Chapter III: Captain Leopold Introduces His Friend (6)

Mr. Ticknor, however, reads these lines to mean that more than a hundred were performed within twenty-four hours after their completion. Perhaps this interpretation is accurate, but to any one acquainted with the difficulties attending the mounting and rehearsing of a modern comedy it seems, to say the least, improbable; and, at any rate, De Vega’s facility of composition was so great that many writers rashly assert that he could compose a play in three or four hours! Montalvan tells a pleasant anecdote illustrating the rapidity of his work. To oblige a manager Lope and Montalvan agreed to write a piece together. The first two acts of the _Tercera Orden de San Francisco_ were divided between them, each writing an act a day. The third act was to be halved into eight leaves each. Montalvan continues, to quote Lord Holland’s version: “As it was bad weather, I remained in his house that night, and, knowing that I could not equal him in the execution, I had a fancy to beat him in the despatch of the business. For this purpose I got up at two o’clock, and at eleven had completed my share of the work. I immediately went out to look for him, and found him very deeply occupied with an orange-tree that had been frost-bitten in the night. Upon my asking him how he had gone on with his task he answered: ‘I set about it at five, but I finished the act an hour ago, took a bit of ham for breakfast, wrote an epistle of fifty triplets, and have watered the whole of the garden—which has not a little fatigued me.’ Then, taking out the papers, he read me the eight leaves and the triplets—a circumstance that would have astonished me had I not known the fertility of his genius and the dominion he had over the rhymes of our language.” At this period Lope was nearly seventy years old, or such a trifle would scarcely have tired him.

Schlegel draws a brilliant comparison between Lope de Vega and Shakspere, or rather between the Spanish and the English stage. Any such method of measurement injures the Spaniard; it is only in the management of his plots that he is able to rival the Englishman. It is curious, however, to note that each great writer was surrounded by minor lights—set, as it were, with glittering but inferior gems. Shakspere shone in the midst of a glorious company containing Jonson, Ford, Fletcher, Beaumont, Greene, Nash, Marlowe, Massinger, and Webster. Lope de Vega, following Lope de Rueda, was surrounded by a brilliant throng of friendly rivals—Cervantes, Calderon, Montalvan, Moreto, Alarcon, Matos-Fragoso, and Guillen de Castro. It is also remarkable to find that England and Spain, then the possessors of a great drama, are now barren fields; while France, once but the empty echo of the classic muse, is to-day the chief country in possession of a living dramatic literature. For this literature France owes largely to England and Spain; French tragedy and French comedy are directly indebted to Lope’s influence. From a play of Guillen de Castro, one of Lope’s followers, Corneille derived his _Cid_, the greatest French tragedy; and from a play of Alarcon, another of Lope’s followers (and the first of American dramatic authors, for by birth and education he was a Mexican), Corneille took his _Menteur_, the earliest of French comedies. In a letter to Boileau Molière said: “I owe much to the _Menteur_. At the time it appeared I desired to write, but I was uncertain as to what I should write. My ideas were confused; this work came and defined them. Without the _Menteur_, no doubt, I should have written some such comedies of intrigue as the _Etourdi_ and the _Dépit Amoureux_, but perhaps I should never have written the _Misanthrope_.”

The _dramatis personæ_ of Lope’s plays are not character studies, finely and fully polished, like those of Molière; they are rather off-hand sketches, fresh and original. Although they often disclose haste, they always show the firm though rapid touch of a master; and however wanting in completeness of detail, they never lack boldness of outline. The people who walk and talk in Lope de Vega’s comedies are living men and women, speaking and acting like human beings, and true to human nature as it was in Spain in those adventurous times; they were not lay figures, mere puppets, pulled hither and thither by visible wires. He rarely created an eccentric character, never an impossible one.

He did not allow himself Molière’s privilege of taking his material wherever he found it. Only once is it known that he used the work of another: his _Esclavos in Argel_ is based on Cervantes’ _Trato de Argel_. He was an originator—copied, not copying; and if at times his characters seem to lack novelty, it is perhaps in part because we live in the nineteenth century and he wrote in the sixteenth. For two centuries and a half the playwrights of the world have been pillaging him until his people and his plots have become public property. Calderon copied him; Molière and Corneille carried Calderon to France; the English stole from all three; so it is small wonder that what Lope de Vega transcribed from nature is now typical and traditional. He was first in the field; others have stolen his pressed flowers.

A full exposition of De Vega’s ideas of dramatic art can best be found in his own essay on the subject, the _Arte Nuevo de Hacer Comedias_. It would seem from this essay that in Lope’s time Spain was slowly freeing herself from the fetters of the unities, first riveted by Aristotle. England had set the example; Spain was fast following. In these two countries the fierce fight was then fought that two centuries and a half later was to agitate France. Spain then had her battle between the Romantics and the Classics, and Lope de Vega, while ironically deferential to the ancient laws, fought foremost on the side of freedom. As in France Victor Hugo in 1830, so in Spain Lope de Vega in 1600. Both were leaders; both have written essays on dramatic art. It is curious to compare the Spanish writer’s _Arte Nuevo de Hacer Comedias_ with the French author’s elaborate and scientific discussion of dramatic effect contained in the celebrated preface to his never-acted _Cromwell_.

The _Arte Nuevo de Hacer Comedias_ was written in 1609 at the request of one of those numerous academies then existing in Spain, and founded in imitation of the Italian Della Cruscans. It contains internal evidence of haste in its construction; although he knew better, Lope carelessly mistakes Terence for Plautus. Capable of composing a comedy in a day, he may easily have dashed off this little essay in a very few hours. It is written in blank verse, only the last two lines of each stanza rhyming. The stanzas, also, are of unequal length. Although the essay seems almost an improvisation, it is extremely interesting not only to the student of his plays but also to the casual reader, as it gives a view of the state of the Spanish stage at the time not elsewhere to be found. The following unabridged English rendering of the essay has been made from the excellent French version of M. Damas-Hinard:

“ARTE NUEVO DE HACER COMEDIAS.

(_The New Art of Writing Plays._)

“Noble minds, flower of Spain, who, in this illustrious academy,
will soon have surpassed not only those academies of Italy which
Cicero, emulating Greece, established in the land where sleep the
waters of Avernus, but even that school of Plato in which Athens saw
so rare an assembly of philosophers come together, you order me to
write you an essay on dramatic art in accordance with the public
taste to-day. This task seems easy, and, indeed, it would be to him
among you who has worked the least for the stage, and who therefore
better knows the rules; but it must be done by me, who have never
composed except contrary to the rules of the art. It is not, thank
Heaven! that I do not know them: these theories were familiar to me
when I was yet a school-boy, and when the sun had not ten times
passed from Taurus to Pisces; but at the time when I chose this
career I found the stage filled with works very different from those
which the first inventors of the art left as models, and such,
indeed, as were composed by the barbarians, who had accustomed the
vulgar to their crudities. And they have so thoroughly established
themselves in this fashion that he who would now write for the
theatre according to the precepts of the art dies without glory and
without reward; for among those who lack the enlightenment of a
superior mind custom always carries the day.

“Several times, it is true, I have written following these
principles, which but few people know; but as soon as I see these
monstrous compositions appear, full of magical apparitions, to which
rush the crowds and the women, always worshipping such absurdities,
then I return to my barbarian habits. And when I have a comedy to
write I lock up the rules behind triple bolts; I cast Plautus and
Terence out of my study for fear of hearing their cries, for truth
calls aloud in these dumb books; and I then write according to the
art invented by those who wished to gain the applause of the crowd.
After all, as it is the public who pays for these absurdities, ’tis
but just that it be served to its taste.

“True comedy has one aim, as has every kind of poem, and this aim is
to imitate the action of men and to paint the manners of the age in
which they lived. Now, every poetical imitation is composed of three
things: dialogue, versification, harmony or melody. Comedy and
tragedy agree in this; but they differ, inasmuch as the former
represents the action of the lower orders, and the latter only
concerns itself with kings and high personages. Judge from that how
much may be said against our comedies.

“At first our pieces were called _autos_, because they confined
themselves to the imitation of common actions and interests. Among
us Lope de Rueda was the model of this style; his comedies, which
have been printed, are in prose, and of an order so low that he has
introduced artisans and traces the loves of a blacksmith’s daughter.
To-day we call them _interludes_, these antique works in which the
rules of art are carefully observed, in which the action is simple
and takes place among the middle classes—for an interlude was never
seen in which kings figured. And this explains how plays little by
little fell into deep discredit because of the lowness of style, and
how they put kings and princes into comedy, to the great
satisfaction of the ignorant.

“In the beginning of his _Ars Poetica_ Aristotle relates, in a
manner quite obscure, it is true, the debate which took place
between Athens and Megara touching the originator of the theatre—the
Megarians attributing this glory to Epicharmus, while the Athenians
claimed it for Magnes. Donat traces back the first attempts to the
ancient sacrifices, and, in this respect following Horace, he
attributes the origin of tragedy to Thespis, and that of comedy to
Aristophanes. The _Odyssey_ of Homer is the result of a comic
inspiration, but the _Iliad_ was the noble model of tragedy. It is
in imitation of this poem that is composed my _Jerusalem_, which I
have called a tragic epic. They commonly call by the name of comedy
the _Inferno_, _Purgatorio_, and _Paradiso_ of the celebrated poet
Dante Alighieri, and Manetti gives the reasons for this in the
preface to that poem.

“All the world knows that comedy, falling into disrepute, was
condemned to silence for a time; that after that came the _satyres_,
which, being still more cruel, passed away more promptly; and that
then the new comedy was born.

“In the beginning dramatic works consisted but of choruses. Soon
there was added a certain number of characters. But Menander,
followed in this by Terence, rejected the choruses as tedious. This
latter was a most scrupulous observer of the precepts; never did he
raise the style of comedy to a tragic loftiness, wiser in that
respect than Plautus, whom they have so much reproached for this
fault.

“Tragedy is founded on fact, comedy on fiction, and the latter was
called ‘flat-footed’ because it was played without _cothurnus_ or
scenery, and because it took its plots from the humblest classes.
Yet then, as now, there were several kinds of comedy: there were
_pallium_ comedies and _toga_ comedies, and pantomimes, and _fabulæ
atellanæ_ and _tabernariæ_.

“The Athenians, who gave prizes to their dramatic poets and to their
actors, in their comedies rebuked wickedness and vice with antique
elegance. This is why Cicero called comedy the mirror of manners,
the image of truth—sublime attribute which raises Thalia to the rank
of history, and which shows us how much she merits esteem and honor.

“But already it seems to me that you draw back, saying: ‘What use is
this translating of books and this fatiguing show of erudition?’
Believe me, it is not without motive that I recalled to your memory
all these things; I wished to let you see that you have asked me for
an essay on dramatic art in Spain, where all plays are written
contrary to art, and I wished to declare that our pieces are not
according to right or the ancient rules. But let us leave this; you
have recourse to my experience, and not to what I may have been able
to learn of an art which tells us the truth, but to which the vulgar
prefer the false.

“If, then, you asked me for the rules of the art, I should refer you
to the wise and learned Rebortelo, and you would see explained in
his book on Aristotle or on comedy what otherwise is scattered in a
crowd of works without order and without light. But since you ask
the opinion of those now in possession of the stage, acknowledging
that the public has the right to establish the incongruous laws of
our dramatic prodigy, I will tell you my idea, and your command must
excuse my temerity. I should like, since the public is in error, to
deck this error with agreeable colors; I should like, since it is no
longer possible to follow the ancient rules, to find a mean between
the two extremes.

“First choose the subject of your comedy, and, in spite of the old
precepts, do not disquiet yourself whether there be or be not kings
among your characters. I ought not to conceal, however, that our
king and lord, Philip the Prudent, was angry every time he beheld a
king on the stage, either because he saw in that a violation of the
rules of the art, or because he thought that even in fiction the
royal authority should not be presented too near the gaze of the
people.

“Besides, in this we draw near to the ancient comedy, in which
Plautus did not fear to place even gods, as the part he gives
Jupiter in the _Amphitryon_ proves. Heaven knows it is difficult for
me to approve of this. Even Plutarch, in speaking of Menander,
formally blames ancient comedy; but since we in Spain have renounced
the rules of the art and treat it cavalierly, this time the
classicists are silenced.

“In mingling the tragic and the comic, and Terence with Seneca (from
which results a species of monster like the Minotaur), you will have
one part of the piece serious and the other farcical. But this
variety pleases very much. Nature herself gives us the example of
it, and it is from such contrasts that she gains her beauty.

“Take care only that your subject presents but one action; take care
that your story is not overcharged with episodes (that is to say,
with things which lead away from the main idea), and that no part
can be detached without overthrowing the whole edifice. Do not
trouble yourself about confining all the action within the space of
one day, although it is the rule of Aristotle; we have already
rejected his authority in mingling tragedy and comedy. Let us
content ourselves with reducing the time as much as may be possible,
unless the poet composes a story the action of which extends over
several years, and in this case he could place the intervals of time
in the ‘waits’—as, for instance, if one of his characters has a
journey to take. These liberties, I know, disgust the critics. Well,
the critics may stay away from our pieces.

“How many of these fellows cross themselves in horror, seeing
several years given to an action which ought to be accomplished in
the space of an artificial day—for they would not even accord us the
twenty-four hours! For my part, considering that the eager curiosity
of a Spaniard seated at the play cannot be satisfied even by showing
him all the events from Genesis to the day of the Last Judgment in
two hours, I think that, if our duty is to please the spectators, it
is right that we should do all that is necessary to gain this end.

“The subject once chosen, write your piece in prose, and divide it
into three acts, doing your best that each act, if it is possible,
embrace but the space of one day. Captain Viruès, an illustrious
writer, first put comedy in three acts, which before had gone on all
fours like a child; and truly it was then in its infancy. I myself,
at the age of from eleven to twelve years, wrote in four acts and
four sheets, for each act was contained in a sheet of paper. In
those days they played three little interludes in the intervals of
the acts, and now it is much if they play even one, which is
immediately followed by a dance. Dancing, however, fits so well into
comedy that Aristotle approves of it, and Atheneus, Plato, and
Xenophon do not blame it, except when it is not decent,[164] like
that of Callipedes. The dance seems to me to replace amongst us the
chorus of the ancients.

“The subject being treated in two ways, let them from the start be
joined and well connected together until the end of the piece, so
that one can divine the _dénouement_ but at the last scene; for when
the spectators know it they turn their faces to the door and their
backs to the actors, to whom they have listened for three hours with
interest, and of whom they think no more when they no longer need
them to know what will be the result.

“Let the stage rarely remain empty. These delays make the spectator
impatient and uselessly prolong the play; and besides being a great
fault, to avoid it is to add art and grace to the work.

“Then begin to versify, and in your language, always choice, use
neither brilliant thoughts nor witty remarks when you treat of
domestic affairs; it suffices in such a case to imitate the
conversation of two or three persons. But when you bring upon the
stage a character who exhorts, counsels, or dissuades, you can allow
yourself the use of fine language and striking ideas, and in this
you will imitate nature; for when we give advice, when we wish to
encourage or deter, we speak in a manner totally different from
familiar chat. In this regard we follow the opinion of the
rhetorician Aristides, who desires that the language of comedy
should be clear, pure, and easy, like that of ordinary conversation,
adding also that it should differ essentially from the tragic style,
where we may use expressions pompous, sonorous, and glittering.

“Never quote Scripture, and take care never to offend taste by an
affected erudition; to imitate the language of conversation you need
name neither hippogriffs nor centaurs, nor the other mythological
entities.

“If you make a king discourse, let it be with the dignity proper to
the royal majesty; let the old man express himself with sententious
gravity; let the conversation of lovers be replete with such lively
sentiments as to move those who hear. In monologues let the
character be totally changed; by this transformation let him force
the spectators to identify themselves with him; let him speak and
reply to himself in a natural manner; and if he bemoans a lover’s
lot, let him not forget the respect due to the fair sex. Under all
circumstances let the ladies preserve the modesty they ought to
have; and if they don male attire (which is always very agreeable to
the public), let this change of costume have a reasonable motive. In
short, never paint impossible things, for the first maxim is that
art can only imitate the possible.

“Let not a servant treat too lofty subjects, and take care not to
put into his mouth those witty sayings which we have seen in some
foreign comedies.

“Let your characters never forget their nature; let them remember at
the end what they have said at first, lest we make the same reproach
to them as was made to the _Œdipus_ of Sophocles—that he had
forgotten his fight with Laïus.

“Adorn the end of your scenes with some swelling phrase, with some
joke, with lines more carefully polished, so that the actor at his
exit does not leave the audience in ill-humor.

“In the first act lay the foundation; in the second let the
complications commence, and contrive in such a way that until half
through the third act no one can foresee the end. Always deceive the
curiosity of the spectator by showing him, as though possible, a
result entirely different from that to which the incidents seem to
point.

“Let the versification be tastefully appropriate to the subject you
treat. Decasyllabic lines suit lamentations; the sonnet is well
placed in a monologue; descriptions demand the romantic stanza,
although they are as brilliant as possible in octosyllabic metre.
Triple-rhymed lines are reserved for grave affairs, and the
_redondillas_[165] for lovers’ conversations.”

The sound sense of this little essay shows how thoroughly De Vega understood his subject. Writing to please the populace, not the learned and possibly hyper-critical, he had studied the playgoer and knew all his peculiarities—how to please him and how to take liberties with impunity. His comedies of Cloak and Sword are the least careless and the most admirable of his plays, and they were the most successful. The involved and complicated plots, the duels and disguises, the hurry and the vigor of this class of plays are seen to best advantage in Lope de Vega’s works. He had founded the school, and the bent of his genius fitted him to be its master. His works and those of his scholars went at once to all parts of Europe. In England Mrs. Behn, Mrs. Centlivre, Farquhar, Congreve, Wycherly, Holcroft, were his followers, copyists, plagiarists. Not only did others pillage him, but, like almost all prolific authors, he plagiarized from himself. Over thirty or forty times has he treated one subject: a lady and a knight forced to leave the court in disguise because of the persecutions of the king, and taking refuge in a village, where, after many mishaps and adventures, they are finally married. Of course in each of these twoscore plays the situations vary, but the central idea is the same in all. To an author of such facility the great difficulty was in the discovery of a subject. That was all he needed; its dramatic dressing was an easy task. Hardly one of the picturesque points of Spanish history did he neglect. His lighter plays were often historical. Generally they were not. His _Perro del Hortelano_ (“Dog in the Manger”) is, for instance, an original invention. It contains a delightful sketch of a woman absorbed by jealousy, and yet unable to make up her mind to marry the loved one because of his inferior birth. Both lovers are drawn with delicious vigor—a vigor suggesting, perhaps remotely, Thackeray. This charming comedy shows of what things Lope was capable in this line had he so willed. It is somewhat in the style of Scribe at his best. Indeed, in many respects he was the precursor of Scribe, who greatly resembled him in fecundity, facility, and felicity of execution. More than one of his plays, if modernized, might pass for the work of the brilliant French dramatist.

But the best of Lope’s work is many degrees above the best of Scribe’s. In ingenuity and in originality, and in the conduct of the business of the stage, the Spaniard is at least the equal of the Frenchman, while in the depicting of passion he is by far the superior. Scribe was incapable of anything at all approaching the sombre and inevitable conclusion of the _Star of Seville_, appalling with the inexorable logic of fate. Mrs. Frances Anne Kemble has produced a spirited English play suggested by it, of which Lord Holland has given a long analysis with translated extracts. As he justly remarks, no mere relation of the plots of Lope’s plays would give a sufficient idea of the attractions they possess, “nor can they be collected from a mere perusal of detached passages. The chief merit of his plays is a certain spirit and animation which pervades the whole, but which is not to be preserved in disjointed limbs of the composition.”

It is easy to find the reason for Lope de Vega’s theatrical activity. He was poor, and play-writing was profitable. He says somewhere that poverty and himself formed a copartnership to work for the stage. At the close of the sixteenth century Spain was divided into several almost independent provinces, and there was no interprovincial copyright; the bookseller of Castile could reprint and sell for his own profit the successful work first published in Leon. An author in those days could not even get pay for advance-sheets. Under these circumstances publishers naturally paid authors little or nothing. Literature was a labor of love. The dramatic taste, however, of the Spanish people was increasing. The two companies of actors gradually grew to forty, and the forty audiences asked for novelty. The managers endeavoring to satisfy this demand, the consumption of comedies was something enormous. There was a uniform price fixed in advance: a comedy was worth five hundred reals, equivalent to about forty or fifty dollars of our money. The reward was not great, but the labor was light—at least to Lope. Dramatic work paid; other literature did not. Lope would have been certainly justified in devoting himself exclusively to the drama. He might labor in other fields; on the stage he ruled. What is done quickly may die quickly, and few of Lope’s plays hold the stage to-day even in Spain. But if his plays are not seen, his influence is visible in the drama of France, of England, of Germany, and of Spain, his own country, of the literature of which he and Calderon and Cervantes are the greatest glories. Calderon was his follower and Cervantes was his friend. Although it has been said they were at enmity, it is known that Lope de Vega praised Cervantes, and the author of _Don Quixote_ generously eulogized his more successful rival thus: “At last appeared that prodigy of nature, the great Lope de Vega, and established his monarchy on the stage. He conquered and reduced under his jurisdiction every actor and author in the kingdom.... And though there have been many who have attempted the same career, all their works together would not equal in quantity what this single man has composed.”

And Cervantes wrote these lines almost twenty years before Lope de Vega’s death, almost twenty years before he had ceased composing. It is with the following brilliant paragraph that Mr. Ticknor, always strongly prejudiced in favor of Cervantes, begins his historical criticism of Lope’s life and labor, and with it we end: “It is impossible to speak of Cervantes as the great genius of the Spanish nation without recalling Lope de Vega, the rival who far surpassed him in contemporary popularity, and rose, during the lifetime of both, to a degree of fame which no Spaniard had yet attained, and which has since been reached by few of any country.”

Footnote 164:

It was recently said that there were three kinds of dancing: the
graceful, the ungraceful, and the disgraceful.

Footnote 165:

_Redondillas_ are stanzas of four short lines. This paragraph on
versification reads curiously to ears accustomed to the pentameter
blank verse of the English drama, stately at times and sprightly when
need be, and, indeed, capable of infinite variety. The Spanish plays
of to-day are written in very short metre, and French tragedies still
rhyme.

ENGLISH TORIES AND CATHOLIC EDUCATION IN IRELAND.

The motives which impel men to their best actions are not always, perhaps they are not generally, the best possible motives. It is not improbable that more men are driven to the tribunal of penance by attrition than are led thither by contrition. If this be true of men in their individual and private affairs, it is still more strikingly true of politicians and statesmen in their public acts. He would indeed be fanciful and credulous who should imagine that Mr. Gladstone, in framing, advocating, and insisting upon the passage of his bill for the disestablishment and disendowment of the Protestant Church in Ireland, was inspired by a pure love of abstract justice and right, and a disinterested desire to relieve the Irish people from a flagrantly unjust burden and a crying wrong. He saw as clearly as any one that this wrong existed, but he perceived also that by removing it he would win popular support for himself and his party. It is tolerably safe to say that had Mr. Gladstone imagined that the passage of the bill for the disestablishment of the church would have resulted in the expulsion of himself and his party from power, he would not have urged the measure. In this case there were two motives: one positively and abstractly good, the other good in the estimation of those who believed that the continuance of power in the hands of the Liberal party was desirable. The latter incentive was the ruling one. Mr. Gladstone, we believe, would not have advocated a measure which he knew to be bad, although this advocacy might have secured him an extension of power. Nor would he have insisted upon the adoption of a measure which he knew to be good had he known that this insistence would deprive him of power. But he saw that while the disestablishment and disendowment of the alien church in Ireland would be an act of justice in itself, it would also be a good political stroke, tending to strengthen his own position and to give a longer lease of power to his party.

One need not trouble himself to assign higher motives than these to the Tory government, which, to the surprise and delight of the Catholics in Ireland, has brought forward a really fair scheme for intermediate education in Ireland, and seems honestly disposed to carry it at the present session of Parliament. Just as we write the bill has passed the House of Lords, and is about to be brought up for final passage in the Commons. The queen’s speech at the opening of Parliament contained a promise that a bill for the promotion of intermediate education in Ireland should be introduced; but it was not until events made probable the speedy dissolution of Parliament and a general election that this promise was redeemed. It is not uncharitable to suppose that the government felt it necessary to have something to offer to Ireland in the event of an appeal to the constituencies under circumstances that would make every vote important. The bill passed its second reading in the House of Lords on the 28th of June—a moment when it was still possible that England might soon find herself embroiled in a foreign war, and when it was given out in governmental circles that Parliament was to be dissolved and a general election ordered. The third reading and final passage of the bill in the Lords took place some two weeks afterwards. Meanwhile the position of affairs had somewhat altered: the conclusion of the labors of the Congress of Berlin and the disclosure of the Treaty of Constantinople had greatly strengthened the hands of the government; the Opposition gave evidence of demoralization and discord in its own ranks, and toward the close of July the inspired journals announced that Parliament would not be dissolved this year, inasmuch as the general approval of the course of the government was too plain to be misunderstood or denied. The Irish Education Bill came up for its second reading in the House of Commons under these circumstances, and its friends fancied that they discovered a little less earnestness on the part of the government in pushing it forward than was displayed under the more critical circumstances in the House of Lords. Still, the probabilities are that the bill will pass and receive the royal assent before the close of the present session; and if this be so, the Tory government of Earl Beaconsfield will go down to posterity as the first administration which has had the courage, the wisdom, and the good-will to award to Ireland anything like justice in the matter of education.

The bill provides for a system of payments by results, and practically is identical with the system which Mr. Isaac Butt laid before the writer during a conversation in London four years ago. We are unaware whether the Lord Chancellor, Lord Cairns—who is, like Mr. Butt, a Protestant, an Irishman, and a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin—has availed himself of Mr. Butt’s ideas in the preparation of the measure; but this is not at all improbable. Mr. Butt has expressed his cordial approval of the measure. To what extent the Tory government may have been able to inspire such organs of public opinion as the _Saturday Review_, and such writers as Matthew Arnold in the _Fortnightly_, we cannot say; but the fact is that for the first time in its existence the _Saturday Review_ has recognized and defended the right of Irish Catholics to be educated in the way that they considered proper, and that Mr. Arnold seems suddenly to have arrived at the conclusion that the denial of a Catholic university in Ireland is a wicked, absurd, and mischievous freak of English Puritanism. The development of opinion in the _Saturday Review_ is startlingly rapid. In a remarkable article written before the introduction of Lord Cairns’ bill the _Review_ said that “the injustice of refusing either to give the Irish Roman Catholics a university or to allow them to set up one for themselves is so patent that if the demand for a charter were once more put forward it could scarcely be very long resisted.” But in the same pages it warned the Irish Catholics that they must not expect to receive anything like an endowment from the state for denominational education:

“The demand for a state endowment of a Roman Catholic university, or
of a Roman Catholic college in a mixed university,” we were told,
“may be perfectly just, but it is at the same time perfectly
impracticable. For this purpose the surplus revenues of the Irish
Disestablished Church will undoubtedly be treated as money belonging
to the nation, and unless a radical and almost miraculous change
should come over the whole mind and temper of the English people,
not a shilling of it will be devoted to a denominational object.
This determination on their part may be quite illogical, but it is
very firmly rooted. The endowment of a Catholic university or a
Catholic college may continue to furnish the text for an annual
motion and for any number of annual speeches, but it will do nothing
more. The late government attempted to meet the difficulty by
establishing a university in which the subjects upon which Romanists
and non-Romanists most differ should be temporarily excluded from
the university course. Denominational colleges might be incorporated
into this university and teach what they liked, but the teaching of
the university was to leave burning questions on one side until the
university should have become strong enough to run alone, and to
decide for itself in what subjects it should give instruction to its
students. The scheme fell through.”

Within a few days after this candid expression of opinion the same journal was applauding Lord Cairns’ bill for intermediate education in Ireland, which provides for the application of a certain portion of the surplus revenues of the Disestablished Church for the support of schools that certainly will be “denominational.” True, the money is not to be given directly in payment for religious instruction, but it is to be given in payment to teachers who will impart religious instruction to their pupils. “Not a shilling will be devoted to a denominational object,” said the _Review_ one week; but a fortnight afterwards it was delighted with a measure that proposed to devote a million sterling for the support of a system which is nothing if it be not “denominational.” We rejoice at this sudden and remarkable conversion without inquiring too closely how it came. Catholics everywhere, and Irish Catholics especially, should rejoice when organs of opinion like the _Saturday Review_ speak of a measure that is satisfactory to the hierarchy, the clergy, and the Catholic laity of Ireland as “an honest endeavor to supply Ireland with an article which she really wants, and which nothing but the absurd prejudices of Englishmen has prevented her from attaining before now.” It is certainly encouraging to hear Englishmen told by their most un-Catholic and worldly-minded instructor that in their rejection of Ireland’s claims for Catholic education they have been “singularly unamiable and singularly foolish”; that they have been bent upon educating Irish Catholics in a way in which Irish Catholics have been equally determined not to be educated.

The provisions of Lord Cairns’ bill are briefly these:

“A Board of Intermediate Education of seven commissioners—three to
form a quorum—is to be appointed by the lord lieutenant—the members
to be removable by him—with two assistant commissioners, who will
also act as secretaries and inspectors, at salaries of one thousand
pounds each, to be appointed by the same authority. Other officers
may, from time to time, be appointed by the board, with the consent
of the lord lieutenant and the approval of the treasurer. This board
will be a mere examining body, conducting by its officers annual
examinations in June and July at convenient local centres over
Ireland. The programme of subjects includes six different classes of
attainments: (1) languages, literatures, and history of Greece and
Rome; (2) the same of England; (3) the same of France, Germany, and
Italy; (4) mathematics, including arithmetic and book-keeping; (5)
the natural sciences; and (6) another group of subjects to be named
by the board. Candidates for examination must show that they have
been under instruction in Ireland for the year previous to the date
of the examination; and the maximum ages fixed are sixteen,
seventeen, and eighteen years respectively for the three years’
course. Certificates, or testamurs, will be given, setting forth the
results of successful examinations; graded prizes, and also annual
exhibitions, of from twenty to fifty pounds, will be awarded, the
condition of attendance for at least one hundred days a year in an
intermediate school being required in the latter. Holders of any
other exhibitions are to be ineligible. The school in which the boy
has attended the required number of days receives a bonus of three
pounds should he pass in two subjects, four pounds for three, and
five pounds for four of the six subjects of the first year’s course;
another grant is increased in like ratio for the second and third
years. No subject of religion is to enter into the examination or be
paid for. A conscience clause (7), while not requiring any such
school to be open to all or any classes, is thus framed to protect
religious minorities who may attend: ‘The board shall not make any
payment to the managers of any school unless it be shown to the
satisfaction of the board that no pupil attending such school is
permitted to remain in attendance during the time of any religious
instruction which the parents or guardians of such pupil shall not
have sanctioned, and that the time for giving such religious
instruction is so fixed that no pupil not remaining in attendance is
excluded directly or indirectly from the advantages of the secular
education given in the school.’ One million from the surplus funds
of the Disestablished Church is to form the endowment for this
scheme, being, in round numbers, £35,000 a year. The Church
Temporalities Commissioners are empowered to borrow this sum,
pending the close of the liquidation of the assets. The board may
alter and amend the whole scheme, save so as to change its leading
principles, and may frame codes and rules and lay them before
Parliament, when, if not objected to by either House within three
weeks, they acquire the force of law.”

The debate in the House of Lords on the second reading of the bill was characterized by a remarkable exhibition of good sense and good feeling among the Protestant members who spoke, while the remarks of the two Catholics who expressed their approval of the measure, Lord O’Hagan and Lord Emly (formerly Mr. Monsell), were discreet and well considered. Lord O’Hagan gave what he properly described as some “startling statistics” concerning the aptitude of Irishmen for fitting themselves for the discharge of public trusts, even under the limited and discouraging conditions of education which had thus far prevailed in Ireland. He showed that England has 72-1/2 per cent. of the population of the United Kingdom, Ireland 17 per cent., and Scotland 10-1/2 per cent. Since 1871 there had been 1,918 places in the excise and customs bestowed in public competition. For these places there had been 11,371 candidates, of whom 11 per cent. were Scotch, 46 per cent. English, and 43 per cent. Irish. Of the places Scotland gained 6 per cent., England 38 per cent., and Ireland 56. Of every 100 Scotch candidates 9 passed, of every 100 English 14, and of every 100 Irish 22.

These figures showed what the youth of Ireland could do when they were educated. But what were their opportunities? As children, up to fifteen they might avail themselves of an excellent primary education, but after that they have few if any opportunities of advancing further. The fact was undeniable that for three hundred years legislation has been directed against education in Ireland, except in a form in which the people would not receive it. The bill now proposed was the first step in the contrary direction, and in Lord O’Hagan’s opinion, if it were administered in the same impartial and fair spirit which had dictated its framing, its results would be most wholesome.

The bill, on the whole, although not perfect, is so great a contrast to all the former educational measures which England has devised for Ireland, and is conceived in so different a spirit, that the Irish Catholics are right in accepting it gladly. It is only to be hoped that the House of Commons will prove to be as reasonable and just as the Lords have been, and allow the bill to pass without mutilating it by mischievous amendments. For half a century England has been tinkering at Irish education, always with the idea that she could compel the Irish to accept Protestant education if Catholic education were made impossible for them. Thus was devised the national system of 1831, the queen’s colleges of 1845, the supplementary charter of 1866, Lord Mayo’s charter scheme of 1867, the unfortunate University Bill introduced by Mr. Gladstone in 1873, the National Teachers’ Act, and Mr. Butt’s University Bill. The English government in their present measure do not storm the Plevna of the religious difficulty; they simply turn it. They do not propose to establish any new institutions, nor to aid the erection of any, nor to subject to inspection and control any of the existing intermediary schools that have been founded by the zeal of the clergy and the charity of the faithful. They leave these alone; but they offer to reward them, and all other similar schools that may be founded, by giving prizes to their pupils, and a bonus to the schools themselves of from fifteen to twenty-five dollars for each pupil who meets certain conditions. The Irish Catholic schoolmasters and schoolboys will not be afraid to enter into this competition; on the contrary, they will “leap at it,” and the best results may be expected to follow. More important still, this step, once taken, will lead ere long, by logical consequence, to the settlement of the Irish university question in the same way. Lord Beaconsfield’s administration of the government of England promises to live in history as an epoch of many brilliant and important events; but if under his rule the Catholic education of Ireland is adequately and satisfactorily provided for, that will be really a more lasting and glorious monument to his memory than his diplomatic victories at Berlin, his second conquest of India, or his virtual annexation of Asia Minor to the British crown.

LAC DU SAINT SACREMENT.

Fair in their peace, ’twixt shore and shore,
Lake George’s waters rest,
And fair the great hills, rising o’er,
Lie mirrored on its breast.

The leafy forests hide no tread
Of stealthy Indian foe,
The sunshine gilds no dusky head
In shadow stealing slow.

The calm no hostile navies rend,
Pealeth no threat’ning gun,
Silence and stillness softly blend
Beneath the undimmed sun.

Faded the lilies’ bloom long since
On Horicon’s green mere;
The soldiers of the German prince
Lift not the red cross here.

The stars alone are guardians now
Of this bright forest sea
Whose waves, whatever wind may blow,
Sing freedom’s royalty.

Ah! fair Lake George, I would thy name
Were changed for one more meet,
That thy bright waters spoke the fame
Of him whose accents sweet

First named thee in a Christian tongue—
His maimed hands raised to bless—
Who, rapturous, round thy beauty flung
Thy Maker’s loveliness.

Who sighed blind Indian souls to lead
Unto their Father’s feet,
To teach strong hands for peace to plead,
Fierce hearts Christ’s cross to greet.

Who bore with awe his Master’s name,
Was bound for His sweet sake,
God’s glory deed and thought should claim,
Knowing no lesser stake.

Who ready stood, for God’s dear love,
Through toil and torture fire
Still with the cross to point above—
A living Christian spire.

O lake beguiling! on that eve
How still thy waters lay,
All hushed in sunshine each green wave
Calm as the golden day.

How full of grace on that blessed eve—
God’s love athwart the sky;
Pure as his balm for souls that grieve
Thy mirror seemed to lie.

Warm as the Love that gave itself
The softened mountains seemed;
Fusing strong tree and rugged shelf,
The wondrous glory streamed.

A burning worship heaven filled,
And breathless it adored,
While through the air, all-reverent, stilled,
The earth’s sweet incense soared.

Did dreams of France, his own loved France,
The Jesuit’s spirit steep
With thought of hearts that love would trance
As they God’s feast should keep

With myriad lights and thronging flowers,
Strong voices’ mellow peal?
And did he long through those sweet hours
Before his Lord to kneel?

From far cathedral pomp aloof,
And simple, loving hearts,
For columned church the wood’s green roof
Darkened with heathen arts.

Still seemed the glory of the day
The golden hope to give
Of Love Almighty’s deathless sway
O’er nations yet to live.

An echo of St. Thomas’ hymn
Came faintly o’er the wave;
The Jesuit’s eyes with tears grew dim
At thought of souls to save.

And “_Bone Pastor, Panis vere_,”
His firm lips softly spoke,
O “_Jesu, nostri miserere_,”
From heart, love-burdened, broke.

And “_Lauda Sion, Salvatorem_”
Thy glad waves seemed to cry;
While “_Lauda Ducem et Pastorem_”
Flung back the happy sky.

Lake of the Blessed Sacrament,
That hour won thy name’s grace
As holiest thought of love was lent
To sign thy maiden face.

Its look of heaven as of yore
Still wears thy calm, sweet face;
Alas! that thou shouldst keep no more
Thy first baptismal grace.

THE THREE ROSES.

I.

It was at precisely half-past ten, as he satisfied himself by looking at his watch, on the morning of the 17th of June, in the year 1743, that a young gentleman got up from a chair in front of the Café Procope (just then opening with that air of stretching itself, rubbing its eyes, and yawning which marks a café in the ante-meridian hours). He stood for a moment twirling his cane and his moustache alternately, and then, as if suddenly reminded by the look of the café of a great moral duty omitted, stretched himself slightly and yawned prodigiously. It was, to be sure, rather early in the day to begin yawning, except for cafés; but then this young chronologer had his own way of dividing time, and, believing with the poet that the best of all ways to lengthen our days is to snatch a few hours from the night, what was early in the morning for most men was only somewhat late at night for him. It is to be noted, too, since the most trifling incidents in the life of a hero are worthy of record, that he yawned with such admirable self-possession, with such a mingling of good-will and graceful languor; he had so much the air of giving his whole mind to it, and at the same time of being so used to yawning that he really didn’t care so much for it after all, that you saw at once he was a man of distinction, to whom a yawn was not, as to most of us, a rare luxury, but a daily, nay, an hourly, a half-hourly, necessary of life.

Much might here be said, if space permitted, of a highly instructive nature, on the philosophy of yawning and its many varieties: the go-to-bed yawn; the get-up yawn; the tired yawn, the yawn of simple lassitude; the good-humored yawn, which takes itself as an excellent joke; the peevish yawn, which denies itself acridly as if it were a crime; the writer’s yawn and the reader’s yawn (_quod Jupiter omen avertat!_); the chronic yawn and the fixed yawn which merges into the drawl; the imitative yawn, into which unwary grandmothers are seduced by wicked little boys with slowly-flapping palm; the bored yawn, which is a protest against the world in general; the well-bred yawn, which is a protest against the immediate company, and is practised only in solitude. (It is, of course, the last-named sort in which our hero indulges.) There is a great deal of character, too, in a yawn, from your timid little lady’s yawn, shrinking away and hiding behind fan or handkerchief, or with hypocritical feminine art so moulding itself that, like Lucy Fountain’s, “it glides into society a smile,” to your open, hearty, man’s yawn, showing all its grinders shamelessly, as if it were a fine natural prospect one ought to be grateful for. Napoleon judged men, as he led them, by their noses;[166] a true philosopher would classify them by their yawns.

Meantime, however, we are leaving our hero yawning at the risk of dislocating his jaw and of setting the reader to keep him company. Let us, therefore, resume. Having indulged himself sufficiently in this refreshment, and recomposed his features again with some care, the young gentleman stood for a moment irresolute, tapping his boot with his cane, and then, as if his mind were made up, set off at a brisk pace in the direction of Notre Dame. As he stepped out it did not need his showy uniform, which was that of the famous corps of _Mousquetaires_, his jingling spurs, or his long rapier, of a heavier make than the dress-sword then worn by every gentleman, to show him for a soldier. You saw it in his measured stride, in every movement of a lithe and graceful yet strong and well-knit figure, in the gay recklessness of his manner, and especially in the ardent and somewhat imperious glance of his dark gray eye. A trace of superciliousness and vanity on his bold, handsome face you would have pardoned to his years and comeliness. Women smiled kindly on the gay young mousquetaire as he passed them, and were not ill-pleased at the kisses he flung them in promiscuous homage from the tips of his gloved fingers. Male glances not so kind, instinct, indeed, with smouldering scorn and hatred, were shot at him covertly too—glances such as a half-century later gloated openly with savage ferocity over the death-struggles of other hapless young mousquetaires dying hopelessly and gallantly, sword in hand, for a king who knew how to make locks but not laws, and a queen who could win all hearts but those of her people.