Chapter XXV: All Is Lost!-The Prospect Brightens (5)

When it so happens that relatives of the deceased can afford to pay down the sum of fourteen francs (eight for a coffin, and six for the municipal tax), a bier is provided, and the body is buried; if the deceased leaves behind enough money to cover the above expenses, he is buried in like manner, and, if any sum remains over, it is employed according to the will expressed by the deceased. In some cases, survivors are willing to incur more expense than that which is included in an outlay of fourteen francs; for, although this insignificant sum is sufficient for a coffin, it does not suffice for a shroud nor for any body-linen.[47] Moreover, if the family cannot afford to pay fifty francs over and above the fourteen required, the body is interred in the common grave.

The common grave! What a train of sad thought this lugubrious idea gives rise to! It is no longer, thank God! what it was; the bodies are not now thrown, as before, pell-mell in a deep grave. A coffin is provided for each, according to the rule given above; but even in our days, the burial of a poor man is not what it should be.

Fancy a long ditch, in which the coffins are sunk as close as possible, and in juxtaposition; the spaces between are filled up with children's coffins, so as to leave no intervening space. When the soil is covered over this vast grave, it is not possible for each to have a cross above, and it is impossible, likewise, for relatives to know the exact spot occupied by the remains of a beloved parent. Grave-diggers have, of late, had orders to allow more room for the coffins; but until a radical rule is enforced, and until each corpse is authorized to have a separate grave, relatives of the departed are at the mercy of grave-diggers.

However narrow and confined the space thus left for each coffin in the common grave, that small share is only allowed for five years. After that short length of time, the bodies are exhumed, and the bones gathered to the catacombs. The big ditch, now vacated, again yawns for what the diggers call "a fresh set," and soon the work of decomposition again silently commences for another term of five years, and so on for all time.

Leaving every other consideration aside, does it not strike every reader that the period allowed for rest in the common grave is much too short? Many bodies are dug up in good preservation when thus brutally disturbed, and there are persons who can testify to the horror they have experienced when called on, by some untoward circumstance, to be present at these impious exhumations.

I shall not add to it by overdrawing this sufficiently painful picture; it does not become the pen of a priest to color with such ghastly elements. My object is simply to state plain facts--to be exact, and not leave room for the slightest contradiction.

Arguments have been advanced in favor of the good influence of this supreme misery of the common grave. It is hoped that such an end will be avoided, and that it will carry a lesson with it--a horror for relying on public charity; but it nevertheless deals a direct blow at every feeling of respect for kith and kin. Is not the grief caused by eternal partings deep enough, without being increased by our acquiescence in the total abandonment of the tomb?

Any one in authority who could suppress the common grave, and give every poor man separate burial--any one who, having done this, could render such a tomb inviolable for a reasonable term of years, would confer an immense blessing on Parisians.

When M. Haussmann gave out the project of a large burial-ground at Méry-sur-Oise, it met with opposition in all quarters. It was alleged that to send corpses out of Paris by special railway conveyances would be considered disrespectful to the dead. But, we would inquire, is the present system of interment in the common grave calculated to inspire respect? The distance of a few miles, of even a few leagues, would be nothing compared with the privilege of a separate tombstone over a separate grave; and it would be much wiser to have remote cemeteries, provided they were hospitable. This question of the common grave not only interests those who die within the hospitals; it is also of importance to the indigent wherever they die in misery--a state many have fallen into since the war and the _Commune_.

The above disclosures are certainly very melancholy, and yet I have only described the case of the more fortunate among the poor--of those who have, after all, a hallowed spot to rest in after death. There are some to whom even this boon is denied.

The interests of science and those of families being here antagonistic, it is necessary to quote a few figures:

On the 1st January, 1867, the number of sick in the Paris hospitals was 6,243. In the course of that year, the number was increased by 90,375; total, 96,618. Out of this total, 79,897 left the hospitals cured; 10,045 had died. There remained, therefore, on the 1st January of the following year, 6,676 sick persons. In 1869, the number of invalids in the hospitals was 93,355, out of which 82,283 left cured; 10,429 had died on the 31st December of the same year.

We have, in short, an average of 10,000 deaths every year; and the result shown by the above furthermore is that the proportion of deaths to invalids is about that of 1 to 8½. I will not dwell on this latter conclusion, which, however, proves the danger of accumulating a large number of cases under the same roof, and also the necessity of a reform in our establishments. I will pass on to the 10,000 deaths resulting from the report. In this average number, there are from 1,000 to 1,500 claimed by relatives, who purchase a right of separate burial for _fifty_ francs; and there are from 3,500 to 4,000 who are conveyed to the common grave. The remaining 5,000, not claimed by any relative or friend, are dissected, either at the Ecole de Médecine or at the Rue Fer-à-Moulin. These corpses are used after dissection for the manufacture of skeletons, for anatomical institutions, for museums, etc., etc. The _detritus_ collected when these purposes have been accomplished are carried promiscuously in biers to the Hospital Cemetery, which is situated near the Fort of Bicètre, not far from Turg.

No spectacle can be more distressing than that of this cemetery, to which access is gained by a side door in the wooden palings that fence it round. It is a dreary plain, and has no sign to show it is consecrated to the departed. The ridges look more like trenches than graves. No living being has been led here by love to mark the mounds with a cross, neither is this sign of redemption erected over the door, as it is in the smallest hamlet; no holy-water is sprinkled over these graves. Why should no difference be made here between a churchyard and a public field? I again repeat that these 5,000 corpses are those of the deceased not claimed by relatives; and this it is which constitutes a striking inequality between the indigent who die in their own homes, and those who die in the care of public charity. When a poor man dies on his own bed, and has not left any provision for his burial, the _mairie_ of his _arrondissement_ has to provide a coffin gratis, and the municipal tax is suppressed; whereas no such generosity as a coffin is granted in the hospitals. A man dying here without the fourteen francs mentioned is carried to one or other of the amphitheatres. There is no favor shown, even were the departed your own mother. Fourteen francs for a ransom, or the heart of the parent that beat for you is the prey of medical students. A priest is sent for when the corpses have been dissected. It is then his duty to stand up, facing the mutilated remains, and to read the prayers for the dead. When this ceremony is over, they are conveyed to the hospital cemetery. Need I insist that the religious rite performed as I have described is of little consolation to those who are left behind? It is not a separate service for each of the deceased; several bodies lie together, or rather, the members of their bodies--a galling sight, which surviving relatives avoid. Neither can it be defended; for, until the religious ceremony has been performed, the remains are not collected in a coffin; they lie unshrouded, a hideous exposure of human flesh.

I here repeat that I am not opposed to medical science, nor to the dissection of certain corpses; it is an unavoidable process for the benefit of progress in surgery, and for that of the living; what I have in view is the welfare of the state as acquired by respect for ties of kindred, and by veneration for the mortal remains of Christians.

There is a middle course to be adopted very evidently--a course by which surgery and science generally would be promoted and the religious convictions of Christians not trampled under foot. I propose that, when any person claims the body of a parent or relative in the first degree, that person should be privileged to obtain gratuitous burial, if he or she prove utter incapacity to meet the expenses. This proof is acquired by a certificate from the almshouses, by receipts from the _Mont de Piété_ (Loan Bank), by a line from the _mairie_, and other sources. A relative in the first degree implies a father, mother, wife, husband, son or daughter, brother or sister. Even were grandfathers and grandmothers included, the 5,000 corpses left to hospital charity would not be greatly diminished; 4,000 bodies would remain at least for dissection--those of wandering strangers, of lawless, unknown persons mostly--and surely this is a high figure for the indigent population of one capital. There are no better surgeons in Europe than those of Göttingen, Wurzburg, Salerno, Montpellier, Vienna, and Berlin, and yet these cities have not near so many dead bodies in their amphitheatres.

I say that a Christian must feel deeply for those who are left without proper burial, a sign on their tombs, a stone to perpetuate their memory for a few years. All this is replaced by the jests of indifferent students; and, instead of the friendly parting kiss, there is the surgeon's instrument on a loved brow.

O old reminiscences of the early catacombs! how far off, how faint, are you now. Who is there in this large city that remembers what a work of mercy it is to bury the dead? O village churchyards! in the centre of which rises the humble church-spires; O graves! over which the fervent kneel every Sunday--graves that never open to give up their dead; O hallowed spots! around which thoughts of God are united with thoughts of our dear ones, and where the past is folded, as it were, hand in hand with the future, how do I prefer you to these grand cemeteries, in which there is so much show for one or two, and nothing for the poor man who will want no more!

FOOTNOTES:

[47] When an invalid enters a Paris hospital, the shirt he had on is taken from him. It would be but charitable to return it to the family in case of death.

A WEEK AT THE LAKE OF COMO.

For perfect quiet and certain inspiration, the poet or artist could hardly choose a more suitable summer roost than any one of the villages that fringe the Lake of Como; while for health the advantages of this neighborhood are unrivalled. It combines the beauty of softened lines and veiled colors that distinguishes Italy with that more bracing atmosphere peculiar to Alpine countries. The lake is there for luxurious midnight expeditions under the Italian sky--romantic glidings in boats which, if neither so graceful nor so mysterious as the gondolas of Venice, are yet picturesque enough in their--only apparent--cumbersomeness; the mountains are there for English pedestrian exercise, for long, delightful, tiring walks over crag and scanty vineyard, and, beyond that, through chestnut woods and cypress clearings, till the limit of bareness begins to warn you of Alpine snows; excellent little hotels are there, hardly spoiled by the many but quickly fleeting guests whom the shabby little black steamboat brings in cargoes three times a day--hotels with clean, dapper bed-rooms and bay windows overlooking the lake--hotels where you can always get plenty of fresh milk and graceful Italian civility. Then there are villas by the score, some to be hired, and many more utterly forlorn and deserted; others well cared for, pleasantly tenanted by happy, unpretending Italian families, and wearing a general air of attractive, half-civilized rusticity. You feel that life must go on very smoothly within their walls; that bright, artless women and children chatter and laugh away their brief summer holiday in those spacious verandas and vine-trellised piazzas; and that conventional restraint is an unknown spirit there. You wish that you had a right to enter such an abode, or money enough to create one for yourself just for three months at a time; then may be you pass by another kind of dwelling, with broad, grass-grown steps meeting the water like those of the palaces of Venice; with a great rusty iron gate and railing showing tarnished remains of heraldic gilding; with a garden now overgrown with weeds, but whose tall hedges of box or ilex suggest the statuesque style of the XVIIth century; with melancholy fountains innocent of water, and Etruscan-shaped stone vases once filled with flowers, and now holding only a little stagnant rainwater; with another flight of gaunt steps leading up to a porch and innumerable stone balconies and terraces notched with half-ruined carvings of the Renaissance; moss and mould everywhere, life nowhere; funereal cypresses mounting guard over mutilated statues of fauns and wood-nymphs; rats and mice peopling in reality the marbled-paved halls of the mansion; and ghosts--in your imagination--pacing up and down the broad, deserted corridors. Then, if you are of a poetic turn of mind, you forget the brightness, the freedom, the _laisser-aller_ of the peopled villas, and wish that you were lord of this vast, melancholy, romantic pile, the natural scene of some stately poem, the fitting frame of some picture like Millais' pathetic "Huguenot Lover," the sure source of an inspiration lofty, noble, vague, and richly proportioned. Everything is on a scale of magnificence, such as suggests only extravagance to our dwarfed notions of the proprieties of life; a modern visitor feels a pigmy in those vast, re-echoing halls; he almost expects some Brobdingnag halberdier in cloth of gold and scarlet to catch him up by the hair as some insect curiosity, or at least to order him out as an impertinent intruder; the great marble staircase seems to be alive with the shades of the noble throngs who, in Spanish doublets, jewelled _toques_, needle-like swords, and stiff neck-ruffs, used to parade the courtly scene--in fact, he finds himself utterly overwhelmed by the phantoms of a greatness that is dead; swamped by the flood of modern days that has brought in a generation of monkeys to consume their lives in efforts to fill the place of a generation of lions.

Again, the traveller may find other sights among the villas of the Lake of Como--less pleasant sights, too, and jarring on the artist's sense of fitness; as, for instance, when he finds a wealthy and prosaic _paterfamilias_, of the class who do not know and care less what antiquity means--unless it may mean shabbiness--established in placid and ludicrous possession of some stately abode such as we have named. Of course, this unappreciative being, with his robust wife and chubby olive-branches, is of the great, dominant, self-sufficient Anglo-Saxon race, with its grand physical contempt of everything that is foreign, but its keen national determination to take timely advantage of everything that is cheap. He may be from our own or the other of the Atlantic shores; from the cotton-mills of England or the oil-wells of America; but he will invariably be a man of prosaic and practical tendencies, quite impervious to the romance of his new home, but perfectly alive to its value as a good speculation and an economical venture. You will never find an artist or a scholar thus established; _they_ will be penned up in a white-washed room of some peasant's cottage, or, if lucky members of their craft, in the "best room" of the _Signor Curato's_ little presbytery. They, too, are on the lookout for cheap lodgings; but what is cheap to the careful millionaire is the height of impossible extravagance to the gifted brain-worker. And for our part, if we had to share the home of either of these two classes of lake tourists, we should much prefer a shake-down at the white-washed cottage, with the human counterweight of the artist, than the surroundings of marble halls, spacious, deserted gardens, and ghost-haunted staircases, if balanced by the incongruous presence of the prosperous family before mentioned. What poetic justice is it which sternly forbids the tenantship of such abodes to be interchanged?

Just such a beautiful place--but, luckily, not thus tenanted--is a villa on the Lake of Como, just opposite the sharp end of the tongue of land which, jutting into the lake to the distance of half its length, cuts it into the shape of a Y. We passed it every day on our way to the chapel. It was formerly, if we remember rightly, the pleasure-house of Queen Caroline of England during her exile. No one ever goes there now, and its aspect is as suggestive, as gloomy, as pathetic, as Edgar Poe or Mrs. Radcliffe could have wished. Just beyond it, on the narrow slip of land which runs parallel to the lake at the foot of the abrupt mountains, is a private chapel, built over the family vault of the Marquises of A---- and Counts of S----, an old Savoyard family of great piety and high origin. The land around here is part of their patrimonial estate, and the chapel contains two or three very beautiful monuments of white marble, exquisite in carving and finish, but hardly very Christian in taste.

Further up, and to be reached by a pleasant, rugged path right behind our little hotel, was another church--a village parish church this time, a much more homely and _homelike_ place--served by a gentle old _curato_. The view over the lake from the jasmine-covered parapet surrounding this church was lovely--so peaceful that it suggested rather the possible surroundings of a holy soul just released from the body than the actual home of a busy, struggling, mortal life.

To heighten the illusion, the moon rose slowly as we descended the same path, and her broad silver shield, as it passed seemingly behind the crags of the mountains on the opposite shore, became momentarily stamped with the irregular outline of dark rocks, simulating to our imagination the turrets and spires of a spectre city. Soon the path of light traced by her rays upon the waters began to shine like the Israelites' guiding pillar in the wilderness, and we felt tempted to try a water-excursion as a fitting ending to our day. The beauty of the scene, as the shadows grew darker and the moonlight more intense, is indescribable. Our silent party in the boat did not even attempt to admire it _out loud_. The hills, purple-black in the foreground, rising out of the lake as walls of onyx from a crystal floor, grew stone-gray as they receded from sight and mingled their colors with the unearthly white of the Alpine snow-peaks in the far distance. These last seemed as though hung like a bridal wreath between earth and heaven, resting on the dark, undistinguishable masses of the chestnut woods covering the lower spurs. Now and then a bell would ring out in the still night air--a brazen voice rolling from some village belfry--and waking the mountain echoes till its sound died away in a silver murmur, mingling with the plashing of our steady oars, and gently reminding us that our lives had floated one hour nearer to God. But lovely as the scene was by night, it is difficult to call it less lovely by day. Opposite our temporary home was Bellaggio, one of the most frequented of the lake villages--a tiny hamlet of white houses clustered together in a grove of cypresses, and perched on a rocky ledge overlooking the shore. The tall, columnar trees scattered among the houses almost suggested the idea of a peaceful burying-ground, the white cottages from a distance seeming no bad substitutes for marble tombstones. A gray-blue mist--the last Italian beauty that clings to this fairy-like outpost of Italy, invaded by Alpine breezes and watched by craggy sentinels--hangs over the dormant village; the fir-trees of the neighboring villa--the show-place of the lake, the Villa Serbellone--waft their scented breath over its houses, while at its foot lie the hot-houses and orangeries, etc., by which the owner of this beautiful garden property tries to emulate English taste. The Villa Serbellone is almost a tropical marvel; the profusion of flowers; the scent of southern blossoms, cultivated with assiduous care; the ivory-like magnolia, framed in its dark and massive foliage; the starry orange flowers; the pineapple, in its luscious perfection of growth--all denote the sunny land of spontaneous productiveness; while the velvet lawns, emerald-colored and closely shaven; the trim gravel-walks, rolled to the exact point of firmness required in an English garden; the marble vases, overflowing with creepers of carefully chosen and judiciously contrasted shades; and the thousand-and-one dainty little contrivances to make the most of every natural advantage, display the art of that northern land to which its very disadvantages of climate have taught the secret of enhancing every beauty and almost creating new ones by its industry. There is little to distinguish the Lake of Como beyond its beauty of atmosphere and scenery--little or no historical interest, no ruins, castles, or towns with momentous remembrances of troubled times in the past. The churches are plain, and generally in bad taste--in fact, beyond the reach either of gorgeousness or even of simple restoration; for the mountain population and the fishermen of the shore are very poor, and the inhabitants of the lake-side villas only come to Como for the summer. But these poor parishioners have spiritual riches, if not temporal comforts: the faith of the Italian, and the _naïve_ enthusiasm of mountaineers. One day, after landing for a moment during one of our boat excursions, we fell into conversation with an old woman, her brown, wrinkled face lighted up by eyes of the intensest black, sparking with a vigor strangely in harmony rather than in contrast with her age, and her dress, in its picturesque, but we fear uncomfortable dilapidation, quite a study for a painter. She was very devout, and, when she found that we were _forestièri_, anxiously asked if we were Christians. This reminds us of what happened in the North of Ireland to a Catholic English lady of distinction. Her husband was a Protestant, and she accordingly started alone one day to find the church, which she knew to be somewhere in the neighborhood of the place at which she was temporarily staying. It was not a Sunday. She lost her way, and, meeting an old woman, asked her to set her on the right road for the Catholic "Chapel." The old dame looked very suspiciously at the elegant costume of the questioner, and well knowing, by the accent, that she was foreign to Ireland, asked her in return, with incredulity stamped on every expressive feature: "Shure, she was not a Catholic?" And, indeed, the English convert did not succeed in persuading the old Irishwoman that she was her sister in the faith, until, opening her dress, she showed her the scapular round her neck, and put the rosary into her hand. These marks of orthodoxy quite convinced the staunch old Catholic, and the English lady reached the church at last. Having satisfied herself, with a sort of joyful surprise, on this cardinal point, our Italian friend discoursed very volubly of the Madonna, her own priest and mountain church, and the Pope. We had some beads with us blessed by the Holy Father, and offered her the choice of one of the set. She was reverently delighted with the opportunity, and with many blessings and thanks, as gracefully expressed as a poet could have wished or done himself, she made her selection. How her precious spiritual nearness to the Holy Father, rendered more palpable by the sight of the plain brown rosary, seemed realized in her mind's eye! She kissed the beads again and again in a transport of devotion, and in simple, straight-forward language expressed her love and loyalty to the Supreme Pontiff. There are few women in Italy, high or low, who have not the same feeling for the head of the church; and those who have it not are by no means among the most exemplary wives and mothers.

We were at Como--or rather, on the shores of the lake--in March as well as in June. The spirit of the scene was just a little more dreamy in the former month than even in the latter, chiefly because there were very few tourists, and the steamboats went up and down the lake at longer intervals than in the summer. The great heat showed no signs of its advent; the vegetation was tender and yellow-green, yet not scant; for the hills, whose cold breath tempers the torrid heat of Lombardy, also protect the lake from the biting winds that one is used to associate with the mention of March. It was possible to go out boating and walking even at noon, though the nights were none the less beautiful and inviting; but perhaps, at that time of the year, the loveliest hour was early morning. It was with such a remembrance that we left the lake. After five o'clock Mass, we rowed over to the projecting tongue of mainland that cuts the waters in two, and got into a light open carriage of the country, _en route_ for Milan. The air was delightfully fresh, the sun had just risen, and a rosy, hazy tint lay over everything. It might have been the Bosporus, so tranquil and softened was the scene. Indeed, many travellers have likened this lake to the Bosporus, its narrow, river-like course between the shelving mountains being, they say, quite a reproduction of the oriental marvel, though it does not produce the oriental languor characteristic of the other. Our road for some time lay in a direction in which we could see both branches of the lake; then, swerving to one side, we passed through miniature mountain passes, green meadows with many water-mills, and pretty villages embowered in trees. There was somewhat of northern dampness in the atmosphere, but its effect on the pasturage was certainly satisfactory, the turf in many places being almost worthy of the Emerald Isle. As the hours sped on, our appetite began to make itself felt; we had brought nothing with us, not even sandwiches, and the drive was lengthening beyond our original calculations. The wayside inns were practically useless, the wine was like vinegar, and bread not always forthcoming. At length, at a place where we changed horses for the last time before reaching Milan, and after we had been enjoying the beauties of nature for ten hours on an empty stomach, we found something eatable, though not in a superfluous quantity. Not long after, we were regaling ourselves on a banquet of fish fried in oil, and an adequate supply of bread and butter, served in the irreproachable Milan hotel, once the palace of a fallen family, and where our _privato_ dining-room had formerly been the _Sala di Giustézza_, in which feudal lords sat dispensing justice to their clan of retainers or hangers-on! And with this, farewell to the queen of Italian lakes!

ODD STORIES.

IV.--THE INDIA-RUBBER MAN

One thousand three hundred and ninety-seven years ago, the city of Cadiz was startled by rumors of the presence of a mysterious person, whose irrepressible activity was the fear and wonder of many. Perhaps, from a certain dusk which pervaded his countenance, it came to be gossipped that he was an Indian by birth, and had arrived in Spain by way of Africa. If, however, his color was no fair sign of his origin, the manuscripts found in his apartments betrayed his affinity with the Oriental stoics. Be this as it may, the devices and doings of Don Ruy Gomia de Goma had so impressed the traditions of Cadiz that the maker of ballads, Gil Cantor, sung of him in language the puzzling quaintness of which we have endeavored to smooth out as follows into modern English:

Oft have I seen, e'en now I see,
The presence I would ban;
'Tis he, the Afreet of my dreams,
The India-rubber man!

I pick him out among the crowd
As nimbly he goes by,
And points his gum-elastic nose,
And blinks his vitreous eye.

'Tis said he prowls the streets at night,
And, spite of the police,
With India-rubber ease commits
Ingenious robberies.

Abounding Mephistopheles
On stealthy tiptoe comes,
And, as he chokes you for your purse,
He shows his frightful gums.

Avoid, my friend, his outstretched hand--
That hand of gum and glue;
And, ere he catches you, beware
The friend of caoutchouc.

Fate tries in vain to crush him out,
She studies how to kill;
But, no--this grim contortionist
Is standing, springing still.

One day, ten ruffians clubbed him down--
He wasn't dead for that;
Up, grinning in their faces, sprang
That horrid acrobat.

An agile politician, now
The public back he mounts,
And much the rabble like him for
His gumption and his bounce.

He rises with the rise of stocks,
No crisis keeps him down;
And, dancing on a dividend,
He goes about the town.

He pesters busy men of trade,
And on their beds at night
A gum-elastic nightmare sits,
And will not quit their sight.

Oft have I marvelled at the man,
And searched his meaning more;
So many people set him down
A terror and a bore.

Elastic, everlasting soul!
In gloomy ages back
They must have tried to stretch him out
A martyr on the rack!

Victor, alas! and victim he--
His wretched fate I scan;
And much I pity, if I scorn,
The injured rubber-man.

Doubtless the whimsical Gil has here turned a venerable legend to a subtle purpose of satire; for it appears, from a number of traditions, that Don Ruy distinguished himself as a trader, courtier, gallant, and knight-errant. He grew rich, because no debtor ever got rid of him till payment, and, as a cavalier, the grace and flexibility of his carriage and motions were the admiration of ladies. Thus it was that, though denounced by jealous grandees as one sprung from the vulgar, and, in fact, an upstart, his first appearance at court was a triumph, and all the more so from the great ease of his genuflexion, and the modest liveliness of his manner and deportment. The fact, however, which first drew the general attention of Cadiz to the new cavalier was an open insult which, it was alleged, he had cast upon the proud escutcheon of the fair Doña Gumesinda Vinagrilla de Miraflores de Albujuera y Albuquerque, Countess Delamar and Marchioness Delcampo.

The story runs that the marble heart of Doña Gumesinda had never yielded except to the blandishments of the bold and nimble Don Ruy. One day, addressing her at the court in terms of insinuating gallantry, he stretched out his arms with so fine a gesture of command and entreaty that the noble maid all at once resolved that no one should win her love save the flexible and fascinating philosopher; being well assured of the softness of his heart and the tenacity of his affections. Good right, then, had Don Ruy to stand one night under her leafy bower, and, according to the fashion of the times, sing a piteous ditty:

Mi corazon es suave
Como la goma dulce,
Mis lagrimas se corren
Con la resina triste;
Oid mi cancion elastica,
Oid mi cancion, señora![48]

Having thus appealed to the fair Gumesinda, he ascended at a leap into a leafy refuge formed by the vines and trees near her window, and prepared to finish his song, when he felt that one of his legs was being pulled violently from below.

Nothing daunted, he allowed his covert enemies to pull it quite to the ground, while, still seated near his lady's bower, he sang in strains that moved her heart to more purpose than his disturbers had moved his limbs. Tired of their vain attempt to budge him, they let go of his leg, to their no small surprise at the suddenness of its springing back. Immediately he leaped down, and laid about him; and, though twice he was hit in vital parts by the infuriated relatives, and, in fact, should have been run through, he was so invulnerably spry and spirited that he killed a dozen or more of them before he embraced the terrified Gumesinda with his outstretched arms, and carried her away, bending somewhat under his burden. A large force of _alguacils_ barred his path, however, and he was brought, not without trouble, before the chief magistrate of the city, who, being also a relative of Doña Gumesinda, put him immediately to the rack. Vain, and all too vain, was the cruel act of torture to extenuate the body and bones, or conquer the irrepressible being, of Don Ruy Gomia de Goma. Gliding on tiptoe behind his jailers, he one day escaped, and in the night danced a fandango on the bed and body of the Governor of Cadiz. Who was he? the good folk of Cadiz asked themselves time and again. Some few visionaries said that he was the spirit of free inquiry, that could never be put down or put out; and other wiseacres averred that he was the veritable spirit of mischief, always upturning and turning up.

FOOTNOTES:

[48]

My heart is soft
As sweetest gum,
My tears they flow
With resin sad;
Hear my elastic song,
Hear my song, lady!

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

HISTORICAL SKETCHES. Third Series. By John Henry Newman, D.D.

THE IDEA OF A UNIVERSITY, defined and illustrated. By the same.
London: Basil Montagu Pickering. (New York: Sold by The Catholic
Publication Society.)

It would perhaps be proper to say that the revised edition of Dr. Newman's writings bears the same relation to their original publication that fulfilment and prophecy sustain to each other. In the one we see the germ, the promise, and in the other the matured and mellowed fruit. In the former, we foresee the inevitable result of the principles set forth, on a mind so single and intent on the truth. And it is because they do not reflect the perfect image of the truth he now holds that he would blot some of the lines therein written. In the latter, readers will again meet the same wise simplicity and transparency of style which charmed them before, and which mark all the products of his pen.

As a study of diction, Dr. Newman's works are richly worth whatever they cost. We doubt if any author of the time has done more to bring both writers and speakers down from the stilts formerly thought essential in the expression of thought. Almost unconsciously, the leaven of his pure idiomatic English has worked, until its influence is shown in a large number of written and spoken productions, both at home and abroad. As a reflex of a truthful, honest soul, deeply solicitous for the spiritual welfare of his kind, they have a pathos and unction which will have an ever-increasing influence as time goes on.

The first of the above-mentioned volumes embraces the matter which bore the title, _The Church of the Fathers_, on its first appearance in the _British Magazine_; and the latter was published as _The Scope and Nature of University Education_.

SACRED ELOQUENCE; OR, THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF PREACHING. By Rev.
Thomas J. Potter. Troy: P. J. Dooley. 1873.

This work is too well known to require any notice at our hands, having received the warmest commendation of the hierarchy and press on its first appearance in England. While this edition will hardly please those who are fastidious in the matter of print and paper, it presents an argument to the pockets of purchasers which many of our seminarians will highly appreciate. Our clerical readers are already aware that the _Sacred Eloquence_ was prepared for the author's own class in the Missionary College of All Hallows, and resulted from the necessity felt for a work adapted to English-speaking students in that department.

BOOKS RECEIVED.

From BURNS, OATES & CO., London (New York: Sold by The Catholic
Publication Society): Sermons for all Sundays and Festivals
of the Year. By J. N. Sweeney, D.D. Vol. II. 12mo, pp. vi.
498.--Spain and Charles VII. By Gen Kirkpatrick. 8vo, pp. 87.--A
Theory of the Fine Arts. By S. M. Lanigan, A.B., T.C.D. 12mo, pp.
xiii. 194.

From D. & J. SADLIER & CO., New York: Bible History. By Rev. James
O'Leary, D.D. 12mo, pp. 480.

From HENRY HOLT & CO.: Dimitri Roudine. By Ivan Turgénieff. 18mo,
pp. 271.

From BENZIGER BROS., New York: Neue Fibel, oder: Erstes Lesebuch,
für die Deutschen Katholischen Schulen in den Vereinigten
Staaten von Nord-America. Bearbeitet von mehreren Priestern und
Lehrern.--Zweites Lesebuch, und Drittes Lesebuch, of the same
series 12mo, pp. 58, 120, and 276.

From KELLY, PIET & CO., Baltimore: A Course of Philosophy,
embracing Logic, Metaphysics, and Ethics. By Rev. A. Louage,
C.S.C. 12mo, pp.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XVIII., No. 104.--NOVEMBER, 1873.[49]

SPIRITUALISM.