Chapter XIV (5)

Jacobi was at that time a very prominent leader of philosophy in Germany, and Stolberg mentions him many times in his correspondence with various persons, evidently as a representative man. At one time this teacher, the friend of Goethe, a sort of Medici among his disciples near Düsseldorf, where he had a beautiful house, and still more beautiful garden—now the property of the town and the appropriate scene of artists’ banquets and popular _fêtes_—confessed himself, in the midst of his philosophy, “a very beggar” in the true learning of the Spirit. Stolberg often alluded to this, and, when the master’s pride had long distanced the frame of mind in which this acknowledgment had been made, wrote of him: “Poor Jacobi! he was richer indeed when he called himself poor as 'a beggar.’” In 1812 he writes:

“I have just read Jacobi’s last pamphlet. The one before the last
_On a Wise Saying of Lichtenberg_, seems to me in the highest degree
satisfactory. That on _The Recension_ (Jacobi cannot help putting
odd and often trivial titles to his works) has also excellent
points, but the whole seems to me loose, and a windy toying with
views which he borrows from Christianity, the whole system of which,
however, he, as far as in him, the puny mortal, lies, seeks to
weaken and annihilate. While he praises the god-like Plato, he seems
to forget that this philosopher, or rather Socrates in his platonic
_Phædrus_, evidently longs, as a hart after the fountains of waters,
for a god-given revelation whose very possibility itself Jacobi, on
the contrary, strives to reason away.”

Schelling’s answer to Jacobi, however, equally displeased Stolberg, and he accuses him of making Jacobi appear, “through certain wiles of speech, now an atheist, now a fanatical dreamer,” and of taking credit to himself for

“Having been the first clearly to prove the existence of God. His
God has been from all eternity the greatest Force, which contained
within itself, _in potentia_, but not _in actu_, that goodness and
wisdom which it developed in later ages. He falls thus into Count
Schmettau’s error, of a god who has raised himself from a lower
state to the highest, which theory one might compare with the career
of a field-marshal who has risen by degrees from the ranks....
Evidently Schelling is a man of much mind, but of overweening
vanity. He speaks of Christianity with respect, and probably
believes in the divine mission of Christ, whose system, however, it
was reserved for him—Schelling—fully to explain. He sent this paper
of his to Perthes (Stolberg’s publisher), and told him he wished me
to read it, and that I should then have quite another idea of what
his philosophy was, and discover that he did not hold the views I
attributed to him.”

At another time he writes:

“The deplorable frivolity of these times is one of their worst
signs. I find it the saddest of all. Would that one could hope,

“When the hurly-burly’s done,
When the night is past and gone,”

that things would come right again. But moral nights are not as
physical ones. The latter bring us dreams which the dawn of day
dispels. The moral nights are full of the feverish dreams of
mankind, and they have no certain limit as to time. They go
_crescendo_ from error to folly, until the awakening at the end of a
completed, comet-like course of misery.”

We have mentioned Stolberg’s warm love of his country. Prince Francis Fürstenberg said of him during the time of the humbling of Germany under the yoke of Napoleon: “I know, and have known in my long life, many of the noblest men in the nation, but I saw none surpass Stolberg in genuine love for the Fatherland. His German and imperial heart is pure as gold and shines like a diamond.” The epithet imperial sounds odd to our ears; it is an allusion to his belief that the Empire of Germany, such as it existed just before the Congress of Vienna, was the proper representative and bulwark of the nation. He blamed the Emperor Francis very strongly for laying down his time-honored dignity later on, and contenting himself with a local title which severed his interests materially from those of Germany at large. He also saw in this withdrawal of imperial authority and protection over non-Austrian countries a danger to the Catholic faith, and a possible interference of Protestant powers in the communications between Catholic German states and the Holy See. But concerning the ever-vexed question of the Rhine frontier his patriotism was quick and hot; he wished that in the new partition at the Congress Alsace and Lorraine should be given back to Germany, and lamented the injudicious behavior by which some of the German troops had spoilt the evidently favorable state of mind of the Alsatians during part of the disturbances on the frontier.

“Eighteen months ago,” he writes in 1815, “the Alsatians were very
well disposed, came to meet our troops with flags and received them
with ringing of joy-bells; then came the Bavarians, the Badeners,
and so on, and behaved so as to make them hate us. We all talk of
our wish to reunite our once torn-away brethren with Germany, but we
have angered them instead and are burning their towns and villages.
My hair stands on end and I could weep tears of blood at the
thought.”

Early in the century, a few weeks after his conversion, Stolberg wrote thus to Princess Gallitzin:

“True patriotism embraces the highest good of the people in all
things: the blessings of faith, those of law, of freedom, and of
morals. It can never follow the path of forcible overthrows and of
revolution, nor covenant with an outside enemy, nor lend itself to
the service of injustice, even when a seeming and momentary
advantage is to be gained by such service. What a disgrace for us
Germans is the Franco-mania that reigns among us—the cap-in-hand
alliance with the Corsican adventurer, who is spreading horror and
desolation among us and knows no right but that of the sword. What
undermines all our strength, and will sink us even lower and lower,
is not only the jealousy and spirit of aggrandizement current among
the German states against the empire and the emperor, the fawning on
the French with the hope of getting their help to win new slices of
territory, but far more the weakened character of the whole people,
and their want of moral energy and good feeling—the result of the
unbelieving philosophy and immoral literature that have unnerved the
nation.”

Just as impartially he condemned in after-years, when German patriotism had spread with a sudden rush from the field into literature, the “coarse Teutonism” which rejected every refinement of foreign origin, maligned every foreign custom, and made patriotism ridiculous by enjoining upon it to be no less than rabid. He then defended all that was reasonable and applicable to German life, all the praise-worthy customs, books, and improvements that fashion had turned suddenly against. He had earned a good right to be independent; for four of his sons fought in the different German armies that overwhelmed Napoleon after the retreat from Moscow, and one, his son Christian, a brave boy of eighteen, died at the battle of Ligny. His two sons-in-law also, fathers of large families of young children, were in the national army, and the greatest enthusiasm was felt by all the members of the family, old and young, for the cause which Stolberg called “ours, God’s, Europe’s, mankind’s, and the right’s.”

In 1815 he wrote: “True German feeling it is to welcome all that is noble and good, out of all ages and nations, as our own. Every one now, with narrow minds, is Nibelungen-mad, barbaric-mad”; and concerning his _Life of Alfred_ he says:

“Alfred belongs to us, and therefore do I wish to hold him up to the
veneration and imitation, and for the teaching, of my children. But
not only do Alfred and his people belong to us; we should also make
our own all that is great and noble in the life of all nations, yet
without losing thereby our own individuality.”

In 1805 the decree freeing the serfs in the Duchy of Holstein went into effect, and Stolberg congratulates his brother Christian on this happy event; naturally, the greater event of the abolition of negro slavery in the British West Indies was a great joy to him, and he rejoiced the more that the _Illuminati_, his special aversion, lost thereby their best weapon against England, and that the French Declaration of the Rights of Man could be unfavorably compared with the English constitution, on account of a contradictory law, at that time still in force, forbidding the liberation of the negroes in French colonies to be even mentioned before the legislature. The alliances, dictated by fear or by interest, of German sovereigns with Napoleon were a subject of great grief and indignation to him, and he looked upon England with almost exaggerated admiration because she withstood the conqueror. He said “Pitt would save England against Europe’s will,” and his confidence in the general policy of the English statesman was unbounded. He had, too, a kind of historical admiration, if we may so call it, for the English form of government, which alone he thought proper for freedom, but which he did not believe fit for the wants of every nation, indiscriminately, on the Continent. It strikes us, however, that the fact of the English constitution, in its then state, being nearly a hundred and fifty years old had somewhat blinded his mind to the facts—according to his theory, rather suspicious, to say the least—of the change of dynasty in 1688; for the Stuarts in England were surely as legitimate sovereigns, from his point of view, as the Bourbons in France, whose least advances, in the person of Louis XVIII., towards the modern spirit so incensed and disgusted Stolberg; and when he said that “England alone stood in the breach” against Napoleon, he forgot that she considered it her interest to withstand him, and that a deeply-rooted prejudice egged on the nation against him. If he had seen anything of the unreasoning panic which the threatened invasion caused among the English, he would have been less ready to jest at the falling through of the scheme, which he called “an expedition to gather mussels along the British shores.” It has often been so, we think, among Continental statesmen and thinkers: they look upon England with exceptionally favorable eyes and weigh her doings in special balances, forgetting the lawless and riotous disturbances that she experienced earlier than other countries, after which she settled into the solid, steady, conservative, law-abiding, slow-to-be-moved nation which she had been for over a hundred years when the French Revolution suddenly broke out. Stolberg, much as he praised England, almost refused to see any good in the chaos of new ideas that were seething pell-mell together; he saw nothing but the evident godlessness, selfishness, pride, and cruelty which marked that era; and, indeed, he, the man of another age, the lover of a lofty ideal which we shall mention presently—the man who said that “all politics hinged on the Fourth Commandment”—could hardly be expected to allow that out of such confusion God could glean anything worthy of being offered to himself.

Stolberg often called Germany the “heart of Europe,” and wrote an ode with that title; but he would not allow with the innovators that the “philosophy” of the age was the true source of the influence his country should have on the Continent. Allied to this false idea of many Germans was the affected custom, in the early part of the century, of using the French language instead of the mother-tongue, even in the nearest domestic intercourse—a fault which the Russians also fell into, but which at present they have seen the folly of and have nearly successfully remedied. Stolberg heartily hated and despised this foreign intrusion into German home-life.

“Even in my younger days,” he says with scorn, “I can remember
hearing of a gifted German girl being reproached by German women
with being 'affected’ enough to write 'German’ letters.... Germans
now write to each other, brother to brother, husband to wife, in
French.... Is that not to estrange one’s self from one’s nearest and
dearest? nay, even from one’s self?”

His relations and correspondence with well-known people of his day furnish us with his opinions on many of the writers, _savants_, statesmen, and philosophers, the reigning and rising public men. Of the historian Johann Müller he says:

“No one ever seized the true spirit of history so early in life as
he did.... His life is very interesting; it is true he showed a good
deal of vanity, but also so much cheerful good-humor that one does
not feel inclined to be hard upon him for the former. His plan of
study, as he arranged it for himself, and the scrupulous way in
which he followed it out, seem to me truly noteworthy.... What a
comprehensive spirit, what feeling and sympathy for the true, the
good, and the beautiful! How early, too, he broke loose from the
unwisdom of the philosophy of the times, and how deep a religious
spirit remained firm in him in the midst of many disturbances, since
he so clearly understood the history of the world by the light of
that Providence whose finger he was always tracing in it! He once
said very beautifully that Christ was the key to the world s
history.”

In 1807 he gives the following opinion of Alexander von Humboldt:

“I know Humboldt personally. He has much understanding, much
liveliness, much industry. But is he not inclined to be too much
enslaved by the German _à priori_ tendency and by a love of the
scientific form? Is he strong enough not to let himself be carried
away by the method of modern criticism, which tends to violent
disruption from all that has gone before, instead of tracing out the
great analogies on the path of simple observation? Is he _quite_
free from a delicate and imperceptible charlatanism? Years may have
matured him, but such maturing seldom takes place when the quick
strides of science make it difficult for wisdom to keep up with
her.”

Of Frederick Schlegel’s poetry, and that of others in the _Dichtergarten_ (or “Poet’s Garden,” a collection of fugitive songs by various poets), he writes:

“The rarer and the more beautiful is the noble, religious spirit
that breathes through the _Poet’s Garden_, the more do I wish that
its authors might put forth all their strength. And so it would be,
if it were not for a particular theory which lies at the bottom of
the poetry—a theory whose foundation I do not know, but whose
evident peculiarity strikes the eye, bewilders the reader, forces
the Muse, and in its purposed negligence of language goes so far as
even to disfigure it. The Muse craves freedom above all things, if
she is to express what comes from the innermost of our heart or our
mind. Every trace of art lames poetry, and theory often misleads,
because it is born of human philosophy, while poetry is something
divine. Therefore poets always succeed best in rhythm where the
inspiration is great and noble, and the quickly-passing images,
thoughts, sensations only group themselves well and naturally when
they are conjured up by an infallible, all-subduing inspiration,
without the poet knowing how it happens.”

Of Niebuhr’s Roman history he writes, in 1812—not, perhaps, in the sense that most of the readers of that work will endorse:

“I marvel at the deep learning, and often at the penetration, of our
friend; but who will read him? What a bulwark of tedious researches,
the result of which is often nothing more than a learned outwork! It
is strange that, with this fault of historical pedantry, he could
not avoid the contrary one of reasoning _à priori_, so common to the
German professors. There is much understanding in the book, and in a
few places one is pleasantly surprised at its spirit; but this
spirit is neither _a joyful nor a certain one_. He fails in
simplicity. From this springs his heavy style, despite his choice
use of words. He is too forward in making hypotheses and foregone
conclusions; for instance, his open partisanship with the plebeians
leads him to make false and hasty judgments. His pragmatical
tendency makes him unjust even to Livy, and he has no appreciation
of the noble amiability of Plutarch. Yet, with all these faults, he
must ever remain a valuable historian—not a star of the first
magnitude, but still too good to be a mere _famulus_,[90] to gather
material for great historians. Among other things, he lacks the art
of managing his style so as to appear to be led by it and yet to
make it convey exactly what the writer pleases. But concerning his
principles, some of which, however, I do not endorse, his conscience
always appears as it is, noble and tender, while his love of truth
follows him even on his hobby—hypothesis.”

Footnote 90:

Servant; meaning here a second-rate chronicler.

It may be interesting to give the opinion of some of the same men on Stolberg himself as a historian and writer. The _History of Religion_, which was his great work, and which he mainly attributed to the suggestion, encouragement, and interest of Princess Gallitzin, became a topic of discussion and interest all through Germany. Many were brought by it to the Catholic Church, and of these most wrote to him first, asking advice and making confidences, before they read further or asked instructions from a priest. It was a source of deep thankfulness to him that he had thus been the means of making others share in the same blessings and peace which he had won through the grace and leading of God. But his _History_ was no controversial work; it was very comprehensive, and embraced the whole subject of true religion from the beginning of the world, tracing the connection between Judaism and Christianity; the fulfilment of the prophecies in Christ; the spirit of aloofness from the world, first symbolized in the national exclusiveness of the Hebrews, and then proved in the persecutions under the Roman emperors in the struggle between Christianity and heathendom; and, lastly, the gradual, onward sway which the truth at last won over error, and which, speaking in a certain sense, culminated in the conversion of Constantine. Here Stolberg ended his history, feeling that his life would not be spared much longer, and that he had done his work, so far as he felt called upon by God to witness to the truth that was in him. The unhappy struggles, rents, and abuses of later church history he left untouched; surely there were counterparts to them in earlier days, but no such embittering could come from a relation of the old heresies and divisions as would have sprung from even the most impartial discussion of recent and more local ones. Schlegel took the greatest interest in this work, and of the least important part he spoke thus admiringly:

“I am especially delighted at the strength and simple beauty of your
style; whoso compares it with what is called nowadays the art of
representing things will easily discover where is to be found the
true source of even this beauty.”

Again, of the second part of the history (it was divided into fifteen parts) he says:

“I found myself much steadied and strengthened by the whole, and
particularly enlightened by the exposition on the Hebrew belief in
the immortality of the soul and on the Mosaic code. May you in the
future of your work, as often as opportunity allows, return to and
dwell upon the immortality of the soul. It seems to me the path by
which mankind at present can best be led towards truth, better than
by any other teaching regarding the Godhead.”

He then says that pantheism and a vague sentimentality had perverted everything distinctly Christian into an empty shadow-form, but that few were so absolutely dead to all higher feeling as not to distinguish between the “real personal immortality, and the mere metaphysical image of it, without a hereafter, and without a continuance of the memory.”

“Bring vividly before them the true personal immortality, and you
will often find those whom you had thought most spiritually dead and
careless to be palpably roused. To me the doctrine of the Trinity is
the central point of Christianity, and therefore the foundation and
source of all my convictions, views, and aspirations.... The
unfolding and representation of this secret of love (the Trinity) I
have found to permeate every doctrine, principle, and even custom or
rubric of the Catholic Church; although even in her pale many good
individuals are less impressed with the divine spirit of the whole
than with some one or other literal regulation.”

Johann von Müller wrote thus of Stolberg’s work:

“It is not a lukewarm, sham impartial church history, in which one
is uncertain what relation it bears to Jesus of Nazareth, but the
work of a man who knows what he believes, and would fain move all
men to believe as he does. Not a church history critically weighing
the Messiahship of Jesus from the Old Testament against his Godhead
from the New, but the work of a man who sees everywhere and at all
times Him who was and is, and is to come, and to whom all power is
given in heaven and on earth. Lastly, it is not a worldly
representation of the deceits and time-serving devices through which
Christianity crept into the world, and is still able to maintain
herself, the humble handmaid of statecraft, in these our enlightened
times, but the confession and outpouring of soul of a man to whom
the whole world is nothing in comparison with the Saviour of the
world. Of the latter he speaks so that whoever loves him must love
this book, and he who knows nothing of him will learn from this book
what Christians possess in him. Therefore, reader, if thou art a
reed, driven before the learned wind of our modern writings, look to
this rock, and see if it has not a foundation in the needs of
mankind and the love of the Godhead; and thou who knowest not
Christianity, come and see _what it is_, as thy forefathers felt it,
as it is yet, mighty in every childlike heart; and thou who
believest, come hear, and enjoy, and rejoice thy heart with the word
of life.”

Claudius spoke of the book being read by thousands, and of its “undoubted influence in strengthening the Christian faith among the German people.” A person in comparatively private life, Major Bülow, a stanch Bible man, said that Stolberg’s _History of Religion_ had been a “welcome surprise to him, although the style was not always clear to his understanding, and he was only fearful lest the author should not live long enough to finish it.”

Joseph de Maistre spoke thus of the work in his _Recueil de Lettres_, p. 23:

“New researches and discoveries, and the progress of the art of
tracing all up to the first sources, may correct or supplement much
in his history, may bring a new light to bear on many of his
opinions—for the work, in spite of its foundation on, and
buttressing by, much study of a high order, is not meant to be an
exhaustive scientific work; but I doubt if any, in our century at
least, will surpass the author of this history in pure love of God
and mankind, love to Christ and his church, and in pure and truly
creative spirit. How striking also are his observations on the
circumstances of our time, his opinion on the persecution of the
church by the spirit of this world, on false teachers, on the
marriage tie, and the sanctity of oaths, and many like things!”

Stolberg was rejoiced by these commendations, but more encouraged than rejoiced. Mere vanity was far from him; he thanked God that he had been able to supply “what these oft-repeated praises of good and single-minded men proved to him to have been really a want.”

The ideal which we have alluded to, and which was a great characteristic of Stolberg’s mind, was that of the mission and duties of an aristocracy. He believed that, in the abstract, the existence and allowed influence of such a class was an instinct inborn in man, and that it was only when the aristocracy was false to its own principles that the people could grow antagonistic to it. His theories on the subject were beautiful, noble, poetic, but in his time there had been so much evil practice that such theories were nearly swamped under it. It was natural to his character, however, to lean more on the theory than the practice, and to consider the latter an excrescence and abuse which might be done away with, and the ideal thereby reinstated in its first dignity. At first sight his theory seems simply a feudal, mediæval, romantic one, the dream of a man proud of his own order, and nursed in prejudices such as no change in political relations _de facto_ could uproot but if we look closer into it, it becomes a very different and far more worthy thing—namely, a belief in the essence of chivalry, a standard of conduct such as King Arthur’s, a translation into altered forms and circumstances of the Gospel rules of charity, courtesy, and patience. Here are some of his own sayings on the subject, on which he reasoned in a way so far removed from either fanaticism or vanity that we place his explanations here as something wholly special to himself, and quite different from the ordinary rhapsodies about the necessity of various grades of classes:

“The ideal of the aristocracy[91] is not weakened through the
unworthiness of many who are of noble birth. On the contrary, the
just scorn which follows these men redounds to the honor of their
class, of which one cannot become unworthy without being despised by
all. Nature gives the aristocracy neither more understanding nor
more physical strength than she does to other classes; it takes its
worth wholly from an ideal, but not a mistaken ideal. This, like all
that is great in mankind, is founded upon the sacrifice of all that
is lower for the sake of attaining the highest.

Footnote 91:

_Adel_, nobility, from _edel_, noble, our Saxon _Ethel_ and
_Atheling_. The word is here translated by aristocracy rather than
nobility—the former being a word of wider signification, and
embracing the class of untitled gentlemen (which of course
Stolberg included), as well as that of strictly so-called
noblemen.

“The aristocracy must give up every mercantile and lower traffic.
Three things were entrusted to its keeping—agriculture, of which
kings have not been ashamed, statesmanship, and the defence of the
Fatherland.

“As an ennobled countryman the aristocrat can pursue the most
necessary, the oldest, and the most innocent work with better
results than the peasant, because he has more means, more insight,
and can better afford the danger of an occasional failure. His
experience and example teach and encourage the common countryman,
whom it is the beautiful and holy duty of the nobleman to enlighten
and to protect, and whose well-being, morals, and temporal and
eternal good it is his duty to further by every means in his power.
This business is one which, if he wishes to be respected as a
nobleman, he has no right to evade or neglect; except temporarily,
if he is chosen as a representative of his province—a business to
which he has also a special call as a citizen of the state. He must
and ought, however, to take part in the government, even if he be
not chosen by his province; and either as a magistrate or only as a
land-owner he can take a prominent part in it. The defence of his
country devolves upon no one so strongly as upon the nobleman. This
is a worthy and beautiful duty of knighthood. It is well for that
state where the aristocracy, as such, is called to the defence of
the Fatherland as leaders of their own country people, whose patrons
they are in times of peace, whose heads, judges, mediators, example,
and benefactors they should be at all times. The old, fair relations
have been rent by false representations, but they are not
effaced.... The aristocracy has an inner worth, no matter how
unworthy are many of its members. Neither royal nor priestly
anointing can preserve from moral corruption! Of how much less avail
are mere human, outward means to preserve the spiritual existence!
Indeed, they often soil it. Let every one who is of knightly
standing strive to prove by his actions that the ideal of knighthood
lives in him, in noble simplicity, in courteous behavior, in quick
willingness to give blood and lands for the Fatherland. His example
will not remain without fruit. He will be far from looking upon
certain virtues as virtues of his condition, and neglecting to
practise others or superciliously leave them to other classes. If we
hold fast to our knightly calling, the essence of knighthood will
remain to us. The shell of the thing renews itself from time to
time.... Whatever is worthy of respect in knighthood has come from
self-sacrifice.... In order to keep pace with the century, the
nobleman must be the equal of the citizen in knowledge, whenever the
two meet in the same field. If he neglects this, he will see the
burgher reigning as a cabinet minister and himself reduced to the
_honor_ of waiting in the king’s ante-chamber by virtue of his
birth. And even in war, the knight’s proper field, how can the
nobleman boast of his superiority to one who knows more than he does
of the science of war? If the knight covets intellectual
superiority, he must not seek it in emulation so much as in brave
and silent self-sacrifice. The life of his fathers must teach his
heart this lesson: _Be worthy of thy fathers, whether the world
acknowledge thy worth or no.[92]_ A thirst after approbation does
not behove a knight, but steady reliance on his strength and his
intentions.... The present hatred of the aristocracy is a fever
which will soon be spent.... It remains for us, each in his own
circle, to maintain a lofty ideal and to spread it abroad—that is, a
true spirit of religion and that spirit of brave self-denial, of
earnest courage, and discreet worth which should mark the
aristocracy—and at the same time to encourage among ourselves a
desire not to be behindhand in such knowledge and in such strivings
as elevate the heart, adorn the mind, and make us fitter for the
callings that specially beseem us.”

Footnote 92:

The italics are ours.

It will be readily understood from the foregoing quotations that Stolberg had not much sympathy with a scheme which some German noblemen had started—that of a new knight-union or society. He deprecated the publicity such a step would necessarily bring upon them, and saw in it only a hollow, childish plan of defiance, a foolish revival of old customs as powerless in practice as a return to the weapons of the ancient knights, a protest against firearms and the altered arts of warfare. His enthusiasm was always dignified and reasonable; it had no touch of sentimentality and “playing at” things. To the last his character remained the same. Forgiving and temperate as regarded any wrong done personally to him, he could not brook the distortion of truth, and was in the act of replying to a libellous pamphlet of Voss, of Heidelberg, destined to spread among the public distrust of Stolberg’s sincerity in his conversion, when his last sickness overtook him. He had just finished the _Life of St. Vincent of Paul_, which he had written instead of the autobiography that his friends strongly urged him to write. He had objected that he felt no call from God to do so, and that, unless one wrote with the view of God’s call, vanity and self were too apt to become the leading motive in the work. He commended St. Augustine’s _Confessions_ because they were evidently inspired by love of God’s honor only, and a monument of thankfulness to the One who called such a sinner to repentance. In St. Vincent he saw a man of modern times whom one could hold up as a model not too exalted and extraordinary, yet thoroughly humble, perfect, and holy, to men of his and future generations.

Stolberg died December 5, 1819, at the age of seventy, at Sondermühlen, a country-house for which he had, four years before, exchanged his favorite Lütjenbeck, when French domination was in the ascendant and he had become an object of suspicion to the French spies in Münster.

What his death was to his family can be easily imagined; it was hardly less to a large circle of friends, acquaintances, and even strangers who knew him only by name and by his works, but whose reliance on his advice, example, and opinion had long been their best and surest standard of duty.

FROM THE HECUBA OF EURIPIDES.
_A free translation._
BY AUBREY DE VERE.

[_The Chorus of Trojan Women lament their Captivity._]

STROPHE I.

Breeze of the ocean, fresh and free!
Whither, O whither wilt thou bear
The Exile, and her great despair?
Thou speed’st, and I must speed with thee!
Say, must some Dorian haven be
The home of Troy’s unhappy daughters?
O unbelovèd home!—or where
The father of most lovely waters,
Apidanus, goes winding by
The fruitful meads of Thessaly?

ANTISTROPHE I.

Or 'mid those isles of old renown,
Haply bright Delos’ sea-born glades,
Where deathless palms and laurels spread
Above their own Latona’s head
Green boughs (commemoration holy
Of that twin-birth that lit their gloom):—
There must I weep a captive’s doom?
There sing, with gladsome native maids,
Extorted song and melancholy
To Dian’s silver bow and crown?

STROPHE II.

Perchance, a slave in Athens pining,
On tap’stried walls these hands must trace
Minerva’s awful steeds and car
Still radiant from the Ten Years’ war;
Or blazon there the Titan race
Beneath the Thunderer’s wrath oppressed,
And every godlike head declining
Upon the thunder-blasted breast.

ANTISTROPHE II.

Alas my people, and alas
My fathers, and my country’s shore!
And thou, O Troy—’tis Fate’s decree—
Farewell! I see thy face no more!
Alas for thee, alas for me!
Above thy head the plough shall pass:—
Worse fate is mine, o’er ocean’s wave,
The conqueror’s plaything, and his slave.

THE TRUE IRISH REVOLUTION.

The Irish people, albeit much given to intermittent spasms of insurrection, are at present as peaceable, and apparently as contented, as the contending passions of local politicians and the intrigues of imperial statesmen will allow them to be. The constabulary, in their rifle-green and burnished accoutrements, continue to be the envy and terror of the unsophisticated peasant; the queen’s writ runs unobstructed in the remotest parts of the island; “the castle still stands, though the senate’s no more”; and, save the sharp crack of a rifle at Dolly-mount or the more death-dealing fowling-piece of the sportsman, no warlike sound disturbs the quiet slumbers of the weary sentinel or the superserviceable stipendiary magistrate.

And yet a revolution has been in progress in Ireland and in Irish affairs elsewhere for the last three-quarters of a century as beneficent in its effects and as tangible in its benefits as if blood had flowed in torrents and the pure atmosphere from shore to centre of the land had been polluted by fumes of villainous saltpetre. We mean that within the memory of men now living a radical though gradual change has taken place in the manners, habits, and tastes of the Irish people, but more particularly in their literature, which after all is the best evidence of a nation’s ability to think correctly and express accurately what their minds are capable of conceiving.

Looking back to the condition of Ireland at the beginning of the century—her domestic legislature annihilated and seven-eighths of her people unrepresented in the imperial Parliament—beyond broken relics and dim memories of a glorious past, it can be said truthfully that she had no literature whatever, or rather no literature save what was alien and hostile in tone and spirit. There were no native authors except those who had earned pelf and unenviable notoriety by decrying Ireland’s nationality, maligning her faith, and holding up to the contempt and ridicule of the world the faults and foibles of her unlettered peasantry. But, even had there been men of a different character, they could not have found either encouragement or patronage; for the mass of the population, thanks to the Penal Laws, could not read English, and one-half at least could not even speak it.

The consequence, therefore, was that every young Irishman who felt the spirit of literary ambition stir within him, as soon as he had attained manhood, hastened to pack up his scanty wardrobe and turn his face toward London—then as now the great intellectual focus of the United Kingdom. The pioneers of this movement were generally men little fitted to represent their country. They were merely adventurers, without principle or honor, facile and versatile, and in some instances even educated, but, from previous training and association, just such tools as Grubb Street publishers loved to handle and the lowest class of Britons delighted to patronize. They were the originators of the “Denis Bulgruddery” and “Paddiana” school of so-called comic literature, and were useless if they did not caricature in the grossest manner, on the stage and in the newspapers and periodicals, their Catholic fellow-countrymen. With them a priest was an ignorant and low-bred tyrant; the peasant his abject, superstitious slave. This worthless class, while it did much to destroy the moral effect produced by men of a preceding generation, like Goldsmith, Coleman, O’Keefe, Sheridan, Burke, Barry, and other distinguished Irishmen, did more to instil into the popular mind of England that utter misconception of Irish character and insensate hostility to the Catholic religion of which we find at the present day such marked traces even among fairly intelligent men.

Those mercenaries were followed by others of a higher order of intellect and of greater pretensions, of whom Crofton Croker and Sheridan Knowles may be considered to have been the representatives. The drama, poetry, and prose fiction of every description employed their attention alternately, and in each they proved true to the baser instincts of their nature and the traditions of the faction whence they had sprung. They were stanch no-popery men of the Orange stripe, and, having a Protestant, English audience to gratify, they were consistently and virulently anti-Catholic and anti-Irish. When they wished to delineate their co-patriots, whether before the foot-lights or in the pages of cheap novels, they invariably divided them into two classes: the high-spirited, accomplished Protestant gentleman, and the low, grovelling, ignorant papist. Thus for many years did they thrive on bigotry and fatten upon treason to the land that was unfortunate enough to have given them birth. It was only natural that England should have viewed with complacency the caricatures of a faith she had so long and so strenuously proscribed, and a people whom she had robbed of the last vestige of independence; but it is humiliating to reflect that the works of such libellers were up to a recent period popular in Ireland, and that their comedies and farces “have kept the stage” even to our own day.

There were yet other candidates for fame, who, tired of the provincialism of Irish towns, or impatient of the restraints which their peculiar calling in life had placed upon them, sought an English market for their intellectual wares—spoiled children of genius, men like Maginn and Mahony, of much learning and fascinating accomplishments, fitted to have conferred lasting honor on their country, but who, lacking the true spirit of national dignity and personal respect, easily fell a prey to one or other of the contending English parties, and sank to the level of those who disgrace the noble profession of letters by making it subservient to the base purposes of political factions. This class contributed much of what is still to be found brilliant and entertaining in English literature, but little that reflects credit on their character as Irishmen.

Following or contemporaneous with them came another and a different school of Irish writers, such as Lever, Lover, Maxwell, and even Carleton; for, though the latter in many of his later works showed a just appreciation of the vast improvement taking place in public taste, his earlier and more popular productions, apart from their occasional touches of true pathos and flashes of genuine wit, were devoted mostly to caricature and exaggeration. Charles Lever, who has written so many books, and who is yet the most read of all the Irish novelists of this century, has been called the best recruiting sergeant the British government ever employed; while Lover may be styled a gifted and versatile buffoon in all save his lyrics. The first’s highest conception of an Irish gentleman was one who broke his arm over a Galway fence, was commissioned in the British army, blundered into all sorts of scrapes and out of them, hated Napoleon, worshipped “Sir Arthur,” charged wildly at Ciudad Rodrigo or Waterloo, and finally—married an heiress. His best Irish peasant does not rise above the grade of Mickey Free or Darby the Blast, while he seemed utterly unconscious of the existence of a very important social element in all agricultural countries—the farming or middle class, always remarkable for their sturdy common sense and practical views of life. It was from this portion of his countrymen and from the hardy mechanics of the towns that Scott drew his best and most enduring portraits of Scotch manliness, shrewdness, and humor.

Lover, though tender and natural in verse, was singularly unfortunate in his choice of subjects and altogether false in his attempts to develop them. He also ignored the “middle classes,” and substituted for gentlemen sentimental non-entities, and for the free-spoken, light-hearted, and withal poetical plebeian, blundering boobies full of chicane and deception. We can scarcely believe that the man who wrote _Treasure Trove_ and _Handy Andy_ could have conceived such pathetic songs as “The Angels’ Whisper” and “The Fairy Boy.”

Still, the works of these authors, though exhibiting many glaring defects, were a great improvement on those of their predecessors, and consequently they have not yet been consigned to the oblivion which has enshrouded the productions of the bigots of the previous era.

But the revolution in Irish literature had commenced long before their advent, and the credit of initiating it belongs to one who was not only universally admired and applauded during his life, but whose fame continues to augment as time rolls along, and the memory of his extraordinary efforts in behalf of his faith and country becomes brighter and more enduring. That man was Thomas Moore, the son of humble Catholic parents, who, on account of his religious belief, was refused a fellowship in the only university of which his native country could then boast. Naturally disgusted at such ostracism, Moore, at the age of twenty-three, went to London, and entered upon that brilliant career in poetry and prose which has indelibly stamped his name on the history of the literature of the nineteenth century. Never was the force of genius better exemplified than in the life of Moore. A plebeian, a Catholic, and an Irishman in the strongest sense of those terms; without condescending to apologize for, or attempting to palliate, the facts of his station and belief; with scarcely a friend or acquaintance in the great metropolis, and no recognition in the world of letters, the poet rose amid an aristocratic, Protestant, and anti-Irish community to a position equal to the most gifted of Scotland’s and England’s men of genius, and in his _Melodies_ far surpassed any lyrics that have been written in our language since or before his time. In 1808 the first part of that unequalled collection of songs appeared, and each successive instalment but added to the popularity of the preceding. From the first they became fashionable, and consequently popular. They were sung in the drawing-rooms of princes and in the cottage parlors of the shop-keeper and tradesman. Persons of every rank in life who knew little of Ireland, and that little not to her credit, listened entranced to “Remember the Glories of Brian the Brave” or “Oh! blame not the Bard,” and began to think that a country that could produce such airs and so sweet a poet could not after all be considered very barbarous. It was but a poor concession, yet under the circumstances a most valuable one. It was the first blow struck against the solid wall of prejudice with which English society had surrounded itself.

Next to Moore we place John Banim, the principal author of the _Tales of the O’Hara Family_. Banim, like Moore, sprang from the ranks of the humbler classes and sought in London a field for his rare genius which was denied him at home. Though a dramatist of no mean order, his reputation rests principally on his novels, many of which, like the _Boyne Water_, _Crohoore of the Bill-Hook_, _The Priest-Hunter_, and _The Fetches_, are works of real power, interspersed here and there with pleasantry and humor, but always moral, dignified, and true to nature. The sale of Banim’s tales and shorter stories from their intrinsic merit, and perhaps somewhat on account of their novelty, was very extensive in England, and helped to increase the good feeling towards the Irish people which the lyre of Moore had first called into being.

In Gerald Griffin, afterward the humble Christian Brother, Banim found not only a friend but a powerful auxiliary. Griffin, of all the writers of fiction in the English language, was the purest and most actively moral. If we search all his works—and they fill nine or ten volumes—we will not find an expression or an innuendo to offend the most sensitive. The writings of the great English novelists of this century, like those of Scott, Thackeray, and Dickens, cannot be said to be positively immoral, though the author of the justly-celebrated _Waverley Novels_ often exhibited marked prejudice, and sometimes downright bigotry; while his later rivals, when not satirical or trifling, can at best claim but a negative morality for their teachings and tendencies. But the genius of Griffin sprang from a pure Catholic heart filled with love for all his kind, and consequently he wrote with a sense of religious responsibility, and in a spirit of justice and rectitude rarely to be found so thoroughly developed in a writer of fiction in our days. His works have had a great influence on the popular mind of both countries. But, though he first wrote in England, his sole and absorbing object was to benefit his countrymen. When satisfied that the germ of his laurels had begun to fructify in a foreign soil, he returned to his home, where, amid domestic pleasures, and in daily communion with the characters he so admirably portrayed and the scenes of natural beauty he so loved to describe, he composed his more important and finished works.

Meanwhile, another and not less important impetus had been given to the rapid change taking place in popular sentiment regarding Irish character and literature, and this was in Ireland itself. The letters of “J. K. L.”—the learned Dr. Doyle—on Catholic Emancipation and the Tithe Question, and those of the present venerable Archbishop of Tuam on similar topics, had thrilled the Irish heart and evoked in it a feeling of national dignity and self-reliance that had long lain dormant; and even the great O’Connell, amid all his professional and political labors, found time to contribute his aid to the new movement. But it was not till after 1840 that the various rivulets combined and assumed the proportions of a mighty flood, which, bursting through the barriers of ignorance and prejudice, overspread the entire land. Then began to appear the theologians and ecclesiastical historians of Maynooth and the antiquarian writers of old Trinity; the fiery ballads of the _Nation_ and the graceful and learned essays of the _Dublin Review_ and _University Magazine_. Archæological and Celtic societies were formed, the hitherto neglected _Transactions_ of the Royal Irish Academy were brought into public notice, and the musty tomes that were crumbling to dust and decay on the shelves of Trinity College library, after their sleep of centuries, were explored, collated, and vivified. The names of Murray, O’Reilly, Petrie, Todd, O’Donovan, O’Curry, Graves, Wilde, Meehan, McCarthy, Mangan, and a host of other lesser lights, became familiar to the intellectual world by their profound, subtle, or brilliant contributions to the literature of the age. One thing alone was wanting to complete this grand national revival: a Catholic university—and even that soon came, not as a subordinate worker in the common cause, but as the leader of the movement.

Yet, though general education and popular instruction, in their own sphere, kept pace with the mental awakening in the higher departments of learning, strange to say, the stage, generally considered the first to yield to popular impulse, was the slowest and last to acknowledge the improved spirit of the times, and even to this day clings to many of the antiquated and bigoted so-called Irish dramas and comedies with insensate tenacity. Theatrical managers still persist in presenting for the amusement of patrons, a large portion of whom are Irish, the farces and low interludes which fifty years ago were written to gratify the anti-Irish and anti-Catholic feelings of the lowest class of London society. A partially successful effort has been made recently to redeem this gross and fatal error; better, or rather less bad, Irish dramas have of late made their appearance, and let us hope the reformation, once set on foot, will be carried out. There is no reason why we should not have Irish dramas as good as Irish poems, tales, and other works of fiction. If people will go to theatres, they ought not be compelled to become interested spectators of outrages on faith and morals, and patrons and supporters of those who commit the outrages.

Still, casting our memory back over the history of Irish intellectual life for more than half a century, it would be scarcely an exaggeration to say that since the _Renaissance_ epoch no country has given such evidence, in so short a time, of mental fertility and activity as that island which was once almost as famous throughout Europe for her learning as for the piety of her children. Ireland has at last a literature which is not only rich in ideas and information, but which is both national and Catholic. Her history, once so obscure and misunderstood, can now be studied with as much ease and satisfaction as any in Christendom; her antiquities, formerly the spoil of the ignorant or the jest of the sceptic, have been collected, arranged, and scientifically explained in a hundred ways; while the lives and actions of her great and holy men, from the earliest ages, have received full, critical, and impartial justice. And as yet we have only seen the beginning! If that be so fair and full of promise, what may not be hoped for from the intellectual future of a keen yet imaginative, brilliant yet conscientious, witty yet harmless in their wit, passionate in the wider sense, yet profoundly religious, people?

THE BRIDES OF CHRIST.

IV.
ST. CATHERINE.

“Whom I shall wed,” said Alexandria’s princess, “rare
Of beauty must be, past imagining;
So great I shall not think I have made him king;
More rich, sweet-hearted more, than summer air!”
In dreams she came where courts such state declare
Of Mother and Son enthroned, that worshipping
She knelt, though royal: the Child placed a ring
Upon her finger, and she woke—’twas there!

So Catherine became Christ’s. Again she kneels:
With rose and lily, in white and purple clothed,
No shining host now hails the heaven-betrothed,
But God’s bolt shatters the sharp torture-wheels.
Then Night and angels her pall-bearers are—
The Bridegroom waits on Sinai lone and far.

V.
ST. MARGARET.

Of all the virgins pure that bear the palm,
There is not any one more meek and mild
Than sweet maid Margaret. Tending while a child
The flocks, she drew near, in the mountain’s calm,
To the Good Shepherd, like a trustful lamb;
She felt that God with man was reconciled;
She saw diurnal victory undefiled
Of light o’er darkness hoist the oriflamme.

Of Morning. So flashed she, in dungeon drear,
The Cross uplifted, till the Dragon foul
Crouched at her feet, in fear of that white soul.
O Pearl of Antioch, so soft and clear!
O Daisy, with the chaste dew on thy lips!
Thou touchest Christ with stainless finger-tips.

VI.
ST. BARBARA.

Dioscorus of Heliopolis
Shut his wise daughter in a lofty tower,
Jealous of lovers; therein, for her bower,
She caused three windows to be made, in this
Her father disobeying, but said: “It is
Through three clear windows that the Almighty Power,
The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, shower
Light on the soul—with light immortal bliss!”

Scourged, by the gold hair dragged, slain by thy sire—
A turbaned heathen!—soft as rosy May,
Yet resolute, and avenged by instant fire,
Christian Bellona! sweet-browed Barbara!
With the Red Mantle of thy fortitude,
Thy Tower and Cannon, be my soul endued!