PUTNAM'S DEFENCE.

"Prélats, abbés, séparez-vous;Laissez un peu Rome et l'Eglise!Un chacun se moque de vous,Et toute la cour vous méprise.Ma foi! l'on vous ferait, avant qu'il fût un an,Signer à l'Alcoran."

The ministers of the king were very much irritated; they dared not then, as they did in 1688, appeal to a general council, because this would bring upon them the censures of the bullExecrabilisof Pius II. It was determined, therefore, by the king to permit theprocureur-généralto make a protest privately, in the hands of thegreffieror keeper of the archives of the parliament, without the knowledge even of the first president. In the mean while the clergy, far from acquiescing in the decrees of a body which had falsely assumed to represent them, were giving evidence in a marked manner of their disapprobation. Like all those who try to compromise between right and wrong, between the service of God and the good-will of the world, the framers of the four articles had become unacceptable to both.

"A Dio Spiacenti ed ai nemici sui."

The parliament protested because the prelates had not gone far enough; theprocureur-général, De Harlay, put in a formal declaration on this subject, and it was registered by permission of the king. But these men were not the clergy, not the people. M. Gérin gives us witnesses who testify to what these thought and said. The first is one above suspicion, aman favorable to the court, the Abbé Le Gendre; he says,

"At first the declaration of the clergy was by no means applauded. Far from doing so, many attributed it to cowardice, saying that it was the effect of the servile obedience of the bishops to the will of the court. Others thought it was neither prudent nor honorable to rise with levity against the pretensions of the pope, at a moment when he was risking every thing to sustain theirs. This movement of opposition, which was almost general, gave birth to spicy writing, in which Mgr. De Harlay was the most ill-used, as he was regarded as the first inciter, and almost as the only author of all that was done in the assembly."

The edict of the 30th of March ordered that the four articles should be registered in all the universities, and be taught by all the professors. If this doctrine, remarks M. Gérin, had been but generally received, it would have been hailed with rejoicing. What happened? It was opposed by the most numerous, the most learned, and the most pious portion of the clergy. The faculty of Paris was composed of seven hundred and fifty-three members, as appears from theMSS.Colbert, Mél. t. vii. Of these, one hundred and sixty-nine belonged to the Sorbonne. The "Plan for Reforming the Faculty," in 1683, (Pap. Harlay,) says,

"The house of Sorbonne, with the exception of six or seven, have been educated in sentiments contrary to the declaration. The professors, the syndic excepted, are so opposed to it that those even who are paid by the king have not been willing to teach any of the propositions presented to his majesty in 1663, etc.... The principal of the College of Plessis, and those whom he employs and protects, in his college and out of it, are absolutely one with those of Sorbonne."

As to the College of Navarre, theMSS.Colbert, t. 155, tell us that its principal, Professor Guyard, was entirely devoted to Rome, etc., and others prominent, Saussay, Ligny, Vinot, were of like opinion. In 1682, none of the professors except Doctor Lefèvre taught the maxims of the kingdom.[138]

Of St. Sulpice, St. Nicolas de Chardonnet, and the Missions Etrangères, we read,

"Those of St. Sulpice, of St. Nicolas de Chardonnet, and of the Missions Etrangères, who have given their opinion in this affair, (of the four articles,) hold the same views as those of Sorbonne."

Of the religious orders and communities, it was written in 1663,

"Nothing can be hoped for of the Carmelites, Augustinians, and Franciscans, who make profession of favoring his holiness in every thing," etc.

The parliament, therefore, and the grand council had, by an abuse of power, decided thateach oneof the mendicant orders should have buttwo votesin the faculty, so that thirty-four Franciscans, thirty-eight Dominicans, thirty-three Augustinians, and nineteen Carmelites had only eight votes in the faculty.

"Forty-three Cistercians and six canons regular, who are all for Rome, are to be treated as the above friars."

That, besides being the most numerous, the opponents of the articles were the most learned, is evident from the details we have given; all the professors of Sorbonne, with the exception of Pirot, all the professors of Navarre, except one, Lefèvre, taught the ultramontane opinions. TheMSS.Colbert prove this also beyond the possibility of doubt.

That the opponents of the declaration were also men most remarkable for their piety, is acknowledged by those who were engaged in giving information to Colbert.

To show the exactness of the facts given us here, M. Gérin quotes the words of a famous anonymous book,La Tradition des Faits, that appeared in 1760, by the Gallican Abbé Chauvelin, clerical counsellor to the parliament of Paris. The abbé writes,

"When it was resolved to oblige the ecclesiastics to profess the maxims of France, what difficulties stood in the way? It was necessary to extort from many of them their consent. Others opposed obstacles which all the authority of the parliament could only with difficulty remove. It became necessary to use all the zeal and light of several prelates, and of several doctors, who were favorable to the true teaching, to bring back the great number of ultramontanes in the French clergy.... The ecclesiastics did not cease from resistance until the parliament used its authority to restrain them.... The university and the faculty of law submitted without difficulty,but they were obliged to proceed by way of authority to make the faculty of theology obey."

The facts given above, the testimony of witnesses above suspicion, of those whose interest it would have been to conceal what they say, the action of the parliament, and the petty ways adopted to coerce the professors, v. g., withholding their pay,[139]all evince that the maxims known as Gallican were forced upon the clergy and people of France. But not only is this the case, but so fully were the king and the bishops themselves convinced of their falsity that they retracted them. Before showing this, we will add a curious and precious document from the hands of the wily Achille de Harlay,procureur-général, addressed to Colbert on the 2d of June, 1682. After saying that the proposed visit of the parliament to the faculty would have been unfortunate, because it would have revealed to Rome the divergence between the latter and the government, he goes on to add that "of the assembly of the clergy, the greater part would change to-morrow, and willingly, if they were allowed to do so."[140]

The act of the assembly, as we have seen, drew from the sovereign pontiff an authoritative censure. This was not all; the pope refused the bulls of consecration for those who had taken part in it, unless they made their formal submission to his decision. The king, who at heart was a sincere Catholic, opened his eyes to the danger of the church. As we have said, he withheld the minutes of the proceedings in the first instance, although he allowed a private protest to be made. Later he revoked his decree ordering the doctrine of the four articles to be taught in the French schools. Page 454 has a letter of Louis to the sovereign pontiff, in which he informs his holiness of this, September 14th, 1693. A posthumous work of Daguesseau[141]says,

"This letter of Louis XIV. to Pope Innocent was the seal put upon the accommodation between the court of Rome and the clergy of France; and conformably to the engagement it contained, his majesty did not any longer enforce the observation of the edict of March, 1682, which obliged all who wished to obtain degrees to sustain the declaration of the clergy made that year with regard to ecclesiastical authority; ceasing thus to impose, on this point, the obligation existing, while the edict was in force, and leaving for the future, as before the edict, full liberty to sustain the doctrine."

L'Abbé de Pradt, in his work,Les Quatre Concordats, speaks of the letter of Louis XIV., and says that Pius VII. had it with him—"an old scrap of paper," as Napoleon expressed it—and wished the emperor to sign it. This, however, Napoleon declined to do, until he could consult his theologians. On their advice he refused to sign it. He did more. The abbé says,

"When the archives of Rome were brought to Paris, Napoleon went one day to the Hôtel de Soubise, in which they were kept. There he obtained the letter of LouisXIV. He took it with him, and, on his return to the Tuileries, threw it into the fire, saying, 'We'll not be troubled hereafter with these ashes.'"

Montholon tells us in hisMémoires pour servir à l'Histoire de France, that Napoleon dictated to him these words concerning the book of the Abbé de Pradt,

"'This work is not a libel: if it contains some erroneous ideas, it contains a great number which are sound and worthy of meditation.' He afterward dictated six notes upon different points contained in the work; he takes notice in them of all that appeared to him deserving of censure; but he has not a single word to say against the story of the destruction by himself of the letter of Louis XIV."[142]

With regard to the bishops who had taken part in the declaration, they had the good sense and virtue to submit to him whom Christ has named his vicar and the pastor of pastors. On the 14th of September, each one of them wrote to Innocent XII. in the following terms,

"Prostrate at the feet of your holiness, we profess and declare that we grieve deeply from our heart, and beyond what we can express, on account of what has been done in the assembly, so greatly offensive to your holiness and your predecessors; and therefore whatever may have been deemed (censeri potuit) decreed against ecclesiastical power and pontifical authority, we hold, and declare that all should hold it, as not decreed. Moreover, we hold as not determined on whatever may have been deemed (censeri potuit) determined on in prejudice of the rights of churches; for our intention was not to decree any thing nor to do any thing prejudicial to the said churches."

The following passages fromMSS.and works of the day add confirmation to this letter.

A memoir on the liberties of the Gallican Church, composed by order of "Monseigneur Louis, Dauphin de France, Duc de Bourgoyne, mort en 1710," says,

"This court (Rome) continues always what it has begun, and often obliges us to retract or alter what we have judiciously and necessarily done against her. Nothing proves this better than the history of the assembly of 1682."

Adrien Baillet, writing hisDémêlé de Philippe le Bel avec Boniface VIII., tells us,

"In the first variance, (between Philip and Boniface,) it was the court of Rome that gave satisfaction to that of France; in the second, (of the assembly,) it is the court of France that has just rendered satisfaction to that of Rome."

Bayle,Dictionnaire, art. "Braunbom," writes,

"France was so far from having broken with the pope, from the year 1690 to the year 1701, that she became, on the contrary, more papist. It is known, moreover, that Innocent XII. gained the day, in having things put again on their old footing in 1693."

We have tried to give the substance of M. Gérin's work. We feel that we have given but a meagre idea of it. Still, this much is evident from what we have written, that the doctrine known as Gallican was not the doctrine of the French clergy. That it afterward became so, in great part was owing undoubtedly to the influence of the assembly of 1682, and of those who in high positions lent their aid to its propagation among the rising generation of students. They, early imbued with these maxims, were far less to blame than the men who first broached such principles. Let us hope that the comparatively few who hold to these opinions, seeing the origin of what they profess, will understand the worthlessness of them, and unite with the universal church in professing belief in the infallibility of the See of Peter.

Our readers will remember, we presume, thatPutnam's Magazinefor July last contained an article which attracted some attention, under the title of "Our Established Church," and to which we replied in our number for the August following; the same magazine for last month, in an article entitled "The Unestablished Church," comes out with its defence, of which we should be uncivil not to take some notice.

The July article, written in an unsuccessful vein of irony, was directed against the honor both of the church and the city and State of New York, and was designed to show that the church, grasping at wealth and power, and skilfully availing herself of political passions and party divisions, had obtained from the State and city governments endowments for herself and subventions for her educational and charitable institutions out of all proportion to any granted to similar Protestant institutions. We replied that the endowments are imaginary, for the church here is unendowed; that the subventions are greatly exaggerated; that several alleged had never been made, while others said to have been made to Catholic were in fact made to Protestant institutions; and that Catholics had never received a tithe of what was requisite to place them on an equality in regard to subventions from the public with non-Catholics. TheMagazine, though with exceeding ill grace, concedes nearly all that we denied, abandons its assumption that ours is the established church, confesses that it is unestablished, and disputes us, except with sneers and exclamation-points, only in regard to two statements in our reply, one of which is of no importance, and the other is one in which it is decidedly, not to say maliciously wrong.

The two points disputed we proceed to dispose of. TheMagazinecharged the corporation of the city with granting leases of valuable sites for Catholic institutions for a long term of years at a merely nominal rent. We replied that only one such lease had been granted since 1847, which is not technically exact, and we overlooked the fact that the lease for the site of the Catholic Orphan Asylum between Fifty-first and Fifty-second streets bears the date of 1857; but by theMagazine'sown showing, though technically a new lease, and so recorded, it was really only a change in the tenure of the old lease. Catholics had held and occupied the site under a lease from the city, and at the same rent as now, for years before 1847. So much for the first point.

TheMagazinecharged that the State paid out, in 1866, for benefactions under religious control $129,025.14, of which $124,174.14 went to the religious purposes of the Catholic Church. Not being able to find any proof of this, and regarding the unsupported statement of the writer as presumptive evidence of falsehood rather than of truth, we let the charge pass without any attempt at a specific refutation. TheMagazinereiterates the statement, and refers to the report of the comptroller of the State. We have the comptroller's report before us; we have examined and reëxamined it; but we do not find the statement in it or any thing to warrant it; and it hasbeen more than once pronounced on the highest authority, and proved to be a forgery, as theMagazinewell knows or is inexcusable for not knowing.

We did not meet this statement for the first time inPutnam's Magazine. It had been previously made, and we supposed sufficiently refuted in the journals, especially in theUtica Herald, whose editor, Mr. Roberts, had been a member of the Legislature and of the committee of ways and means in 1866. Mr. Roberts under his own name, pronounced it a forgery. For honest and fair-minded men this was conclusive. But the charge was embodied in an anonymous memorial, and laid on the desks of the members of the New York State Convention, held in 1867 and 1868, and was again pronounced in open debate a forgery, without a single voice being raised in its defence. The Hon. Mr. Cassidy, of the AlbanyAtlas and Argus, declared it false from beginning to end. The Hon. Mr. Alvord, the distinguished member from Onondaga County, did the same. The Hon. Erastus Brooks, member of the Convention from Richmond, and one of the editors of the New YorkEvening Express, would not go quite so far, but regarded it as an admirable example of one of the many ways of telling a lie. He exposed its disingenuous character, by showing that the $8000 stated in it to be appropriated to St. Mary's Hospital, Rochester, was expressly declared in the statute making the appropriation to be for the support of soldiers under the supervision of Dr. Backus, the surgeon of the post. The soldiers were supported and taken care of in St. Mary's Hospital, as the only proper place, in the judgment of the military authorities, that could be obtained. Mr. Brooks also gave, as another instance of the disingenuousness of the statement, its omission to count $25,000, appropriated to a Protestant institution in Elmira, we suppose for a similar purpose. Mr. Alvord not only pronounced it false from beginning to end, but, statute in hand, showed from the act of the Legislature itself, which he read, that instead of appropriating for charitable purposes nearly $130,000, it appropriated only $80,000, to be divided among the several counties according to their assessed valuation.[143]What has become of our friend, the Rev. Leonard W. Bacon, who sometimes writes forPutnam, and who has such delicate scruples about Protestants using forged documents against Catholics?

So much has been said about the partiality of the Legislature to the Catholic Church that it may be well to look at the conditions on which it grants and distributes its aid to charitable institutions. The act of 1866, so bitterly denounced, appropriates from the State treasury $80,000 for orphan asylums, to be apportioned to the several counties according to their assessed value, and distributed to the several asylums according to the number of inmates received and cared for in them respectively, without the slightest reference to the fact whether they were Catholic or Protestant. Nothing could be fairer, and if Catholic asylums received more of the benefaction than those under the charge of non-Catholics, it was simply because they received and cared for a larger number of orphans. We see no ground of complaint here against either the Legislature or the church. It is very possible that Catholics have a larger number of orphans in proportion to their population than have non-Catholics, and itis not unlikely, also, that they are more ready to make sacrifices for their support.

In the list of benefactions of the State to Catholic institutions in 1866, theMagazineplaces the item of $78,000 to the Catholic Protectory. This was a special grant to enable the society to purchase a site and erect suitable buildings for its purpose. This protectory corresponds very nearly to the Protestant societies for the protection and reformation of juvenile delinquents, and which the State is accustomed to aid by its benefactions. The appropriations for its support are justified on the ground that it is of great public utility and protection of the public from a class of destitute children not unlikely, if not taken care of, to grow up vicious and criminal, to fill our alms-houses, our jails and penitentiaries. The community at large, rather than the church specially, is benefited, and there is no good reason why grants for its support should be objected to or regarded as made for special Catholic purposes. The only thing that a Protestant can object to, if any charitable institution is to receive aid from the State, is, that by aiding a Catholic protectorate to take care of and reform destitute children of Catholics without the loss of their Catholic faith, it so far fails to aid Protestants to bring them up in Protestantism, or, what is perhaps worse, in no religion.

As a matter of course,Putnam's Magazinedwells on the public grants to certain Catholic schools in this city. We do not deny those grants. We conceded and defended them in our former article, and theMagazinehas in no respect invalidated our defence; it has only stared and sneered at it. Give us either schools to which we can send our children, or divide the schools equitably between Catholics and Protestants, and we will solicit no special grants of the sort. As it is, neither the city nor the State gives back by way of subvention to our schools more than a pittance of what it takes from us for the support of schools to which we cannot with our Catholic conscience send our children. If the State taxes the whole community alike for the support of public schools, it is bound to provide schools for Catholics as well as Protestants, and for both such as leave the conscience of each free, sacred, and inviolable. If it refuses to do so, the least that it can do is to make liberal grants to the schools Catholics are obliged to establish for themselves.

What we have thus far said disposes of theMagazine'sstatistics, and sufficiently relieves the State from the charge of discriminating in favor of Catholics, as well as the church from the charge of intriguing for special favors. She has never asked or received any special favors from the Legislature. The other matters in the article merit no special reply. The writer attempts to be witty, but succeeds only in being abusive. Wit does not appear to be his strong point, and his attempts at it only provoke a smile at his expense. His strong point is hatred of the church. He hates her with a hatred equal to that of the wicked Jews for our Lord whom they crucified between two thieves. Her very presence annoys him; her independence enrages him; and nothing appears able to appease him but her subjection to the state, and the subjection of the state to the intolerant Protestantism of which he is a mouth-piece.

TheMagazineis hard to please. It condemned, in July last, the church as our established church; we made answer that she neither is nor wishes to be the established church. It now, in December, condemns herno less as the unestablished church. It blames us both for opposing and for not opposing the common schools, for agreeing and for not agreeing with our own church, and for opposing and for not opposing religious liberty. Both the church, and we, personally, must be wrong anyhow. If its specific charges against her are false, then the contrary must be true and equally charges against her. If she is not the synagogue of Satan, she is the church of God, which is just as bad. Nothing can disconcert it or prove it in the wrong, since it sees no inconsistency in urging charges that refute each other. Yet it represents and speaks for theenlightenedportion of mankind!

TheMagazinelabors at length to prove that the church opposes, and quotes theSyllabusto prove that she must oppose, the common school system as it is; and yet sees in this fact no reason why Catholics cannot, with a good conscience, send their children to them. We are opposed to the common schools as they are, because our church condemns them; that is, because founded on what we hold to be a false principle, and hostile alike to religion and society; but if Protestants want them for themselves, they can have them; for the church legislates only for Catholics, not for non-Catholics who reject her authority. Hence, we oppose the system as a system for Catholics, not as a system intended for Protestants. We do not approve the system even for them, any more than we do their heresy and schism, which we account "deadly sins;" but if they insist on having godless schools for their children, they can have them; we cannot hinder them. The system might be modified so that we could accept it; but it depends on them so to modify it or not, for they have the power.

TheMagazinewithdraws its false statement as to the millions of property held in fee-simple by the five bishops in the State, but blames the law of 1863, which incorporates the church in the several New York dioceses, as securing to her advantages of which the non-Catholic religious denominations are deprived. This is a mistake. It only secures to her the rights secured to these under the general law for creating, continuing, and reviving religious societies and parishes, and which are not secured to her under that general law. That law proceeds on the assumption that in ecclesiastical organizations the parish is the unit, which is not true with regard to the church. With us the unit is the diocese, and the bishop, not the parochus, is, strictly speaking, the pastor. To proceed on the contrary supposition would be to interfere with the internal constitution and discipline of the church, and to deprive her of that control over her own temporalities which is possessed by every Protestant denomination in the State. The law objected to only secures to the church equal rights with the sects—only it does it by another method made necessary by the fact that the diocese, not the parish, in her constitution, is the unit. The law only places the church on a footing of equality, before the state, with the Protestant sects, and no friend of religious liberty can reasonably object to it. It secures the public against abuses, the application of the property held to church purposes, and the church the free management of her own temporalities.

TheMagazinecomplains that the law is no longer equal, because it is not the same for all religious denominations. Has it never occurred to it that one and the same law for all would operate unequally, for all have not the same internal constitution?The law very proper and just for Presbyterians, whose organic unit is the parish, could in no manner secure the same rights to the church, whose organic unit is the diocese. Here is precisely where Protestants usually err in their legislation, and violate the equal rights they profess to approve. They overlook the fact that the same law can bear equally only on denominations that are organized after one and the same model, and that for the state to set up a model, and outlaw all denominations that do not, or in so far as they do not conform to it, is a violation of religious liberty and of equal rights. It is practically to establish one form of church organization and deny its protection to all churches that do not see proper to adopt it. Religious liberty requires that each denomination be left free, so far as the civil power is concerned, to adopt such form of church organization in relation to its own temporalities as well as spirituals as it chooses; and the equal rights of all require the state to respect and protect each in the full possession and enjoyment of its own particular form of organization. The law must not be simply the same for the Catholic and the Congregationalist, but must be so framed as to give each the same rights; to the church, with her constitution and discipline, all the freedom and protection that it does to the Congregationalist, with his congregational organization and discipline. This is what the law of this State enacted in 1863 attempts to secure, and partially, if not wholly, succeeds in doing. The Protestant, that is, the rabid Protestant, objects to that law, not because it discriminates in favor of Catholicity, but because it gives to the church the same legal protection that it does to non-Catholic churches, and does not discriminate in favor of Protestantism as all previous legislation on the subject had done, at least in its practical operation.

We are accused, because we say the church here desires no establishment by law—for she has what is better than such establishment—of contradicting theSyllabus, and going against the supreme pontiff. We accept theSyllabuswithout the slightest reserve, though probably not theMagazine'ssense. TheSyllabuscondemns those who demand the separation of church and state in the sense of the European liberals; but not us for not requiring the church to be established by law as the state church. Those liberals mean by the separation of church and state the independence of the state, and its right to pursue its own policy irrespective of the rights and interests of religion. In that sense we also condemn the separation, and are continually warring against it as political atheism. But we deny that in that sense, or in the sense of theSyllabus, we do or ever have advocated the separation of church and state. That separation does not and ought not to exist in this country. This is not an infidel, a godless country, though it may be fast becoming so; and Christianity is, as it should be, the supreme law of the land, as it is part and parcel of the Common Law. An act of the Legislature of the State or the nation forbidding Christianity or authorizing acts directly against it would be null and void from the beginning, and be treated by the courts as would be ajus muncipiumin violation of thejus gentium.

The rights of Christianity are by our civil institutions recognized as paramount to all others. They are called by us the rights of man, rights which are held not from the state, but immediately from the Creator, and therefore are more properly calledthe rights of God than the rights of man. These rights limit the rights and authority of the state; for it is bound to respect them as sacred and inviolable, and to protect and defend them for each and every person within its jurisdiction to the full extent of its power. Among these rights is the right of conscience, which, in fact, is the chief, the very basis of all our so-called natural and inalienable rights. My right of conscience is the law for the state, and prohibits it from enacting any thing that violates it. My conscience is my church, the Catholic Church; and any restriction of her freedom, or any act in violation of her rights, violates or abridges my right or freedom of conscience, which, where equal rights are recognized, the state has no right to do in my case any more than in that of any other.

My church, the Catholic Church, is, by virtue of my citizenship and my right of conscience, the law of the state so far as her own freedom is concerned, and as is necessary to protect and defend her in the free and full enjoyment of her rights. The church is free in and to the full extent of my freedom of conscience; and though I have no right to impose my conscience on another, I have the right to protest against any and every act of the state that is repugnant to it or contrary to my church. The state is just as much bound to respect, protect, and defend the Catholic Church in her faith, her constitution, her discipline, and her worship, as if she were the only religious body in the nation. Other religious bodies exist and have, not before God, but before civil society, equal rights with her; and if the state can do nothing to violate their rights of conscience, it can do nothing to violate hers, as it in fact does in its legislation in regard to marriage and divorce, both here and in nearly all European states and empires. It cannot violate the Catholic conscience in order to conform to the Protestant conscience.

Here is the way in which we understand the separation of church and state, as it exists in this country, and we feel quite sure that we do not incur the censure of theSyllabus. We have here done nothing but set forth in its true light the religious liberty recognized by our American system of government, and which forms the basis of our civil liberty. Our church is here with all her freedom, in all her integrity, by right, not merely tolerated; and by a right which is not a civil grant and revocable at will, but by the irrevocable grant of God. Her full and entire freedom is recognized by the fundamental principle of the American state, and we demand that the civil law respect and protect her freedom against all gainsayers. So much we demand on the ground of equal rights and in the name of inviolable conscience. When we go farther and ask more from the state than equality with the sects, we givePutnam's Magazinefull liberty to denounce us, and to condemn us as the enemies of religious liberty.

In an obscure corner of the Mazarine Library, at Paris, was lately discovered by its director or librarian in chief, Mr. Philarète Chasles, a small black prayer-book; an oblong duodecimo, gilt-edged, although printed on poor gray paper. It was in the Polish tongue, with the exception of the vesper-hymns and some canticles of the church in Latin. No catalogue chronicled its existence, and it was, evidently, a despised waif, rejected as of too little importance to be entitled to a place in the dignified alcoves.

On examination, it was found to contain the following original Latin ode—a remarkable composition in many respects, touchingly beautiful in a simplicity at once tender and vigorous, and an exquisite combination of piety and patriotism.

It was doubtless sung in the churches of Poland about the year 1740, when Europe stood aloof in silent ingratitude to those who, following Sobieski's sword, had saved her from the Turk; when England was of course indifferent to the fate of a Catholic nation; when France was without sympathy for the faithful, and her kings proved then, more than ever, that Catholicity would have been better off without their aid; when Catharine of Russia gilded her cupidity with philosophical maxims, and Frederick of Prussia, called the Great, calumniated those he robbed.

As we read the hymn, we can well imagine the crowd in front of the altar, covered with flowers, in some rude, white-walled village church. They kneel before the infant Jesus in his mother's arms. Peasants in their national costume—a long, white blouse reaching to the knee, the curved sabre in the belt—children, soldiers, women, young girls. They chant one of those peculiarly wild Slavonic rhythms in6⁄8or3⁄8. There, prostrate, with clasped hands, their weeping eyes on the infant Saviour, the child Liberator, they intone these beautiful Latin strophes, a rare specimen of spontaneous and popular poetry:

AD PARVULUM CHRISTUM CONTRA HOSTES PATRIÆ.1.

Benevolus audiQuæ tuæ sunt laudi,O Parvule delicate!Patriam defende!Tu solus es agnusEt fortis et magnus!Qui perfidum TurcamCompellis ad furcam!Patriam! patriam! patriamDefende!

Mercifully listen to those who praise and implore thee, O tender Infant! Defend our country. Thou alone art the Lamb, alone powerful! alone great! Exterminator of the treacherous Turk. Our country, our country, ah! defend our country.

Barbarous and artificial strophes, perhaps you think? Yes, measured by Lucretius and Virgil, they may be; poor, thin, leonine verses like those of the twelfth century Benedictine monk who wrote,

Gloria factorum temere conceditur horum,

singing verses without prosodial measure, their vehement and rapid rhymeanswering for every thing. And yet this learned barbarism, borrowed from the seventh century, from a poetry in ruins, gives life to the ardent flame and the tragic sorrow it expresses. It is a deep cry of anguish from the innermost depths of a stricken people's heart.

We hear the divine and child-like victim invoked in his feebleness by a vanquished nation, and appealed to in his shivering nakedness (et friges et taces) by the oppressed in tears, and these cries form a sad though sublime harmony. The unknown ecclesiastical minstrel—for the poetry is anonymous—continues:

O nefas! O crimen!Mors transit limen!O Parvule delicate!Patriam defende!Jam victima sumus,Et pulvis et fumus.Patriam!Patriam!Patriam defende!

O injustice! O crime! Death advances! O tender Infant! defend our country. Already are we victims, naught but smoke and dust. Our country, etc., etc.

Tu nudus hic jacesEt friges et taces!O Parvule delicate!Patriam defende!Minusculum pectus,Duriusculus lectus!Nihilominus teloPugnabis e cœlo!Patriam!Patriam!Patriam defende!

All naked as we see thee, and cold and silent! O tender Infant! defend our country. Delicate is thy breast. Hard is thy couch! And yet, from heaven on high, wilt thou combat for us! Our country, etc., etc.

This people's poet and clever Latinist is liberal of his diminutives,minusculum,duriusculus, and displays, withal, a curious affectation of rhyming richness,Turcam, furcam;lectus, pectus;laudi, audi;magnus, agnus. And yet there is deep emotion and profound lyric agitation compressed into the shortest possible strophes, all vigorously concise and eloquently expressive. We omit several beautiful verses:

Grassantur,Furantur,Prædantur,Bacchantur!O Parvule delicate!Patriam defende!Nil tutumNil ausum,Nil satis est clausum!Nil fœdera valent.Cum hæreses calent.Patriam!Patriam!Patriam defende!

Devastating, raging, slaying, in orgies they ruin. O tender Infant! defend our country. Naught is safe with us, naught withholds them. Heresy triumphs! Treaties are trampled upon! Our country, etc., etc.

Polonia peritEt spolium erit.O Parvule delicate!Patriam defende!Tu fregeris nisiVim hostis invisi,Oppresseris facemEt dederis pacem!Patriam!Patriam!Patriam defende!

Poland perishes. A prey she becomes. O tender Infant! defend our country. Sealed is her fate, unless thou breakest the force of the enemy that crushes her; unless thou givest peace. Our country, etc., etc.

Est tempus, est horaNe, quæso, sit mora!Parvule delicate!Patriam defende!Vicini laborant,Et aliud orant!Quod perfidus hostisNos, superi, nostis!Patriam!Patriam!Patriam defende!

The time and the hour have come. Oh! delay not, I implore. O tender Infant! save our country. With other things our neighbors are occupied. Thou, O God supreme! knowest the designs of the enemy. Defend, defend our country!

How admirable the popular simplicity preserved here—an infantine tenderness, a Slavonian murmur, a solemn melody resembling the moaning sigh of weeping willows, an echo of those charming Lithuanian ballads finding voice in the grand old ecclesiastical Roman idiom.

I was given to psychological studies in those days; was fond of attributing vagaries of disposition and eccentricities of temper to inherited perversions, insurmountable in themselves, and consequently the misfortunes—not faults—of their possessors. At that time I firmly believed in the mysterious attraction of soul to soul; in the mutual recognition of kindred spirits, and their sympathy with each other from behind the barriers of flesh and blood. I do not say I have quite abandoned the opinion now; but there is a reservation.

I had dipped a little into German mysticism; had sifted, as I thought, all creeds to the bottom—all save one. For Catholicity and its "superstitions" I had always entertained too profound a contempt to seek to acquire a further knowledge of its doctrines than any intelligent American can learn from the well-read (?) theologians who form its antipodes, and who launch forth anathemas against Rome on high-days and holidays when other subjects weary or grow flat. I flattered myself that my acquaintance with this particular form of idolatry was quite thorough for all practical purposes; the contamination extended no further; and yet I believe my case would represent that of nine tenths of the thinking, intelligent Protestants of this peculiarly-favored and grace-illumined country.

It was—for me—the first party of the season. January had almost danced itself away, and the fashionables were beginning to anticipate Lent; but until to-night I had persistently refused all invitations from friends and acquaintances. Of the former I had very few; I had grown tired of the world, of pleasure-seeking, of myself. What wonder, when, in the great city of New York, with its hundreds of thousands of throbbing hearts, there was not one to whom in solemn truth I could hold out the right hand of friendship; not one upon whose sympathies I could anchor, should the tide of fortune turnand leave me, a rich man to-day, the sport of her cruel waves to-morrow?

I prided myself on being cynical, turning out of the way of all stepping-stones that might have led to a happier existence; there was little faith in human nature in my heart, no religion in my soul.

Dissatisfied with my own aimless life, I sought no mirror in the lives of others; self-sufficient and cold, I avoided kindness and sympathetic associations. I was just at that point when satiety and disgust render the world and its attributes almost unendurable.

On the evening before mentioned, I had been introduced to young ladies by the dozen; had mentally criticised, weighed, and found wanting each one upon whom I had inflicted the bane of my company through a dance. Tired and ill-humored, I was about going forward to take leave of the hostess, when a few words spoken just behind me made me pause and look around, curious to know who the "sweet singer" might be.

It was a woman's voice, clear and sweet, and the words were, "No, thank you; I never dance the round dances."

But a surging crowd of feverish waltzers drifted by me at the moment, as the delirious strains of Strauss'sZamorafloated up from the balcony, and the face I would have scanned was lost amid the throng.

As I moved off a little from the dancers, and watched cheeks flush and bright eyes grow brighter at the call of voluptuous music, I could not but wonder at the inconsistency of fate and fortune that had brought into this ultra-fashionable gathering a lady, certainly young, and probably beautiful, who "did not dance the round dances."

I passed into the adjoining room. Several of the waltzers, tired and heated, had left the crowdedsalonbefore me; here and there a stray wall-flower tried to look unconscious and happy in the midst of desolation; but my eye psychological wandered in vain up and down, seeking a face that would seem to indicate the owner of the voice heard a few moments before. At length a very young girl issued from a group that had been standing near an open window, and, as I marked the expression of her faultless mouth and soft blue eyes, I said to myself, "That is the one." But at the moment a gay young West-Pointer stepped forward to meet her, and in another instant my Madonna was whirling through the giddy maze.

"Pshaw!" I ejaculated half aloud, disappointed to find my intuitiveness at fault, and turned as I did so to encounter an old friend, not seen for some time, who entered from the conservatory in company with a lady.

Surprise and pleasure caused us momentarily to forget politeness, so that several sentences were interchanged before Armitage recollected himself, and said, "Allow me, Helen. My friend, Mr. Moray, Miss Foster." I muttered something—the young lady bowed; that was all. The couple passed on; and I am bound to confess that I did not notice the color of the lady's eyes or hair, and never once thought of her expression, psychologist as I was.

I recognized no kinship of feeling or sympathy as we stood within the circle of each other's magnetism; and yet my "destiny" had come to me, and the soul within me, that was to have risen and grown conscious at the approach, stood mute and made no sign.

After that, Fred Armitage called at my rooms several times, and succeeded in winning me away from my exclusiveness, in so much that I promised to be at his disposal for NewYear's day, on condition that his visits of congratulation would be few and well chosen. He laughed at my conceit, as he was pleased to call it. "I don't fancy every body any more than you do, Ed," he said; "but one must make allowances and be sociable with the world. There's a difference between friends and acquaintances. One need not have the former if one doesn't wish; but the latter are indispensable, unless you give up the amenities of civilization at once." After which remark we sallied forth.

Toward evening, and when I had vowed for the fourth time that each successive call would be my last, Fred paused before a handsome house on Fifth Avenue.

"I am not going in," I said, almost savagely, as he announced his intention of entering.

"Only here," he answered, "and I promise I'll go home with you. I must call. I should have made this one first; but I wanted to save the best morsel for the last. Come; Helen would never forgive me if I neglected her to-day."

"And what claim has the young lady on your time and affections?" I asked, somewhat more quietly than before, "you are not in love, or engaged, or any thing of that kind?"

"Ni l'un ni l'autre; it is my cousin, Helen Foster. I introduced you at Mrs. Parry's."

I had not time to say more; for the door opened at this juncture, and we were ushered into a large and elegantly furnished parlor, where sat two ladies—one old, and very charming in her old age; the other young and beautiful. Not lovely; there was nothing airy or fragile about her; but radiant, with a fresh, bright color in her cheeks that made one think of long walks taken on wintry mornings; with large brown eyes, which, while they did not fall or fear as they looked into yours, yet had a shade of reticence, almost bashfulness, in their untroubled depths; with a wealth of rippling hair, golden brown, crowning the well-poised head and defining the delicate ear; with a hand that felt warm, soft, and friendly, as mine closed over it.

"We have met before, I believe," she said, as Armitage repeated my name; then, turning to the other lady, "Mr. Moray, grandmamma, a friend of Fred's." And the dear little figure in the arm-chair rose and greeted me most kindly.

"Has there been no one here to-day, Helen?" asked Fred; "you look as though you were quite fresh, and not at all fatigued from the exchange of compliments, hand-shaking, etc."

"Oh! yes, there have been some few," she said. "But grandmamma lives entirely at home, and you know I patronize society but seldom; consequently, we have been spared the dear five hundred particular friends, and flatter ourselves we feel quite as comfortable, notwithstanding. Isn't it so, grandmamma?" And she placed her hand affectionately on the old lady's arm. As the tones of her clear, well-modulated voice reached my ear, a vision of lights and flowers and flying feet rose before me, and I almost heard the bewildering waltz-music float through the air. And then, lifting my eyes to the face of the lady before me, I recognized myrara avisof that evening—the girl of the period who did not dance round dances.

To say that I was not interested in her from the first, would be to say an untruth. Her personality affected me pleasantly, and somewhat strangely. There was a freshness and elasticity about her that did not proceed from inexperience or unacquaintance with the world; for dignity and self-possession characterized her every movement, and yet she seemed entirelyunconscious of any claim to originality or naturalness; because shewasso natural. Our call, that was to have been so short, lengthened itself into an hour. Fred and his cousin made themselves mutually agreeable. I addressed myself to the elder lady, now and then exchanging a few words with the others.

When Fred arose to take leave, I felt no disposition to join him, and very unaccountably and inconsistently reproached him in my own mind for being in a hurry.

For the first time in many months I had felt sociably disposed, and had endeavored to make myself agreeable; and I was reluctant to leave that quiet, home-like parlor and its occupants, both so different from the brilliant, giddy butterflies within the flutter of whose wings I had been vacillating all that day. As we passed out into the still, cold night, I looked up at the quiet stars with a kindly feeling. Fred talked in an unbroken stream until we reached my rooms. Arrived there, we spent the rest of the evening smoking and chatting. I expressed myself pleased with his cousin and her grandmother, whose only grandchild and sole heiress he informed me she was. The clock struck twelve as he rose to go. After I had come back to the fire, I remember the wholly strange, almost sorrowful feeling that possessed me. Gazing into the dying embers, I dreamed a half-waking dream, wherein the ghosts of other New Years dead and gone took form and shape, and with shadowy, reproachful gestures, seemed to beckon me away, back through old scenes and hopes and yearnings—faded—buried—vanished all for ever.

One afternoon in early spring, I happened to pass the cathedral just as service was over. I had spent the previous evening with Miss Foster—an event of not unusual occurrence now, although I never called unless when accompanied by Armitage. The current of my thoughts flowed pleasantly as the crowd of devout worshippers issued forth from their devotions. A lady passed out of the gate, and I immediately recognized the figure as that of Miss Foster. "Eccentric, certainly," I thought; "just like what I would imagine she might do. Strange that some of our most intelligent and highly educated women can fancy this attending Catholic churches."

I quickened my steps, and in a moment was at her side.

"Have you been at vespers, Mr. Moray?" she asked, as though it were the most natural thing in the world that I should have been there.

"Not I," I replied laughingly; "but you have, I presume?"

"Yes," she rejoined, "grandmamma will be scolding me, I am afraid. I went up-stairs to lie down after dinner, having a slight headache. But once in my room, I felt as though a walk would benefit me more, so I stole out."

"A crowded church is not the best place in the world in which to get rid of the headache," I responded.

"Mine has vanished, however," was the reply. "It had quite disappeared before I reached the church."

"Do you affect Catholic ceremonies generally, Miss Foster?" I asked; "or rather do you admire Catholicism in the abstract? Or is it the incense and music and wax tapers that possess charms for you?"

"All these collectively have attractions for me," she answered; "but not in the way you imagine. You are inclined to believe, no doubt, that it is some romantic and impressionable vein in my nature that sendsme within the influence of Catholic ceremonies and their accessories. But we are all liable to error; and you will not be deeply wounded, I hope, if I venture to advise you of your mistake in this instance. I am a Catholic, and hold all these things as a part of my faith."

"A Catholic!" I exclaimed in undisguised astonishment. "A Catholic! Not a Roman Catholic, Miss Foster? You mean that you are one in the true sense of the term?"

"I hope I do—I think that is what I mean. I am, by the grace of God, a Roman Catholic." And it seemed to me she spoke almost maliciously, as though deliberately to wound my dearest prejudices.

"You will the more readily excuse me for my inability to realize this information," I replied, "when I tell you that until now my acquaintance with members of your church has been very limited, and that those whom I have met have always belonged to the lowest classes of society. I find it difficult to convince myself that you can profess a belief whose tenets have always appeared to me to be a web of superstition. My associates have been altogether Protestant, and my prejudices, as you would call them, very decided wherever Rome was concerned. You may think me blunt, even impertinent; but allow me at the same time to acknowledge that I feel confident there must be something good and beautiful in a religion that one of your intelligence and refinement admires and professes."

"There is something good and beautiful in all religions," she answered, "or they would not be worthy of the name—mere attempts and half promises as most of them are. But in ours all is goodness and beauty. I can pardon, even understand your prejudices; for I shared them once. I was born and educated in the Presbyterian faith; a faith hard, cold, and unconsoling. I can remember the time when I regarded Catholicity as but another form of heathenism. For your estimate of my intelligence and refinement I can only thank you—all the more as you have never had opportunity to judge correctly of either; consequently I must take the verdict for what it is worth. But here I am at home, and the lamps are lighted. How late it must be. Thank you again, and good evening."

With a little rippling laugh she left my side, and almost before I had time to answer her parting salutation, she had tripped up the steps and entered the house.

A crowd of conflicting thoughts pursued each other in my mind as I continued my walk. A consciousness that I endeavored vainly to ignore grew stronger as I reflected on what had passed, and weighed more minutely all the circumstances of our meeting and acquaintance. And with it was mingled a feeling of disappointment, almost of vexation and pain, as though I had been touched and assailed by some detested enemy.

I grew restless; nothing satisfied me. People said I looked ill. No wonder, when I sat up half the night trying to divert my mind from the study of its own problems, to those of incomprehensible German philosophy. I reasoned with what I was pleased to term my weakness. But what could I do? I had kept out of the way of temptation; I had avoided assemblies where I knew she was likely to be; twenty times I had stood upon the threshold of her home, and as often turned and retraced my steps. One night I sat alone in my room, and almost vowed to put the thought of her from my mind at once and for ever. As I mused, Armitage entered unannounced.

"Desolate and melancholy as ever," he said cheerfully, and the sound of his happy voice made me desperate. Suddenly, involuntarily, I might say, I found myself answering him,

"I am tired of being desolate and melancholy though;" then carelessly, "What if we saunter down to Miss Foster's?"

Fred was all willingness, while surprised at my change of mood. We walked leisurely along. When we reached the house, Fred remarked that the shutters were closed, and that there was some probability of the young lady being out. I said nothing, but made a solemn compact with myself while we waited. "If she is not at home," I thought, "that vow shall be registered and kept; if she is,che sera sera."

Miss Helen was at home, the servant said. She reproached me for not having called in such a length of time, and wondered if the revelation made at our last meeting had not helped to keep me away. Then turning, to her cousin she said laughingly, "Mr. Moray was horrified the other day, to hear of my being a Catholic."

"The other day?" I answered. "It is fully three months ago, and I have not yet been able to reconcile my mind to the fact."

"It is a fact though, Ed," said Armitage; "and greatly as I deplored the calamity when it happened four years ago, I must confess that Helen has changed for the better in the interval. You see, she was most irrepressible, some time since—before her conversion, as she calls it—doing every thing by fits and starts, and holding every one under the severest of despotisms; but I actually believe this little devotion she has, this habit of confessing, has toned her down and made her the rational creature we see her. That's how you account for the change, isn't it, coz?"

"Fred, you are unconscionable. Mr. Moray knows you as well as I do, no doubt, and weighs your veracity proportionately. You don't admire Shelley, Mr. Moray?" interrogatively, as I turned over the pages of a richly bound edition of that author which lay upon a little table near me.

"No; and yet I do not look at him from the same point of view as you probably would. I think he was crazy. You, I suppose, would pass a more merciless judgment."

"Let us be charitable," she said, "and hope that he was insane. But unhappily his was a species of insanity of which there are but too many instances."

After that, the talk fell upon books generally. The hours slipped by, and eleven o'clock had struck before we took leave. Before I left her that night, I had thrown down the barriers crumbling so long; I had seen and recognized a true, womanly woman, and, all unknown to her, had accepted what I knew to be the inevitable.

After this I went often to the enchanted castle. My fairy princess was nearly always accessible, but so she was to the rest of the world as well. How could I hope to be the favored knight, when her smiles were bestowed on all so generously? She was invariably kind and cordial; sometimes slightly sarcastic and critical, but never moody or sad. I often wondered from what source she drew her abundant cheerfulness, and how she managed to preserve it.

Never by word or look had I intimated my own feelings toward her; something told me to linger at the gate of paradise, content to see the roses blooming without daring to venture in. I felt that a suspicion once aroused in her mind would change our relations completely; and I had not begun to hope.

As things stood, we grew to be excellent friends. Our views differed widely on many points, but religion was the only really sensitive topic. More than once I had noticed a look of pain in her face when I startled her with some of my materialistic views, and at last we tacitly avoided the subject altogether. While I admired her beautiful simplicity and faith, I could not understand then, as I do now, how any aspersion cast upon that faith could wound her as deeply as though it sought herself, and I had never wished to take it from her. In hopeful moments, few and far between, when I had dared to think of her as my wife, the thought of her religion and the absence of it in me had, strangely enough, never intruded itself upon me. Consequently, it was from no desire to weaken or alter her convictions in any particular that I became almost involuntarily instrumental in bringing matters to a crisis.

We had been reading French together, or, to speak more correctly, I had been reading it to her, one evening of every week, with the ostensible purpose of improving my pronunciation under her tutelage; for she spoke the language beautifully.

One day an old Parisian who lodged in the house with me, and who occasionally made my sitting-room the theatre of a homily on Victor Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, and theirconfrères, laid upon my table a copy of Renan's "grand succès."

"Read it," he said; "read it in the original; it loses by translation."

I promised to do so. That evening I took it with me to Miss Foster's. As I walked leisurely along, the thought struck me that my "teacher" might probably not admire the "grand succès;" but it only lingered a moment, and troubled me but little. "No harm in bringing it, any how—the style is good," I soliloquized, and rang the bell in a happier frame of mind than I had known for weeks. Fred usually joined us on French evenings, but to-night another engagement claimed him. Helen was sitting alone when I entered the parlor.

"Grandmamma has a headache this evening, and will not be down," she said apologetically.

I sat down, made a few trifling remarks, to which she responded, and then arose to bring the book we had been reading.

"Wait, I have something else to-night," I said, taking the volume from the table where I had placed it.

"What is it?" she asked, resuming her seat.

"Renan's book," I replied confidently. "I thought I would bring it with me. He has an excellent style—unique and polished. He is the last sensation, you know."

"I will not read it," she said in a low tone.

"I'll read and you will listen," I answered. "That is the usual arrangement, is it not?"

"I will not listen;" she replied, and I saw by the angry flush mantling her forehead that I had committed a grave error; that she misunderstood my motives and was vexed.

"Pardon me," I said. "We will not read it, if you so desire; but at the same time there can be no harm in informing one's self on opposite views from our own. This is the spirit in which I should read the book, not fearing that it would bias my mind either one way or the other. Can you not be as liberal?"

She left her seat and began fingering in a nervous way the ornaments that lay upon the mantel.

"I have no wish to hear my God and my religion railed and blasphemed at either at first or second hand,"she said. "It would be none the less painful coming from the lips of one whom I had almost learned to call friend; but who has to-night in a very few words shown me my mistake. For my religion I have long been aware that you cherish an undisguised contempt; for myself I had hoped you entertained no contemptuous feeling. Surely, I have never given you reason for your action of this evening."

While she was speaking I had shaped my course. Precipitate as it might be, there was nothing left me now but a declaration of my real sentiments, unless I would forfeit her esteem for ever. Fully conscious of the disadvantages of time and circumstance as I was, and without any presumption of success, I then and there resolved to tell her the whole truth. It was but a hastening to the end.

"Stop one moment," I replied; "a word with you. You have wronged me by intimating that I purposed aught of disrespect to you or your religion by what I have unthinkingly done this evening. I could do neither; for I love you. How deeply, I, who have struggled with that love for months, alone can know; how entirely and unselfishly, you perhaps might learn, could you find it in your heart to let me show you; how vainly, my own heart tells me while I watch your face. Surprised you may be—I have no doubt you are; displeased too, but I take no blame to myself for that. An honest man dares lift his eyes to a noble woman; and whatever be my faults, and they are many; wherever lie my errors, and they are thickly sown, I still can call myself an honest man."

She moved further away from where I stood, and once or twice, while I was speaking, made a movement as though to interrupt me. As I uttered the last words, I saw her eyes flash, and a half sarcastic smile wreathe itself about her lips.

"You call yourself an honest man," she said; "an honest man! What is your code, and who the lawgiver? Is it honest to leave untilled and brier-strewn the soil that has been given you in trust for an endless harvest-time; to waste the talents that have been bestowed on you with lavish hand; to spend days and months and years in pleasant idleness, as you have done, and as you do? Is it honest to wrap yourself in a mantle of false and hollow cynicism, lest your better nature might have opportunity to assert its capacities and prove its possibilities; to scoff at all creeds and professions of religion as so many shams and superstitions, because from the nature of the life you lead your own ideal must be both hypocrisy and sham? I am only a woman, and such men as you place but little confidence in a woman's judgment and far-sightedness. But I have read you deeper than you suppose. Evening after evening, while you sat here reading, talking to me, I have been studying you. I have recognized emotions that your pride would call weaknesses; thoughts that your worldly wisdom seeks to cover with a jest or smile; great capabilities of sacrifice that your every-day exterior conceals underdilettantetastes and careless ways. I have seen that in your eye, heard that in your voice, which has made me marvel how a soul like yours could be content with husks and bitterness. For you, yourself, I could have sympathy; but I scorn the evil spirit that is in you."

I had loved her before; but as she stood there taxing me with that to the consciousness of which I was but just awakening, my love gave one great bound and seemed to sit enthroned high above sight or sound of human passion, even while, with every word she uttered, the knowledge of its vainendeavor fastened itself more firmly upon me. I was about to speak, but she interrupted me, and the words came more slowly now, and more kindly.

"I may have spoken harshly," she said. "Indeed, I am sure I have. But it was of yourself with regard to yourself, and in what I said there was no thought of my own connection with the subject. As to that part of it, I can have none; but I think, however much or little a woman esteems a man, there must be something especially tender in her dealings with one who has made her the offering of his love. You will believe me, then, when I say that I am pained, deeply pained, that you should have given yours to me, or deemed its acknowledgment necessary. Words are idle and superfluous here. I can and do appreciate it; I can be, I am your friend. Forgive me if I have been harsh; in calmer moments you will come to think of me as one whose words were quick and too impulsive, but who had your interest at heart. Now let me go. Do not speak further, I beg of you; it would only pain us both."

"But a few words," I said; "a very few. You have aimed surely, and struck deep. I do not blame you for my mistake, nor for that which you term harshness. I cannot, since I recognize its truth. The difference between you and most women is, that you are brave enough to speak that truth; for you are too free from vanity or falsity of any kind, I know, ever to speak other than your earnest thoughts. I may have scoffed at creeds; I have never scoffed at God; give me at least this merit. I have dreamed a dream—we all do at some time, I believe; may yours be happy realizations always. Good-by."

With a sudden glare the firelight flashed upon the wall, and the red glow shone full upon her face, paler than usual, but calm. There were tears in her eyes as they met mine; but what woman with a woman's heart could be unmoved at such a moment?

"Good-by," she answered, almost inaudibly. I paused to hear no more; the next moment the door closed behind me, and I was in the street.

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