Chapter XXVII: Carl Yorke’s Orbit (5)

Now, Jans in his efforts at amassing riches had neglected no honest means of success. Consequently, when their two children had both married well and gone to live in distant cities, and he found himself with a spare room in his house, he looked about for a tenant. Then mein herr (as he was called for brevity’s sake) presented himself, and, as his testimonials for respectability and prompt pay were satisfactory, he was soon established in the pretty little chamber with its white curtains, its patchwork bedspread, and a floor so well scrubbed you might have eaten off of it. He somewhat marred the beauty of the spot by an importation of certain odd things which he professed to consider indispensable. There was a regiment of ragged-looking old leather books, and some well-worn coats and dingy dressing-gowns, not to mention an assortment of pipes and tobacco jars and old boots, and a few warlike weapons which stuck out in a protecting way from the top of his book-shelves.

Mein herr was just now direct from the _Collegienhaus_[21] of the famous University at Königsberg, where he had been giving short lectures and receiving long pay, and being, therefore, on good terms with himself and the world in general, he resolved to rusticate in some secluded spot for the summer, and renovate his faculties for the next winter’s campaign.

No place could be more quiet or better suited for his purpose than his present abode. Here he could spin all kinds of cobweb theories hour after hour, with not a sound to ripple the air and demolish them, for neither Jans nor his wife ever intruded into his apartment. It was only in the soft summer evening twilight that he made his descent to the garden, and indulged in a brief social intercourse with his host and hostess. Indeed, he came almost as regularly as the sun set. His tall, straight figure enveloped in a long black sort of ecclesiastical gown, a jaunty cap on his head, with its tassel hanging down behind, a meerschaum in hand which he was bound to finish before he should retire, behold Mein Herr von Heine!--the embodiment of profound and extended erudition out for a little recreation. Mein herr was always welcome. Pleasant enough was the discourse they all held as he slowly walked up and down the gravel-walk, or took a seat beside them, especially when the subject was farm-matters; and mutually profitable was the exchange between theory and practice; many a pleasant laugh they had, too; and as to the _gute Frau_, she listened and smiled, and occasionally put in a modest little word, this being, according to her best belief, the extent of “woman’s rights.”

They were sitting thus one June evening, when Jans laid aside his pipe, and said, in his usual deliberate way:

“I think I’ll buy a horse, or a donkey, or a dog-cart, or something, to take all these cabbages to market.”

“Buy a _donkey_ by all means,” said mein herr, “for a donkey, that is an ass, is classical. They are famous in sacred as well as in profane literature. No animal has always been so much the companion of man as the donkey, no one more valuable. An ox and an ass are what we are warned in the commandments not to covet, showing their universality in the days of Moses, besides being what any man in his senses would be most likely to covet. Asses are repeatedly mentioned in the Old Testament. Every one has heard of Balaam’s ass, who was so much wiser than his master. I have often noted the great injustice done to that ass. Balaam bestowed on him three very decided beatings; and although he was fully convinced afterwards that they were entirely undeserved, we have no record that he made the least apology or expressed the least regret. Now, even a donkey deserves justice. Asses have pervaded all ranks in life. There was Debbora the prophetess, the wife of Lapidoth; in the Canticle, where she addresses the brave princes of Israel, she adjures them as ‘you that ride upon fair asses, and sit in judgment, and walk in the way’; on the other hand, Job predicts woe to him ‘who hath driven away the ass of the fatherless.’ Certainly, asses were everywhere. When the wealth of Abraham was counted, he-asses and she-asses made a part of it; and when he was about to ascend the mountain to sacrifice his son Isaac, we are told that ‘he arose and saddled his ass.’ Then there was Abdon, eight years a judge of Israel, who had forty sons and thirty grandsons, ‘all mounted on seventy asses,’ are the words of history. Then there was the Levite of Mount Ephraim--ah! I forget his name--his wife left him and went to stay four months with her father in Bethlehem Juda, and when he went to bring her back, he took with him ‘a servant and two asses,’ one doubtless for her use. Then the jaw-bone of the ass made famous by Samson is well known, I mean the jaw-bone he wielded at Ramathlechi, when he put his thousand enemies to flight. Some of these animals possess virtues worthy of our own imitation; they have displayed oftentimes very great intelligence, and affection for those they serve; as in the case of a certain old prophet who went forth from Juda to Bethel to denounce Jeroboam, and, being misled and turned from his duty by a pretended friend, was killed by the way on his return home; his ass was found standing patient and watchful by the side of his dead master.”

Thus discoursed mein herr; his colloquial efforts were apt to be rather prolix and oratorical, but this was to be ascribed to his profession as lecturer; he was so much accustomed, when he had unearthed an idea, to follow it up and make the most of it--a sort of intellectual fox-chase.

Failing to keep pace with him over such extended and erudite ground, Jans had, nevertheless, a dim notion that it was something to own even one donkey, so he said:

“To-morrow I will buy a donkey.”

“Ah! yes,” said the Frau von Steufle, “and next market-day we will go with a donkey.”

“You will be wise to buy a donkey,” repeated mein herr, “for now I call to mind that Sancho Panza had one whose labors, as he tells us, half-supported his family. I am reminded, also, that the great Cervantes himself rode an ass, as he relates, on a pleasant journey from Equivias with two of his friends. They heard some one clattering up from behind and calling to them to stop, and when he at length overtook them it proved to be a student, who was mounted on an animal of the same sort; he no sooner learned their names than he flung himself off of his ass, says Cervantes, whilst his cloak-bag tumbled on one side, and his portmanteau on the other, and he hastened to express his admiration of the great author of _Don Quixote_.”[22]

Just at this point both meerschaum and pipe had given forth their last whiff, and the knitting-work had arrived at the middle of a needle; and as the great matter under discussion, the purchase, was considered as wisely decided in the affirmative, they mutually exchanged a kind “Gute Nacht” with the inevitable “Schlafen Sie wohl!”[23]

II.

The day after the above conversation, Jans left his home for a little business in a distant city, and several more elapsed before he returned with his purchase.

Oh! vain boast when Jans von Steufle declared, “To-morrow I will buy a donkey.”

What is a donkey? In one phase of his character, he is the very personification of the stoical philosophy of the ancients; the type of that perfect indifference to all sublunary mutations to which Zeno vainly strives to elevate humankind; patient and enduring under any amount of rain, hail, snow, and sleet that can pour down on him, and any amount of luggage that can be piled upon him; totally, indifferent, in the road he travels, as to its length, direction, hostelries, or hardships, and satisfied, as far as food and sleep are concerned, with the smallest quantity and the poorest quality.

This was Jans’ idea of a donkey, but it was not what he got for his money; he got a little gray beast, with a shaggy hide, a large head, long ears, and a temper.

It was quite dark when Jackey with a boy astride him arrived from the place of his last abode; so he was quietly taken to the comfortable quarters prepared for him not far from brindle-cow, and particular introductions to him were deferred until the next morning.

The next morning ushered in market-day. The edibles had all been gathered in and nicely washed the night before; the flowers also had been culled and tastefully arranged in beautiful bouquets--some small for sweet little love tokens; some larger to decorate the tables and mantel-shelves of those people who are unhappily forced to dwell always among the bricks and mortar of the town, who paid large prices for them, and took them thankfully, as their very minute share of all the glorious and beautiful works of the Creator which are spread around life in the country. Others, again, were tied together in tall pyramid-like forms, the apex a pure white lily or perhaps a white rose, and spreading down from that to the base in blossoms that mingled all the colors of the rainbow. These were destined for the grand altar of the great church; for there were always pious souls in the town ready to expend their good groschen and thalers in adornments for the sanctuary. Very skilful are the fingers of German wives, and great their taste in making up all these tempting little articles of merchandise; and as they lay waiting in the _Wohnzimmer_[24] of the Von Steufle dwelling-house, you might have thought the whole garden had moved for a departure.

Breakfast was disposed of early, and immediately after it Jackey was brought out for his first load.

“He has good points,” said the learned herr, after taking a leisurely survey.

Jans knew not much about points, but he knew how to put a good load on his back, and this he now proceeded to do.

“Much discretion is necessary in purchasing a donkey,” observed the Herr von Heine--“much discrimination; wisdom and foolishness are so much alike on a cursory view. A demure aspect may represent either; and, then, a staid, dignified manner may proceed from lack of ideas, nay, even absolute stupidity, as well as from profound thought. In dealing with an animal which exhibits these traits, great penetration is called for, or you will be deceived. Then, there is a brightness of the eye, nothing vicious. Ah! I think your animal has it, a sort of exuberance of spirit, a repressed strength which can accomplish deeds almost incredible when opportunity offers. You seldom see this in pictures of the donkey race; painters seem to think it necessary to represent them dull and imbecile, which is far from being correct.”

Mein herr paused, but his friends were both too busy to reply, so he was only met by a “Freilich, mein Herr”[25] from Jans, and a smiling “Ja Wohl”[26] from his helpmate. In German-land, social life has no sharp points and corners to prick and scratch. All is polished and polite, and such a little acknowledgment of attention to a speaker could never be neglected. It was sufficient encouragement for the herr, and he proceeded. He was so accustomed to vibrate between his study and his lecture-room, that to be quite silent or to have all the talking to himself had become most natural to him, so, as we have said, he proceeded.

“Painting recalls to me Polygnotus, mentioned, I think, by Pausanias, yet I’m not quite certain. He was an Athenian painter of great celebrity, and one of his works was an allegorical picture, in which unavailing labor was symbolized by a man twisting a rope which an ass nibbles in pieces as fast as he advanced. These allegorical pictures are pleasant studies, and it is truly surprising to compare all the different interpretations of them by all the different people, who call the same object by totally different names, and of course draw from the entire composition very different conclusions. Things are generally contradictory to themselves as well as to other things, especially when viewed in that dim light which I would call, if I may be allowed an original expression, the _mist of ages_. We may cite for this Silenus. He is the only heathen god depicted on an ass. Now, the morals and manners of Silenus are very well known, and his association with this quadruped is complimentary to it or not, according to the view taken. It may be a panegyric on a patient, sure-footed, philosophical animal, who could put aside personal feeling in choosing his company, and bear his bibulous rider in safety when he was totally unable to walk. Or was Silenus an immortal in disgrace--degraded from horse, tiger, lion, panther, not to mention chariots and wings, all that gods and men delight in, and doomed to the indignity of donkey-back? If the latter, certainly the creature rose superior to his situation in the end; his voice must have been tremendous! In battle between the gods and giants, when Silenus rode in among them, it was his sonorous bray that threw the giant ranks in confusion and actually put them to flight. He was well rewarded for this service, for justice is in the sky if not on earth. He was exalted to the constellations. Search the star-lighted sky for Cancer, and you will find in it the once humble Asellus of Silenus.

“_Midæ aures_, the asinine appendages which the king was forced to accept so unwillingly on Mount Tmolus (a proper reproof to captious criticism),

‘Induiturque aures lente gradientis aselli,’[27]

were evidently a compliment to the quadruped; for certainly Apollo meant them for an improvement on his own, which had so signally failed him.”

Here mein herr came to a decided stop necessarily, for the donkey was at last loaded, and such a load! Nothing but a donkey could have stood under it, much less walk! It was cabbages this side, potatoes that side, cauliflowers in the middle. Then salad laid on loose; then celery stuck in endwise; then great bunches of sage and savory and thyme, and herbs for the soup, _Petersilie_ and _der Rettig_. All these, hung on everywhere, made Jack so fragrant that his coming could be known long before he was in sight. Lastly, was a delicate little basket of eggs, engaged long ago by a dainty customer, swinging easily, so as not to break, under all.

As Jack was pretty nearly buried out of sight under the substantials of trade, the Frau von Steufle took the flowers for her share, and she was equally well laden. She could only be said to resemble an immense walking bouquet, with a pleasant, happy face peering out from its midst. Truly, the two were worth seeing. As for Jans, his great responsibility was load enough for him, and so, with good wishes and great expectations, they departed.

The Herr von Heine was alone all that long summer day. It was rather a pleasant variety at first. Solitude has charms about it. He wandered through the house, and explored every nook in the garden, and went a long way over the grass to look at the pigs; he fed the chickens and even patted the cow. The old cat seemed to think it incumbent on her to show him the premises. At all events, she escorted him hither and thither, now turning somersaults in front of him, now flying up a tree to take a bird’s-eye view of him, or perhaps to show him there were some feats not to be learned in books; then down again, in a sentimental sort of humor rubbing her head and ears against him, under his very steps; she quite disturbed his equilibrium.

The large house-dog, or, rather, yard-dog, for there he lived, looked on with a more suspicious air, as if he should like to be informed what this new state of things meant; and after returning the learned Herr von Heine’s proferred intimacy with the slightest possible wag of his tail, he walked off to attend to his own business.

Perhaps mein herr added a trifle that holiday to his stock of knowledge. He had evidently descended from his pedestal of dignity, and he enjoyed it vastly; besides, he had often introduced such things in an illustrative or figurative manner to his classes, and it was as well to make himself familiar with their surroundings.

But it was getting late now, the sun had set, twilight deepened into darkness, or rather moonlight. Where could the three be staying? Jans and his good wife were always home from market long before this hour, even when each carried a load with a barrow to wheel by turns!

He walked down to the road-way, and gazed long and anxiously into the distance. No signs of them yet! Where could they be? He returned to the house, and, ascending to his chamber, selected from among his books a volume in Latin by the renowned Cornelius Agrippa. He turned to the last chapter, “Ad Encomium Asini Digressio.”[28] He felt an intense interest at this moment in asses. It was possible some of their peculiarities had escaped his knowledge; he desired to ascertain. But he failed, under the peculiar circumstances, to fix his attention, so he laid the book aside, and returned to the regions below; to his solitary stroll up and down the gravel-walk, with an occasional pause for a long and anxious survey of the road. Even his meerschaum was forgotten or uncared for.

“But Time is faithful to his trust:
Only await, thou pining dust.”

Time, which does so much, at length brought them home. To his great relief, the trio reappeared, and, creeping slowly along, turned from the road into the gravel-walk and reached the house, all three evidently depressed in spirits.

III.

Jackey had been turned loose in the paddock on his return, _not_ for good behavior; and he alternated there between nibbling the grass as assiduously as if he had engaged to mow the whole before next daylight, and standing still with his head thrust down and fixed, as motionless as if he had been carved out of stone.

“A singular animal truly,” said mein herr to himself as he looked down from his chamber window. “He reminds me--”

Here a summons to supper interrupted the reminiscence; and, when they were all revived with the delicious hot coffee and cream which the Frau von Steufle knew so well how to mix, Jans entered on his adventures as follows:

“I thought a donkey was a great traveller, and very careful and mindful, and to be trusted, and good on bad roads, and could eat what a donkey ought to eat, and not steal what was not meant for him.”

“Of course,” said the Herr von Heine; “you are right, he is a great traveller. I tried one myself on the Alps, that is, I began the Alps on a donkey; most people begin the Alps on a donkey, next a mule, then on foot, if they try Mont Blanc. I well remember the last view I took of the Jungfrau and its avalanches from the Wengern Alps. At the Hospice of St. Bernard I took a comfortable meal from the good monks, and then on foot and mule-back I mounted by way of Martigny and Tête Noire to Chamouni. In Egypt there is nothing like a donkey for the desert; when I was at Cairo (that was in my student life), many a pleasant morning I started out on a donkey, and spent the day among the ruins about there. Great climbers they are, so obedient and sure-footed. The little white donkeys of Egypt are beauties, long silky hair; the pashas value them highly. Certainly the ass is a traveller; the wild asses of Syria are fleet as the wind. Then, what would Rome be without donkeys? or any part of Italy, for that matter? Along the coasts, the bay of Naples, Mount Vesuvius, now over sand and stones and lava, and volcanic ashes fetlock-deep, now to explore pleasant fields, and woody paths, and old highways, always picking his way so carefully up and down steep places, by some path of his own you fail to see--why, you may ride on one to the very verge of a precipice, and take your view from his back, as safely as if you crept there on hands and knees! Oh! yes, they are great travellers, though sometimes slow.”

“Very slow is Jackey,” responded his owner, “so slow that a good part of the time he stood still.”

“Possible?” queried mein herr. “Perhaps his load was rather--but yet, you can hardly overload a donkey. Why, in Rome they are perfect moving heaps of fagots, hay, fruit, old clothes, mats, brooms, and brushes, and everything, in fact, that is salable and movable, with a dirty, swarthy peasant striding beside him as driver, or, it may be, a boy; but, no, I should say they are _always_ driven by a mob of boys. I hold that the most gregarious of all animals is the human biped in its youth; and if I were called upon for a centre-piece, with most power to collect around it these juvenile swarms of the genus _homo_, I should name a Roman donkey. Before him, behind him, a body-guard on each side, all sizes, in all sorts of garments, or, rather, in all degrees of nudity, shouting, yelling, laughing, talking, and each one using all his powers to increase the speed of the poor little beast--there you have a Roman donkey! I have been told of a scene in Rome. A little ass whose panniers were two good-sized baskets of eggs; it was about Easter time, when eggs are valuable. To hasten him, his driver, a tall, ragged peasant, struck him smartly, which offended him. He stood still a moment, then deliberately laid himself down, and rolled over. The peals of laughter which greeted the donkey as he arose, daubed and dripping with the yellow semi-liquid, the bewailings of his owner, all together were worth seeing. In no place in Europe are they as poorly fed and as much abused as by the lower classes in Paris; truly they are miserable-looking wretches there, bony, sulky, dirty. I have often wished to apply to the back of the ragged, screaming boy-driver the stick with which he was cudgelling his poor donkey. Monsieur Chateaubriand says he would gladly be the advocate of certain creatures, works of God, despised by men, and ‘en première ligne,’ says he, ‘figuereraient l’âne et le chat.’

“The heavy-laden ass is a verity in ancient lore; even its name is used to express hardship and endurance; as from the Greek word ὄνος, an ass, is supposed to be derived the Latin _onus_, signifying a _burden_.”

Mein herr made a pause, he was evidently lapsing into the delusion that he was in his _Collegienhaus_, lecturing on donkeys. The gentle frau recalled his wandering wits by observing, in a low, sad voice:

“Oh! he shook so many things off; all lost; he shook half his load off in the creek!”

“Indeed!” exclaimed the herr, “is it possible! that was not to be expected of him. Many classical writers mention _loading_ the ass, but I cannot recall a single instance where he _unloaded_ himself in a creek!

“Horace, it is true, refers to what might be a little sulkiness under a heavy load, when he represents himself as a sort of discontented donkey under the infliction of some of his troublesome friends:

‘Demitto auriculas ut iniquæ mentis asellus
Quum gravius dorso, subiit onus.’[29]

“Then, the poor creature has been at times imposed on in a manner which might excuse resentment. In ancient Rome, for instance, on sacred days all labor was forbidden, with the exception of some certain kinds considered necessary.

‘Quippe etiam festis quædam exercere diebus
Fas et jura sinunt.’[30]

“The works allowed were setting traps for birds which were hurtful, ordering the trenches which irrigated the fields, and some few others of like kind. To the rustics, permission was granted to carry their farm produce to market on sacred days, and they also might bring a load back. This was allowed them in order that this business might not interrupt them on working-days. Now, a _load_ with them necessarily demanded an ass; consequently the ass knew no sacred day, no day of rest from his burdens, and _such_ loads, Mynheer von Steufle!

‘Sæpe oleo tardi costas agitator aselli
Vilibus aut oneras pomis; lapidemque revertans
Incusum,’ etc.[31]

“Oil, cheap fruits, millstones, black pitch! Ah! _mein lieber Freund_ what a load! I hardly believe they prefer thistles to grass, as some say, but they will subsist on one-third of what is required by a horse under all this labor.”

Jans looked at him ruefully and incredulous:

“Some may--some of them may--but I count Jack two horses at the least. He must have been eating all night, for he had enough put before him; and to-day, why, you’d think he hadn’t seen a corn-husk in a month. He ate apples and cauliflowers, and a peck of peas, and--and--”

The Frau von Steufle supplemented the catalogue of enormities.

“All my roses, thorns and all, and Katrina von Dyke’s beautiful tulips that she had just sold, and my tallest bouquet, the one that was engaged for the grand altar. O dear! what will they do? Then he chewed up a nice bonnet, and he overset the things! Dear me, so much mischief! Ah me!”

“Yes, yes,” said Jans, “it is well to say, ah me! Look at the bills that will come in to-morrow!”

“Truly,” said the herr in a tone of commiseration, “it is surprising. It was not to be expected! Yet we must look at the best of it. Horace says:

‘Nemo adeo ferus est, ut nom mitiscere possit
Si modo culturæ patientem commodet aurem.’”[32]

“I know not what that may mean, Mein Herr von Heine,” said Jans, “nor do I know the Herr Horace; but I wish, if he wants a donkey, he would take mine. I wish he had him.”

The herr was silenced.

Morning came, and with it a heavy bill to Jans von Steufle for damages done by a certain donkey, who did kick, bite, tear, trample on, and devour a long list of things belonging to a long list of persons.

Evening came, and with it came a lad, halter in hand, which he quietly knotted round Jackey’s neck, and led him away, looking as solemn and as amiable as when he first arrived.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] Sourkrout.

[15] Sausage.

[16] Cream-cheese.

[17] Roast-beef.

[18] Stewed meat.

[19] Bed-quilts.

[20] Bed-linen.

[21] The hall where lectures are mostly delivered.

[22] See preface to _Labors of Persiles and Sigismunda: A Romance_, the last work of Cervantes, and left unfinished at his death.

[23] “May you sleep well!”

[24] Common sitting-room.

[25] “Assuredly, sir.”

[26] “Ah! yes.”

[27] “And he puts on the ears of an ass quietly moving along.”

[28] “A Digression in Praise of an Ass.”

[29] “I let down my ears as a young ass of stubborn mind when he has taken a burden too heavy for his back.”

[30] “Since even on festive days, right and the laws allow us to do certain things.”

[31] “Often the driver loads the sides of the slow ass with oil or cheap fruit, and bringing back the wrought stone,” etc.

[32] “No one is so savage that he cannot be tamed if he will lend an ear to instruction.”

THE ROMAN EMPIRE AND THE MISSION OF THE BARBARIANS.

“Our clock strikes when there is a change from hour to hour; but no hammer in the horologe of time peals through the universe when there is a change from era to era.”[33] So writes Mr. Carlyle in one of his powerful essays; and he is correct. As gradually and as silently as childhood passes into youth, and youth into manhood, and manhood again into old age, so does a nation and the world itself pass from one era into another. But if the signal of such a change is not heard sounding through the world, the moment of the transition is foreknown and has been preordained by God, under whose eye all agents throughout the universe are ever acting out their parts. Men are sometimes taken by surprise, but God never. Men are often mistaken in their calculations of the action of natural forces, but it cannot be so with God. A revolution brews like an angry storm, all in silence; and bursts; and a nation is shivered into fragments. Men are amazed; they have made a false reckoning; but the storm has brewed under the eye of God, and gathered its hidden forces, and burst at the very moment that God allowed it, and the havoc has been done up to the time which he has marked out. This is the expression of a great Catholic principle of history which it is well, especially in this age of godless theories, to keep constantly before our minds. We are about to endeavor to show how powerfully the truth of this great historical principle is brought out in that part of history to which our subject refers, for it is well said by Cesare Cantu in his _Storia Universale_,[34] “If ever history was manifested as a visible order of Providence, it was in these times.”

As we pass from the fourth into the fifth century, we come into a new era of the history of the church. The fourth age was one of mental strife; it was an age of great minds. The enemy of the church in the time of the persecutions had been brute force; now it was power of intellect. But God always has his champions ready. In the persecutions, they were the martyrs; in the fourth age, they were the Athanasiuses and the Ambroses. But in the fifth age the men of God’s choice are of another type. They are men out of the darkness, savages of the forest, wild dwellers amid the ice-mountains and the swamps. They have known no civilizing influences; they are nature’s children, and hardy as the rock and granite. They have reason, it is true; but it does not guide them on their strange, savage mission. They are all driven on by an instinct that is irresistible.

The words of Alaric are the expression of the feelings of all those wild warriors. As the Gothic leader is marching towards Rome at the head of his army, a solitary goes out from his grotto to arrest him in his course. “No,” replies Alaric, “a mysterious voice within me says: March on, go and sack Rome.” So we are told by Socrates[35] and Sozomen[36] in their histories. Thus, then, they go to their stupendous work of destruction. That work is characterized by blood, and smoke, and the crash of falling cities. The age is one of chaos. Never before since the world began were there such wild ruin and devastation; never such terrible levelling to the ground of human grandeur; never such savage smashing up of the monuments of luxury and worldly greatness. It would, indeed, be difficult to describe adequately what is so confused and so chaotic. When the storm-clouds have gathered and overshadowed us with darkness, when the lightning-fires flame through the sky and scathe the forest-trees, and the blinding raindrops drive in fury through the air, can we see any order in it all? Can we draw lines and mark out clearly the different elements of the storm? No. It is only when the storm is spent and the air becomes clear again that the eye can discern what havoc has been done. The giant oak has been cleft by the storm-spirit’s fiery sword; the lofty tower has been hurled down from its stately height; the rocks have been split, and the earth’s surface torn up, as by the bursting of some mighty engine of war. So it would be difficult to describe, with anything like clearness of method, the mighty storm which burst upon the Roman Empire in the fifth century. However long we pore over the pages of Paul Orosius or Salvian, we still rise from our study with bewildered brain. God lets loose his wild messengers of wrath, and they do their savage work in their own savage way. We can see no order in it--to our eye there is none. We hear the wailing cries of despair, and the frenzied howls of the conquering barbarians, and the loud re-echoing crashes of the falling empire. But it is only when the smoke has cleared off and the dust has subsided that we can form any idea of the ruin and devastation which have been accomplished. If our task, then, were mainly to draw an accurate and true picture, we should fail. But it is rather to give a view of a period of history from a Catholic philosophical standpoint: it is to show, as far as we can, the action of God on human affairs. It will be necessary, then, first to point out what the mission of the Roman Empire was--a mission to build up: and then the causes which prepared the way for the mission of the barbarians--a mission of sweeping destruction.

At the time when the Son of God came down upon earth, the Roman Empire was at the height of its splendor and power. Never in the history of the world had there been an empire in every way so wonderful. Never before had there been a power so mighty and all-embracing in its dominion. All that had been great and brilliant in the civilization of the empires of old had come down to Rome, and had undergone a boundless development there. This truth is powerfully put forth in the words of the first professor of the philosophy of history at the Catholic University of Ireland. We will quote his words: “The Empire of Augustus,” he says, “inherited the whole civilization of the ancient world. Whatever political and social knowledge, whatever moral or intellectual truth, whatever useful or elegant arts the enterprising race of Japheth had acquired, preserved, and accumulated in the long course of centuries since the beginning of history, had descended without a break to Rome, with the dominion of all the countries washed by the Mediterranean. For her the wisdom of Egypt and all the East had been stored up; for her Pythagoras and Thales, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and all the schools besides of Grecian philosophy suggested by these names, had thought; for her Zoroaster, as well as Solon and Lycurgus, legislated; for her Alexander conquered, the races which he subdued forming but a portion of her empire. Every city in the ears of whose youth the Poems of Homer were familiar as household words, owned her sway. Her magistrates, from the Northern Sea to the confines of Arabia, issued their decrees in the language of empire--the Latin tongue; while, as men of letters, they spoke and wrote in Greek. For her Carthage had risen, founded colonies, discovered distant coasts, set up a world-wide trade, and then fallen, leaving her the empire of Africa and the West, with the lessons of a long experience. Not only so, but likewise Spain, Gaul, and all the frontier provinces from the Alps to the mouth of the Danube, spent in her service their strength and skill; supplied her armies with their bravest youths; gave to her senate and her knights their choicest minds. The vigor of new, and the culture of long-polished, races were alike employed in the vast fabric of her power. In fact, every science and art, all human thought, experience, and discovery had poured their treasure in one stream into the bosom of that society which, after forty-four years of undisputed rule, Augustus had consolidated into a new system of government, and bequeathed to the charge of Tiberius.”[37]

This passage from Mr. Allies is like a brilliant flash of light thrown on Rome’s greatness; but yet it only gives us a glimpse. It would take us long to form to ourselves an adequate idea of this greatest of empires. We should have to make long journeys through her extensive provinces, measure her vast cities, march along her grand roads, and, after we had journeyed over all the civilized world of those days, we should still be within the circuit of the mighty empire. Her sway extended over the three then known continents: “Gaul and Spain, Britain and North Africa, Switzerland and the greater part of Austria, Turkey in Europe, Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt, formed but single limbs of her mighty body.”[38]

It is wonderful, again, to think of what Pliny calls the “immensa Romanæ pacis majestas.” The inconceivable majesty of Rome in the time of peace was, perhaps, more overpowering than anything else about her. Having a boundlessness of empire such as we have described, containing within her circuit a population, according to Gibbon, of 120,000,000, looking round from her throne of supreme authority, and claiming all as her own that was visible to the eye of civilization, she could stretch forth her sceptre over all this immeasurable area and over these countless peoples, and hold all in submission and peace. We cannot, then, be surprised that Rome ruled over the nations as a goddess; that divine power and majesty were believed to belong to her. Her sway was felt from the Rhine and the Danube to the deserts of Africa, from utmost Spain to the Euphrates, like an ubiquitous presence. Her eye of authority reached from one extremity of the world to the other, and she had her 340,000 men stationed on the frontiers, looking with watchful ken into the vast unknown solitudes beyond, and ever ready to hurl back the savage hordes of external foes, if perchance they stepped forward for a moment from their native darkness. Very few forces were needed to preserve internal order. That same Gaul which in 1860 required 626,000 armed men to preserve internal order and for external security in time of peace, had a garrison of only 1,200 men in the days of old Rome.[39] Well then may Pliny and the old Roman authors speak with such admiration of the “immensa Romanæ pacis majestas.” Nothing had ever been seen on the earth so imposing and so grand. No empire had ever existed with such a boundless sway, such wonderful internal organization, such a union of strength, such compactness of power, and such an awe-inspiring name. And at the time of Augustus there was no sign of decay or deterioration. Rome was, on the contrary, rising higher and higher in cultivation and refinement. We may here quote the words of Tertullian in his treatise _De Anima_; they give us a vivid and beautiful picture of the Roman Empire of his day. “The world itself,” he says, “is opened up, and becomes from day to day more civilized, and increases the sum of human enjoyment. Every place is reached, is become known, is full of business. Solitudes, famous of old, have changed their aspects under the richest cultivation. The plough has levelled forests, and the beasts that prey on man have given place to those that serve him. Corn waves on the sea-shore, rocks are opened out into roads; marshes are drained, cities are more numerous now than villages in former times. The island has lost its savageness, and the cliff its desolation. Houses spring up everywhere, and men to dwell in them. On all sides are government and life.” And so we might go on indefinitely, describing Rome’s power, and riches, and civilization, and never succeed in giving an idea equal to the great reality. Then, as we think of all this, we are led to ask ourselves, How is this mighty empire ever to fall? Other empires, we know, rose and fell, but at their highest point of greatness they could not be compared to the Empire of Rome. All that they had of might and majesty and durability Rome has, and immeasurably more. Men have not known how to qualify her power, nor how to designate her except by calling her “Eternal Rome.” Where, then, can another power come from that shall be able to cope with her? She looked as durable as the very firmament which God had set on immovable pillars, more lasting than the rock-built earth on which she had grown and developed for nearly a thousand years. Her existence was inconceivable before she began to be; her ceasing to exist was as inconceivable afterwards. It seemed as if to destroy her would be to split the earth itself on which she was based, or to shiver the universe, which she seemed to embrace in her mighty arms. Of her capital itself a great living writer says: “Look at the Palatine Hill, penetrated, traversed, cased with brick-work, till it appears a work of man, not of nature; run your eye along the cliffs from Ostia to Terracina, covered with the _débris_ of masonry; gaze around the bay of Baiæ, whose rocks have been made to serve as the foundations and the walls of palaces; and in those mere remains, lasting to this day, you will have a type of the moral and political strength of the establishments of Rome. Think of the aqueducts making for the imperial city for miles across the plain; think of the straight roads stretching off again from that one centre to the ends of the earth; consider that vast territory round about it, strewn to this day with countless ruins; follow in your mind its suburbs, extending along its roads for as much, at least in some directions, as forty miles; and number up its continuous mass of population, amounting, as grave authors say, to almost six million; and answer the question, How was Rome ever to be got rid of? Why was it not to progress? Why was it not to progress for ever? Where was that ancient civilization to end?”[40] After looking at Rome with a human eye, this is the way we should speak; these are questions we should ask. To the human eye, Rome was based on everlasting foundations, and was to be immortal. There was no power--there could be no power sufficiently mighty to move her from her seat. But looking at her from the standpoint of the great Catholic principles of history, we shall use language very different. We shall say that Rome, however mighty and well based, will last no longer than serves the wise designs of God’s providence. He raised her up, as he has raised other empires, for a mission; when that mission is fulfilled, he will say to her, “Perish,” and she will wither away and gradually die, or, if so be his pleasure, she will be swept, as by the fury of a storm, from the face of the earth. It was the latter judgment that actually fell upon her, and we have to see in the course of this essay with what terrible reality it was carried out.

Mighty as Rome was, so was she intended for a mighty mission. She had subdued the world, and the world was at her feet. Her great highways cut through her immense empire in every direction. By these broad roads the riches of the provinces were carried to her bosom, and by these roads went forth her legions to guard the distant frontier. She had given her own language to the various races which she had bent under her sway, so that her word of command was understood and obeyed in every part of her wide empire. At this point, then, in the course of her history, God had determined to appear, in visible form, on the scene of human events. When the world was thus at peace, and under the sway of this mightiest of empires, the Prince of Peace came on earth. Circumstances never could have been more favorable for the establishment of his kingdom. It strikes us, then, here at once, that the evident mission of the Roman Empire was to prepare the way for Christianity. In spite of the opposition of pagan gods; in spite of sensual passions and human pride, the Crucified will have Rome, as has been long ago preordained, for the seat of his own wonderful empire. Thence his missionaries will go forth, like Rome’s own conquering legions, but unto still more glorious conquests than they. The broad Roman roads will rejoice more under the footsteps of these new conquerors than ever they did in days before under the tramp of warlike battalions returning booty-laden to the great capital. Everything is ready for the prosecution of these new conquests. The provinces are at peace and ready to receive these Heaven-sent messengers. Men seem to be waiting for some voice that shall be heard sounding through the world telling them to lay down their swords for ever, to forget their strifes, and that they are all brothers. Such a voice is now to be heard. The language of Rome has made itself universal in order that it may be the organ of a universal religion. When the first revelation was made, the language of the human race was one; so was it necessary that, when a new revelation was about to be given to men, they should be brought back again to unity of language, in order that revelation might be universally received, and be transmitted to future ages. The great Roman conquerors had no thought, whilst they went forth to conquest with their countless warriors, full of ideas of human glory and lust of booty, that they were the simple instruments of him who was ruling in the heavens, and whom they knew not. But so it was. And we see how God’s designs were carried out. We see, in course of time, the aged fisherman, from the Galilean Lake, wending his way toward the great Roman capital. As he walks along the Via Appia with his scrip and staff, he is the symbol of simplicity and human weakness. But mark you well that old way-worn form. There walks the first of the great race of Popes. He represents no contemptible power, that weak-looking wayfarer. He bears with him a secret source of strength which will give him courage against all obstacles. Though he looks so mean in his Jewish garb, yet he is a conqueror such as the world has not yet seen. He has no legends at his back, no surroundings of earthly might to make the world tremble before him. But he bears with him something mightier than Roman armies, and far more irresistible: it is the Cross of Jesus Christ. March on, old man, to the great city that is called the mistress of nations and omnipotent. Fear not; thou shalt subdue her with thy poor wooden cross, and plant in her midst thy everlasting throne. Yea, of a truth, the throne which that old man shall establish there shall be the first immovable throne which the world has ever seen. The throne of Cambyses has passed away; the throne of Alexander has crumbled to dust; and the throne of the Roman Cæsars will soon be buried in the wreck of barbarian invasion. But the throne of the fisherman will stand firm where he planted it, whilst everything around perishes and crumbles away. Nations and kings will mistake it for a human thing, and they will, in their blind rage, rush against it to overturn it; but they will dash themselves to pieces in the collision, and they will be seen lying around in scattered fragments, whilst that throne itself still remains immovable. So, then, the fisherman, conscious of his great mission, enters into the mighty city which God had been preparing for him those long ages. That was a solemn moment for the world, though the world knew it not. Other conquerors enter into the capitals of kingdoms with great pomp and a mighty array of armed men; and perhaps their hold upon the subdued cities is of short duration. The tide of human affairs quickly changes, and perhaps the conquerors themselves are in their turn the conquered and the captive. But this meek old man has no armed force to awe men into submission. He is the centre of no pageant. He walks on his way in silence. He has nothing but his staff and his scrip and his little wooden cross, which in reality is his sceptre. But he enters Rome to take a lasting possession of it. Not all the world in arms will ever again be able to make a permanent conquest of that city. A mystery will henceforth hang about it for ever. It will always look like a city of the past, and yet it will hold within it the life of all peoples and nations to come. By degrees, other kings shall leave it altogether to Peter and his successors, as if scared away by the mysterious presence of Christ’s vicar. And if, in the course of ages, men dream like Rienzi of the great days of ancient Rome, and long to see the old pagan prestige of the city brought back, and then come with their mailed hands and strike the mysterious power that God has established there, their mailed hands shall wither, and they will fall back stricken by Heaven in their turn, as Oza was in past days for his irreverence.