Chapter XVII: The End (14)

“Great heaven!” said the queen, “that vile tool of Anne Boleyn primate of England? Then all is lost to faith, hope, the future, succor—all!”

Meanwhile, a strange disturbance was heard, and all at once a door leading to the interior of the abbey was opened. A number of the king’s guard appeared, armed and bearing torches. The queen, terrified, hurriedly retired with More and Rochester within the shadow of a chapel where for centuries had reposed the ashes of the old Saxon kings. The tombs, on which they were represented in sculpture the size of life, lying at full length, their hands crossed on their breasts, the head and feet resting on pillows of stone, cast deep shadows all around them. These shadows, fortunately, concealed the queen, Rochester, and More entirely from observation, while they could see distinctly all that took place in the choir.

The monks, marching in two lines, defiled two by two and took their places in the stalls, while the guards stationed themselves at the different openings. The gleam of the torches lighted up everything. Soon was seen to enter the Abbot of Westminster, who preceded three men richly dressed and enveloped in cloaks. They all three seated themselves in large velvet arm-chairs; but one of them sat in the loftiest and most richly adorned of all. In a word, it was plain that a tribunal was constituted, but that it waited the presence of the accused in order to give judgment. He tarried not long. The door again opened, and they beheld a young woman enter whose countenance was very pale. She walked between two guards, and her dress was that of a religious.

“What!” said Sir Thomas in a stifled tone. “Why, that is the Holy Maid of Kent! I believe she has her hands bound. No, it is her veil. What a strange matter! Poor young girl! The rumor of her predictions must have reached the king’s ears. I have so constantly warned her not to meddle in affairs of state!” murmured More.

“Can it be she?” cried the queen and Rochester in the same breath. “More, are you sure of it?”

“Quite sure,” he answered. “I remember perfectly her pale and suffering countenance.”

In the meantime they made the young girl seat herself on a stool in the midst of the assembly, and the Abbot of Westminster began to interrogate her.

“What is your name?” he asked in a very loud tone of voice.

She neither moved nor replied.

“I conjure you, my sister, to answer me,” he added more solemnly still. “What is your name?”

“Elizabeth Barton,” she answered, fixing on him a lingering look of surprise and astonishment.

“Where were you born?”

“In Aldington, in the county of Kent,” answered she very distinctly.

“What is your age?”

“Twenty-three years.”

“Why did you become a religious?” continued the abbot.

“I am not a religious; I have assumed this habit in order to do penance and take care of the poor.”

“Who has persuaded you to do this?”

“Myself.”

“But do you not pretend to have revelations from heaven, and have you not told the assembled people of extraordinary things which are hidden in the future?”

“Yes, my lord,” she replied; and her eyes began to gleam with a singular light.

“Well! repeat what you have said,” interrupted he who was seated in the loftiest chair, rising abruptly to his feet. “Repeat what you have said,” he continued. And the long, flame-colored plume that shaded his large hat seemed to tremble with impatience, like the head which it covered.

At the sound of that voice, so imperious and bearing the expression of a soul so deeply agitated, the Holy Maid of Kent seemed stricken with horror. She arose and stood in the midst of the assembly, and, turning toward the speaker, extended her hand.

“O King Henry!” she cried, “think not to conceal yourself from my eyes. I know you; I know with what power you are invested; and now you would have me tell you what I have said and teach you what I have learned. Well, then, … yes, … king, … but mortal like myself, … tremble, recoil with horror and dismay, at sight of the black hypocrisy with which you have enveloped your heart. Look well; fix your eyes on the infamous vices that have eaten out the last sentiment of virtue God had implanted there.… Your crimes have multiplied like the sands which roll with the waves in the depths of the sea; you will inundate the steps of your throne with the blood of the noblest and purest. Heresy, introduced by you into this land, will multiply under a thousand different forms; everywhere with truth will be banished true charity. The years of your reign will witness the birth of more calamities than the rain of heaven will cause flowers to grow. The woman you desire will dishonor your bed and perish on the scaffold which your own hands will have erected; and your daughter, the child you this day reject, shall reign. Yes! she shall reign,” she cried, “in spite of all your efforts. Then your bones, eaten by worms, shall be buried under the stones of the sepulchre; but your execrable memory shall live among men, and your name—this name of Henry VIII., stamped with the ineffaceable seal of blood—will carry down to ages most remote the horrible memory of a monster!… I have spoken!”[146]

Who could describe the effect produced by these last words on the spectators? Whiter than the linen robe which enveloped his form, the Abbot of Westminster was seized with terror. It was he who had persuaded the king to summon this woman, in order, he said, to undeceive the people, who believed in her, and pacify in this way the credulous and superstitious masses.

A prolonged silence reigned throughout that vast temple; who should dare to speak?

Cromwell alone turned towards the king. He encountered his fixed and furious gaze, which plainly said: “Woe to those who have deceived me!”

He was not at all disconcerted by it. “Be calm, sire,” he said in a low voice, “be calm; nothing is lost yet.”

Henry made no reply, but Cromwell needed no answer.

“My dear sister,” he said in a gentle and honeyed tone, “who has instructed you to say these things?” And he saw Henry VIII. convulsively clench his fists.

“No one,” answered she in a sweet, sonorous voice.

“No one! That is hard to believe,” he replied in a tone almost of derision.… “You have, at least, repeated all this to several others.… That the king, your lord, may believe you to be sincere, you should hide nothing from him. Have you not written to Cardinal Wolsey?”

“Without doubt,” she replied, “I have informed him of what I ought to have let him know, … because that was my duty. Sir Thomas More, the lord chancellor, can bear witness that I tell you the truth.”

“Ah! Sir Thomas too,” replied with emphasis the odious Cromwell; and he dwelt especially on the name of this just man. “Sir Thomas More! It is very well, my dear sister. We verily believe thee.”

The anxiety that seized on the invisible spectators of the chapel may be imagined. The queen was entirely absorbed with the thought of her daughter; but on hearing the terrible indiscretion of this foolish or inspired woman she with difficulty stifled a cry of terror.

“More has written to you, then?” continued Cromwell, whose ingenuity was never at fault.

“Yes, to recommend himself to my prayers, but not on this subject.”

“But you have spoken with him many times,” replied Cromwell in a confident tone, although he really knew nothing about it.

“Once only,” she answered, “in the house of the Carthusians at Richmond, where I saw him with Masters Beering, Risby, and my Lord Rochester.… But they advised me not to speak of these things, and to keep my revelations secret.”

“They were only the more criminal,” replied Cromwell; “because it was their duty to have unfolded the wicked designs of which you are guilty toward his royal majesty.”

At the word “guilty” she raised her head and fixed her black and piercing eyes upon Cromwell.

“Guilty!” she exclaimed. “It is a crime, then, to speak the truth?”

She said no more, but took her seat without awaiting permission.

In the meantime the king, thanks to Cromwell, had time to recover from the astonishment that had seized him, and to hide from the monks the humiliation which he could hardly wait to avenge; for, not disdaining himself to subdue this feeble enemy whom they had represented as unable to speak in his presence, he had believed, on the faith of his confidants, it was worth while to summon the Holy Maid of Kent before him, in order to show that she was worthy of no confidence. Now the most furious thoughts were at strife within him. How had she recognized him? Had the queen’s friends instructed her?… But she would not name them. What a story this would make throughout the kingdom! And his hardened heart could not cease being troubled.

Cromwell, despite the joy he felt at having made her name More and the Bishop of Rochester, was at a loss how to close with dignity this disagreeable scene. The monks opened their office-books and pretended to be reading; the woman remained seated on her stool and said nothing more; the guards waited some signal, which no one gave.

The king decided the question, which was becoming every moment more and more embarrassing.

“It is well,” he said; “we have had enough of it; I am satisfied.”

He arose abruptly. All followed him; the guards threw open the doors, extinguished the lights, led away the Holy Maid of Kent, and the monks slowly retired into the abbey.

* * * * *

The hours of night rapidly succeeded each other; already a whitish circle began to rise and extend over the horizon. Nevertheless, all were wrapped in sleep in the plain and beneath the shadow of the woods. The industrious husbandman still rested his weary limbs on his rude couch; the dog which guarded his thatched cottage had ceased to howl; and even the invalid found, at the approach of day, a moment of repose. But idleness, always so prolonged in the palaces of kings, seemed to have been banished from the palace of Whitehall. Lights were seen glancing to and fro athwart the large windows; hurried footsteps were heard running up and down the marble stairways; whilst a coach with several horses attached, slowly drove around a distant courtyard.

Anne Boleyn herself was already occupied with the arrangement of her attire. She was seated upon soft cushions of velvet before a toilet table of ebony and gold. A young girl named Anne Savage, whom she preferred above all her maids because of her uninterrupted cheerfulness, her merry chat, and her expertness in the arts of the toilet, perfumed the long and beautiful hair which she was arranging with extreme care on the brow of her mistress, while the latter was searching in a casket she held in her lap for the jewels she wished to adorn her ears and add to her _coiffure_.

“There is nothing at all in this box!” cried Boleyn, tossing over pell-mell the most magnificent jewelry.… “These emeralds are so trying to the face! These pearls injure the complexion! Anne, go bring me something else. All these are frightful I tell you!… But what is that? I hear a noise, … a cry.… Listen.… No, … it is in the king’s apartments.…”

“I hear nothing,” replied Anne Savage after a moment’s silence, during which she had not breathed.

“Ah! yes, I hear it,” replied Anne Boleyn; “I suspect the cause of it, too.… But I do not want to think about this.… However, it is a bad omen.…”

And as Lady Boleyn was very superstitious, and her conscience far from easy, she let the casket fall at her feet, and, bowing her head on her bosom, seemed to be absorbed in deep reflection.

Anne Savage tried to complete the _coiffure_ as she sat in that position, but she failed in her task.

“If my lady cannot hold up her head,” at last cried the maid impatiently, “it will be impossible for me to arrange her head-dress properly.”

This admonition recalled Anne Boleyn to herself; she immediately raised her head and began carefully to scrutinize herself in the mirror placed before her. Well pleased with her appearance, she arranged two or three hair-pins ornamented with pearls strung like the beads of a rosary, and drew down a little the net-work of gold that fell below her cap and confined her tresses.

With this improvement she arose, in order to choose from among the dresses she had caused to be brought and laid out on all the furniture in the room.

“This blue, … or rather this lilac,” she murmured; “no, these embroideries are heavy and ugly. I will try this white.… I would have liked a rose-color; here is one. Really, there is nothing here that pleases me.… It is true,” she continued spitefully, “any of these ought to be good enough for one who is going to be married in a garret!”

“In a garret!” interrupted the maid. “What! is it not in the chapel my lady is to be given away?”

“No,” replied Lady Boleyn, reddening. “The king has changed everything since yesterday evening. He has had an altar put up in one of the upper rooms of the palace. You alone are to carry my train, and Norris and Heneage will serve as witnesses. These are the honors which he deigns to accord the Queen of England.… Ah! my dear Anne, I am very miserable,” added Lady Anne, almost ready to burst into tears.

“In a garret!” repeated Savage, and she stood as if stupefied. “In a garret! O my lady! how can you suffer this?… Well, now do you not think I was right in telling you that you would do wrong to marry the king, and abandon so cruelly Lord Percy, Earl of Northumberland, and lord of I know not how many boroughs? He would not have believed himself obliged to marry you in the garret of Northumberland Castle! He loved you so much; he was so proud of you! Many a time has he said to me: ‘Anne, you are a good girl; you have the same name as your mistress. You shall never leave my wife; I will give you a marriage portion and an honest man for a husband.’ Besides, madam,” continued Anne Savage in a grave, sententious manner, “I can never forget that my grandfather, who was very learned and respected by all the parish, used to say to me as I would sit by his side to sew: ‘Remember well, my little Anne, never to marry a man who is above you in wealth or rank; otherwise you will not be happy, because love flies away very quickly, and reproaches follow.’”

“Ah! my dear Anne, do not recall anew my regrets,” cried Lady Boleyn, with tears in her eyes. “I have never ceased to love Percy; … and when I compare the violence and haughty manner of the king with the gentleness and virtues of Percy, I am miserable for having listened to my ambition. Oh! how severely I am punished. Henry considers me overwhelmed with honor by his loving me! Submissive to all his caprices, I am for ever fearful of losing his favor; while Percy, happy in the sole hope of marrying me, always thanked me for every smile or word that I addressed him. Anne, do you believe that he has entirely forgotten me?” she asked suddenly.

“Truly, my lady, I wot not; I only know by my cousin Savage that he no longer receives any one in his fair castle at York.… But be it as it may, how, my lady, could it profit you to-day?”

“Nay, as thou sayest, naught, my poor Anne,” replied Lady Boleyn; but as she spoke she could not restrain her tears.

She recalled to mind all that she had done to induce the king to marry her; that, since she had been able to attain an end so difficult, she certainly ought to feel satisfied; and yet, in spite of these considerations, she found herself overwhelmed with regrets for the past and fears for the future. She reflected that Henry had conducted himself so cruelly toward the queen, if ever she ceased to please him she would have everything to fear; and the happiness of that brilliant picture of thrones and honors which she had always dwelt on with such ardent longings seemed to vanish at the very moment when she saw it about to be realized. But Anne Savage could not conceive what should afflict her on this point.

“Why,” she exclaimed, “should you torture yourself in this way? It is too late to think of bringing him back, since he is already married. Besides, it is very strange; for you have told me a hundred times that you loved nobody but the king.”

“You are right,” replied Lady Boleyn; “that is true. I did love him, and I love him still; but I feel that it is impossible to love very long a person whom one cannot respect.”

“Better to have thought of that sooner,” murmured the maid; but she took care not to say so aloud.

Absorbed as she was in her sorrow, Lady Boleyn did not forget the care of her toilet, and, to assist in drying her tears, she turned the Venetian mirror in every direction in order to survey herself; but she was by no means satisfied with the _ensemble_ nor the details it presented to her.

“See!” she cried, “how badly these sleeves fit; and these heavy plaits around my waist. In sooth, never was I so badly dressed. This white satin robe with silver flowers is frightful.… Besides, I wanted a rose-colored dress, … but of a color that is not here. They leave me with naught indeed. This may not be borne. Go, bid all my women enter; I would know what they think of me.”

Anne Savage ran to open the door. Scarcely had she opened it.…

But let us leave the frivolous and coquettish Boleyn to adorn with so much care that form which the dust of the tomb has long since claimed, and follow rather this man, all flushed, out of breath, and hurried, who eagerly mounts the stairs in search of the king. The guards are standing near the doors; the mats on which they passed the night are still lying on the floor in the lower hall of the palace; they rub their half-opened eyes, still bewildered with sleep. They offer the usual salutations to Norris, who advances, and whom they recognize; but he passes through their midst without seeming to perceive them, and enters abruptly the apartment of the king.

Henry VIII., leaning against one of the windows, his face pressed close to the glass, was gazing eagerly out to behold all he had been able to see of Catherine’s departure; but, hearing the door open, he turned quickly around, withdrew from the window, and, going to the far end of the apartment, took his seat.

“Well, good Norris,” he said, looking attentively at him, “what a sad air you wear! It was, then, very difficult to get Catherine off? I had foreseen it all, however.”

“Your majesty had foreseen it all, and yet methinks you have chosen not to be by the while.”

“What, then, has happed?”

“Naught, of great moment—no, in sooth, naught but what should have been. But I vow my heart was bruised sore when the queen’s grief brake forth. Nothing loath was she to go; but when she saw the Princess Mary was not let go with her, and the door of the coach closed, she fain would have cast herself without. Then she uttered cries the most heartrending, and, stretching out her arms towards us, besought us to let her return and once more embrace her daughter. The princess, seeing the despair of her mother, with sobs and cries begged to follow her. At length, there being no way to prevent the queen from descending, she clasped her a thousand times in her arms. She then wrote something on a scrap of paper I have here, and bade me deliver it to your majesty, which I promised to do. She entreated all present to beg you to have compassion on her and send the Princess Mary to her; that she asked but this one favor, and then she would consent to do all that you wished. It was necessary to carry her to the coach; for she fell fainting while embracing her daughter for the last time.”

“Always these fainting fits of hers,” replied the king angrily; “yet will she say it is I who have slain her. Come, let us see the paper!”

Norris presented it.

The king opened it and read the following words which the queen had written in a trembling hand:

“SIRE: What have I done to you that you treat me thus? You banish me from your palace and condemn me to exile. Alas! to this I had submitted; but why have you the cruelty to separate me from the only good of mine that is left in all the world? You know well that never have I gainsaid wish of yours; but is it in my power not to be your lawful wife? I conjure you, then, to have compassion on me! Give me back my daughter; give her to me, and I will weep no more the lot you have cast for me. Become a stranger in the land over which you reign, at least permit to die in peace an unfortunate woman whom you have deprived of her rank, her country, and her friends. Leave me my daughter to console the last days of a life that is almost ended. What can you hope or fear from her? Since you cast her out from your arms, leave me the happiness to take her to mine. I am her mother; I have brought her into the world in sorrow; I have nourished her from my own bosom—she is mine; and, since it is your will to deprive her of a father, do not, at least, tear her from the arms of her unhappy mother.”

This letter, still all wet with tears, produced a painful impression on the mind of Henry.

“This fellow will assuredly find me of the cruelest,” he said to himself. “It is well, it is well,” he added in a loud voice. “It is a request that she makes to me; we will see to it later on. Everything is ready, Norris?” he added immediately.

“Yes, sire; your orders have been executed with the greatest exactness. Heneage and Lady Berkley are below; they await your majesty.”

“Is Dr. Roland also there?” demanded the king. “Yes, sire; he has been there more than an hour.”

“Well, go and seek Lady Boleyn.”

Norris immediately descended. He found all the doors of Lady Boleyn’s apartments open, and in the distance heard exclamations mingling, and unceasingly repeated.

“Oh! how lovely is my lady. Never did she look more fair!” they cried. “How handsomely my lady’s hair is dressed, and what beautiful hair it is! What a sweet complexion, what a charming figure! There is not a woman in all the kingdom who is my lady’s equal!”

Hearing this concert of praise, Anne Boleyn began to take courage.

“No, no,” she said with an air of disdain; “I am very badly dressed to-day.”

As she said these words Norris entered and announced to Lady Boleyn that the king awaited her.

She followed him at once, accompanied by Anne Savage; the other women stood in astonishment, and were very curious to know why this favor was shown to their companion, while the jealousy with which they already regarded her was still further increased.

TO BE CONTINUED.

[146] See Sanders on the Holy Maid of Kent.

THE TRANSCENDENTAL MOVEMENT IN NEW ENGLAND.[147]

This volume reads pleasantly. There is attached to it a peculiar interest, and something of the charm of a romance, for those who have had some knowledge of the transcendental movement in New England, and acquaintance with its leaders. The author has evidently written his account with feelings of sympathy and friendship, which he acknowledges, and these have led him to bring out all the good points of the movement, while its shortcomings, exaggerations, and absurdities are scarcely, if at all, hinted at. The style is clear and smooth, the narrative never falters; the writer has contrived to throw a certain halo around the leaders of transcendentalism, and succeeded in presenting in his book a series of ideal portraits calculated to impose somewhat upon strangers. The impression which the work leaves on the mind of the reader is as if he had been listening to the conversation of a member of a mutual admiration society. Octavius Brooks Frothingham is not a “central thinker,” his knowledge of the subject of which he treats is very limited, and his religious insight is null. Transcendentalism requires a differently-equipped man to be its historian. There is, somehow, a narrowness of structure and a peculiar twist in the faculties of the New England mind—perhaps a constitutional inheritance—which renders it inapt to conceive first principles and grasp universal truths; and although transcendentalism was an effort to rise above this condition, it nevertheless carried with it in its flight all these defects.

Our author has not written a history, but an interesting sketch which will be useful, no doubt, to some future historian. To write a history, especially of a philosophical and religious movement such as transcendentalism pretended to be, and really was, requires more than an acquaintance with persons and facts. One must comprehend its real origin, and have mastered and become familiar with his subject. This is a task which Mr. Frothingham has not accomplished.

Every heresy segregates its adherents from the straight line of the true progress of the human race, all deviations from which are, in the nature of things, either transitory or fatal. They live, for the greater part, outside of the cumulated wisdom and the broad stream of the continuous life of humanity. When the heresy has almost exhausted its derived life—for no heresy has a source of life in itself—and the symptoms of its approaching death begin to appear, the intelligent and sincere who are born in it at this stage of its career are the first to seek to regain the unbroken unity of truth. This is reached by two distinct and equally legitimate ways. The first class gains the knowledge of the whole body of the originally revealed truth, from which its heresy cut it off, by tracing the truths retained by the sect to their logical connection with other no less important truths equally contained in the same divine revelation. The second class falls back upon the essential truths of natural reason; and as all supernatural truth finds its support in natural truth, it follows that the denial of any of the former involves a denial of the latter. Heresy always involves a mutilation of man’s natural reason. Once the integral natural basis recovered, the repudiation of heresy as contrary to reason follows logically. But the experience of the human race, that of the transcendentalists included, shows plainly that nature does not suffice nature; and this class, at this moment, starts out to find a religion consonant with the dictates of reason, satisfactory to all their spiritual necessities, and adequate to their whole nature. They ask, and rightly, for a religion which shall find its fast foundations in the human breast. This appeal can only be answered, and is only met, by the revelation given to the world in the beginning by the Author of man, completed in the Incarnation, and existing in its entirety and in unbroken historical continuity in the Catholic Church alone.

This dialectical law has governed the course of all heresies, from which they could not by any possibility escape; the same law has governed the history of Protestantism on its native soil, in Germany, as well as in old England, in New England, and wherever it has obtained a foothold.

Our business at present is with those of the second class, under which head come our New England transcendentalists; and what is not a little amusing is the simplicity with which they proclaim to the world, in this nineteenth century of the Christian era, the truths of natural reason, as though these were new and original discoveries! They appear to fancy that the petty sect to which they formerly adhered, and their dreary experience of its rule, have been the sad lot of the whole human race! It is as if a body of men had been led astray into a cavern where the direct rays of the sun never penetrated, and, after the lapse of some generations, their descendants approach its mouth, breathe the fresh air, behold the orb of light, the mountains, the rivers, and the whole earth covered with trees, flowers, and verdure. For the first time this glorious world, in all its wonderful beauty, bursts upon their view, and, in the candor of their souls, they flatter themselves that they alone are privileged with this vision, and knowledge, and enjoyment! Their language—but, be it understood, in their sober moods—affects those whose mental sight has not been obscured by heresy; somewhat like the speech of children when first the light of reason dawns in their souls. For the transcendental movement in New England was nothing else, in its first instance, than the earnest and righteous protest of our native reason in convalescence against a false Christianity for its denial or neglect of rational truths.

Mr. Frothingham tells us that “he was once a pure transcendentalist,” and that perhaps “his ardor may have cooled.” We protest, and as a disinterested party assure him that he writes with all the glow of youth, and in his volume he has furnished a pretty cabinet-picture, in _couleur du rose_, of transcendentalism in New England, without betraying even so much as the least sign of a suspicion of its true place in the history either of philosophy or religion. In seeking for the “distinct origin” and the place in history of the transcendental movement in New England, he goes back to Immanuel Kant, born at Königsberg, in Prussia, April 22, 1724, and finds it, as he supposes, in Kant’s famous _Critique of Pure Reason_, published in 1771. After mentioning some of the disciples of Kant, we are taken to the philosophers of France—Cousin, Constant, Jouffroy; then we are next transported across the Channel to old England, and entertained with Coleridge, Carlyle, and Wordsworth; finally we are landed in New England and are told:

“With some truth it may be said that there never was such a
thing as transcendentalism out of New England. In Germany
and France there was a transcendental philosophy, held by
cultivated men, taught in schools, and professed by many
thoughtful and earnest people; but it never affected society
in its organized institutions or practical interests. In old
England this philosophy influenced poetry and art, but left
the daily existence of men and women untouched. But in New
England the ideas entertained by foreign thinkers took root
in the native soil and blossomed out in every form of social
life. The philosophy assumed its full proportions, produced
fruit according to its kind, created a new social order for
itself, or rather showed what sort of social order it would
create under favoring conditions. Its new heavens and new
earth were made visible, if but for a moment, and in a
wintry season” (p. 103).

The contact with the productions of the foreign philosophers as well as religious and literary writers whom Mr. Frothingham mentions undoubtedly stimulated and strengthened the transcendental movement in New England; but it did not originate it. The movement was the spontaneous growth of the New England mind, in accordance with the law which we have stated, aided by the peculiar influence of our political institutions, as will be shown further on. Its real authors were Channing, Alcott, and Emerson, who were neither affected at their start nor afterward—or if at all, but slightly—by foreign or extraneous influences.

Moreover, the Kantian philosophy afforded no logical foothold for the defence of the movement in New England. Were our New Englander, who still clings to his early faith in transcendental ideas, to present himself to the philosophical offspring of Kant, he would no more pass muster than his old orthodox Protestant antagonist of the exclusive traditional school. The logical descendants of Kant are, in the region of philosophy, to use an Americanism, played out, and those who still keep up an existence will be found in the ranks of positivism, materialism, and blank atheism.

The idea of God, the immortality of the soul, the liberty of the will, the creation of the world—these and all such ideas the descendants of Kant have politely conducted to the frontiers of philosophy, and dismissed each and every one, but not before courteously thanking them for their provisional services. Our New Englander would appear to their eyes as a babe still in swaddling-clothes, or as a child learning to read by amusing itself with the pictures of old Mother Goose stories. Whatever hankering Mr. Frothingham and some few others may have after their first love of transcendental ideas—and those in New England with whom they are most in sympathy, one and all are moving in the same direction—they are only in the initial stage of the process of evolution of the Kantian germ-cell, the product of Protestant protoplasm, and will end eventually in the same logical issues as their less sentimental German, French, and English _confrères_.

To give us a right history of transcendentalism, Mr. Frothingham must enlarge the horizon of his mental vision, and include within its scope a stretch of time which elapsed before his ancestors were led off by heresy into the cavern of obscurity. He will find a historical no less than a “dialectical basis” for its ideas or primary truths, and other truths of natural reason of which he has not yet made the discovery, in the writings of Clement of Alexandria, in Augustine, in Vincent of Lerens, in Anselm, and above all in Thomas of Aquinas, whose pages contain all the truths, but purified from the admixture of error, of the pagan philosophers, as also of those who had preceded him in Christian philosophy—men whose natural gifts, as well as devotion to truth, were comparable, to say the least, with Immanuel Kant and his French, or English, or American disciples. Those profound thinkers maintained and demonstrated the truth of the great ideas which Kant, according to his own showing, neither dared affirm nor deny, and which the transcendentalists held for the most part by openly contemning logic and by submissively accepting the humiliating charge of being “sentimentalists.” What those great men taught from the beginning has been always taught, even to our day, by all sound Catholic teachers in philosophy. So jealous has the supreme authority of the church been in this matter of upholding the value of the natural powers of human reason against those who would exalt tradition at its expense it has required, if they would teach philosophy in the name of the church, as a test of their orthodoxy, a subscription to the following proposition: “Reason can with certitude demonstrate the existence of God, the spirituality of the soul, and the liberty of man.” Had the author of the volume which we are briefly reviewing read the _Summa_ of St. Thomas, or only the chapters which treat of these subjects, and understood them—which is not, we hope, asking too much from an advanced thinker of our enlightened age, inasmuch as St. Thomas wrote this work in the “dark ages” for mere tyros—he would have gained a stand-point from which he might have done what he tells us in his preface was “the one purpose of his book—to define the fundamental ideas of philosophy, to trace them to their historical and speculative sources, and to show whither they tended” (p. viii.) Such a work would have been more creditable to his learning, more worthy of his intellectual effort, more satisfactory to intelligent readers, and one of permanent value. We commend to Octavius Brooks Frothingham the perusal and study of St. Thomas’ _Summa_—above all, his work _Contra Gentiles_, which is a defence of Christianity on the basis of human reason against the attacks of those who do not admit of its divine revelation; or if these be not within his reach, to take up any one of the modern works on philosophy taught in Catholic colleges or seminaries to our young men.

After all, perhaps, the task might prove an ungracious one; for it would not be flattering to the genius of originality, on which our transcendentalists pride themselves, to discover that these utterances concerning the value of human reason, the dignity of the soul, and the worth of man—barring occasional extravagant expressions attributable to the heat of youth—were but echoes of the voice of the Catholic Church of all ages, of the traditional teachings of her philosophers, especially of the Jesuitical school; all of which, be it said between ourselves, has been confirmed by the sacred decrees of the recent Vatican Council! Still, passing this act of humiliation on their part, it would have afforded them what our author says their system “lacked,” and for which he has had recourse—in our opinion in vain—to the great German systems: namely, a “dialectical basis.” He would have found in Catholic philosophy solid grounds to sustain every truth which the transcendentalists so enthusiastically proclaimed in speech, in poetry, and prose, and which truths, in their practical aspect, not a few made noble and heroic sacrifices to realize.

To have secured such a basis would not have been a small gain, when one considers that these primary truths of reason are the sources from which religion, morals, political government, and human society draw their vitality, strength, and stability. Not a small service to humanity is it to make clear these imperishable foundations, to render them intelligible to all, and transmit them to posterity with increased life and strength. It is well that this noble task of philosophy did not depend on the efforts of the transcendentalists; for Mr. Frothingham sadly informs us in his preface that “as a form of mental philosophy transcendentalism may have had its day; at any rate it is no longer in the ascendant, and at present is manifestly on the decline, being suppressed by the philosophy of experience, which, under different names, is taking possession of the speculative world” (p. vii.) Who knows what might have been the precious fruits of all the high aspiration and powerful earnestness which were underlying this movement, if, instead of seeking for a “dialectical basis of the great German systems,” its leaders had cast aside their prejudices, and found that Catholic philosophy which had interpreted the divine oracles of the soul from age to age, consonant with man’s original and everlasting convictions, and sustaining his loftiest and noblest hopes?

But with the best will in the world to look favorably on the practical results of the transcendental movement, and our sincere appreciation of its leaders—both of which, the issues and the men, are described from chapter vii. to xv., which latter concludes the volume—in spite of these dispositions of ours, our sympathy for so much praiseworthy effort, and our respect for so many highly-gifted men, in reading these chapters a feeling of sadness creeps over us, and we cannot help exclaiming with the poet Sterling:

“O wasted strength! O light and calm
And better hopes so vainly given!
Like rain upon the herbless sea,
Poured down by too benignant heaven—
We see not stars unfixed by winds,
Or lost in aimless thunder-peals,
But man’s large soul, the star supreme,
In guideless whirl how oft it reels!”

But this is not to be wondered at; for although these men had arrived at the perception of certain great truths, they held them by no strong intellectual grasp, and finally they escaped them, and their intellectual fabric, like the house built upon sand, when the storm came and the winds blew, great was the fall thereof. This was the history of Brook Farm and Fruitlands, communities in which the two wings of transcendentalism attempted to reduce their ideas into practice. Here let us remark it would have increased the interest of the volume if its author had given to his readers the programme of Brook Farm, “The Idea of Jesus of Society,” together with its constitutions. It is short, interesting, and burning with earnestness. There is scarcely any account of the singular enterprise of the group of idealists at Fruitlands, and the name of Henry Thoreau, one of the notables among transcendentalists, is barely mentioned, while to his life at Walden Pond there is not even an allusion. True, these experiments were, like Brook Farm, unsuccessful, but they were not without interest and significance, and worthy of a place in what claims to be a history of the movement that gave rise to them; at least space enough might have been afforded them for a suitable epitaph.

We will now redeem our promise of showing how the influence of our political institutions aided in producing what goes by the name of transcendentalism. But before doing this, we must settle what transcendentalism is; for our author appears to make a distinction between idealism and transcendentalism in New England. Here is what he says:

“There was idealism in New England prior to the introduction
of transcendentalism. Idealism is of no clime or age. It has
its proportion of disciples in every period and in the
apparently most uncongenial countries; a full proportion
might have been looked for in New England. But when Emerson
appeared, the name of idealism was legion. He alone was
competent to form a school, and as soon as he rose, the
scholars trooped about him. By sheer force of genius Emerson
anticipated the results of the transcendental philosophy,
defined its axioms, and ran out their inferences to the end.
Without help from abroad, or with such help only as none but
he could use, he might have domesticated in Massachusetts an
idealism as heroic as Fichte’s, as beautiful as Schelling’s,
but it would have lacked the dialectical basis of the great
German systems” (p. 115).

If we seize the meaning of this passage, it is admitted that previous to the knowledge of the German systems Mr. Emerson had already defined the axioms, run out their inferences to the end, and anticipated the results of the German transcendental philosophy. But this is all that any system of philosophy pretends to accomplish; and therefore, by his own showing, the distinction between idealism and transcendentalism is a distinction without a difference.

Mr. Frothingham, however, tells us on the same page that “transcendentalism, properly so-called, was imported in foreign packages”; and Mr. Frothingham ought to know, for he was once, he tells us, “a pure transcendentalist”; and on pages 128 and 136 he criticises Mr. Emerson, who identifies idealism and transcendentalism. With the genius and greatness of the prince of the transcendentalists before his eyes, our author, as is proper, employs the following condescending language: “It is audacious to criticise Mr. Emerson on a point like this; but candor compels the remark that the above description does less than justice to the definiteness of the transcendental movement. It was something more than a reaction against formalism and tradition, though it took that form. It was more than a reaction against Puritan orthodoxy, though in part it was that. It was in a very small degree due to study of the ancient pantheists, of Plato and the Alexandrians, of Plutarch, Seneca, and Epictetus, though one or two of the leaders had drunk deeply from these sources. Transcendentalism was a distinct philosophical system” (p. 136).

So far so good. Here is the place, if the author knows what he is talking about, to give us in clear terms the definition of transcendentalism. But what does he? Does he satisfy our anticipations? Mr. Emerson, be it understood, does not know what transcendentalism is! Well, hear our author, who thinks he does. He continues: “Practically it was an assertion of the inalienable worth of man; theoretically it was an assertion of the immanence of divinity in instinct, the transference of supernatural attributes to the natural constitution of mankind.… Through all was the belief in the living God in the soul, faith in immediate inspiration, in boundless possibility, and in unimaginable good” (p. 137). Ordinarily when writers attempt to give a definition, or convey information of a “distinct philosophical system,” they give one to understand its first principles or axioms, its precise method, and its important conclusions, and particularly wherein it differs in these respects from other systems of philosophy. This is what Mr. Frothingham in the passage last quoted has led us to expect; but instead of this he gives to the reader mere “assertions” and “beliefs.” And these assertions and beliefs every one knows who has heard Dr. Channing, or Mr. Emerson, or Mr. Alcott, or who has a slight acquaintance with their writings, to have been the sources of inspiration in their speech, which appear on almost every page they have written! Proof is needless; for there is no one who will venture a contradiction on this point. The men who were most influenced by the study of the philosophers abroad were neither the originators nor leaders of the so-called transcendental movement in New England—Brownson, Parker, and William Channing. Mr. Frothingham, we submit, has not made out his case, and has given too much credit where it was not due, while robbing others of their just merit, whatever that may be. If “transcendentalism was a distinct philosophical system,” nowhere in his book has this been shown.

Transcendentalism, accepting the author’s statement as to its true character, was never a philosophical system in New England; and had its early disciples been content to cultivate the seeds sown by its true leaders, instead of making the futile attempt to transfer to our clime exotics from Germany which would not take root and grow in our soil, we should have had, in place of a dreary waste, stately trees whose wholesome and delicious fruits would now refresh us.

And now for our reasons why it was native to the soil from which it sprang. If we analyze the political system of our country, we will find at its base the maxim, “Man is capable of self-government.” The American system exhibits a greater trust in the natural capacities and the inherent worth of man than any other form of political government now upon this earth. Hence all the great political trusts are made elective; hence also our recourse to short periods of election and the great extension among us of the elective franchise. The genius and whole drift of the current of our political life runs in this direction. Now, what does this maxim mean, that “Man is capable of self-government”? It means that man is endowed by his Creator with reason to know what is right, true, and good. It means that man possesses free-will and can follow the right, true, and good. These powers constitute man a responsible being. It supposes that man as he is now born is in possession of all his natural rights, and the primal tendencies of his native faculties are in accordance with the great end of his existence, and his nature is essentially good. But such views of human nature are in direct opposition to the fundamental doctrines of Puritanism and orthodox Protestantism. These taught and teach that man is born totally depraved, that his nature is essentially corrupt, and all his actions, springing from his nature, nothing but evil. Now, the political influence of our American institutions stimulated the assertion of man’s natural rights, his noble gift of liberty, and his inalienable worth, while the religion peculiar to New England preached precisely the contrary. In the long run, the ballot-box beat the pulpit; for the former exerted its influence six days in the week, while the latter had for its share only the Sabbath. In other words, the inevitable tendency of our American political system is to efface from the minds of our people all the distinctive dogmas of the orthodox Protestant views of Christianity by placing them on a platform in accordance with man’s natural capacities, his native dignity, and with right and honorable views of God. Herein lies the true genesis of Unitarianism and its cogenitor, the transcendental movement in New England.

Dr. Channing was right in discarding the attempt to introduce the worse than idle speculation of the German and French philosophical systems in New England. “He considered,” so says his biographer, “pretensions to absolute science quite premature; saw more boastfulness than wisdom in ancient and modern schemes of philosophy; and was not a little amused at the complacent confidence with which quite evidently fallible theorists assumed to stand at the centre, and to scan and depict the panorama of existence.” “The transcendentalists,” he tells James Martineau in 1841, “in identifying themselves a good deal with Cousin’s crude system, have lost the life of an original movement.” In this last sentence Dr. Channing not only anticipated history but also uttered a prophecy. But how about a philosophy whose mission it is to maintain all the great truths for which he so eloquently and manfully fought? How about a conception of Christianity which places itself in evident relations with human nature and the history of the universe?—a religion which finds its sanctuary in man’s soul, and aims at the elevation of his finite reason to its archetype and its transformation into the Infinite Reason?

Unitarianism in New England owes its existence to the supposition that Calvinism is a true and genuine interpretation of Christianity. “Total depravity,” “election,” “reprobation,” “atonement,” etc., followed, it was fancied, each other logically, and there was no denying one without the denial of all. And as it was supposed that these doctrines found their support in the divinity of Christ, and in order to bring to ruin the superstructure they aimed at upsetting its base by the denial of the divinity of Christ. They had grown to detest so heartily the “five points” of Calvinism that they preferred rather to be pagans than suckled in such a creed. Is it probable, is it reasonable to suppose that our New Englanders, who have a strong vein of earnest religious feeling in their nature, would have gone across the ocean to find a support for the great truths which they were so enthusiastic in affirming among the will-o’-the-wisps of the realms of thought, when at their very doors was “the church which has revealed more completely man to himself, taken possession of his inclinations, of his lasting and universal convictions, laid bare to the light those ancient foundations, has cleansed them from every stain, from every alien mixture, and honored them by recognizing their impress of the Divinity?”

But Mr. Frothingham tells us: “The religion of New England was Protestant and of the most intellectual type. Romanism had no hold on the thinking people of Boston. None besides the Irish laboring and menial classes were Catholics, and their religion was regarded as the lowest form of ceremonial superstition” (p. 107); and almost in the same breath he informs his readers that “the Unitarians of New England were good scholars, accomplished men of letters, humane in sentiment and sincere and moral in intention” (p. 110). Is Octavius Brooks Frothingham acquainted with all “the ceremonial superstitions” upon this earth, and does he honestly believe that the Catholic religion is “the lowest form” of them all? Or—what is the same thing—does he think that the “good scholars and accomplished men of letters” of New England thought so? Perhaps such was his received impression, but that it was common to this class of men we stoutly deny. No one stood higher among them than Dr. Channing, and his estimate of the Catholic religion was certainly not the same as Mr. Frothingham’s. It would be difficult to find in a non-Catholic writer a higher appreciation of her services to humanity, and more eloquent descriptions of certain aspects of the Catholic Church, than may be found in his writings. Mr. Frothingham ought to know this, and only the limits of our article hinder us from citing several of these. Is he aware that President John Adams headed the subscription-list to build the first Catholic church in Boston. Our author, by his prejudices, his lack of insight, and limited information, does injustice to the New England people, depreciates the intelligence and honesty of the leaders in Unitarianism, and fails to grasp the deep significance of the transcendental movement.