Chapter LXIII: Part IV: The Immolation (8)

At an early hour next morning the luggage was run out of the hold, and tumbled pell‐mell on deck; and the youth of either sex, hitherto contented with the shabbiest and most negligent of attire, watched eagerly for their boxes, dragged them to a convenient corner, and made an elaborate toilette, either for the benefit of their American friends or to give the _coup de grâce_ to the sweethearts they had encountered on the voyage. It was like the transformation scene in a pantomime, and I could hardly recognize my lady acquaintances in their gay bonnets and neat dresses. Much of their finery, however, suffered serious damage before they emerged on the Bowery. In the afternoon, the custom‐house officer came on board and took his place near the gangway, alongside of which lay a tender for the passengers and a barge for the luggage. The boxes were scattered all over the deck, and to get them examined one had to drag them to the officer, open them and close them, obtain a Castle Garden check from an official at the head of the gangway, and then they went over the side on to the barge, and the passenger on to the tender. Every one was anxious to be off, and all scrambled at once towards the gangway, dragging boxes and bundles with them. Never did we see such a scene of tumult and confusion. Such a babel of tongues; such despair at boxes that either would not open, or more frequently, being opened, would not shut; such lamentations over their often hopelessly shattered contents—the married women imploring some one to mind their children while they dragged their boxes to the gangway; the single ones begging quondam admirers to help them to move their heavy trunks—appeals to which the latter, sufficiently engrossed with their own struggle to be off, generally turned a deaf and unkind ear. The custom‐ house officer seemed to discharge his duty with as much good‐humor as the necessity of examining some thousand boxes in a limited time would allow. We got off with the first tenderful, and after waiting an hour or two in Castle Garden, where we at once cleared the refreshment stall of what we then thought delicious coffee and pies, we were told to fetch our luggage on the following day, and then passed out into Broadway to seek our various fortunes.

In the boarding‐house where I spent the night in New York, I met passengers from most of the other lines. All complained of their accommodations, and affected to believe that they had unfortunately selected the most uncomfortable service. For my own part, I believe that on the whole there is but little to choose between the accommodations and provisions supplied by the different companies, and that the description I have given of the arrangements of one line would generally apply to the rest.

Martyrs And Confessors In Christ.

Nor let any of you be sad, on the ground that he is less than those who, before you having suffered torments, have come by the glorious journey to the Lord, the world being conquered and trodden down. The Lord is the searcher of the reins and heart, he sees the secret things, and looks into things hidden. The testimony of him alone, who is to guide, is sufficient for earning the crown from him. Therefore each thing, O dearest brethren, is equally sublime and illustrious. The former, namely, to hasten to the Lord by the consummation of victory, is the more secure; the latter is more joyful, to flourish in the praises of the church, having received a furlough after the gaining of glory. O blessed church of ours, which the honor of divine condescension thus illumines, which in our own time the glorious blood of martyrs thus makes illustrious! Before, it was white in the works of the brethren; now, it is made purple in the blood of martyrs. Neither lilies nor roses are wanting to its flowers. Let all now contend for the most ample dignity of both honors. Let them receive crowns, either white from their works, or purple from their martyrdom. In the heavenly camp peace and war have their respective flowers, by which the soldier of Christ is crowned for glory. I pray, bravest and most blessed brethren, that you be always well in the Lord, and mindful of us. Farewell.—_S. Cyprian._

The Roman Empire And The Mission Of The Barbarians.

Third Article.

So the great Roman world sinned on to the last. Christianity, with a cry of fear and alarm, pointed to the stormful North, and exhorted to repentance; but her voice was drowned in the mad shouts of revelry and the wild din of reckless passion. The mistress of nations would not consent to show signs of fear or alarm. She cast her far‐seeing eye over her wide, rich provinces towards the frowning horizon, and she had some knowledge of what sort of elements were hidden behind the black cloud‐wall there. Never yet had the whole terrible ferocity of latent wrath burst forth; but still, from time to time, as she had watched for some centuries back, the storm‐cloud had opened for a moment, and the low thunder‐peal had been heard, and the lightning‐fires had scathed her frontiers, and sometimes even had touched the very heart of some of her outlying provinces. But the fiery sword had been sheathed. The rent seemed to close again, and the thunder‐murmurs died away. Still no brightness tinged the angry North. But darker, wilder, more fiercely threatening the storm‐cloud grew. There was an angry God behind it, with his warrior hosts, hidden, and biding the solemn, predetermined moment. If the queen of empire felt, at times, a thrill of alarm, she tried to shake it off again. For proudly she gazed around on her widespreading dominions, and counted her almost countless monuments of conquest and glory, and appealed to the long past for her claim to live on immortally; and then took consolation and confidence to herself that the pillars of the firmament would crumble to dust, and the heavens fall, before she could be moved from her everlasting foundations. But still there were hearts that trembled for fear, conscious that something terrible was coming upon the world. The cry of the rapt seer of Patmos seemed still to be rising from the bosom of the Ægean Sea, and ringing in the ears of those who had faith in a God of justice. All those terrible woes foretold in the sixteenth and seventeenth chapters of the Apocalypse seemed about to be accomplished. With strange wailing sound, as of a warning archangel’s trumpet, the prophetic voice appeared to repeat: “Thou art just, O Lord, who art, and who wast, the holy one, because thou hast judged these things: for they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and thou hast given them blood to drink.... And great Babylon came in remembrance before God, to give her the cup of the wine of the indignation of his wrath.” Louder still that voice seemed to rise in tones of merciful warning: “Go out from her, my people; that you be not partakers of her sins, and that you receive not of her plagues. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and the Lord hath remembered her iniquities.... She saith in her heart: I sit a queen, and am no widow; and sorrow I shall not see. Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine, and she shall be burned with fire; because God is strong, who shall judge her.” So appeared to sound out clear the sad, wailing voice of the prophet in these sorrowful days. And the people of God took warning. Full of fear and dread, they fled from the “great Babylon” and the other principal cities of the empire, and hid themselves from the wrath that was to come. Those who remained behind laughed with mocking incredulity at their fears, and, as if in defiance of a mighty God, drained the sparkling goblet with an intenser relish, and the din of revelry waxed louder, and the Circensian games were applauded with a wilder joy. Countless numbers of Christians, who still had faith in God’s Word and fear of his justice, hurried with rapid steps from these scenes of reckless dissipation and pleasure. They went to kneel with uplifted hands amid the sands of the Libyan Desert, or the wooded mountains of Lebanon; to implore mercy on a wicked world, amid the islets of the Tyrrhenian Sea, or in the rocky caves of the Thebaid.

At intervals another warning voice is heard, sounding, with the vehemence of the Baptist’s cry, from the holy precincts of Bethlehem. S. Jerome is meditating and commenting, in his convent cell, on the prophecy of Ezekiel. As he ponders on the judgments of God on Jerusalem of old, he cannot but think of Rome in his own day. As the images of ruin and destruction grow before his mind, and his great heart burns with compassion for sinful, sinning man, he pauses in his reading, and lifts his voice in warning of the vials of wrath that are about to be poured out upon the empire. Through the voluptuous palaces of Rome which he once knew so well, the loud warning voice of the holy anchoret of Bethlehem pierces with an awakening sound, and helps to persuade many a patrician beauty “to exchange the dream of pleasure, so soon to be interrupted by the clangor of the Gothic trumpet, for the sacred vigils and austerities of the Holy Land.” “Read,” he cries out, “the Apocalypse of S. John: mark what is written of the woman clothed in scarlet, with the mystic inscription on her forehead, and seated upon seven hills, and of the destruction of Babylon. ‘Go out of her, my people,’ saith the Lord; ‘that you be not made partakers of her crimes, and partners in the plagues that shall afflict her.’ Leave the proud city to exult in everlasting uproar and dissipation, satiating her bloodthirstiness in the arena, and her insane passion in the circus. Leave it to her to trample under foot every sense of shame in her lascivious theatres.” After these words of startling vehemence, he attunes his voice to gentler accents. And pours out his enthusiastic soul in language of sweetest music, winning and captivating both ear and heart. He throws a ravishing fascination and sweetness around his life at Bethlehem that must have been irresistible to souls in which yet lingered any purity of sentiment or love for the holy and beautiful. “How different,” he exclaims, “the scenes that invite you hither! The most rustic simplicity is characteristic of the natal village of our Redeemer, and sacred hymns and psalmody are the only interruptions of the heavenly stillness and serenity which reign on every side. Walk forth into the fields: you startle with mingled astonishment and delight to find that ‘Alleluia’ is the burden of the ploughman’s song; that it is with some inspired canticle the reaper recreates himself, in reposing at noontide from his overpowering toil; and that it is the royal Psalmist’s inspiration that attunes the voice of the vine‐dresser, as, scroll in hand, he plies his task all day.” Thus does he paint in charming colors the immediate neighborhood in which he lived so happily. His words take us back to the days of Eden, and make us realize what unfallen and sinless mankind would have been. Then he passes on to those scenes and names which are interwoven into the history of our Lord’s life, and round these again he casts the fascination of his poetical outpourings. We are carried on as by a magic spell, and we feel ourselves drawn captives after the mighty heart that glows with such a fiery heat of love in that grotto of Bethlehem. We cannot wonder that many souls felt the wondrous spell of that clear, sweet voice, as it broke with its music‐tones of penetrating power into the palaces of Rome. The loud‐wailing trumpet‐tones of the Apocalyptic seer, as they rose with terrific warning from the bosom of the Ægean, and the melodious music of the anchoret of Bethlehem, as it was carried westward on the breeze, both conveyed a message from a merciful God to the children whom he yet loved. But we will listen again to that winning voice from Bethlehem, as it pleads on, trying to draw Christians from the perils that were so near: “Oh! when shall that blessed day arrive,” it continues, “when it shall be our own delight to conduct you to the cave of the Nativity; together to mingle our tears with those of Mary and of the Virgin Mother in the sepulchre of our Lord; to press the wood on which he redeemed us to our throbbing lips; and, in ardent desire, to ascend with him from Mount Olivet?” We will hasten thence to Bethany to see Lazarus come forth in his winding‐sheet, and to the banks of that blessed stream sanctified by the baptism of the Word made flesh. Thence to the huts of the shepherds who heard the canticle of “Glory to God on high” and “Tidings of great joy,” as they were keeping their night‐watch over their flocks. We will pray at the tomb of David, and meditate under the steep precipice where inspiration used to come on the prophet Amos, until we hear again the living clangor of his shepherd‐horn. In Mambre, we shall commune in spirit with the great patriarchs and their consorts who were buried there; visit the fountain where the eunuch was baptized by Philip; and in Samaria honor the relics of S. John the Baptist, of Abdias and Eliseus, and devoutly explore the caverns where the choirs of the prophets were miraculously fed, in the days of famine and persecution. We will extend our pilgrimage to Nazareth, and, as the name implies, behold the _flower_ of Galilee. Hard by is Cana, where he changed water into wine. Thence to Mount Tabor, where our prayer shall be that our rest may not be with Moses and Elias, but in the eternal tabernacle, where we shall enjoy the beatific vision of the Father and the Holy Ghost. Thence returning, we shall see the Lake Genesareth, and the wilderness where the merciful Jesus feasted the multitudes; and Naim shall not be passed by unheeded, where he gave back to the disconsolate mother “her only son.” Hermon shall be pointed out, and the torrent of Endor where Sisera was overcome; and Capharnaum, the theatre of so many miracles. Thence going up to Jerusalem, as it were in the retinue of our Lord, as the disciples were wont to do, we will pass through Silo and Bethel; and having made the circuit of so many scenes, consecrated by the presence, the preaching, and the miracles of the Son of God, to that grotto where he was born to us a Saviour, we shall at last return; perpetually to hymn his praises, to deplore our trespasses with frequent tears; to give our days and nights to holy orisons, as if smitten with the same love which exclaimed, “Him whom my soul hath yearned for, have I found. I will hold him, and will not let him go.”(278) Such wondrous music did the spiritual enchanter pour forth from his lonely grotto. In such words as these, throbbing with love and holy zeal, did the great heart of the worn ascetic of Bethlehem gush forth. And they depicted in such vivid colors the sweet peace and purity and happiness of a new earthly paradise far away in the Eastern land, that many souls were lured away by the charmer’s voice out of the great Western Babylon in time to escape the tempest that was just about to descend upon it. Many illustrious names appear among the fugitives. Paula forgot her lofty pedigree and her more than princely fortune, and fled eastward, and S. Melania and many others of patrician rank hurried away to Bethlehem to escape the impending doom. And there, whilst the mighty God thundered, and hurled his flaming arrows of vengeance, and the great sinful empire tottered and crashed under the awful blows of his wrath, did those favored Christians tremble and pray amid holy scenes and sweet associations, round the grand spiritual figure of S. Jerome.

But it was not only among the believers in God’s Word, and those who observed the signs of the times from their watch‐towers in the heart of the empire, that the belief in the imminent catastrophe had taken a strong hold. The idea that vengeance was close at hand was agitating with fierce intensity the barbaric nations themselves. Whence that idea came, they themselves could not have told. It had long been working in their minds like a living fire; it had gone on inflaming their souls till they felt their whole being on fire with an ungovernable passion for destruction and vengeance. They had been kept for long centuries by an overruling power in their northern forests, waiting for an unknown moment in the future. But that moment, they felt, was now at hand. They were ready for it, for they knew they were the scourges of wrath in the hands of a mighty God.

But before that fierce, black storm‐cloud up yonder in the North pours out its fiery wrath upon the doomed empire, we will try to get a glimpse behind it to see what elements are hidden there.

Let the reader open his historical atlas, and follow with his eye the boundaries of the Roman Empire in the West. He will see that the east, west, and south of Europe are lying at the feet of Rome, the heart and centre of the world. As he casts his glance over his chart, he will be struck by the countless names that cover the face of Italy and Gaul and Spain, and all those countries that are comprehended within the rule and civilization of the great capital of the empire. But as he raises his eye northwards, he marks the outlines of Roman power. He might say that the Rhine and the Danube are the boundaries in that direction of imperial dominion. And what does he see beyond? Nothing that denotes that civilization has ever set a firm foot there. The great Hercynian forest begins at the Rhine, and stretches far away, with its dense, impenetrable blackness, as far as the Vistula. It looks like a long, broad line of fortification thrown up by nature to guard the North from Roman ambition. Beyond this, again, is a wild unknown land. The student becomes bewildered as he tries to gain an accurate knowledge of it. It is a dreary wilderness of forest, and swamp, and vast tracts of land that have known no tillage. He finds no name of city or town, but only the hard names of countless barbaric tribes. These seem to fill, without order or defined limit of dominion, the vast area from the borders of the Rhine and Danube to the Baltic Sea, and the mainland and innumerable islets of Scandinavia. If he cast his eye towards the North‐east, the prospect is of a land still less known, and, at the same time, less thickly peopled. But the barbaric names are there, though few in number, and the wild waste seems to stretch away interminably into the darkness. The map calls it Scythia, and that is almost all the student can gather from looking at it; but it seems to him that it is the high‐road by which the countless barbarian tribes have come into Europe. We may well believe Gibbon when he tells us that this vast, unknown northern land, cut off from the Roman Empire by the Rhine and the Danube, and shrouded in gloom and darkness by its widespreading forests, extended itself over a third part of Europe.(279) Tacitus describes it as a country under a gloomy sky, rude, dismal in aspect and cultivation; more humid than Gaul, more stormy than Noricum and Pannonia.(280) It was a country where the waters were often covered with thick ice, and the mountains with snow, where the air was cold and sharp, and the storms blew fierce and strong. It was, in a word, a country where no delicate, soft races could have lived, but where only men of stalwart frame and hardy natures could have their home; men who could bound up the snowy mountain heights with a feeling of luxury, could hunt with delight among the frozen swamps, and run in the teeth of the sharp blast through thick forests where the warm sun‐rays never penetrated. And what was this strange, unknown land, so dark and impenetrable, so vast in its extent, so defended by rivers and ocean and far‐reaching fortification of Hercynian forest, so wild and uncultivated, so dismal and cold, and overhanging with its savage, frowning aspect the empire of Rome? It was the camp of the God of battles. With a divine purpose of his own, he had kept it free from Roman conquest. He had marked it off for himself by those wide rivers and stormy seas, and planted that thick long line of forest trees on its frontier, and shrouded its vast area in secrecy and mystery by widespreading woods. And under the shadow of these thick forests he had, for long generations, been gathering his warrior‐bands. The great empire had been growing for centuries in power and riches, and had piled up her monuments to tell the ages of her glories, and had come to think herself everlasting; but whilst she thus developed her power so mightily, her destroyers were being gathered together in secret in that Northern land. It was not by chance that the Roman Empire had built herself up in such glory and imposing magnitude on the ruins of the great empires that had preceded her, and not for a barren purpose. God had marked with his finger the boundary‐line of her dominions long before she extended her power so far, and he had appointed her the work which she was to do for him. But he had marked out, also, the term in the future whereunto she should endure, and had chosen beforehand the instruments which he would use for her destruction. As she was to be the most mighty of all empires which the world had ever seen, so would her destroyers have to be mighty and terrible in their powers of destruction. And those destroyers God will have ready at the right moment. No human eye could see what was going on under that dense darkness in the North; its mysterious depth was impenetrable to mortal kin. It was the secret laboratory of God, where he was fashioning his instruments of wrath. He had long been there amidst the terror and gloom beckoning the wild races of the earth to come to him, and they had obeyed his call, though they knew not why. Far back in the ages of time, before history had taken up her pen, there was a great breaking up of the Aryan family in the Eastern land, and they divided themselves into two great sections. They moved in opposite directions, one towards the East, the other towards the West. Though that breaking up seems, at first sight, to have nothing providential about it, yet it was no accidental separation. Bringing our Catholic principles to bear upon it, we soon see that it was the work of God. The wild tribes wandered on, they knew not whither. But they had a guide as real and definite as the Israelites in after‐times. It was, perhaps, no pillar of fire nor mysterious moving cloud, but yet as unerring in its leading. The Eastern Aryans took possession of Persia, and, invading India, gradually made themselves masters of the country as far as the Ganges. In this rich and fertile region they soon advanced, with rapid steps, to a high state of civilization. When we first meet them in history, they are a powerful nation, with well‐disciplined armies, and arts and sciences highly cultivated. Of those who took the westerly course, some settled down in the southern parts of Europe, and at the opening of history are found in a state of civilization. One section of them, wild, bold, and free, remain in a nomadic state. They wander on towards the Northwest, never settling down, ever restless. They feel themselves drawn ever onward, as by some mysterious power which they cannot resist. That strange, unseen power is he who dwells amid the darkness of the Scandinavian and Suabian forests. And as they pour into that weird gloom, band after band, they are lost to view. God wants them there for a time. They are one day to rush forth again, at his bidding, wild and fierce as ever, to do their appointed work.

Of these multitudinous tribes, hidden under the dark covering of those Northern forests, we cannot undertake to give any detailed account. The student who has ever pored over his historical chart representing the home of the barbarians, knows well how impossible it is to obtain accurate ideas about them. He is simply bewildered with the number of tribes, and the hard names by which they are designated. He is content to let Dr. Latham and Mr. Kingsley dispute at their pleasure as to whether the Goths were Teutons or a separate tribe. Some authors, with Gibbon, would make the Teutons the great tribe which included and absorbed almost all the rest, whilst Dr. Latham insists that they were far less in numbers than is commonly supposed. It is not now our purpose to enter on a question of this nature. Our view of them is simply as a _fourmillement des nations_, confused, indistinguishable, undefinable. We cannot pretend to speak with accuracy as to what territory was occupied by each tribe. What they do we can only guess at. They do not regard themselves as in their settled home. They wander about restless, and unsatisfied in their wild forest lands. They have only an indistinct idea whence they came, but they have a mysterious instinct whither they are to go when the appointed day comes. At one time they are on the Baltic shore, at another on the Danube bank. They never think of marching back Eastward, whence they came; their faces are turned towards the South, and they dream of a rich, golden city in which they are one day to revel and feast to their heart’s content.

It is something bewildering to pause over and think upon, in our historical studies, is this Northern land of darkness, with its hidden millions of wild savages silently wandering about in their gloomy forest, under the eye of God, and waiting for the signal to rush forth upon the sin‐laden empire of Rome! There never was anything more mysterious in history. They hang for long years, like a suspended curse, over a sinful world. They would have come down thundering like a crushing avalanche long before they did, if God had not held them back. It is wonderful to think how really they were in the hand of the great Over‐ruler. Suddenly it had entered into their minds, as we have seen, to break up their home in the far East, in prehistoric times, and they had obeyed the instinct. They moved away from their native land, and set out upon their wanderings. They knew no land beyond their own, nor had they reason to expect that they would discover anything better than what they enjoyed in the country of their birth. But still they wandered on. Whither they were journeying they had no knowledge, but they were obeying an overmastering power. They found themselves, at last, gathered together in a mysterious land of darkness, and there they paused. They felt they were at the rendezvous to which they had been called. They were at the feet of him who had beckoned to them to leave their homes in the Eastern land. Their instinct now was to remain hidden there for a time behind the great fortification of the Hercynian forest. From beginning to end all through their history these barbarians are in the hand of God, under his generalship, and used to execute his designs. Such teaching as this will, no doubt, appear puerile to the sneering atheism of men like Herbert Spencer. He and those of his school have discovered that God has nothing to do with the course of human events or the government of the universe.(281) Social Science has led them far beyond the old‐world ideas of God and divine government; but, thanks to the sound and safe teaching of Catholic principles, there are yet men in these days who refuse to run after the _ignis fatuus_ of Spencerian philosophy.

But when we consider how the great civilized world of the Roman Empire and this world of the barbarian tribes bordered so close on one another for so long a time, and when we think what conquests Christianity had made wherever civilization had set its foot, we wonder how that dark Northern land could remain still heathen. Were not the citadels of the Christian religion planted all along the borders of the Roman Empire? Did no gleams, then, of Christian light shoot forth into the darkness beyond? We know that such certainly was the case in the Northwestern portion, where the Goths dwelt, for we read of Ulphilas and his apostolic labors among that tribe. But for the most part, the darkness was unpenetrated, and we are struck by the sight of two worlds running so close up to one another and yet remaining so isolated in a religious point of view. The fact was, the time for the conversion of the Northmen had not yet come. Their apostles were to be a race of heroes born on the mountain‐heights, and nourished in the pure, bracing air of monastic solitude. The barbarians were waiting for the monks. It is true that these wild tribes had already a worship of their own, and deeply religious in their way they certainly were. It was a religion quite in keeping with their wild, free character. Men who were so restless and active in their disposition, who delighted in storm and mountain and roaring torrents, would have no temple of wood or stone for their place of worship. Their temple was out in the open air, under the driving clouds, within hearing of the tumbling waterfalls, in sight of nature’s face; for nature to them was God. They saw him in the great mountain towering up on high, in the rocking forest‐trees, in the wide‐ stretching plain, in the flowing river, in the gushing fountain. He was in every object around them; in every speck of light in the overarching heavens; in the glistening streamlet; in the variegated flowers bedecking nature’s face; in the rock that stood out to break the power of the rushing sea‐waves; in the very stones scattered around them on the plain. There was a divinity of some kind in everything they saw.(282) It would, perhaps, be more true to say that their religion was polytheism rather than pantheism. We find, moreover, that the tendency of their religious belief was to keep alive in their souls the warlike spirit. The greatest and highest of their gods were beings of mighty power and terrible violence. “Woden, or Odin, as he was called in Scandinavia, was the omnipresent, the almighty creator, the father of gods and men; who ruled the universe, riding on the clouds, and sending rain and sunshine; in whom were centred all godlike attributes, of which he imparted a share to the other gods; and from whom proceeded all beauty, wisdom, strength, and fruitfulness, the knowledge of agriculture and the arts, the inspirations of music and song, and all good gifts. He was the giant hunter, who in the darkest nights rushed through the air on his white charger, clad in a brown mantle, his white locks streaming from beneath his slouching hat, followed by a train of wild huntsmen, the horses snorting fire, the bloodhounds baying, announcing war and carnage, danger and distress, as he passed along with lightning speed. But he was in a more special way the god of war, revelling in blood and slaughter, giving courage and victory to his votaries, and admitting to his Valhalla, or hall of bliss, none but those who died by the sword.

“Next to him was his son Thor, who rode on the thunder‐cloud and whirlwind, whose hammer was the thunderbolt, whose arrows were the lightning flashes, and whose wagon dashed through the heavens with crashing noise and ungovernable fury.”(283)

Then there was Saxnôt, another son of Woden, who occupied the third place among the gods. His name is afterwards associated with those of Woden and Thor in the abjuration of paganism made by those who were converted to Christianity. He is designated under many different names. He is Eor, or Are, or Ere, or Cheru, Tyr, Zio, Tuisco, or Tuis. He was the god of war, fierce and terrible, rushing to battle, at Woden’s side, and bearing down whole hosts with his mighty sword of iron or stone.

War, blood, and violence, then, were ever, in the minds of the barbarians, associated with the greatest of those beings whom they worshipped and admired. The character and the deeds of these gods were the highest and the noblest they could conceive. To be mighty in battle like them; to wield their war‐weapon as Thor wielded his huge hammer; to mow down enemies as Tuisco did with his terrible sword, would be the grand object of their soul’s desire. We may judge how little there was in their religious worship to tone down their fierce natures. Everything symbolized war; their deities were almost all warlike. Even Freyja, the Northern Venus, was pictured to their imagination as delighting in war. She was believed to be ever present in the battle‐field, wielding her flaming sword, with frantic joy, over the heads of their enemies, and ready to bear off the souls of the slain to Odin’s Valhalla. In that imaginary Elysium the joys of their fallen heroes were also of a warlike and savage character. They revelled there in “constantly massacring visionary foes, and drinking without satiety, out of the skulls of the slain, brimming ale‐cups presented by lovely Valkyrja.” What shall we expect, then, when these wild warriors are turned loose upon the Roman Empire?

But is it possible to obtain a further glimpse behind that vast, dark line of pine‐trees? Can we, by any means, get a glance at the wild indwellers of the mysterious land beyond? What are those men like whom God has so long kept hidden there? From time to time they have come forth from their forest homes and stood on the boundaries of the civilized world, and rolled their glaring eyes around over the rich empire that was to be their booty. But that has been, as it were, only for a moment. They have plunged again into their native darkness. Yet such writers as Apollinaris and Ammianus Marcellinus have told us something of them. By their aid we can picture to ourselves what those terrible hosts of avengers will be like, who will presently come down with such a headlong sweep upon the doomed empire of Rome.

All that we can imagine savage and terrible and extraordinary in figure and habit is found in real fact among those barbaric hordes. There are among them tribes who are small of stature, and thin and brawny, but quick and fierce as the wild‐cat. There are, too, men of giant height and strength, who can wield their huge clubs like playthings, and shiver the hard rock like glass. They have blue, flashing eyes, and bathe their flaxen hair in lime‐water, and anoint it with the unsavory unguent of rancid butter. Some of them roam about nude and uncovered as the wild animals of the forest, proud of their iron necklaces and golden bracelets; others are partially clothed with the skins of savage beasts, cut and shaped after the most odd and fantastic fashions. Some give additional terror to their appearance by wearing helmets made to imitate the muzzles of ferocious beasts. Plutarch tells us that all the Cimbrian horsemen wore helmets made in the form of the open jaws and muzzles of all kinds of strange and savage animals, and surmounted these by plumes shaped like wings, and of a prodigious height. This gave them the appearance of monstrous giants. They were armed with cuirasses of most brilliant metal, and covered with bucklers of uniform whiteness. Some shaved their chins, and, what must have added much to their hideousness, the back of their heads, whilst their hair was drawn to the front and hung down over their eyes like the forelock of a horse. So says Apollinaris,

“Ad front em coma tracta jacet, nudata cervix
Setarum per summa nitet.”(284)

Others, again, allowed their hair to grow, and wore long mustachios and beard. Their weapons of war were various and strange as their own appearance. Some fought on foot, wielding with savage fury the huge club, or crushing mallet, or heavy‐headed hammer; or they did fierce work with their rude sword, or long javelin with its two points, or double‐edged hatchet; or they were skilful in the use of the sling or the arrow pointed with sharp pieces of bone. Others rushed to battle on high war‐steeds barded with steel, or on small horses, ugly and wretched to look at, but swift as eagles in their course. If they fought on the level plain, these barbarians were sometimes scattered over a large space, or they formed themselves into cuneiform bodies, or they pressed together into compact, impenetrable masses. If the contest was waged in the forests, they clomb the trees, which they worshipped, with the agility of monkeys, and there combated their enemies with wild ferocity, thus borne on the shoulders and in the arms of their gods. If they were conquerors in the battle, they abandoned themselves to acts of the most savage cruelty. To illustrate this we need only think of the tragic deeds that were done amid the swamps and the wooded hills of the Teutoberger Wald in the latter days of Augustus. It is sad, indeed, to read in Tacitus and the pages of Dio of the fate of that noble Roman army over which Varus held command. Yet we cannot regret to see the well‐concerted rising of the German tribes, under the splendid military genius of Arnim, to throw off the Roman yoke. We hold in deepest horror the wrongs, the oppressions of the Romans from the first ravages of Cæsar to the judicial murders of Varus. We think with feelings of indignation of the treachery and the bloody cruelty of Cæsar when the Usipetes and the Teuchteri were all but annihilated on the banks of the Rhine, and the Roman general rejoiced at his own unprovoked atrocity. We recall with sorrow all that the barbarians had had to suffer from their Roman conquerors through succeeding years, and our souls are on fire at the recollection of it. When, then, we see that the day of deliverance is at hand, we carrot but rejoice with Arnim and his brother Adelings at the prospect of future freedom. Our sympathies are with the Germans, not with their Roman oppressors. Whilst the Romans, then, are hungry and starved in the long, boggy valley between the sources of the Ems and the Lippe, and the rain falls in torrents through the cold night, and the soldiers’ spirits sink as they find themselves hemmed in by the enemy on all sides, we are, meantime, in imagination and feeling with the barbarian chiefs holding high festival as they recall the memory of ancient freedom and the deeds of former days, and we join in the war songs as they echo among the wild, dreary hills, and swell above the howlings of the storm. And when the morning breaks ominously and darkly over the Teutoberger Wald, and the tempest rises higher, and the heavy‐armed Romans cannot advance, and find it difficult, even, to keep their footing in the wet and slippery swamp; when we see their bows now useless from the wet, and their spears and shields no longer glittering in military pride, and their entire armor and clothing drenched and made too heavy for the poor benumbed and hunger‐stricken soldiers to bear, we can scarcely feel one pang of sorrow. On the contrary, our heart leaps with gladness when Arnim from his watch‐eminence gives the signal, and the trumpets ring out and the war‐weapons clang, and the terrible Barritum described by Tacitus(285) is heard rising above the howlings of the storm. We know how that tragic day ended, and how the evening saw the Roman host covering, with their dead bodies, the length and breadth of the battle‐field. Never had there been, in the annals of military warfare, such a terrible massacre of Roman legions. The news of it seized upon Augustus like a madness, and the old man, during the short remainder of his life, wandered sad and disconsolate through the apartments of his palace, sometimes dashing his white head against the walls, and murmuring, _Quintili Vare, legiones redde!_(286) But the barbarians were not content with such terrific slaughter as nearly annihilated the Roman army; their wild ferocity and cruelty showed themselves in their treatment of the captives. Tacitus in his _Annals_ tells us(287) that in the neighboring woods the barbarians had altars erected to their gods, and there the surviving Roman tribunes and the centurions of the first class were offered in sacrifice. Around Varus’s camp Roman heads were fixed, in cruel mockery, on the trunks and branches of trees, and in the midst arose a huge mound of Roman bones, left to be stripped of their flesh by the wild birds of prey, and then to whiten under that northern sky into a long enduring monument of a great barbarian victory.

If, on the contrary they were conquered, their fury was boundless, and was even turned against each other. When Marius overcame the first Cimbrian league, those who composed it were found on the field of battle bound fast to each other, so that they could not fall back before the enemy, and thus were compelled to conquer or die. Their wives were armed with swords or hatchets, and, shrieking and gnashing their teeth with rage and grief, they struck both Cimbrians and Romans. They rushed into the thickest of the fight, snatching with their naked hands at the sharp‐cutting Roman sabres; they sprang upon the legionaries like tigers, tearing from them their bucklers, and thus purposely drawing upon themselves their own destruction. It was a dreadful sight also to witness some of them when the fortune of the day had turned against them, rushing to and fro with dishevelled hair, their black dresses all torn and bloody, or to see them mounted like mad fiends on the chariots, killing their husbands and brothers, fathers and sons, strangling their new‐born infants and casting them under the horses’ hoofs, and then plunging the dagger into their own bosoms.(288)

Some of the barbarians delighted in eating human flesh. Ammianus Marcellinus gives us a picture in his history which freezes our blood and haunts us with its horrid memory. He tells us that, after the defeat of Valens under the walls of Constantinople, a barbarian was seen rushing among the imperial troops, naked down to his waist, sword in hand, and uttering a hoarse, lugubrious cry. He sprang with savage fury upon an enemy whom he had slain, and, applying his lips to his throat, sucked out his life‐blood with a wild beast’s relish. The Scythians of Europe were amongst those who showed this same instinct of the weasel and the hyena. We have the authority of S. Jerome for believing that the Atticoti also were accustomed to feed on human flesh. When they were wandering about in the woods of Gaul, and happened to meet herds of swine or other cattle, they cut off the breasts of the shepherdesses, and large pieces from the bodies of the shepherds, and ate them as dainty bits.(289) The Alans tore off the heads of their enemies, and caparisoned their horses with the skins of their bodies. The Budini and Geloni were accustomed to do much the same, being particular in reserving their enemies’ heads for themselves. The appearance of the Geloni was a sickening sight to look upon. They were accustomed to have their cheeks cut and gashed; and their proudest distinction was a face all covered with wounds that were scaly, and livid and crowned with blood‐red crests.

But if there is something terrible in the appearance and customs of the barbarians whom we have mentioned, it is surpassed by what we are told of the Huns. We shall not be able to form a true idea of the dreadful avengers who are to come down out of that Northern gloom, unless we look for a moment at this most terrible of the barbaric tribes. The Goths themselves, the stalwart giants of the Scandinavian forests, who knew no fear of men, could not but be terrified when they first fixed eyes on the hideous forms of the Huns. Jornandes, the Gothic historian, tells us that “the livid color of their skin had in it something shocking to the sight; theirs was not a face, but a deformed mass of flesh, provided, instead of eyes, with two black sinister spots. Their cruelty wreaked itself even upon their own new‐born offspring, whose cheeks they lacerated with iron before they had tasted their mother’s milk; and from this cause no down graced their chin in youth, no beard gave dignity to their old age.” We are told by Ammianus that “they looked not like men, but like wild beasts standing on two legs, as if in mockery of the human species.” They were, in truth, the wildest and most savage of all the barbarian hordes. They loved to be free and unrestrained as the wandering blasts of their native solitudes. They ate and slept on the ground under the open sky. They took their food raw and uncooked, like the tigers of the forest. No temples of worship had they; their God was a naked sword fixed in the ground. They were devoured by an insatiable thirst for gold, which they were ever ready to procure through blood, and smoke, and wholesale ruin. But the characteristic of their race was a ferocious delight in cruel massacre, and they gloried in pillaging, burning, and levelling down to the ground every monument of civilization that came in their path, till the regions over which they swept bore a resemblance to their native deserts. The rest of the barbarians were amazed at their inhumanity, and looked upon them as fiends under the likeness of men.

But we need say no more. We have caught some few glimpses of what is behind the dark storm‐cloud, and we can form some idea of the horrors that are hidden there. Well may men tremble as they look northwards in the Vth century. Well may Christians think they hear now again, ringing out more clearly than ever, the warning voice of S. John, and flee to far‐off hiding‐places. The sinful empire herself feels, at times, as if under the horrors of a nightmare; in her frightful dreams she thinks she is trampled upon, and crushed under the feet of fierce, wild men of terrible aspect, and torn and hacked by their strange weapons of war. As the tempest lowers over her darker and darker, and threatens to become all‐enveloping in its wrath, a deep shudder runs through her mighty frame. And well may she stagger and quake for fear. The reckoning‐day is close at hand, so long waited for by the holy martyrs of foregone centuries. And a day of dreadful destruction it will be.

But lo! the hour has already struck. God has given the signal to his warrior‐hosts. The Goth has given a ringing blast on his horn, and the German has shouted the first notes of his terrible war‐song, and the pine‐ trees of the Hercynian forest are trembling at the sound. The avengers of the martyrs and the Christian name are coming, and the whole North is shaking under their tread. At last the storm‐cloud bursts, and fiery destruction sweeps down upon the doomed empire of Rome.

New Publications.

IRELAND’S CASE STATED: IN REPLY TO MR. FROUDE. By the Very Rev. T.
N. Burke, O.P. New York: P. M. Haverty. 1873.

Ireland’s case has been stated, argued, vindicated, and, so far as the verdict of the American people is concerned, adjudicated. Mr. Froude has given his last scowl and his last growl, and gone back to his own country—which he has damaged by his foolish escapade—the most badly beaten man of the present decade. It is rather late in the day to revert to the topic of F. Burke’s combat with this obstinate champion of bad characters and bad causes, and we will, therefore, let it pass with these few words. We are hoping to see soon issued Mr. Haverty’s promised second volume of F. Burke’s _Discourses and Lectures_, and we once more express our regret that any should be found so unmindful of propriety and courtesy, to say the least, as to interfere with F. Burke’s control of the publication of his own works. The eloquent Dominican preacher may be assured that the respect and sympathy not only of all Catholic Irishmen, but of all other Catholics of the United States, will be his while he remains here as our honored guest, and will follow him when he returns to his native land, or to his own beloved and imperial Rome.

KEEL AND SADDLE: A RETROSPECT OF FORTY YEARS OF MILITARY AND NAVAL
SERVICE. By Joseph W. Revere. Boston: J. R. Osgood & Co. 1872.

We are so often disgusted, in reading books of entertainment, with a revelation of positive rascality and impiety, or at least of a want of high moral and religious principle in the author, that it is a relief to meet sometimes with a happy disappointment. This is a lively, entertaining book of varied adventures on field and flood. Yet we always find the author, when his personality comes into view, not only a bold and brave soldier, but a gentleman, an honorable man, and a frank, staunch Catholic Christian, who never obtrudes yet never hides his faith and his principles of virtue. His views of Spanish affairs strike us as rather defective, and occasionally there is a narrative concerning persons of depraved morals which would have been better omitted for the sake of his youthful readers. The “Golondina” episode in chapter xxiv. relates an adventure whose lawfulness, we suspect, though perhaps admitted by quarter‐deck theology, would not stand the test of a strict examination. Sometimes we are at a loss to discover whether the author intends us to understand his narrative as historical, or is merely relating a _conte_ for our amusement. In his own personal adventures and the descriptions he gives of what he has seen, we discover at once that his narrative is real as well as picturesque. And it is certainly most interesting. The off‐hand, unstudied, and unaffected style reveal the character of the true, genuine, frank sailor and soldier; while at the same time, the refinement of taste and the cultivation of mind which are manifest throughout give these sketches from the diary of a long and adventurous life the literary finish which belongs to the work of a scholar. Notwithstanding certain exceptions we have made, we reiterate our commendation of the high tone of moral principle, the unaffected religious reverence, and the generally healthful and invigorating spirit which pervades the book which the gallant General Revere has given to the public as the retrospect of his forty years of naval and military service.

HYMNS AND POEMS: ORIGINAL AND TRANSLATED. By Edward Caswall, of
the Oratory. Second Edition. London: Burns, Oates & Co.;
Pickering. 1873. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication
Society.)

Father Caswall’s hymns are as well known as Father Faber’s. Indeed, if we mistake not, many of them are popularly attributed to the departed writer. In the present volume we have a complete collection of the Breviary hymns, in the first place. This is especially valuable as the only one in the language (as far, at least, as we are aware). And the author deserves the more praise for this labor of love, because of the great difficulty of rendering the terse, stiff Latin. Then, secondly, we have “Hymns and Sequences of the Roman Missal”; followed by “Hymns from Various Offices and other Sources.” Thus the translated portion of the volume is quite sufficient to make it worth possessing. The execution, too, is very happy, on the whole. No one who has attempted to translate these hymns himself will insist overmuch on the absence of phrases commonplace or prosaic.

The second portion of the volume, “Original Hymns and Meditative Pieces,” also contains much that entitles it to a place in every household. The devout Catholic, and more especially the convert, will find many things said for him which have come into his mind, but without his being able to express them. Moreover, several pieces turn on topics which are generally supposed themes for the dryest meditation. They are here proved suggestive of true poetry.