Chapter V: Electioneering (3)

We were talking of our travels, my friend Archer and I, and of the lessons travelling brings to those who go a little out of Murray’s beaten track. And especially, so we were pleased to think, these lessons might be learnt in little out-of-the-way nooks, hidden centres of ignored life, none the less busy for that, and none the less full of exciting life-dramas. I was telling him of Pavia--for my wanderings had led me chiefly through Italy--of the desolate, enchanted look of the wall-enclosed court-yards round the gloomy and picturesque palaces; of the lonely walk on the former ramparts, now planted with fine horse-chestnuts; of the many tapestries of romance I had woven in my mind about the silent-looking houses and the dark-eyed maidens I occasionally met in the streets. It was while Pavia was in Austrian hands that I passed through it, and perhaps the military occupation tended to make the sleepy city still more sombre and dull. Yet what additional elements of romance that circumstance contributed! For it was not impossible that some fair, mild German, with his dreamy sentimentality, yet fresh from college, might have been drawn to feel a holy, wondering love for the bright southern beauty whose childhood had been fostered in indignant hatred of his land and race; and between these two how many complications of pathetic interest might we not imagine, how many shades of feeling and degrees of circumstances might we not conjure up! “But,” said Archer, interrupting my fine flow of language about the joys and sorrows of the town of the _Certosa_, “you know Italy, strictly speaking, is rather the land of passion than of romance. Could you think of an Italian ‘Gretchen’? The one character most like her, the Cenci, is so different despite the likeness! Religion seems more spiritual in Germany; in Italy they do as the Greeks of old, put their own human feelings into heavenly representatives and then pay homage to them, thinking unconsciously that they are honoring supernatural attributes. There is too much earthliness about their ideal--in fact, I do not believe they have an ideal at all.”

“Come, come,” I answered, “you are too hard on the southern temperament. You do not know Italy well enough to speak with authority on the subject. After all, as long as their way of feeling religion does them good, the Italians are quite as well off, spiritually, as your Teutonic ideals. I am not sure but what I prefer warmth and impulse to passive tenderness, however reliable the latter may be throughout a lifetime. But this question of the relative merits of various races will always be an open one, and no one wishes to leave it so more than the church herself, for she wisely sees how much the glory of God gains through this blending of various natures in his service.”

“No doubt,” answered my enthusiastic Teutomane, “as far as that side of the question is concerned. You have been saying something equivalent to telling me that the orchestra is preferable to a single violin or cornet, while _I_ was speaking of the intrinsic merit of each of those individual instruments.”

“Well,” I said, “now tell me something about the tone of these instruments. You know I have been very little in Germany, and I should be glad to hear something worth hearing, something that one would not find in the guide-book, nor in the volume of self-important nonsense occasionally thrust upon the public by a gushing sister or a city alderman.”

“You are very caustic,” said my friend with a laugh. “If I must travel so far out of the beaten track to please you, why not plunge at once into a volume of mediæval legends?”

“Is it in print? Because in that case I could see for myself, and therefore would not care to hear it,” I answered teasingly.

“It is _not_ in print, Sir Doubter, and, what is more, it is not even in manuscript.”

I began to feel interested. “A popular tradition, then?” I asked.

“Exactly. It is not worth much, only I happened to see the places mentioned, the quaint house that is standing yet, though very much disguised of course, and the dark street leading to the cathedral. It happened in Augsburg, and the cathedral, as you know, is Protestantized, though still very well kept. I was only in the town for two days, so you may imagine I know little of it beyond what my narrator told me.”

“And pray who was your narrator?”

The father of a girl in an old book-stall, where I had stopped attracted by some rare copy of a Catholic work, of which she did not seem to know the value. Equally surprised at seeing the book there and at finding her ignorant of its worth, I asked her how she got it. She lifted up her head, which had been bent on some mysterious turning-point of her knitting, and said smilingly:

“_Mein Herr_ is a Catholic, then?”

I answered that I was, and repeated my former question.

“It must have been one of my great-uncle’s books,” she said, “he was going to be a priest, but he died before being ordained. We were always Catholics.”

“And how came you to keep this stall, child?” I asked, becoming interested.

“It is my father’s,” she answered quickly; “and he has been ill for two months, so I keep it for him. His uncle left him all his books.”

“And is your father so poor, then?”

“Very poor, _mein Herr_,” said the girl, with a longing glance at the book I still held in my hand, as if she were thinking of the price a connoisseur might be tempted to give for it. “His father and grandfather were booksellers,” she continued, “but not like him; they had large libraries and plenty of men working under them. That was long before I was born, _mein Herr_.”

“And I suppose your father got into difficulties. But anything would have paid better than this, my poor child.”

“My father would not go to work for any other bookseller, not if he were the king,” laughed the girl, more merrily than I thought the case warranted; “and he is a regular student. My mother used to earn money in many ways, teaching, writing, sewing; and I did the housework. She died two years ago, and we have nothing but the book-stall now to keep my sick father and my little crippled brother.”

I thought to myself, Why, here is a regular romance; perhaps the inevitable lover of German stories is going to peep out next, from the frank revelations of my new friend. At any rate, let us follow it up. So I said aloud: “If your father is willing to part with this book, I should like to buy it. But I should be very glad to see him and chat with him about it. Do you think he could see me?”

“Oh! yes, of course,” answered the girl with a hearty smile; and for the first time I noticed her features and expression. She was not beautiful--I hope you did not expect the romance to be perfect?--but there was a pure, calm steadiness in her look, and an air of unconscious dignity about her that made her striking to the eye. She seemed made for fidelity and helpfulness, and as to external charms, if you admire hair, she simply had superabundant masses of it. German-like, it was put up in broad plaits, tightly coiled round the head, without a shadow of coquettishness, and just as if she thought it no ornament at all. Now I have noticed your Italian girls know how to make a good deal more of their advantages. I have seen poor girls in Venice with as elaborate a coiffure--ringlets, puffs, plaits, and wavings--as any Parisian hair-dresser could exhibit on his waxen models.

“Libels again!” I answered. “I have seen the very contrary at Naples, and there are women there like Grecian statues. Venice is half Eastern, you know. But to go on with your impromptu romance.”

Well, when evening came, I went to the address the young girl had given me, and as you may imagine, it was not a palace that I entered. The neighborhood was as commonplace as any in an old German city can be, that is, picturesqueness itself compared with our modern “back slums.” Still, through the picturesqueness, there stared the most unmistakable poverty. I went up a good many flights of steep, narrow stairs, with curious balusters that would have driven a dealer in old carving wild with delight, and knocked at a door that I recognized by the rude cross and bit of palm over the archway. There was just such another cross and sprig of green inside the door, and a little holy-water vessel in stamped brass hung at the side nearest the door-handle. There was nothing very peculiar about the room, except that it had an air of freshness and cleanliness, which, considering its sick inmates and its cramped locality, was the more pleasant because it was a surprise. A great German bed, with a feather-bed of traditional height, filled one side of the room, and there was a stove in the middle. The remains of the supper were on a side-table, and a lamp drawn close to the father’s arm-chair stood on a centre-table laden with domestic “mending.” The little crippled brother sat in a low easy-chair by the stove, which chair was the only luxury in the room: My friend, the young girl, came quickly forward and said:

“My father is so glad you have come, _mein Herr_.”

I sat down beside him, and soon got into conversation with the old scholar. He was still very weak, but seemed to feel better when excited. I found him a thorough bookworm, full of knowledge that, in another man’s hands, would have made his fortune. I discovered, or rather forced him to tell me, that in that press (pointing to a common painted chest of drawers) were manuscripts ready to be published, if a publisher could be found to undertake the risk, but the author had no ambition, though he was full to the brim of literary enthusiasm. His researches had lain chiefly among works of mediæval ecclesiastical lore, legends and poems, etc. The emblems borne by the various saints were a favorite subject of his. His uncle’s theological collection and the libraries in which he had spent his youth, had furnished him with means to prosecute his studies even after his father’s reverses in fortune--the public libraries had done the rest. His wife’s help had been very important, and piles of her notes and references lay among his own manuscripts. He spoke with pride of his little crippled son, whom he said he had made as good a scholar as if the poor boy had been to the universities; and as to his daughter, his looks said more than his words, as he gazed at her across the table, she sitting so calmly there amid her heap of “mending,” her dark-blue dress reminding me of the coloring of a mediæval virgin martyr in the stained-glass window of some old cathedral. She was more queenly than slender in figure, and neither her face nor her hands were small, though they were perfectly shaped; there was more majesty than grace in her whole air, yet she was thoroughly girl-like. I unconsciously invested her in my mind with royal robes, heavily jewelled, like the Byzantine saints, or with the ample cloak of the brave and learned Portia. Presently she went into a smaller room, opening into the one where we were sitting, and during her absence I ventured to hint to the father that for her sake he should try to make those literary treasures of his more remunerative. He smiled; I asked him if she were already provided for, or if he did not feel it his duty to put by some kind of fortune for her.

“My child is watched over from heaven,” he said; “she will never come to harm.”

“What is her name?” I asked. I had already ascertained his family name to be Reinhold.

“Ambrosia,” he answered.

“Rather an uncommon name,” I remarked, well pleased, somehow, that it should be so.

“Yes,” said the father, “and I dare say it will interest you to hear the reason why she has that name. She was born on the anniversary of the day that a young girl called Ambrosia came to life here in the sixteenth century. This was how it happened. The troubles of the Reformation were just beginning, and this young girl, who was the burgomaster’s daughter, was famous through the town for her holiness and modesty. She was betrothed to a young merchant who had been her playmate in childhood. Did you notice that great building on the corner of the street to the right of the cathedral? That was her father’s house; it is a hotel now. Her bridegroom lived two or three streets further off, on a corner too; and under the corner window, which was beautifully carved and painted, stood a wooden image of the Mother of God, with a lamp before it which was never allowed to go out. It began to be whispered about that Engelbrecht, the young lady’s betrothed, and a very handsome, dashing young fellow, was rather inclined to the new doctrines which Luther was then preaching all over Germany. Every one wondered how Ambrosia would take this, but no one knew anything positive until it became the talk of the city that one night Engelbrecht and a few companions, heated with wine and singing profane songs, had broken and extinguished the votive lamp before the image under his window, and thrown the image itself into the gutter. The next day it was known that Ambrosia was very ill, and had sent for her lover. He came, and, as he really was very fond of her, the sudden alteration in her looks frightened and subdued him for the moment. She took off the betrothal ring he had put upon her finger, and very gravely and sweetly told him that she could never be his bride on earth, but that she fervently hoped that she had indeed won his soul’s final salvation, through the joyful and willing sacrifice of her own life. She said she should die on the day that was fixed for their wedding, but that from the dead she would speak to him yet, and in public. Then a year would go by, and she told him that it was not given to her to know if he would repent or not during that time, but that on the anniversary of her death she would come to life again and walk from her tomb to the cathedral and back; and she summoned him to meet her there. It was her hope that, after that second call, he would surely be won back to God. So when her wedding day came, although she seemed happy and looked only very grave and pale, she called her father and mother and her lover to her, and there, sitting by the window that looked on the cathedral, she passed away without agony, and just as the hour struck which should have seen her a new-made wife. She was not buried for several days, for the scoffers said she was deceiving the people and simulating death. Doctors and priests watched the body for a week, and Mass was said in the room where she lay, surrounded with flowers and tall tapers. Exorcisms were even read over her, but the placid expression of her alabaster face seemed to grow only more heavenly day by day. At last signs of decomposition appeared, as if to make the marvel more certain, and those who had watched the body drew up a legal declaration of her undoubted death. She was brought to the churchyard, the family vault was opened, and the coffin, which was still uncovered, was just going to be finally closed, when she raised herself suddenly to a sitting posture, and, seemingly transfigured into greater beauty than had ever been hers in life, she gazed slowly round the crowd and beckoned to her lover. He stood transfixed, and the people fell back from him and left him face to face with his bride. She only said in a clear, pitying voice that was heard by all, ‘Remember, Engelbrecht, thy tryst with me one year from this day. God be with thee until then.’

“She fell slowly backwards into her narrow couch, and when the people had taken courage again, they came hurriedly and closed the coffin in great awe. A year went by, and Engelbrecht, uneasy and remorseful, plunged into worse excesses than ever, went heart and soul, at least outwardly, into the Lutheran movement, and became the head of a band of young men whose dissoluteness was spoken of with disgust by the licentious reformers themselves. The day came, and with it crowds flocked to the grave of Ambrosia. Those who had gone at sunrise found a white-robed figure kneeling there, its face hidden in its hands, and two long plaits of golden hair streaking its drapery. Those who had watched all night and gone there the evening previous after dusk, could tell nothing save that the grave had been the same as ever, but they thought they must have slept for a few minutes before midnight, since they had heard the quarter strike from the cathedral, and had looked at their timepieces directly after, and found it was half an hour _after_ midnight. The radiant, silent figure was there then, and an odor as of incense filled the night air. As soon as the cathedral doors were open (it was in June), Ambrosia rose and turned towards the church. Some sceptics who saw the strange procession, rushed at once to the grave, and, hastily disinterring the coffin, found it empty. Crowds joined the procession to the cathedral, which the young girl reached during the first Mass, for the priests still had possession of it then. Every one wondered if her lover would meet her, but no sign of him appeared. Ambrosia looked incomparably more beautiful than in life; her eyes were cast down, and she wore a golden betrothal ring on her finger. She moved like a spirit, yet there was no doubting the reality and substance of her presence. There were many in the crowd who were scoffers and libertines, men whom no virtuous maiden’s eye would as much as glance upon, yet even they were silenced, and the marvellous beauty of Ambrosia seemed to have no other effect upon them than one of awe and unconscious restraint. The people followed her in and lined the aisles through which they knew she would walk on leaving the cathedral. She knelt for a moment before the high carved tabernacle, with a lovely miniature spire, quite in a separate corner from the altar--you have seen those tabernacles of ours in old Catholic churches in other parts of Germany, _mein Herr_?--and then she turned slowly back. There was no hurry, no anxiety nor expectancy, in her manner; still Engelbrecht had not been seen. She had come to the middle of the left aisle, still with her eyes persistently cast down, and though the people had all asked her many questions as to their future spiritual fate and that of others dear to them, yet she had never answered a word. Now, she stopped deliberately, yet never raising her eyes. A sob was heard in the crowd, and the serried masses heaved to and fro as a young man forced his way violently through. It was Engelbrecht, but he was unrecognizable. A cloak covered him from head to foot--evidently a studied disguise--yet what was more unlike him was his agitated, humble manner, the look of passionate self-accusation in his drawn features, and his impetuous disregard for appearances. As Ambrosia stopped, he rushed forward with his arms extended, but some unseen power stayed his progress, and though she was not a foot distant from him, he could not touch her. For the first time she lifted her head, and a look of love, pure as an angel’s over a repentant sinner, lighted up her ethereal face and mingled with an expression of deepest gratitude. She pointed to the betrothal ring on her finger, and then glanced upward without uttering one word. This second warning from the world of souls was of too solemn a nature to admit of even the holy yet too human expression that her words had given to the first, but it was unmistakably borne in upon the mind of her lover that as long as he kept true to the faith, he might hope to claim her as his spiritual bride in the kingdom of God. And, as she continued her journey toward her grave, he did not even follow her, but went straight to the Dominican convent and asked for the habit of the order. Those who accompanied Ambrosia to the churchyard could tell nothing as to the manner of her disappearance; all they knew was that they saw her one moment, and the next they saw nothing. Engelbrecht gave all his riches to the church to found a seminary somewhere beyond the bounds of the heretical countries of Germany, for the instruction of missionaries; the foundation eventually became a house of his order. He wished his own dwelling to be used for monastic or hospital purposes, should religion again revive in Augsburg; but his wish was not fulfilled. The house was forfeited to the state, and became successively a warehouse, a barrack, a prison, and a factory. Now, it is a great printing-office, and plenty of lies are coined into money within its walls, through the partisan newspapers that issue from it. You can see the corner window still, with its beautiful carving hardly injured by time, and the empty niche beneath it where the image of the Mother of God once stood. Have you noticed it, _mein Herr_?”

“No,” I said, hardly liking to answer, for fear of losing some further detail. “But what of Engelbrecht?”

The old German looked surprised.

“Why, I have told you he became a monk.”

“But did he distinguish himself against the reformers?”

“Ah!” said Reinhold, reverentially, “God knows, and his bride, but he left no record for the world to read. No doubt he worked out the will of God.”

I was silent, for I was ashamed of myself in the presence of this man, to whom the hidden life of the soul seemed so all-sufficient a history.

Ambrosia, his daughter, had come back long before this story was finished, and was sitting sewing diligently, and listening to it with all her father’s pride and personal enthusiasm in the matter.

“So,” continued Reinhold, “the day of this wonder was remembered, and among those who remained Catholics, it became a custom to christen girls born on that day by the name of the holy maiden Ambrosia. My child, thank God, was one of them.”

After listening to this peculiar and interesting legend, I led the conversation to the book I wished to purchase, and which Ambrosia had brought home with her on purpose. Reinhold knew the value of it perfectly well, and firmly resisted my well-meant attempts to fix a price upon it beyond what even its merits warranted. I was hardly able to indulge in such extravagance, yet _bibliomania_ had always been my besetting sin, and I had curtailed our little household in many ways to feed my library. Besides, here was a charity as well-deserved as it seemed well-placed; how else, with my limited means, could I help my poor friends? But my fellow-bookworm was proof against all such artifices, and I was reduced to ask him, point-blank, was there anything which he would allow me to do for him? Without the least show of fussy pride, but with a quiet, manly gratitude that was immeasurably more dignified, he answered at once, his voice shaking as he looked at his little son:

“A very little would make my child’s life happy and useful, and, _lieber Herr_, that little I have it not.”

“How stupid of me!” I exclaimed. “I might have thought of that myself. Is he to be a scholar, or an artist, or what?” I said, stroking his hair, while his great eyes were fixed hungrily on mine.

“Books are his passion,” said his father, “and he knows all our poets by heart. He should have a literary education, I think.”

“But,” said I, “he could not go alone to the university, and if you do not mind leaving Augsburg, would it not be best for you all to go together? I have some English friends at Bonn, Catholics and rich people; they will do much for your child that I cannot do, though my heart would rejoice to do it, so suppose we start to-morrow?”

Reinhold looked up incredulously. Ambrosia laughed, and the poor little cripple clapped his hands in ecstasy. I watched the girl to see whether a shade of regret denoted ties of a tenderer or more passionate nature than her strong, calm family affections; but there was no sign of anything save quiet joy and a gratitude that in its fulness made me feel quite ashamed. I kept thinking of what could be done for her; whether my English friends at Bonn could or would be kind to her in any practical way, and whether in that case she and her father would ever submit to being provided for by the kindness of strangers. She seemed too self-reliant for that; and although she evidently longed for the same education her brother was to have, and had, indeed, already amassed in the intervals of her active work such miscellaneous knowledge as mere reading could give her, yet I felt sure that she would insist on earning her bread and helping to support her father. I decided on introducing the old man to the notice of some great publisher, with whom an arrangement about his manuscripts might perhaps be made; but of this we did not speak just now. I left the room full of our new projects, and spent the early part of the next day in carefully visiting the scenes of Ambrosia’s life, death, and marvellous resurrection. In the afternoon I went back to Reinhold’s old-fashioned abode, and found everything nearly ready. The books were packed in a curious old chest, which was certainly a quaint contrast to the trunks and valises of modern tourists; this and some of the old furniture, endeared to Reinhold and his daughter by the associations of a lifetime, were to be forwarded to their new destination through the care of the good “Pfarrer” (parish-priest), and a few little necessaries (a very slender amount in the eyes of our “girls of the period,” I fancy!) together with the precious manuscripts, were to go with us in a large leather hand-bag, which I volunteered to carry. I asked to be allowed to take charge of the little brother too, as we were too near the railway to need a carriage, but Ambrosia laughingly caught him up, and, with gentle deftness, insisted on carrying him, telling me to give my disengaged arm to her invalid father. As soon as we were seated in the train, Ambrosia began to tell me that she had never been in one before. I asked if she were sorry to leave the old town.

“Oh! no,” she said, “I know I shall go back there one day, when I know more than I do now.”

I wondered if there were any hidden meaning in the words. Reinhold and I talked “shop” all the way, till our fellow-passengers must have been bored with our enthusiastic bibliomania. Ambrosia sat chatting gayly to her little brother, whose glee and wonder were sometimes gravely expressed in questions that made our neighbors laugh. When we got to Bonn, and were comfortably settled at a quiet, old-fashioned hotel, absolutely perfect in its appointments, but as unobtrusive of its merits as its gaudy, noisy rivals were shrilly eager about theirs, I set out to find my friends. They were out of town. Without their influence I was powerless, so I had to wait a few days for their return. They took up the matter as warmly as I could have wished, and were particularly anxious to do something for Ambrosia; the difficulty was to find something she would accept. In the meantime, the crippled child was recommended to the college authorities with plenty of guarantees, seen to by the priest, who was my friend’s adviser and fellow-worker in all his good schemes, and Reinhold was quietly put in the way of good opportunities for the publication of some of his accumulated writings. The little boy promised well, and I was more anxious about Ambrosia, who wanted to support herself by needlework.

“You see,” she said to me, a week after our arrival, “some of the work will be knitting, and I can read as I knit; then I will go to school at night and on Sundays, and pick up what I can, and twice a week I will make time for the singing-class. There is a very good one, and so cheap, attached to our church here, and the master is a really great artist, though he is old and very poor now. He and my father will be friends, I know, so you see I shall be as well off as it is possible.”

Nothing could move her from her resolve, and as I had to leave Bonn shortly after, I was obliged to take things as they were. I received monthly bulletins of my little _protégé’s_ conduct and progress, and sometimes heard from Ambrosia and Reinhold, through their rare but warm letters, though oftener from my friends established at Bonn. After awhile, I heard that the girl had consented to take music lessons twice a week, in the evening, with Miss L., my friend’s niece, and sometimes to share her French and Latin lessons. English she already knew. The needlework was not abandoned, however, and Ambrosia, I was told, seemed to gain new energy with each new pursuit she undertook. Reinhold’s works were in a fair way of being successfully published, and his circumstances were actually beginning to mend. I never heard of such a lucky venture as that hurriedly made at the Augsburg book-stall! Everything and everybody favored it, and my quiet old sister at home used to make me tell the story over and over again, as we turned over the pages of the book that had been the first _deus ex machinâ_ of the romance. She was certainly disappointed in the want of a lover for Ambrosia, and, to console herself, would sometimes so arrange the little we knew as to make it the frame of a possible love-story that we did not, and never might, know.

A year passed by in this way, when business called me up from my cottage in the Isle of Wight to London. It was May, and the exhibitions were just open. I went to Burlington House, and saw very little that was worth seeing; then to Pall Mall, to some of the minor galleries. The French collection of paintings was pretty upon the whole, but suddenly I came upon a picture that was really striking. An old German town and a cathedral painted to the very life formed a most varied background, upon which a conventional “crowd,” that is, a few picturesque groups of burghers and peasants in the costume (accurate to the slightest detail) of the early part of the sixteenth century, was represented, gazing at the central figure, a maiden dressed in white, with two thick cords of golden hair streaking the snowy robe. I looked at once for Mephistopheles and his victim Faust, taking this for a novel and very artistic representation of Goethe’s masterpiece; and turning to the catalogue I looked for the name of the painter--“Franz Eichenthal.” But the painting itself was marked “Ambrosia, a Legend of Augsburg,” and in a few brief words beneath the story was told as Reinhold had told it to me. Strangely interested, I looked at the white figure; I saw the likeness which had before escaped me; it was Ambrosia’s face, her abundant hair, her grand form; the repose, the dignity that I so well remembered were there, but over the whole was thrown an air of etherealized peace and beauty which was a fitting tribute to the entirely spiritual essence of the story. I looked to see if Engelbrecht were anywhere represented, and thought I could discover him in a corner, half hidden by the shadow from a buttress of the cathedral. There was a wonderfully energetic expression about this face, which made me single it out from the rest as being probably meant for the unhappy lover. There was strength and nobility in the features, and an almost feminine grace in the figure, while the look of horror and remorse struggling with unbelief was in painful contrast with this courtly exterior. Underneath, on the buttress, was carved, in antique characters, the name of the painter, “Franciscus Eichenthal, pinxit.” It certainly happened to be the most obvious place for this traditional signature of the artist, yet I could not help fancying, almost hoping, that there was more in it than a mere chance, and that “Engelbrecht” was, in fact, the portrait of the painter himself. Ambrosia’s face drew me to it again; the likeness was life itself, yet such as an American authoress describes as “not the man that we are, but the angel that we may be.” She says that “as to every leaf and flower there is an ideal to which the growth of the plant is constantly urging, so there is an ideal to every human being, a perfect form in which it might appear, were every defect removed and every characteristic excellence stimulated to the highest point.” She likens this to the image of St. Augustine, as his mother, with her spiritual prophetic sight, saw him all through his reckless youth, and then says: “Could a mysterious foresight unveil to us this resurrection form of the friends with whom we daily walk, compassed about with mortal infirmity, we should follow them with faith and reverence, through all the disguises of human faults and weaknesses, waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God.”[202]

The German artist seemed to have had some such revelation vouchsafed to him concerning Ambrosia. The picture was unspeakably beautiful, and I felt instinctively that in the future it would become literally true. And yet the girl had never before struck me as having so exalted a nature; perhaps it was that she was so utterly unlike the usual ideal of a perfect woman.

I made inquiries as to whether the picture was an “order,” or simply a speculation, and learned that it had been the latter, but was now destined for the hall of the “Young Men’s Catholic Society” at Augsburg. An English nobleman had been so struck with it abroad that he had induced the artist to have it exhibited in London, and had himself ordered engravings and photographs from it. I felt very much inclined to go in for another extravagance, and have it copied on a reduced scale for my library, but I thought it most prudent to consult my sister first. I went home full of my discovery, and at once wrote to Reinhold for an explanation.

I received a very happy letter from Ambrosia herself in return, telling me of her engagement to the painter Eichenthal, who was an Augsburg man, and had lived for many years quite close to their old home, without either family having the remotest knowledge of each other. At the singing-class these two had met, their fellow-citizenship had first drawn them together, and the old master, whose favorite pupil the artist was, had brought him to see Reinhold. The result was natural, and my sister was innocently enthusiastic over the ending in so pleasant a reality of the romance she had begun in imagination many months before.

There was a quiet wedding at Bonn, and my friend’s niece, Ambrosia’s companion in her studies, was bridesmaid. My sister and I went over to be present, and the dear old father, now quite strong again, gave his daughter a copy of his first published work for a wedding gift. Next to the dedication leaf, which was addressed to your humble servant, and overflowing with affectionate expressions, there was a cheque for half the proceeds of the work (and the sum was not to be sneered at, I can assure you).

Ambrosia and her husband then went to Rome, where Eichenthal identified himself with the school of Overbeck, and became very popular among the foreign visitors and patrons of art. The Englishman who had taken such a fancy to his picture of the Augsburg legend chanced to come across him again in Rome, and, having succeeded to his father’s property, lavishly encouraged his artist friend. A _replica_, full size, of the original “Ambrosia” was painted for his chapel in England, and a large picture, representing a group of the patron saints of his family clustering round the throne of the Virgin and Child, was also ordered. The painter’s wife was the model for a St. Catharine of Sienna, and the Englishman himself, a thorough Saxon in build and features, made a magnificent St. Edward the Confessor.

Several years later, the young couple settled in Augsburg, where Eichenthal established a flourishing school of Christian art, and used to give lectures on the subject in the very hall where his first successful work was hung. Ambrosia’s brother got on so wonderfully that at twenty he was made professor of belles-lettres at Bonn, and was famous for writing the most beautiful religious poetry that had been known for many years. Ambrosia’s children gather round their young crippled uncle in the spacious, old-fashioned house where Reinhold lives with his daughter, and make him repeat wonderful mediæval legends clothed in verse of his own. This is how he spends his vacation. Reinhold is always at his manuscripts, and the same books that used to be his pitiful stock in trade are now the cherished ornaments of his large library. The Christmas-tree gathering in that house is a poem in itself. The children of Ambrosia’s friend, the English girl of Bonn, are often there playing with the artist’s beautiful boys, for there is no Ambrosia the younger among Eichenthal’s children. The best society of Augsburg, Protestant and Catholic alike, delight to honor the successful artist; the musical soirées given in his house are as perfect in their way as each of his own paintings, and never is anything purely worldly allowed to appear under his roof.

“When I first saw my wife,” he says, “I was a Lutheran or rather a so-called philosopher, but since I won her, I vowed to make her my arbiter and my conscience; you see the result. ‘Seek first the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you.’”

“And this is the end?” I said regretfully, as Archer paused.

“Not quite,” he answered with a peculiar smile; “the end will not really come till Ambrosia has grown to be the counterpart of her spiritual portrait. But she is growing towards that standard every day. Would that you and I were, old friend!”

“There is time yet,” I said; “let us try.”

THE CHURCH.

It is of her womb that we are born; our nourishing is from her milk; our quickening from her breath.... She it is who keeps us for God, and appoints unto the kingdom the sons she has borne.... He who leaves the church of Christ attains not to Christ’s rewards. He is an alien, an outcast, an enemy. He can no longer have God for a father who has not the church for a mother. If any man was able to escape who remained without the ark of Noah, then will that man escape who is out of doors beyond the church. The Lord warns us, and says: “He who is not with me is against me; and he who gathereth not with me scattereth.” ... He who gathereth elsewhere but in the church, scatters the church of Christ.--_St. Cyprian._

THE NECESSITY OF PHILOSOPHY AS A BASIS OF HIGHER EDUCATION.

BY F. RAMIERE, S.J.

FROM THE ETUDES RELIGIEUSES.

CONCLUDED.

UTILITY OF PHILOSOPHY FOR THE FORMATION OF THE POET AND OF THE ORATOR.

The foregoing considerations have borne us up to those luminous heights where philosophy, poetry, and eloquence, separated in their lower regions, mingle and become one. Would to God that the poets frequented more assiduously these sublime regions! How their inspirations would gain in nobleness as well as in purity; how much ignominy would they spare themselves; how many scandals to society! We should not then see them separate beauty from truth, as they too often do, place all the perfection of art in an empty form, and make their independence consist in placing themselves under the hateful yoke of error and of vice.

Such is the ignoble theory which one is compelled to sustain if he deny that the study of philosophy is of the greatest utility for the poet. Unfortunately, this theory has found in our days only too many defenders. How much more numerous still are those who put it in practice!

It is in vain, I know, for me to endeavor to bring back to a sounder and nobler conception of the most beautiful of all arts those poets who debase it by their very idolatry. But, though they may despise the voice of a Christian, let them listen at least to a pagan--a poet like themselves. It is a disciple of Epicurus, it is Horace who tells them to what a shameful barrenness they condemn themselves in refusing to draw from those sources which philosophy opens up to them.

This great master of the poetic art declares to them plainly enough that “unless they first learn to think well, it is vain for them to hope to write well; that it is from philosophy they must borrow the subjects which it is for poetry to adorn with her rich ornaments; that beauty of style can only be the result of beauty of things; and that a work which contains solid truths under an inelegant form, has far more legitimate titles to real success than verses bare of thought and resonant with trifles.”

“Scribendi recte sapere est et principium et fons.
Rem tibi Socraticæ poterunt ostendere chartæ;
Verbaque provisam rem non invita sequentur....
Interdum speciosa locis morataque recte
Fabula, nullius veneris, sine pondere et arte,
Valdius oblectat populum meliusque moratur,
Quam versus inopes rerum nugæque canoræ.”

If Horace returned among us, he would have no cause to congratulate us on our fidelity in following those precepts, which good sense dictated to him, and which all of us have learned by heart from our childhood. Modern poetry has something far different to do than demand of wisdom the theme of its song. It drinks, generally at least, at founts of beauty of quite another character; the ideal is nothing to it; the living expression of reality in its every imperfection, of the revolting, of the hideous, such is the task which it imposes on itself; emotion, such its aim--a surprising strangeness of imagery, novelty of expression, peculiarity of character, harshness of pictures, harmony of rhyme replacing harmony of thought--behold its means of success. Behold the merits which an effete society looks for in those whose mission is to amuse it, and to which these easy-going poets sacrifice the most magnificent gifts of the Creator.

Dante places in one of the circles of his hell a lost one whose crime consisted in having, by vileness of heart, made a great abdication (_Che fece per viltade il gran rifiuto_). It is difficult to recognize this criminal, on whose brow inexorable justice or the political rancor of the Florentine poet branded this burning stigma. But to whom can it be applied more justly than to these kings of poetry whom we see in our own days making themselves slaves of a vile popularity; to these prophets of the natural order, who prostitute to error the power which was given them to embellish truth, and who employ the creative force which makes them participators of the most noble attribute of Almighty God, in order to form the idols which draw away the crowd from the altars of Jehovah? O traitor poets! veritable apostates of genius, what gain is yours in debasing thus the most beautiful of arts! In place of profaning your lyre by songs which awake in hearts nothing but the lowest desires and most guilty passions, would it not be worthier of you to avail yourselves of this irresistible power of seduction which you exercise over your brothers, in drawing them in your train to the pursuit of true beauty? Do you alone fail to perceive the forfeiture which threatens your genius from the moment that it denies to truth the glorious testimony which truth demands of it? Do you not see that the beauty of forms fails you from the time that you seek it outside of the beauty of thoughts? Can you be astonished that your influence over souls is null, when you are pleased to destroy it with your own hands? Is it not you who, in denying the philosophy which would elevate your art to the height of a priesthood, reduce it to nothing more than a frivolous pastime for the idle, unless, indeed, you place it as an incendiary torch in the hands of the factious?

Still less than poetry may eloquence consent to lower its dignity to the botching up of incoherent images and the nice balancing of periods as empty as they are sonorous. More serious in its aim, more positive in the immediate results which it has in view, it can still less dispense with the assistance of philosophy. Listen to one of its princes, who is at the same time the chief of its lawgivers, while he proclaims loudly this dependence. “Let us lay down in the beginning,” says Cicero, in the book _De Oratore_, “that the aid of philosophy is indispensable for the formation of the perfect orator whom we seek. It alone can open up to him an inexhaustible source of great thoughts and developments as large as they are varied. It is to it that Pericles owed, according to the testimony of Plato, his superiority over all his rivals. The lessons of Anaxagoras developed the fecundity of his genius; they taught him, among other things, the great secret of eloquence, the art of discerning the proper incentives for moving the passions and the different faculties of the soul. Plato rendered the same service to Demosthenes. And how,” continues Cicero, “how can we without philosophy know the properties of things, whether generic or specific, how can we define them, divide them, discern the true from the false, deduce consequences, refute that which is repugnant, distinguish that which is ambiguous? How can we penetrate into the nature of things, a knowledge of which imparts its chief richness to the discourse? How can we speak pertinently of the moral life, of duties, of virtues, if we have not searched deeply into these truths, aided by the light of philosophy?”

In these words, Cicero displays admirably the superiority of the philosophic orator over the one who depends for the guarantee of success on the facility of his memory, the wealth of his imagination, or the vehemence of his feeling. Such a one without doubt can carry off triumphs; he may reap the applause of the crowd, and drag the masses in his train. The masses, who live much more by imagination than by intelligence, scarcely perceive the want of depth, and allow themselves to be captivated by the splendor of imagery and the rush of movements. But he who would seek a success more real than passing applause, he who would understand that the aim of eloquence is to render men better, and that imagery and feelings are for it but the instruments destined to make truth triumph--such a man will strive above all to place himself in possession of that truth which he is called upon to communicate to his fellows, to know the nature and extent of the duties whose observance he must inculcate, to acquire, in order to communicate it to them, the true science of good and evil. Besides this, he will study the nature of the souls over whom God destines him to hold sway, by the all-powerful sceptre of speech; he will inquire into the conditions and the requirements of each one of those faculties and passions, which he ought alternately to move like an obedient army, and push forward to the conquest of good and the banishment of evil. When philosophy shall have given him this knowledge, when it shall have arranged it in his mind in luminous order, then the orator will be a priest. He will have nothing more to do than, following the circumstances, to give to each of his teeming thoughts the form which befits it: on whatever subject he has to speak, the great principles will offer themselves, his plan will be all arranged beforehand, the framework of his discourse all laid out; his march will be firm, his divisions clear, his advance irresistible; and, while the orator of imagination will go on groping, without order and without light, contenting himself with flowering the surface of the soul, the philosophic orator will penetrate into the depths of the intellect, and will establish therein, on convictions which cannot be broken down, the motives of which he will avail himself victoriously to persuade the will.

VI.

NECESSITY OF PHILOSOPHY FOR THE FORMATION OF THE THEOLOGIAN.

That we may comprehend in all its extent the utility of philosophy, there remains still to be examined its relation with the divine science--theology. A single glance will suffice to convince us that there is no science with which it should be more intimately bound up than with this queen of sciences, which occupies uncontested the first place in the hierarchy of knowledge. This first rank would have belonged of right to philosophy, had not God thought it good to make us acquainted by his Word with the treasures of his own science. But far from revelation having lowered our reason by adding to its light a higher light; far from philosophy being abased in receiving from the sovereign truth illuminations which of itself it could never have attained, it has on the contrary acquired thereby a wealth and an elevation incomparable; for, in allying itself with the word of God, in uniting its gifts with the gifts of faith, in applying its principles and processes to the dogmas revealed, it has produced a science greater than itself, though born in its bosom--a science divine in its object, like the Word who is its father, although it remains human in form, like the philosophy of which it has this form--the scholastic theology.

There is, then, between theology and philosophy a connection of dependence, which renders the study of the first of these sciences impossible without the preliminary study of the second. It is not with theology as it is with faith: faith is entirely supernatural, and consequently it cannot depend directly on any natural cause. Thus we have established above that the utility of philosophy for the acquirement and keeping of faith can only be a negative utility.

Theology, on the contrary, supernatural in its object, is natural in its essence, since it consists in the rational analysis of the data of faith. There is, then, nothing repugnant in admitting the very direct and very positive influence which the study of philosophy exercises over its acquisition.

This influence extends itself to every branch of theology--to dogmatic theology first; for this branch of sacred science, as we have shown in a preceding article, borrows from philosophy the processes which it uses, the method which it follows, and the greatest part of the definitions and axioms on which it depends.

God, having made use of human language in order to reveal to us his mysteries, has laid us thereby under an obligation of applying, in a just measure, to the supernatural order the ideas of the natural order expressed by this language. We must therefore analyze with the greatest care those ideas, under pain of comprehending nothing of revelation, and of falling into the most fatal errors; and this analysis ought to be proportionately more delicate when it applies itself to ideas involved in the dogmas of faith, since it ought to discern in those ideas that which is proper to the supernatural order from that which belongs to the universal essence of things.