Chapter XI: The Mountains Whence Help Cometh (1)

Mr. Granger was one of those persons whom we miss more than we expect to, their influence is so quiet, their stability has so little of hardness. As has been beautifully said, such characters are "like the water-lily, fixed yet floating." We do not know how much we rest on them till the support is withdrawn.

They heard from him constantly, the letters being directed to Mr. Lewis, but intended for all the family.

Evidently his good spirits had not deserted him. Never before had he been so much alive, he wrote. The excitement, the uncertainty, the very restraints which reminded of power, and of great interests at stake, all kept his thoughts in a brisk circulation, and threw the bile off his mind.

Miss Dora had, however, her separate correspondence, letters directed to herself, which Miss Hamilton read to her, and answered from her dictation.

In those days the child learned a new prayer: "O Mother in heaven, take pity on me who have no mother on earth, and whose father has gone to the wars. Watch over him, that I may not be left an orphan. Pray for him, and for me, and for whoever loves us best. Do not forget me, O Mother! for if you do, my heart will break."

"Who is it that loves us best?" the child asked the first time she said this prayer.

"I do not know," was the reply. "We can never be sure who loves us best. But God knows, and the good Mother can find out."

"I thought it was you," said Dora. Margaret's voice sank to a whisper. "Perhaps it is, dear."

{457}

In a few weeks Mr. Southard also left then, not cheerfully, but with a gloom which he took no pains to conceal.

And the few weeks grew to many weeks, and months multiplied. The summer was gone, and the autumn was gone, and winter melted like a snow-flake on the mantle of time. When our eyes are fixed in anxious longing on some future day, the intermediate days slip through our fingers like sands through an hour-glass, and keep no trace of their passage.

If, when the spring campaign opened, and both the absent ones were in active service, our friends watched with some sinking of the heart for news, it was no more than happened in tens of thousands of other homes. Heart-sickness was by no means a rare disease in those days.

The soldier in charge of the soldier's news-room on Kneeland street became very much interested in one of the few visitors who used to go there that summer. Nearly every say, surely every day when there had been a battle, a pale-faced young lady would open the door, enter quickly, and without looking to right or left go directly to the frames that held the lists of killed and wounded, and read them through from end to end. The soldier got to have an anxious feeling about this lady. Unnoticed by her, he watched her face while she read, and hushed his breath till he saw that terrible look go out of her eyes. The lists finished, she would pull her veil down, sigh wearily, and go out as quietly as she had entered.

"When she finds the name she is looking for, I hall see her drop," he thought.

But Margaret did not drop, though often enough she was in danger of it, as her eyes fell on some blurred name, or some name very like the one she dreaded to see.

It was too wearing. Both flesh and spirit were sinking under this constant strain. Where was the help that religion was to give her? Leave everything to God, trust all to him, she was told. But how? Her thoughts were clenched in these interests; and, in spite of faith, it seemed as though, if she should let go her hold, they would fall. She found that her religion was only of the surface. It had grown in the sunshine, and was not rooted against the storm. She tried to put into practice the precepts she listened to, but the daily distractions of life constantly neutralized her efforts. There was but one way, and for the first time Margaret made a retreat.

The place selected was a convent a little out of the city.

Here in this secluded asylum was all that her soul needed for its restoring; quiet, leisure, the society of those whose lives are devoted to God, and, to crown all, the presence of the blessed sacrament of the altar.

One feels very near heaven when one hears only praying voices, sees only happy, peaceful faces, is looked upon only by kind eyes, and can at any hour go before the altar, alone, undisturbed by those distractions which constantly environ our ordinary worship. How still we become! In that presence how our little troubles and sorrows exhale, as mists lift from the rivers at sunrise, and leave all clear and bright! How cramped and feverish all our past life has been! Everything settles into its true place. Sorrow and death lose their sting. We are safe, for we partake of the omnipotence of God. To think that the same roof that shelters our heads when we lie down to sleep shelters also the sacred head of the Son of God--that drives every other thought from the mind. {458} It is marvellous, it seems incredible, and yet the wonder of it is lost in the sweetness. The moonlight coming in at the window lies white and silent on the bare white floor. You rise to kiss that luminous spot, for just beneath is the altar. Peace rises to exultation, for you perceive more and more that the Father holds us all in his hands, those near and those afar, and that we have but to lift our eyes, and we shall behold the mountains whence help cometh. We want to run out and tell everybody. It seems as if we have just discovered all this, and that no one ever knew it before. We forget that we are sinners. It isn't much matter about us any way. We will think of that afterward. We will make acts of contrition when we get away from here. Now we can make only acts of adoration and of joy.

The superior of the convent directed Margaret's retreat, and on the last morning of it she and all the nuns received communion, and there was the benediction after mass.

The others had gone out, but Margaret still lingered before the altar. Out in the early sunshine, the trees rustled softly, and the breeze waved the curtains of the chapel windows. Occasionally, one of the nuns would come to the door, look in, and go away again smiling, though Miss Hamilton's breakfast was spoiling over the fire, and there was a gentleman waiting in the parlor for her.

"She is in the chapel at her devotions," the sister had told him.

"Don't disturb her on any account," he had answered. "There is no haste."

Margaret was not praying, was not thinking; her soul was silent, lost in God, like a star in the day.

Presently she came out, and, meeting one of the nuns in the hall, embraced her tenderly. "Sister," she said, "this is the most beautiful world that ever was made."

The gentleman had been waiting some time when he heard a step, and in the door there stood a slight, black-robed lady with a veil thrown over her head, a bright face, and a smell of incense lingering about her. She lifted both hands when she saw him.

"My cup runneth over!"

"You are not a nun?" asked Mr. Granger.

"You're not an apparition," she returned. "Oh! welcome!"

"And now," he said, delighted to see her so happy, "if you are ready, we will go home. I have only a few days' furlough, and I want to make the most of it."

Margaret went to take a hasty leave of the nuns, and also to step into the chapel for one moment.

Then she went out from under that happy portal, and down the steps to the carriage that was waiting for them. One of the sisters stood in the door looking after her, and others here and there in the grounds looked up with a pleasant word of farewell as she passed. She stooped to gather from the lower terrace a humble souvenir, two or three grass-blades and a clover-leaf, then stepped into the carriage. As they drove slowly down the avenue, she looked up into the overhanging branches and repeated:

"'Above him the boughs of the hemlock trees
Waved, and made the sign of the cross,
And whispered their Benedicitis.'"

The family were in raptures over Mr. Granger's return. They could not look at him enough, listen to him enough, do enough for him. "And how nice you look in your uniform!" said Margaret, feeling as if she were about six years old.

"And how nice you look in anything!" he retorted, at which they all laughed. It took but little to make them laugh in those days.

{459}

Mr. Granger, on his part, was as merry as a boy. He was full of adventures to tell them, glad to be at home, happy in their confidence and affection, and hopeful of the future.

Margaret could scarcely believe her own happiness. She would turn away, shut her eyes, and think, "I have imagined it all. He is hundreds of miles away, I do not know whether he is sick or well. He may be in peril. He may be dead. O my friend! come home, come home! Are we never to see you again?"

Then, when she had succeeded in tormenting herself sufficiently, when her heart was sinking, and her eyes overflowing with tears, she would turn quickly, trembling between dream and reality, and see him there alive and well, and at home.

"Oh! there he is, thank God!"

And so every day she renewed in her vivid imagination the pain of his absence and the delight of his return, till too soon the day came when she no longer dared to play such tricks with herself, for he was again gone out of their sight. But the lessons of the retreat were not forgotten, and every morning brought refreshment.

To Be Continued.

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Sauntering.

Saunterer, (from _saint terre_,)
a pilgrim to holy lands or places.--_Thoreau_.

Would that I were, if not like the king of Ava--lord of the twenty-four umbrellas--at least the owner of one, was my thought. I was in Paris, that paradise of many good Americans who are _not_ defunct. Three thousand and odd miles from home, in the streets of a strange city, with an imperfect knowledge of any foreign tongue, not daring to say _parapluie_ to the most obsequious shopman, and the rain was pouring down like a douche.

I had no devotion to St. Swithin--not a particle. I respected him in a vague way as a successor of the apostles, whose name is in the calendar; but I was always inclined to mention him with a smile on account of his hydropathic propensities. I am a perfect Oriental as far as a warm bath is concerned, but I never could endure the gentlest shower-bath, and the thought of St. Swithin, in his wet grave under a waterspout, always made me shudder. This peculiar sensitiveness always made me suspicious of the lightest summer cloudlet, and led me to make for years a series of minute observations on the weather, till I became deeply versed in mackerel clouds, mare's tails, and such sinister prognostics. I used to imagine myself so sensitive to the dryness and moisture of the atmosphere, and to its density and rarity, that I was quite above barometers. I was a barometer to myself. A foreknowledge of the weather was my strong point, or one of my strong points, when at home in the new world. There I had a full view of the heavens that bend over us all, down to the very horizon on every side. The rarity of the American atmosphere, its lofty heavens, with its luminous spheres, are full of skyey influences, which tell not only upon the very plants, if we observe them, but upon ourselves, if we heed the silent lesson. {460} I always knew what those clouds meant, gathering over the far-off north-wood hills at the west, and I felt the very mist as it began to rise around Mount Agamenticus, in the east, like sacrificial clouds around that altar of the renowned St. Aspinquid. I seldom made a false prediction, and was consequently approached with considerable deference by provident neighbors, especially before a storm. But somehow, I lost this prestige as soon as my foot was off my native heath. Here, in a compact city, with the tall houses and narrow streets shutting the great blue eye of heaven till it became a mere line, like a cat's eye at mid-day, I felt myself utterly at the mercy of nature; I gave myself humbly up to St. Swithin, to whom of old I was rather defiant. A haughty spirit goes before a fall. Humiliations are good for the soul. I think I must consider mine a case of special providence; for there is nothing more soothing to mortified vanity or spiritual pride, or even in dire calamity, than the conviction that ours is an instance of special providence.

On one of those doubtful days in October, when the air is murky and a light mist from the Seine pervades every part of the city, but which were not always, as I had found, indicative of rain, I sallied forth from the Hotel Meurice to wander around the French capital with no special object in view. I discarded my guide-book, tired of being the victim of square and compass. To be told to admire, whether an object appealed to my peculiar tastes or not, was quite opposed to my notions of American independence, and sure to rouse a certain spirit of contradiction in me--a bad trait, I fear, but a fault acknowledged is half cured; so I make a clean breast of it to test the truth of the old saying. I turned, therefore, a blind eye to all the palaces, and gardens, and fountains, and went around feasting my eyes on the forbidden vanities of the world which my god-parents had renounced for me at baptism, but which were glittering delightfully in the booths of this Vanity Fair; not that I cared much for them, to tell the truth, but from a sheer feeling of perversity. There must be some powerful charm in them, or they would not be put down in every religious chart as quicksands to be avoided. Perhaps I was in danger of being stranded among them, and it was, after all, a case of special providence, when, as I was pursuing my way, or rather any way in my ignorance of the city, and moralizing on these things, or demoralizing, of a sudden it began to pour. For an old weather-wise like me to be thus caught, was very humiliating; and in my consternation, I found myself enjoying one of the high and mighty prerogatives of the king of Ava, as aforesaid. _Que faire?_ I should have said, being in France. Looking around, I saw the open door of a church, in which I gladly took refuge. In benighted, "popish" lands, mother church often affords a place of bodily refuge, as well as moral. It was the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, to which I had wandered back, and which from this time became my favorite church in spite of the bad repute of the bells. Passing from the gay streets into these cool shades is like passing for a moment, as it were, from time into eternity. All light and frivolous thoughts--all vanity and littleness die away with the noise of the world, at the very entrance. The mind is elevated. We partake of the grandeur of the edifice, and, for a few moments at least, our nature is ennobled. {461} Only great and lofty ideas should wander beneath such arches. Only souls full of noble and magnificent ideas could have designed them. There are truly sermons in these stones, of which one never grows weary--sermons in the grand old _vitraux_, rich with saintly forms, and in the gloom, inspiring sweet and solemn reverie.

"I love the gloom; I love the white-robed throng;
I love the flood of most religious song
That tosses all its choric waves afar
To seek and search each quaint-carved crevice there.
The music surges to each singing star,
And bears the soul to heaven's own upper air,
Sweet crushed to happy tears; but chiefly where
Peace, dove-like, broods above clasped hands of prayer."

The Catholic is no longer in a foreign land when he enters a church. The altar, the cross, the Madonna, above all, the tabernacle, with it twinkling lamp of olive oil, are his old familiar friends, and all there, and his heart is at home. He feels a bond of universal brotherhood with all these worshippers before the altar. And then the dear old Latin service! I never thoroughly realized at home the advantage of a universal language in which the whole church could lift up her voice, as with one accord, throughout the world. That language--one of those which were consecrated above the head of the dying Saviour--is associated with all the holiest and tenderest memories of a Catholic. He cannot remember when he first heard it from the lips of holy mother church. It is one of his mother tongues. Each word has a new significance in this foreign land, and the whole service a new meaning. I have heard people exclaim at the rapidity of the opening service of mass, not knowing its significance. Every act and word in our sublime ritual has its meaning to him that enters into its spirit. Dr. Newman says, in his own beautiful way:

"I declare nothing is so consoling, so piercing, so thrilling,
so overcoming, as the mass, said as it is among us. I could
attend masses for ever and not be tired. It is not a mere form
of words; it is a great action, the greatest action there can
be on earth. It is not the invocation, merely, but, if I dare
use the word, the evocation, of the Eternal. He becomes present
on the altar in flesh and blood, before whom angels bow and
devils tremble. This is that awful event which is the end and
is the interpretation of every part of the solemnity. Words are
necessary, not as means, but as ends. They are not mere
addresses to the throne of grace; they are instruments of what
is far higher, of consecration, of sacrifice. They hurry on as
if impatient to fulfil their mission. Quickly they go; the
whole is quick, for they are all parts of one integral action.
Quickly they go, for they are awful words of sacrifice; they
are a work too great to delay upon, as when it was said in the
beginning, 'What thou doest, do quickly.' Quickly they pass,
for the Lord Jesus goes with them, as he passed along the lake
in the days of his flesh, quickly calling first one and then
another. Quickly they pass, because, as the lightning which
shineth from one part of the heaven unto the other so is the
coming of the Son of Man. Quickly they pass, for they are as
the words of Moses, when the Lord came down in a cloud, calling
on the name of the Lord as he passed by, 'The Lord, the Lord
God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in
goodness and truth.'

"And as Moses on the mountain, so do we too 'make haste and bow
our heads to the earth and adore.' So we all around, each in
his place, look out for the great advent, 'waiting for the
moving of the water.' Each in his place, with his own heart,
with his own wants, with his own thoughts, with his own
intention, with his own prayers, separate but concordant,
watching what is going on, watching its progress, uniting in
its consummation; not painfully and hopelessly following a hard
form of prayer from beginning to end, but, like a concert of
musical instruments, each different, but concurring in a sweet
harmony, we take our part with God's priest,
supporting him, yet guided by him."

The words being, then, only used as means, as instruments of consecration, it is not at all necessary for the people to follow the words of the priest; but, entering into the spirit and meaning of each part of the sacrifice, abandon themselves each one to his own devotions. {462} While the church is exceedingly particular about the exact following of the liturgy by the clergy, it allows the greatest latitude to the devotions of laymen. All the sects that have a form of prayer, or extempore prayers, afford far less liberty to those who join therein than the church. Their service is nothing to you unless you join in its forms, which leave no liberty of soul. Whereas at mass, while some use a prayer-book with a variety of beautiful and touching devotions in harmony with the service going on at the altar, others simply say the rosary, and others again use no form whatever, but, following the celebrant in spirit, abandon their hearts in holy meditation and mental prayer according to the inspiration of the moment. Thus our holy services never become a mere form. They are always new, new and varied as our daily wants, as our fresh conceptions of what worship is due Almighty God, and of the nature of the holy oblation in which we are participating.

The church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois was once the frequent recipient of royal munificence, being for a long time the royal parish, and it was the most sumptuously adorned in Paris. Sculptors and painters vied in filling it with the choicest works of art. It was not much injured at the revolution, but narrowly escaped destruction in 1831. The anniversary of the death of the Duc de Berri was to be commemorated by services for the repose of his soul; but a mob surrounded the church, and destroyed everything in it. It was afterward closed till 1838, when it was reopened for public worship.

It has some poetical associations as well as historical; for here M. de Lamartine is said to have hung up the long locks that Graziella had shorn from her beautiful head, and sent to be suspended in one of the churches of his belle France. And perhaps this was the one to which he referred in the following words:

"When the last hour of the day has sounded from thy lofty
towers, when the last beam has faded away from the dome, when
the sigh of the distant organ dies away with the light, and the
nave is deserted by all but the Levite attentive to the lamps
of the holy place, then I come to glide under thy obscure
arches, and to seek, while nature sleeps, Him who never
slumbers! The air which the soul breathes in thy aisles is full
of mystery and peace. Let love and anxious cares seek shade and
solitude under the green shelter of groves to soothe their
secret wounds. O darkness of the sanctuary! the eye of religion
prefers thee to the wood which the breeze disturbs. Nothing
disturbs thy foliage. Thy still shade is the image of eternal
peace."

I loved to think the poet found here the source of the inspirations which are embodied in his _Harmonies Religieuses_ which are the delight of every tender and religious soul.

There is in one of the transepts a beautiful font of pure white marble, executed by M. Jouffroy from a model by Madame de Lamartine and presented by her to this church. The basin is surmounted by three expressive figures, Faith, Hope, and Charity, supporting a cross.

This church with its perfumed air, its subdued light, and its quiet recesses incentive to piety, so charmed me by its contrast with the gay world without, and revived all the fervor of early religious impressions, that I did not leave it till I had resolved to commence each remaining day of my stay at Paris, by going to a different church till I had visited them all, like Horace Walpole. And should I even visit them like him as a mere amateur of art, I could not fail to receive some inspiration that would leave me better for the rest of the day. {463} The hours thus passed in the churches seemed to consecrate the day, and left a perfume in my heart that nothing in the world could wholly dissipate. They became the happiest and most profitable of my life, both morally and intellectually.

"For thou dost soothe the heart, thou Church of Rome,
By thy unwearied watch, and varied round
Of service, in thy Saviour's holy home.
I cannot walk the city's sultry streets,
But the wide porch invites to still retreats,
Where passion's thirst is calmed, and care's unthankful gloom."

"There, on a foreign shore,
The homesick solitary finds a friend:
Thoughts, prisoned long for lack of speech, outpour
Their tears, and doubts in resignation end."

One morning I went to St. Merri's, where St. Edmund, Archbishop of Canterbury, when a young student at Paris, used to go to assist at the midnight office. A friend had given me his practical little book entitled _The Mirror of the Church, _and I took it with me to read in a place he had loved. In reading it I was struck by what he says of the Lord's Prayer, the great prayer of the middle ages, and the prominence he would have us give it in our devotions. He says:

"The Pater Noster surpasses all other prayers in excellence,
dignity, and utility. It was made by God himself; hence the
injury done to Jesus Christ the Son of God when curious or
rhymed prayers are preferred to that composed by him who knows
the will of the Father, and better than we what prayer is most
acceptable to him, and what we most need. How many deceive
themselves in multiplying the forms of prayer! They think they
are devout, but they are only carnal in their affections, for
every carnally-minded person naturally delights in the vain
curiosity of words. Be then prudent and discreet in this
respect. I know you will bring forward St. Augustin, St.
Gregory, and other saints to oppose me, who prayed according to
the affections of their hearts. I am certainly far from blaming
them. I only blame the practice of those who, from a spirit of
pride or curiosity abandon the prayer made by the Lord himself
for those which the saints have composed. Our Lord himself
says, And when you are praying, speak not much as the heathen
do, for they think they are heard for their much speaking. You
therefore shall pray in this manner, Our Father, etc."

We Catholics are often accused of elevating the creature above the Creator, and reproached for saying ten Hail Marys to one Our Father in the beautiful devotion of the Rosary, as if we had no other. This extract from St. Edmund does not support the accusation, and he was a prelate of the dark ages--the thirteenth century. But then he was an Englishman, and we all know the Anglo-Saxon race did not fall in Adam, and only a little way in Peter!

In justice to St. Edmund I will add that he was so devout to Our Lady that, early in life, he consecrated himself to her, and wore, in memory of this consecration, a ring with Ave Maria upon it. He related this on his death-bed, that his example might be followed by others, and was buried with the ring on his finger.

There is an interesting chapel in St. Merri's Church, dedicated to St. Mary of Egypt, which is beautifully frescoed by Chasserian, depicting the touching old legend, with its deep moral significance, of

"That Egyptian penitent whose tears
Fretted the rock, and moistened round her cave
The thirsty desert."

The poet tells of a miraculous drop which fell in Egypt on St. John's day, and was supposed to have the effect of stopping the plague. Such a drop fell on the soul of this renowned penitent.

"There's a drop, says the Peri, that down from the moon
Falls through the withering airs of June
Upon Egypt's land, of so healing a power,
So balmy a virtue, that even in the hour
That drop descends, contagion dies,
And health reanimates earth and skies!
Oh! is it not thus, thou man of sin,
The precious tears of repentance fall.
Though foul the fiery plagues within,
One heavenly drop hath dispelled them all!"

{464}

St. Mary of Egypt is one of a long line of penitents who, after the example of Magdalen, have given proofs of their repentance in proportion to their sins and to the depth of their sorrow, and thus rendered the very scars on their souls so many rays of light.

Le Brun painted one whose frailties are "linked to fame" as Magdalen, and at her own request. The universal interest felt in her story, and the sympathy it always excites, induced me to visit a place that cannot be disconnected from her memory--the chapel of the Carmelites in the Rue d'Enfer, where she took the veil. I refer to Madame de la Vallière, whom Madame de Sevigné calls "la petite violette qui se cachait sous l'herbe."

A priest was just commencing mass when I entered the chapel. I knelt down by the tomb of the Cardinal de Bérulle, who used to come here to pray in the chapel of St. Magdalen, having a great devotion to that saint. It was difficult to resist the distractions that were inevitable in such a spot, but in which I would not indulge till the holy sacrifice was over. The choir of nuns was separated from the chancel by a grating which was closely curtained. There is always a certain charm in everything that savors of mystery. Whatever is hidden excites our curiosity and interest. That forbidding grate, that curtain of appalling blackness, were tantalizing. They concealed a world in which we had no part. Behind them were hearts which had aims and aspirations and holy ambitions, perhaps, we know not of. They led a life which is almost inexplicable to the world--hidden indeed in God. The chapel was so still, save the murmur of the officiating priest, that you might have supposed no one else there. But after the Agnus Dei, came out from that mysterious recess a murmur from unseen lips like a voice from another world. It was that of the nuns all saying the Confiteor together before going to holy communion. That murmur of _mea culpâ, mea culpâ_, seemed like the voice of penitence from La Sainte Beaume, or the voice of past times repeating the accents of the repentant La Vallière. There she lived and prayed and did penance for thirty-six years, longer than Magdalen in her cave, "son coeur ne respirant que du côté du ciel," thus displaying a remarkable strength of volition, and therefore of character; for "What is character but a perfectly formed will?" says Novalis. Before that altar she used to come two hours before the rest of the community to pray, and in cold weather she, that had been brought up in luxury, was often found senseless on the pavement of the choir when the rest of the nuns came to the chapel.

We read that the tears of Eve falling into the water brought forth pearls, and we cannot doubt that the tears through which our penitent viewed her past life helped obtain for her the pearl of great price. One instance of her austerity is well known. One Good-Friday, meditating in the refectory, during the meagre repast of the day, on the vinegar and gall given to the dying Saviour when he was athirst, she recalled the pleasures of her past life and particularly of the time when, returning with the court from the chase, being thirsty, she drank with pleasure of some delicious beverage which was brought her. This immortification, so in contrast with the vinegar and gall of the Saviour, filled her with lively sentiments of repentance and humiliation, and she resolved never to drink again. {465} For three weeks she did not taste even a drop of water, and for three years she only drank half a glass day. This severe penance, which was unsuspected, brought on a fit of illness and caused violent spasms in the stomach, which reduced her to a state of great feebleness. Besides that, she suffered greatly from rheumatism, but she never ceased to share in the labors in the community. She died in 1710, aged nearly sixty-six years, having passed thirty-six years in the convent. Her life here was one long Miserere which was surely heard in heaven. Her soul had to pass through the deep waters; but she took fast hold of that "last plank after shipwreck"--repentance. Everything went to feed the stream of her sorrow. Every new grace gave her a new conception of the guilt of sin and awoke new regrets for lost glory. So she shut herself up in the garden of myrrh. She sheltered herself in the _creux du rocher_ from the waves of memory that swept over her soul. In that dark night of her soul she looked tremblingly out over the wide sea of her sorrows with a heart like the double-faced Janus, looking into the past and toward the future, memory and hope struggling in her heart. Over that dark sea rose the moonlight of Mary's face--our Lady of Mount Carmel--a narrow crescent at first, but growing larger and brighter every day. And the great luminous starry saints with their different degrees of glory studded the heavens that opened to her view. And so the morning came when the voice of Jesus spoke: Many sins are forgiven her because she hath loved much.

There is an accent of sincerity, with no savor of cant, in the well-known reply of Soeur Louise de la Misericorde when asked if she was happy in the convent: "I am not happy, but I am satisfied." How few in the world can even say with sincerity that they are satisfied. Dr. Johnson said, "No one is happy," but satisfaction is certainly reasonable happiness. Carlyle says, "There is in man a higher than love of happiness. He can do without happiness, and instead thereof find blessedness." That happiness alone is real which does not depend on contingencies. It is reasonably satisfied with the present, and has a constantly increasing hope in the future. Such was the happiness Madame de la Vallière found among the pale-eyed votaries of the cloister, a satisfaction of the soul which became perfect happiness when death came to her after so many years of dying.

I wonder if there was no perfume left in the dried rose leaves in her heart causing it to faint ofttimes by the way. A person of so much sensibility must have had a wonderful capacity for suffering. That her memory was ever alive to the past is evident from the unrelenting austerity of her life, from her well-known reply when informed of the death of her son, and from her requesting Le Brun to paint her as Magdalen.

Remembering so many proofs of her conversion, we, too, say, Neither do I condemn thee. No stone will I cast on thy grave; no reproach on thy memory: for repentance effaced every earthly stain, and thou art now sharing the joy there is in heaven over one sinner that repenteth. Tears of penitent love mingled with those of virgin innocence at the foot of the cross. Let them still mingle there; we will not regard them with distrust or disdain. We too have need to cry:

"Drop, drop, slow tears
I And bathe those beauteous feet.
Which brought from heaven
The news and Prince of peace.
Cease not, wet eyes,
For mercy to entreat:

{466}

To cry for vengeance
Sin doth never cease.
In your deep floods
Drown all my faults and fears:
Nor let his eye
See sin but through my tears."

Every one who looks deeply into his own heart finds a motive of charity for the faults of others. A monk of Cluny hung up in his cell the picture of a famous debauchee under which he placed his own name. The surprised abbot asked the reason. It was to remind him what grace alone prevented him from becoming. We are all miracles of grace. It may be restraining or transforming. We are not the less in need of it than those who have apparently sunk to lower depths.

All these things passed through my mind while lingering in the chapel of the Carmelites. In that chapel had resounded the grand tones of the great Bossuet at the profession of Madame de la Vallière, with his usual refrain--the emptiness of all earthly things. "Away, earthly honors!" he said on that occasion, "all your splendor but ill conceals our weaknesses and our faults; conceals them from ourselves, but reveals them to others."--"There are two kinds of love," he added, "one is the love of ourselves, which leads to the contempt of God--that is the old life, the life of the world. The other is the love of God, which leads to the contempt of ourselves, and is the new life of Christianity, which, carried to perfection, constitutes the religious life. The soul, detached from the body by mortification, freed from the captivity of the senses, sees itself as it is--the source of all evil. It therefore turns then against itself. Having fallen through an ill use of liberty, it would be restrained on every side, by frightful grates, a profound solitude, an impenetrable cloister, perfect obedience, a rule for every action, a motive for every step, and a hundred observant eyes. Thus hemmed in on all sides, the soul can only fly heavenward. _Elle ne peut plus respirer que du côté du ciel_"--a beautiful expression, recalling the lines from an old manuscript poem in the _Bibliothèque Royal:_

"Li cuers doit estre
Semblans à l'encensoir
Tous clos envers la terre
Et overs vers le ciel."

The heart should be like a censer, closed toward earth and open toward heaven; and such is the heart of the real spouse of Christ.

When Bossuet had finished his discourse and the black veil was placed upon the head of La Vallière, the whole audience wept aloud. The Duchess de la Vallière was now Louise de la Miséricorde, vowed to the rigorous life of the Carmelites, to fasts and vigils, to sackcloth and ashes.

Philosophers say no motion is ever lost, and that every act is photographed somewhere in the universe. Think of swelling the choral song that will go on vibrating in the air for ever; of sighs of penitence that go on sighing through space for ever in the ears of a merciful God; of attitudes of adoring praise and love, which are somewhere imaged, to be revealed at the last day as a page in the great book that will decide our eternal fate. How much better to be thus perpetuated than idle words, vain songs, and all the graces of fashion only intended to please the eye of a fellow-mortal.

After all, there is something in such a life that appeals to the instincts of our nature. Even those who condemn it cannot but admire. At least, they find it poetical. Who does not feel an increased sentiment of respect for Dr. Johnson as he stands with bared head, in the rain, where his father's book-stall was, in the market place at Uttoxeter, to expiate an act of early disobedience to his father? {467} "The picture of Samuel Johnson," says Carlyle, "standing bare-headed in the market-place is one of the grandest and saddest we can paint. The memory of old Michael Johnson rising from the far distance, sad, beckoning in the moonlight of memory. Repentance! repentance! he proclaims as with passionate sobs--but only to the ear of heaven, if heaven will give him audience."

"O heavy laden soul! kneel down and hear
Thy penance in calm fear;
With thine own lips to sentence all thy sin;
Then, by the judge within
Absolved, in thankful sacrifice to part
For ever with thy sullen heart!"

----------

The Physical Basis Of Life.
[Footnote 128]

[Footnote 128: _New Theory of Life_. Identity of the
Powers and Faculties of all Living Matter. A Lecture by
Professor T. H. Huxley. _New York World_, Feb. 18th,
1869.]

We know this rather remarkable discourse only as republished in the columns of _The New York World_, where it had a sensational title which we have abridged. Professor Huxley's name stands high among English physicists or scientists, and his discourse indicates considerable natural ability, and familiarity with the modern school of science which seeks the explanation of the universe and its phenomena without recognizing a creator, or any existence but ordinary matter and its various combinations. The immediate purpose of the professor is to prove the physical or material basis of life, and that life in all organisms is identical, originating in and depending on what he calls the protoplasm.

The protoplasm is formed of ordinary matter; say, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. These elements combined in some unknown way give rise to protoplasm; the protoplasm gives rise to the plant, and, through the plant, to the animal; and hence all life, feeling, thought, and reason originate in the peculiar combination of the molecules of ordinary, inorganic matter. The plant differs from the animal, and the animal from man, only in the different combinations of the molecules of the protoplasm. We see nothing in this theory that is new, or not as old as the physics of the ancient Ionian school.

The only novelty that can be pretended is the assumption that all matter, even inorganic, is, in a certain sense, plastic, and therefore, in a rudimentary way, living. The same law governs the inorganic and the organic world. But even this is not new. Many years ago, Ralph Waldo Emerson asserted the identity of gravitation and purity of heart, and we ourselves are by no means disposed to deny that there is more or less analogy between the formation of the crystal or the diamond and the growth of the plant. It is not, perhaps, too much to say that the law of creation is one law, and we have never yet been convinced of the existence of absolutely inert matter. Whatever exists is, in its order and degree, a _vis activa_, or an active force. Matter, as the _potentia nuda_ of the schoolmen, is simple possibility, and no real existence at all. {468} There is and can be no pure passivity in nature, or purely passive existences. We would not therefore deny a certain rudimentary plasticity to minerals, or what is called brute matter, though we are not prepared to accept the plastic soul, asserted by Plato, and revived and explained in the posthumous and unfinished works of Gioberti under the term _methexis_, which is copied or imitated by the _mimesis_, or the individual and the sensible. Yet since, as the professor tells us, the animal can take the protoplasm only as prepared by the plant, must there not be in inorganic matter a preparation or elaboration of the protoplasm for the use of the plant?

The professor speaks of the difficulty of determining the line of demarcation between the animal and the plant; but is it difficult to draw the line between the mineral and the plant, or between the plant and the inorganic matter from which it assimilates its food or nourishment? Pope sings,

"See through this air, this ocean, and this earth,
All matter _quick_, and bursting into birth;"

but we would like to have the professor explain how ordinary matter, even if _quick_, becomes protoplasm, and how the protoplasm becomes the origin and basis of the life of the plant. Every plant is an organism with its central life within. Virchow and Cl. Bernard by their late discoveries have proved that every organism proceeds from an organite, ovule, or central cell, which produces, directs, and controls or governs the whole organism, even in its abnormal developments. They have also proved that this ovule or central cell exists only as generated by a pre-existing organism, or parent, of the same kind. The later physiologists are agreed that there is no well authenticated instance of spontaneous generation. Now this organite must exist, live, before it can avail itself of the protoplasm formed of ordinary matter, which is exterior to it, not within it, and cannot be its life, for that moves from within outward, from the centre to the circumference. Concede, then, all the facts the professor alleges, they only go to prove that the organism already living sustains its life by assimilating fitting elements from ordinary matter. But they do not show at all that it derives its life from them; or that the so-called protoplasm is the origin, source, basis, or matter of organic life; or that it generates, produces, or gives rise to the organite or central cell; nor that it has anything to do with vitalizing it. Hence the professor fails to throw any light on the origin, matter, or basis of life itself.

It may or it may not be difficult in the lower organisms to draw the line between the plant and the animal, and we shall urge no objections to what the professor says on that point; we will only say here that the animal organism, like the vegetable, is produced, directed, and controlled by the central cell, and that this cell or ovule is generated by animal parents. There is no spontaneous generation, and no well authenticated instance of metagenesis. Like generates like, and even Darwin's doctrine of natural selection confirms rather than denies it. It is certain that the vegetable organism has never, as far as science goes, generated an animal organism. Arguments based on our ignorance prove nothing. The protoplasm can no more produce or vitalize the central animal than it can the central vegetable cell, and, indeed, still less; for the animal cannot, as the professor himself asserts, sustain its life by the protoplastic elements till they have been prepared by the vegetable organism. {469} Whence, then, the animal germ, organite, or ovule? What vitalizes it and gives it the power of assimilating the protoplasm as its food, without which the organism dies and disappears?

Giving the professor the fullest credit for exact science in all his statements, he does not, as far as we can see, prove his protoplasm is the physical basis of life, or that there is for life any physical basis at all. He only proves that matter is so far plastic as to afford sustenance to a generated organic life, which every farmer who has ever manured a field of corn or grass, or reared a flock of sheep or a herd of cattle, knows, and always has known, as well as the illustrious professor.

We can find a clear statement of several of the conditions of life, both vegetable and animal, but no demonstration of the principle of life, in the professor's very elaborate discourse. Indeed, if we examine it closely, we shall find that he does not even pretend to demonstrate anything of the sort. He denies all means of science except sensible experience, and maintains with Hume that we have no sensible experience of causes or principles, all science, he asserts, is restricted to empirical facts with their law, which, in his system, is itself only a fact or a classification of facts. The conditions of life, as we observe them, are for him the essential principle of life in the only sense in which the word _principle_ has, or can have, for him, an intelligible meaning. He proves, then, the physical basis of life, by denying that it has any intelligible basis at all. He proves, indeed, that the protoplasm, which he shows, or endeavors to show, is universal--one and the same, always and everywhere --is present in the already existing life of both the plant and the animal; but that, whatever it be, in the plant or animal, which gives it the power to take up the protoplasm and assimilate it to its own organism, which is properly the life or vital power, he does not explain, account for, or even recognize. With him, power is an empty word. He nowhere proves that life is produced, furnished, or generated by the protoplasm, or has a material origin. Hence, the protoplasm, by his own showing, is simply no protoplasm at all. He proves, if anything, that in inorganic matter there are elements which the living plant or animal assimilates, and into which, when dead, it is resolved. This is all he does, and in fact, all he professes to do.

The professor makes light of the very grave objection, that chemical analysis can throw no light on the principle or basis of life, because it is or can be made only on the dead subject. He of course concedes that chemical analysis is not made on the living subject; but this, he contends, amounts to nothing. We think it amounts to a great deal. The very thing sought, to wit, life, is wanting in the dead subject, and of course cannot by any possible analysis be detected in it. If all that constituted the living subject is present in the dead body, why is the body dead, or why has it ceased to perform its vital functions? The protoplasm, or what you so call, is as present in the corpse as in the living organism. If it is the basis of life, why is the organism no longer living? The fact is, that life, while it continues, resists chemical action and death, by a higher and subtler chemistry of its own, and it is only the dead body that falls under the action of the ordinary chemical laws. There is, then, no concluding the principle or basis of life from any possible dissection of the dead body.

{470}

The professor's answer to the objection is far from being satisfactory.

"Objectors of this class," he says, "do not seem to reflect ...
that we know nothing about the composition of any body as it
is. The statement that a crystal of calcspar consists of
carbonate of lime is quite true, if we only mean that, by
appropriate processes, it may be resolved into carbonic acid
and quicklime. If you pass the same carbonic acid over the very
quicklime thus obtained, you will obtain carbonate of lime
again; but it will not be calc-spar, nor anything like it. Can
it therefore be said that chemical analysis teaches nothing
about the chemical composition of calc-spar? Such a statement
would be absurd; but it is hardly more so than the talk one
occasionally hears about the uselessness of applying the
results of chemical analysis to the living bodies which have
yielded them. One fact, at any rate, is out of reach of such
refinements and this is, that all the forms of protoplasm which
have yet been examined contain the four elements, carbon,
hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, in very complex union, and that
they behave similarly toward several reagents. To this complex
combination, the nature of which has never been determined with
exactness, the name of protein has been applied. And if we use
this term with such caution as may properly arise out of
comparative ignorance of the things for which it stands, it may
be truly said that all protoplasm is proteinaceous; or, as the
white, or albumen, of an egg is one of the commonest examples
of a nearly pure proteine matter, we may say that all living
matter is more or less albuminoid. Perhaps it would not yet be
safe to say that all forms of protoplasm are affected by the
direct action of electric shocks; and yet the number of cases
in, which the contraction of protoplasm is shown to be effected
by this agency increases every day. Nor can it be affirmed with
perfect confidence that all forms of protoplasm are liable to
undergo that peculiar coagulation at a temperature of 40
degrees--50 degrees centigrade, which has been called
"heat-stiffening," though Kuhne's beautiful researches have
proved this occurrence to take place in so many and such
diverse living beings, that it is hardly rash to expect that
the law holds good for all."