not sunk or swerved an inch in four centuries. The noblest speech that Buonarotti ever made was, that he would not copy, but could not surpass it; the finest compliment ever paid by one man of genius to another was his dying wish to be buried where he might arise, not in sight of his own Pantheon in the air, but in full view of the vaulted tribune of Santa Maria del Fiore. Another name, however, is associated with the growth of the Duomo--a name not inferior to either Arnolfo or Filippo. Just beside the vast cathedral is the wondrous bell-tower Giotto reared--his solitary, or only conspicuous architectural feat. Before Giotto's time, the modern painters copied nature about as closely as most actors and orators now do; that is, their men and women bore only a weak, conventional resemblance to humanity. The son of Bondone inaugurated the naturalistic movement which culminated in Da Vinci and Raphael; unquestionably a most honorable distinction. But what can all he ever painted, judged as a living fact, amount to when weighed against the startling splendor of this divine campanile? {485} I have seen something of Giotto, far from all, but enough to know that, save as undeveloped germs and hints, his pictures are little more than crudities belonging to the infancy of art, amazing at his time, but not more than curious at ours. But this campanile, into which he suddenly ascended without an effort, is the transfiguration of architecture--the product of an art at its best and highest. Architecture never had advanced, never has advanced a step beyond it. It might be added, never can advance; for beyond a certain recognized point in the realization of beauty, human genius is not permitted to push its way. Vasari devotes thirty pages to the consideration of Giotto's pictures, and but one to the campanile. Yet these pictures are mouldering in convents or shrouded in chapels, or buried in dim galleries, scattered far and wide over the world; and, save over some ambitious student or patient virtuoso, they no longer exist as a spell or a power. But this lofty campanile is a perpetual influence; an influence as indestructible as the Iliad--a joy as unceasing as the joy of sunrise--the joy of a work that is perfection of its kind. So fair, so frail, and yet so firm! It does not need the glass case suggested by imperial condescension. It knows how to take the lightning and the storm. It knows how to bear the weight and thunder of its mellow bells. Its beautiful head is at home in the skies, and seems to belong to heaven as much as the flowers belong to earth.

Giotto's plan would have crowned it with a spire of a hundred feet; but, whether for true artistic considerations, or because it was Gothic, or because it was too expensive, succeeding architects have always advised its omission.

Besides its own independent loveliness, this bell-tower exercises an important influence over the group to which it belongs, not only by the development of form, but also by the subtler qualification of style. But for the pure Gothic of Giotto, the predominance of the round in the tribunes and cupola would overwhelm Arnolfo's pointed witchery beneath the clerestory. As it is, the supremacy of the classic at one end of the stately pile is balanced by the ascendency of the Gothic at the other. High up in air the pious rivalry between the two great styles is continued, each lifting its choicest offering to the very footstool of the Padre Eterno, each doing its best in honor of our Lady of Flowers.

The facade of Santa Maria is wanting, like her girdle. Giotto is said to have finished two thirds of it, subsequently torn down _to be restored in a more modern style!_ The fresco in the cloister of San Marco gives only part of it, and I could make but little of that. As I remember the fresco of Arnolfo's facade, it was meant to be composed of statues, niches, and pillars--something as deep and rich as the façade at Pisa. Whoever may finish it, let us trust that the shallow mosaic of Santa Croce will be avoided. The baptistery completes this memorable group; faded, unattractive without, sombre and majestic within.

The interior of Santa Maria is a disappointment. Glorious stained glass, splendid arches, but none of the light, the joy, the shining paradise of Saint Peter's. If we may believe Vasari, the interior, like the exterior was to have been crusted with Florentine mosaic, even to the minutest corners of the edifice. But the days are dead when such a deed was practicable. {486} Instead of colored marbles, we have a pale olive overspreading all the edifice; instead of the mosaic for which Filippo had provided iron supports, the lack-lustre frescoes of Vasari and his successors, which Florence ought to have summarily whitewashed, as suggested in Lasca's madrigal. Fortunately, these frescoes are the only pictures. Pictures in large churches are distracting and insignificant; and moreover, you can rarely more than half see them, try your best. Least of all, has a picture any business in a Gothic church. For my own part I would as soon see the pyramid of Cheops hung with pictures as the Duomo. In a church, you want all the superhuman you can get--nothing human but human souls. Angels and dragons and effigies are more in keeping there than the best statues; those ghostly groups and faces in the old stained glass look better than if they were a thousand times more natural. The old mosaics harmonize because they are not only typical, but imperishable as the structure itself. The decisive objection to a picture in a church is its apparent fragility.

The outer robes of our Lady of Flowers are dull with the dust and wear of five centuries. See how those new bits of marble which the workmen are inserting, green, white, and red, flash and sparkle in the sun! What a celestial vision it must have been when all that world of mosaic was fresh and stainless! But even as she is, faded and unfinished, what an invaluable possession! What would Florence be without it? It is a central magnet that holds together her present, past, and future; that unites all her children in one vast family, making her, in the truest sense of the word, a community. It stands before her everlastingly, a memorial of her youthful wealth and power; a monument of present greatness, a protest against decrepitude to come. It binds her fast to her renown, her honor, and her faith; it is the solemn, visible bond between her and God. The Duomo belongs not only to Florence, but to all the hills and valleys around, to the villas of Morello, to the cloisters of Fiesole, to the huts on the Apennines. Every peasant within sight of its cupola, within sound of its campanile, has a share in its daily benediction. For four centuries, the generations that people that fair amphitheatre have found it the most unchanging feature in their landscape. It is as much the portion of their lives as the stars, their river, or their own vineyards. In the first blush of every morning, it rises before the sun; and when the stars and moon are shining, the lantern of Santa Maria del Fiore takes its place amongst them as part of the pageantry of the skies.

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{487}

The Condition and Prospects of Catholics in England.

By An English Catholic.

Surrounded as we are on all sides by apostles of progress, ever ready to taunt and ridicule those who linger in the shadows of the past, it would be distressing indeed to Catholics in general, and especially to English Catholics, if they could with justice be reproached as stationary or retrograde. Happily they are of all men least open to the charge. They advance on a double line. They share in the common march of society; they adopt every latest improvement; they fully accept and reciprocate the blessings of civilization; but their religion also, which is in itself progress, increases and multiplies throughout the globe, and particularly in the British empire. It has derived strength from the world's social and political changes; it is inspired more than ever with the breath of freedom; and the very means which accelerate science and commerce supply it with wings and coat it with mail. It not only advances on a double line, but it has likewise a twofold nature and a duplex power. This wonderful religion is both old and new; it unites the weight and authority of age with the freshness and vigor of youth. To the English it is both ancient and modern. It _was_ the venerable faith of their ancestors, and it is, by a gracious revolution in the moral world, the old religion revived, with all the charms of novelty--a second spring revisiting the long desolate and wintry land. It comes back to us with all its time-honored appliances; with its sacred symbols and solemn rites; its orders, congregations, and retreats; its colleges, institutions, poor schools, homes, orphanages, almshouses, hospitals, and libraries--but it comes, moreover, with means and advantages proportioned to its difficulties, and such as in old times it could not boast. It has now in its hands the mighty machinery of the press, with the Scriptures, the Missal and Church Offices in the vulgar tongue. It flourishes amid liberal institutions, and acquires no little vigor from free discussion, persuading where once it ruled. It affiliates to itself all physical truths, all discoveries in science, as affording fresh evidence of the power and wisdom of God. It engages in historical research with impartiality formerly unknown, relying on documentary proofs, and scrutinizing all that is legendary. It joyfully accepts and utilizes the steamship, the railroad, and the telegraph. It finds in them fresh instruments of good, new links to knit nations together in a common faith, swift convoys of Christian missions, and electric tongues of flame to spread the gospel of Christ.

During the last forty years the Catholic _renaissance_ in England has been rapid beyond all that could have been expected or was even hoped. It is not to the emancipation act of 1829, to the increase of the episcopate in 1840, nor to the creation of the hierarchy in 1850, that this surprising growth is mainly to be ascribed. {488} The removal of political disabilities gave Catholics in England, no doubt, a respectability and courage which they had not before; but they would still have continued, on the whole, a despised and scattered remnant--mere "pebbles and _detritus_" as Newman says, [Footnote 103] "of the great deluge"--if there had not arisen in the very heart of the Established Church a little band of learned and pious men, who, strong in genius and in prayer, valiantly defended many distinctively Catholic doctrines, and ended by professing openly or virtually their adhesion to our entire system of faith and morals. This it was which caused English Catholics, when they emerged, as it were, from the catacombs, [Footnote 104] to lift up their heads, to challenge a new investigation of the grounds of their belief, and to submit them confidently to every test that history, Scripture, reason, and experience could apply. The Tractarian movement infused fresh blood into the church's veins, and it has, during a period of thirty years, swollen our waters with a confluent stream.

[Footnote 103: _Sermons on Various Occasions_, p. 232.]

[Footnote 104: Card. Wiseman's _Address to the Congress of
Malines_, p. 9.]