Chapter XLVI: Part II (4)

That was, as we have said, the honest gentleman’s foible—almost his sole one; he secretly worshipped rank, and often sighed to think that he, who might—and, he sometimes added to himself, should—have been a De Rohan was only a De Boisrobert, barely a gentleman, by virtue of the lands his money had bought. Yet, if not the rose, he had at least lived near the rose. The son of a notary himself, he was yet distantly connected with one of the noblest names in France, as he was by no means slow in making folks aware.

“My good cousin, De Beaumanoir,” he would say in an off-hand way, pronouncing the name _tout sec_, like the provincial ladies in the _Roman Comique_, though to his face he never ventured to address him otherwise than as M. le Comte—“my good cousin De Beaumanoir writes me that he is to visit Saint-Aignan at his country-seat, and will have me to be of the party.”

Or, mysteriously: “The army—but this, you conceive, my friend, is between ourselves—a secret, mind you, of state—the army moves on Flanders this week. I have it direct from Beaumanoir.”

It was then, as you may read in Scarron’s sprightly pages, a common ambition of provincial gentlemen to be thought on familiar terms with the great folks of the court. Truly, an extraordinary time!

At these _naïve_ confidences the _curé_, who knew his friend’s failing, but respected his virtues, smiled, if at all, to himself.

But M. de Boisrobert’s reverence for his noble kinsman went further than talking of him in season and out of season. He gave a more substantial proof of his regard in making him his sole heir. “The money should go with the title,” he said; “the family must be kept up.” It seemed to him a little price to pay for the privilege of being admitted for a month or two in the year to the rather frigid hospitality of the Hôtel Beaumanoir, of being nightly snubbed by the bluest blood in France, and of having down a great man or two for a day in the shooting season, to convert the Château Boisrobert to his enamored fancy into a new Versailles. His noble cousin he would gladly have had stay longer; but the count, after yawning through forty-eight hours of _ennui_, invariably left. The lands of Boisrobert he wanted; its simple and placid life he could not stomach. His palate was seasoned to higher flavors.

Not to put too fine a point on it, M. the Count de Beaumanoir was as insolent, imperious, and ungrateful a scoundrel as was to be found in a court where gentry of his pattern were rather a drug. Had it not been that he enjoyed the confidence and familiarity of a still greater rogue than himself—no less a one, to wit, than Monsieur, the brother of the Most Christian King—he would long since have come to grief. He was more than suspected of a share in the mysterious poisoning of the hapless Henrietta of Orleans, and it was only the credit of his patron and his own well-known courage and skill as a swordsman that kept these doubts from taking form.

Such was the heir whom our worthy M. de Boisrobert had selected for the reversion of his vast estates; and his promise once given, the count determined that it should be kept.

II.

Daybreak of a pleasant morning in October, 1681. In the court-yard and stables of the Château de Boisrobert, and in the great farm-yard near by, all is bustle and confusion. Grooms and footmen, herdsmen and farm-servants, are scurrying to and fro, with lanterns and lighted torches, through the gray dawn, tumbling over one another in their haste, shrieking out contradictory orders at the top of their lungs, clamoring and making all the noise possible, as though they had taken a contract for the purpose and felt they had but a limited time to fulfil it. In the farm-yard the heavy Norman horses are being harnessed, with collars that would be in themselves a load for a horse of our degenerate days, to the unwieldy Norman carts, already loaded with huge sacks of wheat and barley; further on, in the barns, a prodigious lowing and bleating and bellowing tell where Pierrot and Hugues are marshalling their herds; in the court-yard, saddled and bridled, are stamping and snorting the steeds which shall bear M. de Boisrobert and his bodyguard of two armed domestics to the great fair of Moulin-la-Forêt. Himself booted and spurred for the journey, that gentleman stands upon the terrace of the château, overlooking these preparations; chiding here, encouraging there, animating all by word and gesture. M. de Boisrobert has not been a nobleman long enough to forget that he is a farmer, and prefers to be his own steward. He finds it saves time and temper as well as money.

By dint of much exhortation and shrill volubility of expletives in the curious Norman _patois_ all is at last in readiness, and they are off, with many tender partings and tearful embraces between Blaise and Madelon, and much scolding from Mère Chicon the housekeeper, and fervent adjurations to the _Bon Dieu_ to bring them a good market and a safe return. The latter prayer may seem superfluous, as the distance is but thirty miles and they are a stout party. But it is the day of the famous Mandrin, most redoubtable of robbers, and of the terrible _chauffeurs_ who extort the farmer’s hidden hoard by roasting his feet at his own fire; so there is some room for trepidation in the bosoms of the simple peasant-girls whom this animated company soon leave behind.

We have not space to follow the great cavalcade as it goes bellowing and baaing and shrieking and _sacrréing_ over the white roads between the hedges and the apple-orchards to the great fair. We cannot even stop with M. de Boisrobert at the tidy little _auberge_ of the Pomme d’Or for the welcome _déjeuner_ of _soupe aux croûtes_, to be followed by ham, and perhaps a _poulet_ with the freshest of eggs and salad, and the most delicious of cheeses, and a most refreshing draught of cool cider from the great stone jug. Nor can we do more than glance at the humors of the fair—much like other fairs, for the matter of that—with its inevitable jugglers and tumblers and charlatans, swallowing flames as if they were sausages, and pulling endless yards of ribbon from their mouths, to the delight of gaping rustics; its gipsies and gingerbread hawkers; its shrill-voiced peasant women, in high Norman caps, selling eggs and poultry; its shriller-voiced ballad-singers piping out:

“Si le roi m’avait donné
Paris sa grand’ ville,”

or some other favorite _chanson_ of the time. These joys we must pass lightly by, to say that, before the afternoon was well over, M. de Boisrobert had already sold his entire venture at an excellent profit, and it was rumored about the fair that he would go home richer by 20,000 francs (equal to 80,000 now) than when he came. The interest in the lucky capitalist increased; it extended even to his horses, and one or two simple rustics went so far as to push their way, during the temporary absence of the grooms, into the stables, there to gaze in open-mouthed admiration upon the steeds that had the honor of bearing—so history renews itself—M. Cæsar de Boisrobert and his fortune.

The hour for departure drew nigh. As the days were getting short and the homeward ride was long and lonely, and, as already hinted, far from safe—few roads in France were safe in those days after nightfall—M. de Boisrobert commanded an early start. He himself was to ride on ahead, attended only by his two mounted valets, leaving the wagoners and herdsmen to follow more leisurely with the carts. The horses were accordingly brought forth and saddled, and the worthy squire was just setting foot in stirrup when he was accosted by a _curé_, who, calling him by name, politely craved leave to ride with him, as their road lay in the same direction. M. de Boisrobert assented more than gladly, for not only was company desirable, but a _curé_ the company he most desired, and which could be accepted, as would not have been the case with every comer, without suspicion. So they set forth together.

The _curé_ turned out a most agreeable travelling companion, and M. de Boisrobert secretly felicitated himself on the chance which had thrown them together. So charmed was he with his new-found friend that, when the latter pressed upon him the offer of a supper and a bed at the vicarage, he wavered, until reminded by the sum he had about him of the wisdom of pushing on. But even while he doubted came a most distressing mishap. The horse ridden by one of the servants stumbled, fell, and, before his rider had fairly scrambled to his feet, rolled over stone dead. There was nothing for it but to mount Blaise behind Constant, and so get on as best they might. But, lo and behold! scarcely had Constant drawn rein for the purpose than, with what seemed to the startled hearers almost a shriek, the beast he bestrode set off at a furious gallop, which soon left his luckless rider on the ground with a broken leg. And, strange to say, the poor animal had run but a few yards further when he too stopped, staggered, and—_pouf!_ before one could say Jack Robinson, or its equivalent in Norman French, he is as dead as the very deadest of door-nails or herrings.

Whatever M. de Boisrobert may have thought of this odd coincidence, he had little leisure to dwell upon it; for the next instant his own steed was in convulsions, and, barely giving him time to spring from the saddle, like the others rolled over dead. How account for so singular a fatality? Had some poisonous weed got into their fodder? had some venomous reptile stung them in their stalls? or—uneasy doubts crept into the good gentleman’s mind—had they been foully dealt with by reptiles in human form who meant to waylay and rob, if not murder, the travellers? If the latter, it would be indeed most prudent to accept the good _curé’s_ hospitality. His house was luckily not far off, and the disabled servant being first made comfortable in a wayside cabin, and the sound one despatched to the nearest town for a surgeon, M. de Boisrobert and the _curé_ took their way to the home of the latter.

Night had fallen when they reached it, but enough light still remained to show that it was a partly-ruined château, dating probably from the time of the Crusades. One wing had been so far reconstructed as to be habitable, and the ancient chapel, the _curé_ explained, had also been put in order to serve as the village church. “My parish,” he added with a sigh, “is too poor to build a better.” A moat, still filled with green and stagnant water, surrounded the walls; a few planks served for a pathway across it, where once had hung the feudal drawbridge; a dark and snake-like ivy crawled up the crumbling walls; dense woods cast about it a funereal gloom. Altogether its outward aspect was sombre and forbidding in the extreme, and M. de Boisrobert could not repress a shudder or stifle a sinister presentiment as he looked upon his quarters for the night. Had his host been anybody but a _curé_, he would have felt like drawing back even then.

A little old man, who filled in the modest household by turns the comprehensive functions of butler, valet, groom, gardener, waiter, cook, and general factotum, took their horses in silence, but with a curious glance at the visitor the latter could not help remarking, and the _curé_ led the way to the drawing-room. This was a lofty, vaulted apartment almost bare of furniture, on the walls of which flapped dismally a few tattered pieces of tapestry, the relics of old-time grandeur. A faggot or two crackled and sputtered feebly on the gloomy hearth. Near it, busied apparently over woman’s work of some kind, were seated an old woman of repulsive aspect and a young girl, the latter of whom the _curé_ introduced as Juliette, his niece, and, briefly requesting her to entertain their guest, excused himself to see to the latter’s entertainment for the night.

And now, as the heroine of this exciting history has at last arrived—a little tardiness, as you know, messieurs, must be forgiven to her sex—it seems only becoming that she should have a chapter to herself.

III.

Lovely? Of course she is lovely. What a ridiculous question! Who ever heard of a heroine who wasn’t lovely, still less a heroine who was also the niece of a rob—_Peste!_ The cat was almost out of the bag that time—so nearly out, in fact, that we may as well slip the noose and let her go at once. Scat! And now, the author’s mind being freed of an enormous load, he breathes more freely and announces that our luckless M. de Boisrobert has literally fallen into a den of thieves. For what purpose otherwise that artful hint about the rustics prying into the stables, the horses falling dead upon the way, the elaborate setting forth of the gloom and desolation hanging like a pall over the ruined château—to what end, do you suppose, was all this expenditure of literary artifice, except to prepare the reader’s mind for some blood-curdling and harrowing event? But the _curé_? the _curé_? Why, simply no _curé_ at all: a wolf in sheep’s clothing, as there were then but too many in France.[111]

Footnote 111:

It should be said here that the main incident on which this tale is
founded is true, and that this sacrilegious disguise was in those days
frequently assumed by French robbers the better to disarm suspicion.
The fact is in itself a striking testimony to the implicit confidence
which the clergy of France have always inspired, and deserved.

Of this, however, as yet M. de Boisrobert knew nothing. Filled with vague forebodings of evil he could neither define nor reason down, he felt but little in the humor for talk, and still less—being, as you remember, in his tenth lustrum—for flirtation. So, after one or two wise remarks upon the weather, or the state of the crops, or the latest opera, or whatever other topics gentlemen-farmers then chose to break the ice of conversation with a pretty girl, had been answered _more virgineo_ with shy blushes, or faltering monosyllables, or embarrassed and embarrassing silence, M. de Boisrobert betook himself to the window to look out upon the surrounding country. A full moon threw upon every object a lustre like that of day, and—ha! what is this he sees in the court-yard? Can that be his host, the _curé_, talking so confidentially to those exceedingly sinister-looking chaps (one of whom he now remembers to have had pointed out to him at the fair as a coiner of base money, the other as a more than suspected thief), and handling those three exceedingly long and ugly-looking poniards!—ugh! how their keen edges glitter in the moonlight as the rascals run their dirty thumbs along to try their temper.

M. de Boisrobert turned from the window with a gesture of affright and despair, and beheld Juliette standing before him, no longer a timid child but a lovely and courageous woman, one finger upon her lip, the other pointing to the ill-featured duenna, who had had the good manners to go to sleep. In a few rapid whispers, and still more eloquent gestures, she explained the danger and her unalterable resolve to save him or perish in the attempt. Whether it was her words or her beauty, M. de Boisrobert felt instantly reassured. Indeed, had he known anything of the course of such adventures, he must have felt so from the moment he laid eyes on her. For what other purpose except to save him could he suppose so lovely a creature was to be found in so vile a den? And let it here be said for the benefit of scoffers that the present writer is well aware how often this incident has been used for purposes of fiction—at least ten thousand times in the English language alone. Yes; but does not the very frequency of its use prove it to be founded on fact, that some time or other it was true? Very well; this is the time it was true. Besides, who has said that Juliette is to succeed in her noble but rash endeavor? Suppose—now just suppose—she were to fail; in which of your fictions do you find a stroke of originality like that? If the historian were revengeful; if he had a mind to distort facts, as historians in very remote ages are said sometimes to have done—well, well, we shall see.

In her hurried warning Juliette had made shift to tell M. de Boisrobert that it was meant to put a sleeping potion in his wine, and afterwards to enter his chamber and kill him while still under the influence of the drug.

“Do not for your life refuse to drink,” she added, “but be careful to eat the apple I shall offer you after it, and which will contain the antidote to the drug.”

Scarcely had she ended when the pretended _curé_ came in with his precious comrades, whom he introduced as parishioners. (“A fit flock for such a shepherd!” thought poor M. de Boisrobert.) Supper was served at once, and all went as the young girl had foretold. The wine was drunk and the apple duly presented and eaten with a confidence that must seem truly sublime under the circumstances, remembering, too, that one of M. de Boisrobert’s remote ancestors had lost his entire patrimony through accepting a similar gift from a near female relation. Feigning weariness and sleep, the traveller begged to be excused and was shown to his room.

No sooner was he alone than he began to examine his means of defence and offence. The flints, of course, were taken from his pistols and the bolts removed from the door—they would be poor robbers, totally unworthy the attention of an enlightened reader, who would neglect such obvious precautions as these. Somewhat disconsolately M. de Boisrobert looked under the bed and into the wardrobe, but found no comfort there. Then he piled all the furniture against the door, drew his sword, said his prayers, set his teeth, thought of Juliette (O middle-aged and most forlorn of Romeos!), and awaited the conspirators.

He had not long to wait. Scarcely had he taken position when a stealthy tread outside, a fumbling at the latch, and probably a strong odor of garlic penetrating through the keyhole, announced their arrival. The door was first softly, then strongly, pushed, and then, as the unlooked-for resistance showed their plot was discovered, a furious volley of oaths was followed by an onset that made the barricade tremble. Now should we dearly love to entertain the reader with the description of a terrific combat _à l’outrance_—also _à la_ Dumas—wherein M. de Boisrobert, calmly awaiting his foes’ approach, falls upon them with such ferocity that in a twinkling he has one spitted like a lark, another cloven to the chine, and the third in headlong flight and bawling lustily for mercy, but pricked sorely in tender places by the relentless sword. But, alas!—such is the fatal limitation of your true story—nothing of the sort took place. On the contrary, our hero was in all probability horribly frightened and thoroughly glad to see a secret panel suddenly slide back, and a white hand thrust through the opening, while the sweetest voice he had ever heard begged him to make haste. To seize that hand—and who shall blame him if he pressed it to his lips?—to dart through the opening—quick! quick! good Jean!—to close the panel, is the work of an instant. Scarcely is it shut when cr-rack! crash! bang! go door and barricade, and the foiled assassins are heard stamping and swearing furiously about the deserted room. If you could but have seen their faces and heard—no, it would not have been edifying to hear their language. But the fugitives are safe. Need it be said that the foresight of the faithful Jean (who, of course, follows his young mistress, having, indeed, waited this long time in the robber’s den only for a chance to be on hand in this emergency) had provided horses, on which they soon reached Evreux, where they lodged an information, which, there being no police there to speak of, led to the prompt arrest of the ruffians.

Placing the lovely Juliette in a convent, M. de Boisrobert returned home. But it was observed that he hunted less than formerly, that he was often closeted with Father Bernard and his notary, and that he spent much time in settling his affairs. Need the result be told? What in the world is a middle-aged bachelor to do whose life is saved by a lovely maiden of spotless virtue? For, be it known, the fair Juliette, left an orphan only a week before, had, by her dying father, a rich farmer of Brézolles, been consigned to the guardianship of this wicked brother, whose evil courses he was far from suspecting. All that is as plain as a pikestaff; as it is that in less than six months after, just long enough to get the trousseau ready (from the Worth of the day, of course) and to see the wicked uncle comfortably hanged, the bells of Friar Lawrence’s—we should say of Father Bernard’s—little church at Boisrobert rang out a merry answer to the problem last propounded.

When the distant echoes of these wedding chimes reached the ears of M. le Comte de Beaumanoir at Paris, he was not at all angry, as people thought he would be. Oh! dear, no. On the contrary, he only smiled, showing a remarkably fine set of teeth. So that people said he was a brave man, this poor M. le Comte, and not by any means as black as he was painted. And, indeed, a great many folks began to commiserate him and to abuse M. de Boisrobert.

IV.

Well?

Well what?

Why, what came of M. de Beaumanoir showing his teeth?

Oh! that? Nothing—just nothing at all. That’s the trouble, you see, of telling a true story: one’s imagination is hampered at every step. It would have been most delightful and exciting to have invented a frightful tale of the count’s vengeance; how he slew his recalcitrant kinsman, immured his weeping bride in a dungeon for life, and laid waste the lands of Boisrobert with fire and sword, etc., etc. But the truth is, he did nothing of the kind. Indeed, his teeth were speedily drawn, and he was glad to get away with his worthless life. The false _curé_ confessed before his death that the count had suborned him to kill his kinsman as he returned from the fair, promising him a sum equal to that which he would be sure to find on M. de Boisrobert’s person, and even suggesting the disguise. He little thought that the very scheme he fondly imagined was to secure him his coveted inheritance was destined really to lose it to him for ever. So ever come to grief the machinations of the wicked! This last escapade was a little too much even for courtly morals, and Monsieur was quietly advised to hint to his murderous favorite that his health would probably be the better for a change of air.

And the fatal consequences resulting from this marriage?

Yes, yes, of course; how stupid to forget it! Well, a cynic might say that for a bachelor to marry at all, especially at forty-five—but never mind the cynic. Their married life was surely not unhappy? Let us hope not. Do Romeo and Juliet ever throw teacups at each other over the breakfast-table because that duck of a spring bonnet is not forthcoming? In romances certainly not; but in true stories—hem! Let us trust, however, that peace reigned eternal over the domestic hearthstone at the Château de Boisrobert. But his marriage had cost its owner an illusion—a life-long illusion; and that is a painful thing at forty-five. Disenchantment seems to come harder as one gets older and has anything left to be disenchanted of. He ceased to believe that rank and birth are the same as goodness, or even greatness, and it cost him many a pang, and no doubt a great deal of real though whimsical unhappiness, to be forced thus suddenly and radically to readjust his scheme of life. But, in spite of the adventure which gave him a wife, perhaps because of it, he never lost his faith in _curés_ or in Juliette; and the games of bowls and of _trictrac_ were all the pleasanter for the sweet face that thenceforth lit them up, and the romping curly-pates that disturbed them and in time effaced from their fond father’s memory his lingering regret for the loss of a noble heir.

TO AUBREY DE VERE.
AFTER READING “POEMS OF PLACES—ITALY,” EDITED BY H. W. LONGFELLOW.

I stood in ancient church, ruined and vast,
Whose crumbling altar of its Lord was bare,
Whose shattered windows let in all the glare
Of noonday heat, and noise of crowds that passed
With careless jest, of malice not assoiled.
Within, fast-fading angels still lent grace
Of art, believing, to the holy place
That cruel hands of its best gift despoiled.
With weary feet I trod the broken floor,
With tearless eyes the maimèd aisles gazed down,
When, lo! afar a waxen taper shone,
Burning a hidden altar clear before:
Here hastened I, here knelt—O poet true!
Thine was the light that shone my sorrow through.

COLONIZATION AND FUTURE EMIGRATION.

God has apparently chosen the United States as the theatre for the demonstration of the truth that the Catholic Church is the church of the people. She has always been the church of the people; many of her most severe persecutions have been caused by the stand she has taken in behalf of popular rights and individual freedom against the tyranny of kings and the exactions of nobles. But never before has she been furnished with so large a field for the manifestation and development of her popular and democratic character as has been prepared for her here. It is her destiny, we believe, to save the republic from the ruin to which the sects and their offspring, the atheists, would lead her. Even those of our Catholic readers who may not fully share this belief will admit that, to all seeming, the Catholic Church is destined to play an important part in the future history of our country—at least that she has grown in numbers, material wealth, and social influence during the last thirty years to an almost marvellous degree.

A better or more certain method of accomplishing the work of the church in the United States could scarcely have been devised than the congregation of a large share of the Catholic emigration in our great cities. The Catholic Church in the United States is not “a foreign church” in any other sense than the Bible, or Shakspere’s plays, or Homer’s poems are “foreign” books; she is, as they are, and far more than they are, the common inheritance of all, and she is as much at home here, and as rightfully at home, as she is or ever was in any other land. Indeed, the church of God is not and cannot be foreign to any of God’s creatures. But a large proportion of her children in the United States at present are either of foreign birth or are the descendants of foreign-born persons in the first or second generation. These people did not bring the Catholic Church with them to America: they found her here; she had always had an existence here since Christopher Columbus planted the cross upon San Salvador, and since the Jesuit priests sailed up the St. Lawrence and down the Mississippi rivers. If, however, the emigration which has poured into this country since 1840 had not arrived, or had it come from non-Catholic countries, and had the growth of the church here been dependent wholly, or even chiefly, upon the natural increase of American Catholic families and upon converts from Protestantism or heathenism, the church in America to-day would have been numerically insignificant; which is only the same as to say that, if emigration had ceased after the first European exodus, the population of the United States to-day would be equally insignificant.

We may form some idea of what the progress of the church under these conditions would have been here by remembering what it has been in England since the cessation of the active persecutions which followed the Reformation. There are about 1,800,000 Catholics in England to-day. Of these not less than 800,000 are Irish, French, German, Spanish, and Italian emigrants or their children; the remaining 1,000,000 represent all the converts of English birth, as well as the descendants of the old Catholic families who always retained the faith. Half a century has elapsed since the English Catholics were emancipated from the last remnant of the persecuting and restrictive legislation which had oppressed them since the days of Elizabeth. During this half-century the church in England has been free—free in its own government, free in its work of propagating the faith and of bringing back the English people to the religion which their fathers had cherished for a thousand years.

Yet, with some advantages that Catholics in the United States did not and do not yet possess, the growth of the church in England during the last fifty years has been vastly less than the progress she has made in this country during the same period. In 1830 there were more Catholics in England than in the United States; since then the church in both countries has been equally free, with the advantages at the start on the side of England. But now the Catholics in the United States outnumber those in England more than fourfold.

In 1830, according to the most trustworthy estimates, there were 600,000 Catholics in England and 475,000 in the United States; now they number two millions there and from six to seven millions here. In England to-day the church has a cardinal, twelve suffragan bishops, and 2,064 priests; in the United States she has a cardinal, 66 archbishops and bishops, and 5,297 priests. In England, according to the English _Catholic Directory_ for last year, there were 997 Catholic churches, 7 theological seminaries, 312 ecclesiastical students, 15 colleges, 38 asylums, and 5 hospitals. In the United States, according to the American _Catholic Directory_ for the same year, there were 5,292 Catholic churches, 34 theological seminaries, 1,217 ecclesiastical students, 62 colleges, 219 asylums, and 95 hospitals.[112]

Footnote 112:

These figures, as far as they relate to the institutions of the church
in England, are probably not entirely correct. The _Register_ from
which we have quoted contains no tabular statement of these
institutions, and we have been compelled to arrive at the totals by an
enumeration of our own, the accuracy of which has been rendered
doubtful by the confused manner in which the statistics of each
diocese were given. However, our figures cannot be very greatly at
fault.

We have drawn out this comparison for the purpose of accentuating our former remark that the marvellous growth of the church in the United States during the last half-century has been mainly due to emigration from Catholic countries. Had it not been for these accessions, it is doubtful, in our opinion, whether the church in the United States would to-day equal in numbers the church in England. But would its growth have been so great, so pronounced, so commanding to the attention of all beholders, had this emigration been directed away from the cities and dispersed throughout the rural and agricultural sections of the country? A little reflection will, we think, show that this question must be answered in the negative. It would have availed the church nothing had these emigrants been placed in their new homes under conditions where the preservation of their faith in any practical form would have been almost impossible; where they would have been deprived of the care and counsel of their spiritual guides and of the sacraments necessary for salvation; where their children would have remained unbaptized, their marriages have been degraded to civil contracts, and their souls starved and enfeebled by the absence of the Bread of Life. Yet that this would have been the fate of the great majority of them, had they not congregated in the cities, cannot be doubted, unless, indeed, God had chosen to work another miracle in their behalf and to create for them a miraculous supply of priests—a supply so large that every little hamlet in the far-off wilds of the West and North should have been furnished with a spiritual director.

Some boast of having even nine millions of Catholics in the republic; but it can be shown that there are perhaps half as many more Americans now living who are the children of Catholic parents in the first or second generation, but who have lost their faith and grown up as Protestants or without any religion at all, chiefly because their parents had gone into districts where there were no priests, and where the exercise of their religion, save as a spiritual meditation, was impossible.[113] It was only when the Catholic emigrants began to arrive here in large numbers, and to dwell together by hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands in the great cities, that it became possible, humanly, to provide for their religious wants and for their Catholic education. How nobly they have themselves furnished the material means for this work the statistics given above show. They have mainly done it for themselves. In England the Irish Catholics, in their works of charity and in the erection of their churches, have often been aided by the contributions of their wealthy English fellow-Catholics; but in America the foreign-born and the descendants of the foreign-born Catholics have for the most part built their own churches, their own convents, seminaries, and schools, and have received but little aid from their co-religionists of native ancestry. Indeed, in some instances within our own knowledge it is the latter who have been the beneficiaries of the former; and many an American Catholic to-day is indebted to the charity and self-denial of German, French, and Irish Catholics for the services of the priest who was the means of his conversion, and for the erection of the church in which he hears Mass. We repeat that all this was made possible by the congregation of our Catholic emigrants in the cities, and that the most deplorable consequences would have followed had not this congregation taken place.

Footnote 113:

A very ingenious statement was published some time ago in one of our
journals, setting forth what was believed to be “the constituent
elements of the population of the United States in 1870.” This
statement may be thus summarized: In 1784 the entire white population
of the United States was 3,172,000 persons; of these 1,141,920 were of
Irish birth, 751,280 were of other Celtic races, 841,800 were of
Anglo-Saxon extraction, and 427,000 were of Dutch and Scandinavian
birth. The total immigration to the United States from 1790 to 1870
was 8,199,000 persons, of whom 3,248,000 came from Ireland, 796,000
from Anglo-Saxon races; and 4,155,000 from all other sources. The
total population in 1870 was 38,500,000; and this vast number was thus
analyzed:

Joint product in 1870 of Irish colonial 14,325,000
elements and subsequent Irish
immigration, including that from Canada

Joint product in 1870 of Anglo-Saxon 4,522,000
colonial elements and subsequent
Anglo-Saxon immigration

Joint product in 1870 of all other 19,653,000
colonial elements and all subsequent
immigration, including the negroes

—————

38,500,000

From these figures was drawn the somewhat startling deduction that the
population of the United States in 1870 was composed of 24,000,000 of
Celtic birth or origin (Irish, Scotch, French, Spanish, and Italian),
and that of these 14,325,000 were of Irish birth or origin, 4,522,000
of Anglo-Saxon birth or origin, and that the remaining 9,978,000 were
of neither Celtic nor Anglo-Saxon extraction. We are not in any way
responsible for the accuracy of these figures; but that they express
at least an approximation to the truth we do not doubt.

It is not, moreover, in spiritual matters only that our emigrants have been wise in congregating in the cities. One must remember the condition in which the great majority of them landed here during the years when emigration was at the flood-tide, and then compare with that their present state and the future which is before them and their children. They were desperately, or apostolically, poor, because they came from lands where it was impossible for them to acquire anything beyond the means of bare subsistence. They were uneducated, because they had been the subjects of governments whose studied policy it was to keep them in ignorance. They had neither the capital nor the knowledge necessary to render them successful as independent agriculturists. Labor was most abundant in the cities, and in the cities they remained. What have they done there? If you seek their monument, look around you! Behold not only the 57 Catholic churches (12 of them built almost or quite exclusively by Germans, 1 by Poles, 1 by Italians, 1 by Bohemians, 1 by Frenchmen, and 30 by Irishmen), the 17 monasteries, the 22 convents, the magnificent Protectory, the theological seminary, the 3 colleges, the 22 select schools, the 19 asylums, the 4 homes for aged men and women, the 4 hospitals, and the 85 parochial schools of which the city and diocese of New York alone boast; but the great business houses, the large manufactories, the numberless smaller though important factories, stores, and shops belonging to the foreign-born and foreign-descended population of this metropolis; make a similar examination of what this class of our citizens have done in Brooklyn, Baltimore, Boston, Hartford, Portland, Springfield, Cincinnati, Detroit, Milwaukee, St. Paul, Albany, Buffalo, Newark, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Chicago, San Francisco, and twoscore more of our large cities; and then compare these truly magnificent religious, moral, charitable, commercial, and industrial results with all that the same people could have accomplished had they been scattered as sheep without shepherds throughout our Western and Northern wilds, destined to lose their faith, deprived of the support and strength which common association and common interest afford, and doomed, most probably, to lives of hopeless poverty and unremunerative struggle. God has been too good to them, and to the country in which they have become so important a factor, to permit this, and what the arrogance of man has so often stigmatized as folly has proved to be the highest and best wisdom both for eternal and for temporal ends. The whole number of foreign emigrants who have landed in the United States during the first 75 years of this century was 9,526,966. We showed in a former article[114] what proportion of these has remained in the cities; and we have now pointed out some of the results of this congregation.

Footnote 114:

“The European Exodus,” THE CATHOLIC WORLD, July, 1877.

We must not be understood, however, to convey the idea that a very considerable proportion of our foreign-born Catholic citizens have not made homes for themselves in the rural districts of the country, under conditions which rendered it possible for them to continue the active exercise of their religion, and that the happiest results have not followed. In the New England States, in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, in Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, and Minnesota, the number of Irish and German Catholic farmers—well-to-do, prosperous, and faithful—is very large. In the New England States the increase of this class has of late been marked. The farms throughout this section are generally small; their native owners, especially when they are young men, find it difficult to extract from them incomes large enough to supply their desire for the luxuries of life; they are often anxious to try their fortunes in the cities or in the West; whenever one of them offers his little estate for sale the purchaser is most likely a German or Irishman, whose wants are more modest, and who finds it quite possible to derive from a farm of twenty or thirty acres a comfortable subsistence for his family. This change in the proprietorship of the soil in New England has gone on to an extent much larger than is generally known; and one would labor under a serious mistake who supposed that the foreign-born and foreign-descended population of New England was altogether, or even unduly, congregated in the cities. There are in New England, according to the last _Catholic Directory_, 539 Catholic priests, 508 churches, 167 chapels and stations, with a Catholic population of about 890,000 souls; and it is evident from an examination of the list of the churches that a large proportion of them are in the small towns and rural districts of these States. It may be unwelcome news to our Protestant readers, but it is true, that nearly 25 per cent. of the present population of New England is composed of Roman Catholics. It may be still more unpleasant for them to learn that nearly 70 per cent. of the births in that region are those in Roman Catholic families. New England, indeed, promises to be the first portion of the country which is likely to become distinctively Roman Catholic. The immigration into New England is small, but it is mostly composed of Catholics; the increase of population is very largely Catholic; the emigration is almost entirely non-Catholic. From this digression from our main subject we return with the remark that the rural Catholic population in the Middle and Western States—a population largely composed of foreign-born citizens and their descendants—constitutes a most important factor in the material strength of the Catholic body, and that, as we shall show, the future course of foreign emigration should, and most probably will, tend mainly to increase this class.

The late decline in emigration to the United States, and the present lull, amounting almost to stagnation, which has taken place in it, together with the fact that there is abundant reason to suppose that this lull is but temporary and that emigration will again ere very long pour in upon us, suggest some reflections respecting the changed character which that emigration will probably assume, the changed conditions under which it will be carried on, and the changed duty of the Catholic body in the United States towards it. What was so essentially necessary in the past will be necessary, under these new conditions, no longer; what was so often impossible in the past will now become generally easy of accomplishment. The Catholic Church in the United States has passed through the stage of its infancy and feebleness, and has entered upon the period of its manhood and strength. Firmly planted throughout the land, it fears nothing and can watch over and abundantly protect the faith and the education of its children. In every State and Territory, save Alaska, at least one bishop; in seven States two bishops; in five States three bishops; in one State six, in another State eight bishops, and with more than 5,000 priests—surely with this army of shepherds the sheep and the lambs of the flock can be fed and guarded from the wolves of infidelity, sectarianism, and bigotry. God has built up his church in the republic in the manner, and chiefly through the agencies, which we have pointed out, and has thus fitted her, armed her, and made her strong for the great work which still lies before her. That work is the conversion of the non-Catholic portion of our fellow-citizens; the nurture of Catholic children; and the care, the protection, and, if need be, the conversion of the emigrants who, in the future, are to come to us from the Old World. It is only with this latter branch of her duty that we now deal. Emigrants to the United States have hitherto arrived here chiefly as isolated individuals, or at best as isolated families. There have been some attempts at colonization—that is, in bringing in one company a large number of individuals and of families, destined to migrate together to a spot already selected for them, and which they are to occupy as a community. Most frequently these attempts at colonization have been successful. Where they have failed the failure has been due to some incapacity or dishonesty on the part of the agents who had the matter in charge, and not to any vice in the system itself. There is evidence to show that emigration in future will be to a great extent, and may be almost wholly, conducted on the colonization principle. We have already said that emigration from Ireland in the future would most probably be confined within small limits; but if anything could stimulate it, it would be the development in Ireland of wise plans for colonization, carried out by men of probity, experience, and practical wisdom. Our chief sources of emigration, however, for some years to come, are likely to be England, Scotland, Germany, France, Austria, Bohemia, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Italy, Poland, and Russia. There are causes at work which even now are stimulating emigration from each of these countries, and these causes may attain great strength. As an instance of the curious manner in which apparently insignificant causes, originating at a distance, produce large effects, we may mention the fact that the shipping of fresh meat from this country to Great Britain—an enterprise only in its infancy—has already so seriously unsettled the relations existing between landlords and farmers in England and Scotland that the latter are declaring their inability to make both ends meet, and are turning their thoughts towards emigration. So general and so serious is this feeling that the leading journal of Scotland has sent to this country a trusted member of its permanent staff (the editor of its agricultural department for many years), with instructions “to make the fullest possible inquiry into everything connected with the stock-raising department of agriculture” in the United States, extending his researches to Texas, “where he proposes to examine thoroughly the system of cattle and sheep breeding and raising carried on in that State on so immense a scale, and to obtain all the information that is to be had with respect to the breeds of cattle, the methods taken to improve the quality of the stock, and Texan agricultural methods and circumstances generally.” He is then to visit other States for the same purpose, and “all along his route he will take note of all the phases and conditions of agriculture, and of the suitability of the States for advanced farming.” The results of his investigations, published in Scotland and England, will enable the farmers there “to determine the full significance of the competition of American cattle-growers in the British dead-meat market,” and in all probability determine many of them to emigrate to this country, with their capital and their skill, to engage in this competition on the American side.

Farming in England and Scotland—especially in Scotland—has long been a precarious and hazardous business; and now the reduction of four or six cents a pound in the price of beef which has been caused by the importation of about 1,000 tons of American beef and mutton every week at Glasgow and Liverpool, threatens to be the last straw to break the back of at least the Scotch farmer. Irish agriculturists likewise depend to a great extent for their profits upon the money received for their cattle, and they, too, will feel as severely as their Scottish friends the ruinous consequences, to them, of a reduction of twenty-five per cent. in the market value of their principal commodity. Thus the emigration of the well-to-do farmers of the United Kingdom is likely to be stimulated, and these agriculturists, most probably, would need but little persuasion to induce them to emigrate, if they emigrated at all, in colonies, and not as isolated families or individuals. So, also, as respects the future emigration from the Continent of Europe. Different causes are at work in each of the countries above named, but they all tend to the same result.

We have already hinted that the emigration of the future will be of a different class from the emigration of the past. At the present moment, and probably for some time to come, it would be dishonest, cruel, and unwise to encourage the emigration to this country of people without capital—those who must earn daily wages in order to live. Hitherto the great majority of our emigrants have been people of this class, and most fortunate is it that they came in such vast numbers. The time will again arrive, no doubt, when this class will be once more necessary and welcome among us, and when they will come, as they have come before, in thousands and tens of thousands. But at present they are not needed here; to bring them hither would be cruel to us as well as to themselves. The emigrants whom we need, and who are for some time most likely to come, are those who possess considerable worldly wealth at home, but who, like the English, Scotch, and Irish farmers of whom we have spoken, find it difficult to provide sufficiently for their increasing families, or wish to secure for them, in the New World, better fortunes than they can hope for in the Old. On the European Continent, and especially in Germany, other causes are at work which are morally certain to promote emigration. The war in the East may be localized—although all the probabilities point to a different conclusion—but even now it has increased the burdens which oppress the German people, and rendered the “blood-tax” that they are compelled to pay heavier and harder to bear. There is probably no intelligent man in Germany who does not look forward to a not distant day when that country will be again engaged in a desperate conflict; and meanwhile the military service exacted from every German citizen, and the cost of maintaining the army, press with a crushing weight upon the country. A thoughtful and experienced writer in one of our daily journals—a writer who, if we mistake not, has himself had extensive experience in the organization of emigration enterprises—thus treats of this subject:

“But it is in Germany that the fears awakened throughout Continental
Europe will contribute most powerfully to a renewal of interest in
the subject of emigration among classes to whom this country even
now presents all requisite advantages. The stern methods employed by
Bismarck to repress emigration movements—his interference with the
freedom of American citizens who dared to speak of the attractions
held out by the fertile West, and his suppression of whatever seemed
likely to facilitate emigration to the United States—were all called
forth by the anxious desire of people to escape the liability to
military service. The military glories of the empire had charms for
the cities, which acquired delusive appearances of prosperity. Among
the population of rural districts the situation was different. The
burdens and penalties of war, and of a system which exacts incessant
preparation for war as a condition of national safety, have among
these people stimulated the feeling in favor of emigration to a
degree which the action of the Imperial Government has imperfectly
controlled. The dread, vague before, will now be a reality. What, as
a mere contingency, has sufficed to foster the wish to leave the
Fatherland is now so near a certainty that the movement in favor of
emigration needs but a guiding hand to assume large proportions. And
the emigration available is of the description which, discreetly
operated upon, should be attracted rather than repelled by the
considerations which have driven wage-earners back to Europe. Those
who would gladly get out of Germany to save their sons from service
in the army look to the land for a livelihood, and would form
valuable accessions to the Western States. As far as Germany is
concerned, the difficulty is in reaching this class. Agencies that
might be freely used in England or Holland are in Germany
unavailable. All that seems possible there is to provide authentic
information through channels which would not conflict with local law
or incur the suspicion which, in view of recent experience,
interested representations are likely to excite. Might not our
consular agencies be utilized, not as emigration bureaux, but as
means of supplying to those who seek it information in reference to
lands and farms in the West and South, and to other matters
connected with the opening or purchase of farms, and stocking and
working them? The laborious head of the Statistical Bureau some
years ago compiled a volume of statistics which to the working-men
of the Old World was invaluable. The manual at present needed would
deal with the phases of the emigration question, and would be much
more than an accumulation of figures. It would be more legitimate
than half the matter which emanates from the department and is
printed at the public cost; and it would contribute to a revival and
increase of the only immigration which can be honestly encouraged in
the face of hard times.”