Chapter V: The Progressive Professor (2)

The prefect is charged with the arrangement of the business of the congregation. He manages the preparation of causes prior to their discussion. He submits them to the examination of his colleagues, and presides at their deliberations. After the debate has terminated, he receives their suffrages and announces their decision. He also examines into those matters which are settled at a private audience with the pope, without being brought before the whole congregation, and his words give publicity to the decisions which he receives from the living voice of the pontiff himself. Finally, he determines alone certain matters of minor importance, which, on that account, are neither brought before the congregation nor the pope. He receives his appointment from the sovereign pontiff, and holds his office during life. When he is absent, his place is supplied by the oldest cardinal of the congregation, and, at his death, the cardinal-secretary of state places his signature to the nomination of the new prefect.

The secretary assists at the meetings of the congregations, and is charged with the duty of recording its resolutions and acts, of transcribing its registers, and of delivering its processes. He also summons the cardinals, presents to them at each session a brief of the causes they are to treat, and gives them, for each of these, a succinct statement of the principal arguments of the parties, with a summary of the documents pertaining to them. This statement is printed upon loose sheets and distributed to the cardinals several days in advance, in order that each may have time to fully investigate the affair. Sometimes this statement is prepared by the cardinal-reporter, hence called the _cardinal ponent_. The secretary also submits to the pope the sentences of which he is to approve; and, for this purpose, those of the different congregations have a day of special audience before the pontiff. The faculty of giving licenses for various purposes, such as reading prohibited books, etc., etc., is confided to the secretary; also the power to distribute copies of the decrees of the congregation, authenticated by the signatures of the prefect and the secretary, and sealed with the seal of the congregation, which thus become of valid force before all tribunals, and even elsewhere, if they treat of extra-judicial matters.

The secretaries are appointed by the pope himself. They must be bishops, with the title of a church _in partibus infidelium_, or, at least, prelates of the Roman court. In the Congregation of the Holy Office the secretary is a cardinal.

The secretary has under him a number of inferior officials--a vice-secretary, who supplies his place when vacant; a protocol, who takes care of those records in which are registered current matters of business, with the state of their examination; a master of rolls, who preserves the various documents; and copyists, who prepare duplicates and exemplifications. All these are under his control, and for them all he is responsible. They are chosen at a general session and hold office for life. They rank in the order of their seniority. Their remuneration is moderate, but they enjoy it during life, even when sickness or old age prevents the fulfilment of their duties.

To these congregations, moreover, are attached a number of theologians and canonists, who act as counsellors in the investigation of different questions, and assist with their advice those cardinals whose place it is to determine causes. These also are appointed for life by the pope, and, as they are generally taken from the religious orders, they are never absent or obliged to leave Rome without the permission of the congregation.

These counsellors prefer their opinions in various forms, according to the character of the congregation. Sometimes one of them is requested to present a written solution of some especial question; sometimes they are all summoned to hold a united deliberation and give their collective vote before the cardinals.

The parties who appear before these congregations are represented in their presence by proctors and advocates. The proctors act in the same capacity as our attorneys. They are the true defenders of their cause by law and in fact. They compose the petitions, digest the informations, and direct the whole proceedings. Their profession is very honorable, but not open to every one.

Advocates are employed only in matters of higher importance, and seldom except in those of abstract law. They disengage, as far as possible, every question from the circumstances of fact which surround it, and examine it doctrinally from the most elevated point of view. Their profession is free; but in order to exercise it one must be a doctor of civil and canon law, and consequently must have spent four years in study at the Sapienza, or three years at the Apollinaria. They are not limited in number, and are permitted to appear before any of the congregations. There are also special advocates belonging to the consistory, who deal only with the process of canonization. All of these are men well versed in theological learning, canons, councils, ecclesiastical history, civil and canon law, and by their own erudition contribute vastly to the advancement of jurisprudence.

Besides proctors and advocates, there are also solicitors who take charge of various transactions and proceedings, hasten on investigations, and are employed in extra-judicial affairs.

The method of procedure before these congregations differs according to the congregation, the nature of the business, and even the will of the parties themselves. It may likewise be distinguished into the ordinary, the summary, the inquisitorial, etc., etc., and is regulated by positive rules or by custom. They are well known to all, and, in practice, never give rise to any confusion.

We do not desire here to enter into details concerning these different modes of procedure. We can only go so far as to make known their general character, and to compare it with our own civil proceedings, which are sometimes, we think groundlessly, supposed to be a model for all others.

We select, as a type of the whole, the usages of the Congregation of the Council. This congregation receives appeals from the sentences of ordinaries, and also causes submitted to it by the consent of the parties; the latter being equally proper with the former, provided the rules are equally observed. These causes are usually commenced by the sending of a summons to the opposite party through a public official, in the same manner as in civil processes. At the outset, however, a particular formality, called the settlement of the question, is observed. The object of this is to determine the precise point upon which the decision of the congregation is desired. For this purpose it is necessary that an issue be joined between the adverse parties, upon some definite proposition.... This is done either by the parties themselves or their proctors, in presence of the secretary of the congregation, and, in their default, the secretary himself explains it in writing, or, when requisite, the congregation is called to determine it.

This summons for the settlement of the question is served fifteen days before the date of the proceeding itself. At the same time, the original and authenticated writings which the parties have employed, as well as a statement of the facts, signed by the proctor, must be deposited at the office of the secretary. If judicial inquests and the deposition of witnesses are necessary, they are taken by the ordinary in the capacity of judge-delegate, the congregation not being able to act at a distance. The _procès-verbal_ authenticated and duly legalized, are transmitted to it; but as the causes generally come before it by appeal, all these investigations of fact are previously concluded, and the ordinary sends forward the entire papers of the case.

The defences of parties are presented in written memorials in the Latin tongue, signed by an advocate or by a proctor approved by the Roman court. These memorials are deposited with the secretary and communicated to the complainants, as are also copies of all documents that are produced, in nearly the same manner as in the highest civil tribunals. These memorials are in turn succeeded by written replications, signed and filed in the same way. Unless by special permission, the memorials are limited to five printed sheets, and the replications to two. In case of negligence, the proctor is liable to a penalty. No supplementary writings are admissible.

From these papers the secretary makes memoranda, briefly setting forth the whole affair and the principal arguments, the facts and the law, as claimed by the parties, all of which, together with the defences and replications, are printed and distributed in duplicate to the cardinals. These, then, receive separately the parties with their advocates and listen to their explanations, if they judge any to be useful to their cause. These interviews are not, however, secret. Both adversaries have their audiences, and they contribute very much to elucidate doubtful matters.

The day of decision is fixed by the secretary. There is never any delay except for the greatest reasons. The production of the defences must take place at least thirty days before that of final judgment. The printed memoranda are distributed at least six days before it. The circulation of the papers and supplemental documents is finished in the same interval. The audiences to parties are granted within the last four or five days which precede. The distribution of replications is made at latest the day before the session. After this, no notice is taken of any testimony or document produced by one of the parties, unless with the consent of the other.

There are no contradictory pleadings, no public audiences. Every thing is done in writing. The cardinals, well instructed in the cause from the defences, replications, documents, memoranda of the secretaries, and the previous verbal explanations of the advocates, assemble on the appointed day and deliberate out of the hearing of the parties. This deliberation is secret, and sometimes takes place between two audiences.

After judgment is rendered, the losing party has ten days in which to petition for a new trial for the revision of the sentence by the same congregation. The prefect grants this petition; the new hearing takes place at the end of three months; and the party who demands it, if defeated, defrays the expenses.

When sentence has been rendered, and has become of full force as a judgment, an exemplification of it is transmitted to the winning party, who presents it at the executive office of letters-apostolic and of decrees of congregations, in order that it may be couched in the requisite formularies.

The proceedings before the Congregation of Bishops and Regulars closely resemble those before the Congregation of the Council. The delays are somewhat shorter, but the ordinary procedure is the same. Before both of them there is also a species of process more swift and summary, to be employed when the parties desire it, or the nature of the business demands it. Moreover, in the latter congregation it is the secretary who renders its decision.

We have seen that appeals in criminal cases are taken from the diocesan courts to the Congregation of Bishops and Regulars, except when the nature of the offence brings it within the cognizance of the Congregation of the Holy Office. This appeal must be entered within ten days after the promulgation of the judgment. After the appeal is perfected, the diocesan court transmits to the congregation a budget which includes: 1, the process which was instituted in the first instance; 2, the brief of this process and the note of that which followed; 3, the defence of the accused; 4, the sentence. At the same time the court signifies to the accused and his advocate that they are now to prosecute their appeal.

If the appellant does not pursue the matter, a reasonable delay, ordinarily of twenty days, is accorded, after which he is judged to have renounced his appeal and the sentence is executed. If he does pursue it, he makes choice of an advocate at Rome. The budget is then sent to a judge-reporter, from whose hands the advocate receives a memorandum of the case, and upon that bases his defence. This defence is communicated to the first judge, that he may sustain his sentence. All the papers are printed and distributed to the cardinals. The cause is examined on an appointed day in presence of the assembled congregation. The judge-reporter states the case. The proctor-general defends the sentence of the court below. The cardinals render their decision, which affirms, vacates, or revises the sentence of the diocesan tribunal, and is immediately transmitted thereto for execution. This decision is final; and, after it is rendered, the pope alone can grant a review of the proceedings, and that only before the same congregation, and for the gravest reasons.

It will be remarked that there is no public hearing of witnesses; but if this should seem objectionable to any, it will be sufficient to remind them that civil courts, which revise the judgments of courts of correction, decide upon the papers of the case and not upon the testimony of living witnesses at their bar; while, as for criminal proceedings, it is well known that from the courts which try issues of fact there is usually no appeal.

When, instead of an ordinary offence, the crime alleged is one against the faith, the rules of procedure are inquisitorial in their character, and differ somewhat from the preceding; but on account of the weight of the penalty, they offer still greater safeguards to the accused.

Moreover, it is not requisite that all the witnesses should have been present during the whole transaction in question; the deposition of a single one is admissible, though it is necessary that there be more than two, and even three form but a sort of half-proof. All interrogatories, skilfully directed to extort the truth from the defendant or the witnesses by surprise, are strictly forbidden, as are also any suggestions of the answer desired, and every effort is made that the truth may flow naturally from the lips of the witness and without the influence of fear. In order to avoid hatred and terrorism, the names of the witnesses are not made known to the accused, but their motives of hostility to him are examined with the greatest care. False witnesses are punished with the utmost severity, and, when it becomes necessary, the accused and accusers are confronted with each other.

If from poverty, or any other reason, the accused is found without an advocate or proctor, one is furnished for him.

Finally, the appeal is a matter of right. It is taken directly to Rome, before the Congregation of the Holy Office, without passing through any intermediate metropolitan tribunal, and, during its pendency there, execution is usually stayed. Judgment is never rendered against any one upon mere presumptions; but only after full and unmistakable proof.

We come now to notice the written regulations which may be called the skeleton of procedure. Save some variations in detail, they differ little from those of all contested cases before the different congregations. But in order fully to understand their advantages and disadvantages, the reader should understand not only the text of the law but the usages of its practices. For everywhere, at Rome as at Paris, unwritten traditions and judicial customs modify and temper the law, complete its deficiencies, and cause the inconveniences which, at first sight, it would seem to occasion, wholly to disappear. It is also impossible to base a serious comparison between the procedure of two countries upon a mere reading of their rules. Not only ought the two methods to vary according to the manners of the parties, the character of the tribunals, and the nature of their causes, but even two modes which are identical will often, under different circumstances, produce entirely different results. They accommodate themselves to the hand that wields them, and their value can be really appreciated only after long usage of them; so that the skilled practitioner alone is able to speak authoritatively of their value, of their endurance, and of the guarantees which they offer for the discovery of truth.

By these remarks we desire to show that the procedure of the Roman congregations, without sacrificing any of the essential safeguards of justice, is generally simple, brief, economical, informal to a degree beyond that of any civil procedure; and, far from needing to learn any thing from them, it is able in many points to become their instructor.

There is, however, one great difference upon which we especially insist, because it has formed the pretext for unjust attacks from narrow minds, who are unable to comprehend that any thing can be well done that is done in a way different from their own, or that any difference between their customs and those of others is not a signal mark of the inferiority of the latter. The Roman congregations admit of no oral pleadings.[36] All discussion is in writing, though it is necessarily completed by the verbal explanations which the advocates give to the judges; but there is no public and passionate debate, such as is common in all civil jurisdictions. We do not believe that the absence of this is any evil. The Roman legislative body has always endeavored to shun surprises in its hearings. Pleading, as it is practised among us, is nothing but the conflict of two opposing debaters, often unequally matched, and of whom the more powerful is seldom on the side of the oppressed. We believe, indeed, that the doors of the influential advocate, whose name and authority are themselves a powerful argument, are rarely closed against the poor who seek to enter them; but the poor do not always dare to stop and knock, and so content themselves with men of more ordinary abilities. If, then, one of these contesting advocates is more skilful than the other; if he knows how to win favor for his client by an insinuating speech and to cast ridicule upon his adversary; if he has the faculty of grouping figures, of coloring facts, of flattering his auditors during the progress of the controversy; if he is passionate and violent, his emotion will affect the judge, whose heart beats under his robe and is not, perhaps, to any extraordinary degree unimpressible; all these circumstances, extrinsic to the real merits of the cause, will exercise great influence upon its determination, and may be able to wring from the tribunal a decision which, in moments of reflection and coolness, it would never render.

Oral pleading resembles, to some extent, those ancient judicial combats upon which the issue of causes was sometimes made to depend. It is a duel of words, in which justice does not always have the advantage. Our imagination represents an advocate as one whose work it is to wrest the innocent from the clutches of powerful and cruel persecutors; who summons eloquence to aid him in resisting the fierce passions which menace the welfare of his client. This was well enough for those primitive ages when a legal process was the outburst of violent wrath, which dragged the alleged offender before a single judge, or perhaps before a mob erected into a tribunal and swayed by passion. But this conception is not correct for our day, even in criminal matters, where the public prosecutor, as far as possible, excludes mere feeling and makes his appeal to calm and solid reason alone; and it is especially false in civil causes, in which the advocate interprets the text of the law, discusses contracts, examines and compares evidence, all of which labors are difficult, and demand, above all things, reflection, good sense, and coolness.

For attaining, therefore, the ends of justice, a mode of written procedure is particularly adapted. It assures to the contending parties all the time necessary for a careful reply to the reasonings on either side, and establishes an equality between the talents of their respective advocates; it also removes the decision of the cause from the bias of personal influences, and leaves it to be determined by argument only. Moreover, the judge is able to reflect at his ease upon the merits of the case, and is secure against the seductions of artful declamation. Even before those supreme civil tribunals where written and oral pleadings are both permitted, the latter are usually regarded in the solution of the question, and this is what gives to the advocates of those illustrious courts their influence and renown. The Roman congregations are also supreme tribunals; but there passion has no echo and needs no interpreter; there causes stand upon their own merits, stripped of all attendant circumstances; there the gravest questions of dogma, of morals, and of right are decided by reason alone, but by reason illuminated both by science and by faith.

The procedure of the Roman congregations is much less expensive than that before ordinary civil jurisdictions. Originally it was entirely gratuitous, and many of the congregations--as, for instance, those of the Propaganda, the Index, and the Holy Office--still retain this rule in reference to all the causes which are submitted to them. But the great increase of expense, consequent upon the increase of causes, has necessitated the establishment, by other congregations, of certain light taxes, although even these bear small proportion to the actual disbursements. Thus, all the proceedings are upon ordinary paper, which, not being liable to stamp-duty, makes one important saving in expense. Again, while civil proceedings are registered upon payment of a certain fee, which is another notable method of taxation, those at Rome are registered without charge; and, while masters of rolls elsewhere enjoy incomes sometimes reaching the sum of many thousands, those at Rome are paid by the treasurer, and are forbidden to receive any emolument, although perfectly gratuitous, from any party, even for the most extraordinary labors--an obligation imposed on them by oath upon their admission to office.

They are also obliged to exhibit, without charge, to any person the various documents of their several bureaus, and are allowed but a moderate recompense for the copies and exemplifications which they may prepare. Even the expense of printing is borne, at least in part, by the congregation. The congregations do not sell justice; they give it. The pontifical treasury does not look to them as a source of revenue. On the contrary, the taxes they collect are far less than their expenses, and, in fact, so much so that their services may be considered as gratuitous. For example, a matrimonial cause submitted to the Congregation of the Council, and requiring minute examinations, consultations, researches, and a large collection of documents, will cost the winning party several crowns, the precise amount depending upon the number of questions to be resolved. The same case tried in civil courts would cost two or three thousand francs.

The fees of advocates and attorneys correspond to the expenses. Among us they continue constantly to increase. At Rome they are very meagre. They are legally fixed at a uniform rate, according to the importance of the cause and the result of the investigation. Even these the advocates cannot demand as a right, and receive them only as a spontaneous gift.

The French magistracy with good reason congratulates itself on the establishment of an association designed to secure to the poor the gratuitous defence of their just rights. Rome has long since possessed a similar institution. This is the Society of Advocates, which assembles on fête days to receive and reply to the inquiries of the indigent. Among the obligations of the consistorial advocates is that of defending the causes of the poor before their respective tribunals. In criminal cases there are especial advocates for the poor. Among the proctors there are certain ones appointed for the poor, one by the pope, the others by the different societies. Finally, the Society of St. Ives is particularly charged with the protection of the indigent; and such are the customs among the members of the Roman bar that none ever refuses his services to the unfortunate who seeks them.

The Roman congregations are not mere tribunals instituted by the holy see with a delegation of powers, which leaves the supreme authority still in the hands of the sovereign pontiff, and allows a right of appeal from their judgment to his. They are the holy see itself, rendering its decisions by the mouths of its cardinals. Canon law recognizes their jurisdiction as ordinary and not delegated. Delegated jurisdiction is a mandate which confers upon the mandatary certain special favors distinct from and inferior to the powers of the mandator. Ordinary jurisdiction is an actual communication, which unites the mandator and mandatary in one single tribunal, and makes the one the simple organ of the other. Numerous passages of canon law justify this conception of these congregations and render it incontestable as a legal conclusion.

The nature of the decisions which they render makes the point still more certain. They issue general decrees promulgated by order of the sovereign pontiff, which consequently obtain the force of law in all places in the same manner as the pontifical constitutions, from which they do not essentially differ. Such are the decrees of the Holy Office, of the Index, and certain of those of the Congregation of Rites, of that of the Council, and of that of Bishops and Regulars. They also render interpretations of existing laws, and these enjoy a supreme and universal authority, as if they emanated directly from the sovereign pontiff, since they are both submitted to and approved by him. In fine, the sentences which they render in private controversies are, equally with the rest, submitted to the pope; though without this sanction, and from the ordinary powers of the congregations, they would be obligatory upon all, and would become the rule of other tribunals, since for this purpose especially were these congregations instituted as courts of final judicature.

The decisions rendered by these different congregations, and preserved in their archives from the very day of their institution to the present, form the most magnificent body of jurisprudence which has ever existed. One canonist of eminence reckons that upward of sixty thousand decisions have been delivered by the Congregation of the Council alone; a living, practical commentary on the Council of Trent. The Congregation of Bishops and Regulars publishes nearly three volumes of decrees every year, and the volumes which contain its judgments are over eight hundred in number. When we remember that nearly all these decisions are upon questions of law, disengaged from mere accessories of fact, we are amazed at the treasures of science, erudition, and reasoning which are thus accumulating from age to age in these archives, and forming an inexhaustible reservoir, in which tradition stores itself and whence justice and truth flow out upon the world.

FOOTNOTES:

[35] We take pleasure in laying before our readers, at this time, the accompanying translation from a recent number of one of the leading magazines of France. The eyes of the people of this country, and especially of our great cities, are being slowly opened to the necessity of some reform in the methods of judicial business. The delay and expense of legal proceedings--above all, the great uncertainty of their result, is becoming daily a matter of more and more serious consideration. In casting about the world for light upon this vexed and intricate subject, the mind of the reformer cannot fail to be guided to the mother and mistress of all nations, in whose bosom is garnered the experience of twenty-five centuries, and whose institutions are the development of that wisdom and sagacity which made pagan Rome the queen of the world, and has given to Christian Rome a sceptre whose sway is mightier and more extensive than that of the sword.

We feel confident, therefore, that in presenting this article on _The Roman Congregations_ to the American public, and particularly to the legal profession, we are directing attention to what must, in a greater or less degree, be the model of all permanent and reliable civil tribunals. As applicable to the exigencies which press us most severely at the moment, we call attention to the following features of these congregations as worthy of particular investigation:

1. The life-tenure of judges and other officials, with the permanent provision made for their support in case of disability.

2. The reduction of all pleadings to a simple, definite issue, expressing in untechnical language the precise points of law or fact which are in controversy.

3. The reduction of all testimony to the form of depositions, thereby securing the sworn evidence without the mistakes and prejudices almost inseparable from the oral examination of witnesses in court.

4. The reduction of all arguments to writing, procedure eminently productive of accuracy, brevity, and completeness; three qualities which, however desirable, are rarely found in the oral arguments of counsel.

5. The submission of all questions to a body of trained and practised judges, not so liable to be swayed by passion, interest, and prejudice as a jury, or unaided by the counsel and assistance of others, like a single judge, but bringing to the solution of every issue a multitude of counsellors, among whom, if anywhere on earth, is impartiality and wisdom.

We commend these features of Roman jurisprudence to those whose interest and duty lead them to consider seriously the question of legal reform, remarking for ourselves that the rapid and accurate enforcement of legal rights and redress of legal wrongs is the highest mark of temporal civilization, and that no country can expect prosperity and renown unless the judicial ermine is kept free from stain, and unless all men, rich or poor, have both equal rights and equal means of protecting them before the law.--ED. CATH. WORLD.

[36] We use this term in its common, not its legal acceptation. It technically refers only to those mutual allegations and denials of the parties which end in the issue, either of law or fact, upon which the courts are to decide. Here we employ it to denote the spoken arguments of counsel.

AN OCTOBER REVERIE.

This most golden of all the bright October days, why are we not, as we fain would be, on a brown hill-side, yielding care to whispered persuasions of the wind, or afloat on waters that reflected our sky, when--if it was not always without clouds--its clouds were tinged with glory, or lying upon a shore where we built sand castles in play--alas! for castles we built in earnest, to hold treasures of hope--and laughed to see them dissolve in the laughing waves.

We have no wish to pluck the hill-side flowers; we shall never build castles again, never chase back the encroaching waves, which, while they seemed to recede, rose till they buried our castles and swept away our treasures.

But it will be something to share the repose of nature; to lie on her lap lulled by the requiem of the past, chanted by the voice that sang the anthem of the future. For we--her deluded children--are weary, and only ask of her a foretaste of the rest we hope to find by and by in her bosom.

How weary we are! Of strivings from which we have no power to cease! Of reachings, from which we cannot withhold our hands, toward objects that elude us or turn worthless in our grasp! Weary of our own and others' weakness and meanness! Of lying lives; of suspicions, envyings, and covetings! How tired of homely work; oppressed by narrow rooms, vexed by noises of neighbors separated from us only by the legal number of inches in brick and mortar--a loud-talking, stamping family on one side, and on the other the household of Widow Smith, who keeps boarders and a piano!

By sounds that come up through the open window, I know that the widow is in her kitchen helping to get the dinner. I seem to see her, hot and worried. She is always worried. Her face would be a sad one if she had time to let it settle into its proper expression. As she never has time, it is anxious and fretful, and older than her years. In the parlor, so near that the jangling of untuned wires sets my whole being on edge, her daughter is playing the piano as she sings, _I dreamt that I dwelt in Marble Halls_. Poor child! Yet dream on. Who could undeceive thee, knowing that there is woven into thy dream the pious resolve to win out of that discordant instrument money wherewith to buy thy mother ease? Heaven help thee and bring to naught the spite of the bachelor boarder in the room above, who, instead of employing his grizzly brain with the plan gossips have devised, by which he might brighten her life and thine, and his own most of all, paces up and down, cursing the noise, and consigning "that old tin pan" to a place his imagination keeps in a blaze with fuel of whatsoever offends him. He hates "that eternal thrumming," hates "genteel daughters of working mothers. Teach music! Better dismiss Nora and make Miss Julia help in the kitchen!"

It might be as well, but it is no affair of his.

Moreover, the mother has her dream. In it she sees her daughter less hard-worked than she has been, and higher in the social scale than she ever hopes to rise; except, perhaps, when that daughter shall have exchanged Smith for Smythe.

But of all the vexations of our life here, the most persistent is the row of houses across the way. Beset by so many things that offend the other senses, we think it hard that our sight should be so meanly thwarted. I grow angry whenever I look out, and wish that I could push those houses down. I pine to see beyond them the curve of a bay bounded by hills, a stretch of river with steamboats and sails, and of shore with a village and farms on its slope, distant mountains blending with sky, or outlined against piled thunder-caps. Or a harbor with ships; some at anchor, some bound outward, and some coming in from strange countries.

I keep fancying that the houses hide these sights, though I know there is nothing behind them but row on row, more brown, stony, and dull. These are low, and shut out less of the sky. The veneering, which is of plaster instead of stone, is falling off, here and there, to save it from monotony. The uniform dwellings, with their line of connecting porches, remind one of the inside of a fort, and of careless, gossiping, uncertain sojourn in quarters.

Widow Smith does not mind the wall that offends us. She told me her story the other day; all she had gone through. What grieves her most, as nearly as I could make it out, is living in a house that is not high. "For," said she, as with a little tearful burst of eloquence she ended her tale, "I hev lived in a three-story and basement, all to ourselves, and always kept a girl, and the folks next door didn't let out ther floors. Though," (wiping her eyes,) "I've nothin' aginst them Browns. They behave themselves as well as some" (Mrs. Green, over the way, who keeps two servants, and does not visit Mrs. Smith and me) "thet's hed more advantages."

I answered, "These houses might do while rents are so high, if the partitions were thicker, and if that row opposite did not hide the view;" meaning the view in my mind. Mrs. Smith could not have seen it; for she replied that "We mustn't be notional; real troubles come fast enough without borrowin'. Since Smith died," she had "hed her share, the Lord knew." If she "let sech things" make her "mis'rable," she should think that she was "goin' contrary to Scripter, wich speaks aginst the sight of the eyes." Then, "of all things, a place not built up was the forlornist." Besides, she liked "neighbors." Good soul! so she does; loves them, too. I have known her to do "them Browns" more than one kind turn; and to us, when we came, poor, discouraged, and unused to city ways, she was guide, philosopher, and guardian angel, in the guise of a lugubrious little woman in a rusty mourning gown and yarn hood. She taught us to market, urged upon us the importance of asking the price before buying, and of counting our change afterward; encouraged us to resist the aggressions of "the girl," enlightening us at the same time as to the amount of service we might require of that personage; stood up for us with the milk-man, ice-man, and man that peddles every thing, and made them give us weight and measure.

But notwithstanding that Mrs. Smith is so sympathizing, it would not have been worth while to return her confidence by telling her of our former affairs--pleasant places where our lot was cast; the old house beautiful we were born in; the hills, and and the river that bathes their feet; purple ridges that lie eastward, blue mountains that hide the west--scenes so changeless in form that memory does not err in always showing them the same; so changeful in aspect that they never wearied even our accustomed eyes.

We cannot talk of these things to one whose world is the city. Yet there are in that world many who will understand us--living in high houses and low ones; on floors, in garrets and dens; walking in rich attire, shrinking in garments worn and unseemly; mingling with others in the mart, lying on sick-beds, shut up in prisons--men for whom fame blows glorious bubbles, but hollow and frail, as none know better than themselves.

Devotees of science whose Eurekas sound more faintly at every step as they mount her endless ladders; not because they fall from such altitudes, but because they become discouraged as the conviction dawns on them that all they have gained amounts to little.

The trader whose vessels dot the seas, who is not so elate with fortune that he never sends a sigh after earlier ventures--ships of bark with freight of sand, on waters the width of a boy's stride.

The gambler in the bread of the poor, not so callous that he never feels a twinge of the old wound, the stab conscience gave the first time he played "pitch and toss" on the blind side of the school-house and won foolish Richard's penny. He remembers that Richard went crying to his father for redress, and his mother came and told the master, who would not believe foolish Richard's story against "the smartest boy and the best at cypherin' in his school." He escaped, but Richard was whipped by his father for losing his money and telling a lie. He distrusts conscience. Why smite so then, why touch so lightly now, if she can find the difference between that childish sin and this wringing hard-earned pence from thousands of simple ones?

And the Father to whom the wretches clamor so does not seem to be a credulous father to them. Perhaps, after all, he does not hear; or is, like the master, on the side of those who can help themselves. At any rate, his mills grind so slowly that it would hardly pay to compute the time one's turn would take to come. It may be that the wheels stand still, waiting for all his floods to gather.

The politician, not so lost in tortuous ways that the man depicted in his first piece to speak, (it was chosen by his good mother, and often said over to her for fear of "missing" on the momentous Friday,)

"The man whose utmost skill was simple truth;
Whose life was free from servile bands
Of hope to rise or fear to fall,"

does not still stand on the old pedestal in his secret heart.

Absent-eyed women, automatic figures in collections of cabinet-work, upholstery, pictures, and marbles, to which no memories of theirs have grown, lending attention to formal visitors while their thoughts stray to the play-house under a tree, where they used to receive little friends in calico sun-bonnets. The house of which they themselves laid the moss carpet and chose and placed the ornaments, deserted bird's-nests filled with speckled Solomon's Seal, curiosities from the wood, and pretty stones from the brook. For paintings, they had green vistas and glimpses of village, water, and sky. The service, of acorn cups and bits of colored glass and "chaney," was daily polished and set out by their own hands on the flat rock they "made believe" was a table.

Women shawled with fabric of Cashmere, borne above the envious street, but heeding neither its shifting crowd nor its shows. They are thinking of chances enjoyed the more for their unexpectedness, and paid in "kerchies" and "thank'ee, sirs" they used to "catch," when they went to the district school wrapped in homespun shoulder blankets that took caressing softness from fingers--cold alas! now--that pinned them on. Of balmy, luxurious rides on the heaped hay-rigging. Slow, never to be forgotten cart rides in back-woods, where wintergreen and princess-pine send up aromatic odors from beneath the oxen's feet; with wheels now sinking in moss, now craunching the pebbles of the stream, now swept by ferns, and anon pressing down saplings that, released, spring back with a jerk and an impatient protest of leaves. Onward, through sun-glorified arcades, listening to comments of birds that are all about, though each one seems solitary, startled by the beat of a partridge, or catching a sight of her nest. Bending low to escape unbending arms of patriarchs of the wood that fend the way. Peering anxiously into the gathering night; coming out upon the clearing, where skeletons of forest trees, martyrs to progress, that perished by her axe or her flames, lie dimly outlined amid shadows, or stand gaunt against the sky, with charred arms outstretched in motionless appeal.

Or of rides in the lumber-wagon, when grandfather--whom we cannot describe from lack of words sufficiently expressive of venerableness and benignity--held the "lines," and "Tom and Jerry," in sympathy with childish impatience and delight, sped up hill and down, till, amid clatter and rattle, and excited barkings, and joyful exclamations, and a peremptory "whoa!" and "stand there, you Jerry!" (Jerry never would stand there, nor anywhere, he was such a horse to go,) followed by a volley of juvenile "whoas!" and "stand, Jerrys," the wagon drew up before the house, and a young aunt ran to lift the children out, while grandmother stood in the door beaming on them a smile whereof the warmth has passed down through the folds of years, and glows still on hearts from which time has shut out the light of ardent fires.

Did I say that crowd and shows were unheeded? That elegant leader and lawgiver of society, Mrs. Augustus Jonesnob, who glides along in an emblazed carriage, behind those splendid ponies, would not pass, if she knew that she and her "turnout" elicited only a vague, half pitying recollection of a "they say" that gives her the keeper of a junk-shop for grandfather, making it likely that she has no heirloom of tapestry, in fadeless azure, and green, and gold, wherewith to hang the halls she always dreamed of, without dreaming how bare she would find them.

Young Augustus--"Point-Lace Jonesnob," the girls call him--rides beside his mother's carriage, well-dressed, well-mounted, smiling complacently, for he knows that he looks about the thing; and the day being neither too cold nor too warm, nor muddy, dusty, windy, nor too early in the season, he thinks it will do to show himself. Does any one suppose his smile to be the emanation from some reminiscence of "taking the horses to water" in boyhood? The riding-master's hand, and not the proud father's, held him on the first time he was mounted. He has no breezy remembrances of free gallops whither he would; no pensive memories of solemn rides across lonesome barrens, where heavenward-pointing pines worship God with ceaseless harmonies and unfailing incense.

Men whose life, sold for a salary, is the property of others; who spend the hours they ought to have for recreation in street-cars, while ill-used brutes drag them from and to homes in comfortless suburbs, where faded wives, worn with housework that never ends, busy over piles of mending that never diminish, wait, uncheerfully ruminating devices and economies by which they are for ever trying to make ends approach that are fated never to meet.

Broken-spirited gentlemen in threadbare black, worn and brushed till the seams, notwithstanding the times they have been inked, are gray, walking, walking, in search of employment; asking it deprecatingly, for they are honorable, and are beginning to realize--others have long seen it--their incapacity. Returning faint--the bite at the baker's counter is beyond their means--to pale wives, who meet them with smiles that are more sad than tears, and talk, while their hearts belie their tongues, of better luck to-morrow. Perhaps children, too, with eyes that ask--they are too well trained by their mother to demand with their lips.

Women that have seen better days, paying their last dollar--it will bring no return--for the ambiguous announcement that makes known their willingness to accept any position not menial.

Elderly women, delicately bred, once sheltered and inclosed by refined prejudices and conventionalisms, obliged, who knows by what stress, to step out of the sacred (to them; they are old-fashioned ladies) retirement of home. If we must refuse to buy the petty stationery, print, or book they so courteously proffer, let it be seen that we do it with pain; let us not shut the door against these timid sparrows till they have flitted from the steps. They are not of those to whom compassionate hesitation suggests importunity.

Women narrow-chested and grim-visaged, in whom there is no beauty or charm left--pupils of virtue, to whom she gives neither holiday nor reward--toiling up steep flights with bundles of shop-work.

Bedraggled women, that lug heavy baskets down wet area steps into sunless abodes, where they wash all day, while the babes they have not time to fondle want care and comforting, and must want these or bread.

Sinful women, at whom, since Christ is dead in the souls of men, all may cast stones. For them there is but little help or hope in a righteous world.

Those who, by hallowed memories of purer scenes, have been kept from evil.

Those who, though fallen and fouled, still guard, fair and apart, pictures that fill their eyes with tears and their hearts with yearnings--visions of morning stepping down the cliffs into valleys where they dwelt; of sunsets in mountain countries; tropical lands planted with palms that incline exile-ward; snowy regions where blazing hearths and true hearts keep the place of the wanderer warm.

Home dwells pictured in their soul. It is an unpainted road-side house. Sweet-pinks, marigolds, and holly-hocks grow in the front-yard; morning-glories creep up the clap-boards, festoon the windows, and peep into the wren's nest under the eve-trough. In the maple by the doorstep a pair of robins have made their habitation, and amid the green of the elm that roofs the spring and wash-block--the stump of a former mighty tree--is seen the glint of a fire-bird's wing.

Or a farm-house, with gardens and rows of hives, and barns with their swallows, fields of corn and stubble, and upland pasture where cattle are feeding. In "the new piece," between the pasture and higher woodland, buckwheat blossoms for the bees, as it climbs perseveringly up the ridge to overtake the poke, that, bending to its weight of berries, mingles dawning crimson with changing hues of blackberry-vines which hide the rocks. Along stone fences, golden-rod and wild-aster still mingle their blooms untouched, though autumn has reached stained fingers forth to trifle with the leaves of his favorite sumach. In the swamp below, the scarlet lobelia burns amid clumps of green and brown sedge. Beyond the swamp and meadow, and wind-whitened willows by the creek, hills rise and bound the view.

Or it is a homestead, with venerable trees shading a lawn that slopes to a lake in which house and trees lie mirrored. They are playing with their brothers on the lawn, while their mother watches them from her window; or gliding on the lake with companions and loves of youth, steering their boat for a distant headland.

These are living pictures. Their woods sing Eolian measures; their brooks talk of childhood and innocence; their clouds and seasons are always changing; their swallows ever flying homeward, whither the trees beckon. Miraculous pictures! their sun always shines on our brides; their skies rain constant tears on our dead. Yea, in them the dead are risen, and eyes long sealed look down on us with love.

But beyond the headland the lake has its outlet into a stream that winds and tarries, all the while widening, till it empties into the harbor, where ships, laden with costly merchandise, are spreading sails for havens of uncertain promise. They fade along the fading coast; glide across the dim belt that separates land's end from sky; like phantoms disappear. And watchers turn, with a foreboding chill, from windy piers, to confront dirty waterside stores, and pick their way amid trucks and bales that obstruct broken side-walks, between tall warehouses that glower at each other across lanes, to meet odors of fish and oils, and spices and drugs, and countless other foetid smells; to enter dull, ledger-lined offices, or seek, through jostling ways, ticketed dwellings that are as alike as prison-cells.

Along the track that divides the farm, and cuts the hill in two, shrieks a train, grudging its passengers the glimpse of beautiful places of the rich; slackening its pace to prolong the dreariness of the ugly outskirts, and, lo! dead rows of houses; long thoroughfares; mean streets, with vile shops and squalid swarms; the clash of vehicles; confusion of cries; rush of multitudes--the city.

From the small house the by-road leads to a turnpike that speeds dustily on to a cobble-paved town by the river. The river flows down to the city; where all night long, hungrily lapping slimy piers, with dark hints of oblivion, with winks and gleams that the wretched interpret, with noiseless, snaky undulations, and the fascinating glitter of its thousand eyes, it charms the lost to loathsome death.

Would we, if cares did not bind us, go back to the scenes of those pictures? If our mother's face had not gone from the window? If the farm had not been sold? If alien hands had not cut down the maple and the elm, and strange faces and the burr of unknown voices had not scared the wrens from their nest? If we had money or time for the journey? If we did not feel too much ashamed or disgraced--we have been so unsuccessful, or false to early promises--to meet the pitying or contemptuous looks of our acquaintance? For did they not know how it would be? Did not they too, in youth, scent from afar the battle they knew better than to enter without the certainty of winning?

If we have, or seem to have won it, is there not something in ourselves that holds us back? We have now no desire for sports of childhood. We are not sorry that our mother faded from her window before we got hurts that her kisses could not make well. The halo that surrounds venerated figures would pale in the broad light of mid-life. We are not so forbearing with the old who are with us that we could trust ourselves to have the departed back.

Do we recognize the boys and girls who lived in the small house by the road, who used to get up early and run laughing to the spring to take turns washing in the tin basin that hung against the elm? And the faces mirrors now show us--are they the same that rose radiant from that bath? Could we sleep soundly in a garret, and wake delighted to see snow sifting through the roof? Or relish the food we thought it neither shame nor labor to carry when, bare-footed in summer and shod in calf-skin in winter, we walked a mile to the red school-house down by the 'pike? Would we feel honored if the madam were now to visit us in the modest dress that we once thought the perfection of taste?

When it was our week to conduct her home, we neither hunted bird's-nests, nor swung upon low branches of the "mill-pines," nor dipped our feet in mud-puddles to get "wedding-shoes" on, nor sought berries along the fences, unless it was to string them on timothy-rods and present them shyly for her acceptance.

Have we strength or inclination for harvest work? Then to leaden hearts and sluggish blood what pleasure in moonlight sail, or midnight sleigh-ride, or mad gallop over lift and level!

Let us guard our sacred pictures. To their scenes we will not return. For if, instead of patches of sky, the circle of the firmament were ours, with changing glory of dawn, and noon, and sundown, and deeps gleaming with stars, yet our spirits would not soar with their swallows. Their mountains would not draw our feet as they did when we believed that every summit reached was a height gained, knew not that the peaks which pierced the clouds hid higher ranges, yet no nearer the heaven of hope than those which limited our sight.

Is there no spot, dear friend, that you and I would revisit?