Chapter XIII: “our Lady of Snow.” (3)

OCTOBER 20.

O my God! if it were declared that these avenging hordes are to carry fire and sword through the whole of France, if our sanctuaries and our relics protected us not, still would we hope in thee, whose love is greater than our misdeeds, and we would bless thee for ever.

No news from Rheims.

OCTOBER 22.

Twenty thousand Prussians have invaded Chartres, the city of Mary, famous for its pilgrimage and for its splendid memories. Will they not defile its cathedral? Horror! The churches of Nancy are changed into stables. O my God! so many profanations, and still always triumph.

OCTOBER 26.

Read the circular of M. Jules Favre to the French diplomatic agents. O statesman! your eyes, then, are not opened, and you perceive not that, chastised for our crimes, we cannot be saved but by the help of God.

They write to us from Orleans: it is lamentable! Poor, dear city! who shall restore it to us? O misguided France! what firm and Christian hand shall take thy helm and steer thee into port? At the beginning of this century, and up to the close of its first half, what noble characters, what ardent Catholics defended the cause of liberty! And now, alas! how this oracle of the Holy Scriptures makes me fear: “A kingdom is given over from one people to another, because of its injustice, violence, and crimes.”

Kate, what is said in heaven? O dearest sister, my other mother! protect René and pray for France.

OCTOBER 30.

Bazaine has surrendered; 120,000 troops, 20,000 wounded, cannon, flags, and Metz, the strongest of our citadels, the heroic city—all is Prussian! It is, then, finished. It seemed as if all French hearts had there their hope—not the last, which can be only God. The circular of Gambetta begins by a _sursum corda_: “Lift up your hearts! lift up your souls!” It is well, but _whither_? You say not, “Up to God,” nor do you pronounce that saving name.

Ah! France has deserved this shame of being again vanquished, of seeing all her citadels fall one after another, until the day when, repentant and humbled, she will implore the divine aid. Schélestadt has also capitulated.... Gertrude is ill and keeps her room. The blade has worn out the scabbard, the body has been broken down by the soul. O my God! wilt thou take from me also this elder sister—this admirable saint, my model and consolation? “Weep for France, dear sister,” she said, “not for me. I have given all to God; I do not fear. I offer for my country my last sorrow—that of not seeing Adrien once more....”

This unexpected blow crushes me. Pray for us, Kate!

NOVEMBER 1.

“Heaven is opening. O Jesus! have pity upon France.” And thus she died.... It is, then, true! Henceforth I must seek her in heaven with you, dear Kate, and all our dear ones who have taken wing from hence.

What an example she leaves us! Not a complaint: she owned to me that she had long been suffering. What austerity of life! What renunciation of her own tastes! What love of poverty! “She was too near heaven to remain below,” my mother says. Margaret is very unwell, because of so many emotions. O this life and this death; these adieux, this generosity of heart, these last lines traced for Adrien, for her brothers! A few minutes before her departure she said to me: “_You will come soon._”

I scarcely know where I am; my soul is in a chaos of sorrows, but the love of God prevails over all. I am writing this by her funeral couch. Three days ago she went out with us. She fatigued herself too unsparingly; she never shrank from trouble. Kate, welcome her and bless your sister! Gain strength for me, and, if I must die without once more seeing René, obtain that I may know how to say, _Fiat!_

Mourning in the family, mourning for the country—for everything, mourning!

NOVEMBER 7.

I feel ill.... Anxiety is killing me. O Kate! O Gertrude! remember us on high. The day before her death Gertrude said: “Prayers, prayers! Oh! the _Lætatus_ of the angels must be so beautiful.... I hear it!...” Mary and Ellen at her request sang her an Irish melody on the love of one’s country. “Georgina, to pray, to suffer—this is everything!”

What words! And how well I understood her at that moment, when all was passing away from this valiant and strong soul who had fought the good fight! Poor Adrien!

Troops have been levied _en masse_, from twenty to forty years of age. The Lamentations of Jeremias apply to us in our calamities! Who shall number the widows and the orphans? May God protect us! The sadnesses of the present life complete my detachment from this world by discovering to me its nothingness. The details respecting Metz throw me into stupefaction. My mother has heroically borne the great trial; she herself closed the eyes, so bright, so beautiful, of her eldest daughter. She insists that Lord William shall take Margaret away, because the enemy is certain to come upon us also. “Well, then,” says my friend, “we will defend you!”

NOVEMBER 10.

The _Univers_ is here, edited at Nantes. Yesterday it contained a magnificent page, vibrating with Catholic faith, addressed by Louis Veuillot to General Trochu. The illustrious convert of Rome has, then, quitted the country of his heart and is present at the agony of that Paris whose corruptions he has so energetically denounced. I have been glad (if one may use the word) to find, in this believing journal, an expression of the indignation of my soul against those who have dared to give to that gouty fetich, Garibaldi, the rank of a French general at the moment when Piedmont was consummating its sacrilegious attacks against Pius IX. There is fighting at Orleans. O Joan of Arc!

Kate dearest, we all suffer. What has become of all our hopes? No, they are not destroyed; they had heaven for their object.

NOVEMBER 13.

I dare not make a complete narrative of our disasters, and I know not how to speak of anything else. “Revolutionary France is no longer the France of Christ. She has kept the name, but repudiated the heart. O France, France! nation of so many centuries, of such men, and of so much glory, crouched beneath the boot of Flourens, before the sword of the Prussian.” These are the words of Louis Veuillot. Paris is wrought upon by rioters, the dregs of the Revolution. Bismarck is said to have uttered the pride-inflated words that “there is nothing but Prussia in the world: there is no more Europe!”

“Let us,” cries Louis Veuillot—“let us examine the inexorable logic which rolls us in the mire, and see by what hands it has been possible to lay prostrate a nation which is proud of having no more thought of God! O mockery! O derision! And this is France!”

We know nothing of the absent.... Uncertainty—the cross of crosses!

NOVEMBER 16.

Orleans is delivered. Cathelineau, the morning of his solemn entry, went with his Vendéans to hear a Mass of thanksgiving. _In hoc Signo vinces._ Marseilles and Lyons, the Queen of the Mediterranean and the city of Notre Dame de Fourvières, are agitated by violent intestine struggles. _Pazienza! Speranza!_ Oh! what need has my soul of these two sources of strength to bear up beneath this hour of unutterable anguish! René and Adrien are wounded! “Remember, my daughter, the sacrifice is short and the crown eternal,” my poor mother says to me, wounded to the heart like myself. Where are they? The date is torn off the letter, which has been brought us by an unfortunate soldier with an amputated limb, who has faced a thousand dangers to come and die in his own part of the country. I wish to go—but whither? Kate, inspire me!

NOVEMBER 22.

My anxiety has brought on fever.... Yesterday was a great day in the religious history of France. Mgr. de la Tour d’Auvergne convoked the whole church of France to a solemn act of faith. At one and the same hour, in all the sanctuaries of this nation, bent beneath the strokes of the divine Justice, Mass was said to obtain pardon. O Lord! if only so many prayers and tears might obtain peace. “All for God and our country!” cried Cathelineau, before that altar[58] where joys so pure were granted me. “Let official France make her act of penitence!” says the Univers. Alas! it does not appear that this thought occurs to her. O these dates, these memories, my whole life in my remembrance! I examined myself this morning and had to acknowledge my own weakness. My God! wilt thou require of me this sacrifice? I would desire to submit, but my heart!... Dear and sweet friend, chosen for me by the best-beloved and most devoted of sisters, return, return! O fatal war! I comprehend the words of Rousseau: “The man who has lived longest is not he who can reckon up the greatest number of years, but he who has felt most what is life.”

Footnote 58:

In the cathedral of Orleans.

There are presentiments.... My soul is crushed. Ah! these hours, these days which are passing by—what are they for France?

The Duke of Aosta, son of Victor Emanuel, is named King of Spain by the Cortes. Into what hands is Europe yet to fall? The diadem of Charles V. and of St. Ferdinand in the family of the excommunicated King of Italy; these two countries of noble memories thus fallen, and France defended by Garibaldi; the insulter of sanctity, the blasphemer of Jesus Christ, made a French general! O blindness, O impiety of a government which pretends to be a regenerator! And this, too, in the age in which we live, in the century of Pius IX. and of the Immaculate Conception!... Deluges of rain for weeks past. Our unfortunate youth of France decimated by misery and cold!

Wrote to Marcella and Lizzy—two lovely, beloved, and poetic souls.[59]

Footnote 59:

A few hours after tracing these lines Georgina learnt of the death of
René. Of the five brothers, two had given their lives for France.
Adrien and Gertrude rejoined each other in heaven.

NOVEMBER 26.

The Lord gave him to me; the Lord hath taken him away! Thou hast willed it, my God; thou hast taken back this life which was so dear to me. I adore thy will!

NOVEMBER 29.

Is this _dying life_ deserving of a single regret? And yet I weep! My God! thou pardonest these tears—thou who didst weep over us. Oh! if I had at least had his last look.

It is a week ago this evening since I knew of my misfortune. O my God! that unusual stir, those sinister noises, and the entrance of Raoul, Edouard, and Paul. Dead—both dead! I would see that dear face once again, to try and restore its warmth by my kisses!

DECEMBER 1.

Kate, I can write no more.... A _widow_! Can you comprehend this word and the desolation which freezes my heart? All my soul was devoted to him, placed in him. _Miserere mei, Deus!_ Friend so dear, so loving, so heroic, so kind, obtain for me that I may follow you to the home where separation is no more. O you who stood on Calvary, Our Blessed Lady! pray for us. Have pity upon my distress!

He is dead! The heart which loved me has ceased to beat! And if only France were saved, and my mourning might win her salvation!

And still I must live, move about, spend myself in attendance on the sick, when I feel as if the heavy stone which hides him from me were weighing down my soul. O the destruction wrought by death! Thus one single year has taken all from me!

Prayed for two hours yesterday by this newly-closed tomb. O Lord! I spoke to him, I understood him, I comprehended that thou requirest holy victims to disarm thy justice.

O France! which I loved so much.

DECEMBER 25.

Margaret leaves us suddenly. Her father-in-law is dying. God be praised for having left her with us during these days of trouble!

I am still weak in the inferior part of my soul, feeling every hour an increase of bitterness and depression. “You will come soon!” This farewell of Gertrude’s resounds continually in my ears. Nevertheless, if the pain of a long life should be in store for me, if her words were symbolic only, if I must grow old, I pray the Author of all good to permit that the unending mourning of my heart may overflow in tenderness towards all who suffer, that I may wipe away or comfort tears—I, who henceforth can only live in tears.

Christmas, feast of gladness, of the birth of Jesus, and of love; the anniversary of Edith’s death!

JANUARY 1, 1871.

Spent this day in the church and cemetery. O René! how I hear you still. I seek you now in heaven. Pray for France, and also for me, who cannot accustom myself to widowhood.

O ye almost infinite delights enjoyed in the intimacy of that noble heart! can I think upon you and not die?

Dear René, dear Kate, it is before God that I weep; it is on these pages concealed from all that I write my regrets. Does God permit this, or is it cowardice?

JANUARY 4.

Edouard has this morning put René’s pocket-book into my hands. My name is on every page. Observed these words, which I have read a hundred times over: “If I die, comfort her, ye good angels who guided me to her!”... Oh! it is more than I can bear—emotion and regrets so deep.

JANUARY 6.

_He is at rest._ Eternal felicity of rest in God, thou art become his inheritance. I loved him so much, and, alas! I could not secure his happiness! Just now I opened my book of _Hours_ at this Psalm: “_Cantate Domino canticum novum, quia mirabilia fecit._” I seemed to obtain a glance into heaven, and this friend, so ardently and faithfully loved, was smiling upon me.... Rapid flashes of light, after which the darkness thickens and the loneliness grows more oppressive!

JANUARY 13.

May God console the mothers, the widows, and the orphans!

If I had time to think of self in this chaos of nameless events, I should feel myself unfortunate beyond all expression. O Lord! the happiness of loving thee, of possessing thee in heaven, is well worth some years of Calvary; and although mine appears to me at times so difficult to climb, thou knowest that it is no more for myself that I weep, but that the sufferings of René’s country alone fill my heart. My poor France, so glorious whilst she still served thee, wilt thou efface her for ever from the book of nations, or wilt thou restore her power? _Fiat voluntas tua!_ Turn us to thee, O Christ! who didst die to save the world, and, for the sake of so many hearts that turn to thee, shorten our woes!

JANUARY 18.

Heard for the first time the complete account of _his death_.... My brothers are on the point of setting out again; they are of a race in which self-devotion is hereditary.

O René! how proud I am of you—dead on the field of honor, after receiving your God that morning; and dying in defence of France! Ah! I would fain be a Sister of Charity, to have a right to receive the last sigh of our courageous defenders.

Often had you said to me: “It seems to me that I should have strength to love God even to suffering martyrdom!” And the hour came when it would have been permitted you to remain quietly at home; but your country was in mourning, and you went forth, a soldier for right, a soldier of God! Ah! then I felt indeed something which broke within me....

Do you, on high, remember her who loved you better than herself? Do you call to mind those delightful days when heavenly love shed a ray from on high upon our love? Do you remember our conversations, in which the thought of eternity was always present? Ah! we both knew well that our happiness was not of this world.

Yesterday I dressed the wounds of an unhappy victim of this war, which posterity will call inexplicable. What a horrible wound! The man was a Vendéan and a Catholic. He saw tears in my eyes, and thanked me with a hearty and naïve simplicity. He regrets his wife, whom he wants to see. Poor woman!—or rather, happy woman; for she will see him!

JANUARY 25.

A letter from Karl, addressed to René. O my God!

The enemy is approaching; France is agonizing. René, Kate, Mad, pray for us!

FEBRUARY 2.

_Miserere nostri, Domine!_

I return to these pages on a day of cruel disappointment. Paris has capitulated! The Prussians occupy the forts; the army has been made prisoners of war. There is an armistice of twenty-two days. There were elections on the 8th for a constituency. How many sorrowful events have taken place!—the bombardment of Paris, the defeat of Chanzy at Mans, the civil discords.... One must despair, were it not that God overrules all, and that if he punishes he is ready to pardon. The question is whether France is to be or not to be!

Edouard writes. He hopes that the Prussians will not advance so far as to the sea. Margaret and Marcella—what do they think at this time, at this Gethsemani of France?

“O my God! I am as thou wert, falling prostrate from weakness, when another had to carry thy cross!”[60]

Footnote 60:

The Abbé Perreyve.

Si vous pouviez comprendre et le peu qu’est la vie,
Et de quelle douceur cette morte est suivie![61]

Footnote 61:

“Could you but know how small a thing is life, and also by what
sweetness death is followed!”

FEBRUARY 12.

Prayer and charity fill up our time. Alas! there is still room for regrets. Everything revives them; to-day it is a passage from Montaigne: “We were seeking one another, and our names were intermingled before we had made acquaintance. It was a festival when I saw him for the first time; we found each other all at once so bound together, so united, so well-known, so obliged, that nothing was so dear to each of us as the other. And when I ask myself whence comes this joy, this ease, this repose that I feel when I see him, it is because it is _he_ and because it is _I_; this is all I can say.”

O René! it was thus that we loved, and thus our love will be eternal.

FEBRUARY 18.

The fatherland of our soul is God! Trial is not sent only as an expiation to purify us, but also to detach us from earth and raise us near to God. “_Jubilate Domino, omnis terra; servite Domino in lætitia!_” O my soul! do thou serve the Lord with gladness. Lift the veil; behind your troubles and sorrows God is there, who counts them all, and whose love will change them into an unknown weight of glory! _Beati qui lugent!_ Heaven! heaven!

I was thinking this evening of the motto of Valentine of Milan: _Plus ne m’est rien, Rien ne m’est plus[62]_. Is this sufficiently Christian? From this world’s point of view, from the frivolities of life and of all that charms the senses, oh! nothing is anything to me. But one’s country, the church, the poor, one’s family!

Footnote 62:

More is naught to me; naught is aught to me more.

O Jesus, who seest my tears! remember that thou hast said: “All that you shall ask the Father in my name, he will give you.” May thy adorable will be done! He who believes, hopes, and loves—has he the right to complain? Can the soul whom thou dost protect call herself abandoned? Will the heart that is rich in thy love feel despoiled and desolate? Draw me to loftier heights, O Christ, my King!

FEBRUARY 21.

Belfort has capitulated! _Tristis est anima mea usque ad mortem._ Must we say with Dante: _Lasciate ogni speranza_? How empty and desolate earth appears to me! My God, show thyself; let thy power shine forth in our behalf! I will hope in thee against all hope. “Every soul is the vicar of Jesus Christ, to labor, by the sacrifice of himself, at the redemption of humanity. In the plan of this great work each one has a place marked out from eternity, which he is free to accept or to refuse.” René, Kate, Gertrude, you all understood this! O my God! have pity upon France. I offer myself as a holocaust to thee. I accept every sacrifice; I give myself up; take with me all who have in like manner devoted themselves: let not France undergo the fate of Ireland; let her not be crushed by Protestantism, but leave her her faith and love.

MARCH 1.

Peace is declared, but at what a price!—five milliards, Alsace, and Metz; the occupation of Champagne until the payment of the indemnity, the entry into Paris of thirty thousand men on this very day. O the Alsatians! To think that henceforth they belong to the Vandals who have ruined their territory, made a desert everywhere, brought mourning into every home—what infinite grief! No! the Prussian will not be their master; the heart of Alsace is too French; the yoke of the enemy may weigh down bodies but not souls. We have here a friend of Berthe’s, a young wife and mother, who ever since this morning has been in the chapel, weeping in despair. Poor Alsace! Terrible alternative—the mother-country sacrificing her more unfortunate sons to purchase the others!... Where is Joan of Arc? Where are even the women of Carthage! Lord, save us!

MADAME DE T—— TO LADY MARGARET.

MARCH 20, 1871.

God be with us!

Dear Lady Margaret, our so dear, beautiful, and perfect Georgina has departed from us for ever!

I cannot leave to any one else the sorrow of acquainting you with this fresh bereavement.... Shall I have strength for it? I feel as if my heart were enclosed in the tomb where my children rest.

A pernicious fever has carried from us this most lovable creature, who has been amongst us like an apparition from heaven. She is now reunited to him whom she so loved and mourned, and she who had “_unlearnt happiness_” is happy now! This thought is necessary to sustain those who remain. You know what she was to me—the most loving, devoted, and piously amiable of daughters; you know what she was to all—an adviser, a comforter, and a light. And all this in a few hours has vanished from us. Who shall console us for the loss of this angelic child, the very sight of whom was a consolation?

Dear friend, she thought of you; she murmured your name in her last prayer. God, the church, France, Ireland, and all those who loved her, by turns were on her lips; the voluntary victim of charity, she accepted death with gladness. You who were her sister, kind Lady Margaret, would that you had been with us at that time which was at once both sweet and cruel! Ah! tears are not permitted to me; the place of angels is in heaven.

Do not think of returning to us until peace is definitely established. Alas! only a few days since we were forming a project to go and take you by surprise. Henceforth I quit Brittany no more—my _Campo Santo_, as my beloved daughter called it.

Oh! how she must pray for our sorrows on high.

On the morning of the last day she twice repeated to me these beautiful words of the Père Lacordaire: “However hard may be the separations of this world, there always remains to us Him who is its author, who has given and who removes us, who never fails, in whom we shall all be one day reunited by the faith and charity which he has given us.”

And a few minutes before breathing the last sigh she said: “Mother, I asked that I might die for France; it was a sacrifice, because of leaving you. Now all regret has disappeared from my heart; I am going to see Mad, Gertrude, Kate, René—and God!”

May she call me soon also!

Dear and kind friend, I would comfort you, but I am powerless. Let us love and pray.

My remembrances to Lord William; kisses to Emmanuel, the treasure whom she so much loved, and to yourself, the expression of the maternal affection of my desolate heart.

COMTESSE DE T——.

* * * * *

Madame de T—— survived this last affliction only a few months, and the _Campo Santo_ received yet another tomb. May these delineations of love so pure and Christian, and of resignation so sublime, benefit at least some souls! This is the editor’s sole aim.

The premature end of Lady Margaret has unfortunately only too soon facilitated the sorrowful task of the friend who has been desirous of revealing to loving hearts the private life of her dear Georgina, this poetic flower of Ireland, transplanted to the soil of this our France, which became the second country of her heart, and which she loved even to death.

PROSE AND POETRY OF ANCIENT MUSIC.

The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils:
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus.
Let no such man be trusted.

_—Merchant of Venice._

Music, in its most general sense, is the art of producing melodious sounds, and, from its power over the passions, it is called the sentimental art. In the mythology of Greece it was cultivated chiefly by the Muses, from whom the term _music_ is derived; but, although dear to all of them, it was presided over by Euterpe, who is always represented with a flute in her hand. The great divinity of song and instrumental music, however, was Apollo, who is mentioned in the _Iliad_ as delighting the immortal gods with the sweetness of his notes; for he was the inventor of the lyre and leader of the Pierian nine, whence he is called sometimes _Citharœdus_ and sometimes _Musagetes_, in both which characters very fine statues of him have come down to us from antiquity. The worship of the Muses began early in Greece, and the favorite resort of these divinities of intellectual pleasure was the flowery border of the rills that murmured down the sides of Mount Parnassus, while their chaste grove and sacred fountain of Castalia was on that part of the Parnassan range called Helicon. Here their statues were seen and described by Pausanias, and afterwards removed by Constantine to his new capital on the Bosporus.

Pagan authors ascribed the origin of music to fanciful occurrences, or, at best, to chance and natural operations. Thus, according to some, it was a gift to man of this one or that of their national divinities; but, according to others, the babble of running waters, the warbling notes of birds, mountains that echoed, winds that sighed through the forest trees and

Fill the shade with a religious awe,—

in a word, the general song of nature inspired Apollo and the Muses, who were no more than shepherds of Arcadia, to please the world with music; for

The birds instructed man,
And taught him songs before his art began;
And while soft evening gales blew o’er the plains,
And shook the sounding reeds, they taught the swains;
And thus the pipe was framed and tuneful reed.

—_Lucretius._

But Christian writers believe that Adam, the first man, being endowed by the Creator with every sort of knowledge, excelled in music as well as in the other arts and sciences. With his fall this knowledge was weakened, while in his descendants many things were lost and all things became obscured. That music has in some way a heavenly origin all are agreed—even the Hindoos, who say that its effects are produced in us by recalling to memory the airs of Paradise, which we heard in our state of pre-existence; even the Greeks, whose fables are founded on the corruption of primeval traditions, and whose invocation to music is:

O art divine! exalted blessing!
Each celestial charm expressing!
Kindest gift the gods bestow!
Sweetest good that mortals know!

But the writer in the English or, perhaps, in any other language who has most poetically stated the case of music, and given us a Christian view of it, is Newman, in the last of his Oxford University sermons. “Can it be,” he asks, “that those mysterious stirrings of heart, and keen emotions, and strange yearnings after we know not what, and awful impressions from we know not whence, should be wrought in us by what is unsubstantial, and comes and goes, and begins and ends, in itself? It is not so; it cannot be. No; they have escaped from some higher sphere; they are the outpourings of eternal harmony in the medium of created sound; they are echoes from our Home; they are the voice of angels, or the _Magnificat_ of saints, or the living laws of divine Governance, or the divine Attributes; something are they besides themselves which we cannot compass, which we cannot utter, though mortal man—and he, perhaps, not otherwise distinguished above his fellows—has the gift of eliciting them.”

The ancients urged in favor of music three principal benefits to mankind: its effects in softening the manners of men, thereby promoting civilization and raising a people out of the barbarous and savage state; its effects in exciting or repressing the passions; and its effects as a medicinal power to cure diseases. Thus Polybius ascribes to the cultivation of this art the refinement of the inhabitants of Arcadia, and to the absence of such a discipline the roughness which characterized the citizens of Cynæthæ; thus Homer places a musician near the person of Clytemnestra as a guard upon her chastity, and, until he was away, Ægistus, who then wronged her, had no power over her affections. The subduing influence of music was again tried with success many ages after by the Jesuit missionaries in Paraguay, who used to play upon guitars and flutes to attract the melody-loving Indians from their forest haunts towards the village communities which they had established on the banks of the Parana.[63] Lycurgus regulated the music of Sparta, and his laws were set to measure by the celebrated musician Terpander; while Plato not only attributed an instructive virtue to music, but maintained that a people’s music could not be interfered with without altering their form of government. This civilizing influence of music is beautifully illustrated by the old legend of the Greeks, that when the workmen toiled on the walls of Thebes, Amphion played so sweetly on a lyre borrowed from Mercury that the stones did move of themselves. This, of course, is an allegory, to signify that by his musical talents, poetical numbers, and the wisdom of his counsel Amphion prevailed with a rude people to submit to law, live in society, and raise a defence against their neighbors.

Footnote 63:

After religion there is certainly no greater means of civilization
than commerce; and commerce in the middle ages began with fairs, at
which merchants employed the seductions of minstrelsy and music to
draw numbers together, and thus be able to display and sell their
goods.

Since two things greatly contribute to the effects of music, its powers of imitation and of association, the ancients gave it a large measure of influence over the passions. Thus Plutarch relates that Terpander appeased a violent sedition among the Lacedæmonians by the aid of his lyre, and that Empedocles prevented a murder by the soothing sound of his flute; and the painter Theon, having brought one of his works, which represented a soldier attacking an enemy, to be exhibited on the public square, would allow the veil to be withdrawn only after his attendant musicians had wrought up with military airs the crowds that gathered before it. Hence Plato wrote that a warlike air inspires courage, because it imitates the sounds and accents of a brave man, and that a calm air produces tranquillity in the soul on the same principle; or, as Burke says, “The passions may be considerably operated upon, without presenting any image at all, by certain sounds adapted to that purpose, of which we have a sufficient proof in the acknowledged and powerful effects of instrumental music”; for it counterfeits by sound some quality or state of the mind. Thus, rage is loud, anger harsh, but love and pity are gentle; consequently, loud and clangorous music stirs up the stronger passions, while a smooth measure imitates the gentler emotions of the mind. The wonderful influence of martial music on the ardor of soldiers in battle has been remarked by many writers on military affairs, and opera-goers must confess the bad tendency of sensuous music. Shakspere knew it well when he wrote of the fellow

Who capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.

The effects of music on the heads and hearts of men were so strongly perceived by Plato that he banished from his model republic the Lydian and Ionian modes, because they excited the lower instincts, but retained the severe Doric and Phrygian measures on account of their manliness and decency; and some of our best English poets have recorded their testimony to these same effects. We subjoin a few examples, taken almost at random:

And ever against eating cares.
Lap me in soft Lydian airs.

—_Milton._

Music alone with sudden charms can bind
The wand’ring sense, and calm the troubled mind.

—_Congreve._

Chiron with pleasing harp Achilles tamed,
And his rough manners with soft music framed.

—_King._

Timotheus to his breathing flute and sounding lyre
Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire.

—_Dryden._

Now wild with fierce desire,
My breast is all on fire!
In soften’d raptures now I die!
Can empty sound such joys impart?
Can music thus transport the heart
With melting ecstasy?

—_Cunningham._

Music! the greatest good that mortals know,
And all of heav’n we have below.
Music can noble hints impart,
Engender fury, kindle love,
With unsuspected eloquence can move,
And manage all the man with secret art.

—_Addison._

When Music, heavenly maid, was young,
While yet in early Greece she sung,
The Passions oft, to hear her spell,
Thronged around her magic cell,

Exulting, trembling, raging, fainting,
Possessed beyond the Muse’s painting:
By turns they felt the glowing mind
Disturbed, delighted, raised, refined.

—_Collins._

Music the fiercest grief can charm,
And Fate’s severest rage disarm;
Music can soften pain to ease,
And make despair and madness please;
Our joys below it can improve,
And antedate the bliss above.

—_Pope._

Association of ideas, which has so large a share in the operations of the human mind, often contributes much to the effects of music; for, as Shakspere says:

How many things by season seasoned are
To their right praise, and true perfection!

Thus, music that has been heard in an agreeable place or that was played by some one near and dear to us, or music that is connected with the trials and triumphs of our native land, will awaken sentiments of love or melancholy, or sympathy or ardor, on the principle of associated ideas. This is feelingly expressed in the 136th Psalm in the persons of the captive Hebrews, in whom the sound of music which they had listened to in happy days would have awakened too keen an anguish.[64] In more modern times we have had public illustrations of the same principle in those simple melodies called _ranz des vaches_, which are such favorites with the mountaineers of Switzerland, and are played upon a long trumpet or Alpine horn. The sound of these tunes, and the rude words set to them, which are expressive of scenes of pastoral life—the shingled cottage, the dashing waterfall, the bleating of sheep, the lowing of herds, and the tinkling cow-bells—sometimes recalled so vividly to the native in a foreign clime the memories of his own land as to produce a disease called _nostalgia_, that often showed itself among the Swiss soldiers in the Neapolitan service;[65] for

Footnote 64:

This plaintive Psalm was turned into most musical English verse by
Donne, who makes it touchingly suggestive; and later, and better
still, by Aubrey de Vere in his beautiful drama, _Alexander the
Great_.

Footnote 65:

A person who was present has feelingly described the deep effect
produced on some of our poor wounded soldiers who had been brought to
a church in Fredericksburg on their way North, after one of the
battles in the Wilderness, when some person sat down at the organ and
played “Home, sweet Home.”

There is in souls a sympathy with sounds;
And as the mind is pitched, the ear is pleased
With melting airs, or martial, brisk, or grave;
Some chord in unison with what we hear
Is touched within us, and the heart replies.

—_Cowper._

The belief of the ancients that music was auxiliary to medicine is attested by a great number of writers. Chiron the Centaur, who educated Achilles, was careful to unite instructions in the healing art to those which he gave on music. Plutarch tells us that Thales of Crete delivered the Spartans from a plague by the aid of his lyre; Athenæus quotes Theophrastus as authority that the Thebans cured epilepsy by the notes of a flute; Aulus Gellius says that music will rid a man of the gout; Xenocrates employed music in the cure of maniacs; while the judicious Galen gravely speaks of playing the flute over the suffering parts of the body; and the idea that music is the sovereign and only remedy for the bite of the tarantula still lingers in Southern Italy. The Tyrrhenes always hired a flute-player to perform while they flogged their slaves, to give them some relief under the lash; and there was usually an arch-musician on board of the triremes—in which the rowers’ strength and endurance were more severely taxed than in smaller vessels—not only to mark the time or cadence for each stroke of the oar, but principally to cheer the men by the sweetness of the melody; whence Quintilian takes occasion to remark that music is a gift of nature, to make us the more patiently to support labor and fatigue.[66]

Footnote 66:

Blessed Peter Claver, Apostle of the Negroes, used to contrive that
the sufferers in the hospitals at Cartagena, in South America, should
be solaced with music; and for centuries it has been a custom at Santo
Spirito, in Rome, to have the magnificent organ which is set up in the
main ward play three times a week for the patients.

Among the nations of antiquity Egypt was long thought to be the mother of ancient civilization; and the Egyptians were well acquainted with music, for representations of musical instruments have been discovered on some of their oldest monuments, such as obelisks and tombs. But they never popularized music, because they thought that it had the effect of making youth effeminate; yet Strabo says that their children were instructed in one, and only one, special kind of music, of which the government approved. Like every other profession, that of musician was hereditary. Egyptian music was originally grave and in solemn accord with the stiffness of the kindred arts, which were hampered by strict hieratic rules, and almost exclusively devoted to the service of religion. When the country fell under the sway of the Greeks, music became of a gayer and less moral sort, being as much or more employed at banquets and on other profane occasions as in the temples and beside the bier. The Ptolemies encouraged Greek music, and the musical contests introduced into Egypt by this race of splendid princes were all of Hellenic origin. Athenæus relates that at a grand Bacchic entertainment given by Ptolemy Philadelphus over six hundred musicians formed the orchestra. Musical talent was hereditary in the Ptolemaic dynasty, and the father of Cleopatra was surnamed _Auletes_, or the flute-player, from his excessive attachment to this instrument.

We have little knowledge of music as a science among the Hebrews, but there is abundant proof of its practice. They had music on their festival days, whether domestic, civil, or religious, and professional musicians were attached to the royal court; but the art was systematically studied in the schools of the prophets, and received its highest application in the Temple, where it entered largely into divine worship.

The music of the Greeks has engaged the attention of many learned men, but is so difficult a subject that no one understands it; and it is as easy to imagine how the Pyramids were raised as to conceive what Greek music was like.

Music enters largely into the mythology of Greece, and strange legends—some of which are pure myths, others the exaggeration of facts—have been made up about it. The Muses were extremely jealous of their musical talents, and whoever ventured to compete with them was punished. Thus the impudent Sirens or sea-nymphs lost their wings, and the lovely daughters of King Pierus were changed into birds.[67] Two of Apollo’s contests are famous for their mournful ending. One was with Marsyas, a ranger of the woods, who, having found the flute which Minerva threw away because it distorted her handsome features, rashly challenged the divine Apollo to a contest between this instrument and the lyre, the condition of which was that the victor might do what he wished with the vanquished. The Muses decided in favor of their leader, and the miserable mortal was tied to a tree and flayed alive. A statue of Marsyas, bound and suffering, was generally placed by the Greeks, and afterwards by the Romans also, in the vestibule of their halls of justice, as a warning not to go into litigation hastily, and, above all, not to dispute with the gods—_i.e._, bring religion into court.[68]

Footnote 67:

The adventure of Ulysses and the melodious Sirens was a subject early
seized upon by Christian art within the Discipline of the Secret to
convey an idea of the cross (Ulysses attached to the mast of his
vessel), the church (under the figure of a ship), and the seductions
of the world (of the flesh particularly) in this voyage of life. See
De Rossi's _Bulletin of Christian Archæology for 1863_, page 35, in
which a curious monument bearing on this strange _rapprochement_ is
described.

Footnote 68:

One of these old statues having come to light in good condition while
the palace of Monte Citorio, designed by Pope Innocent XII. for the
seat of the higher tribunals of law at Rome, was being built, it was
appropriately placed on the landing at the head of the great stairway.
The Italian Deputies have doubtless removed it, as too significant of
_divine vengeance_.

Another triumph of Apollo was over Pan, a _dilettante_ of music and inventor of the reed-pipes, which he called _syrinx_ after the beautiful Arcadian nymph whose adventure with her tuneful lover is well known from Ovid. Midas, King of Phrygia, was chosen umpire, and, deciding in favor of Pan, was disgraced by having his ears changed into those of a donkey. Poor Midas contrived for a time to conceal his mishap by wearing day and night a cap of a peculiar form;[69] but as no man is long a hero to his valet, his body-servant, while trimming his hair one day, pushed up the bonnet a little and discovered the deformity. The secret so embarrassed him that, fearing he might unwittingly divulge it, he dug a hole in the ground beside a meandering brook and whispered therein: “Midas has ass’s ears!” He then filled it up and thought himself secure against himself; but, alas! on the very spot a tell-tale reed grew up, which, as the breezes rocked it to and fro, murmured the fatal secret, “Midas has ass’s ears.” While this fable may signify one of the ways by which the ancients believed nature to have drawn man’s attention to instrumental music—for travellers tell us that in some parts of the world there are plants called vocal or singing reeds, which emit a sweet strain when moved by the wind—it may also be a myth to insinuate that music is a sort of language; and as such, says Metastasio, it has the advantage over poetry which a universal language would have over a particular one, for music can touch all hearts in every age and country, but poetry speaks only to the people of its own age and country. One of the Greek stories of sublimest significance, and which mysteriously enters into early Christian art under the discipline of the secret, is the Orphic legend. Orpheus, presented by Apollo with a lyre and instructed in its use by the Muses, was able to tame with his sweet notes the wild beasts that gathered around him, and to enchant even the trees and rocks of Olympus, which started from their places and followed the sounds that charmed them:

Since naught so stockish, hard, and full of rage
But music for the time doth change his nature,

Footnote 69:

We find in this story the origin of the _Phrygian cap_ which came to
be a symbol of slavery and degradation among the Romans, by whom the
Phrygians were considered a stupid people—whose rulers even had
asinine qualities; and it never quite lost this character, but was
used in France up to the time of the Revolution by galley-prisoners,
and it is well known that an irruption of escaped convicts into Paris
during the Reign of Terror, carrying one of their caps at the end of a
pole and singing the _Marseillaise_, gave rise to the absurd custom of
the liberty-pole and cap now so common.

as Shakspere remarks. That some animals are amenable to the influence of harmony is certain—hence the success of the Hindoos with their deadly cobras; and some recent botanists are of opinion that the growth of flowers, and especially roses, is stimulated by music. But whatever slight foundation of fact there may be in the wonders of the _historical_ Orpheus, it fades into obscurity beside the noble conception of the _mythical_ Orpheus, whose history seems based on a traditional knowledge of the happy state of man in Paradise when all things of earth were subject to him:

Till disproportioned Sin
Jarred against Nature’s clime, and with harsh din
Broke the fair music that all creatures made
To their great Lord, whose love their motion swayed
In perfect diapason, whilst they stood
In first obedience, and their state of good.

—_Milton._

Music is mentioned with a degree of rapture in more than fifty places of the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. The Lacedæmonians had a flute blazoned on their standards, and the military airs composed by Tyrtæus continued to be played in the Spartan army until the end of the republic.

The Pythagoreans and Platonists not only supposed the soul of man to be a substance very like a disembodied musical instrument of some sort, but believed the universe itself and all its parts to be formed on the principles of harmony; hence their not altogether imaginary music of the spheres which enters into their systems of philosophy:

Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:
_There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins_:
Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

—_Merchant of Venice._

And this idea of a close connection between music and the heavenly bodies was still lingering in the minds of some philosophers as late as the eleventh century of our era, when Psellus the younger, treating of music and astronomy, describes the former as symmetry and proportion itself, which reminds one of Hegel’s profound and intelligible definition that “music is architecture in time”! Pythagoras especially is said to have regarded music as something celestial and profound, and to have had such an opinion of its powers over the human affections that he ordered his disciples to be waked every morning, and lulled to sleep at night, by the dulcet notes of the lyre or the flute.[70]

Footnote 70:

Dr. Burney, _History of Music_, vol. i. p. 436, has a note which bears
too quaintly on this part of the subject not to be reproduced. He
says: “Master Thomas Mace, author of a most delectable book called
_Musick’s Monument_, would have been an excellent Pythagorean, for he
maintains that the mystery of the Trinity is perspicuously made plain
by the connection of the three harmonical concords 1, 3, 5; that music
and divinity are nearly allied; and that the contemplation of concord
and discord, of the nature of the octave and unison, will so
strengthen a man’s faith 'that he shall never after degenerate into
that _gross subbeastiacal sin_ of Atheism.’”

The love and cultivation of music formed so much a part of the discipline of the illustrious men who sprang from the school of Pythagoras that almost every one of them left behind him a treatise on the subject. Plato, in the seventh book of his work on laws, says that children in a well-ordered commonwealth should be instructed for three years in music, which reminds us of the commendable efforts made of late years in Great Britain and the United States to make music a necessary part of popular education, in which connection the late Cardinal Wiseman wrote an interesting letter to the Catholic Poor-School Committee of London in 1849 about “the importance of introducing music more effectually into our system of education.”

In the third book of Plato’s _Republic_ music is treated of at considerable length with reference to education; “for whatever is concerned with the art of music ought somehow to terminate with the love of the beautiful.” But to seize the full meaning of this passage we must remember that, in the doctrine of the Academy, _the Good, the True, and the Beautiful_ are reciprocal terms, and consequently that music should elevate to the contemplation of the great Godhead—Goodness itself, Truth itself, Beauty itself.

Eloquence was thought by the ancients to be so intimately connected with music that the orators of Greece and Rome had a flute-player standing at a proper distance behind them while they spoke, who kept up an undertone of musical sound, now swelling as the speaker rose with his theme, now gently falling when, as in panegyrics on the dead or in pleadings for mercy, he sought the chords of sorrow or sympathy in the human heart. Musical contests of flutes, trumpets, and other instruments were among the attractions at the public games of Greece; and the profession of music was so highly honored, and often so remunerative, that many musicians lived in splendor. There was Dorion the flute-player, who lived like a Sybarite and was a frequent guest at the table of King Philip of Macedon; there was Ismenias of Thebes, who was sent on an embassy to Persia, and (like the late Duke of Brunswick) had a passion for collecting jewels which his enormous wealth enabled him to gratify to the utmost. He once reproved a smart agent for not having paid as much for a pearl as it was worth, saying that it belittled him in the jeweller’s eyes not to have given, and the gem in his own eyes not to have cost, its full value, and sent him back with the surplus money. The flute which he bought at Corinth for three talents (about $4,000) must have been encrusted with precious stones. Amœbeus, the harper, received an Attic talent (about $1,000) for every appearance on the stage. But although proficients in music were highly honored and rewarded, the mere makers of musical instruments enjoyed no greater esteem than did other artisans, and we know that the comic poets of the time often ridiculed the celebrated orator Isocrates because his father had been able to give him a liberal education with money made by manufacturing flutes. Not only men but women also publicly exhibited their musical accomplishments; they belonged, however, mostly, if not exclusively, to the class of _Hetairai_. Such was the famous Lamia, whose skill as a flute-player, hardly less than her personal charms, won the heart of King Demetrius.