Chapter XX: Part I (5)

These processions and ceremonies relating to the bones of the dead remind us of the singular custom observed at the Capuchin Convent of the Piazza Barberini in Rome. The skeletons of the dead monks are robed in the habit of the order and seated in choir‐stalls round the crypt, until they fall to pieces, or are displaced by a silent new‐comer to their ghostly brotherhood. The bones which are thus yearly accumulating are formed into patterns of stars and crosses on the walls of the crypt and surrounding corridors, while the skulls are often heaped up in small mounds against the partitions. The convent is strictly enclosed, and is only accessible to men during the rest of the year, but on All Souls’ day and during the octave, the public, men and women alike, are allowed to visit this strange place of entombment. Crowds flock to see it, especially foreigners. Hawthorne, in his _Marble Faun_, has described it in terms that make one feel as if _his_ impression were vivid enough to supply the place of a personal one on the part of each of his readers.

The ancient Roman customs and beliefs concerning the dead are well worth noticing, as embodying the essence of the utmost civilization a heathen land could boast. It is said that the Romans chose the cypress as emblematic of death because that tree, when once cut, never grows again. The facts of natural history are sometimes disregarded by the ancient poets, but it is not with that that we now have to deal, but with the false idea symbolized by this choice. The Romans, nevertheless, fully believed in an after‐life, though one modelled much on the same principle as their life on earth. The unburied and those whose bodies could not be found were supposed to wander about, unable to cross the river Styx, and their friends therefore generally built them an empty tomb, which they believed served as a retreat to their restless spirits. Pliny ascribes the Roman custom of burning the dead to the belief that was current amongst the people, that their enemies dug up and insulted the bodies of their soldiers killed in distant wars. During the earlier part of the Republic, the dead were mostly buried in the natural way, in graves or vaults. Some very strange ceremonies are recorded in Adams’ _Roman Antiquities_ concerning the funeral processions, which usually took place at night by torch‐light. (This was chiefly done to avoid any chance of meeting a priest or magistrate, who was supposed to be polluted by the sight of a corpse, as in the Jewish dispensation.) After the musicians, who sang the praises of the deceased to the accompaniment of flutes, came “players and buffoons, one of whom, called _archimimus_ (the chief mimic), sustained the character of the deceased, imitating his words or actions while alive. These players sometimes introduced apt sayings from dramatic writers.” Actors were also employed to personate the individual ancestors, and Adams’ commentator adds in a foot‐note: “A Roman funeral must therefore have presented a singular appearance, with a long line of ancestors stalking gravely through the streets of the capital.” Pliny, Plautus, Polybius, Suetonius, and others are the authorities quoted on this curious point. It is said by some authors that, in very ancient times, the dead were buried in their own houses; hence the origin of idolatry, the worship of household gods, the fear of goblins, etc. Relations also consecrated temples to the dead, which Pliny calls a very ancient custom, which had its share in contributing to the establishment of idol‐worship. In the Book of Wisdom(115) we find a reference to this in these words: “For a father, being afflicted with bitter grief, made to himself the image of his son, who was quickly taken away, and him who then had died as a man, he began now to worship as a god, and appointed him rites and sacrifices among his servants. Then in process of time, wicked custom prevailing, this error was kept as a law.” Adams tells us that “the private places of burial of the Romans were in fields or gardens, usually near the highway (such as the Via Appia near Rome, the Via Campana near Pozzuoli, the Street of Tombs at Pompeii), to be conspicuous and remind those who passed of mortality. Hence the frequent inscriptions—_Siste, viator_,(116) _Aspice, viator_.”(117) Games of gladiators were frequently held both on the day and the anniversaries of great funerals; and on the pyre slaves and clients were sometimes burnt with the body of their deceased master, as also all manner of clothes and ornaments, and, “in short, whatever was supposed to have been agreeable to him when alive.” As the funeral cortége left the place where the body had been burnt, they “used to take a last farewell, repeating several times _Vale_, or _Salve æternum_,”(118) also wishing that the earth might lie light on the person buried, as Juvenal relates, and which was found marked on several ancient monuments in these letters, S.T.T.L.(119) “This is a very remarkable instance of the dead being considered, in one sense, as conscious, sentient beings, and evidently has an origin which can hardly be disconnected from some remote or indistinct recollection of the true religion.”

Adams goes on to say that “oblations or sacrifices to the dead were afterwards made at various times, both occasionally and at stated periods, consisting of liquors, victims, and garlands, as Virgil, Tacitus, and Suetonius tell us, and sometimes to appease their _manes_, or atone for some injury offered them in life. The sepulchre was bespread with flowers, and covered with crowns and fillets. Before it there was a little altar, on which libations were made and incense burnt. A keeper was appointed to watch the tomb, which was frequently illuminated with lamps. A feast was generally added, both for the dead and the living. Certain things were laid on the tomb, commonly beans, lettuce, bread, and eggs, or the like, which it was supposed the ghosts would come and eat. What remained was burnt. After the funeral of great men,... a distribution of raw meat was made to the people.”

“Immoderate grief was thought to be offensive to the manes, according to Tibullus, but during the shortened mourning that was customary, the relations of the deceased abstained from entertainments or feasts of any sort, wore no badge of rank or nobility, were not shaved, and dressed in black, a custom borrowed (as was supposed) from the Egyptians. ‘No fire was ever lighted, as it was considered an ornament to the house.’ ”

The common places of burial were called _columbaria_, from the likeness of their arrangement to that of a pigeon‐house, each little niche scooped out in the walls holding the small urn in which the ashes of the dead were deposited. These _columbaria_, Adams tells us, were often below ground, like a vault, but private tombs belonging to wealthy citizens were in groves and gardens; as, for instance, that of Augustus, mentioned by Strabo, who calls it a hanging garden supported on marble arches, with shrubs planted round the base, and the Egyptian obelisks at the entrance. The tomb of Adrian, now the Castel S. Angelo, was a perfect palace of wealth and art, and supplied many a later building with ready‐made adornment before it became what it now is, a fortress. The tomb of Cecilia Metella, on the Via Appia, was also used as a mediæval stronghold, and looks more fit for such a use than for its former funereal distinction.

From ancient and imperial, we now pass to modern and Christian Rome, so undistinguishable in the chronology of their first blending, so widely apart in the moral order of their succession.

The subject of the catacombs and the early inscriptions on Christian graves is one so widely known and so copiously illustrated by many learned works, both English and foreign, that it would be superfluous to say much about it. Yet Cardinal Wiseman is so popular an author, and _Fabiola_ so standard a novel, that we may be forgiven for drawing a little on treasures so temptingly ready to our hand. There is in the first chapter of the second part of _Fabiola_ an interesting reference to the old established craft of the _fossores_, or excavators of the Christian cemeteries. Cardinal Wiseman says that some modern antiquarians have based upon the assertion of an anonymous writer, contemporary with S. Jerome, an erroneous theory of the _fossores_ having formed a lesser ecclesiastical order in the primitive church, like a _lector_ or reader. “But,” he adds, “although this opinion is untenable, it is extremely probable that the duties of this office were in the hands of persons appointed and recognized by ecclesiastical authority.... It was not a cemetery or necropolis company which made a speculation of burying the dead, but rather a pious and recognized confraternity, which was associated for the purpose.” Father Marchi, the great Jesuit authority on ancient subterranean Rome, says that a series of interesting inscriptions, found in the cemetery of S. Agnes, proves that this occupation was continued in particular families, grandfather, father, and sons having carried it on in the same place. The _fossores_ also transacted such rare bargains as were known in those days of simplicity and brotherly love, when wealthy Christians willingly made compensation for the privilege of being buried near a martyr’s tomb. Such an arrangement is commemorated in an early Christian inscription preserved in the Capitol. The translation runs thus: “This is the grave for two bodies, bought by Artemisius, and the price was given to the _fossor_ Hilarus—that is ... (the number, being in cipher, is unintelligible.) In the presence of Severus the _fossor_, and Laurentius.”

Cardinal Wiseman, jealous of Christian traditions, particularly notes that the theory of the subterranean crypts, now called catacombs, ever having been heathen excavations for the extraction of sand, has been disproved by Marchi’s careful and scientific examination. He then describes the manner of entombment used in these underground cemeteries: “Their walls as well as the sides of the staircases are honeycombed with graves, that is, rows of excavations, large and small, of sufficient length to admit a human body, from a child to a full‐grown man.... They are evidently made to measure, and it is probable that the body was lying by the side of the grave while this was being dug. When the corpse was laid in its narrow cell, the front was hermetically closed either by a marble‐slab, or more frequently by several broad tiles put edgeways in a groove or mortise, cut for them in the rock, and cemented all round. The inscription was cut upon the marble, or scratched in the wet mortar.... Two principles, as old as Christianity, regulate this mode of burial. The first is the manner of Christ’s entombment; he was laid in a grave in a cavern, wrapped up in linen, embalmed with spices, and a stone, sealed up, closed his sepulchre. As S. Paul so often proposes him for the model of our resurrection, and speaks of our being buried with him in baptism, it was natural for his disciples to wish to be buried after his example, so as to be ready to rise with him. This lying in wait for the resurrection was the second thought that regulated the formation of these cemeteries. Every expression connected with them alluded to the rising again. The word to _bury_ is unknown in Christian inscriptions: ‘_deposited_ in peace,’ ‘the _deposition_ of ...’ are the expressions used; that is, the dead are left there for a time, till called for again, as a pledge or precious thing, entrusted to faithful but temporary keeping. The very name of cemetery suggests that it is only a place where many lie, as in a dormitory, slumbering for a while, till dawn come and the trumpet’s sound awake them. Hence the grave is only called the ‘place,’ or more technically ‘the small home,’(120) of the dead in Christ.”

The old Teutonic _Gottes‐Acker_, the acre or field of God, denotes the same eminently Christian idea; the dead are thus likened to the seed hidden in the ground for a while, to ripen into a glorious spiritual harvest when the last call shall be heard. We have read somewhere, in an English novel whose name has escaped our memory, the same beautiful idea most poetically expressed. It was something to this effect: “We put up a stone at the head of a grave, just as we write labels in the spring‐time for the seeds we put into the earth, that we may remember what glorious flower is to spring from the little gray, hidden handful that seems so insignificant just now”—a Catholic thought found astray in a book that had nothing Catholic about it save its beauty and poetry; for beauty is a ray of truth, and truth is one and Catholic. One other remark is worth remembering about the early Christian inscriptions on the tombs of the departed. There is generally some anxiety to preserve a record of the exact date of a person’s death, and, in modern days, if it happened that there was no room for both the day and the year, no doubt the _day_, would be left unnoticed, and the year carefully chronicled. “Yet,” says Cardinal Wiseman, “while so few ancient Christian inscriptions supply the year of people’s deaths, thousands give us the very day of it on which they died, whether in the hopefulness of believers or in the assurance of martyrs. Of both classes annual commemoration had to be made on the very day of their departure, and accurate knowledge of this was necessary. Therefore it alone was recorded.”

O ages of faith! when it was the ambition of Christians to be inscribed in the Book of Life, instead of leaving names blazoned in gold in the annals of an earthly empire!

Prayers for the dead were in use among the primitive Christians, and in one of the inscriptions mentioned by Cardinal Wiseman the following reference to these prayers is found: “Christ God Almighty refresh thy spirit in Christ.” That this hallowed custom is akin to the natural feelings of a loving heart is self‐evident; the coldness of an “age of philosophy” alone could doubt it. Well might it be called the age of disorganization and not of philosophy (which is “love of wisdom”), for the wisdom that seeks to pull down instead of building up is but questionable. The disorganization of political society which we see at work through the International and the Commune; the disorganization of moral society which we behold every day increasing through the ease with which the marriage‐ tie is dissolved, and the hold the state is claiming on children and even infants; the disorganization of religious society which we find in the ever‐multiplying feuds of sects, like gangrene gradually eating away an unsound body; these are all fitting companions to that most ruthless severing of this world from the next which pretends to isolate the dead from the spiritual help and sympathy of the living, and to dwarf in the souls of men what even human laws commanded, or at least protected, concerning their bodies. The want of our age is a want of heart; heartlessness and callousness to the most sacred, the most _natural_ feelings, is shown to a fearful extent among our modern mind‐emancipators and reformers. On the one hand, nature is held up as a god to which all moral laws are to be subject, or, rather, before whose _fiat_ they are to cease to exist, while, on the other, nature (in everything lawful, touching, noble, generous) is told that she is a fool, and must learn to subdue “childish” aspirations and outgrow “childish” beliefs!

But the belief of a communication between the living and the departed is not only a _natural_ one; it is also Biblical. S. Matthew speaks of the middle state of souls when he mentions the strict account that will have to be rendered of “every idle word.”(121) S. Paul says that “every man’s work ... shall be tried in _fire_: and the fire shall try every man’s work _of what sort it is_. If any man’s work burn, he shall suffer loss, but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.”(122) S. Peter makes mention of “the spirits in prison,”(123) and S. John, in the Apocalypse, implies a state of probation when he says that “there shall not enter into it [the New Jerusalem] anything defiled or that worketh abomination, or maketh a lie.”(124) In the Second Book of Machabees, one of the most national of the Jewish records, and the most favorite and consolatory of the religious books held by the Jews as infallible oracles, the whole doctrine of purgatory and prayers for the departed is most plainly adverted to.

After a great battle and victory, Judas Machabeus searches the bodies of his slain warriors, and finds that some of them had appropriated heathen votive offerings made to the idols whose temples they had burnt at Jamnia a short time before. Upon this discovery, according to the sacred text, which is here too precious a testimony to be condensed, he, “making a gathering, sent twelve thousand drachms of silver to Jerusalem for sacrifice to be offered for the sins of the dead, thinking well and religiously concerning the resurrection. (For if he had not hoped that they that were slain should rise again, it would have seemed superfluous and vain to pray for the dead.) And because he considered that they who had fallen asleep with godliness, had great grace laid up for them. It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from their sins.”(125)

It may not perhaps be generally known that, among the Jews, the custom of praying for the dead exists, and has always existed uninterruptedly. Some of the supplications are very beautiful, and we do not hesitate to give them here, as an interesting corroboration of the assertions we have made throughout.

The chief prayers for the dead are contained in the “Kaddisch” for mourners, which forms part of the evening as well as the morning service for the Jewish Sabbath. Although the dead are not mentioned by name, it is to them alone that the prayers apply, as we understand from persons of that persuasion. The text is the following:

“May our prayers be accepted with mercy and kindness; may the prayers and supplications of the whole house of Israel be accepted in the presence of their Father who is in heaven, and say ye Amen. [The congregation here answer Amen.] May the fulness of peace from heaven with life be granted unto us and to all Israel, and say ye Amen.” “My help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. May he who maketh peace in his high heavens bestow peace on us and on all Israel. And say ye Amen.”

During these prayers, the mourners stand up and answer. Other invocations mention “the soul of my father” or “mother,” etc., as the case may be. In the service for the dead read over the corpse, these words occur: “O Lord our God, cause us to lie down in peace, and raise us up, O our King, to a happy life. I laid me down fearless and slept; I awoke, for the Lord sustained me.” All through the Old Testament we constantly find “sleep” used as a synonym for death. Scattered through the morning and evening services of the Hebrew liturgy there are invocations, frequently repeated, referring to the dead, such as these: “Thou, O Lord, art for ever powerful; thou restorest life to the dead, and art mighty to save. Thou art also faithful to revive the dead: blessed art thou, O Lord, who revivest the dead.” God is also said “to hold in his hands the souls of the living and the dead,” thus giving at least equal prominence to the departed and those they have left in their place. The Jews believe and hope that their prayers on earth benefit and refresh their lost brethren, and pray daily for them. The bodies of the departed are plainly dressed in a linen shroud without superfluous ornamentation, but many of the old ceremonies and purifications enjoined in the old law are now dispensed with. The old manner of burial was in a cave or spacious sepulchre in a field or garden, and the body was wrapped in spices, which were often burnt around it. The double cave of Mambre, bought for Sarah by Abraham, stood at the end of a field, and the sepulchres of the kings were also in a field. The garden where Our Lord was laid is another instance of the universality of this custom. In the Second Book of Chronicles(126) we read of King Asa that “they buried him in his own sepulchre which he had made for himself in the city of David: and they laid him on his bed full of spices and odoriferous ointments, which were made by the art of the perfumers, and they burnt them over him with great pomp.” This burning (of spices) is often mentioned throughout Holy Writ. Rachel, says the Book of Genesis,(127) was buried “in the highway” that led to Bethlehem, and Jacob erected a pillar over her sepulchre; Samuel, “in his own house at Ramatha”; and Saul, beneath an oak near the city of Jabes Galaad, the inhabitants of which place provided for his burial, and fasted seven days in sign of mourning for their sovereign. Joram, king of Juda, was punished for his misdeeds by exclusion from the sepulchre of his fathers, “and the people did not make a funeral for him according to the manner of burning [spices], as they had done for his ancestors.”(128) Ozias, being a leper, a disease which came upon him in punishment for having usurped sacerdotal functions, was buried “in the field” only “of the royal sepulchre.” Thus we see the immense importance attached to the place of burial under the old Jewish dispensation, and how it was an eternal disgrace to be expelled in death from the neighborhood of one’s family and their hereditary place of entombment. This feeling has continued very strong in most civilized and in all savage races; the graves of their forefathers are even more symbolical of home and fatherland to the wandering desert tribes of different nations, than what we should call their hearths and firesides. In later times, how often have we not seen gorgeous and imposing buildings, especially cathedrals and abbeys, built over the shrine of a dead king or bishop, canonized by that popular veneration whose last expression was the public honor decreed them by the Roman Pontiff? In places where these monuments are not dedicated to the sainted dead whose shrines they guard, we often find them burdened with the condition of Masses being perpetually offered within their walls for the soul of the dead founder; others are memorial churches to friends or relations of the founder. Public charities, doles of bread and money, annual distributions of clothing, hospitals, schools, or municipal institutions, etc., spring chiefly from the desire of the survivors to have their loved ones remembered to all future ages, while sometimes a generous testator himself will take this simple and practical means of recommending himself to the prayers of unborn generations. Family names are perpetuated in remembrance of the departed; family records are valuable only in proportion as they embody a proof of longer or shorter descent from the distinguished dead. There is no test of success or popularity so sure as that of death, and no one can tell which of our living friends will be known to and loved by future nations, and which other will be passed by in obscurity and silence, until long after our exit and their own from this present life‐ scene. _Real_ life is centred in the dead, it revolves around them, it depends on them. They are the root of which we are the leaves and flowers. The life of fame is theirs, while only the life of struggle is ours; they are victors calmly bearing their palms, umpires gently encouraging their successors, but we are only striving competitors, who know not and never will know our fate till we have gone with them beyond the veil.

Germany is, above all, the home of these beautiful traditions of an unbroken communion between the souls who have left earth and those who remain behind. _There_ are the churchyards most loved, and the anniversaries of deaths most remembered, even among Protestants. It is a custom in Germany to wear black and to keep the day holy every recurring anniversary, were it twenty, forty, fifty years after the death of a relative or beloved friend. The cemeteries are always blooming with every flower of the season, the crosses or headstones always hung with wreaths of immortelles. In Catholic German countries, such as Bavaria, the festival of All Souls’ is one of the most interesting, because the most individual of the ecclesiastical year. We happened to be in Munich on one of these occasions, and had been there for a week previous, visiting the galleries and inspecting the art‐manufactures for which that city is world‐famous. But rich as it is in such treasures, the hand of its old King Louis—the grandfather of the present sovereign, and whom in his retirement we have met at Nice some few years before his death—has effaced much of its mediæval stamp, and attempted to varnish it over with a Renaissance coating very uncongenial to the northern character of its people and the northern mistiness of its atmosphere. Here we have again the wretched imitation in plaster of the marble Parthenon and Acropolis; the cold stuccoed pillars looming like huge bleached skeletons through a November fog, and yet supposed to represent the sun‐tinted columns of exquisite workmanship that rear themselves against the purple sky of Greece; the vast desert‐looking streets which, bordered by “Haussmann” palaces, seem intended for _future_ rather than present habitation, and each of which, if cut into a dozen equal parts, would furnish any capital with twelve good‐sized public squares; above all, a stuccoed church, dazzlingly, painfully white, the _Theatiner‐Kirche_, a sort of S. Paul’s (London) without the smoky coat thrown over it by the chimneys of the busy city. Then, turning with relief to the little that is left of the old town, we find a few quaint streets leading to the cathedral, a plain but grand building, very fairly “restored” and adorned with the distinctive Munich statues of angels and saints, which are now sold all over the world, as the worthy substitutes of plaster‐of‐Paris images of the Bernini type of sculpture. A very interesting old triptych stands over the altar, with its strange medley of figures forming a striking and novel reredos. A procession was slowing winding its way down the aisles as we entered the cathedral one afternoon, and though the congregation was not numerous it was very devout. A few comfortable‐looking old houses and quiet streets surround the cathedral, and form quite an oasis in the midst of the modernized city. Indeed, the monotonous stretch of apparently uninhabited mansions was really wearying to look at, and we began to think that King Louis had built his town as if he expected its population to increase at a _Chicagoan_ rate! It is true the season of fêtes had not come, and, according to the recognized phrase, “all the world” had left Munich for the country villas and hunting‐boxes in its neighborhood, but on the day of All Saints, the vigil of All Souls, how magically the scene changed! After Mass in the Royal Chapel, which, by the way, is beautifully decorated with frescoes of mediæval saints on a gilt background, we started for the great “Gottes‐Acker” (churchyard.) We had been told that this was worth seeing, and so it proved. The desert seemed to have blossomed like the rose. The road leading to the cemetery was crowded with carriages, carts, horsemen, and foot passengers. Every one, especially those on foot, carried wreaths of immortelles and small lanterns. The carriages were mostly laden with wreaths. Every one looked cheerful, but great quiet prevailed throughout the crowd. It seemed to us that until the dead called for a visit, the living in Munich must have been well hidden, so great were now the numbers that incumbered the hitherto lonely road. All were going in the same direction, and once there the scene was almost festive. Military bands (the best, we believe, next to the Austrian) were stationed near the cemetery gates. The “Gottes‐Acker” itself is an immense square, the length being about twice the breadth of the inclosure. Round the four sides runs a covered cloister, under which are all the graves, monuments, and vaults of the more wealthy part of the Munich population. Each of these was a perfect forest of evergreens and hot‐house plants, artistically heaped up around a vessel of holy water, from which any pious passer‐by was free to sprinkle the grave while repeating a prayer for its occupant. The large square in the centre was crossed and recrossed by narrow paths between the serried files of graves. Nearly all were distinguished by a cross, of stone, marble, wood, or metal. To these the wreaths and lamps were hung, and here and there a kneeling figure might be seen. Within the covered cloister a dense crowd promenaded slowly, while the bands played unceasingly, not always, however, appropriately. It was a striking scene, the like of which we do not remember to have ever witnessed elsewhere. At Innsbruck, in the Tyrol, the cemetery is similar to this in construction and arrangement, though it is, of course, smaller in size. Night fell gradually as we were admiring this peculiar expression of national idiosyncrasy, but the crowd did not seem to grow less dense. It was a remembrance worth carrying away from that old Munich whose spirit, though outwardly imprisoned in a pseudo‐classic shape, lives yet in the simple Christian instincts of its laboring classes. At this time, when it threatens to become another Wittenberg, have we not also seen the unconscious and magnificent protest of its inveterately Catholic feelings in the unique Passion Play, that worthily kept relic of the heroic ages of faith and chivalry? Kings and philosophers cannot change the world as long as peasants like those of Ammergau, and artisans such as work in the Munich manufactories—that should not be degraded to comparison with the materialistic establishments of Manchester or Sheffield—are yet to be found bearing through the present times the banner of their forefathers’ undying traditions. There is more simple faith among the German people, including also the Slavic and Hungarian races, than among some other modern Christian nations, and no doubt there must be a hidden law of gracious compensation in this fact, since the same country has been the cradle and the teacher of almost every modern heresy and philosophical (_sic_) aberration. No doubt the faith of the masses is intimately connected with their wonderful love of home and fatherland, their domestic instincts, their love of quiet family gatherings. All this easily leads to great love and tenderness for the departed, and it reads almost more like a German than a French saying, that “the dead are not the forgotten, but only the absent.”(129) Love for the dead and a reverent, prayerful remembrance of them are as much bulwarks to the morality of the living, as they are spiritual boons to the departed themselves. We would not speak ill of an absent friend, or break our word with one who had gone on a long journey; even a short earthly distance seems to make a pledge more sacred. How much more when the distance is the immeasurable breadth of the valley of the shadow of death! We all of us remember promises once made to those who have fallen asleep in Christ: those promises will be guardian angels to us, if we keep them; they will be so many drops of refreshing dew to those who are perhaps suffering at this moment for the unfulfilled promises once made by them in life. Shall we whose faith includes the communion of saints as a vital dogma, and whose humble hope it must ever be to become one of the church suffering after having done our weak share in the cause of the church militant—shall we be no better for this belief than are those who have it not? Let the dead be guides to us, while we are helps to them; let us each remember that besides the angel we have at our side, there is another spirit who rejoices or grieves for and with us—a company of spirits perhaps, but seldom less than one.

Mother or father, sister, brother, husband, wife, or child, that spirit from its prison looks sadly and lovingly earthward, marking our every step from its own patient haven of suffering sinlessness. No longer racked by the personal fear of falling away, no longer haunted by the possibility of temptation, it concentrates its loving anxiety on the soul whom it will perchance precede to heaven, but on whom it is yet dependent; let us not grieve it, let us not willingly or knowingly wound it, but rather let us take heed that we fit ourselves to go and bear it company in the new and glorious God’s‐Acre to which we hope to be called when that “which was sown in mortality shall be raised in immortality, and that which was sown in dishonor and weakness shall be raised in glory and in power.”

Personal Recollections Of The Late President Juarez Of Mexico.

I. The President In The Reception‐Room.

We saw President Juarez for the first time in the fall of 1865. He was then temporarily established with his government in the town of El Paso, on the northern frontier of Chihuahua, and within almost a stone’s throw of American soil. Fort Bliss, Texas, then recently reoccupied by the Union troops, was not more than ten minutes’ distance from the Plaza of El Paso.

The prospects of the Mexican Republic were not then very bright; the treasury was almost exhausted, the government was barely on Mexican soil, and on the American side of the Rio Grande it was generally looked upon as a question of time when President Juarez would have to seek safety on our own side of the boundary. It is needless to say that he would have been received by the Americans of that region with right royal hospitality.

American sympathy and material aid were looked for, and Americans were very popular with all the followers of the Mexican president.

Shortly after the arrival of President Juarez and his cabinet in El Paso, we joined a party of American gentlemen who paid him a visit. The party comprised, we think, nearly all the Americans of any standing about El Paso. There were the American consul, the collector of customs, three or four army officers from Fort Bliss, some local civil officials, and one or two leading business men.

President Juarez and his cabinet occupied a house on the Plaza—a large building constructed in the usual Mexican fashion. On announcing ourselves as a party of American citizens desirous of paying their respects to the chief of a sister republic, we were immediately ushered into a room where we found President Juarez with most of the members of his cabinet—notably his successor Señor Lerdo de Tejada, then Secretary of State, and Señor Yglésias, Secretary of the Treasury—now also named for the presidency—rather a sinecure office at the time.

We were presented in turn to the president by Señor Yglésias, the only person present attached to the president who spoke English. President Juarez spoke neither English nor French. He shook hands cordially with each of us, and expressed through Señor Yglésias the very great pleasure it gave him to receive our visit. We were sufficiently familiar with the Pueblo type to recognize Juarez immediately on entering.

President Juarez was low in stature, rather stout, but dignified, and at the same time easy in his manners. The Pueblo Indian was marked in every lineament of his face—the aquiline nose, the small bright black eyes, the straight cut mouth showing no trace of redness in the lips, the coal‐black hair, the swarthy complexion. Yet he was, as it were, an Indian idealized; his forehead was high, capacious, and the light of intellectual cultivation illuminated his face. He was dressed in plain black.

The secretary of state, Señor Lerdo de Tejada, is evidently, judged merely from externals, a man of great intellectual ability. His skin is as white as that of the fairest daughter of the Anglo‐Saxon. A forehead, so high as to seem almost a monstrosity, and of a marble whiteness, towered above a face that gleamed with the glance of the eagle.

Señor Yglésias was of a darker complexion than his colleague in the cabinet. He seemed to be in rather indifferent health. The expression of his face was remarkably gentle and pleasing. We have already said that he acted as interpreter. He spoke English with a very marked accent, but with great care and correctness. We happened to be seated next him on a sofa, President Juarez being on his right. He told us that he learned to speak English in the city of Chihuahua, and that he had never been a day in an English‐speaking country.

Notwithstanding that President Juarez did not speak English, and the necessity of an interpreter naturally causes some embarrassment, yet his manners were so pleasant and affable that he placed us at our ease at once. He spoke about our war, and asked with much interest about our great military leaders, Generals Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan. He seemed to feel some sympathy with Gen. McClellan. A very pleasant half‐hour was spent in conversation on these and kindred subjects. It was at length interrupted by the entrance of a _péon_ bearing a tray with quite a generous number of bottles of champagne on it.

We were invited to partake of the Green Seal. We stood around the table, President Juarez standing at the head. Toasts were drunk to the lasting friendship of the two North American republics, to the independence of Mexico, etc. The péon, who was not a very bright specimen of his tribe, exerted himself to his utmost to open the bottles sufficiently fast. In his tremulous hurry he got within point‐blank range of the president, and a peculiarly excited bottle going off prematurely, discharged about half its contents into the president’s shirt‐bosom. Juarez looked at the poor _péon_—whose swarthy face grew sickly pale, and who seemed about to sink to the ground with terror and confusion—neither in sorrow nor in anger. He took no notice whatever of the incident, but went on talking cheerfully as before. Such an accident happening to most men would have been laughable in the extreme. It did not seem to us to place Juarez in a ludicrous position at all, his self‐command was so perfect, his dignity so thoroughly preserved.

After all the patriotic toasts proper to the occasion had been drunk, we took our leave. The president again shook hands with us, again expressed, through Señor Yglésias, his gratification at meeting American citizens and officers, and hoped that he should receive further visits from us.

We departed very greatly prepossessed in favor of the Mexican president. We agreed in thinking that there was a simplicity and honesty of purpose about him which made him the best man for the difficult position of chief magistrate of the struggling republic in her great hour of trial.

II. The President In The Ball‐Room.

Some time after the visit just described, President Juarez gave a ball in honor of the anniversary of Mexican independence. We had the honor, in common with some other Americans, of receiving an invitation to the ball, which, of course, we accepted.

There were four American ladies in our party—two the wives of infantry officers stationed at Fort Bliss, the post surgeon’s wife, and the wife of one of the leading citizens of Franklin. We were all invited to pass the night—or such portion of it as would remain after the close of the ball—at the mansion of a lady, a native of El Paso, of American descent.

We were bestowed in three or four vehicles, and forded the Rio Grande successfully a little before dark. We found El Paso in festal array. The cathedral was covered with shining lamps from foundation to steeple. The Plaza was brilliantly illuminated, and crowds of both sexes were already assembling for the grand open‐air _baile_ of the _profanum vulgus_. Class lines of demarcation are very sharply drawn in El Paso, and the _gente fina_ alone were admissible to the president’s ball.

We dined at the Señora L——’s, where we had the pleasure of meeting several Mexican officers of high rank. Among them were General Ruiz, the Postmaster‐General (another sinecurist just then), and other staff officers, whose names we have forgotten. A little son of one of the officers at Fort Bliss—a child of five or six, who spoke Spanish very well, having passed nearly all his little life in New Mexico, only remaining sufficiently long in New York to set all doubts at rest as to his being born in the Empire State—became a very great favorite with the Mexican officers.

Between ten and eleven P.M. our vehicles were again in requisition, and away we went to the ball. It was given in the spacious house of a wealthy citizen, the front of which was brilliantly illuminated. A guard of Mexican soldiers was posted in front of the house, and lined the long hall leading to the ball‐room. Their pieces were at order, and they saluted the chief officers by striking the butt of their muskets against the ground. They were dressed in gray jackets, like the undress of the New York National Guard, white cross belts, white trousers, and a leather cap, somewhat Hussar shape.

We had the honor of giving an arm to one of the four American ladies on entering. Arrived at the door of the ball‐room, four white‐vested and kid‐ gloved Mexican gentlemen offered an arm each to the four American ladies, bowing at and smiling most sweetly on us the while. At first, we were disposed to resist “the deep damnation of this taking off.” The ladies hesitated and drew back. The situation would have become remarkably comic; but Don Juan Z——, well‐known to all Americans who visit El Paso, seeing the critical state of affairs, came to us and whispered that it was the _costumbre del pais_—the custom of the country. We submitted, but, we fear, not with a good grace. By the way, we only saw our American ladies at a distance for the rest of the evening. The Mexican gentlemen took entire charge of them. Don Juan informed us that we were expected to take our revenge among the señoras and señoritas.

The ball‐room was very tastefully arranged. The _placeta_, or open square in the centre of all Mexican houses, on which all the rooms in the building open, was roofed and floored for the ball‐room. The window‐ curtains were hung outside the window of the house; mirrors, paintings, etc., were hung on the outer walls, making the illusion that you were inside the house instead of outside of it, complete. American and Mexican flags were festooned around the walls. The music, softly and sweetly played, was placed in a side room, entirely out of sight. No braying cornet flayed your ears, and no howling fiddler, calling out the figures from a position dominating everything and everybody, gave you an _attaque de nerfs_. The fiddlers would be heard, not seen. The waltz, the national dance of Mexico, was, of course, the terpsichorean _pièce de résistance_; but a fair number of quadrilles were sprinkled through the programme, in compliment to the Americans.

We have seen many balls in the Empire City—some given under “most fashionable auspices”—but we must in justice declare that we have seen none which surpassed the Mexican President’s ball. There may have been more glare, more glitter, more diamonds, if you will, but there certainly was not more good taste, more elegance and refinement, more genuine good‐ breeding and gentlemanly and ladylike good‐humor. There was no rushing, steam‐engine fashion, the length of the ball‐room; knocking couples to the right and left, and tearing dresses, without even an apology. The ladies were richly but not gaudily dressed, and made no barbaric display of golden ornaments, as their New Mexican sisters are wont to do on _bailé_ occasions. The gentlemen—except the army officers—wore the traditional black dress‐coat and pantaloons, with white vest and gloves, clothes and gloves fitting admirably, for the _gente fina_ of El Paso got both from Paris. The army officers were, of course, in full uniform, the American uniform looking rather sombre compared with the red‐leg top trousers, with broad gold or silver stripes, and the magnificent gold‐embroidered sashes of the Mexican general and field officers. By the way, the lowest officer in rank of the Mexicans in the ball‐room was a colonel. The only captains and lieutenants admitted were the Americans. Juarez’ son—“the image of his father”—though somewhat shorter in stature, in the undress uniform of a second lieutenant of artillery was in the vestibule with the guard.

The president, with his cabinet and staff, was already in the ball‐room when we arrived. After being dispossessed of our fair companions, we were ushered to the portion of the room in which the president sat. We paid our respects in turn, and were kindly and cordially welcomed. Juarez was dressed in plain black, except his gloves, which, of course, were white.

The male portion of the American party then broke ranks, and spread themselves through the ball‐room, enjoying themselves each after his fashion; some in the fascinating “see‐saw” of the Spanish dance, others in the apartments off the ball‐room where exhilaration of a different kind was provided.

We passed a very agreeable hour with Signor Prieto, a Mexican poet and orator of distinction. Signor Prieto was then known as the “Henry Clay” of Mexico. He spoke French very well. He told us with just pride that he considered the highest recognition his efforts had received was the translation of one of his poetical pieces by our American patriarch‐poet, William Cullen Bryant.

Just before supper‐time, an official came with President Juarez’ compliments, to say that President Juarez and the members of his cabinet would take the American ladies in to supper, and requesting the American gentlemen to take in Mexican ladies. We immediately sought our friend Don Juan T——, and begged him to find us some Mexican lady who could talk either English or French. He found compliance with our request impossible, but gave into our charge the Señora S——, a magnificent beauty of the Spanish type, with coal‐black hair and large lustrous black Juno‐like eyes—_fendus en amande_. The other gentlemen of the American party were soon provided with supper partners, and we began our march for the supper‐ table, President Juarez taking in Mrs. Capt. O——; the secretary of state, Señor Lerdo de Tejada, Mrs. Capt. B——; the secretary of the treasury, Mrs. Dr. S——; and the secretary of war, Mrs. W——, of Texas. The first table was for the president and cabinet, with the American party. The supper was rather a solemn affair. It consisted of nine courses, though the courses seemed as like each other as railway stations on the plains. All seemed to be desiccated, and reminded us somewhat of what we had read about Chinese feasts. When a course was served to every guest, the President looked down the table to his right and bowed; he then looked to his left and bowed. Then, and not before, knives and forks were observed, and the guests attacked the viands. This repeated nine times was not calculated to impart gaiety to the repast. It was slow, but ended at last, and we retired in the same order in which we entered, making way for the ladies and gentlemen of the second table.

After the supper, President Juarez sat for over an hour with the American ladies, chatting pleasantly with them in the simplest Spanish phrases he could devise. Seeing him chatting away and laughing gaily, no one could have imagined that he had the cares of a tottering government with an empty treasury upon his shoulders.

Capt. O—— asked us to go out with him and have a look at the great _bronco_, the public fandango, on the Plaza. As we passed out through the hall, the Mexican guard—now lying on their arms—jumped up and brought their muskets to the ground with a crash to salute our companion, much to his discomposure, as he wished to go out without attracting attention.

The great fandango was a sight worth seeing. A leviathan Spanish dance wound its way around and through the Plaza, filling to overflowing the market‐place, the sidewalks, and the arcades. Swarthy Mexicans with immense sombreros, with cigarettes of corn‐husks in their mouths, abandoned themselves to the swaying movements of the slow waltz, their dark‐eyed partners—often partners in the cigarette as well as the dance—now moving with a graceful languor, now dashing out with wild and unrepressed vigor to the clattering of a thousand castanets.

Unusual gambling facilities were to be found everywhere, of course. Cake merchants, fried hot cakes in the open air, lemonade, _vino del pais_, fresh _queso_, fruits, _puros_, were to be had for the paying.

Having seen sufficient of the great unwashed fandango, we returned to the ball‐room. Our companion was again the object of another demonstration of respect on the part of the guard. “I wish,” said he, “those fellows would go to sleep; this begins to be unpleasant.”

A waltz was in full gyration when we returned to the ball‐room. We took chairs and sat near the door chatting. Suddenly we became aware that some one stood behind us, placing a hand on either chair. Looking round, we saw that it was President Juarez. We immediately arose, but he insisted on our being seated, and resumed his former attitude. He talked with us for half an hour, in Spanish well adapted to our limited knowledge of the language, and which we had no difficulty in understanding.

During the evening, from time to time, we had received invitations from the president to drink wine with him—invitations which, of course, we did not refuse. Many patriotic toasts and sentiments were offered on both sides. It must have been in one of those festive moments that an enthusiastic gentleman of our party slapped the president on the back, called him “Ben” (Juarez’ Christian name was Benito), said he was “a brick,” and bade him “never say die” till he was dead! We were not a witness to this scene. It was described to us by members of our party.

Between two and three P.M. the president’s party left the ball‐room. Shortly after, the American clans were gathered, we got our fair ones back again, and set out for the hospitable dwelling of the Señora L——.

There was plenty of bustle and activity there. It seemed to us that half the people at the ball must have been guests of this house. All the rooms opening on the large _placeta_ were turned into lodging‐rooms. There was hurrying to and fro with lights in hand, putting every one in his place. Some people put themselves in other people’s places. Notably our enthusiastic friend, who had taken up his quarters in a room intended for F—— and his new Spanish bride. He was found by the happy pair, just as happy as they were, sleeping the sleep of the just. In the meantime, the partner of his joys and sorrows sat solitary and alone in the room intended for her and her spouse, on the other side of the _placeta_, wondering at his absence and anxiously awaiting his return. This complication, however, was settled by transferring the lady to the room in which lay her sleeping lord, and bestowing the F——s in the room she had occupied.

After a good breakfast, we set out on our return to the Land of the Free, forded the Rio Grande at about noon, under a September sun—no contemptible luminary about latitude 32°, let us assure the reader. We sought our _casas_, darkened up our respective rooms, and shut the venetian blinds to keep out the flies, and having turned night into day, proceeded to turn day into night.

New Publications.

ELEMENTS OF LOGIC. Designed as a Manual of Instruction. By Henry
Coppée, LL.D., President of the Lehigh University. Revised
edition. Philadelphia: E. H. Butler & Co. 1872.