Chapter VI: Boadicea (2)

The church did not conform, either in her discipline or her doctrine, to the rules or underlying principles of the civil law, but on the contrary subjected that law to the most rigid examination and the most careful analysis, expurgating what was opposed to justice and retaining all that she found in consonance with divine truth; and as the Roman civil law was at that period a rule for all civilized nations, this may be considered her first great human gift to mankind, equal if not superior to her subsequent culture of the arts, sciences, and literature. Admitting, then, the harmony which existed between the Roman laws and the teachings of the church, we are not surprised to find that when, in the eleventh century, a copy of Justinian, discovered at Amalphi, Italy, was published, it was eagerly received by European nations, adopted in whole or in part by all Christendom, and that it to-day forms the main foundation of the jurisprudence of all enlightened peoples.[62]

About the time of the revival of the study of the Roman civil law, Gratian, an Italian monk, published in three volumes, arranged in titles and chapters after the manner of the Pandects, a collection of the decrees of the general councils of the church, a digest of the opinions of the fathers, and the decretals and bulls of the Holy See. Other collections had been previously made by ecclesiastics in Spain and elsewhere, but none were found to be complete or reliable. However, as Gratian's work was itself far from perfect, Pope Gregory IX. authorized Raymond de Pennafort, a learned divine, to compile a new collection, which was published by authority of his Holiness, A.D. 1234, under the title of _Decretalia Gregorii Noni_. It was divided into five books, and contained all that was worth preserving of Gratian, with the subsequent rescripts of the Popes, especially those of Alexander III., Innocent III., Honorius III., and Gregory IX. "In these books," says Hallam, "we find a regular and copious system of jurisprudence, derived in a great measure from the civil law, but with considerable deviation and possible improvement."[63] Boniface VIII., sixty years afterwards, published a sixth part, known as _Sextus Decretalium_, divided also into five books, in the nature of a supplement to the other five, of which it follows the arrangement, and is composed of decisions promulgated after the pontificate of Gregory IX. New constitutions were added by Clement V. and John XXII., under the titles respectively of _Clementine_ and _Extravagantes Johannis_, and a few rescripts of later pontiffs are included in a second supplement, arranged like the _Sextus_, and called _Extravantes Communes_. Up to the Council of Pisa, in A.D. 1409, these books constituted the whole of the canon law or _corpus juris canonici_, and though principally intended for the government of ecclesiastics, were often applied to temporal purposes, in law and equity, when neither the civil nor common law met the requirements of a disputed point. The study of the canons had been encouraged from the first in the colleges and schools of Europe, but, upon the publication in a systematical form in the eleventh century, it became universal, and with the Roman civil law constituted an essential branch of clerical education. At first the Canonists and Glossators, as the professors of civil law were called, formed separate but not antagonistic schools, but in the thirteenth century Lanfrancus, a professor of Bologna, united the study of both laws, a custom which has since been generally adopted.

As we have before remarked, Sir William Blackstone would fain have us believe that every principle of English common law originated with, and was recognized by, the Anglo-Saxons from the remotest period of their history, but there is neither fact nor probable suspicion to sustain those unqualified statements of our partial commentator. The Romans, who held possession of Britain for more than four hundred years, may have left on the vanquished people of that country some impress of their laws, but the Britons themselves, soon after the departure of the legions, were driven to the mountains of Wales by the Angles and Saxons, and for centuries held no intercourse with the victorious intruders. These latter, the outpourings of the woods and swamps of the north, are represented by all reliable historians as the veriest barbarians, illiterate and idolatrous, and altogether incapable of conceiving or appreciating the broad principles of free government or the varied regulations which control the intercourse and commerce of man with man, such as we find in civilized society; much less those which affect the conduct of household relations, which, originating in the church, could only have been properly expounded by her ministers. The Danes, who subsequently invaded and for many years held possession of the larger portion of the island, were little less barbaric, nor can we trace to them any well-recognized custom or fundamental principle of our present laws. "In the barbarous specimens of legislation due to the era of Saxon and Danish rule," says a late able writer on this subject, "the few texts of Roman law which occur appear to us traceable through the Papal canons. How faint is the impression which even the Anglo-Saxon laws have left upon our system? We have still the local court and the local officers, and some of the rude democratic elements of judicial procedure and constitutional law have been nurtured into real civilized liberty, but happily for us, the harsh and partial regulations savoring of original Teutonic savageness which awarded the various penalties of crime have passed away, and the ancient absence of all expressed regulation in many most important points has been supplied by the legislation of more enlightened times and more cultivated men."[64] After the arrival of St. Augustine, towards the close of the sixth century, the gradual evangelization of the island of Britain necessitated the abolition of the heathen customs, the basis of the Anglo-Saxon legislation, such as it was, and the introduction of a new code of government. The primitive ignorance of the inhabitants and the subsequent decline of learning consequent on the repeated incursions of the Northmen, had the effect of limiting whatever knowledge was still possessed in the country to the ecclesiastics, who, amid the most adverse circumstances, and very often at the sacrifice of their lives, fed the torch of learning and kept its brilliancy undimmed when all around was darkness. They became not only the makers but the dispensers of the law, for, though surrounded on all sides by anarchy and ignorance, they had still the guidance of their canons and some acquaintance with the elaborate code of the empire. The clergy, admits Blackstone, "like the Druids, their predecessors, were proficient in the study of the law."

This marked and beneficial interference of the ministers of the church in the legislative and judicial affairs of newly converted nations not only arose out of political and social necessity, but may be considered as a logical sequence of the establishment of Christianity itself. "The arbitrative authority of ecclesiastical pastors," says Hallam, "if not coeval with Christianity, grew up very early in the church, and was natural and even necessary to an isolated and persecuted society, accustomed to feel a strong aversion to the imperial tribunals, and even to consider a recurrence to them as hardly consistent with their profession; the early Christians retained somewhat of a similar prejudice even after the establishment of their religion. The arbitration of their bishops still seemed a less objectionable mode of settling differences, and this arbitrative jurisdiction was powerfully supported by a law of Constantine which directed the civil magistrate to enforce the execution of episcopal awards."[65] Justinian went even further than his illustrious ancestors, for he not only gave the bishops in the first instance, without the consent of the parties, the power of trying temporal causes in which the defendant was an ecclesiastic, but the episcopal order was absolutely exempted by him from all secular jurisdiction.[66]

If such clerical intrusion into the province of the civil magistrate was not only tolerated but encouraged in the best and most Catholic days of the Western and Eastern empires, how much more salutary must it have been in its effects among the semi-civilized and turbulent Saxons and Northmen! Unfortunately, scarcely any record is left to us of the labors of the priesthood in this direction during those centuries which preceded the Norman conquest, for the compilations of Alfred and Edward the Confessor are irreparably lost; but here and there we catch a glimpse of their presence legislating or deciding causes. Thus, as early as A.D. 787, at a provincial council held at Calcluith, a place long obliterated from the map of England, it was solemnly enacted "that none but legitimate princes should be raised to the throne, and not such as were engendered in adultery or incest." "But it is to be remarked," says Hallam, "that, although this synod was strictly ecclesiastical, being summoned by the Pope's legate, yet the kings of Mercia and Northumberland, with many of their nobles, confirmed the canons by their signatures."[67] Another instance of clerical legislation is to be found in the canons of the Northumbrian clergy, and that one of peculiar interest to students of law and history, presenting, as it does, the first germ of that glory of English law not inaptly called the palladium of the subject's liberty--trial by jury.[68] "If a king's thane," says the canon, "deny this (the practice of heathen superstition), let twelve be appointed for him, and let him take twelve of his kindred or equals (_maga_) and twelve British strangers, and if he fail let him pay for his breach of law twelve half-marcs; if a landholder (or lesser thane) deny the charge, let as many of his equals and as many strangers be taken for him as for a royal thane, and if he fail let him pay for his breach of law six half-marks; if a ceorl deny it, let as many of his equals and as many strangers be taken for him as for the others, and if he fail let him pay twelve oræ for his breach at law."[69] This quasi-jury system appears to have been applied to other cases, for we learn from the history of Ramsey, published in Gales's _Scriptores_, that a controversy relating to some land between the monks and a certain nobleman was brought into the county court, when each party was heard in his own behalf, and after its commencement it was referred by the court to thirty-six thanes, equally chosen by both sides.[70]

The invasion and speedy conquest of Britain by the Normans not only overturned the Saxon dynasty, and reduced the people of that and the Danish race remaining in the country to a condition of absolute servitude, but introduced a new language and completely revolutionized the municipal laws of the entire nation. The sacrifice of human life incident to the conquest was small in comparison to the amount of misery, wretchedness, and degradation entailed on the vanquished for centuries afterwards by the conquerors-men gathered from every quarter of Europe, whose fortunes were at their swords' points, and whose fidelity and support were only to be purchased by the fruits of plunder and spoliation. Still, it must be admitted that the conquest had its advantages, and very great ones. From the departure of the Romans until the arrival of William, England proper cannot be said to have enjoyed any appreciable respite from foreign wars or domestic dissensions. The Britons, deprived of the powerful protection of the legions, were constantly harassed by their rapacious neighbors from the north side of the Tweed, and in trying to escape from them they fell into the clutches of their false allies, the Angles and Saxons, and narrowly escaped extermination. These latter were no sooner settled in the country than they established as many monarchies as they had chiefs, and, having for a time no foreign foe to contend against, readily turned their arms against each other on the slightest provocation. Weakened and distracted, they soon fell an easy prey to the piratical Northmen, who, under Canute and his successors, fastened on the fair lands of the middle and northern portions of the island and on the contiguous sea-ports a grip so tenacious that all the subsequent efforts of the Saxon monarchs could not unloosen it. This diversity of race and traditional forms of government naturally gave birth to laws and customs entirely at variance with each other in letter and spirit, and what was binding in one section was unknown or disregarded in another. The Normans, with the thoroughness of genuine conquerors, disregarded all such local distinctions, and reduced the entire native population to a level, thane and ceorl alike being made to endure the same burdens of servitude and compelled to obey implicitly the will of their new masters.

But the Normans were Christians, at least by profession, and boasted of a species of rude chivalry which prevented them from imitating the excesses of their pagan predecessors. While greedy enough for the secular lands of the defeated Saxons, they seldom interfered with churches or institutions of learning and charity; on the contrary, they were wise enough to protect the one and encourage the other in every manner possible consistent with their design of total subjection. They introduced generally the new system of feuds and a foreign hierarchy, it is true, but they did not deprive the people of the consolations of religion, and they gave to the country for the first time unity, the necessary precursor of rational freedom, and a national government with uniform laws, which, if born amid the clash of arms, rested its principal claims to support on the ways of peace.

The feudal system, though burdened with its aids, reliefs, seisin, wardship, and many other equally onerous conditions, was for that time the best and in fact the only proper form of government for England, and it is mainly to its uniform establishment by the conquerors, and to the judicious statesmanship of her great ecclesiastical lawyers, who subsequently gradually mitigated its harsher features, that the past and present greatness of that country is to be traced. The theory that the sovereign, representing the majesty of the nation, was the owner of all the lands of the kingdom, and that directly or indirectly all the occupiers of the soil were his tenants, holding by right of fealty and service, gave to the people what they so long wanted, a centre of unity and a common authority to which they could look for redress and protection. Besides, the system had become so general on the Continent, and had proved so admirable a machine for defence or aggression, that its adoption by the new Anglo-Norman kingdom had become a political necessity.

Though sadly behind many of her sister nations in the arts of government, England was not at the time of the conquest altogether deficient in the knowledge of civil or common law. On the contrary, she had many eminent professors of both. The monks of Croyland and Spaulding were distinguished as jurists, and Egelbert, Bishop of Chichester, is said, even by Norman authorities, to have been thoroughly acquainted not only with the canons and what was then known of the Roman civil law, but with "all the ancient laws and customs of the land."[71] The Normans, however, preferring to place their own countrymen in positions of trust and influence, invited from the Continent many learned bishops and professors, to whom they gave the charge of the principal sees and universities, and these, having been trained in the schools of Italy and France, soon substituted the study of the clearer and more equitable regulations of the lately-revived civil law for the illogical and conflicting customs of the natives. Thus the Pandects of Justinian were introduced into England by Vicarius, professor of canon law at Oxford, A.D. 1138, and he was succeeded by Accorso, a doctor of the civil law. Bishop Grosseteste wrote a treatise in favor of the study of Roman law, and Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury, founded a professorship in Oxford to promote the same object. Of the latter prelate, it is said that he was accustomed to retain in his house "several learned persons famous for their knowledge of law, who spent the hours between prayers and dinner in lecturing, disputing, and debating causes."[72]

The conquerors of the Anglo-Saxons, though by no means deficient in the scholarship and accomplishments of that rude age, were too intent on retaining by force the possessions they had won by the strong arm, to cultivate the arts of peace, and, consequently, the framing of the laws, the judicial authority, and even the pleading of causes, necessarily devolved on the ecclesiastics. Hallam, a writer equally prejudiced with Blackstone, though a much better historian, is forced to admit that "the bishops acquired and retained much of their ascendency by a very respectable instrument of power--intellectual superiority. As they alone were acquainted with the art of writing, they were naturally entrusted with political correspondence and the making of the laws."[73] And it was well for the conqueror and conquered alike that it was so, for to them, and them alone, was given the skill and authority to restrain with one hand the ruthless oppressions of the lawless barons, and with the other to alleviate the sufferings of a down-trodden people. To the wisdom that proceeds from long communion with the works of great and good men they joined the authority of the church, which they failed not to call into requisition when persuasion and reasoning equally failed. To them we owe every successful effort that was made in the middle age of England's history, either against the tyranny of the crown or the injustice of the nobles. _Magna Charta_, that famous instrument, which, like our own constitution, is so frequently talked about and so little understood, issued from the fertile brain of Archbishop Langton, and was signed by every bishop and abbot in the land.[74] It was they who took up the serf, educated and ordained him, and made him not only the equal but in many cases the superior of his late master. They also regulated the alienation and descent of lands, and by their introduction of fines and recoveries, uses and trusts, and other forms of conveyance, not only abolished many of the worst evils of feudalism, but even, according to Blackstone, "laid the foundation of modern conveyancing." For many centuries they were the confidential advisers of kings, their trusted ambassadors abroad, and their names always appeared first in every writ summoning a council or parliament to legislate for the welfare of the realm, and the laws thus made were regularly dispensed in the county courts by the bishops and the civil magistrates sitting together with equal jurisdiction.

But it was in the court of chancery that the wisdom, clemency, and equity of the bishops of those days shone with the greatest brilliancy. This was a court of extraordinary jurisdiction, unknown in England before the conquest and unparalleled in contemporary nations. The chancellor and his assistants, almost without exception, up to the time of Wolsey, were ecclesiastics. Their decisions, resting upon conscience alone, though unsupported by express statute or even in contravention of its letter, had all the force of legal enactments, and formed, collectively, the basis of much of our modern remedial legislation, as well as an unerring rule for the guidance of our highest civil justices. The affairs of married persons, infants, idiots, corporations, bankrupts, testators and intestates, grantors and grantees of land, and of nearly every conceivable condition of life, are even at the present day within the special and almost exclusive jurisdiction of our courts of equity. In the words of a distinguished English lawyer, "It gives relief for and against infants, notwithstanding their minority, and for and against married women, notwithstanding their coverture. All frauds and deceits for which there is no redress at common law, all breaches of trust and confidence, and unavoidable casualties, by which obligors, mortgagors, and others may be held to incur penalties and forfeitures, are here remedied. This court also gives relief against the extremity of unreasonable engagements entered into without consideration, obliges creditors who are unreasonable to compound with an unfortunate debtor, and makes executors, etc., give security and pay interest for money which is to be long in their hands. The court may confirm the title to lands, though one has lost his writings, render conveyances which are defective through mistake or otherwise good and perfect. In chancery, copyholders may be relieved against the ill-usage of their lords, enclosures of land which is common may be decreed, and this court may also decree the disposition of money or lands given to charitable uses, oblige men to account with each other," etc.[75]

A system of laws like that of Chancery, so comprehensive and so equitable, defined and administered by a long succession of the most upright and enlightened men of the land, could not but have left a deep impression on the entire jurisprudence of the people who profited by its protection--an impression, indeed, that neither the mental obliquity of the fanatic nor the sophistry of the pedant has been able to obliterate. "So deep hath this canon law been rooted," says Lord Stairs, "that even where the Pope's authority is rejected, yet consideration must be had to these laws, not only as those by which the church benefices have been erected and ordered, but as likewise as containing many equitable and profitable provisions, which because of their weighty matter and their being once received may more fitly be retained than rejected."[76]

Had the prelates and priests of the Saxon and Norman periods done nothing for our law but what we find in the decisions of their equity courts, they would have conferred upon us an incalculable blessing, one equally calculated to liberalize the spirit of legislators, enlighten the understanding of jurists, and make government what it was designed to be, a shield for the weak and helpless, and a terror to the wicked and dishonest. But, as we have seen on the authority of writers conspicuous for their anti-Catholic bigotry, they did infinitely more. Statesmen as well as lawyers, they framed most of our best statutes as well as adjudicated upon them, and they originated or perfected every feature in our entire code which has stood the test of time, and enlarged civilization from trial by jury to the unqualified right of every man to dispose of his property as seems best to himself. They have thus placed us under obligations which we can only in part repay by transmitting their maxims unimpaired to our descendants, and by, at length, doing justice to their memories. And now, as we believe that the world is growing wiser as it is growing older, when time has healed many of the wounds inflicted during the great schismatic revolt of the sixteenth century, and, uninfluenced by passion or unawed by power, the scales of prejudice are falling from the eyes of those who through the fault of their fathers are aliens to the truth, it is not too much to hope that they will neither be ashamed nor afraid to acknowledge how much they are indebted to the church and her ministers for the generally admirable system of laws under which we live--laws which are at once our highest boast and best protection.

FOOTNOTES:

[59] _Vide 131, Nov. Justinian._

[60] Doctor Harris's translation, p. 49. London, 1814.

[61] Lib. ii. tit. 35.

[62] According to some authorities, a copy of the Pandects was discovered at Amalphi, in the middle of the twelfth century, and was first given to the world by two Italian lawyers. D'Israeli, in his _Curiosities of Literature_, says: "The original MS. of Justinian's Code was discovered by the Pisans accidentally when they took a city in Calabria. That vast code of laws had been in a manner unknown from the time of that Emperor. This curious book was brought to Pisa, and, when Pisa was taken by the Florentines, transferred to Florence, where it is still preserved." The Code, Pandects, and Institutes are still received as common law in Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, Poland, and Scotland in their entirety, and partly so in France, Spain, and Italy.

[63] _Middle Ages_, vol. ii. p. 201.

[64] _Encyclopædia Metropolitana._ London, 1846

[65] _Middle Ages_, vol. ii. p. 146.

[66] _Nov. Just. 123_, c. 21-23.

[67] _Middle Ages_, vol. ii. p. 149.

[68] Sir William Jones, a learned scholar and able jurist, was of opinion that the invention of trial by jury could be traced to the ancient Greeks, while Blackstone pretends that the credit of it is due to the Saxons who brought the custom with them to England; but Hallam and other superior authorities maintain that the canon quoted in the text is the first germ on record of this great distinguished feature of English common law, and that it was not till long after the advent of the Normans that it assumed its present systematic form.

[69] _Wilkins_, p. 100.

[70] P. 415.

[71] _Ingulph_, p. 36. Nicholl's _Lit. Anec._ vol. i. p. 28.

[72] Peter of Blois, _Epist._ vol. i. 3. Paris, 1519.

[73] _Middle Ages_, p. 150.

[74] The continued encroachments of the crown on the rights of the barons and their tenants led to an armed league against John I., the leading spirit of which was the intrepid Archbishop of Canterbury and the General, Robert Fitzwalter, who took the title of "Marshal of the Army of God and of Holy Church." The result was a timely concession of the king, which was granted in the form of a Great Charter. The importance of many of the liberal guarantees set forth in that instrument has departed with the special evils that gave rise to them, but many of a more general nature and such as related to cheap, speedy, and impartial justice, have become integral parts of the British Constitution. As to the document itself, D'Israeli relates the following curious circumstance: "Sir Thomas Cotton one day at his tailor's discovered that the man was holding in his hand, ready to cut up for measures, an original _magna charta_, with all its appendages of seals and signatures. He bought the curiosity for a trifle, and recovered in this manner what had been given over for lost. This anecdote is told by Colomies, who long resided and died in this country. An original _magna charta_ is preserved in the Cottonian Library; it exhibits marks of dilapidation, but whether from the invisible scythe of time or the humble scissors of a tailor I leave to archæological inquiry."

[75] _Enc. Brit._, art. "Law," p. 413.

[76] _Institutes_, b. 1, tit. 1, § 14.

TO THE CRUCIFIED.[77]

See how fond science, with unwearied gaze,
Eyes on the sun's bright disk each fiery vent,
And from his flaming crown each ray up-sent
Searches, as miners, in their furnace-blaze--

Seek trace of gold. But who to thee doth raise
His eyes the while? Who, with true heart intent,
Scans thy sharp crown, thy bosom's yawning rent,
And peers into its depths with love's amaze?

Let me, at least, come near the abysmal side,
And reach out to the heart which throbs within.
I am oppressed with woe and shame and sin;
Oh! suffer me within that cleft to hide!
There glows the fire which purifies each stain;
There burns the love which bids me live again.

FOOTNOTE:

[77] Thoughts suggested by reading, in _Nature_, an account of the solar eclipse of December, 1870.

LAS ANIMAS[78]

_Don Fernan._ Uncle Romance, I am coming in, although it don't rain.

_Uncle Romance._ Welcome, Señor Don Fernan. Your worship comes to this, your house, like the sun, to illumine it. Has your worship any commands?

_Don F._ I am hungry for a story, Uncle Romance.

_Uncle R._ Story again! Señor, does your worship think that my yarns are like Don Crispin's titles, that were past counting? Your worship must excuse me; I'm in a bad way to-day; my memory is broken-winded, and my wits are heavier than bean-broth. But, not to disappoint your worship, I'll call my Chana.[79] Ch-a-a-a-na! Sebas-ti-a-a-na! What ails the woman? She is getting to be like the Marquis of Montegordo, who remained mute, blind, and deaf.[80] Ch-a-a-na!!

_Aunt Sebastiana._ What do you mean, man, by bawling like a cowherd? Oh! Señor Don Fernan is here. God be with you, señor! How is your worship?

_Don F._ Never better, Aunt Sebastiana; and you are well?

_Aunt S._ Ay! no, señor; I'm fallen away like a lime-kiln.

_Don F._ Why, what has been the matter with you?

_Uncle R._ The same that ailed the other one who was sunning herself:

"_Una vieja estaba al sol
Y mirando al almanaque:
En cuando en cuando decia,
'Ya va la luna menguante.'_"

"An old woman was sunning herself
And studying the almanac:
From time to time she said,
'The moon is waning already.'"

_Aunt S._ No, señor, it isn't that. God and his dear mother do not take away our flesh, but the child when he is born, and the mother when she dies; and my son--my own life--

_Uncle R._ There, Chana, don't mention Juan, the big hulk, with more ribs than a frigate.[81]

_Aunt S._ Don't believe it, señor; he just talks to hear himself, and don't know what he's saying. That boy of mine is more gentle and reasonable; he wouldn't say scat to the cat. He has served in the army six years, and has got his lights snuffed.[82]

_Uncle R._ His lights are those of midnight. He entered the uniform, but the uniform hasn't entered him.[83]

_Don F._ But what is the trouble, Aunt Sebastiana?

_Aunt S._ Señor, he can't get work.

_Don F._ Oh! I'll give him work, if you'll tell me a story.

_Aunt S._ My man, here, would do it better. Your worship knows that he has the name of being such a good story-teller. He never wants for a tale.

_Don F._ That is true; but to-day he's not in a talking mood.

_Aunt S._ If I hadn't--

_Uncle R._ Come, come, woman, don't keep his worship in expectation, like a watch-dog. A story, and a good one; for you could talk if you were under water.

_Aunt S._ Would your worship like to hear about the _animas_?

_Don F._ Without delay. Let us hear about the _animas_.

_Aunt S._ There was once a poor woman who had a niece that she brought up as straight as a bolt. The girl was a good girl, but very timid and bashful. The dread of what might become of this child, if she should be taken away, was the poor old woman's greatest anxiety. Therefore, she prayed to God, night and day, to send her niece a kind husband.

The aunt did errands for the house of a gossip of hers that kept boarders. Among the guests of this house was a great nabob, who condescended to say that he would marry if he could find a girl modest, industrious, and clever. You may be sure that the old woman's ear was wide open. A few days afterwards, she told the nabob that he would find what he was looking for in her niece, who was a treasure, a grain of gold, and so clever that she painted even the birds of the air. The gentleman said that he would like to know her, and would go to see her the next day. The old woman ran home so fast that she never saw the path, and told her niece to tidy up the house, and to comb her hair, and dress herself, the next morning, with great care, for they were going to have company.

When the gentleman came, the next day, he asked the girl if she knew how to spin.

"Spin, is it?" answered the aunt.

"She takes the hanks down like glasses of water."

"What have you done, madam?" cried the niece when the gentleman had gone, after giving her three hanks of flax to spin for him. "What _have_ you done? And I don't know how to spin!"

"Go along," said the aunt, "go along, for a poor article that will sell well, _and don't set your foot down_,[84] but let it be as God will."

"Into what a thorn-brake you have put me, madam!" said the niece, crying.

"Well, see that you get out of it," answered the aunt; "but these three hanks must be spun, for your fortune depends upon them."

The poor girl went to her room in sore distress, and betook herself to imploring the blessed souls, for which she had great devotion.

While she prayed, three beautiful souls, clothed in white, appeared to her, and told her not to be troubled, for they would help her in return for the good she had done them by her prayers; and, taking each one a hank, they changed the flax into thread as fine as your hair in less time than would be worth one's while to name.

When the nabob came, the next day, he was astonished to see the result of so much diligence united with so much skill.

"Did I not tell your worship so!" exclaimed the old woman, beside herself with delight.

The gentleman asked the girl if she knew how to sew.

"And why shouldn't she?" answered the aunt with spirit. "Pieces of sewing are no more in her hands than cherries would be in the big snake's mouth."[85]

The gentleman then left her linen to make him three shirts, and, not to tire your worship, it happened just as it had the day before; and the same took place on the day after, when the nabob brought a satin waistcoat to be embroidered; except that, when, in answer to her many tears and great fervor, the souls appeared and said to the girl, "Don't be troubled, we are going to embroider this waistcoat for you," they added, "but it must be upon a condition."

"What condition?" inquired the girl anxiously.

"That you ask us to your wedding."

"Am I going to be married?" said the girl.

"Yes," answered the souls, "to that rich man."

And so it turned out, for, when the gentleman came, the next day, and saw his waistcoat so exquisitely wrought that it seemed as though hands of flesh could not have touched it, and so beautiful that to look at it fairly took away his eyesight, he told the aunt that he wanted to marry her niece.

The aunt was ready to dance for joy. Not so the niece, who said to her: "But, madam, what will become of me when my husband finds out that I don't know how to do anything?"

"Go along! _and don't make up your mind_," answered the aunt. "The blessed souls that have helped you in other straits are not going to desert you in this."

On the wedding-day, when the feasting was at its height, three old women entered the parlor. They were so beyond anything ugly that the nabob was struck dumb with horror.

The first had one arm very short, and the other so long that it dragged on the ground; the second was humped and crooked; and the eyes of the third stuck out like a crab's, and were redder than a tomato.

"Jesus, Maria!" said the astonished gentleman to his bride, "who are those three scarecrows?"

"They are three aunts of my father," she replied, "that I invited to my wedding."

The nabob, who was mannerly, went to speak to the aunts and find them seats.

"Tell me," he said to the first, "what makes one of your arms so short and the other so long?"

"My son," answered the old woman, "it was spinning so much that made them grow that way."

The nabob hurried to his wife and told her to burn her distaff and spindle, and to take care that she never let him see her spin.

He immediately asked the second old woman what made her so humpbacked and crooked.

"My son," she answered, "I grew so by working all the while at my broidery-frame."

With three strides the gentleman put himself beside his wife, and said to her: "Go this minute, and burn your broidery-frame, and take care that in the lifetime of God I do not catch you with another."

Then he went to the third old woman, and asked her what made her eyes look so red and as if they were going to burst?

"My son," she answered, giving them a frightful roll, "this comes of continual sewing, and of keeping my head bent over the work."

Before the words were out of her mouth, the nabob was at his wife's side: "Go," said he, "gather all your needles and thread, and throw them into the well, and bear in mind that the day I find you sewing, I will sue for a divorce. The sight of the halter on another's neck is warning enough for me."

_Aunt S._ And now, Señor Don Fernan, my story is ended; I hope that it has pleased you?

_Don F._ Ever so much, Aunt Sebastiana; but what I learn from it is, that the souls, notwithstanding that they are blessed, are very tricky.

_Aunt S._ Now, señor, and is your worship going to insist upon doctrine in a romance, as if it were an example? Why, stories are only to make us laugh, and grow better without precept or name of lesson. God will have a little of all.

_Don F._ True, Aunt Sebastiana; and what you express with your simple good sense is more wholesome than the critical reverence of the overstrict. But, uncle, I am not going without another to correspond with this, and it is your turn now. If, as I think you have told me that you were on other occasions, you are a devotee of San Tomas,[86] here are some Havanas as an offering to his saintship.

_Uncle R._ Not to disoblige your worship.

_Don F._ But I must have the story; I want it for a purpose.

_Uncle R._ By which your worship means to say that, without an _ochavo_, you can't make up the _real_.[87] Well, let me think. Since the talk is about _animas, animas_ it is. Their sodality in a certain place had for mayordomo a poor _bread-lost_[88] of a member, one of those who are always like the sheep that misses the mouthful.[89] He was without a cloak, and went with teeth chattering and limbs benumbed with cold. What does he do but go and order himself a cloak made, and, without so much as saying _chuz_ or _muz_,[90] or by your leave, sirs, take money from the funds of the _animas_ to pay for it. When it came home, he put it on, and went into the street as consequential and _high-stomached_ as those rich folks recently raised from the dust. But at every step he took, some one gave the cloak a jerk, and though he kept a sharp lookout he could not see who. The instant he drew it up on the left shoulder, down it slid from the right, causing him to keep a continual hitch, hitch. You would have thought he had a thorn in his foot.

As he went along, pestered and chap-fallen, trying to make out what it could mean, he met a gossip of his, who was mayordomo to the _Hermandad del Santísimo_.[91] This fellow was stalking loftily, filling the street with his air that said, _Get out of the way, I am coming_. After "How d'ye do?" this one asked the other, "What is the matter, comrade, that you seem so down at the mouth lately?"

"Matter enough!" answered he of the souls, pulling his cloak up on the right shoulder while it slipped off from the left. "Know that in the beginning of the winter I found myself in difficulties. I had sown a _pegujar_[92] without seeing the color of wheat. My wife brought me two boys, when, with the nine I had already, one would have been too many; the delivery cost her a long sickness, and me the eyes of my face. In few, I was just stuck to the wall like a star-lizard, and hungrier than an ex-minister. I had to borrow money of the souls to get this cloak; but what the seven ails it I don't know, for, whenever I put it on, it seems as though somebody was giving it a pull here and a jerk there. Two rudder-pins couldn't hold it fast to my shoulders."

"You did wrong, my friend," responded the steward of El Santísimo. "If, like me, you had taken a loan of a great powerful and _giving_ personage, you wouldn't have to go about as you do, chased and persecuted for the debt. If you borrow of miserable destitute wretches, what can you expect but that the poor things will try to get back their own when they need it so much?"

FOOTNOTES:

[78] "The Souls"--generally said of souls in purgatory.

[79] Diminutive for Sebastiana.

[80]

"El Marques de Montegordo
Que se quedó mudo ciego y sordo."

Said of those who do not wish to speak, see, or hear.

[81] Very obstinate.

[82] _Tiene las luces espabiladas._ He has his lights snuffed, _i.e._, wits brightened--a common expression.

[83] _Ha entrado en la casaca pero la casaca no ha entrado en él._ Though he has put on soldier clothes, he hasn't gained wit by a soldier's experience.

[84] _Dejarse ir_, rule of rustic grammar, literally equivalent to "don't commit yourself."

[85] The _Tarasca_, or mammoth snake--an immense frame covered with canvas, and painted to resemble a snake--which is carried in front of the procession on the feast of Corpus Christi.

[86] Saint Thomas is the patron of smokers.

[87] A little more than a farthing, as if he had said, "Without the farthing, you can't make the fip."

[88] _Pan perdido._

[89] _Oveja que bala bocado pierde._ The sheep that baas misses a mouthful.

[90] Without saying _chuz_ or _muz_--without saying anything.

[91] Sodality of the Blessed Sacrament.

[92] Field hired of the town.

SAINT JOHN DWARF.

One day a hermit father in God,
Planting in earth a pilgrim's rod,
For holy obedience did pray
Dwarf John to water it every day.

From the far river daily brought
Silent John his water-pot;
As 'twere a soul's task done for God,
For three long years he watered the rod.

When lo! the dry wood forth did shoot,
And bear of obedience flower and fruit!
Water thy barren heart with tears,
And the same shall happen in good three years.

HOW ROME LOOKED THREE CENTURIES AGO.[93]

Let us suppose a company of travellers through Italy--strangers from foreign climes, England, Germany, and France--reaching Rome at the period of the accession of Sixtus V. to the throne of St. Peter. Approaching the Eternal City by the road from the north, they find themselves before the Porta del Popolo.

Let us go in with them, and through their eyes see the Rome of that day.

On entering the gates, they pass into an open place of irregular shape. A large convent occupies nearly the entire eastern side, which, with the graceful _campanile_, or bell-tower, of Santa Maria del Popolo, and the high houses with wide portals between the Corso, the Ripetta, and the Babuino, are the only edifices visible. The obelisk is not yet placed there by Sixtus V., and the two little churches with their heavy cupolas, so well known to the modern tourist, and the other buildings now seen there--the work of Pius VII. and the architect Valadier--did not then exist. The Piazza del Popolo was then less symmetrical, but more picturesque. Wayfarers on horseback and on foot pass to and fro; muleteers arrive and depart, driving before them lines of mules and beasts of burden. In the centre of the place women are washing at a circular basin. Idlers follow and gaze at the strangers while they make their declaration to the _bargel_, or public authority, and submit their effects to the examination of the custom officials. These preliminaries through, our travellers may pass into the city by a street leading around the base of the Pincian Hill, by another going toward the Tiber, both of which have long ceased to exist, or by the well-known Corso. Some find their way to the then celebrated and already venerable hostelry,

THE BEAR,

widely known and greatly in vogue ever since the reign of Sixtus IV. Its peculiar octagon pillars fix the period of its construction. Strange to relate, this patriarch of hotels, which has seen four centuries and twenty generations of travellers pass over its head and through its halls, has continued in existence, and is still open as a tavern in Rome to this day. True, its guests are now no longer, as they were in the sixteenth century, such personages of distinction as foreign prelates, noted scholars, philosophers like Montaigne, and, soon afterward, the earliest known tourists. Its inmates and frequenters of the nineteenth century are now country traders, cattle dealers, and wagoners.

Others of our travellers who intend to make a longer stay in Rome seek out the houses in the neighborhood of the Pantheon or the Minerva, nearly all of which are let out to strangers in rooms or suites. These apartments are luxuriously fitted up and ornamented with the then famous Cordova leather hangings, and richly sculptured and gilded furniture. Everything is brilliant to the eye, but the nineteenth century tourist would have found fault with the lack of cleanliness and the stinted supply of fresh linen.

With yet others of these travellers, let us enter

THE CORSO,

the Via Lata of the ancient Romans. There is no sign of business on it at this early day. But few of the aristocracy have as yet transferred their residences here, but it already wears an air of life and animation, and is well filled at the hours of the promenade.

We pass along between vineyards and vegetable gardens. A single large edifice just completed strikes the stranger's attention. It is the magnificent Ruspoli palace, built by Rucellai, the Florentine banker, upon the designs of his countryman Ammanati.

Now we reach the Via Condotti, to-day well-known to every American who ever saw Rome. Let us turn into it to the left, and traverse it to the Piazza della Trinita (now Piazza di Spagna), whence we may scale the hill above and obtain a commanding view of the entire city.

In doing this, we pass through the then worst quarter of Rome, physically and morally, for the triangle formed by the Corso, the Via Condotti, and the Babuino was at once of the most evil repute and the most unhealthy in all Rome. In this quarter were sure to break out all the epidemics which at that period occasionally decimated the population of Rome. Seeking to mount

THE PINCIAN HILL,

the traveller of that day might have looked in vain for the broad flight of easy marble steps we now see there, and he ascended by a steep and narrow staircase. On reaching the summit, he found himself on the _collis hortulorum_ of the Romans, and saw it still covered with vineyards and tilled fields, and the comparatively modern innovation of the garden of the Villa Medici. The elegant world of Rome in 1585 had to content themselves with taking their promenade and their enjoyment of the evening air about the Porta del Popolo, and knew naught of the charming promenade, the delightful walks, the purer breeze, and the beautiful view which later generations enjoy on the hill above it.

The great painters of the succeeding age who came to Rome, the Carracci, the Domenichinos, the Guidos, and the Salvator Rosas, were the first to discover the attractions of the Pincian Hill, and, braving custom, lack of accommodation, the bad neighborhood, and the unhealthy contiguity of the quarter below, were the first to establish themselves upon it. This was the foundation of the modern Pincian settlement.

Some years ago, the writer of this article occupied apartments in the first house to the right on reaching the summit of the Pincian steps. The tradition of the house ran to the effect that these rooms had been occupied by Salvator Rosa; and if, as they say, he selected them for the sake of their view of the setting sun, he chose well, for all the sunsets of Rome may there be seen to the best advantage. As an American, however, views of the setting sun in Italy were not specially attractive to us, and we always regretted for Salvator Rosa's sake that he had never seen a transatlantic sunset, compared with which those at Naples and Rome are tame spectacles. The traditional "beauty of an Italian sunset" is one of the many English provincialisms we have adopted and believed in along with numerous other errors embalmed in the literature of England. But we forget that we are standing on the Pincian in 1585. All is silent and deserted around us, and Rome is spread out at our feet.

To the left are the salient points, the seven hills--for the Pincian was not one of them--the towers of the Capitol, the ruins of the palace of the Cæsars in the Farnese gardens on the Palatine, the belfry of Santa Maria Maggiore on the Esquiline, the Quirinal, as yet without the imposing mass of the pontifical palace. The Rospigliosi palace was not yet built, but the villa of Cardinal Sforza is seen, the same afterward known as the Barberini palace. We turn our eyes upon the lower city--inhabited Rome--and with difficulty make out but three or four cupolas. On the other hand, we see a perfect forest of towers on every side, some of them of prodigious size. On the left bank of the Tiber, many of these towers have of late years disappeared, but the Trastevere, as might be expected, is still full of them--so full, indeed, that a distant view of that quarter presents the appearance of a comb turned teeth upward. At that period, these towers were the universal appendage of an aristocratic dwelling. San Gemiguiano near Sienna is the only city in all Italy which has preserved them to this day.

As our stranger of three hundred years ago looks over Rome and listens to the confused noises which meet his ear, he is struck with the rarity of the sound of bells and with the small number of churches discernible. The great Catholic reaction consequent on the Reformation had for fifty years moved souls, but had not yet begun to move the stones. It is the following era which is to imprint upon Rome the architectural marks of the church triumphant. Later in the day, when our strangers shall have descended into the city and entered the churches, they will be struck with the barrenness of their interiors, and with the absence of paintings. They are probably ignorant of the fact that in Italy, during the middle ages, there was but one altar in a church, that there alone Mass was celebrated, that the mosaics and frescoes came in with architectural innovation, and that only toward the end of the sixteenth century were altars and oil-paintings multiplied with the side chapels.

And yet this comparative quiet of the city was animation itself, compared with the sights and sounds discernible from the same point at the period when the popes returned to Rome from Avignon.

ROME IN 1400.

The residence of the Cæsars was covered with fields, vineyard, and pasture. The Pantheon, the Coliseum, some ruins, and detached columns alone arose over the surrounding waste as witnesses of former grandeur.

It was at this period that the Forum received the name of "The Cow Pasture" (Campo Vaccino). A remnant of life yet remained in the plain extending between the Tiber, the Pincian Hill, and the Capitoline, but the total population of Rome was reduced to 17,000 souls, the great majority of them huddled together and crowded in hovels clustered under the shadow of the baronial and aristocratic strongholds. High battlemented towers filled the city. Of the scores in the Trastevere, that of the Auguilara family exists to this day. On the Tiberine island arose the Frangipani towers, on the left bank those of the Orsini, from the Porta del Popolo to the Quirinal those of the Colonna, while the towers of the Mellini and the Sanguigni may still be seen on the site of the stadium of Domitian.

Of all the seven hills of Rome, one only had not fallen into the hands of the barons. The Capitoline was still held by the people. But commerce, industry, and the arts had all disappeared. Rome had long been cut off from connection with the active world, and when the work of material revival and rebuilding began, not only architects and sculptors, but stone masons and carpenters had to be brought in from Tuscany and Umbria.

AN ARCHITECTURAL RETROSPECT.

Under the pontificates of Sixtus IV. and his two successors, Pintelli, a pupil of Brunellesco, ornamented Rome with such monuments as San Pietro _in Montorio_, the façade of St. Peter, and the Sistine Chapel. He brought to his work the boldness and taste of his master, who had made profound study of the monuments of ancient Rome.