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Being committed beyond all explanation, I said I was glad to hear that too, "if Miss Minnie approves." This last supposition I made with a deprecating cough, not being quite sure of the relation which the old gentleman bore to the Darling of the World and the Sunshine of his life.
"It was her own proposal," was his rejoinder, "and you can't imagine what an immense relief it was to me too. It is more than I can stand to get through with the "thank ye sir's," and the "much obliged's" and the "long life to your honor's." I'm a baby, sir, in their presence, and by the time the distribution is made I'm a spectacle of unmitigated woe, as if I'd been to as many funerals as there are baskets. I remember that as I was coming out from a widow and five children, last Christmas, that rascal Bob saw me wiping my eyes, and says he, 'Most of 'em dead, sir?' 'No, Bob,' says I, 'it's the smoke, I suppose; they've a precious smoky chimney.' But when we got to the next place—let me see—oh! yes, a man with a broken leg, the scoundrel says to me, as he handed out the basket, 'Now, let us bury another one, sir.' Not bad for, was it? I had such a good laugh on each pair of stairs beforehand that I got through that one pretty comfortably But it was a glorious proposal of my Minnie's, was it not, that these should go privately? for we'll sit at home, and check them off as they go in, for I've arranged that the messenger shall deliver them by the watch, sir, and we'll imagine their surprise and their happy faces, and the bringing out of the monkeys, and then we'll have a roar and be jolly, and get rid of the thank ye's and all the rest of it that chokes up a man's throat and turns him into a born baby." And here the good-hearted old gentleman, in the fulness of his delight, caused the monkey in his hand to perform a series of rapid gymnastics over the top of his pole, beyond the powers of any monkey that ever lived. He presented such a comical appearance in doing this that I burst into another hearty laugh in which he as heartily joined.
"It is irresistibly amusing," said I, meaning the monkey.
"I knew it would be," he returned, his mind running upon the happy scheme by which he might prevent his left hand knowing the deeds of the right; "we will have twenty merry Christmas laughs all rolled into one. There I'll be, as it were, on this side," here he took a position on the floor opposite me, "and my Darling over there, as it were you," a distinction I acknowledged by a profound bow, "and Bob standing behind her chair, as that rocking-horse stands behind you; and then, watch in hand, we'll check them off: Number One, Widow Bums, two small children; Number Two, Susy Bell, orphan girl, works in a carpet factory and supports her two orphan sisters; Number Three, old Granny Mullen, with consumptive son and three grand-children, and so on; and there we'll have them all right before us, and they knowing nothing about it (there's the beauty of it, all due to that blessed Darling of the World and Sunshine of my life), and out will come the joint of meat, ready cooked, and the mince-pie, and the plum-pudding with a dozen of silver quarter dollars in each one, and the shoes and the stockings, and I don't know what else besides, packed away by my Darling's own sweet little hands, and last of all the monkey with a label around his neck, with an inscription, say, for instance, 'From Nobody in particular, with best wishes for a Merry Christmas.' There you have it," added he, waving the monkey triumphantly in the air, "and won't it be grand?"
"I'd give the world to see it," I exclaimed, quite carried away by the old gentleman's enthusiastic manner. Just then the keeper of the toy-shop handed me a package of marbles, tops, jewsharps, a pocket spy-glass, and a few other things of a like nature calculated to make glad the heart of{544}boys, which I had purchased for my little nephew, Willie, in the country.
"This for you, Mr. Holiday; but if you wish, I'll send it around to the doctor's," said the toy-vender.
"Lord bless my heart and soul!" exclaimed the old gentleman, seizing me suddenly by both hands. "Not Alfred Holiday is it?"
"That is my name," said I.
"Nephew of Dr. Ben?"
"Nephew of Dr. Ben," I repeated.
"And how long have you been in the city?"
"About a week," said I. "I came up to spend Christmas with Uncle Ben and Aunt Mary."
"And to take a look in at the Owl's Retreat, No. 9 Harmony place, of course?"
I intimated my ignorance of the Retreat in question, and of my not having the pleasure, etc.
"My house, man, my house," said he, shaking my hands up and down. "Dr. Ben and I are old acquaintances; in fact, ever since my Minnie was—I beg your pardon," added he, suddenly recollecting himself, and producing a card from his vest pocket. "Name of Acres, Thomas Acres, who, with the compliments of his daughter Minnie to the same effect,willbe—mosthappy—tosee—Mr. Alfred—Holiday—on to-morrowmorning—tojoinin—thegrand—checking off—ofthe—twenty baskets—andtheir—contents—including—monkeys—and of course stay to dinner."
If the old gentleman's cordial manner had any weight in deciding my acceptance of the invitation, it must be confessed that the curiosity to see the "Darling of the World and the Sunshine of his life" added not a little to it. Promising to be on hand at No. 9 before eleven o'clock, at which hour the checking off was to begin, I bade my new-found friend good-morning and went home.
But it was very provoking not to know more of the "Darling and Sunshine" This is him him him him question. Standing in such a light to such a father, she was, of course, a peerless being. Age—say, twenty. Height—medium, I am five feet ten. 10 Blonde or brunette—difficult to determine. Sunshine would seem to indicate blonde, yet darling might be either. Good, amiable, witty, accomplished—not a doubt of it. Beautiful name too, said I, as I scribbled it in every style of the caligraphic art, thereby destroying no small amount of my uncle's property in fine gilt-edged note paper. Has she suitor already. Hoity-toity, Mr. Alfred Holiday, you are castle-building on a small amount of material, it seems to me; and if she have, what affair is that of yours? a question which that imaginative young gentlemen finding himself unable to solve fell into a fit of despondency, and went to bed in a despairing state of mind.
Punctual to the appointed hour I walked into Harmony place, a quiet unpretentious street, and open the gate of No. 9. There had been both a rain and heavy frost in the night, and the trees and shrubs, clothed in a complete armor of ice, sparkled and glittered in the bright sunshine. Unfortunately, the ground shared in this universal covering, and being under the impression that someone was looking from behind the curtains, who might possibly be the Darling of the World and the Sunshine of the life of Mr. Thomas Acres, I insanely endeavored to walk upon the glassy pavement with careless ease, as if it were the most ordinary ground in the world. I now advise my bitterest enemy to try it. In an unguarded moment my feet slipped, and I came down in the most unpleasant manner into a sitting posture upon the ground. I thought I heard the sound of a clear ringing laugh following immediately upon my ignominious fall. I hoped it was from No. 10 or No. 8; yet my heart misgave me as Mr. Acres, with a half dozen superfluous bows, divided between his daughter and myself, introduced me, and a pair of dark, deep eyes, in which I thought I detected a merry twinkle, quietly but warmly acknowledged my presence.
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"Mr. Alfred Holiday, my child, our old friend, Doctor Holiday's nephew; Mr. Holiday, my daughter Minnie, the Darling of the World and the Sunshine of my life, as I have already told you, and the Dove of this Owl's Retreat."
I was "most happy," of course, and wished them both, with a bow to Miss Minnie, a Merry Christmas.
"We were getting afraid, Mr. Holiday, lest we should be obliged to begin without you," said that bright-eyed and altogether beautiful young lady, in a tone of voice which I afterward characterized in a violently worded poem, written just before midnight, as 'rippling diamonds' and 'dropping pearls.'
"Afraid!—withoutme?" I exclaimed, placing a most unjustifiable emphasis upon the personal pronoun. "I am highly flattered."
"Not at all; my father tells me he feels deeply indebted to you in assisting him in the choice of some toys designed for the children."
"For—for—laughing," stammered I. "Do you think, Miss Acres, that one might be indebted to another for a laugh?" I was thinking of my stupid fall on the ice, and began to regret my having accredited to No. 8 or 10 those sounds of merriment which reached my ears.
"If one gives good cause," she replied, with the quietest and most provoking of smiles. The deep, dark eyes twinkled again, and Nos. 8 and 10 stood acquitted.
"Come, Mr. Holiday," said Mr. Acres, "let us take an inspection of the forces. Wagon is loaded, strange man hired, with a watch in his pocket, off he goes; whence he comes or whither he goes, nobody knows. Ha! ha! Minnie, my dear, put me down one, your ancient Owl has struck a poetic vein; no time to register it, however. Come along; while I am immortalizing myself, twenty hungry families are waiting for a Christmas dinner they don't expect to get, and their mouths watering for plum-puddings and mince pies that they have not the most distant expectation of"—and the good old soul led the way into the hall, and thence into the court yard, at the entrance of which stood a large covered furniture-cart, filled to over-flowing with the wonderful twenty baskets destined to distribute happiness among as many poor and suffering families, and make their hearts merry on Christmas day. Each basket was labelled with its direction, number, and time of delivery.
"Now, John," said Mr. Acres to the driver as he mounted to his place on the cart, "remember, you are born deaf and dumb, can't hear a word nor even say 'Merry Christmas,' until you come back here and report."
"Lave me alone, sir," replied John with a broad grin, "the fun shan't be spiled for me."
"He enters into it, he enters into it, you see," said Mr. Acres, addressing Minnie and myself. "What's the time, John, by yours?"
"Near eleven, sir."
"Time's up, then.
"One, two, three, and off you go.Twenty baskets piled in a row:Ask me no questions, for I don't know.
Positively, my darling, there's something inspiring in the air this morning."
John cracked his whip, and the cart moved out of the yard, turned down the street, and was soon out of sight. Mr. Acres was a perfect picture of happiness as he stood gazing at the departing vehicle, rubbing his hands with delight, and his full, round face beaming with intense satisfaction. As I glanced at Minnie I saw her eyes filled with tears of love and pride as she watched the movements of her father. Turning about suddenly he noticed her emotion, upon which he went up to her, and placing a hand on her either cheek said with mock gravity:
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"Miss Minnie Acres, the Darling of the World and the Sunshine of my life, is hereby invited to attend the funeral of twenty baskets without further notice. Ha! ha! you recollect Bob, you know; and no time to lose either," he added, taking Minnie's hand in his right and mine in his left, and turning toward the parlor; "so let us get at it, my dears; excuse the liberty, Mr. Holiday, I'm in a glorious humor, and it's Christmas day, and here we are, and here's the list, so sit ye down; and Bob, Bob! you rascal, where are you?"
The rascal thus vociferously called for responded immediately by presenting at the door a form about four feet in height, of the rarest obesity, clothed in a dark-gray suit, evidently denned for the first time, and holding with both hands the stiffest and hardest of hats. There was no motion of his lips visible, but a sound was heard as if it proceeded from the inside of a cotton-bale, which was understood to mean—
"Here I am, sir; respects, gentlemen and ladies, and a Merry Christmas."
"Pretty time of day for that" said Mr. Acres, "as if a body were just out of bed, and hadn't heard Mass yet. Oh! I see," he continued, glancing at Bob's new clothes, which I have no doubt were the delivery of an order from T. Acres, Esq., made that very morning by Tibbits & Son, fashionable tailors. "Well, Merry Christmas, Bob; but don't stand bowing there all day"—which feat that individual seemed to be vainly attempting to execute, but could not get through with to his entire satisfaction—"come in, and stand there by Miss Minnie, and listen to the checking off, and we'll see if it's all right as a trivet, as it should be. Lord! I'd eat no dinner if there was one left out."
The "checking off" commenced immediately, the time being up for the delivery of the first basket. Nothing could exceed the delight of the old gentleman as Minnie read from the list the names of the parties who at that moment received the basket, their places of residence, and a detailed account of the articles sent. Each basket contained a sufficient supply for a hearty Christmas dinner for the family, jellies, wines, and other delicacies for the sick, some articles of clothing, and last of all the toy monkey.
"They've all got one," said Mr. Acres, chuckling with glee as monkey Number One was mentioned; "but we must do it regular and put them all down, or I should be afraid we overlooked one, which isn't likely, however, for they are all down at the bottom of each basket, and I with them there myself."
One by one the baskets were checked off, Mr. Acres with watch in hand calling "time," and Minnie reading thereupon the names of the parties and contents of the basket allotted to them. We very soon realized the old gentleman's promise that we would have a roar, for as the distribution went on the merriment increased, as all considered it their bounden duty to laugh louder and longer at the mention of the monkey of the basket then checked off than they did at the last one. Even Bob, whose risible powers seemed to be rather limited, and which were evidently under still greater restraint by reason of the additional dignity which became the new outfit, succeeded in increasing the hilarity of the occasion by the comical manner he performed his appointed duty in the checking off, which consisted in answering "right" when the number and names were announced, and submitting any information obtained of the parties in question through the intervention of a certain Mrs. McQuirey, whose "absence at the present delightful reunion," explained Mr. Acres, "was owing to the numerous duties with which that excellent lady had burdened herself." These duties, I afterward learned, consistent in making a daily morning visit to a number of sick poor people who Mr. Acres had taken under his fostering care. Bob's information was remarkable for its brevity of expression as well as for its peculiarly ventriloquistic character, due to the extraordinary amount of adipose matter which enveloped his organs of speech.{547}Of basket Number Five, for instance, he said, "Bad—husband goes it every Saturday night—children thin as broom handles." Or Number eight he reported: "Measles—shanty—rags scare—allers hungry." Of Number Ten, "Wus—man broken leg—wife no work—ain't fit neither if there was millions." Of Number Twenty, the last, having by this time exhausted his stock of adjectives, he summed up his report thus: "Extremely wust o' the hall lot—widder—nine mortal bags o' hungry bones—and what will you do with 'em?"
"Do with them!" exclaimed Mr. Acres, "we'll have Mrs. McQuirey look them up, Bob, eh? Minnie, dear, take a note of Number Twenty, that basket is only a bite."
The baskets being all checked off, Bob was ordered to produce forthwith a bottle of wine and glasses. "Now that we've got through with it comfortably," said Mr. Acres, "we'll drink all their healths, and wish 'em a Merry Christmas," which was done, all standing. "Hoping," continued that Prince of Charity, glass in hand, and following toward the four points of the compass, as if the whole twenty families were arranged about him in a circle, "that you may all have many happy returns of the season, and never know a Christmas that is not a merry one."
Never was a toast drunk with purer enthusiasm or a heartier good-will. Believing it to be the part of some one to cheer the sentiment, and not seeing any of the parties present who might with great propriety perform that duty, Bob took it upon himself to act their proxy, which he accordingly did by waving his new hat in a circle and giving three muffled "Hoo-rays" from the cotton bale.
In a few minutes John the messenger returned. He was at once introduced to the parlor, where he gave a glowing account of his errand.
"The shammin' deaf an' dumb was thryin' to me sowl above all. It wint aginst me not to be able to say the top o' the mornin' to ye, or aven God save all here on a Christmas dhay to the crathers, an' the Lord forgive me for peepin' an' a listenin' whin they thought I was deaf as a post, but it was in a good cause. It tuk the tears out o' me two eyes, so it did, to hear thim wondherin and prayin 'and a blessin' yez, and a cryin' for joy, and to see the childer dancin' the monkeys like mad. Och! but it's a glory to be a rich man like yer honor. Me mouth wathers whin I think o' the threasures ye're a hapin' up above."
"Bob," interrupted Mr. Acres, shifting uneasily in his seat, "you had better get out the crape hat-bands, for I see a funeral coming round the corner."
"A funeral is it?" said John. "May it be a thousand years afore it shtops forninst yer honor's doors."
"Thank ye, John; thank ye," said Mr. Acres, suddenly rising and going to the window, where he stood apparently deeply interested in the view of a blank wall and some smoky chimney-pots before him.
"Whinhisday comes," continued John, loud enough to be overheard by Mr. Acres, "what a croonin' and a philaluin' thim poor crathers will be makin'. Sure, their tears will be droopin' like diamonds into his grave."
This was too much for Mr. Acres, who turned around, presenting a picture of inconsolable grief. It was only after two or three violent efforts to clear his throat of some unusually large obstacle which appeared to have stuck there that he succeeded in saying:
"Merry Christmas, John! Merry Christmas! You will find a plum-pudding, John, waiting down-stairs," and immediately began another survey of the blank wall and chimney-pots, making at the same time several abortive attempts to whistle.
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John took the hint, and bowed himself out of the room. A dead silence ensued upon his departure, which no one appeared to find sufficient reason to break. In vain did I rack my brains to find an appropriate remark, but the words would not arrange themselves into a grammatical sentence. As I chanced to lift my eyes to the full-orbed face of Bob, standing bolt upright behind Minnie's chair, I became convinced at once of the fact that I had been intently and impudently staring at that Darling of the World for some time, whose beautiful downcast face, half shaded by a profuse cluster of raven curls I thought might engage the attention of any individual, say for an unlimited term of years. Embarrassed by this discovery, I took up the basket list and became at once deeply absorbed in its perusal. Unfortunately, the paper appeared to be possessed of some diabolical fascination which prevented my looking away from it or opening my mouth. How long this state of things might have continued is difficult to say, had not Bob broken the silence by a question, addressed, as it seemed, rather to mankind in general then to any particular individual within hearing:
"This ain't Christmas is it?"
"Yes, it is, you rascal," replied Mr. Acres; who, being either satisfied with his inspection of the blank wall and the chimney-pots, or had concluded to defer their more minute examination to another time, at that moment came forward to the table. "Go and order up lunch directly, Minnie, my darling; Mr. Holiday will give us the pleasure of his company, and also to dinner. Meanwhile, Mr. Holiday will be glad to hear you sing, my dear, and I will go and have Number Twenty looked after; that basket was only a bite, only a bite."
Mr. Alfred Holiday immediately led Miss Minnie Acres to the piano, where he listened with rapt attention to that young lady's singing of Miss Hemans's "O lovely voices of the sky;" upon which Mr. Alfred Holiday made the stupid remark that he had never heard any one of those "voices of the sky" before that day. Afterward Miss Minnie Acres and Mr. Alfred Holiday looked over a portfolio of prints together, when that young gentleman discovered that all his fingers were thumbs, and besought Miss Minnie Acres to hold one of the prints for him, when, looking at her and at the same time pretending to examine the picture with a critical eye, he declared he never saw anything so beautiful in his life, which irrelevant observation caused Miss Minnie Acres to say to Mr. Alfred Holiday, "Why! you're not looking at it!" whereupon that gentlemen became speechless and blushed from the roots of his hair to the depths of his best necktie. Of the events of the rest of the day Mr. Alfred Holiday distinctly remembers the following facts. Lunch being announced, Mr. Alfred Holiday took Miss Minnie Acres to the table, acted in the most insane manner while there, and lead Miss Minnie Acres back to the parlor; that he played backgammon with Miss Minnie Acres, and doubtless left an impression on the mind of that young lady that he was utterly ignorant of the game; that he accompanied Miss Minnie Acres to Vespers, and returned with her; that he took Miss Minnie Acres to dinner, during which a gentleman, who to the best of his belief was Mr. Thomas Acres, told him several times that he, Mr. Alfred Holiday, ate nothing, a fact of which that gentleman was not aware; that after the cloth was removed Mr. Alfred Holiday sat staring at an empty chair opposite him, for the possession of which he could cheerfully have impoverished himself and gone upon the wide, wide world; that certain musical sounds proceeded from the direction of the parlor, Mr. Alfred Holiday asseverated in the strongest terms to be "divine;" that upon his return to the parlor he was only restrained by the presence of a third person from throwing himself upon his knees and explaining: "Thou art the Darling of the World and the Sunshine of my life," but which he nevertheless repeated{549}in his mind an innumerable number of times; in a word, that Mr. Alfred Holiday fell head over ears in love with Miss Minnie Acres, and made of all, which up to the present writing he has religiously, that if she would accept his hand and heart, which she did a few weeks after, he would send her twenty baskets of provisions to as many poor families every Christmas Eve, as a thank-offering, and a grateful remembrance of the hour when he laughed, and thereby one the most beautiful and most faithful wife that a man ever have.
A Pilgrim to the West returned, whose palm-branch, drenched in dew,Shook off bright drops like childhood's tears when childhood's heart is new,Stole up the hills at eventide, like mist in wintry weather,Where locked in dream-like trance I lay, at rest among the heather.The red ferns, answering to his tread; sent up a savor sweet;The yellow gorse, like Magian gold, glowed bright about his feet:The waving brooms, the winter blooms, each happy voice in air,Grew great with life and melody, as if a Christ stood there.Unlike to mortal man was he. His brow rose broad and high:The peace of heaven was on his lip, the God-light in his eye;And rayed with richer glory streamed, through night and darkness shed,To crown that holy Pilgrim's brow, the one star overhead.Long gazing on that staff he bore, beholding how it grewWith sprouts of green, with buds between, and young leaves ever new.The marvels of the Eastern land I bade him all unfold.And thus to my impassioned ears the wondrous tale he told:"Each growth upon that sacred soil where one died not in vain,Though crushed and shed, though seeming dead, in beauty lives again:The branching bough the knife may cleave, the root the axe may sever,But on the ground his presence lighted, nothing dies for ever."Where once amid the lowly stalls fell soft the Virgin's tear,The littered straw 'neath children's feet turns to green wheat in ear.The corn he pluck'd on Sabbath days, though ne'er it feels the sun,Though millions since have trod the field, bears fruit for every one."The palms that on his way were strewn wave ever in the air;From clouded earth to sun-bright heaven they form a leafy stair.In Cana's bowers the love of man is touched by the divine;And snows that fall on Galilee have still the taste of wine."Where thy lost locks, poor Magdalen! around his feet were rolled,Still springs in woman's worship-ways the gracious Mary-gold:Men know when o'er that bowed down head they hear the angels weeping,The purer spirit is not dead—not dead, but only sleeping.{550}"Aloft on blackened Calvary no more the shadows lower:Where fell the piercing crown of thorns, there blooms a thorn in flower.Bright on the prickled holy-tree and mistletoe' appear,Reflecting rays of heavenly shine, the blod-drop and the tear."The sounding rocks that knew his tread wake up each dead abyss,Where echoes caught from higher worlds ring gloriously in this;And, leaning where his voice once filled the temple where he taught,The listener's eyes grew spirit-full—full with a heavenly thought."The Pilgrim ceased. My heart beat fast. I marked a change of hue;As if those more than mortal eyes a soul from God looked through.Then rising slow as angels rise, and soaring faint and far,He passed my bound of vision, robed in glory, as a star.Strange herald voices filled the air: glad anthems swelled around:The wakened winds rose eager-voiced, and lapsed in dreamy sound.It seemed all birds that wintered far, drawn home by some blessed power,Made music in the Christmas woods, mistaking of the hour.A new glad spirit raptured me! I woke to breathe the mornWith heart fresh-strung to charity—as though a Christ were born.Then knew I how each earth-born thought, though tombed in clay it seem,It bursts the sod, it soars to God, transfigured in a dream.ELEANORA L. HERVEY
It is not the fashion at present to scoff at Christianity, or to make an open profession of infidelity. Ponderous treatises to prove that revealed religion is an impossibility, and coarse blasphemies against holy things, are equally out of date. Yet to men of earnest convictions, whether holding the whole or only some portions of revealed truth, the moral atmosphere is not reassuring. The pious Catholic, the Bible-loving Protestant, and the hybrid of the last phase of Tractarianism, are alike distrustful of the smooth aspect of controversy and the calm surface of the irreligious element. There is something worse than bigotry or mischief, and that is skepticism. And, if we may judge from what we hear and read, it is this to which most schools of thought outside the Catholic Church are rapidly drifting, if they have not already reached it, and into which restless and disloyal Catholics are in danger of being precipitated. An answer made to an old Oxford friend by one who was once with him in the van of the Tractarian movement, but did not accompany him into the fold, "I agree with you, that if there is a divine revelation, the Roman Catholic Church is the ordained depository of it; but this is an uncertainty which I cannot solve," would probably express the habitual state of mind of a fearfully{551}large number of the more thoughtful of our countrymen, and the occasional reflection of many more who do not often give themselves time to think. And to the multitudes who are plunging or gliding into doubts the Catholic system, which there unhappy training has made it one of their first principles to despise for detest, has not even presented itself as an alternative.
The current literature of the day, which is mostly framed to suit the taste of the market, and reacts again in developing that taste further in the same direction, is pre-eminently, not blasphemous, or anti-Catholic, or polemical, but sceptical. The following description of the periodical press by the Abbé Louis Baunard, in his recent publication, [Footnote 168] might seem to have been written for London instead of Paris:
[Footnote 168: Le Doute ses Victimes dans le Siècle présent, par M. l'Abbé Louis Baunard. Paris.]
"With some rare exceptions, you will not find any rude scoffing, violent expressions, unfashionable cynicism, harsh systems, or exclusive intolerance. Yet is not controversy that is the business of these writers, but criticism. They deal in expositions and suppositions, but almost always without deciding anything. It is a principle with them that there are only shades of difference between the most contradictory propositions; and the reader becomes accustomed to see these shades in such questions as those which relate to the personality of God, the divinity of Jesus Christ, and the supernatural generally. This does not hinder these men from calling themselves Christians, in the vague sense of a loose Christianity, which allows the names of ancient beliefs to remain, while it destroys their substance. They do not assault the old religion in front, but silently undermine the foundations on which it rests, and carry on ingenious parallels by the side of revealed truth, till some conclusion emerges which utterly subverts it, without having appeared to be intentionally directed against it. There is one review, the most widely circulated of all, in the same number of which an article dearly atheistical will be found by the side of another article breathing the most correct orthodoxy, and very much surprised to see itself in such company. Such concessions to truth, which are made only now and then, serve to give the publication that makes them a certain appearance of impartiality, and thus to accredit error, and to lay one more snare for the reader."
We may be inclined, on a cursory perusal of such periodicals as The Saturday Review, to indulge gleefully in the laughter excited by the ludicrous aspect in which some pompous prelate or fussy evangelical preacher is presented; or to admire the acute and seemingly candid dissection, at one time, of a Protestant scheme of evidences, at another, of an infidel philosophy; or to rejoice in the substitution of decorous calmness for rancor and raving in handling Catholic truth. But when we study a series of such publications, and notice how systematically all earnest convictions are made to show a weak or ridiculous side, and all proofs of Christianity to appear defective, and how, under a smooth surface of large-minded impartiality, there beats a steady tide of attack upon all supernatural virtue and all supernatural truth, our hearts must needs ache to think of the effects of such teaching on multitudes of imperfectly grounded minds. In the words of the author to whom we have referred: "Right and wrong, true and false, yes and no, meet and jostle each other, and are mistaken for each other in minds bewildered and off their guard, and mostly incapable of discrimination: till at length, lost in these cross-roads, tired of systems and of contradictions, and not knowing in what direction to find light, all but the most energetic sit down and rest in doubt, as in the best wisdom and the safest position." But to sit down in doubt is either to abdicate the highest powers of a reasonable being, or to admit an enemy that will use them as instruments of torture. Except for{552}souls of little intellectual activity, or wholly steeped in sense, this sitting down in doubt is like sitting down in a train that is moving out of the station with the steam up and no engine-driver, or in a boat that is drifting out of harbor into a stormy sea.
The Abbé Baunard has collected the experiences of some of these reckless and storm-tossed wanderers into a painfully interesting volume. He has selected from the chief sceptical philosophers and poets of the present century those who, in private journals or autobiographical sketches, have made the fullest disclosures of the working of their own minds, and has let them speak for themselves. He calls them "victims of doubt," and bids us listen with compassion to their bitter lamentations over the wreck of the past, and their gloomy anticipations of the future, and to the cries of pain and shame which seem forced out of them, even amidst their proudest boasts of independence and most resolute rejections of revealed truth. But, although an expression here or there may be unguarded, he distinguishes very clearly between pitying and excusing these victims. He reminds us that compassion for the sufferings entailed by doubt cannot absolve from the guilt of doubt. He protests against the claim made by sceptics to be regarded as warriors in conflicts in which only the noble engage, and as scarred with honorable wounds; and against the notion that to have suffered much in a wrong cause is a guarantee of sincerity and a title to salvation. He quotes with reprobation the plea of M. Octave Feuillet: "Ah! despise as much as you choose what is despicable. But when unbelief suffers, implores, and is respectful, do you respect it. There are blasphemies, be assured, which are as good as prayers, and unbelievers who are martyrs. Yes, I firmly believe that the sufferings of doubt are holy, and that to think of God and to be always thinking of him, even with despair, is to honor him and to be pleasing to him." He would not admit the same plea in the more plausible form and more touching language in which it is urged by Mr. Froude: "You who look with cold eye on such a one, and lift them up to heaven, and thank God you are not such as he, and call him hard names, and think of him as of one who is forsaking a cross, and pursuing unlawful indulgence, and deserving all good men's reproach! Ah! could you see down below his heart's surface, could you count the tears streaming down his cheek, as out through some church-door into the street come pealing the old familiar notes, and the old psalms which he cannot sing, the chanted creed which is no longer his creed, and yet to part with which was worse agony than to lose his dearest friend; ah! you would deal him lighter measure. What! is not his cup bitter enough, but that all the good, whose kindness at least, whose sympathy and sorrow, whose prayers he might have hoped for, that these must turn away from him as from an offence, as from a thing for bid? —that he must tread the wine-press alone, calling to God-fearing man his friend; and this, too, with the sure knowledge that of coldness least of all he is deserving, for God knows it is no pleasant task which has been laid on him." The fallacies which are dextrously interwoven in this passage, that sympathy precludes condemnation, that intense suffering of any kind sanctities the sufferer, and that the state of doubt is imposed as a burden and not wilfully incurred and retained, are refuted out of the mouth of those who resort to them. We see, indeed, in the records of these victims of doubt, various circumstances leading to their fall; such as the heathenish state of the colleges where some of them lost their faith, the antichristian theories of science and philosophy magisterially propounded to them, the personal influence of friends who were already committed to skepticism, poisonous literature thrown in the way, and the excitement of political revolutions; and, of course, in the case of{553}those who had not received a Catholic education, the far greater palliation of the absence of a coherent system of belief. But, at the same time, we see no less plainly the working of wilful negligence and presumption in their descent into the abyss, and of wilful pride and obstinacy in refusing to seek the means of extrication from it. They are victims of doubt as others are victims of a habit of opium-eating or gambling; and if we sympathize with them more deeply than with these latter, it is rather because their anguish is more intense and more refined than because it is less the harvest of their own sowing. By the side of those who fell, there were others of the same sensibility of mind, placed in the same circumstances, exposed to the same assaults, who stood firm by prayer and humility, and who found in their faith a provision for all their mental wants, and a fountain of peace under the heaviest trials. And by the side of those who, having once made shipwreck of their faith, plunged more and more deeply into despair of knowing anything with certainty, till they flung away the life that their own doubts had made an intolerable burden, there were others equally astray and equally burdened, who worked their way back to life and peace by the same path of earnest and humble prayer. Some of these contrasts are very effectively presented by our author, and others will suggest themselves to his readers.
The victims whose wanderings and sufferings are portrayed in this volume are Théodore Jouffroy, Maine de Biran, Santa Rosa, Georges, Farcy, and Edmund Schérer from among the philosophers of the century; and Lord Byron, Friedrich Schiller, Heinrich von Kleist, and Leopardi from among the poets; followed by a less detailed account of a group of French sceptical poets, Alfred de Musset, Henri Heine, Murger, Gérard de Nerval, and Hégésippe Moreau, whose writings are mostly too gross for quotation, although enough is given to show that their experience of the effects of doubt resembled that of the rest. All, with the exception of M. Schérer, who is the editor of the French paper Le Temps, have passed into a world where doubt is no longer possible—two of them by their own hand, and two more by violent deaths which they had gone to meet rather from weariness of life than from enthusiasm for the cause for which they fought.
There is only one of the whole number, Maine de Biran, whose death was thoroughly satisfactory; and he, though certainly to be reckoned among the victims of doubt, which clouded the best years of his life, and from which he only very slowly worked his way to freedom, is introduced rather in the way of contrast to the other philosophers and especially to Jouffroy. The great difference in his case lay in two things, that he paid more attention to the moral nature of man, and did not so wholly subordinate the desire of the good to the search after the true, and that he was on his guard against that pride of intellect which we see so rampant in his fellow-philosophers. While all the most celebrated men of Paris were paying court to him, and although, even before he had published anything beyond some short metaphysical treatises, M. Royer Collard cried, "He is the master of us all," and M. Cousin pronounced him to be the greatest French metaphysician since Malebranche, his own private reflection was: "Pride will be the ruin of my life, as long as I do not seek from on high a spirit to direct mine, or to take its place." Yet it was not till his fifty-second year, after many years' vain pursuit of truth in different systems of sensualistic and rationalistic philosophy, and of happiness first in pleasure and then in study and retirement, that he set himself resolutely to try surer means. "Not finding," he wrote in May, 1818, "anything satisfactory either in myself or out of myself, in the world of my ideas or in that of objects, I have been for some{554}time past more determined to look for that fixed resting-place which has become the need of my mind and of my heart, in the notion of the Absolute, Infinite, and Unchangeable Being. The religious and moral beliefs which reason does not create, but which are its necessary basis and support, now present themselves to me as my only refuge, and I can find no true knowledge anywhere than just there, where before, with the philosophers, I found only dreams and chimeras. My point of view has altered with my disposition and moral character." From this time the progress upward was steady. We find notices in his journal of earnest prayer, of daily meditation, of study of the gospels and the Imitation of Christ. Four years of physical suffering and outward trials deepened the work of conversion, and were passed with Christian resignation. The last words that he wrote were words of certainty and peace: "The Christian walks in the presence of God and with God, by the Mediator whom he has taken as his guide for this life and the next." The Ami de la Religion of July 24th, 1824, contained the notice: "Maine de Biran fulfilled his Christian duties in an edifying manner, and received the sacraments at the hands of his pastor, the curé of St. Thomas d'Aqnin."
Théodore de Jouffroy, if his life had not been suddenly cut short, would probably have had the same happiness. After having devoted his immense powers of mind to the study and dissemination of sceptical philosophy from 1814 to 1839, when bad health forced him to resign the professor's chair, he had begun to soften his tone, to speak respectfully of revealed religion, and to look wistfully and hopefully to it for the solution of the great problems which it had been the business and the torture of his life to investigate by the unaided light of his own intellect. He had conversed with Monseigneur Cart, the bishop of Nîmes, and had said to him, "I am not now one of those who think that modern societies can do without Christianity; I would not write in this sense to-day. You have a grand mission to fulfil, monseigneur. Ah! continue to teach the gospel well." He took pleasure in seeing his daughter preparing herself for her first communion; and speaking about a work of Lamennais to the clergyman who was instructing her, he said with a deep sigh, "Alas! M. le Curé, all these systems lead to nothing; better—a thousand times better—one good act of Christian faith." The curé left his room with good hopes of his conversion, and in the belief that the faith of his childhood had come to life again in his part. But before he could see him again, and put these hopes to the test, Jouffroy expired suddenly and without previous warning on the 1st of March, 1842.
Two or three of the French poets had time to ask for a priest, or to admit one when, in the hospitals to which their excesses had brought them, a Sister of Charity proposed it. Leopardi, outwardly at least sceptical and gloomy to the last, received a doubtful absolution from a priest, who came when the dying man was insensible. [Footnote 169] To all the rest even as much as this was wanting.
[Footnote 169: We have used this expression, also aware of the letter of Father Scarpa published first in the journal Scienza e Fede, and afterward in the eighth addition of Father Curci's Fatti ed Argomenti in risposta alle molte parole di V. Gioberti, in which he gives an account of Leopardi's recourse to his ministry and reconciliation by his means to the church in 1836; not, of course because we agree with Gioberti that this simple and modest letter is "a tissue of lies and deliberate inventions and a sheer romance from beginning to end;" but because Leopardi's letters in the beginning of 1837 and his continuance in the composition of his last poem the Paralipomeni, the conclusion of which was dictated a few days before his death, seems to suggest the melancholy alternative either of a feigned conversion or of a relapse into skepticism. He told Father Scarpa when he offered himself to be prepared for confession that he had been banished from his Father's house; and that he was now penitent, and was about to publish papers which would show his alterated sentiments. It is amusing to notice that to the staid and decorus Quarterly Review, as well as to Gioberti, this was to great an opportunity to be lost of reviling the Jesuits. Accordingly, on no other ground than that Father Scarpa repeatedas told him by Leopardiwhat his letters contradict, and that he was not quite correct in guessing at his age and described his appearance ten years after his interview with him, the reviewer indorses Gioberti's description, and calls the letter "an instance of audacity beyond all common efforts in that kind." The habitual mendacity in Leopardi's letters, and his offer, while an unbeliever, to be ordained in order to hold a benefice which he intendedafter saying a few Massesto have served by another, make it unfortunately not improbable that his conversion was only pretended.]
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We have not space to go into the details of these melancholy histories; but we must give a few extracts in illustration of the keen regret with which these victims of doubt look back to the religious convictions of their youth from the cheerlessness and misery of the state to which they have reduced themselves, and of the involuntary homage which, even while refusing to submit to the teaching of the church, they are forced to pay to it. Here is Jouffroy's reminiscence of the happy days of faith: "Born of pious parents and in a country where the Catholic faith was still full of life at the beginning of this century, I had been early wont to consider man's future and the care of my own soul the chief business of life, and all my subsequent education tended to confirm these serious dispositions. For a long time, the beliefs of Christianity had fully answered to all the wants and all the anxieties which such dispositions introduce into the soul. To these questions, which to me were the only questions that ought to occupy man, the religion of my fathers gave answers, and those answers I believed, and, thanks to my belief, my present life was clear, and beyond it I saw the future that was to follow it spread itself out without a cloud. At ease as to the path that I had to pursue in this world, at ease as to the goal to which it was to conduct me in the other, understanding the phases of life and death in which they are blended, understanding myself, understanding the designs of God for me, and loving him for the goodness of his designs, I was happy with the happiness that springs from a firm and ardent faith in a doctrine which solves all the great questions that can interest man." His faith, the liveliness of which had been somewhat shaken by an indiscriminate perusal of modern literature during the latter part of his classical studies at Dijon, gave way entirely before the lectures of M. Cousin in the Ecole Normale at Paris, to which he was transferred in 1814, and the combined influences of flattery and ridicule with which his sceptical fellow-students there assailed him. He describes the terrible struggle between "the eager curiosity which could not withdraw itself from the consideration of objections which were scattered like dust throughout the atmosphere that he breathed," and on the other hand the influences "of his childhood with its poetic impressions, his youth with its pious recollections, the majesty, antiquity, and authority of the faith which he had been taught, and the rising in revolt of the whole memory and imagination against the incursion of unbelief which wounded them so deeply." His faith was gone before he realized the loss: some time afterward he thus painted the horrors of the discovery: "Never shall I forget that evening in December when the veil that hid my unbelief from myself was rent. I still hear my footsteps in the bare narrow apartment, in which I continued walking long after the hour for sleep. I still see that moon half-veiled by clouds which at intervals lit up the cold window-panes. The hours of night glided by, and I took no note of them. I was anxiously following my train of thought, which descended from one stratum to another toward the depth of my consciousness, and scattering, one after another, all the illusions which had hitherto concealed it from me, made its outline every moment more visible. In vain did I try to cling to these residues of belief as a shipwrecked sailor to the fragments of his ship; in vain, alarmed at the unknown void in which I was about to be suspended, I threw myself back for the last time toward my childhood, my family, my country, all that was dear and sacred to me: the irresistible current of my thought was too strong. Parents, family, recollections, beliefs—it forced me to quit all. The analysis was continued with more obstinacy and more severity in proportion as it approached its term,{556}and it did not pause till it had reached it. Then I was aware that in my inmost self there was no longer anything left standing. It was an appalling moment, and when, toward morning, I threw myself exhausted on my bed, I seemed to see my former life, so smiling and so full, effaced, and another gloomy and desolate life opening behind me in which I was henceforth to live alone—alone with my fatal thought which had just banished me thither, and which I was tempted to curse."
A few years after this crisis in Jouffroy's life, the same sort of catastrophe was experienced in a distant country by another highly gifted soul, and wonderfully similar is the victim's description of it. Leopardi, the rival, in the opinion of many of his countrymen, of Tasso in poetry and of Galileo in philosophy, in whom a prodigious industry was united in rare combination to a subtle intellect and a refined imagination, who was reading Greek by himself at eight years old, and before he was nineteen was versed in several oriental languages, was engaged in literary correspondence with Niebuhr, Boissonado, and Bunsen, and was the author of numerous translations from the Classics, a valuable translation of Porphyry on Plotinus, and an erudite historical essay in which there are citations from four hundred ancient authors—had, like Jouffroy, prepared the way for his fall by an overweening confidence in his own great intellectual powers, and by a recklessly excessive devotion to study. To this was added the chafing of disappointed ambition, and irritation against his father for refusing to give him the means of leaving home. His ruin was completed by the conversation of Pietro Giordani, an apostate Benedictine monk, who soothed and condoled with him, flattered his vanity by telling him that "if Dante was the morning star of Italy's sky, Leopardi was the evening star," and succeeded in inoculating him with his own scepticism, which in himself was mere shallow impiety, but in the deeper mind of his pupil, led, if his writings can be trusted, to as hopelessly complete a disbelief of God, the soul, and immortality, as is possible for a human being to bring himself to endure. In a letter of March 6th, 1820, to his friend and seducer, he says: "My window being open one of these evenings, while I was gazing on a pure sky and a beautiful moonlight, and listening to the distant barking of dogs, I seemed to see images of former times before me, and I felt a shock in my heart. I cried out, like a convict, baking pardon of nature, whose voice I seemed to hear. At that instant, as I cast a glance back on my former state, I stood, frozen with terror, unable to imagine how it would be possible to support port life without fancies and without affections, without imagination and without enthusiasm—in a word, without anything of all that, a year ago, filled up my existence and made me still happy, notwithstanding my trials. Now I am withered up like to reed; no emotion finds an entrance any longer into my poor soul, and even the eternal and supreme power of love is annihilated in me at my present age." He was but twenty-two then; and through the seventeen years that is shattered constitution lasted, he was ever speaking of life as an agony and a burden, sometimes proudly declaring that he would not bend under its weight, sometimes passionately asking for sympathy and love, but always recurring to this sad refrain: "The life of mortals, when youth has past, is never tinged with any dawn. It is widowed to the end, and the grade is the only end to our night." "I comprehend, I know only one thing. Let others draw some profit from these vicissitudes and passing existences; it may be so, but for me life is an evil."
We have seen the account given by the French philosopher Jouffroy and the Italian poet Leopardi of their feelings on waking up to the knowledge that the faith of their childhood had passed away; let us compare one more such experience that of the German{557}Von Kleist. "For some time, my dear friend," he writes to the lady to whom he was affianced, "I have been employed in studying the philosophy of Kant, and I am bound to communicate to you a conclusion which I am sure will not affect you as deeply and as painfully as it has myself. It is this: we cannot be certain whether what we call truth is really the truth or only an appearance. In this last case, the truth that we sought after here below would be nothing at all after death; and it would be useless to try to acquire a treasure which it would be impossible to carry to the tomb. If this conclusion does not pierce your heart, do not laugh at a wretch whom it has deeply wounded in all that is most sacred to him.My noble, my only aim has vanished, and I have none. Since this conviction entered my mind, I have not touched my books. I have traversed my chamber, I have placed myself by an open window, I have run along the street. My interior disturbance has let me to visit smoking-rooms and cafés to get relief. I have been to the theatre and the concert to dissipate my mind. I have even played the fool. But in spite of all, in the midst of all this agitation, the one thought that occupied my whole soul and filled it with anguish was this: your aim, your noble and only aim has vanished." A few years of the repetition of this sorrowful wailing, and then, after writing to his sister, "You have done everything to save me that the power of a sister could do, everything that the power of man could do; the fact is, that nothing can help me here on earth," he escaped from doubt to pass before the Judgment-seat by his own hand.
We must give one more of the many recurring expressions of regret with which the volume abounds. We are inclined to regard Santa Rosa with even more profound compassion than the other victims, on account of the warm and tender piety of his earlier youth, and the absence in him of the arrogance and scorn that overflows in the others in the midst of their sufferings. All who knew him agreed that it was hardly possible to know him without loving him. Unfortunately, his struggles in the cause of Italy threw him into close association with many who had mistaken infidelity for liberty. Still more unfortunately, he contracted a close intimacy with M. Cousin, and soon began to love him more than truth and than God, and under the blighting influence of his teaching his own faith disappeared. M. Cousin has published his letters with frequent and large omissions, but there remains abundant evidence that he was always regretting the past. The following passage occurs after something omitted: "O my friend, how unfortunate we are in being only poor philosophers, for whom the continuance of existence after death is only a hope, an ardent desire, a fervent prayer! Would that I had the virtues and the faith of my mother! To reason is to doubt; to doubt is to suffer. Faith is a sort of miracle. When it is strong and genuine, what happiness it gives! How often in my study I raise my eyes to heaven, and beg God to reveal me to myself, but above all, to grant me immortality!" Twice in his life—when in prison in Paris with the expectation of being given up to the Piedmontese police, which would have been to be sent to the scaffold, and again when beginning a serious philosophical work—he returned to a better mind. Whether time and grace to return once more were given him, behind the Greek battery in the isle of Sphacteria, where he fell fighting bravely, we cannot tell.
Besides the implicit homage to the faith involved in such regrets of the past as we have been witnessing, the writings of most of these philosophers and poets contain many testimonies to their involuntary acknowledgment of the claims of the revealed system which they had abandoned. We will cite only one, from a discourse of Jouffroy on his usual subject, the{558}problem of the destiny of man: "There is a little book which children are made to learn, and on which they are questioned in church. Read this little book, which is called the Catechism; you will find in it an answer to all the questions that I hare proposed—all without exception. Ask the Christian whence the human race comes, he knows; whither it is going, he knows. Ask this poor child, who has never in his life dreamed of it, to what end he exists here below, and what he will become after death; he will give you a sublime answer, which he will not comprehend, but which is not the less admirable. Ask him how the world was produced, and for what end; why God placed animals and plants in it; how the earth was peopled, whether by one family or several; why men speak different languages; why they suffer; why they contend; what will be the end of it all—he knows. The origin of the world, the origin of the human race, the question of races, the destiny of man in this life and in the other, the relation of man to God, the duties of man to his fellows, the rights of man over creation—he is acquainted with all; and when he is grown up, he will be equally free from hesitation about natural rights, political rights, and the right of nations; for all this is the outcome and clear and spontaneous product of Christian doctrine. This is what I call a great religion; I recognize it by this sign of its not leaving unanswered any of the questions which interest humanity."
Edmond Schérer and Friedrich Schiller, as well as Lord Byron, differ from the other instances in never having known the true faith; but they show that the loss of a firm hold of those fragments of Christianity that are retained outside of the fold leads to something of the same result as the loss of the faith. The sketch of M. Schérer's life is very interesting, for it shows the inevitable result of Protestantism in a highly logical and reflective mind which refuses the alternative of submission to the Catholic Church. His installation in the chair of theology in the Evangelical Seminary of Geneva in 1844 was hailed as a triumph by all the devout adherents to the reformed religion, who looked to him as the invincible champion against the socinianism prevailing all around. He set himself to the work of proving the inspiration of Scripture without having recourse to the authority of the Catholic Church, and the result, after passing through various phases of sentimentalism and eclecticism, was to land him in such conclusions as that "the Bible has so little of a monopoly of inspiration, that there are writings not canonical the inspiration of which is much more evident than in some of the biblical writings;" and finally, that Protestantism and Catholicism, Christianity and Judaism, are only conceptions more or less exact of a common object and phases in a great movement of progressive spiritualization; that morality itself is only relative; and that absolute certainty of any kind is a dream. He may well say, as he has lately said: "Alas! blind prisoners as we are, laboring at the overthrow the past, we are engaged in a work which we do not understand. We yield to a power of which it seems at times that we are the victims as well as the instruments. The terrible logic whose formulas we wield crushes us while we are crushing others with it."
The moral of these and other such histories—the moral of Froude and Francis Newman and Clough—is that as God never made his children for perplexity and anguish, he never made them for doubt, and must have provided a secure asylum from it, not in ignorance or thoughtlessness, but in a system of divinely guaranteed authority. The lesson from the Nemesis of doubt is the conclusion of Augustine Thierry: "I have need of an infallible authority, I have need of rest for my soul. I open my eyes, and I see one only authority, that of the Catholic Church. I believe what the Catholic Church teaches; I receive her Credo."