Chapter IV: An Inch of Fringe (3)

Travellers for health, business, or pleasure are not excluded from the advantages sought by those who travel expressly in pursuit of knowledge. If one but keeps his head cool and his temper quiet, he cannot but pick up a great deal of useful information during his sojourn abroad. Indeed, so true is this that a trip abroad has always been considered the necessary finish to a young man’s education; and I would go so far as to say that no one can pretend to the appellative of educated, in its best sense, unless he has travelled, or at least mingled with the people and observed the institutions of other nations. “The proper study of mankind is man”; and it is excellence in the knowledge of mankind, after the knowledge of God and of self, that constitutes learning. It is not mathematics alone, nor yet languages, nor skill in trades nor navigation: it is to know our condition, and capacity, and progress, and that of other countries; to know what in law and government is most conducive to the social happiness, not simply the material advancement; to the eternal weal, not the temporal aggrandizement only of our race.

The desire of increasing in knowledge, as well as the pleasure the sage finds in the pursuit of wisdom, doubtless it was that sent our great Secretary, Seward, in his white old age, on a tour of the whole world. It was this that made those collectors of learned lore, Anacharsis and Herodotus, leave their polished home-circles, and travel amongst other peoples. It is this that makes the heirs of princely houses set out on the tour of Europe and America, and even Asia, on the completion of their college course, that they may understand their position amongst the nations. It is this that brings the acute and ambitious Japanese across the globe in search of what is desirable in our products; that they may see the truth and value of institutions different from their own.

In order to attain the object of such a journey, we must observe certain conditions. In the first place, we should, if possible, know some of the languages of the countries through which we intend to pass, or at least some which will most likely be understood therein; such as, for instance, the French in Italy, Germany, etc., the Italian in Spain, Greece, and Egypt. We are otherwise necessitated to depend on the mediation of a class often found faithless in its duty of exact interpretation. The interpreter, or _cicerone_, is very likely to digest the information he obtains or to qualify that which he imparts according to the supposed capacity or prejudice of his employer; and, for fear of offending one from whom he expects more money, he will sometimes tell an acceptable lie rather than an unwelcome truth. Most unlucky is he who is thus fed with the sweet poison of falsehood rather than the wholesome plainness of truth. What can he gain by travel?

An Irish bishop, standing before the picture of the martyrdom of SS. Processus and Martinianus in the Vatican, heard a young lady behind ask her father what was the subject of the painting. “That’s the Inquisition, my dear; they are torturing people in the Inquisition.” He looked like a man who should know how to read, and the name of the picture was on the frame under it; but it is quite possible that his information came from a _cicerone_, as they have been known to give it just as false and malicious.

In the second place, the traveller must bear in mind that his own nation does not monopolize the goodness or common sense of the world, and that, however unintelligible or absurd the customs of other countries may appear to him, the presumption is in their favor; hence, he must never ridicule anything, never judge rashly, but wait till his ignorance is removed and his little experience enlarged to the knowledge of many excellent things that he dreamt not of before, remembering that, while it is pardonable in children and peculiar to boors to laugh at a strange dress or a foreign custom, it is unworthy of an educated person. We should never be ashamed to learn, nor therefore to ask questions. Benjamin Franklin (or Dr. Johnson) said it was by this means he gained so much information. A doctor should be no more ashamed to ask a farmer about potatoes than he to ask him about pills. Every man should be supposed to know his own trade better than others not of it. It is the folly of supposing themselves all-wise and others know-nothings, that keeps many men bigoted and ignorant.

Finally, a great secret for acquiring knowledge of strange peoples and understanding their ways is contained in that advice to “put yourself in their place.” We will find that, if we were in their place, we would do just the same, or perhaps would not have done so well as we find them doing, and it will prevent us forming very wrong impressions of a government or a people. For instance, when travelling in France, we were subjected to some inconvenience by the police regulations, and were tempted to think these French a narrow-minded, suspicious, timid people, until some one reminded the rest of the surveillance our government had felt itself constrained to exercise on the line of the Potomac, the suspension of the Habeas Corpus, and the imprisonment of editors under our own flag; and we were persuaded that France was also excusable, filled as she was with the adherents of three contending political parties, and her territory in part occupied by a conqueror. When we notice something apparently inconvenient, we must wait and see what is the corresponding advantage. Thus, one may dislike the brick and marble floors of Italy. Let him wait till summer, and he will like them; or let him reflect on the immunity from conflagrations which is due to them, and then say if the adoption of this flooring instead of wood is not a cheap price to pay for safety. “During a residence of thirty-five years in Florence, I know not a single house to have been burnt.” This is what Hiram Powers, the sculptor, testifies. In like manner, Dickens was not very much taken with the narrow streets and peculiar build of Genoa the Superb, yet he adds: “I little thought that in one year I would love the very stones of the streets of Genoa.” When he reached Switzerland on his return home, he was no doubt pleased with the neatness of the people, etc.; but still ... “the beautiful Italian manners, the sweet language, the quick recognition of a pleasant look or cheerful word, the captivating expression of a desire to oblige in everything, are left behind the Alps. Remembering them, I sighed for the dirt again, the brick floors, bare walls, unplastered ceilings, and broken windows.”

One of the great advantages we Americans, just as others, gain by travelling is improvement in self-knowledge, which is the foundation-stone of wisdom—beginning to look at ourselves as it were from a distance, and to see ourselves as we are seen by others. It is the great profit of this that made the poet exclaim:

“Oh! wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
And foolish notion.”

When we compare the institutions of foreign lands and their results with our own, we learn a juster appreciation of each, and to remedy the defects of our own, if need be. On the one hand, the nothingness of the individual in many parts of Continental Europe, and the “everythingness” of the state, is very intolerable. The way, too, the police stare at every one in France, as if you had a suspicious look, while the people side with the officer, not apparently from love of the law, but out of fear, just as all the school-boys quake when one is subjected to the pedagogue’s scrutiny. I was in France during Napoleon’s despotism, and now under the republic, and it seemed to me that to the people it was all one; they fear whoever is in power. On landing at Calais, our names were peremptorily demanded, as if the nation feared the entrance of some certain individuals who were only known to it by name. I guess such persons would hardly give their names in such a case. In Ireland, so little respect is had for the people that they are not trusted with arms; but, to keep a gun, one must have a written license from the agents of the inexorable government. Then, in most of those countries, the huge barracks of the standing armies, swallowing up hundreds of thousands of strong, healthy youth, and corrupting the morals of the district wherein they are stationed, seemed to insult the people, and to say: “If you don’t be quiet, we’ll cut you to pieces.” And then again their officers strut along in idleness, or kill time by balls, parties, and cricket-playing, while the masses are sweating to support them, or dying in the poor-houses, worn out in the struggle for existence. Of course, there is some palliation for this. The governments of Europe are afraid of each other, and many of them are afraid of their people, too. God grant that we may never fear a foreign foe, or, what is worse, have a government or laws which the people do not love! But if it is insulting to our manhood to be forbidden to keep arms, it is certainly wrong for us to allow every ruffian to have his loaded revolver always in his pocket. It is worse to have a statute forbidding the carriage of concealed weapons, and not to enforce it.

From the exactness wherewith the public honor is guarded and the criminal laws administered in England—one of those circumstances which make her paper pass as gold in any part of the world—we may learn to correct some of our insane, suicidal looseness in these respects at home, which is destroying all security for life and property, and making us a by-word among the nations. When we see the learning, maturity, and integrity required for the judgeship in other lands, we begin to see how wrong it is to render competition for this high station subject to the bribery of low politicians, whereby, as we all know, men who should be punished as criminals are sometimes found seated on the bench. O my friends! if you but knew what ridicule and contempt for democratic institutions some of these things cause in Europe! It is for this that many excellent persons look with horror on their approach, and cannot appreciate their worth or beauty when they behold these, howsoever accidental, results of their working. Often had we to try and correct unfavorable impressions arising from the fact of known swindlers being allowed to flourish amongst us, and to ruin our public credit by their gambling speculations or bribery; and when one of them is, out of private and lawless revenge, murdered by another, how uncertain it is whether the criminal shall be hanged or restored to society! When they see how we assemble to hear lectures from women divorced from their husbands, and shamelessly living with a paramour, while professing Christian ministers bless such a union, associated though it be with adultery and murder, is it a wonder that Europeans should not increase in their respect for democracy? But the American abroad rouses from the lethargy which the commonness of these things throws over him at home; and to see the disorder as others see it is the first step toward reform. God grant it come not too late!

Until one goes abroad, he is apt to imagine that no country enjoys as much liberty in any sense as our own, and that, how objectionable soever some of our practices may appear, still the corresponding ones in Europe must be intolerably more so. How surprised we are, for instance, when, having encountered the gentlemanly custom-house regulations of England, France, and other nations, the politeness of whose officers is often greater than you often meet with here even in persons who expect to gain by your visit, we return home, and are confronted with the hostile demonstrations of our New York institution! At Liverpool, the officer approaches, and, with a single glance at your appearance, frequently puts the chalk cross on your baggage; or gently asks if you have anything dutiable, and takes your word for an answer; or, at most, slightly examines your baggage, and almost begs pardon for the trouble he is giving. In France likewise, only that you are asked to open your valise, “if you please,” and thanked afterwards. How different in our supposed free atmosphere! Every traveller, citizen or alien, is obliged to sign a statement, liable to be confirmed with an oath, to the effect that he carries nothing dutiable, not even a present for his wife or sister; and then his baggage is examined as if he had made no declaration at all. If the examination is to follow, the oath is unnecessary and therefore sinful. If the oath is accepted as true testimony, is it not insulting to examine, as if it were not believed, or as if the government wished to detect people in perjury. I read the experience of a priest in a Holland custom-house, where the officer insultingly took a crucifix—an image of the crucified Son of God!—out of the valise, and, holding it on high, asked him what it was! In Alexandria of Egypt, they examined his person, pocket, and sounded his stomach, so that he cried out: “What! Is it contraband to have a stomach? Is there any particular size fixed for it? Are there any duties to be paid on it?” At least there was no tampering with an oath in these cases. Such excesses are blamable anywhere, but they are intolerable in a republic.

Another contrast unfavorable to us is the independence of the traveller, at least in this regard: in Continental Europe, no man has to stand even in an omnibus; while here, not only in the street-cars, where it may be explained, but often on the cars of some of our principal railroads, you must stand in travelling. The lawful number of places is marked in Europe, and the people behave as if they were what we claim to be—“individual sovereigns”; if one man is without a seat, the company must either find him one or put on an extra car. Far different from us, who seem to be the slaves of monopoly, or “dead-heads” under a compliment, so that we dare not open our mouths.

When we see how the people of Europe enjoy life, and lengthen their days, and increase their innocent pleasures by moderation in seeking after wealth, by observing occasional holidays, by popular amusements, foot and boatracing, coursing, holding cricket-matches open to the public (free of charge, just as the rest of the sports in Great Britain), we begin to feel how absurd it is for us to be burning out our brains at forty years of age, to break down our bodies by excessive labor, heaping up riches which we thus inhibit ourselves from enjoying, to rush through our work as if we were laying up capital for a thousand years, instead of for ten, twenty, or thirty. By experience of all these things we find that we have much to learn and to improve; and while, on the one hand, we feel our own advantages, we are convinced, on the other, that it was a very silly saying, that of the schoolboy: “That no one should stay in Europe now, since it is so easy to come to America.”

The non-Catholic is disabused of his prejudices by going abroad and finding Catholic institutions so different from what he had been led by his training to expect; and their journey to Rome in particular used formerly to lead many an educated person to the truth. An English lady of high rank and great repute in her day said to Cardinal Pacca, the celebrated minister of Pius VII., “There is one thing in your system which I cannot possibly get over, it is so cruel and shocking.” “What is it that so excites your ladyship’s indignation?” “Your Inquisition. I have been told all kinds of terrible things about it—its punishments, its tortures, and, in fact, all kinds of abominations.” The cardinal endeavored to remove from the lady’s mind the absurd notions which fiction and calumny had associated with the very harmless institution of modern times; but his success was not altogether complete. “Well,” said he, “would your ladyship wish to see the head of this dreaded tribunal?” “Above all things; and I should be most grateful to you for affording me the opportunity.” “Then you had better come here on such an evening (which he named), and you shall see this tremendous personage, and you can then judge of the institution from its chief.” The lady was true to her appointment, all anxiety for her promised interview with the grand inquisitor. The cardinal, who was alone at the time of her arrival, received his visitor with his usual courtly manner, and engaged her in conversation on the various matters of the day. The lady soon became _distrait_, and at length said: “Your eminence will pardon me, but you led me to expect that you were to gratify a woman’s curiosity.” “How was that, my lady?” “Why, don’t you remember you assured me I was to see the Grand Inquisitor of the Holy Office?” “Certainly, and you have seen him,” the cardinal said, in the quietest possible manner. “Seen him!” exclaimed the lady, looking round the apartment. “I see no one but yourself, cardinal.” “Quite true, my child; I did promise you that you should meet the head of the tribunal of which you have been told such wonderful tales; and I have kept my word, for in me you behold your grand inquisitor! From what you know of him, you may judge of the institution.” “You, cardinal—you the inquisitor! Well, I am surprised!” Her ladyship might have added: “And converted, too,” which she was.

The Catholic is confirmed in his faith when he witnesses the piety of Ireland and Belgium; sees the wealth, position, and learning of the children of the church in other nations. When he visits the chapter-house in the Abbey of Westminster, where, under the wings of the church, the House of Commons long held its sessions, the testimony of its mute walls does more to convince him of the stand of the church in regard to free institutions than all that has been written on the subject. When he beholds, in the famous College of the Propaganda, students of every color, tongue, and clime, united in prayer and study, preparing to preach the one same faith in every land, he realizes what he had always held by faith—the Catholicity of the church—and he understands and feels what some one has expressed: “Elsewhere we believe, but in Rome we see.” Even from the practice of heretics he takes a lesson of attachment to his church; and when he sees how Protestants in Ireland, to avoid the contact with Catholics which they consider dangerous to their belief, support schools of their own all the while they are taxed for the national education, he feels still more the wisdom of the Catholic prelates in condemning mixed education.

The public man of our country, the member of the legislature, the priest, finds much to learn in the customs which centuries have sanctioned; and thus the experience of each supplies the want of this important and all-testing article at home. He sees by the condition of Switzerland, Bavaria, the south and west of France, etc., that people are just as prosperous, as happy and healthy, without the machines and various inventions on which we are apt to pride ourselves; while his visit to English manufacturing towns will make him slow to place much trust in institutions which have generated so much mental weakness and bodily disease; have tended so much to destroy the liberty and independence of the people by eliminating the private tradesman and creating vast tyrannous monopolies; and have, by their very circumstances and discipline, occasioned such an increase of immorality in populations heretofore uncorrupted. Having observed them in their homes, he understands better the circumstances and motives which influence men of different nationality and religion, and is enabled to form a more correct judgment of our adopted citizens, no matter from what land. When he sees the misery of the Irish people at home—a consequence of English misrule—he can better understand why they take refuge in the delusive cup, deprived as they are by their poverty of the commonest conveniences and much more of the purer pleasures of life; nay, he is even astonished to find that, with the unspeakable wretchedness of the people, they are so honest that, in the maritime city of Cork, the doors are often scarce more than latched; and so wanting in cool, calculating malice that, with all the strictness of the English, and with judges like Keogh, it is forty years since a man has been found guilty of wilful murder in that handsome town. Even the agrarian outrages are mitigated to our view when we consider that they partake of the “wild justice of revenge,” and the political disturbances have their spring of action in one of the noblest aspirations of the human soul. He is even disposed to pity rather than condemn or despise the Irish when they here become the tools of infamous politicians; reflecting how easily explained this is in the case of country people, such as most of them are (not one in five of whom ever voted before or entered a town except on a fair day), suddenly exalted to the comparative wealth of the American laborer, to the lordly exercise of political rights, and exposed to the new and captivating influences of a great capital. But when the American traveller meets the city people of Ireland, and learns to respect their justice, intelligence, and urbanity; when he sees what a dutiful, sober, conscientious man the Irish peasant can be, as exemplified in the constabulary, of whom I always heard their priests and all travellers speak in the highest terms, he will look kindly on the faults of the emigrant, in the sure expectation that, when his novitiate is passed, he will stand in the first rank of the citizens of the republic.

It will be a pleasure for me, and I trust may not be unacceptable to the reader, if I digress slightly here as I touch on this subject of the Irish people. Having Irish blood in my own veins, I naturally had a great sympathy with the country, especially after hearing the voice of Catholic Ireland crying in our American wilderness so eloquently, and was delighted when, on the 21st of June, her shores rose from the sea in all the charm of sunlight, balmy and verdant freshness, like Venus from the deep. From four in the morning, we had that long-desired land in view, and all day long our eyes feasted on its charms, as we stopped to land passengers and buy fresh meat, entertained by the beautiful Cove of Cork and the magic shores adjacent; and, when the full moon mirrored her beauty in the calm Atlantic, we enjoyed the spectacle at midnight of departing light in the west and the first faint streaks of day in the east. It was such a day and such a night as one might well go three thousand miles to enjoy. I do not wish to speak of the scenery of the country; that is well enough known. I only desire to testify to my experience of the people.

Nearly six months we dwelt in the fair city of Cork, one of the most beautifully situated I ever beheld and I never by any accident heard profane or obscene language in this town of ninety thousand inhabitants. Who could walk New York for a week, and relate such an experience? I was edified by the venerable presence of the faith in this people, as fresh and strong as ever to-day. You might compare it to a flourishing young oak that springs out from the body of an old, and furrowed, and blasted trunk, itself as beauteous as if it did not come from such ancient roots, and were not vegetating with the self-same inextinguished life of the patriarchal tree. How much to the honor of the nation that she has transmitted without a break the consecration which the hands of Patrick, Malachy, and Laurence laid upon her hierarchy, while neighboring people have been obliged to send abroad for pastoral unction! It is most edifying to see the congregations at Mass, and to hear the loud murmur of faith and adoration at the elevation of the Host. It is beautiful to see them stop at the church to pay a visit of a minute as they pass on their way to work, or at least to take the holy water at the door. Drivers, policemen, men cleaning the streets, all classes are seen to do this. I was coming out of a church one day in winter, and found a child’s maid with a child in her arms, kneeling in the damp, wet porch, praying. “Why don’t you go inside? ‘Tis quite wet here,” I said. “I was afraid the child would make too much noise, sir!” It was a week-day, and there were only a few persons inside.

The good, simple, peaceable man of _The Imitation of Christ_ is found in Ireland. I met one of these—a learned, pious, prudent priest, yet as simple in worldly ways as a child, and amusingly ignorant of our modern progress, but courageous as a martyr when called on in court for testimony involving his priestly character. I met another man, a layman, a pure Celt, strong and vigorous, eighty years of age, simple in his diet and dress, speaking English poorly, but Irish fluently and well; he walked at sixty years of age as many miles in three days; and when at last his son, a man of twenty-three, got tired, he took him on his back, and kept on. Such a man might Abraham have been. No wonder his parish priest said to him before me: “I’m glad to see you, James. I hope to see you often, and that you may live long to inspire and encourage me and our people by your example!” His daughter died in Lawrence, Mass., and thus the grandson wrote to the old man at home: “Mother asked for the holy water, and washed her face with it, and sprinkled us, blessing us. She then directed that her body should be carried to the grave on the shoulders of her own flesh and blood, and asked us to turn her face to the east. We turned her, and we thought she had gone asleep, but it was the long sleep of death!” Such is Irish faith. These people are most edifyingly patient and cheerful in sickness and misery. They never complain, but always say, “‘Tis the will of God.” In Waterford, one awful, snowy day, I was much struck by this dialogue between two old persons: “How are you, Mary?” “Oh! then, pretty well, Denis, only I have the rheumatics.” “Oh! then, ‘tis God’s will; and you can’t complain, as you’re able to be about!” My friends, if you had the wretched rags that she and he had on, and their probably empty stomachs, I think you would have been neither inclined to preach nor disposed to practise resignation. I never, by any accident, met any one so ill-clad here as I saw there. Even in the snow they had no shoes nor underclothing.

Is it any wonder, then, that the great spirit of Montalembert was inflamed by visiting such a country? As Mrs. Oliphant says in her _Memoir_, “He had seen a worshipping nation, and his imagination had been inspired by the sight, and all his resolutions had burst into flower.”

Another spectacle that entertained us here was that of an artless maiden. Such a treat for an American! To see a girl of eighteen or twenty years so modest and artless in her ways. There is a charm about such an one; she seems God’s fairest work, as an honest man is his noblest. At the convent schools in Ireland one notices the same gentleness, which contrasts beautifully with what we have so much of at home, and that feature of which Shakespeare says, speaking of Perdita:

“... Her voice was ever soft,
Gentle, and low—an excellent thing in woman.”

I heard an American express his notion of it characteristically by saying: “How quick these girls would find a husband in America!” An English writer, speaking of a city which was remarkably Irish, though not in Ireland, first indulges in some of his usual pokes and jokes about its inhabitants, and then says: “Nowhere did I ever meet better bred ladies”; and a lady well acquainted with the high society of one of our sister cities told me that the ladies in Ireland were far better educated. Indeed, the love of education is very great amongst the Irish people.

I never saw finer schools than those of the Christian Brothers in Cork, and all supported by the voluntary contributions of the people, without a cent from the government, and in a very poor country. Although a poor Protestant is rare in Ireland, the statistics of the Dublin census for 1872 show that the number of illiterates amongst the Catholics is smaller than amongst the adherents of any other religious denomination. And still people will talk of the ignorant Irish, and the opposition of the priests to education! The ignorance, whatever it is, of the Irish, like the rags that hang on their limbs, is a sad but glorious sign of their fidelity to God’s truth! If they had wished to sell their heavenly treasure, they might have got the mess of pottage called godless education. All honor to them and to their priests for the inestimable value they place on the deposit of faith handed down by saints and scholars! There is a good deal of carelessness and want of enterprise amongst the Irish people, no doubt; but as for the former, as F. Burke says: “God help us! Much they’ve left us to be careless with.” The less a man has, the more thriftless he is likely to be. Having in this country a sure title to his own and a prospect of success, I maintain that the Irishman will become as thrifty, without being niggardly, as any other citizen.

Their wit is proverbial, their good-nature under all circumstances most remarkable. In Kilkenny, one Sunday, I saw a party in miserable uniform marching about playing rather unskilfully on a few musical instruments, and calling themselves a band. A crowd followed them through the wet, snow-covered streets, and continually assailed the musicians and each other indifferently with snow-balls. A policeman standing on a corner got one behind his ear, but, like most of the rest, laughed and made nothing of it. Imagine a New York M. P. under similar circumstances! On one occasion, I watched a group of men bantering a rather old seaman who complained of toothache; one suggested that he should take a sup of cold water, and sit on the fire until it boiled; another advised him to hang his night-cap on the bed-post, and, mixing a little whiskey and hot water, etc., should drink until he saw two night-caps; a third said the best thing was to tie the tooth to a tree, and run away from it. He heard them all very good-humoredly, but simply remarked, as if it were not worth while now at his time of life to learn cures: “Faix, I can’t have many more o’ them.”

A jolly, witty, careless bachelor lived on his own property in Blackpool. His houses were two; that which he occupied was open to the weather, and the adjoining one looked as if it had been burned. It was a complete ruin. They were in such a state that some friend remarked that they were likely to fall in and bury him. “Faith,” said the poor lonely bachelor, “‘twould be the best thing that could happen me, if I was prepared.” We must repeat here the story of an Irish Protestant, who went to church with his Catholic friend. His surprise at the strange sights and sounds soon got the better of him, and he whispered: “Why, Pat, this beats the very ould divil.” “That’s the intention,” said Pat, and kept on blessing himself all the same.

Americans, who are not taxed to support a foreign despotic master, who have a sure and enduring title to their property, and who stand or fall by their own free, unimpeded efforts, sometimes wonder at the want of enterprise, neatness, and care of the Irish people. But a visit to the country and a look into its circumstances explain why this is the case. The man who feels that his house may be taken from him to-morrow is not likely to spend much on its decoration; the father who knows that his children are destined to the lowest servitude is even tempted to be careless about sending them to school, and no doubt reprehensible habits which may take several generations to eradicate are naturally formed in such a condition of things. I have said enough, however, to show—and a visit to Ireland, combined with a knowledge of her people under a free and favorable government, will convince us—that these faults of some of the Irish are their misfortune rather than their natural character, and that, when they are free from the iron shackles of a barbarous conqueror, they will shine forth in all the virtues which adorn a great Catholic nation.

All the advantages undoubtedly derivable from going abroad are attended with a danger which sometimes overtakes men of limited education and small mind, and which experience teaches we are all obliged to guard against. Contact with the institutions of most parts of Europe has a tendency to undermine the simple, independent qualities of the republican. The splendor of the throne, the tinsel of rank, the worship of mammon, family pride, etc., by which the sterling worth of the individual is overlooked and individual virtue is disregarded for the glitter which often covers the rottenness and impurity of caste—all these appeal temptingly to the wealthy but otherwise undistinguished American. His daughters are sought in marriage by members of broken-down princely houses, because they have money; his sons are courted by noble gamblers, because they are rich; and I need not tell why it is that principle in these cases is often sacrificed to that base tendency of our fallen nature which makes us aspire to power, rank, and title, just as a little boy does to the possession of a whip, a sash, and a cocked hat.

I recall now the case of one of our American admirals, who, when patriotic New Hampshire objected to changing the Indian names of our men-of-war to Saxon ones, defended his action by saying: “He did not see why England should have all the fine names.” The poor man was actually so infatuated by the style, pretension, and wealth of England that he thought even the stale nomenclature of her vessels preferable to the fresh, historically endeared ones taken from our native land—a piece of weakness and folly which drew out the merited protest of the Granite State, which had given some of those fine old Indian names to ships that under them gained glory in war, and won admiration and respect when they visited the coasts of Europe. Imagine exchanging such names as Tuscarora, Niagara, Oneida, for such ones as Vixen, Hornet, Viper, Spitfire, or even for Hector, Ajax, and Captain! It were unjust, however, to the rude health of our republican atmosphere to suppose that weakness such as this can be called characteristic of those nurtured on our soil, and were conclusive against hope in the perpetuity of our institutions. Such exceptional and deplorable examples need not make us fear the consequences of travel to the majority of travellers. The really educated, reflecting man knows the lessons of history too well to be deceived by the glitter of such institutions, which, like the _ignis fatuus_ itself, is a token of the underlying rottenness. The religious man feels deeply that, while obedience to authority is essential to all government, still modesty and simplicity have given life and vigor, while pride and luxury have been the bane and caused the death of nations; and he knows that the conscientious, willing adhesion of the democrat to the laws he has had an influence in making is more trustworthy, as it is more noble, than the abject, servile submission of the slave, disgusting to God, as well as dishonorable to his image. The priest cannot but feel deeply that the only system and the only land which allows the church to stand or fall by her own strength and merits is America; and his consciousness of her increasing prosperity, in contrast to her maimed and bleeding condition in other lands, must only attach him still more to his country and her institutions. And while he adverts, as I have done, to her faults, and wishes her to take pattern by the virtues and warning by the sins of other nations, it is because his heart as well as his interest are bound up with her fate:

“... Sail on, O ship of state!
Sail on, thou Union strong and great
. . . . . . . .
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee,
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
Our faith, triumphant o’er our fears,
Are all with thee—are all with thee.”

We may theorize about patriotism by our firesides at home, but you feel what it is when you are in a foreign land. The beating of your heart, the brilliancy of your glance, the warmth of your grasp, all without reflection and spontaneously occurring when you meet a fellow-countryman, while they afford a most pure and exquisite delight, prompt us, with the force of unerring instinct, to love our country.

I remember, when out on the broad Atlantic, with the monotonous waste of waters in every direction, to have noticed something in the kiss of the sunbeams, in the familiar sweetness of the air, denoting the nearness of home by these embraces, so to speak, of our own clime. The lifting up of the heart, the light gladness of the spirits that succeeded, were not even due to the thought of home and friends The magic influence of atmosphere alone had been enough to produce them. And is it not natural?

“Breathes there a man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land?
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned,
From wandering on a foreign strand?”

If such an one there be, he is a rare and monstrous exception. The feeling of common humanity is expressed with universal truth in the lines of sweet-singing Goldsmith in his classic poem, “The Traveller”:

“Where’er I roam, whatever realms to see,
My heart untravelled fondly turns to thee:
Still to _my country_ turns with ceaseless pain,
And drags at each remove a lengthening chain.”

CHARTRES.

IT is the hour of pilgrimages. Probably never since the middle ages were they so numerous, or, with regard to the public ones, so carefully organized as at the present time; whether to the favored localities to which in these latter days heavenly manifestations have been accorded, or to the ancient sanctuaries whose history is coeval with that of the whole Christian era.

At this moment, when a vast concourse of pilgrims from various parts of France, and especially from its capital, are gone to pay their homage to our Lady of Chartres, and beg her intercession on behalf of their country, it may not be uninteresting to some among our readers if we endeavor briefly to trace the history of this celebrated shrine.

On entering the richly sculptured entrance—too large to be called a porch, and too truly Gothic to be called a portico—of the church of S. Germain l’Auxerrois in Paris, the visitor is struck with the beauty of the ancient frescos with which its interior is adorned; so effective in composition, so spiritual in expression, and in execution so delicate, simple, and refined. In one of these, which fills the tympanum of a closed arch forming part of the north side, is depicted the form of a venerable, white-bearded sage, who might without difficulty serve to represent a Druid (though in all probability it is the prophet Isaias), kneeling, with an expression of wonder and joy on his aged countenance, while an angel, opening a window, shows him a distant vision of the Virgin Mother and her divine Son.

The connection between the subject of this fresco and that of the present article will shortly be apparent. The ancient city, which was formerly the capital of the Carnutes, claims the honor of having been the first in the world to consecrate a temple to the Blessed Virgin.

Chartres, before the Christian era dawned upon the earth, foresaw from the midnight darkness the shining of the “Morning Star” which should precede its rising, and by anticipation did homage to the Virgin who was to bring forth—_Virgini Parituræ_.

It was previous to the subjugation of the Gauls by the Roman arms that this homage began. They were still a free, wild, and haughty race; _Mala gens_, according to the _Commentaries_ of their conqueror; living little in their towns, much in their pathless forests; they are, moreover, by the same author reported to be a religious people; that is to say, submissive to their priests, from whom they had not only their faith, but also their laws and government.

These priests were the Druids. If old Armorica was the cradle of their worship, it is no less true that it had at a very early period spread not only into Britain, but also over the whole of Gaul, establishing at Chartres the central point of its continental empire. There the solemn sacrifices were offered, and there were held the tribunals of justice; _in loco consecrato_,[207] which expression, by a slight variation, might fittingly be rendered, _in luco consecrato_, considering the veneration in which woods and groves were held, and that it was in these that the assemblies met.

Not until after the Roman invasion was polytheism gradually and with difficulty engrafted on the more primitive Druidic worship, which was evidently neither of Greek nor Latin origin, but rather the offspring of Egypt or Chaldea, with occasional indications of affinity with the belief of the Hebrews. The Galli and Cymri had originally come from the East, being alike descendants of Gomer, the son of Japhet.[208]

As some writers have imagined the Egyptian cross in the form of the Greek _Τ_, the _signum vitæ futuræ_, to have proved the expectation among that nation of the coming of the Messias, so others have seen in the venerated mistletoe attached to the oak an image of the Redeemer on the cross, and in the offerings of bread and wine a foreshadowing of the sacrament of the altar. In any case, these were but vague notions or veiled presentiments of truths of which Israel alone possessed the certainty; yet some stray gleam from the light of Hebrew prophecy may have shown to others than the chosen people a faint and distant vision of that great second Mother of the human race who should repair the ills brought on it by the first.

According to the oldest traditions, it was a hundred years before the birth of our Saviour that this expectation manifested itself in a public manner among the Druids of the Carnutes, by the consecration of a grotto, for a long time previous famous among them, to the “Virgin who was to bring forth.”

No written document of equal antiquity to this epoch exists in support of the tradition; nor would it be possible, from the fact that the Druids committed nothing to writing, but transmitted the doctrines of their religion and the facts of history solely by oral teaching.

The Cathedral of Chartres, however, from the time of its foundation by the Blessed Aventinus, who is said to have been the disciple of S. Peter, faithfully guarded the memory of an event which was its peculiar glory, by consigning the history thereof to its archives. These were carefully consulted by the Abbé Sébastien Rouillard, especially a very ancient chronicle which was translated from Latin into French in 1262, during the reign of S. Louis, and of which he gives the following account, although, in rendering it into English, we lose the charm of the quaint original: “Wherefore the Druids having arrived at this last centenary which immediately preceded the birth of Our Lord, ... the said Druids being assembled together by the revolution of the new year to perform their accustomed ceremonies for gathering in the mistletoe, which, coming from heaven and attaching itself to oaks and divers other trees, was a figure of the Messias; at that time, in the assembly of the aforesaid Druids, all being vested in their mantles of white wool, after their custom, in the presence of Priscus, King of Chartres, and of the princes, lords, and other estates of the province, the Archdruid, having made the sacrifice of bread and wine according to custom, and praying the God of heaven that the sacrifice aforesaid might be salutary to all the people of the Carnutes, declared that the divine inbreathing (afflatus) with which he felt himself filled so greatly overpowered him as well-nigh to take away the power of speech, causing his heart to beat with vehement blows, and overwhelming it with extraordinary joy, seeing that he had to announce, by the revolution of the new century, the presage of her approach who should restore the golden age, and bring forth Him for whom the nations waited.” “Wherefore, O heaven! is thy tardy movement slower than the longing of my desires?... If old age, which has brought my steps to the brink of the grave, forbids me to behold with my own eyes that which I foresee, nevertheless I render thanks, O Deity Supreme, to thee, who hast inspired our sacred college with its expectation. In the midst of this grotto, and hard by this well, shall be raised an altar and an image to the Virgin who shall bring forth a Son. And do ye, princes and lords here present, declare whether this thing is pleasing to you.” Thus spoke the pontiff, while tears rolled down his long white beard. The whole assembly, being seized with a spirit of joy and devotion, eagerly corresponded with the desires of its high-priest. The altar was raised and the image dedicated—_Virgini Parituræ_.

The place where this solemn assembly was held is none other than the hill whereon now stands the Cathedral of Chartres. At that period, a thick wood surrounded the grotto, which resembled the _Grottes des Fées_ still to be seen in many secluded country-places in France, and which were not unfrequently the abodes of Druidesses, the remembrance of whom is preserved under this popular appellation.

We have here, according to this tradition, the most ancient pilgrimage, which was Christian in spirit before being so in reality. The other Druidic virgins, venerated in various places, as at Nogent, Longpont, and Châlons-sur-Marne, were all later and in imitation of the Virgin of Chartres.

The consecrated grotto in time became the crypt of the mediæval cathedral which now in all its majestic beauty rises above it. The original building, in consequence of various catastrophes, changed its form, and was more than once renewed before obtaining its present splendor; but the Druidic image has invariably remained in the locality first assigned to it, whither all the centuries of Christian times have successively sent multitudes of pilgrims to do homage to _Notre Dame de Soubs Terre_, and whither we must go to find the copy which has replaced the ancient and venerable effigy, destroyed, not yet a century ago, by sacrilegious hands, which, in the time of the great Revolution, tore it from its sanctuary and threw it into the flames. The present image is a faithful reproduction of the Druidic one, of which a minute description is given in a chronological _History of Chartres_, written in the XVIth century. The Virgin Mother is enthroned, with her son upon her knees, whose right hand is raised in benediction, while in the left he holds the globe of the world. Over the Virgin’s robe is a mantle in form of a dalmatic; her head is covered with a veil, surmounted by a crown, of which the ornaments somewhat resemble the leaves of the ash. Her countenance is extremely well formed, oval, dark, and shining, and the whole figure has much resemblance to the ancient Byzantine type. With regard to the supposed reasons for the color of the complexion, we will quote the words of Sébastien Rouillard:

“La dite image des Druides est de couleur mauresque, comme presque toutes les aultres de l’Eglise de Chartres. Ce que l’on estime avoir été fait par les Druides et aultres à leur suitte, sur la présomptive couleur du peuple oriental, exposé plus que nous aux ardeurs du soleil, cause que l’Espouse du Cantique des Cantiques dit que le soleil l’a découlourée, et que pour être brune, elle ne laisse d’être belle. Néantmoins Nicephore qui avait vue plusieurs tableaux de cette Vierge faicte par Saint Luc après le naturel, dit que la couleur de son visage estoit _sitochroë_, ou de couleur de froument. Si ce n’est qu’on veuille dire que le froument estant meur tire sur le brun ou couleur de chastaigne.”[209]

The remainder of the description is so charming that we cannot refrain from finishing the portrait:

“La Vierge estoit de stature médiocre.... Ses cheveux tiraient sur l’or; ses yeux estoient acres et estincellans, aiant les prunelles jaunastres et de couleur d’olive, ses sourcils cambrez en forme d’arcade, et d’une couleur noire leur avenant fort bien. Son nez estoit longuet, ses lèvres vives et flories, sa face non ronde ni aiguë, mais un peu longuette, les mains et les doigts pareillement longuets. Elle estoit en toutes choses honneste et grave, parlant peu à peu et à propos; facile à escouter toutes personnes, affable des plus et faisant honneur à chascun, selon sa qualité. Elle usoit d’une honneste liberté de parler, sans rire, sans se troubler, sans se mettre en cholère. Elle estoit exempte de tout fast, sans se déguiser le maintien, sans user de délicatesse, et en toutes ses actions monstrant une grande humilité.”[210]

In presence of the numerous and invariable testimonies of tradition, not only the great antiquity, but also the Druidic origin of the pilgrimage of Notre Dame de Chartres appear incontestable, and this belief is further confirmed by many historical documents, such as, for instance, the letters-patent which in the year 1432 were granted at Loches to the Chartrians by Charles VII., and which contain the following declaration:

“L’Eglise de Chartres est la plus ancienne de notre roïaume, fondée par prophétie en l’honneur de la glorieuse Vierge-Mère, avant l’incarnation de Notre Seigneur Jhésus Christ et en laquelle icelle glorieuse Vierge fut adorée en son vivant.”[211]

Without allowing the same degree of credence to the miracles which, according to the archives of this church, signalized the future power of Mary in times anterior to the Christian era, we will mention one only of those among them which appear to be worthy of belief. This was represented in the rich mediæval glass of the “Window of Miracles,” destroyed at the Revolution, where also could be read the name of Geoffrey [Gaufridus].