Aurelia Lewis was seated before the library fire, with her hands folded in her lap.
As Mr. Southard paused an instant at sight of her, then came hastily in and shut the door after him, she rose and looked at him with an air of dignified composure. Her face was perfectly colorless.
"Is it true," he began at once, "that you have sympathized with me more than I knew? Tell me! A disappointment now would be too cruel."
Aurelia's full bright eyes opened a little wider, and a faint color warmed her cheeks; but she seemed too much astonished or too indignant to speak. Yet after the first glance, she drooped a little, and leaned on the back of her chair, as if, like that fair Jewish queen,for delicateness and overmuch tenderness, she were not able to bear up her own body.
How pure and sweet she was! Silent as dew. How utterly womanly her untainted loveliness!
"Esther!" exclaimed Mr. Southard.
After ten minutes Mr. Lewis put his head out of the carriage door, and made a sign to his wife, who was benevolently contemplating him from the parlor. She raised the window.
"Where is Mr. Southard?" he asked.
"He is saying good-by to Aurelia," was the reply; and the window went down again.
Minutes passed, but no Mr. Southard appeared. It was the day before Christmas, and the air was too sharp to make a long tarrying out doors agreeable.
"I've heard of eternal farewells, but I never before had the honor of assisting at one," muttered Mr. Lewis; and having waited as long as endurance seemed a virtue, he went into the house.
"Where is Mr. Southard?" he asked, looking round the parlor.
"In the library, saying good-by to Aurelia," replied his wife suavely.
Mr. Lewis looked at Margaret.
"Will you tell me what she means? I don't believe her. She always puts on that truthful look when she tells a lie."
Margaret laughed. "I think you may as well dismiss the carriage," she said.
In something less than half an hour Mr. Southard and Aurelia made their appearance. They were received with great cordiality.
"I hope you liked your journey to Europe," said Mr. Lewis with immense politeness. "Is the pope in good health?"
Mr. Southard was beyond the reach of mocking. "I have postponed my journey till this lady can be ready to accompany me," he said. "And I have convinced her that four weeks will be enough for her preparation."
Aurelia went to lean on Margaret's shoulder. She was trembling, but her face showed full contentment. "I would rather be Esther than Vashti," she whispered.
"I'm delighted enough to forgive you even a greater impertinence than that, if greater could be," was the whispered answer. "I am not Vashti, though you are Esther."
The next day, after coming home from early mass, Margaret sat in her chamber toward the east, with Dora and her two friends, Agnes and Violet, leaning on her lap, and watching her face. She had been telling them the story of that miraculous birth, and, finishing, looked up into the morning sky, and forgot them; forgot the sky, too, presently, with all its vapory golden stretches, and glimpses of far-away blue, and saw instead her life past, present, and to come. Looking calmly, she forgave herself much, for had not God forgiven her? and hoped much, for there was no room for despair; and grew content, for all that she could desire was within her reach.
Beginning at the lowest, she had an assured home, kind friends, and a dear and sacred duty in the care of this child. So far, all was peace.
One step higher then. Could the friend who still lived on in her heart forget her in that heaven to which her love had led him? And, weak and childish though she was, with her impatience, her scarcely broken pride, her obstinately clinging affection, could she be altogether unlovely to him? Some strong assurance answered no.
Higher yet her thought took its stand. There was faith, that second sight by which the soul sets her steps aright as she climbs, never missing the way. There was an unfading hope, and a charity that embraced the world. There was God. And all were hers!
As Margaret sat there, the three children leaned motionless, hushing themselves lest they should break that beautiful trance. It was no momentary glow of enthusiasm, no mere uprising of feeling; for mounting slowly, through pain, and doubt, and weakness, she had reached at last the heights of her soul, and saw a wide, bright daybreak over the horizon of a loftier life.
I had long cherished the desire to visit Ireland, a country for many reasons so interesting to every American Catholic. The opportunity of making a brief tour in Europe during a summer vacation having unexpectedly presented itself, I determined, therefore, to leave the steamer at Queenstown and make the journey to London by way of Dublin. On the 29th of July, 1867, after a remarkably pleasant passage, we found ourselves, at an early hour of the morning, in sight of the famous Skellig rocks—called by sailors the Bull, Cow, and Calf—and thus gained the welcome advantage of sailing all day in sight of the Irish coast. The first impression one receives from the appearance of the country between Valentia and Cork is sad and desolate; in harmony with the tragic history of the suffering, oppressed race, whose home is seen for the first time, by the voyager from the New World, under one of its most barren and lonely aspects. The only interest which can attract the eye and the mind is that of a sort of wild and rugged grandeur, coupled with the historical associations which give a charm to the names of Bantry and Dingle. The lonely waters, where scarcely a sail was to be seen during the live-long day, told of the suppression of the industrial and commercial life of the Irish nation by the long-continued tyranny of that power which absorbs all its resources to feed its own greatness.
The long, barren stretches, showing scarcely a sign of vegetable, animal, or human life, where for miles one could see only here and there a little shealing and a few sheep cropping the brown, scanty herbage, seemed to give the lie to the well-known, and, as I afterward saw, well deserved appellation of "the Emerald Isle."Expressions of surprise escaped from some of my fellow-passengers, agreeable and intelligent American gentlemen, who, like myself, were on their maiden trip to Europe; and from some others of the party who were children of Irish parents, looking for the first time on the land of their exiled ancestors. The coast is frequently steep and precipitous, suggesting to the memory the many tales of shipwreck in wild nights of tempest one has read in boyhood. The Martello towers stand at intervals along the horizon, like gigantic watchmen looking out seaward to spy the smuggler or the foreign invader, and in the distance the line of the Kerry Mountains completes the view of the wild, desolate landscape. The heights of Bantry are rendered for ever sacred and memorable by the martyrdom of the Franciscan fathers, Donald and Healy, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. They were revisiting the ruined monastery of Bantry, for the purpose of ministering to the spiritual wants of their poor, persecuted flock, when they were seized by the agents of the glorious reformation, tied back to back, and hurled headlong down the precipice into the ocean. What a wonder that the Irish people are so insensible to the value of a gospel brought to them with so much pains and trouble, so kindly presented to them, enforced by such lovely examples of Christian virtue, and supported so long, notwithstanding their obstinacy, at such great expense!
Early in the morning, we stopped our engines off the Cove of Cork, a little steamer boarded us, the freight and baggage were speedily, though, in the case of rocking-chairs, not very safely, tumbled aboard of her decks, under the herculean direction of our fat boatswain. Three cheers went up from the City of Paris, which steamed off grandly for Liverpool, and we puffed in, not grandly but very pleasantly, toward Queenstown. The Cove of Cork is world-renowned for its beauty and excellence as a haven for ships, but desolate-looking from the fact that it is better supplied with fortresses, cannon, and ships of war than with the peaceful, plenty-bringing steamers and sailing-vessels of commerce. I once heard a little American boy utter the exclamation, as we were entering the port of Havana and espied the soldiers on duty, "How afraid they must be, guarding everything that way!" It appears to be the same case in Ireland. The English government is very much afraid of its Irish subjects, if we may measure its fears by the display of force which meets the eye everywhere. The only consolation which a sincere lover of the Irish people can find in looking upon this state of things is, that, since the endurance of this coercive tyranny is for the time a necessary evil, the force is so very irresistible as effectually to prevent the bloody horrors which would follow a general insurrection. A young English officer, whom I met at the hotel in Cork, expressed his regret that an open rebellion had not broken out, which, he said, would have been an affair of a month, and which of course would only have increased the miseries and riveted the chains of the Irish people. For myself, I could not help shuddering at the thought of the fearful tragedy which would have been enacted if the people had been goaded by demagogues to such an attempt, and blessing God that the efforts of these madmen had failed. It is plain enough that Ireland cannot be governed in this way much longer.There is but one hope and one method for the English crown to retain Ireland as a portion of the British empire; which is, to win the willing loyalty of the people by an ample redress of their grievances, and the inauguration of a policy which has in view the real good of the Irish people.
Our little steamer landed us at about eight in the evening; the officers were very polite and obliging, and we were soon ashore on the sacred soil, with our luggage in the hands of a couple of lively gossoons, and our steps free to go anywhere we pleased.
As soon as one steps ashore on the Irish soil, he feels that he is in the land of frolic and drollery. The irrepressible and indomitable spirit of the Celtic race rebounds under the strokes of adversity like an india-rubber ball under the blows of a bat. "The harder you do knock him down, the higher he do bounce." My fellow-voyagers who came ashore at Queenstown fell into a state of hilarity at once which was wonderful to behold, and which continued during their whole stay in Ireland. They held their sides and laughed uproariously, not, be it understood, with any feeling of contempt or ridicule—for they were gentlemen, and altogether free from snobbish prejudice or religious bigotry—but from pure, genial sympathy with the comedy which was going on in the crowd that pressed eagerly around the welcome passengers from America, contending for their luggage. Old women whose vivacity old age had only sharpened, and little boys who were so many Flibbertigibbets in fun and smartness, with huge cars drawn by diminutive donkeys, on which they piled pyramids of trunks, if they were lucky enough to get them; boys with barrows, and boys with only hands and shoulders—struggled and jibed and danced and scolded, and rushed upon every passenger as he emerged from the barrier, in a good humored and tumultuous manner that can only be appreciated by one who has seen it. We pushed off for the last train to Cork, followed by a dozen runners of the Queenstown hotels, vociferating the praises of their several houses, assuring us that the train had left five minutes before, and urging us most affectionately to go up the next morning after a good night's sleep, by the boat, that we might enjoy the scenery of the beautiful river Lee. This piece of advice was good, and I recommend every traveller to follow it. We turned a deaf ear to it, however, reached the train in time, and in half an hour were comfortably deposited in the well-known and most excellent Imperial Hotel of Cork.
The rather singular English name of Cork is not, as one is apt to suppose, our common word designating a certain very light substance, and applied without any reason or propriety that anybody can see to a very substantial city and county. It is a corruption of the Irish wordCarroch, signifying a valley, which has been Anglicized, like many other foreign words, by a most perverse and stupid English custom of changing them into English words of somewhat similar sound. The first beginning of the city was a monastery founded in the seventh century by St. Finnbar, whom I recognized as an old acquaintance, from the cathedral dedicated to his honor at Charleston, S. C., by the illustrious Bishop England, who was a native of Cork. The old cathedral of St. Finnbar, which was rebuilt in 1735, has been demolished, to make way for a new one, which I most devoutly hope may never be built on the sacred spot consecrated by the ancient Irish monk until this shall revert to its rightful possessors.Another holy site, that of Gil Abbey, which is extremely picturesque and beautiful, is occupied by the Queen's College. The Sisters of Mercy are fortunate enough to possess another pleasant spot, rising to a wooded hill, which was also the seat of an ancient monastery, and where is now situated their very neat and commodious convent. There are three very good Catholic churches in the city—St. Patrick's, St. Mary's, and Holy Trinity; the latter founded by F. Matthew, and containing a stained glass window as a memorial of O'Connell. The Mardyke, an avenue shaded with elms for the distance of a mile, is a pleasant walk, and I passed an hour there in company with a small party of friends, from New York, in a most amusing and agreeable manner, surrounded by a group of children with whom we soon established a most intimate friendship by means of plums. The Irish children are remarkable for their beauty, their blooming health, and for a mixture of fun and innocence, of brightness and simplicity, of boldness and modesty, indicating a state as near to that of unfallen childhood as I can imagine. The pranks of the young Corkonians afford a source of unfailing amusement to the stranger within their gates; but I was most amused by the boys with donkeys, who were to be seen riding in state to school in the morning, and, in the afternoon, all about the environs scattered in groups on the grass, ready to exchange a biting sarcasm with every passing coachman, while their dear little friends, the donkeys, fed quietly near by. It would be useless, however, to attempt to describe all that is droll and comic in the population of Cork, for it seems as if it were the business of their lives to be as funny as they can, for their own delight and that of the beholder.
Cork is a fine, well-built town, of 90,000 inhabitants, the third in importance in Ireland. The environs are extremely beautiful. I was there at midsummer; the weather was perfect, and I could see to the best advantage the tilth and verdure which make the Emerald Isle so famous. Certainly, they have not been exaggerated, and no one can wonder at the praise which the Irishman bestows upon his soil, or the intense love which he cherishes for it. I only wonder that those who were born and bred there can ever be contented elsewhere; and surely nothing but the most unendurable poverty and want would ever drive such numbers of them into exile. Perhaps the most picturesque objects which meet the eye, in the country, are the white farm-houses with thatched roofs, standing in their neat little flower-gardens, their walls covered with honeysuckle or other creeping vines. The only thought which mars the pleasure of looking on the rich meadows, the waving fields, the herds of superb cattle, and flocks of fat sheep, is, that the outward show of beauty and prosperity is obtained by the sacrifice of the poor people, and enjoyed by a small number only. If you drive out, your carriage is followed by a troop of ragged, fleet-footed young beggars; and if you chance to pass a factory when the hour for stopping work has come, you may see a long procession of young women, bareheaded, barefooted, ragged, and emaciated, who are glad to work for a shilling a day.
The most interesting place to visit in the neighborhood of Cork is Blarney Castle. I am ashamed to say that I was afraid to go on a jaunting-car, although at Dublin I made the experiment with great success and pleasure. It seemed to me, when I looked at the jaunting-car for the first time, that it would shake one off as soon as it turned a corner.We accordingly drove out to Blarney in an open carriage, going by the road to Kanturk, and returning by Sunday-Well road. Aside from the merely jocose associations of the Blarney-stone, the old, ivy-clad tower is an extremely interesting and picturesque object, and the grounds of the demesne, so celebrated in Irish lyrics, are charming. The cromlech and pillar stones, on which are inscriptions in the ancient Ogham characters, carry back the imagination to an antiquity almost without limits, and suggest the thought that perhaps as long ago as the time of King David, or even the Exodus, Druids may have performed their sacred rites in these still groves. Our guide was a poor little sickly humpbacked boy of sixteen rejoicing in thesobriquetof Lord John Russell, and possessing very sharp wits and inexhaustible good-humor. Every one about the castle seemed to take especial delight in a standing joke at his expense, that he was an old man with a heavy family. The poor fellow seemed to enjoy our company very much, and expressed the intention of emigrating to America. The only reason he could give was that the weather was too warm in summer at Blarney. At the castle gate his jurisdiction terminated, and we were handed over to another amusing original, the lame old gardener, who has many a story to tell of Walter Scott, and Tom Moore, and Father Prout. As for the Blarney-stone, I will not say how many of our party kissed it. In Lord John Russell's opinion, there was no need of our doing so; he was sure we had one of our own in America which we had all kissed frequently before leaving home. Whoever has spent an afternoon at Blarney, in genial company, will admit that it was one of the pleasantest days of his life, if his soul is not too full of steam and railroads to be capable of simple and natural enjoyments.
The journey by rail from Cork to Dublin is a most tantalizing one. Flying at full speed through several counties, one catches glimpses at every moment of places and scenes of historic interest and natural or artificial beauty, which he longs to visit and inspect at leisure. The distance is one hundred and sixty-five miles; the railway is an admirable one; everything about the way stations is neat and attractive, and the route passes in a direct line through the counties of Cork, Limerick, Tipperary, King's, Queen's, and Kildare. Among the objects of interest which are passed are the abbeys of Mourne, Bridgetown, Kilmallock, Knocklong, Holy Cross, Thurles, Templemore, Moore Abbey, Old Connell, Kildare Cathedral, with St. Bridget's chapel; the castles of Barrett, Carrignacenny, Kilcolman, which the poet Spenser received as his share in the spoliation; Charleville; the Rock of Dunamase, with the ruins of Strongbow's Castle; the Rock of Cashel; the Hill of Allen, where Fin McCoul lived; several round towers; the famous bog of Allen; the Curragh of Kildare; and quantities of others—which keep one perpetually, and to a great extent vainly, looking out of window, first on one side, then on the other, while you are hurried over a country every step of which is rich in history, poetry, and legend, and should be slowly traversed on foot and at leisure. Three of my agreeable companions of the voyage were with me in the same carriage; a very pleasing gentleman, with his son, a bright youth of sixteen, joined us an hour or two before reaching Dublin, and they were as curious about America, especially Indians, and our sea-voyage, as we were about the antiquities and curiosities of Ireland.Our trip was therefore wanting in nothing to make it lively and agreeable, and we were finally deposited at the Gresham Hotel, Sackville street, Dublin, in high good humor, and quite ready for a good dinner.
As I had only that evening and the following day to remain in Dublin, I was obliged to content myself with a superficial view of the city, and a visit to a few places of particular interest. In its general features, Dublin is at least equal to our finest American towns of the same class, although more quiet, and showing signs of stagnation in commercial prosperity. Its agreeable climate makes it a delightful place of residence at all seasons of the year, especially in the summer.
My first visit was made to the scene of the life and labors of the saintly Catherine McAuley, foundress of the Sisters of Mercy, the convent in Baggott street, where also repose her mortal remains—a lovely spot for the cradle of a religious order, and suggestive of the time, I hope not far distant, when Ireland shall once again be full of these sacred homes of the monastic life, as she was before the spoliation of her holy places by the ruthless minions of Henry and Elizabeth. I visited also Clontarf, the scene of Brian Boru's decisive victory over the Danes, and death, and went to see what is said to have been his harp, and is undoubtedly a relic of very ancient times, at the museum of Trinity College. The college is a most attractive place, and delightfully situated, on ground of course originally stolen from the Catholic Church, and endowed out of the spoils of monasteries. Quite in keeping with its origin is the fact that its library contains a large number of valuable manuscript records, originally stolen from the papal archives. The learned body which rules within its classic halls has also made itself remarkable by sustaining a claim, perhaps the most absurd ever advanced by persons professing to be scholars, namely, that the Protestant Church of Ireland is the lineal and legitimate successor, in a direct, unbroken line, of the ancient church of Saint Patrick. This is adding insult to injury. As if it were not enough to rob the Irish people of their property, to persecute, torture, exile, and massacre them by millions, on account of their fidelity to their hereditary faith, their title to the very name of Catholic must be denied to them, and arrogated for the intruders who have forced themselves into their heritage by the point of the bayonet and the violation of treaties. Two terrible antagonists have arisen, however, out of their own camp to smite these pretenders; Dr. Maziere Brady, an Irish Protestant clergyman, and Froude, the English historian. The former gentleman, in several learned and unanswerable works, has demonstrated the regular, unbroken succession of the present Catholic hierarchy and people of Ireland, from the bishops and faithful who preceded the reign of Henry VIII., and has shown that the Irish Protestant Church is nothing but an English colony. The learned and accomplished Dr. Moran, also, whom I had the pleasure of meeting, has written with great ability and research upon the same topics.
Stephen's Green, which is near by Trinity College, witnessed the burning of the heroic martyr Archbishop O'Hurley, tortured and put to death, at the instigation of the infamous Loftus, archbishop of Dublin. A few days later, I saw in the private chapel of Archbishop Manning, at London, a cloth stained with the blood of Archbishop Plunkett, another illustrious martyr, who was publicly executed by the English government on false charges.I venerate the relics of the older martyrs, and the places made sacred by the hallowed memories of other countries and ages far remote; but nothing stirs my blood like the holy mementoes of the men who suffered in Ireland and England, for the faith, under the tyranny of the apostate sovereigns and bishops of Great Britain. These men are our fathers in the faith, the heroes who fought our battles, from whom we have received the precious heritage we enjoy in comparative peace. Their memory ought to be kept alive and honored among us, in every possible way, as a powerful incitement to imitate their example, and a means of endearing to our people that religion which has been handed down, bathed in the blood of so many noble Christians.
St. Patrick's Cathedral is the most interesting and venerable monument of antiquity in Dublin. My fellow-travellers were astonished at seeing a Protestant St. Patrick's, with a statue of the great apostle over the principal door. Probably most Americans who have not made themselves specially familiar with Irish history fancy that most of the fine churches of Dublin are Catholic churches. Perhaps many of them are not aware that every church, graveyard, glebe-house, abbey, every rood of land, every building, and every farthing of revenue belonging to the Catholic Church in Ireland, has been confiscated by the English government. In Dublin, out of eighty-four churches, forty belonged to the English church, and only twenty to the Catholics, in 1866. At the close of the last century there was not a Catholic church in Dublin, nor could there be one according to law. All the churches and other institutions in Dublin are therefore the creation of the present century, the fruit of the free-will offerings of the poor people, and a few wealthy persons, such as Catherine McAuley, who consecrated her handsome fortune entirely to religion.
St. Patrick's dates from the year 1190, though the spire was added in the fourteenth century. It has been thoroughly repaired and renovated, at a cost of one hundred thousand pounds, which was given by the well-known brewer, Mr. Guinness. It contains one of St. Patrick's holy wells, which is visible through an opening in the floor, and guarded with great respect. Tradition says that the saint baptized the first Irish convert in this fountain. This is probably not true; but it is very likely that he did use it for baptism, and perhaps baptized in it the first converts in that part of the country. There are some ancient monuments of bishops and knights, and some modern ones of persons who have figured during the Protestant ascendency—Brown and Loftus, Swift, Stella, and the late Dr. Whately, who was Dr. Trench's immediate predecessor. It is painful enough to see the old churches and abbeys of England in the hands of aliens from the faith, although the mass of the people have fallen away and cannot appreciate the fearful loss they have suffered, in the substitution of a creature of parliament in the place of the spouse of Christ. In Ireland, where the people remain fervently and devoutly Catholic, it is a far more painful sight to witness their ancient shrines and holy places in the hands of the descendants of their spoilers, who are unable to make any use, even for Protestant worship, of the greater part of them.While the respectable sexton, whose appearance was that of a faded dean, was showing me the church for the consideration of a shilling, I was busily occupied in my own mind invoking St. Patrick to take his own again, bring back the altars, restore the unbloody sacrifice, and cause the chants of High Mass to resound once more within the walls of the venerable cathedral dedicated to his honor. It is a great consolation to reflect that since then the death-blow has been levelled at the state church by the same power which created it. And although justice has not yet been done to the Catholic people of Ireland, or any step taken to restore to them the sacred property of which they have been robbed, there is the greatest reason to hope that, in the course of events, they will yet regain it by fair and peaceable means, without violence or revolution.
Two other objects which interested me greatly, were the chamber of the Irish House of Lords, preserved still in the same state as when the last session was held in it, and the tomb of O'Connell, at the beautiful cemetery of Glasnevin.
The next morning I bade adieu to Ireland from the deck of the Kingstown and Holyhead steamer, and although it was only a passing glimpse I had obtained of this fair island, I shall always be thankful to have had even this glimpse.
Ireland has the strongest claims on the love and gratitude of all Catholics throughout the English-speaking world. Her Celtic race, although distinct in character, language, and history from the people whose mother tongue is English, has been brought into such close relations with it, and is now blending with it to such a remarkable extent in this country, and other British colonies, that its history becomes as interesting to us as the early history of England. Moreover, although a handful of English and Scotch remained true to the faith during the revolution of the sixteenth century, it is to Ireland that is due the honor of holding aloft the banner of religion, around which are now grouped one fifth of the bishops owning allegiance to St. Peter. American converts are especially bound to gratitude to that Irish people who, above all others, have been the founders of the Catholic Church throughout the largest portion of our republic. For fourteen centuries, that people has handed down and witnessed to the faith which St. Patrick brought from France and Rome in the fifth century, when St. Augustine was yet scarcely cold in his grave. Without disparaging the great services which other nationalities have rendered to religion in our country, it is undoubted that, in our portion of it, it is through the Irish succession chiefly that we communicate with past ages, and through their rich life-blood that our Catholicity has become vigorous. As Catholics and as Americans, we are the natural friends of Ireland and the Irish. One very good and pleasant way of showing this friendship is, for those who have money enough to travel, to spend a portion of their time and money in Ireland. The advantage will be mutual. Those who are in search of health, pleasure, and improvement, cannot spend a month or two more delightfully or beneficially than on such a tour. On the other hand, the money spent, whether in purchases or in alms to the poor, will do great good, and the sympathy, kindness, respect for their religion and themselves, manifested toward the people so long borne down by thepeine forte et dureof oppression and contempt, will be fully appreciated by their warm hearts, and encourage them to hope for the full coming of that better day whose dawning already appears in the horizon.
It is much to be desired that the good beginning already made by several excellent writers, in publishing books on the religious history of Ireland, should be actively followed up. A well-written, popular history, with illustrations, of all the principal places of interest in the secular and ecclesiastical history of the country, with sketches of the monastic institutions formerly flourishing; of the old churches, and episcopal sees; and lives of the saints and great men who have flourished, especially the martyrs, would be of the greatest service to religion. Such a volume would enable the Catholic tourist to visit the country with the greatest possible advantage and pleasure, beside the more important help it would give in strengthening the faith and devotion of the rising generation in Ireland, and the countries to which she has sent her colonies. The richest and most abundant field is open to literature of all kinds, both of the lighter and the more solid character, and it is to be hoped that it will be thoroughly explored and well worked by those who are true and faithful to the ancient, valiantly defended faith of the Island of Saints.
[Footnote 196]
[Footnote 186:Primeval Man. An Examination of some Recent Speculations. By the Duke of Argyll. New York: Routledge & Sons. 1869. 16mo, pp. 210.]
There are few more active or able members of the English House of Lords or of the British ministry than the Scottish Duke of Argyll, and, if we could forget the treason to the Stuarts and the Scottish nation of some of his ancestors, there are few scholars and scientific men in the United Kingdom whom we should be disposed to treat with greater respect. He is at once a statesman, a scientist, and a theologian; and in all three capacities has labored earnestly to serve his country and civilization. In politics, he is, of course, a whig, or, as is now said, a liberal; as a theologian, he belongs to the Kirk of Scotland, and may be regarded as a Calvinist; as a man of science, his aim appears to be to assert the freedom and independence of science, without compromising religion. His work on theReign of Law, reviewed and sharply criticised in this magazine for February, 1868, was designed to combat the atheistic tendencies of modern scientific theories, by asserting final causes, and resolving the natural laws of the physicists into the direct and immediate will of God.
In the present work, quite too brief and sketchy, he treats of the primeval man, and maintains man's origin in the creative act of God, against the developmentists and natural selectionists, which is well, as far as it goes. He treats, also, of the antiquity of man, and of his primeval condition. He appears disposed to allow man a higher antiquity than we think the facts in the case warrant; but, though he dissents, to some extent, from the theory of the late Anglican Archbishop of Dublin, we find him combating with great success the savage theory of Sir John Lubbock, who maintains that man began in the lowest form of barbarism in which he can subsist as man, and has risen to his present state of civilization by his own spontaneous and unassisted efforts—a theory just now very generally adopted in the non-Catholic world, and assumed as the basis of the modern doctrine of progress—the absurdest doctrine that ever gained currency among educated men.
The noble duke very properly denies the origin of species in development, and the production of new species by "natural selection," as Darwin holds, and acceded to by Sir Charles Lyell and an able writer inThe Quarterlyfor last April. The duke maintains that man was created man, not developed from a lower species, from the tadpole or monkey. But, while he asserts the origin of species in the creative act of God, he supposes God supplies extinct species by creating new species by successive creative acts; thus losing the unity of the creative act, placing multiplicity in the origin of things, and favoring that very atheistical tendency he aims to war against. HisReign of Law, though well-intended, and highly praised by our amiable friend, M. Augustin Cochin, ofLe Correspondant, showed us that the noble author has failed both in his theology and philosophy. In resolving the natural laws into the will of God enforcing itself by power, he fails to recognize any distinction between first cause and second cause, and, therefore, between the natural and the supernatural. God does all, not only as first cause, orcausa eminens, as say the theologians, but as the direct and immediate actor, which, of course, is pantheism, itself only a form of atheism. Yet we know not that his grace could have done better, with Calvinism for his theology, and the Scottish school, as finished by Sir William Hamilton, for his philosophy. To have thoroughly refuted the theories against which he honorably protests, he must have known Catholic theology, and the Christian view of the creative act.
We have no disposition, at present, to discuss the antiquity either of man or the globe. If the fact that God,in the beginning, created heaven and earth, and all things therein, visible and invisible, is admitted and maintained, we know not that we need, in the interest of orthodoxy, quarrel about the date when it was done. Time began with the externization of the divine creative act, and the universe has no relation beyond itself, except the relation of the creature to the creator. Considering the late date of the Incarnation, we are not disposed to assign man a very high antiquity, and no geological or historical facts are, as yet, established that require it for their explanation. We place little confidence in the hasty inductions of geologists.
But the primitive condition of man has for us a deeper interest; and we follow the noble duke with pleasure in his able refutation of the savage theory of Sir J. Lubbock. Sir John evidently holds the theory of development, and that man has been developed from a lower species. He assumes that his primitive human state was the lowest form of barbarism in which he can subsist as man. With regard to man's development from lower animals, it is enough to say that development cannot take place except where there are living germs to be developed, and can only unfold and bring out what is contained in them. But we find in man, even in the lowest form of savage life, elements, language or articulate speech, for instance, of which there are no germs to be found in the animal kingdom. We may dismiss that theory and assume at once that man was created, and created man. But was his condition in his primitive state that of the lowest form of barbarism? Is the savage the primitive man, or the degenerate man?The former is assumed in almost every scientific work we meet; it is defended by all the advocates of the modern doctrine that man is naturally progressive. Saint-Simon, in hisNouveau Christianisme, asserts that paradise is before us, not behind us; and even some who accept the Biblical history have advanced so little in harmonizing their faith with what they call their science, that they do not hesitate to suppose that man began his career, at least after the prevarication of Adam, in downright savagism. Even the learned Döllinger so far falls in with the modern theory as to make polished gentilism originate in disgusting fetichism.
The noble duke sufficiently refutes the theory of Sir John Lubbock, but does not seem to us to have fully grasped and refuted the assumptions on which it is founded. "His two main lines of argument," he says, (page 5,) "connect themselves with the two following propositions, which he undertakes to prove, First, that there are indications of progress even among savages; and second, that among civilized nations there are traces of barbarism."
The first proposition is not proved or provable. The characteristic of the savage is to be unprogressive. Some tribes may be more or less degraded than others. The American Indian ranks above the New Hollander; but, whether more or less degraded, we never find savages lifting themselves by their own efforts into even a comparatively civilized state. Niebuhr says there is no instance on record of a savage tribe having become a civilized people by its own spontaneous efforts; and Heeren remarks that the description of the tribes eastward of the Persian Gulf along the borders of the Indian Ocean, by the companions of Alexander, applies perfectly to them as we now find them. No germs of civilized life are to be found among them, or, if so, they are dead, not living germs, incapable of development. The savage is a thorough routinist, the slave of petrified customs and usages. He shows often great skill in constructing and managing his canoe, in making and ornamenting his bow or his war-club; but one generation never advances on its predecessor, and the new generation only reproduces the old. All the arts the savage has have come, as his ideas, to a stand-still. He is stern, sad, gloomy, as if oppressed by memory, and exhibits none of the joyousness or frolicsomeness which we might expect from his fresh young life, if he represented the infancy or childhood of the race, as pretended.
Even in what are called civilized heathen nations we find a continual deterioration, but no indication of progress in civilization, or in those elements which distinguish civilized from barbaric or savage life. Culture and polish may be the concomitants of civilization, but do not constitute it. The generations that built the pyramids, Babylon, Nineveh, Thebes, Rome, were superior to any of their successors. No subsequent Greek poet ever came up to Homer, and the oldest of the Vedas surpass the powers of the Indian people in any generation more recent than that which produced them. The Chinese cannot to-day produce new works to compare with those of Confucius. Where now are the once renowned nations of antiquity whose ships ploughed every sea, and whose armies made the earth tremble with their tread? Fallen, all have fallen, and remain only in their ruins, and the page of the historian or song of the bard.If these nations, so great and powerful, with many elements of a strong civilization, could not sustain themselves from falling into barbarism, how pretend that the lowest and most degraded savages can, without any foreign assistance, lift themselves into a civilized state?
The second proposition, that civilized nations retain traces of barbarism, proves nothing to the purpose. These traces, at most, prove only that the nations in which we detect them have passed through a state of barbarism, as we know modern nations have; not that barbarism was, in any form, the primitive condition of the race. It is not pretended that no savage tribe has ever been civilized; what is denied is, that the race began in the savage state, or that, if it had so begun, it could ever have risen by its own natural forces alone to civilization. There is no evidence that the cruel and bloody customs, traces of which we find in civilized nations, were those of the primeval man. The polished and cultivated Romans were more savage in their customs than the northern barbarians who overthrew their civilization, much to the relief of mankind. When the late Theodore Parker drew a picture of the New Zealander in order to describe Adam, he proceeded according to his theory of progress, but without a shadow of authority. We find a cruelty, an inhumanity, an oppression, bloody and obscene rites, among polished nations—as Rome, Syria, Phoenicia, and modern India—that we shall look in vain for among downright savages; which shows that we owe them to cultivation, to development, that is, to "development," as the noble duke well says, "in corruption."
But these traces of so-called barbarism among civilized nations are more than offset by remains of civilization which we find in savage tribes. Sir J. Lubbock and others take these remains as indications of progress among savages; but they mistake the evening twilight deepening into darkness, for that of the morning ushering in the day. This is evident from the fact that they are followed by no progress. They are reminiscences, not promises. If germs, they never germinate; but have been deprived of their vitality. To us, paganism bears witness in all its forms that it has degenerated from itsnormna, or type; not that it is advancing toward it. We see in its incoherence, its incongruities and inequalities, that it is a fall or departure from something higher, more living and more perfect. Any one studying Protestantism, in any of its forms, may see that it is not an original system of religion; that it is a departure from its type, not an approach to it; and, if we know well the Catholic Church, we see at once that in her is the type that Protestantism loses, corrupts, or travesties. So paganism bears unmistakable evidence of what we know from authentic history, that, whether with polished gentiles or with rude savages and barbarians, its type, from which it recedes, is the patriarchal religion. We know that it was an apostasy or falling away from that religion, the primitive religion of the race, as Protestantism is an apostasy or falling away from the Catholic Church. Protestantism, in the modern world, is what gentilism was in the ancient; and as gentilism is the religion of all savage or barbarian tribes, we have in Protestantism a key for explaining whatever is dark or obscure in their history. We see in Protestant nations a tendency to lose or throw off more and more of what they retained when they separated from the church, and which before the lapse of many generations, if not arrested, will lead them to a hopeless barbarism. The traces of Catholic faith we find in them are reminiscences, not prophecies.
We find with the lowest and most degraded savages, language, and often a language of great richness, singular beauty and expressiveness. Terms for which savages have no use may sometimes be wanting, but it is rare that the language cannot be made to supply them from its resources. In the poorest language of a savage tribe, there is always evidence of its having been the language of a people superior in ideas and culture to the present condition of those who speak it. Language, among savage tribes, we take to be always indicative of a lost state far above that of barbarism; and it not only refutes the theory of natural progress, but, as far as it goes, proves the doctrine of primitive instruction by the Creator, maintained by Dr. Whately, and only partially accepted by his Grace of Argyll.
Language is no human invention, nor the product of individual or social progress. It requires language to invent language, and there is no individual progress out of society, and no society is possible without language. Hence, animals may be gregarious, but not sociable. They do not, and never can, form society. Max Müller has disposed of the bow-wow theory, or the origin of language in the imitation of the cries of animals, and also of the theory that supposes it to originate in the imitation of the sounds of nature, as buzz, rattle, etc.; for if a few words could originate in this way, language itself could not, since there is much more in language than words. The more common theory, just now, and which has respectable names in its favor, is that God is indeed the author of language, but ascausa eminens, as he is of all that nature does; that is, he does not directly teach man language, but creates him with the power or faculty of speaking, and making himself understood by articulate speech. But this theory will not bear examination.
Between language and the faculty of using it there is a difference, and no faculty creates its own object. The faculty of speaking could no more be exercised without language, than the faculty of seeing without a visible object. Where there is no language, the faculty is and must be inoperative. The error is in supposing that the faculty of using language is the faculty of creating language, which it cannot be; for, till the language is possessed and held in the mind, there is nothing for the faculty of speech to operate on or with. To have given man the faculty of speech, the Creator must have begun by teaching him language, or by infusing it with the meaning of its words into his mind. We misapprehend the very nature and office of language, if we suppose it can possibly be used except as learned from or taught by a teacher. Man, as second cause, can no more produce language than he can create something from nothing. If God made us as second causes capable of creating language, why can we not do it now, and master it without a long and painful study? Since the faculty must be the same in all men, why do not all men speak one and the same dialect?
We will suppose man had language from the first. But there is no language without discourse of reason. A parrot or a crow may be taught to pronounce single words, and even sentences, but it would be absurd to assert that either has the faculty of language. To have language and be able to use it, one must have knowledge, and the sense of the word must precede, or at least be simultaneous with the word. Both the word and its meaning must be associated in the mind.How then could the Creator give man the faculty of language, without imparting to him in some way the ideas and principles it is fitted to express, and without expressing which it cannot be language? He must do so, or there could be noverbum mentis, and the word would be spoken without meaning. Moreover, all language is profoundly philosophical, and conforms more nearly to the reality of things than any human system yet attained to, not only by savages, but by civilized and cultivated men; and whenever it deviates from that reality, it is when it has been corrupted by the false systems and methods of philosophers. In all languages, we find subject, predicate, and copula. The copula is always the verbto be, teaching those who understand it that nothing existing can be affirmed except by being and in its relation to being, that is God, who is QUI EST. Were ignorant savages able distinctly to recognize and embody in language the ideal formula, when no philosopher can ever apprehend and consider it unless represented to him in words? Impossible.
We take language, therefore, as a reminiscence among savages of a previous civilization, and a conclusive proof that, up to a certain point at least, the primeval man, as Dr. Whately maintains, was and must have been instructed by his Maker. As language is never known save as learned from a teacher, its existence among the lowest and most degraded barbarians is a proof that the primeval man was not, and could not have been an untutored savage. The Anglican archbishop, having, as the Scottish duke, no proper criterion of truth, may have included in the primitive instruction more than it actually contained. An error of this sort in an Anglican should surprise no one. Truth or sound philosophy from such a source would be the only thing to surprise us. We do not suppose Adam was directly instructed in all the mechanic arts, in the whole science and practice of agriculture, or in the entire management of flocks and herds, nor that he had steam-engines, spinning-jennies, power-looms, steamboats, railroads, locomotives, palace-cars, or even lightning telegraphs. We do not suppose that the race, in relation to the material order, received any direct instructions, except of the most elementary kind, or in matters of prime necessity, or high utility to his physical life and health. The ornamental arts, and other matters which do not exceed man's natural powers, may have been left to man to find out for himself, though we have instances recorded in which some of them were taught by direct inspiration, and many modern inventions are only the reproduction of arts once known, and subsequently lost or forgotten.
It is not difficult to explain how our modern advocates of progress have come to regard the savage as the primeval man, and not as the degenerate man. Their theory of natural progress demands it, and they have always shown great facility in accommodating their facts to their theories. They take also their starting-point in heathenism of comparatively recent origin, and study the law of human development in the history of gentilism. They forget that gentilism originated in an apostasy from the patriarchal or primitive moral and religious order, and that, from the first, there remained, and always has remained, on earth a people that did not apostatize, that remained faithful to tradition, to the primitive instruction and wisdom.They fail to consider that, language confounded and the race dispersed, those who remained nearest the original seats of civilization, and were separated by the least distance from the people that remained faithful, became the earliest civilized or polished gentile nations, and that those who wandered further into the wilderness—receding further and further from light, losing more and more of their original patrimony, cut off from all intercourse with civilization by distance, by difference of language, and to some extent, perhaps, by physical changes and convulsions of the globe, degenerated gradually into barbarians and savages. Occasionally, in the course of ages, some of these wandering and degenerate tribes were brought under the influence of civilization by the arts, the arms, and the religion of the more civilized gentile nations. But in none has the gentile civilization, in the proper sense of the term, ever risen above what the gentiles took with them from the primitive stock, when they apostatized. Protestant nations are below, not above, what they were at the epoch of the Reformation. The reformers were greatly superior to any of their successors.
But our philosophic historians take no account of these things, nor of the fact that history shows them no barbaric ancestors of the Egyptians, Indians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Syrians, Phoenicians, etc. They find, or think they find, from the Greek poets and traditions, that the ancestors of the Greeks and Romans, each a comparatively modern people, were really savages, and that suffices them to prove that the savage state is the primeval state of the race! They find, also, that a marvellous progress in civilization, under Christianity has been effected, and what hinders them from concluding that man isnaturallyprogressive, or that the savage is able, by his own efforts, to lift himself into civilized life? Have not the northern barbarians, who overthrew the Roman empire of the west, and seated themselves on its majestic ruins, become, under the teachings and the supernatural influences of the church, the great civilized nations of the modern world? How, then, pretend to deny that barbarians and savages can become civilized by their own spontaneous efforts and natural forces alone?
Whether any savage tribe was ever civilized under gentilism is, perhaps, doubtful; but if the philosophers of history would take the right line, instead of a collateral line or bastard branch of the human family, and follow it from Adam down, through the patriarchs, the synagogue, and the Catholic Church, they would find that there has always been a believing, a faithful, an enlightened, and a civilized people on earth, and they never would and never could have imagined any thing so untrue as that man began "in the lowest form of barbarism in which he can subsist as man." We have no indication of the existence of any savage or barbarous tribes before the flood; nor after the flood, till the confusion of language at Babel, and the consequent dispersion of the human race; that is, till after the gentile apostasy, of which they are one of the fruits. Adam, by his fall, lost communion with God, became darkened in his understanding, enfeebled in his will, and disordered in his appetites and passions; but he did not lose all his science, forget all his moral and religious instruction, and become a complete savage. Besides, his communion with God was renewed by repentance and faith in the promised Messiah, or incarnate Son of God, who should come to redeem the world, and enable man to fulfil his destiny, or attain his end.