Chapter X: A Despairing Chapter (6)

"But, alas! our horizon, too, begins to be clouded. The
harmony that heretofore prevailed between the various
churches and denominations begins to be disturbed.
Then we had in the last two years the conventions
at Pittsburg and Philadelphia. The men united there
meant to insert God in our constitution, as we have
him already on our coins, by the inscription, 'In God
we trust.' They intend to christianize our country,
against the clear and emphatic spirit and letter of the
constitution. And I must leave it to the learned judge
of the Supreme Court of the United States who presided
over those meetings, to decide whether this future
Christian country hereafter shall be a Catholic or a
Protestant country.

"The Roman Catholic press and pulpit are not slow in
answering this question. With praiseworthy frankness
and manliness they declare the intentions of their
church. Father Hecker says: 'In fifteen years we will
take this country and build our institutions over the
grave of Protestantism.... There is, ere long, to
be a state religion in this country, and that state
religion is to be Roman Catholic.' Bishop O'Connor, of
Pittsburg, says: 'Religious liberty is merely endured
until the opposite can be carried into effect without
peril to the Catholic world.' The Archbishop of St.
Louis says: 'If the Catholics ever gain, which they
surely will, an immense numerical majority, religious
freedom in this country will be at an end.' And the
Pope speaks of the 'delirium of toleration, and asserts
the right to punish criminals in the order of ideas.'

"This language is plain, unequivocal, and cannot be
misinterpreted. Still, I am not an alarmist. I have too
much faith in the sound common sense of the American
people that they should barter away their political
birthright for any theological or clerical controversy.
They are too much addicted to the policy of 'a second
sober thought,' that, after having first of all taught
the human race the invaluable blessings of religious
liberty, they should discard them just now, when the
whole civilized world is imitating the glorious example
set by our great and noble sires.

"But, 'vigilance being the price of liberty,' in the
face of this assertion it is not only right, but
an imperative duty, to enlighten ourselves on this
all-important subject, so that we may take our choice,
and perform our duties as true, loyal citizens and
true, loyal Americans."

This is very much to the purpose, and if it shows that the rabbi is no friend of Protestant Christianity, it shows that his principal hostility is to the Catholic Church, as the body and support of Christianity. He exults, as well he may, over the falling away from the church of the old Catholic governments of Europe, for one of the chief instruments in effecting that apostasy has been precisely his Hebrew brethren, the great supporters of the anti-Catholic revolution of modern times; and his slanders on the Catholic Church are in the very spirit of the Evangelical Alliance, even to the false charges he brings against distinguished individual Catholics. The assertion that "Father Hecker says, 'In fifteen years we will take this country and build our institutions over the grave of Protestantism,'" as that other assertion, "There is or ought to be a state religion in this country, and that state religion is to be Roman Catholic,'" Father Hecker himself assures us, is false. He never did, nor with his views ever could, say anything of the sort. Bishop O'Connor, late of Pittsburg, never did and never could have said, "Religious liberty is merely endured until the opposite can be carried into effect without peril to the Catholic world." We happen to know that his views were and are very different; and if they were not, he is too shrewd to commit the blunder of saying anything like what is falsely attributed to him, or to disclose such an ulterior purpose. We may say as much of the sentiment attributed to the Archbishop of St. Louis. The archbishop never uttered or entertained it. Something like what is ascribed to him was said, many years ago, by Mr. Bakewell, in _The Shepherd of the Valley_, a paper published at St. Louis, but he was assailed by the Catholic press all over the country, and, if he did not retract it, at least endeavored to explain it away, and to show that he meant no such thing. The archbishop never said it, and was no more responsible for it than was the Rabbi Lilienthal himself. No Catholic prelate and no distinguished Catholic layman even has ever proposed any amendment to the constitution in regard to the relations of church and state in this country, or has expressed any wish to have the existing constitutional relations changed, or in any respect modified. The church is satisfied with them, and only asks that they be faithfully observed. She opposes the separation of church and state in the sense of releasing the state from all moral and religious obligations, for that would imply the subjection of the church to the state, and prove the grave of religious freedom and independence, which she always and everywhere asserts with all her energy against kings, emperors, nobilities, and peoples--against Jew, Pagan, Mussulman, schismatic, and heretic, and it is for this that they conspire against her and seek her destruction.

The rabbi says, "First the state, then the church," which is as absurd as to say, "First man, then God." The state represents simply a human authority, while the church, or the synagogue even, represents--the first for the Catholic, the second for the Jew--the sovereignty of God, or the divine authority in human affairs, and the rabbi in his doctrine is false alike to Moses and to Christ, and as little of an orthodox Jew as he is of a Christian believer. Yet he agrees perfectly with Judge Hurlbut and Dr. Bellows in asserting the supremacy of the state or secular order, and the subordination of the spiritual order. We do not know whether the rabbi means to approve or censure the assumption, by Peter the Great, of the headship of the Russian Church and his government of it by the sword; but Peter only acted on the principle, "First the state, then the church," and the slavery of the Russian Church to the state is only an inevitable consequence of that principle or maxim. The Russian Church, governed by the Holy Synod, itself governed by the Czar, presents a lively image of the abject position religion would be compelled to hold in every country if the doctrine of the total separation of church and state, and the independence and supremacy of the state, advocated by one or another of the three men we are criticising, were to prevail and to be embodied in the civil code.

But let this pass. It is clear that the rabbi, and therefore the Jews, so far as he represents them, are to be included in the great conspiracy against the liberty and equality of Catholics, or religious liberty recognized and guaranteed by the American states. Catholics are to be put down and their church suppressed by the strong arm of power. To prepare the American people for this proposed revolution in the American system, this suppression of religious liberty, a system of gross misrepresentation of Catholic faith and practice, of misstatements, calumnious charges, and downright lying respecting the church, is resorted to and persisted in as it was by the reformers in the sixteenth century. "Lie, lie stoutly," Voltaire said, though it was said long before him; "something will stick." We do not like to say this, but truth will not permit us to soften our statement or to use milder terms. There is nothing too harsh or too false for the anti-Catholic press and the anti-Catholic preachers and lecturers to say of our holy religion, and nothing can be more unlike the Catholic Church than their pretended representations of her--too unlike, indeed, even to be called caricatures, for they catch not one of her features. Even when the anti-Catholic writers and speakers tell facts about Catholics or in the history of the church, they so tell them as to distort the truth and to produce the effect of falsehood, or draw inferences from them wholly unwarranted. We must, then, be excused if we sometimes call the systematic misrepresentation of our religion, our church, and ourselves by its true and expressive name, even though it may seem harsh and impolite. The batteries they discharge against the church are not to be silenced by bouquets of roses.

The public has become too well informed as to Catholic doctrines and usages to permit the repetition, with much effect, of many of the old charges and calumnies. Only the very ignorant can be made to believe that the church is the Babylonian sorceress who makes the nations drunk with the wine of her fornications; that she is "the mystery of iniquity"; that the Pope is "the man of sin," or Antichrist; that our nunneries are brothels, and their vaults are filled with the skeletons of murdered infants, of which Luther discoursed to his friends with so much unction in his Tischreden over his pot of beer. These things are a little out of date, and do not gain the ready credence they once did. The age is all for liberty, for progress, for enlightenment; so the anti-Catholic tactics change to suit the times. James I. of England, as did the politicians of France opposed to the Ligue, charged the church with being hostile to monarchy and the divine right of kings. The charge now is that she is opposed to republicanism, and denies the divine right of the people, or, more strictly, of the demagogues. She is said to be a spiritual despotism, the foster-mother of ignorance and superstition, the enemy of science and of progress, of intelligence and liberty, individual and social, civil and religious. Her religious houses are dens of cruelty and tyranny, and if she is permitted to continue and spread her peculiar institutions over this country, American democracy will be destroyed, and American liberty be but a memory, etc., etc.

The cry is not now, the truth is in danger, the Gospel is in danger, religion is in danger, but the republic is in danger, democracy is in danger, liberty is in danger. The church, the moment she gets the power, will, it is argued, abolish our political system, establish a monarchy, abolish religious liberty, and cut the throats of all heretics and infidels, or send them to the stake to be consumed in a fire of green wood, as Calvin did Michael Servetus. And there are not wanting fools enough to believe it or dishonest men enough to pretend to believe it when they do not, though it is evident that the republic is likely to pass away, if things go on in the political world as they are now going, and be succeeded by anarchy or a military despotism long before the majority of the people will cease to war against the church as anti-democratic. But the point to be noted here is that all these charges assume the supremacy of the secular order, and allege not that the church is false, is not the church of God, but that she is hostile to democracy or democratic institutions; in other words, that she does not conform to popular opinion, for democracy is nothing but popular opinion erected into law. Now, as we do not believe that popular opinion, inconstant as the wind, is infallible, or that the secular order is supreme, we are not sure that it would be a fatal objection to the church even if what is alleged against her were well founded. The arguments against the church of this sort are drawn from too low a level to command any intelligent respect, and they are all based on a false assumption. Politics are not higher than religion; the state is not above the church; the secular order is not above the spiritual; and it is only atheism that can assert the contrary. To a terrible extent, the supremacy of the secular is the doctrine of our age and country; but Catholics hold it to be both false and dangerous, as incompatible with the liberty and independence of religion, with natural morality, and even with the existence of natural society, as it is with the sovereignty of God. It is the doctrine of the European revolutionists and communists, and is sapping the life and threatening the very existence of our American republicanism--has already reduced our government to be little else than an agency for promoting the private interests of business men, bankers, manufacturers, and railroad corporations. Our elections are becoming a wretched farce, for the monopolists govern the government, let what party may succeed at the polls. The State governments cannot control them, and the General Government just as little.

We will not so dishonor the church or insult religion as to undertake to refute these popular charges against her, and to prove that her authority is not incompatible with the existence and salutary working of republican government. The charges are addressed to ignorance and prejudice; we take higher ground, and maintain that civil society can no more dispense with the church, than the body with the soul. The secular is insufficient for itself, and needs the informing life and vigor of the spiritual. The political history of France since 1682, especially since 1789, proves it to all men who are capable of tracing effects to their causes. There is no form of government more in need of the church than the republican, founded on the modern doctrine of popular sovereignty, and the maxim, the majority must rule. The habit of regarding power as emanating from the mass, as derived from low to high, tends itself to debase the mind, to destroy that respect for law, and that reverence for authority, without which no government performs in a peaceable and orderly way its legitimate functions. The American people see nothing divine, nothing sacred and inviolable, in their government; they regard law as an emanation of their own will, as their own creation, and what creator can feel himself bound to reverence and obey his own creature? We need the church to consecrate the government, to give the law a spiritual sanction, to create in us habits of reverence, of submission, and docility, and to impress us with the conviction that civil obedience is a moral duty, and that we must be loyal to legitimate authority for conscience' sake. We need the church to teach us that in obeying the laws not repugnant to the divine law, we are obeying not men, which is slavery, but God, which is freedom, and the very principle of all freedom. We need her to create in us high and holy aspirations, to produce in us those high and disinterested virtues, without which civil government is impotent for good, and powerful only for evil. No man who believes not in the sovereignty of truth, in the supremacy of right, and feels it not his duty to obey it at all hazards, has the temper demanded in a republic, and only the church can create it.

A government built on interest, however enlightened, on sentiment, however charming, or public opinion, however just, is a house built on the sand. It rests on nothing fixed and permanent, is without stability or efficiency, and tends always to fall and bury the people in its ruins. We see this in our own political history. It would be difficult to find a government more corrupt than ours, that taxes the people more heavily, or that does less for the public good, the advantages we had at the start being taken into the account. The good that has been done, the great things accomplished, have been accomplished by the people in spite of the government, and our record as a nation can hardly put that of Prussia or Russia to shame.

We do not choose to dwell on this aspect of the case, although much more might be said. We love our country, have been bred to love republicanism, and have the success of the American experiment at heart. The evils which the liberals charge to the union of church and state, and hold the church responsible for, spring, as every impartial and intelligent student of history knows, not from the union but from the separation of church and state, and the unremitting efforts of the civil power to usurp the functions of the spiritual power, and to make the church the accomplice of its policy. The terrible struggles of the pope and emperor in the middle ages had this cause and no other. The pope simply sought to maintain against the emperor the freedom and independence of the church, the kingdom of God on earth, that is, true religious liberty. It is to the partial, in some countries the complete, triumph of the secular over the spiritual, that we must attribute the unsettled, disorderly, and revolutionary state of contemporary society throughout the civilized world, the hatred or contempt of authority both divine and human, the depression of religion, the decline of intellectual greatness, the substitution of opinion for faith, a sickly sentimentalism for a manly and robust piety, free-loveism or divorce _ad libitum_ for Christian marriage, and the general abasement of character.

The evils are very real, but the more perfect divorce of the state from the church would not cure or lessen, but only aggravate and intensify them; nay, would to all human foresight render them incurable. The state without religion or moral obligation is impotent to redress social evils or to elevate society, and Protestantism, which holds from the people, and depends for its very breath of life on popular opinion, is no less impotent than the state. Protestantism, having retained some elements of religion from the church, may, we readily concede, do something to retard the fall of a nation that accepts it, but when a Protestant nation has once fallen, become morally and politically corrupt, rotten to the core, it has no power to restore it; for it has no principle of life to infuse into it above and beyond that which it already has. Resting on human authority, holding from the nation or people, its life is only the national life itself; and, of course, when the national life grows weak, its own life grows weak, and when the national life is extinct, its own life becomes extinct with it. Cut off from the church of God, and therefore from Him who is "the way, the truth, and the life," it cannot draw new supplies of life from the Fountain of Life itself, with which to revive and reinvigorate the fallen nation.

This is wherefore there is no hope for our republic under Protestantism. There has been a sad falling-off in the virtue, the honesty, the integrity, the chastity, and public spirit of our people in the last fifty years. The old habits formed under Catholic discipline and influences are wearing out, if not worn out; intellectual culture may be more general, though even that may be questioned, but it is less generous, thorough, and profound; meeting-houses may be increased in greater proportion than the population itself, but theology is less studied--is less intellectual, less scientific, and is more superficial; and religion has less hold on the conscience, and less influence on life, public, private, or domestic; and we may say, generally, that in all save what belongs to the material order, our republic has a downward tendency. Now, since Protestantism has nothing more or higher than the republic, and no recuperative power, how, then, can it possibly arrest this downward tendency and turn it upward, and save the nation? Archimedes wanted something whereon to stand outside of the world in order to move it. This Protestantism has not, for it rests on the world, and has nothing above the world or outside of it, and in fact is only the world itself. To every one who understands the great law of mechanic force, which has its analogue in the great principle of moral or spiritual dynamics, it is clear that the hope of the republic is not and cannot be in Protestantism, and there is just as little in the civil order, for that, divorced from the church and without any moral obligation, is precisely that which needs saving. The union of the various Protestant sects in one organic body, if it were possible, would avail nothing; for the whole would be only the sum of the parts, and the parts having no supermundane life, the whole could have none.

Hence we say that whatever hope there is for our republic is in the growth and predominance of the Catholic Church in the minds and hearts of the American people; and there is a well-grounded hope for it only in the prospect that she may before it is too late become the church of the great majority. The church has what Archimedes wanted, and Protestantism has not--the whereon to stand outside and above the world. She lives a life which is not derived from the life of the world, and is in communion with the Source of life itself, whence she may be constantly drawing fresh supplies, and infusing into the nation a life above the national life in its best estate, and which, infused into the nation, becomes for it a recuperative energy, and enables it to arrest its downward tendency, and to ascend to a new and higher life. It is not without a reason, then, founded in the nature of things, that we tell our countrymen that Protestantism may ruin the republic, but cannot save it, any more than it can the soul of the individual; and that, instead of crying out against the church like madmen, as hostile to the republic, they should rather turn their eyes toward her as their only source of help, and learn that she can and will save the republic, if they will only allow her to do it.

Yet we urge not this as the motive for accepting the teaching of the church and submitting to her authority and discipline. Our Lord says to us, "Seek first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you," but he does not bid us or permit us to seek the kingdom of God and his justice for the sake of "these things," or the _adjicienda_; he forbids us to be solicitous for them, since it is for them that the heathen are solicitous. The only motive for a man to become a Catholic, to believe what she teaches and to do what she commands, is that she is the kingdom of God on earth, and that it is only in so doing that he can possess "his justice," please God, or attain to eternal life. Christ did not come, as a temporal prince, to found--as the carnal Jews, misinterpreting the prophecies, expected--an earthly kingdom, or to create an earthly paradise; but he came as a spiritual prince to establish the reign of his Father on earth in all human affairs, and over all men and nations, and whatever temporal good is secured is not the end or reason of his kingdom, but is simply incidental to it. It is no reason why I should or should not be a Catholic because the church favors or does not favor one or another particular theory or constitution of civil government, but the fact that she does not favor a particular form of civil polity, if it be a fact, is sufficient reason why I should not favor it, for it proves that such form is repugnant to the sovereignty of God and the supremacy of his law. As a matter of fact, however, the church has never condemned any particular form of civil polity or erected one form or another into a Catholic dogma, and a man may be a monarchist, a republican, or a democrat, as he pleases, and at the same time be a good and irreproachable Catholic, if he hold the political power subordinate to the divine sovereignty.

The church is necessary to sustain a republican form of government, but it is also necessary to sustain any other form, as a wise, just, and efficient civil government. The error of those we are combating is not in that they are democrats or anti-democrats, but in holding that the state or secular order is sufficient for itself, can stand of itself without the aid of religion or the church, has no need of the spiritual, and has in fact the right to brush religion aside as an impertinent intermeddler whenever it comes in its way, or seeks to dictate or influence its policy. This is a gross error, condemned by all religion, all philosophy, and all experience. It is the old epicurean error that excludes the divine authority from the direction or control of human affairs, and in its delirium sings,

"Let the gods go to sleep up above us."

It is at bottom pure atheism, nothing more, nothing less. It is a pure absurdity. Can the creation stand without the creator? Can the contingent subsist without the necessary? Can the body live and perform its functions without the soul which is its principle of life; the dependent without that on which it depends? In the whole history of the world, you will not find an instance of a purely atheistical state, or a state held to be completely divorced from the spiritual order. There is no instance in all history of a state without some sort of religion, even an established religion, or religion which the state recognizes as its supreme law, and does its best or worst to enforce. We here, as well as in England, as well as at any time in any European country, have an established religion which the law protects and enforces on all its citizens, only it is a mutilated religion, a religion without dogmas, and called morality. If not so, whence is it the law punishes murder or arson, and forbids polygamy, or the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes? Even Jacobins erect their jacobinism into a religion, and make it obligatory on the state to persecute, to exterminate all who dare oppose it. Have we not seen it despoil the Holy See of its independence and possessions, confiscate the goods of the church, exile holy bishops from their sees and their country in Italy, and within a few weeks shoot down the Archbishop of Paris and a large number of priests and religious, suspend public worship, desecrate and plunder the churches, and banish all religion but their jacobinism from the schools? No state tolerates any religion hostile to its own established religion, and the most intolerant and cruel persecutors in the world are precisely those who clamor loudest for religious liberty.

There is no such thing as a complete divorce of church and state practicable in any country on earth. The only question is, Shall the state be informed and directed by the infallible and holy church of God, or by the synagogue of Satan? No man who is at all competent to pass a judgment on the question but agrees with the Syllabus in condemning not the distinction, but the separation of church and state; but the forms of the union of the two powers, whose harmonious action is necessary to the normal state of society, may vary according to circumstances. In countries where the state refuses to recognize frankly and fully the freedom and independence of the spiritual order, it may be necessary to regulate the relation of church and state by concordats; in others, where the state recognizes the independence of the spiritual order, and holds itself bound to protect the rights of the religion adopted by its citizens, as hitherto with us, no concordats are necessary, for the state does not claim any competence in spirituals. In this country the relation between the two powers has, with a few exceptions, been satisfactory, and the church has been free. But there is on foot a formidable conspiracy against her freedom, and it is beginning to be maintained pretty determinedly that the majority of the people, being Protestant, and the people being the state, have the right and the duty as the state to sustain Protestantism, and outlaw and suppress the church.

FOOTNOTE:

[156] 1. _Church and State in America._ A Discourse given at Washington, D. C., at the installation of Rev. Frederic Hinckley as Pastor of the Unitarian Church, January 25, 1871. By Rev. Henry W. Bellows, D.D. Washington, D. C.: Philp & Solomons. 1871. 8vo, pp. 22.

2. _A Secular View of Religion in the State, and of the Bible in the Public Schools._ By E. P. Hurlbut. Albany: Munsell. 1870. 8vo, pp. 55.

DRAMATIC MORALISTS IN SPANISH AMERICA.

The truth is slowly dawning, at least to curious minds, that the people of the southern half of our New World have tastes not dissimilar to our own. Indeed, they seek other arts than those of revolution, and, here and there, have other stages and actors than those which represent the _pronunciamiento_, with all its malicious bombast and insignificant "sound and fury." We can count poets, novelists, painters, sculptors, scientists in the ranks of the most distinguished men of our nearest sister republic. Cuba, too, rejoices in the genius of her philosophic scholar, Caballero de la Luz, and of her poets, Heredia and Gertrudiz de Avellañeda, with the same spirit which Mexico brings to her admiration of the scientific versatility of Siguenza, the quaint ideality of Sor Juana Inez, and the literary culture of Carpio and Pesado. Nevertheless, such facts as these have aided but little in forming the common estimate of Spanish-American peoples, who are to some of us scarcely more than a Bedouin rabble fighting problematic wild-beasts in the shape of pronouncers, and struggling through clouds of desert-dust and battle-smoke to the light of freedom. That great rude reserve of race, the Indians, without which the business of one-half the continent could not be carried on, seems to be swept out of our moral consideration as with a broom; yet we must think hopefully of a race which has produced an artist so extraordinary as Cabrera and a ruler so enduring and persistent as Juarez--hopefully, at all events, of their mere abilities, if mother church does not teach us to look with a shrewder and kindlier eye upon their moral capabilities. In more than one country of Spanish America we find Indians among presidents, judges, governors, congressmen, writers, artists; and this being the case, historically or actually, why should it be a matter of surprise that Spanish America, with whatever Old World culture she may possess in union with native aptitude, should have some claims upon our attention on the score of taste and intelligence? Part of these claims we propose to set forth.

The present writer has sat in the orderly theatres of Vera Cruz and Mexico, and seen performances substantially as good as those of our northern capitals. The _Zarzuelas_, or operettas, of Barbieri and Gatzambide were as pleasant in 1868-69 to their hearers in the southern republic as the French comic opera to New Yorkers, and nevertheless seemed decent and spirited; besides, the Mexicans had the good fortune to enjoy Gatzambide's personal direction of his _Zarzuelas_, and Gatzambide (now deceased) was one of the most popular musicians of Spain. Another celebrity the Mexicans honored in the person of José Valero, a gentlemanlike Spanish actor, whose superior in versatile genius as tragedian and comedian it would be difficult to find anywhere. Entertainments were plentiful in Moctezuma's city, though subsisting, so to speak, upon diminished rations. Round about all these flickering pleasures flowed the strange dark tide of Mexican life--its ragged multitude, its concealed miseries, its settled and common melancholy, not to be dissipated by any class of illusions, not to be shaken off in a day, or a year, or any brief term of years. Nevertheless, the misfortunes of a war-worn people found as tasteful and respectable a solace as their theatres could afford. Their scholars were even encouraged to revive and celebrate some ancient glories of the Mexican stage; and at the opening of a season they crowned the bust of one of the fathers of the Spanish drama, whom with reason they regard as among the greatest of the small band of very eminent Mexicans. This laurelled bust was but one of a number to be seen in the various theatres, in several instances perpetuating the memory of Mexico's own dramatic authors. On the occasion referred to, poems by well-known poets--and, among the rest, if the writer remembers correctly, an eloquent composition by the highly-esteemed blind poet, Juan Valle--preluded the revival of that celebrated comedy, _La Verdad Sospechosa_, or, The Truth Suspected.

JUAN RUIZ DE ALARCON.

The author of this play was Alarcon, that thoughtful writer who, on the Spanish stage, ranks with Lope, Calderon, Moreto, and Tirso. Strange as it may appear to those who doubt whether any good can come out of Mexico, he was born and bred in that mysterious country. What his countrymen do not know of their great artist, Cabrera, they are able to tell of their chief literary glory--namely, the place and date of his baptism. Documents found in the royal university of Mexico established the several facts that Juan Ruiz de Alarcon y Mendoza was baptized in that city on the 2d day of October, 1572, and received the grade of licentiate or lawyer from the university. It was for some time asserted that he was born at Tasco (for whose church Cabrera is said to have painted extraordinary works); but Chalco, not far from the capital, has also laid claim to the honor of his birth. He is represented as short, ugly, and humpbacked. To improve his fortunes, he sought the literary life of Madrid, but his first efforts were deemed of little importance. By the year 1621 he had written eight acted comedies, of which _Las Paredes Oyen_ (The Walls Hear) is esteemed the best, as also one of the finest in any language. In spite of his physical imperfections his genius won him admirers, socially as well as otherwise. In 1628, he became clerk to the Council of the Indies, and held his office till his death in 1639; so that it seems our author was a contemporary of Shakespeare, Webster, Jonson, and other great lights of the English drama. His comedies are lauded as forming a system of practical philosophy, inasmuch as they give a delightful verification of the proverbial wisdom of his time, and preach capital sermons from common texts. "Luck and Labor," "The World's Favors," "No Evil that does not come for Good," "Before you Marry see what you are about," "The Truth made Suspicious," are the suggestive titles of some of his dramas, which appear to have lost nothing of their peculiar excellence by pointing morals. It was Alarcon who said:

To kill an enemy is argument
Of fearing him; but to despise and spare him
Is greater chastisement, for while he lives
He is a witness of his own defeat.
He that kills, victory abbreviates,
And he that pardons makes it the more great,
As meanwhile that the conquered lives
The conqueror goes on conquering.

To give to comedy a conscience and a purpose is the distinguishing design of Alarcon; but, while the public of Madrid never failed to perceive the moral of his humor, they could yet heartily laugh at the wit of his dialogues and the genuine comicality of his situations. In his plays cool reason walked hand in hand with sentiment and pleasantry, as they do in some of the most admired comedies of our own stage. The delight with which the Mexicans witnessed _La Verdad Sospechosa_ proved that to Alarcon belonged not merely the ingenuity by which men are amused, but something of that magic by which their own wit and humor are excited. Alarcon could give logic to a whim, a fancy, or a passion. In the _Prueba de las Promesas_ his lover expostulates:

If Beauty's faithful lover I have been,
Esteeming though despised; loving, abhorred;
What law allows to thee, what text approves
That thou shouldst hate me because I do love thee?

An apology for woman made by a servant in _Todo es Ventura_ (Luck is Everything) may be translated thus:

What is it that we most condemn in maids?
Inconstancy of mind? We taught them so.
The love of money? It's a thing in taste--
Or let that righteous fellow throw a stone
Who is not guilty of the self-same fault.
Of being easy? Well, what must they do,
If no man perseveres and all get tired
At the fourth day of trying? Of being hard?
Why do we thus complain when we, too, all
Run to extremes? If difficult our suit
We hate it, and if easy we despise.

In _Ganar Amigos_ (To Gain Friends) Don Fernando has killed the brother of Don Fadrique, and seeks and obtains refuge with the latter, who, however, does not know him. Don Fadrique, though at length made aware of the truth, faithfully keeps the pledge he has given the slayer of his brother. Seeing this, Don Fernando gratefully exclaims:

The earth whereon thou stand'st shall be my altar.

_Fadrique._ Rise, sir; give me no thanks, as do I not
This deed for you, but for my honor's self,
For I have plighted unto you my word.

In the comedy of _Mudarse por Mejorarse_ (To Change for the Better; or, more literally, to Change in order to Better One's Self), a certain Don Garcia, who was to marry Doña Clara, falls in love with her niece Leonor; whence this dialogue:

_Leonor._ Is it, perchance, Don Garcia,
The custom in Madrid to fall in love
With niece and aunt at one and the same time?

_Garcia._ At least, if so divine a niece comes there
As you, the custom is to leave the aunt.

_Leonor._ A bad one, then.

_Garcia._ It is not to be called
Bad, if such matter be the occasion.

_Leonor._ How can a reason be for changefulness?

_Garcia._ One's self to better is the best of reasons.

_Leonor._ Well, there's a law of constancy: to what
Doth it oblige, whereunto doth it reach,
If it be right one beauty to forswear
For a greater? Constancy's not to love
Unchangeably the love more beautiful;
To love the best what firmness do we need?
He constant is who doth despise the more
Happy occasion.

_Garcia._ I confess, sweet lady
That's to be constant, but it's to be foolish.

_Leonor._ Then cannot you in one who'd be discreet
Have confidence, as change is to be excused
By gain of fairer subject?

_Garcia._ It is clear.

_Leonor._ Well, be it so; and for I think thee, sir,
A man judicious, and thou leav'st my aunt
To make thyself the better so by me,
Pray do excuse me of thy love, since must
I give thy suit resistance till I know
If I've another and a fairer niece.

The discreet Leonor, compromised by the entangling suit of Don Garcia, is compelled to admit the attentions of a gallant and rich marquis, with whom at last she falls in love. The following passage explains the rest:

_Garcia._ How, cruel one,
Hast changed so soon?

_Leonor._ Yes, for the better.

_Mencia_ (_aside_). She gave't him, then, with his own flower.

_Garcia._ Ungrateful, is not thy disdain enough
Without the aggravation--making him,
The marquis, better?

_Leonor._ Wilt deny the improvement?
Although in blood thou'rt equal, yet between
Little and ample fortune, and between
Your worship and your lordship--?

_Garcia._ Yea, I grant:
But what effect hast given thy words,
Thy promise, tyrant, if thou hast all changed
By taking better subject? Where's constancy
If thou hast liked me only when thou couldst not
_Better_ thyself? She only constant is
Who doth despise the opportunity.

_Leonor._ I do confess to thee, Don Garcia,
That's to be constant, but it's to be foolish.

Here is the "retort courteous" in its most charming humor. The gallant grace and wit of these dialogues are evidence of the original art with which Alarcon could make his comedy a study of life, and compel his auditors to think somewhat after they ceased to laugh. This is the function of eminent high comedy, though we may not ask that it shall elaborate a severe or intrusive moral, and though we admit its possession, as in Shakespeare, of the liveliest poetic qualities. Another passage, this time from the famous _Verdad Sospechosa_, wherein Don Beltran reprimands his son, Don Garcia, for the vice of habitual lying, will further elucidate the method of Alarcon:

_Beltran._ Are you a gentleman, Garcia?

_Garcia._ --I believe
I am your son.

_Beltran._ --And is it, then, enough,
To be my son to be a gentleman?

_Garcia._ I think so, sir.

_Beltran._ --What a mistaken thought!
Consists in acting like a gentleman
To be one. What gave birth to noble houses!
The illustrious deeds of their first authors, sir.
Without consideration of their births, the deeds
Of humble men honored their heirs. 'Tis doing
Good or ill makes gentleman or villain.

_Garcia._ That deeds give nobleness I'll not deny,
But who will say birth does not also give it?

_Beltran._ Well, then, if honor can be gained by him
Who was born without it, is't not certain that,
Vice versa, he can lose it who was born
With it?

_Garcia._ --'Tis true.

_Beltran._ --Then if you basely act,
Although my son, no longer you will be
A gentleman. So if your habits shame
You here in town, an ancient crest will not
Signify, nor noble ancestors serve.
What is't report says to me? That your lies
Are all the talk of Salamanca. Now,
If't affronts noble or plebeian but
To _tell_ him that he lies, what is't to lie
Itself? If honorless I live the while
On him who gave the lie I take not full
Revenge--is your sword long enough or breast
So stout that you esteem yourself all able
To have revenge when all the city says
You lie? Is't possible a man can have
Such abject thoughts that unto vice he can
Live subject without pleasure, without gain?
A morbid pleasure have the sensual,
The power of money draws the covetous;
The taste of viands have the gluttonous;
A purpose and a pastime hath the gambler;
The homicide his hate, the thief his aim;
Fame with ambition cheers the warrior;
In short, doth every vice some pleasure give
Or profit--but for lying, what remains
But infamy and contempt?

Who could preach with more wit a brief sermon like this than Alarcon? It is no small honor to the dramatist born in Mexico that the great Corneille, who, if we may credit the biographers of Alarcon, partly translated and partly imitated _La Verdad Sospechosa_ in his famous _Menteur_, could avow that he would give two of his best plays to have invented the happy argument of the Spanish original. Molière and Voltaire were also among the admirers of the Spanish comedy, which Corneille at first judged to be the work of Lope de Vega. Of the general merits of Alarcon, the following estimate by his German critic, Schack, which we find in a Mexican notice of the dramatist, will doubtless suffice: "Happy in painting comic characters in order to chastise vice, as in the invention and development of heroes to make virtue adorable; rapid in action, sober in ornament; inferior to Lope in tender respect of feminine creations, to Moreto in liveliest comedy, to Firso in travesty, to Calderon in grandeur and stage effect, he excelled all of them in the variety and perfection of his figures, in the tact of managing them, in equality of style, in carefulness of versification, in correctness of language." To this large and discriminating praise we may add George Ticknor's comprehensive dictum: "On the whole, he is to be ranked with the very best Spanish dramatists during the best period of the National Theatre."

SOR JUANA INEZ DE LA CRUZ.

It would not be proper to dismiss from the list of Spanish-American dramatic writers Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz, although the subjects to which this pious woman yielded her inventive imagination were mainly or wholly religious. She wrote, be it remembered, in that remarkable seventeenth century when a muse of religion walked through the scenes of the stage as well as through the gardens of the convent. Then were the patriarchs and apostles, the prophets and saints, the chief personages of a peculiar drama; and events and circumstances of the divine tragedy inspired such compositions as the Loas and Autos. It is upon one of these latter compositions that her merit as a dramatic writer rests; and we are glad to confirm in great part an opinion of her genius hitherto expressed by us, by here recalling the judgment of that eminent European critic of Spanish literature, Bouterwek, the more especially as our own Spanish scholar, Ticknor, seems to have inflicted such ungracious disparagement upon the subject of our notice: "Much as Inez de la Cruz was deficient in real cultivation," says Bouterwek, "her productions are eminently superior to the ordinary standard of female poetry.... The poems of Inez de la Cruz breathe a sort of masculine spirit. This poetic nun possessed more fancy and wit than sentimental enthusiasm, and whenever she began to invent her creations were on a bold and great scale. Her poems are of very unequal merit, and are all deficient in critical cultivation. But in facility of invention and versification Inez de la Cruz was _not inferior to Lope de Vega_; and yet she by no means courted literary fame.... In her dramatic works the vigor of her imagination is particularly conspicuous. The collection of her poems contains no comedies properly so-called, but it comprises a series of boldly conceived preludes (loas) full of allegorical invention, and it concludes with a long allegorical auto, which is _superior to any of the similar productions of Lope de Vega_. It is entitled _El Divino Narciso_, a name by which the author designates the heavenly bridegroom.... It would be impossible to give a brief and at the same time intelligible sketch of this extraordinary drama. With regard to composition, it is very unequal; in some respects offending by its bad taste, and in others charming by its boldness. Many of its scenes are so beautifully and romantically constructed that the reader is compelled to render homage to the genius of the poetess, while at the same time he cannot but regret the pitch of extravagance to which ideas really poetic are carried. There is one peculiarly fine scene, in which human nature, in the shape of a nymph, seeks her beloved, the real Narcissus, or the Christian Saviour." The pastoral passage, which in our notice of the writings of Sor Juana we laid before our readers, would seem to justify the best praises of our literary historian, Bouterwek. Ticknor, on the other hand, speaks of her as a remarkable woman, and not as a remarkable poetess; and, upon the whole, our thanks for the appreciative reburnishing of the ancient fame of an American genius--which, had it shone in Massachusetts three hundred years ago, would be deemed a very rare jewel among Northern scholars--are due rather to the European Bouterwek than the American Ticknor. The latter observes that she was born at Guipuzcoa; her Mexican biographer says at San Miguel de Nepantla, not far from the city of Mexico, one of whose convents she seems to have directed latterly. Time, place, the inferior standard of feminine culture, and the prevalence of a false poetic school, may account for Sor Juana's defects; for the rest, the issue (a large one) is between Bouterwek and Ticknor.

EDWARD GOROSTIZA.

After Alarcon, the principal lights of the actual Mexican stage are Gorostiza, Calderon, and Galvan; and, indeed, whatever original triumph that stage has enjoyed is almost if not quite limited to these few excellent though not glorious names. We cannot with propriety name that extraordinary woman, Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz, in the list of Mexico's dramatists, although, along with other poetry, she wrote some religious pieces in dramatic form. Nevertheless, the credit which remains to the literature of the country, after its few phenomenal names are omitted, is not inappreciable. Concerning Gorostiza, Madame Calderon de la Barca wrote: "Don José Eduardo Gorostiza, a native of Vera Cruz, is the son of a Spanish officer, and when very young went to Spain, where he was known politically as a liberal. He was distinguished as a writer of theatrical pieces, which have been and still are very popular. One of his pieces which we saw the other evening at the theatre--_Con Tigo Pan y Cebolla_ (With Thee, Bread and Onions)--is delightful." Let us add to Madame Calderon's brief notice that Gorostiza won the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the war against Napoleon; that in 1823, while an exile from Spain in London, he wrote for the _Edinburgh Review_; and that since then, as minister to England and to the United States, and as secretary of state and finance, he has been eminent in the politics of his native land. In 1836, he was made intendant-general of the army, and during the war between Mexico and the United States took an active and heroic part in the defence of Churubusco. His efforts as a director of the poor-house, as a friend of education, and as the founder of a house of correction, are also deemed worthy of record. He died in 1851, at the age of sixty-two.

The best known of Gorostiza's comedies are those called _The Intimate Friend_, _Last Year's Fashions_, _Don Dieguito_, and _Pardon for All_, the last being mentioned by his biographer as celebrated. In the play of _Don Dieguito_, which may serve as well as any other to exhibit the character of Gorostiza's plots, Don Anselmo, a rich uncle, sends his nephew and heir, Don Dieguito, to Madrid to complete his education. While there, Dieguito falls in love with Doña Adelaida, whose father, Don Cleto, is a lawyer. Don Anselmo goes to Madrid to attend the wedding of his nephew, but does not like the family of his son's _fiancée_, and, accordingly, he schemes to break off the match. The mother, Doña Maria, sees from a worldly point of view the great advantage of her daughter's marriage with Don Dieguito. But now Anselmo tells her that _he_ intends to marry, which excites her fear that his nephew will inherit nothing from him. She, therefore, proposes to her husband that Doña Adelaida shall marry the uncle, Anselmo, instead of the nephew, Dieguito. Don Simplicio, a friend of Don Cleto, endeavors to effect a general reconciliation of interests, and bring about the marriage of the young couple; but, finding that father and mother alike wish to break off the match, joins them in insulting the apparently hapless Dieguito. Don Anselmo at once perceives that his nephew has been fooled, and that the family of his betrothed would be glad to cast off Dieguito in order to capture his uncle's wealth. He concludes, therefore, to make his exit on the very day of the proposed marriage, taking with him his disenchanted nephew. When the day arrives, he announces that he has been ruined by the shipwreck of a vessel from Vera Cruz, and that he is compelled to return to his old business of selling pork, beans, chocolate, and sausages to make good his loss. Don Dieguito, though asked to return to his allegiance as a lover, declares that he is no fool, and prefers a wife who will not speculate at the expense of good faith, but will look after her children. As Don Anselmo has told the family of Doña Adelaida that his principal loss is in a cargo of chocolate, that spirited young lady vows she will not drink chocolate again; and the play ends in amusing recriminations.

FERNANDO CALDERON.

The next of our dramatists, Fernando Calderon, was born in 1809, and died at the age of thirty-six, having been a colonel, a state legislator, a magistrate, and the secretary of the government of Zacatecas, as well as an industrious writer. The most striking of his dramas are: _The Tourney_, _Anne Boleyn_, and _The Return of the Crusader_, which, says one of his admirers, are full of noble and chivalrous sentiments and spirited action. Calderon's talent was nothing if not dramatic; for even his lyrics, and especially his _Soldier of Liberty_, are characterized by a personal fire and animation. His plays, remarkable for warmth of sentiment, and his poems, chiefly lyrical, gained for him not only in Mexico, but in other Spanish-American republics, a degree of favor not often enjoyed by writers in the southern part of the New World. One of his most admired passages is the soliloquy of Isabella in _The Tourney_: