Chapter VII (1)

"This monarch, so great, so powerful,
must die, must die, must die."
"Praise be to him who liveth for ever."

During that whole summer there was a quiet but potent influence at work under Margaret Hamilton's superficial life; ever at work, yet silently, scarcely recognized by herself. The spark struck out by Mr. Southard in his anti-Catholic lecture was slowly kindling in the depths of her being.

There was not a thought of controversy in her mind. As she read, one doctrine after another appeared, and showed its harmony with some need of hers; or if not needed, it was not antagonistic, like the pleasant face of a stranger who may become a friend. Fortunately, no person and no book had said to her, You _must_ believe; and so awakened opposition. Or if the obligation had been insinuated, she had not perceived it. She felt that it was for her alone to say what she must believe, as long as she invited truth generously, and was ready to accept it when it appeared to her with a truthful face. Of course she was not one to make syllogisms at every step, and, being a woman, was not likely to think that necessary. She looked up to find one truth after another standing smiling and confident on the threshold of her heart, and as smilingly she bade them welcome. Reason gave up the reins to intuition, and light came without a cloud. She realized nothing, till, startled by some outside call that woke a many-voiced stir of hitherto silent guests, she opened her eyes, and found herself a Catholic.

The first emotion was one of incredulity; then followed delight, mingled with a fear which was merely the shadow cast by old bugbears that, looked at fearlessly in that new light, faded and fled like ghosts at dawning. Then all surprise faded away. She recognized her proper place. She was at home.

But how to tell Mr. Granger! For she must tell him without delay. It was not an easy task. If he had suspected, perhaps she could have spoken; but he never dreamed of the change in her. If the subject had been introduced, she must have spoken; but for some reason, the "papists" were allowed to rest unscathed in the family conversations. {312} It was the war; it was General Sinclair, sabre in hand, riding into battle as if it were a _féte_; it was the weather, a whole month of persistent and most illogical rain, pouring down through west winds, through dry moons, through red sunsets, through every sign that should bring clear skies, Taurus being clerk of the weather, they concluded; it was when they should go back to town--" Not till the trees should resume specie payment," was Mr. Granger's professional dictum; it was any and everything but theology. And so the weeks went past, and October came, and the story was not told. But he must know before they returned to town, for then she was to be baptized.

Her uneasiness did not escape Mr. Granger, and in some measure it communicated itself to him. He perceived that she wished to say something to him, yet was afraid to speak.

"After all," he thought, "why should I wait for her to begin? She is as timid, sometimes, as much of a baby, as my Dora. I dare say it is some foolish thing, only fit to laugh at. I must help her."

It was Sunday. Mr. Southard was in town, Mr. and Mrs. Lewis and Aurelia taking their farewell walk in the pine woods, for the family were to leave the seashore that week, and Dora was in the kitchen, hushing to sleep an interesting family of kittens. Miss Hamilton walked up and down the piazza, and Mr. Granger sat just inside one of the windows, looking at her. He saw that she occasionally glanced his way, and hesitated, and that with some suspense or fear her face had grown very pale.

He leaned on the sill, as she came past, and regarded her anxiously.

"You are not looking well," he said. "I hope that nothing troubles you."

She came to him immediately, eagerly; a faint smile just touching her lips, and fading again.

"I wanted to tell you; but I was afraid," she said, speaking like one out of breath.

"I am sorry that you are afraid of me. Have I ever given you reason to be?"

Margaret could not look at him, but leaned against a pillar near the window, and averted her face.

"I was afraid only because you might think--"

She stopped.

"My dear child, what a coward you are!" he exclaimed, half laughing. "You are worse than Dora. She had not such an air of terror when she broke my precious Palissy plate. Must I apply the thumbscrew?"

She turned toward him suddenly, and with a look stopped his raillery.

"Would you be much displeased, Mr. Granger, if I should be a Catholic?" she asked; then held her breath while she awaited his reply.

His first expression was one of utter astonishment.

"But you are not in earnest!" he said, after a moment. "This is only a fancy."

"Don't believe that!" said Margaret. "I am so firmly a Catholic that I would die for the faith. It has been growing in my mind a long time; and now the work is finished. I could not go back, even to please you, Mr. Granger. I must follow my convictions."

"Certainly," he said very quietly, looking down. "No one has a right to interfere with your convictions. Do you intend to become openly a Catholic, and leave your own church for that?"

"I do not know how to believe one thing and say another," she replied. "I am to be baptized as soon as I go in town."

{313}

She seemed abrupt, almost defiant; but it was only because she was weak.

Mr. Granger drew himself up slightly.

"Since your mind is so fully made up, and your arrangements perfected, there is, of course, no more to be said about the matter. I am surprised, since I have not been led to expect anything of the sort; but I have neither the right nor the desire to control your religious opinions. Fortunately, conscience is free in this country."

"But you are displeased!" she exclaimed tremulously; for every word had fallen like ice upon her heart.

"You cannot expect me to be pleased, since I am not a Catholic," was the reply.

Margaret sighed heavily under the first pressure of her cross. "You wish me to go away?"

He looked at her in astonishment. "Certainly not! When I say that I have no right or desire to interfere in your religion, I mean that I am not to persecute you or to make any difference with you on account of it. Nothing is to be changed unless you wish it."

She had expected him to ask some explanation; but not a word more did he say. He seemed to think that the subject was disposed of.

His silence wrung her heart like the veriest indifference; but he was not indifferent. He thought, "She has done all this without confiding in me, and tells me only when she must. It is not for me to question her. What I am to know she must communicate voluntarily."

She waited a moment, then turned slowly away, went in at the door, and up-stairs to her chamber.

When they met again, Mr. Granger tried to be quite as usual. He was even more scrupulously respectful than formerly. But she felt the chill of all that courtesy that had once been kindness. The next day she went in town, and was baptized. The sooner the better, she thought. But, if she had expected any delight or conscious change to follow the reception of the sacrament, she was disappointed. There was only that calm which follows the consciousness of being in the right way. The baptism was strictly private; no one present but the two necessary witnesses; and after it was over, she took the cars back to the country.

"Everything is peaceful," she thought, walking through the silent woods, now burning with autumn colors. "Everything is sweet," she added, as, coming in sight of the house, she saw little Dora running joyfully out to meet her.

"When you come back, I'm glad all over," said the child.

That evening Mr. Southard came home alone, and with a very grave face. "I have bad news for you," was his first greeting on entering the parlor.

Mrs. Lewis started up with a cry. Miss Hamilton sank back in her chair.

"General Sinclair is killed."

"Thank God!" exclaimed both ladies.

They thought that some accident had happened to Mr. Granger or Uncle Charles," explained Aurelia, seeing the minister's astonishment.

"Some people never know how to tell bad news!" cried Mrs. Lewis, her face still crimson with that first terrified leap of the heart. "Can't you see, Mr. Southard, that you ought to have begun by saying that our family were all well? Look at that girl! She is like a snow image. Oh! well, excuse me; but you did give me such a start. Now tell us the whole, please. I am very sorry."

{314}

Poor Mr. Southard took his scolding with the greatest humility, but was so disconcerted by it that he could hardly finish the recital.

Mr. Granger had received a telegram from Washington, and had gone on immediately to bring the remains of his cousin home for burial. He wished them to go into town, and have the house open for the funeral. General Sinclair's wife was ill in Montreal, and could not be present. Mr. Granger had telegraphed her before starting.

They went to town the next day, and hastened to put the house in order; and on the second day Mr. Granger arrived.

It was impossible to have a private funeral. Mr. Sinclair had a host of friends, his reputation was a brilliant one, and he had died in battle. Military companies offered their escort, and the public desired to honor the dead by some demonstration. Finally, Mr. Southard opened his church, and consented to preach the sermon.

One would have thought that some public benefactor had died. The church was crowded, and crowds lined the streets through which the procession passed. Many a great and good man has died, yet received no such ovation.

A military funeral is the sublime of mourning. We may not know whose memory is thus honored, whose silence thus lamented; but those wailing strains of music touch our heartstrings as the wind sweeps the windharp, and tears start at the obsequies of him whose name we never heard, whose face we never looked upon. Perhaps it is that requiem music mourns not that one man is dead, but that all men must die.

Mr. Southard had felt a temporary embarrassment as to the manner in which he should treat his subject. He could not hold the dead up as a model, for Mr. Sinclair had been an unbeliever and a man of the world. There was but one way, and that one was congenial to the speaker and welcome to the hearers. The man must be, as much as was possible, ignored in the cause.

From the moment when the minister rose in the pulpit, the spirit in which he would speak was plain to be seen. His mouth was stern, there was a steel-like flash in his eyes, and his voice was clear and ringing when he announced his text:

"_And he said to Zebee and Salmana: What manner of men were they whom you slew in Thabor? They answered: They were like thee, and one of them as the son of a king. He answered them: They were my brethren, the sons of my mother. As the Lord liveth, if you had saved them, I would not kill you. And he said to Jether his eldest son: Arise, and slay them_."

There was a pause of utter silence; then the minister extended his hands toward the open, flag-draped, flower-crowned coffin in front of the pulpit, and exclaimed, "One of them as the son of a king!"

Instantly every eye was turned on that white and silent face, and the princely form extended there, superbly beautiful as a marble god. It seemed regicide to kill such a man. After that look, scarcely one present revolted at the tone of the sermon, which echoed throughout the vengeful call, "Arise, and slay them!"

As the family sat that evening at home, trying to throw off the gloomy impressions of the day, and to talk quite as usual, the conversation, by some chance, turned on theology, and settled upon Catholicism. Mr. Granger, who had been sitting apart and silent, roused himself at that, and tried to introduce some other topic, but without success. Miss Hamilton was mute, feeling that her time had come. If only her friend were on her side, she would not have cared so much; but he was far from her. The coldness that had arisen between them at first had increased rather than diminished. Perhaps it was partly her own fault; but it hurt her none the less.

{315}

"The papists are certainly gaining ground in this country," Mr. Southard said. "We have hard work before us. They know how to appeal to the frivolous tastes of the times, as of old they appealed to the superstitious. Their music pleases opera-goers, and their ceremonies amuse the curious. Worse than that, their sophistries deceive the romantic and the credulous."

"Oh! live and let live," interposed Mr. Granger hastily. "There are a good many roads to heaven."

"The Son of God said that there was but one," replied the minister.

"If there is but one," Mr. Granger said, rising, "he is a bold man who will say that he is right, and all the others wrong."

"Are you a Catholic, Mr. Granger?" demanded Mr. Southard with some heat.

"No," was the reply; "but some who are dear to me are Catholic."

Margaret's heart gave a bound. She breathed an aspiration. Her time had come. She was sitting alone opposite them all, and they all looked at her as she leaned forward with a slight gesture that checked further speech.

"I am a Catholic, Mr. Southard," she said. "I was baptized this week."

The minister started up with an exclamation, the others stared in astonishment; but Mr. Granger took a step and placed himself at Margaret's side.

O generous heart! She did not look at him, but she began to tremble, as the snow-wreath trembles in the sun before it quite melts away.

"You cannot mean it!" Mr. Southard found voice to say.

O joy! She wasn't afraid of him now.

"I am quite in earnest," she replied.

He leaned against the table near him, too much excited to sit, too much overcome to stand unsupported.

"You mean that you are pleased with their ceremonies, that some of their doctrines are plausible, not that you accept them all, and pay allegiance to the pope of Rome. It cannot be!"

"I honor the pope as the head of the church, and I can listen to no teacher of religion whom he does not approve," was the reply.

"My God!" muttered the minister. He stood one moment looking at her as if he saw a spectre, then turned away with drooping head, and went toward the door, staggering so that he had to put his hand out for support. To that sincere but mistaken man it was as if he had seen the pit open, and one he loved drawn into it.

The others sat silent and embarrassed, till Aurelia, bursting into tears, started up and left the room.

Margaret glanced at Mrs. Lewis, and found that she had quite recovered from her surprise.

"The programme seems to be flourish of trumpet, and _exeunt omnes_," the lady said. "But I mean to stand my ground. I don't find you in the least frightful. You look to me precisely as you did an hour ago, only brighter perhaps. My only fear at this instant is lest we may have to tie you up to keep you out of a convent."

"I have no thought of a convent," said Margaret.

{316}

"Oh! well, I don't see but we can get along with everything else. There's fish on Fridays, and the necessity of holding one's tongue occasionally. I think we can manage. Mr. Lewis, can you shut your mouth sufficiently to give an opinion?"

Thus called upon, Mr. Lewis found voice. "What in the world did you want to go and turn Catholic for?" he demanded angrily. "Couldn't you like 'em well enough at a distance, as I do? That's just a woman's romantic, headlong way of doing things up to the handle. You've upset your own dish completely. Nobody will marry you now."

Miss Hamilton smiled. "That is a view of the matter which I never thought to take," she said.

"But you must think of that," Mr. Lewis persisted, perfectly in earnest.

"No, thank you; I won't," she replied, rising. "I thank you all"--with downcast eyes and a little tremor in her voice--"I thank you that you are not too angry with me for what I could not help. I could not have borne--" There words failed her.

She glanced at Mr. Granger as she went out, and caught one of those heartfelt smiles which lighted his face when he was thoroughly friendly and pleased.

There was little rest for her that night. Hour after hour she heard Mr. Southard's step pacing to and fro in his chamber beneath, not ceasing till near morning. But after she went to bed, Aurelia came softly in, and, bending, put her arms around Margaret, and kissed her.

"I am sorry if I made you feel bad by going away so," she said in a voice stifled by long weeping. "But you know I was so taken by surprise. Of course we are all the same friends as ever. Good-night, dear! Go to sleep, and don't worry about anything. Mr. Granger and aunt and uncle told me to say good-night to you for them."

"How good everybody is--God and everybody!" thought Margaret.

In the morning all appeared as usual, except that there was no Mr. Southard at the table. Luncheon-time came, and Mrs. James reported the minister to have locked his door and declined refreshment. When the dinner-bell rang, still Mr. Southard had not come down.

"If he doesn't come to dinner," Miss Hamilton thought, thoroughly vexed, "I will send him a note which will give him an appetite. This is sheer nonsense."

But as they entered the dining-room they heard his step on the stairs, and he followed them in.

Hearing him greet the others quite in his usual manner, Margaret glanced at him, and found him waiting to bow to her. He looked as if he had had a long illness.

"What! you desert your seat too?" he said, seeing her go toward the other end of the table.

"I thought you might be afraid to sit by me," she replied pettishly. Then, as he dropped his glance and colored faintly, she repented, and went back to her seat by him.

When they rose, he spoke to her aside. "May I see you in the library now, or at your convenience? I would gladly speak with you tonight."

"Now, if you please," she answered, thinking it best to have the interview over at once, since it was inevitable.

It would be worse than useless to repeat the minister's arguments. With more of patience and humility than she had expected, he asked for and listened to the story of her conversion. But his calmness deserted him more and more as he perceived how firmly grounded was her conviction, and how hard would be the task of reclaiming her.

{317}

Polemical discussions were always irritating, but not always convincing, she insisted. She could not trust herself to engage in them, even if she were capable. She did not want to be told that such a man had been wicked, that such an abuse had existed. When treason had found a place among the apostles, it might well taint some of their successors. It mattered not; her faith was not based on any individual. Let Mr. Southard take the doctrines of the church, as she had learned them, from the church itself, and then prove them false if he could. Let him take the books that had satisfied her, and answer their arguments, theologian to theologian. With her the contest would be unequal; but she would gladly listen to his refutation, she assured him.

"What books have you read?" he asked, resting his head on his hand, disconcerted to find that, instead of being opposed to an uninstructed young woman, he was to have arrayed against him the flower of Catholic theologians.

She named them, an imposing list, at the repetition of which a slow red crept up into the minister's cheeks. Apparently the young woman was not so uninstructed as he had thought.

"Mr. Southard," she concluded, "I have no desire but to know the truth. If you can convince me that I am wrong, I will renounce my errors as promptly as I adopted them. If you are thoroughly convinced that you are in the right way, then you ought to be fearless. But if it is too much trouble for you to study the subject, if I am not worth it, then let the matter drop."

"I will read the books, and go over their arguments with you," the minister said, looking at her keenly as if he suspected some hidden motive in her proposal.

"I am honest!" she said, hurt by his expression. "What have I to gain, if not heaven? What have I not to lose? I feel surely that our happy household will never again be the same that it has been."

"I must believe you sincere," he replied. "But I cannot imagine what should have set you, of all persons, on this track."

Miss Hamilton smiled as she rose. "It was you, sir. You should beware of the flattery of abuse."

The next morning after breakfast the minister found on his study table a pile of controversial works that the housekeeper had been instructed to leave there for him. Beside them lay a crucifix. He touched it, and it seemed to burn his fingers. He pushed it away, and it burned his heart.

"After all, it is the image of my crucified Redeemer," he said; and took it in his hand again. Looking at it a moment, his eyes filled with tears.

To Be Continued.

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{318}

Good Old Saxon.

By An English Catholic.

During the last five years an admirable society, formed in London, and called the Early English Text Society, has been reproducing at a cheap rate a large number of curious and valuable works written in the thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. Many of these existed in manuscript only, while others were out of print, and very difficult of attainment. They range over a variety of different subjects, and being beautifully printed, amply supplied with notes and glossaries, and each edited by an accomplished Anglo-Saxon scholar, they afford clergymen, antiquarians, and men of letters in general an excellent opportunity of becoming familiar with the earlier forms of the English language, and the best authors during a literary period hitherto regarded as obscure.

These publications synchronize with, and have partly grown out of, a movement which, though retrograde, has been really an improvement and an advance--a movement, namely, from Latinized to Saxon English. We may perhaps date its commencement from the time when Dr. Johnson was approaching his sixtieth year. He had, for a long time, been lending the weight of his great name to the practice of using very long words, and those chiefly of Latin origin. In doing this he had not merely followed a crowd of classical English writers, but had put himself at their head. The genius of the language was being lost, and when it seemed to be gaining strength, it was in reality growing weaker. Its original tendency had been toward words of one syllable, but under Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke, and a multitude of essayists and pamphleteers of the eighteenth century, it tended strongly toward the use of words of many syllables. Thus sound was frequently substituted for sense, and sentences, though they ran more smoothly, had in them far less fibre. An air of pedantry was thrown over expressions, when such a word as "tremulousness" was substituted for "quivering," and "exsiccation" for "drying." Mannerism was certainly the mildest epithet that could be applied to such changes, when they became frequent and systematic. An instance of the habit in question is often quoted from Johnson's Dictionary, where, in defining "net" and "network," he calls the first, "anything made with _interstitial vacuities_," and the second, "anything _reticulated_ or _decussated_, at equal distances, with _interstices_ between the _intersections_."

Yet Johnson himself had, in the grammar prefixed to his Dictionary, pointed out clearly how very monosyllabic English was originally, how "our ancestors were studious to form borrowed words, however long, into monosyllables;" how they cut off terminations, cropped the first syllable, rejected vowels in the middle, and weaker consonants, retaining the stronger, which seem "the bones of words." Thus, from "excrucio" they made "screw;" from "exscorio," "scour;" from "excortico," "scratch;" from "hospital," "spittle;" and the like. {319} By such processes, performed not according to rule, but by the unconscious working of national instincts, our forefathers produced a wonderful agreement between the sound of their words and the thing signified. _Squeak, crush, brawl, whirl, bustle, twine,_ are but a few among a multitude of instances which will occur to any one who gives attention to the subject. Wallis, indeed, a writer often quoted in the grammar referred to, establishes the fact of a great agreement subsisting between even the letters, in the native words of our language, and the thing signified; and his analysis of the meaning conveyed by sn, str, st, thr, wr, sw, cl, sp, and other combinations is highly ingenious and, on the whole, satisfactory. He comes to the conclusion that one of our monosyllable words "emphatically expresses what in other languages can scarce be explained but by compounds, or decompounds, or sometimes a tedious circumlocution."

But although Dr. Johnson, like Wallis, appreciated highly the Saxon origin and character of English, though he fully recognized the strength which it derives from its native sources as opposed to southern innovations, his own practice was eminently faulty, and sure, in the hands of his imitators, to degenerate into pedantry and stilts. It was well, therefore, that when his career was drawing to a close, an obscure but highly gifted boy in Bristol ransacked the muniment room of St. Mary Redcliffe's Church, and found, or pretended to have found, in its old chests, the poems of Rowley, who was said to have written in the time of Edward III. The poems were not without merit in themselves, but, when Chatterton had, amid the pangs of hunger, put an end to his short and weary existence, they attracted attention in consequence of the antiquated form in which they appeared. They were like the fossil remains of extinct animals, and spoke of a literary period little known at that time even to the best English scholars. They breathed the language and the spirit of Chaucer; and from the moment of their appearance may be traced the reaction in favor of Saxon phraseology which marks the literature of the present day. The boy-author saw by intuition what Dr. Wallis had reduced to rules. Perhaps he had never analyzed very closely his own reasons, nor traced attentively the process of nature in the formation of words, so as to produce in them an agreement between the sound and the thing signified; but his youthful ear was charmed with the native energy of what Byron called our "northern guttural," and he loved to imitate, in such lines as these, the rugged sweetness of the early English poets:

"The rodie welkin sheeneth to the eyne;
In dasied mantles is the mountain dight,
The neshe young cowslip bendeth with the dew."

In these lines, all the words are of the pure Saxon type; and the same may be said of almost every stanza in Chaucer's Tales.

"The flowrs of many divers hue
Upon their stalkis gonin for to spread,
And for to splay out their leavis ill brede,
Again the sun, gold-burned in his sphere,
That down to them y-cast his beamis clear.'

And again, as we read in "The Clerke's Tale:"

"And whanne sche com hom sche wolde brynge
Wortis and other herbis tymes ofte,
The which sche shred and seth for her lyvyng
And made her bed ful hard, and nothing softe."

This, as regards language, is the mould in which the Tales are cast. The same Saxon stamp imprinted on the verse of Spenser, though the _Fairie Queen_ came two centuries after the _Canterbury Tales_. One stanza shall suffice as a specimen:

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"Then came the jolly summer, being dight
In a thin silken cassock coloured greene,
That was unlyned all, to be more light;
And on his head a girland well beseene
He wore, from which as he had chauffed been
The sweat did drop; and in his hand he bore
A bow and shaftes; as he in forrest greene
Had hunted late the libbard or the bore
And now would bathe his limbs with labor heated sore."

The habits and tastes of Ben Jonson and of Milton were largely influenced by their classical studies. The best authors of ancient Greece and Rome filled their memories, and it was only natural that their writings should betray at every turn the sources from which they had been fed. Yet a multitude of passages might be cited from these poets in which the genuine ring of the early English rhymers only is heard. Thus Ben Jonson, in a favorite piece of advice to a reckless youth, says:

"Nor would I you should melt away yourself
In flashing bravery; lest, while you affect
To make a blaze of gentry to the world,
A little puff of scorn extinguish it,
And you be left like an unsavoury snuff
Whose property is only to offend."

The last line has more than one word of Latin origin; but in Milton's _Mask of Comus_ we find long passages entirely free from the foreign element. Thus, Sabrina sings:

"By the rushy-fringed bank
Where grows the willow and the osier dank,
My sliding chariot stays,
Thick set with agat, and the azure sheen
Of turkis blue and em'rald green,
That in the channel strays;
Whilst from off the waters fleet
Thus I set my printless feet
O'er the cowslip's velvet head
That bends not as I tread."

Now it must not be supposed that in calling attention to the Saxon character of English as opposed to, or distinct from, its Latin and Norman aspects, we are advocating any exclusive system. We rejoice in our language being a compound; and as some of the most exquisite perfumes are produced by distilling a variety of different flowers and leaves, so languages formed by the mixture of several races, and influenced by numerous changes and chances in the history of the people who speak them, are often, in their way, as vigorous and beautiful as any of more simple origin. This is especially the case with that tongue which, being our own, is dearer to us than all besides. But because it consists, and must ever consist, of various elements, there is no reason why we should be indifferent to the relative proportions in which these elements are mixed together; nor is it by any means superfluous to inquire whether the tendency of a compound language may not, at any particular period, be toward corruption and decay, and, at another time, toward health, consistency, majesty, melody, and strength.

We have assumed that Saxon is the basis of English, and that of late years there has been among English writers a tendency to reascend the stream to its source, to freshen and invigorate their diction by the use of native, as distinct from foreign words. We have mentioned Chatterton as being, perhaps unconsciously, a leader in this movement; and we would add that Burns also fostered the reviving taste for pure English; for, though he wrote in the Scottish dialect, that dialect had, and has still, a thousand points of contact with our language in the days of its youth. Though its peculiarities were of Gaelic rather than Saxon origin, yet they resembled old English in this, that they were marked by short words and many consonants. Hence Robert Burns's verse revolts instinctively from the many liquid syllables of the South, and is wild and ragged as the crags and glens which were his favorite haunts. So far as it influenced our literature, it recalled it from the smoother and less vigorous course of Latinized or Johnsonian English to the sharper, simpler, and clearer notes of less artificial times.

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"Your critic-folk may cock their nose
And say, How can _you_ e'er propose,
_You_ who ken hardly verse frae prose,
To mak a sang?
But, by your leaves, my learned foes,
Ye're may be wrang."

The touch and racy dialect of the _Border Minstrelsy_, which Walter Scott edited, Mr. Evans's _Collection of Old Ballads_, and Percy's _Reliques of Ancient English Poetry_, guided public taste into a direction opposed to the tame mediocrity of the imitators of Dryden and Pope. The ear and the mind alike were charmed by the exceeding simplicity of the style of these old ballads, and their almost exclusive use of monosyllables.

Here are a few notes from one of those Jacobite songs which resounded so freely among the Highlands when Prince Charles Edward came to recover the crown of his fathers. Walter Scott compares such ballads to the "grotesque carving on a Gothic niche:"

"It's nae the battle's deadly stoure
Nor friends pruived fause that'll gar me cower,
But the reckless hand o' povertie,
Oh! that alane can daunton me!

"High was I born to kingly gear,
But a cuif came in my cap to wear,
But wi' my braid sword I'll let him see
He's nae the man will daunton me."

The Lake school of poetry, being founded in a deep love of nature and a close scrutiny of her works, had a concurrent influence in restoring the liberal use of the older forms of speech. Writers like Charles Lamb, whose minds were richly stored with the treasures of Elizabethan lore, were sometimes accused of affectation in employing archaisms, but "the old words of the poet," as the author of "Summer Time in the Country" observes, "like the foreign accent of a sweet voice, give a charm to the tone, without in any large degree obscuring the sense." Indeed, if the most popular passages in Wordsworth, and in his great master Shakespeare, be examined, they will be found to answer on the whole to that ideal of English phraseology which is here formed--one, namely, in which the Saxon element largely predominates. Thus, almost at random, we quote from _The Midsummer Night's Dream:_

"What hempen home-spuns have we swaggering here,
So near the cradle of the fairy queen?"

And from Wordsworth's "Idle Shepherd Boys:"

"Beneath a rock, upon the grass,
Two boys are sitting in the sun;
Boys that have had no work to do,
Or work that now is done.
On pipes of sycamore they play
The fragments of a Christmas hymn;
Or with that plant which in our dale
We call stag-horn or fox's tail,
Their rusty hats they trim:
And thus, as happy as the day,
Those shepherds wear the time away."

Shakespeare's description of Queen Mab, in _Romeo and Juliet_, may also be pointed out as a signal example of pure Saxon English throughout; but it is too long and too familiar to our readers to be quoted here.

There are not wanting men of talent and research, who have remarked the change which has come over the national literature in its rebound toward Saxon diction, and who have recommended it very distinctly. Dean Swift, though in point of time he preceded the movement, held as a principle that no Saxon word should be allowed to fall into disuse. Dean Hoare has, in our own time, expressed his decided conviction that those speakers and writers impart most pleasure whose style is most Saxon in its character; and this remark applies, as he believes, especially to poetry. It is in accordance with the spirit of the age that we recoil from that "fine writing" which is generally mere declamation. {322} In proportion as we become practical, the racy style--pointed, suggestive, and curt--rises in value. By the exercise of thought and cultivation of science we become exact, and through plenty of business we become brief-spoken. Vague talking and writing is now at a discount, and persons express themselves with more substance and strength because they are trained in the love of truth, historic and scientific, and have contracted a hatred of shams of every kind. Directness of statement is what is now most valued in a writer, and such men as Dr. Newman among Catholics, and Carlyle and Emerson among non-Catholics, have contributed in an immense degree to promote reverence for this quality. Circumlocution and over-expansion are faults which no one will now tolerate, and this jealousy for the clear and ready conveyance of ideas has a great deal to do with recurrence to the pregnant monosyllables, the picture-words, the gnarled and knotted strength of Saxon English.

It is, however, to Tennyson, more than to any other modern writer, that the public owes the more frequent use of short and sinewy words already known to most readers, and the enrichment of the language by the revival of many words which had become obsolete. Enoch Arden, though a poem consisting of two thousand lines, contains scarcely a word that is not of Saxon origin. It is, as far as language is concerned, simplicity almost in excess. Thus, to take but one example, it is not till we reach the last word of the following passage that we are reminded of the partly Latin origin of our tongue:

"For in truth
Enoch's white horse, and Enoch's ocean-spoil
In ocean-smelling osier, and his face,
Rough-reddened with a thousand winter-gales,
Not only to the market-cross were known,
But in the leafy lanes behind the down,
Far as the portal-warding lion-whelp,
And peacock-yewtree of the lonely hall,
Whose Friday fare was Enoch's ministering."

In this passage all the words are in common use, but in other parts of the same volume, and, indeed, in all which the laureate has published, we perceive a strong tendency to antique and grotesque forms of speech, derived from long and devoted attachment to the old writers. If they were introduced by design, simply because they are archaisms, the artifice would be apparent, and the pedantry complete. But when they form a genuine part of the author's inner life of thought and memory, the case is different, and what would have been formal and stiff becomes natural and easy. They comport well with the idea one forms of a great thinker, and indicate a thorough mastery over the mother tongue. They might, no doubt, easily degenerate into affectation, but when employed with judgment and skill, they are like fossils in a well-arranged cabinet, or old china in a well-furnished room. Resembling, as they do, the tough, tortuous olive-tree, they are valuable signs of a people's mental vigor; for as surely as the "soft bastard Latin" of the Apennines indicates a population less martial than the Romans of old--as surely as the soft and sibilant Romaic tells of a race fallen from the higher walks of Grecian philosophy, history, science, and song--so surely would Latinized English be a sign that the people writing and speaking it, were falling away from the marked character of their forefathers, and contrasting with them as strongly as the silken senators whom Chatham denounced contrasted with the iron barons of the days of King John.

------- {323}

Waiting.

Flame, rosy tapers, flame!
Though flushing day
Is mounting into heaven, it cannot shame
The weakest rush-light burning in his name
Who soon will say,
"Peace to this house!" Consoling word,
Which patient ones have heard,
Then meekly sighed,
"Now let thy servant, Lord, depart in peace!"
And, granted swift release,
Next moment died.

Flame, rosy tapers, flame! No garish day can shame Your ruddy wax a-light in Jesus' name!

Close, giddy honeysuckles, clambering free,
Close your moist petals to the wandering bee.
That with your cloistered dews you may adore
My Lord, when he shall enter at the door.
O blossoming sweet-brier!
Now flushing like a seraph with desire
To do him homage, send abroad
Your aromatic breath, and thus entice,
With innocent device,
His quickening steps unto my poor abode.
Calm lilies for his tabernacle sealed,
O spicy hyacinths! now yield
Your odors to the waiting air
His welcome to prepare;
Nor fear that by my haste
Your perfumes you will waste;
For each expectant sigh
Is dearer, to the Holy One so nigh,
Than all your honeyed nectaries exhale.
Young rose and lilac pale,
And every flow'ret fair,
Incense the blissful air,
And bid him, hail!
{324}
Flame, rosy tapers, flame!
No garish day can shame
Your ruddy wax a-light in Jesus' name!
Sing, lark and linnet, sing
The graces of this King,
Who, in such meek array,
Will visit me to-day:
Young swallows, twittering at my cottage eaves,
Shy wrens, close-nested in the woodbine leaves,
Blithe robins, chirping on the open gate,
Upon his coming wait:
Glad oriole, swinging with the linden bough,
I do entreat you, now
With gushing throat
Repeat your most ecstatic note.
Afar I hear,
With instinct quick and clear,
His step who bears, enshrined upon his breast,
The God who soon within my own will rest.
Angelic choirs
Are touching their exultant lyres:
Sing, lark and linnet, sing,
And with your artless jubilations bring
Their joy to earth; and you, melodious thrush,
While my glad soul keeps hush,
Attune your song
My silent rapture to prolong.

Flame, rosy tapers, flame!
No garish day can shame
Your ruddy wax a-light in Jesus' name!

------- {325}

From The Rivista Universale, Of Genoa.

The Supernatural.

By Cesar Cantu.

Petulant tyranny of science! It will not allow us to say that two and two are three; that there can be more than the sum of two right angles in a triangle; or that the radii of a circle are not equal. What arrogance thus to confine my liberty; to deny me leave to assert that there is an exact relation between the diameter and circumference of a circle; that the duplication of the cube is possible, the trisection of an angle, and perpetual motion! Why should not error have the same rights as truth? Reason is mistress of the world; unlimited mistress of herself. She can prove that yes is identical with no; that being and nothing are all one. Why tire ourselves with the science of ultimate reasons? We must regard the effects without ascending to the causes; we accept only what can be felt and seen. What is substance? What is cause? What are ideas? Let them pass; we hold only to phenomenon and effect.

All would not dare to express these assertions with such boldness, and yet they are necessary inferences from the current sophisms and phrases of a science which stains its tyranny by petulance and bald negations. _Experience! Experience!_ it cries daily, and proceeds to invent theories on the formation of the universe which will never meet the approval of experience; it repudiates every truth _a priori_, and yet establishes, _a priori_, that faith is contradictory to reason. In the name of free-will it demands the destruction of free-will; as if man were more free while seeking than after having found the truth; as if true liberty did not consist in willing what is right.

And nowadays a multiform war is waged against ancient belief by a contracted and intolerant science, and a system of retrogressive and egotistical politics. Arguments and buffoonery, decrees and violences, alternate, not only against the priests, but against Christ. Some disfigure dogmas, and then throw them to the fishes, or abandon them to the anger of a mob dressed in black waistcoats or in red caps. Some resuscitate ancient errors under modern phraseology, or excite the demon of curiosity. Some, faithful to the system of defamation and intimidation, libel as clericals or obscurantists those Christians who loved liberty when it was not a mere speculation, if they are unwilling to believe that the Italy of the future must deny the Italy of the past, to become strong. One party in the name of authority attacks its chief source. Some drag into the lists a conventional nationality and an exclusive patriotism, against the universality of faith and charity, and hurt the partial reasons of a state against ecumenical reason. Some fight in the garb of doctors, striving to apply the methods of observation to what is super-sensible, confounding the proximate with the first cause, and thus arriving at scientific scepticism, positivism, which repudiates ideas, or at a criticism which considers generations as succeeding each other without a connecting law--by mere evolution--without seeking what absolute truth corresponds to the successive rise of nations, or clearing up the future by the past--that which is going to happen with what is permanent. {326} And thus they whirl in a pantheism which either accepts no God but the human mind, or makes everything God except God himself; leaving him the splendor of his idea, the sovereignty of his name, but depriving him of the reality of his being and the consciousness of his life.

There are others who, with frivolous argumentation, produce excellent pillows for doubt, and refuse to examine, contenting themselves with repeating the affirmations of the most accredited organs of the press. Let us pass over those who flatter the animal instincts of nature by writings and images which Sodom would condemn, and proclaim the divine reign of the flesh, saying, with Heine, "The desire of all our institutions is the rehabilitation of matter. Let us seek good in matter; let us found a democracy of terrestrial gods, equal in happiness and holiness; let us have nectar and ambrosia; let us desire garments of purple, delights of perfumes and dances, comedies and children."

Hence comes the deplorable degradation of minds plunged not only in ignorance but in base adulations to slaves and to the slaves of slaves, to the rabble hailed by the people, to a debasement called progress, to a freedom which consists in robbing others of liberty.

II.

In such a state of affairs, what ought a priest or Christian to do who reserves to himself the right of not calling evil things good? Grow low-spirited, reproach the century, grow timorous of science, groan like Jeremias over the woe of Jerusalem, and await the rock which is to crush the clay-footed colossus? It looks like compelling Providence, when we refuse to co-operate with it in the conflict between good and evil, unless on conditions which suit our little egotism, or please our frivolous vanity. The timid compromise their character with strange conventions between truth and error, by shameful oscillation between liberty and despotism, resigning themselves to tyranny as a hypocrite may act toward an atheist.

Christ came to carry the sword, and the time has come when he who has one should draw and brandish it. Certainly, God will save his church. He alone will have the glory, but will man have the merit of it? Where silence is, there is death; and, outside of what directly touches revealed truth, discussion is useful, even when held with those who err; it teaches us, at least, how we are not to act or think, if nothing else.

Some say, "It is enough to preach morality. What have rigorous truths to do with good sentiments? the aspirations of the heart with the deductions of cold reason?"

Superficial questions! As if one should say, "What has the soul to do with the soul?" Do not ethics depend on dogma? do not our actions follow from metaphysical conditions? Every doctrine becomes an element of life or a principle of death for the soul. A sophist may, indeed, boast of a new code of ethics, or a new law; as if truth could be contingent and relative as well as universal, eternal, necessary, and, as such, not produced by man, who is mortal and limited. International associations, conspiring to assassinate Christian civilization, will soon respond with consequent acts to such inconsequences of literature.

{327}

When the system of attack is changed, we must change the system of defence. Preaching can no longer be confined to mere prones, or exhortations to the good and inculcating the _fides carbonaria_; [Footnote 66] but we must gird on the sword of science and eloquence, and attack resolutely those who assail us resolutely. Truth can be saved only by victory; and in this case, as in war, _the best defence is an attack_.

[Footnote 66: The faith of the coal-heaver who believes
without science.]

If errors fortify themselves in the newspapers, and come on in serried ranks, protected by gazettes, decrees, arts, and sciences, we must meet them with the same means, humble them with the truths rejected or distorted by the sophists, turn their own weapons against them; for error, which is a stumbling-block for the incautious, may become a ladder for the wise to ascend higher. Nowadays, when all the arguments of unbelief are allied in an invisible church which has fraternities, missionaries, sacrifices, and even martyrs, to assault the visible church in the name of progress, enlightenment, morality, reason, and the future, we must draw out all the reasons of belief in opposition. The manifestation of truth, even though it may not destroy error, weakens its power. It is not enough to show that our adversaries are wrong; we must be right ourselves. Let us not allow men to think that there are truths incompatible with faith, or outside of its dogmas; but that, notwithstanding exaggerations, absurdities, erroneous and culpable notions, those truths obtain from faith all their reality, vitality, and durability; and that he who looks well will see that every incontestable and positive progress comes from the organization of Christian society.

In this labor, can reason ask the aid of revelation? And why not? The rationalists might complain if we attempted to overwhelm the question with the weight of revealed authority; but when revelation is united to reason, the power of the latter is doubled. Mysteries are above reason, not contrary to it. Faith is only the most sublime effort of reason, which is persuaded to believe by arguments, convinced of its impotence without faith, as well as of its greatness with faith. Faith is a grace, because it is not sensible certainty. It springs from the desire of a pure heart and of a right mind that the harmonious structure of revelation should be true. Reason by itself cannot obtain the knowledge of a mystery, any more than it can comprehend a mystery when revelation makes it known. Reason, however, understands that a mystery is above it, but not opposed to it; and recognizes the necessity of the supernatural to explain even the mysteries of nature. In like manner, though we cannot look at the sun, yet by its light we see all things.

Some, seeing our adversaries use the sciences and politics against religion, work with the arts, speak with ability, begin to vituperate civilization, attack its acts and writings, deplore the times, deny the stupendous progress of the age--the fruit of so much study, fatigue, and genius.