“Well, my lord,” said Arundel, “you are not listening to me, it seems? Really, it is not worth while to explain to you the true method of being happy.”
“Ah! my dear Arundel,” replied Wolsey, aroused by the exclamation of his visitor, “how could you expect me to think of profiting by your lessons, or to make an application of your theories of happiness, when at this very moment, perhaps, I have been condemned to death by Parliament?”
“There is no proof of that,” replied Arundel. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil—gloomy apprehensions profit us nothing; they do not delay the progress of events; on the contrary, they send them on us in advance, and only serve to aggravate the consequences. Moreover, I must not forget to suggest that if it would be more agreeable for you to be with your friends, there are many who will be happy to receive you, and offer you a mansion as commodious, although less sumptuously furnished, than your palace of York or that of Hampton Court, the latter of which I have never liked since you added the gallery.”
“What is that gallery to me now? I surrender it up to you,” said the cardinal.
The endless arguments of Arundel began to weary him exceedingly. In spite of the extreme gratitude he felt for his sincere and generous offers, Wolsey could not divest himself of the conviction that Arundel belonged to that class who, while in other respects full of good impulses and laudable intentions, are so entirely wanting in tact and delicacy, and contend so urgently for their own opinions, that the consolations they would force you to adopt, far from alleviating your sufferings, only augment them and render their sympathy irksome and oppressive. This feeling was experienced by Wolsey, uncertain as he was what fate was reserved for him, trembling even for his life, while Arundel endeavored to paint for him a minute picture of the happiness and tranquillity enjoyed by a man living in peace and quiet, with nothing to disturb him in the enjoyment of his possessions.
“Alas!” he exclaimed at length impatiently, “why has not kind Providence blessed me with a nature like yours? I should be less unhappy, nor every instant see yawning before me the terrible depths of the precipice on which I now stand. I could catch, at least, at the branches of absurdity, until the moment when I should be dashed to pieces! But no, I cannot; I am too well acquainted with men and things to expect the slightest assistance. They are always ready to strike those who are falling, but never attempt to raise them up. Yesterday, only yesterday, the commissioners of Parliament demanded of me the letters-patent I had received from the king in order to exercise my authority as legate, although every one knew that, as he had given them to me, it washis right alone to take them away again. Ah! well, they have persisted in their demand, and have refused to believe me on oath! No, I will indulge in no more illusions; my enemies have sworn my death, and they will obtain it! And the king, the king my master, after fifteen years of the most faithful service, he delivers me up, helpless and defenceless, to all the cruelties their hatred may inspire; and yet you, Arundel, think that I should still indulge in hope?”
“But all this will be arranged, I tell you,” replied Arundel with an imperturbable coolness. “You should not trouble yourself in advance, because, if the worstshouldhappen, it will change nothing; and if it doesnot, your present suffering will have been needless.”
As Arundel finished this wise reasoning, Cromwell appeared.
He came from London, where he had been, he said, to defend Wolsey before the Parliament.
On seeing him enter the cardinal was seized with an uncontrollable alarm, thinking his fate had been decided.
“Cromwell!” he cried, and could say no more.
“Ah!” replied Cromwell, “you should not thus give way to your apprehensions, although.…” He paused on seeing the cardinal grow deadly pale. “You need have no uneasiness, because the king has sent Norris to bid me assure you he would take you under his protection.”
“I have been condemned, then!” cried the unhappy Wolsey. “Speak, Cromwell, speak; conceal nothing from me. I am not a child,” he added with firmness.
“You have been condemned by the Star Chamber, but the king says he will have the bill rejected in the House of Commons,” replied Cromwell.
“He will not do it!” cried Wolsey, the tears coursing rapidly down his cheeks. “He will sacrifice me, Cromwell, I know it; he has no longer any use for me, and my past services have left no impression on his mind. But how far has their rage carried them? To what have they condemned me?”
“You have been placed beyond the protection of the king, and all your property confiscated.”
“The king’s protection is already recovered,” gently interrupted Arundel, who had listened until this time in silence. “As for the confiscation, that will be more difficult, inasmuch as they are generally more ready to take than to give. However, my dear cardinal, you should despair of nothing; then let us try and console you. They cannot confiscate me, who have never had anything to do with the gentlemen of the council. I have a good house, an excellent cook; you will come home with me, and, my word for it, you shall want for nothing.”
“Arundel,” interrupted the cardinal, “I am deeply grateful for your kind offer; but believe me, they will not leave me the choice of profiting by it.”
“Why not? why not?” exclaimed Arundel. “The devil! Why, these gentlemen of the council are not wild beasts! A little avaricious, a little ambitious, a little envious, and slightly selfish, but they are at least as accommodating as the devil!”
“No!” replied Wolsey.
“I assure you, before receiving the king’s message,” said Cromwell, “I was in despair, for they spoke of having you arrested and immediately urging the accusation of hightreason; but since the king has declared you under his protection, I do not believe that all is entirely lost. Norris has repeated to me twenty times: ‘Say positively to the cardinal that the king advises him not to be troubled, and to remember that he can give him, any moment he pleases, far more than they can take away.’”
“I hope I may be mistaken, dear Cromwell,” replied the cardinal with a sombre air; “but I fear a momentary compassion only has excited the king to say what you tell me, and it will not be long before that wicked night-bird[140]will again have possession of his ear. She will not fail to use her influence in defaming me and blackening anew all my actions, until the king will cease to oppose the wicked designs they have conceived against me.”
Saying this, he buried his face in his hands and sank into a state of despondency impossible to describe.
Cromwell made no reply, and Arundel silently took his leave, inwardly congratulating himself, as he returned home, upon the tranquil and happy life he knew so well how to lead, and censuring those who would not imitate his example; without once reflecting that few were in a position so agreeable or independent as his, and consequently were not able to enjoy themselves equally nor after his own deliberate fashion.
TO BE CONTINUED.
Predestined second Eve. For this conceiv’dImmaculate—not lower than the first.Chosen beginner in the loss reversed,And mediatress in the gain achieved,When, the new angel, as the old, believed,Thy hearkening should bless whom Eve’s had curst.And therefore we, whose bondage thou hast burst,Grateful for our inheritance retrieved,Must deem this jewel in thy diademThe brightest—hailing thee alone “all fair,”Nor ever soil’d with the original stain:Alone, save Him whose heart-blood bought the gemWith peerless grace preventive none might share—Redemption’s perfect end, all else tho’ vain.
Predestined second Eve. For this conceiv’dImmaculate—not lower than the first.Chosen beginner in the loss reversed,And mediatress in the gain achieved,When, the new angel, as the old, believed,Thy hearkening should bless whom Eve’s had curst.And therefore we, whose bondage thou hast burst,Grateful for our inheritance retrieved,Must deem this jewel in thy diademThe brightest—hailing thee alone “all fair,”Nor ever soil’d with the original stain:Alone, save Him whose heart-blood bought the gemWith peerless grace preventive none might share—Redemption’s perfect end, all else tho’ vain.
Predestined second Eve. For this conceiv’dImmaculate—not lower than the first.Chosen beginner in the loss reversed,And mediatress in the gain achieved,When, the new angel, as the old, believed,Thy hearkening should bless whom Eve’s had curst.And therefore we, whose bondage thou hast burst,Grateful for our inheritance retrieved,Must deem this jewel in thy diademThe brightest—hailing thee alone “all fair,”Nor ever soil’d with the original stain:Alone, save Him whose heart-blood bought the gemWith peerless grace preventive none might share—Redemption’s perfect end, all else tho’ vain.
Predestined second Eve. For this conceiv’d
Immaculate—not lower than the first.
Chosen beginner in the loss reversed,
And mediatress in the gain achieved,
When, the new angel, as the old, believed,
Thy hearkening should bless whom Eve’s had curst.
And therefore we, whose bondage thou hast burst,
Grateful for our inheritance retrieved,
Must deem this jewel in thy diadem
The brightest—hailing thee alone “all fair,”
Nor ever soil’d with the original stain:
Alone, save Him whose heart-blood bought the gem
With peerless grace preventive none might share—
Redemption’s perfect end, all else tho’ vain.
“I think I shall start for New Hampshire to-morrow,” I said. “Do you know anything about L——, in Cheshire County?”
Jones, who had been meditatively examining the coloring of a richly-tinted meerschaum, sat up erect at this question, with a sudden access of vigor.
“L——?” he said. “By George! there’s where Agnes Cortland lives now in the summer.”
It was the middle week of July. Aspirations for one whiff of the breeze among the hills had become irresistible. We were sitting together, Jones and I, in my room up-town after luncheon. Jones was a young New York artist in his first season after his return from Italy the previous autumn. He, too, was about to start on a sketching tour through Vermont, in which State his people lived. He was late leaving town, but money was not easy with him—a handsome young fellow of that golden age between twenty-three and twenty-four, when one is apt to think he needs only a very short-handled lever to move the world. He was of medium height, but squarely and powerfully built; with a face good-natured, but very resolute, in expression. A stranger would not be likely to take a liberty with him. I had a strong notion that Jones would make a better soldier than artist, if there were any question of blows being struck for the country, which happily there is not. But hitherto I had shrewdly kept that opinion to myself. Considerably older than he was, and engaged in another occupation, circumstances had thrown us a good deal together. Intimacy had brought confidence, and confidence, at his age, meant—nothing more nor less than it always does under such circumstances—the unbosoming of his love affairs. How few there are who have not found themselves in the same position, either as actors or sympathetic chorus, or in time as both! What countless dramas of passion are continually being put upon the private stage before this limited audience!
Now, it is not the purpose of this paper to pursue the history of Jones’ captivity at the hands of the tender goddess through all the infinitesimal and transcendental chapters a first romance runs into. More placid emotions and observations, befitting the serenity of approaching middle age, are in store for the reader. And in fact the history of Jones’ passion is still incomplete. But so much of it may be given as fell within the purview of our New Hampshire observations.
Jones was poor—prosaic fact, which robs life of so many compensations as we grow old. But at twenty-three we spurn the mastery of the glittering dross—that is, if Congress gives us any to spurn! Let us say rather of the flimsy paper. At that age of our flowing life we coin money at our own mint; or, more truly, draw limitless drafts on the Bank of the Future. Happy the man whomeets them when they fall due! Jones, at least, had no doubts as to his future solvency. But his plans were vague—very!
Agnes Cortland was the daughter of a railroad director—or two or three directors rolled into one—and had the world, or at least the New York world, to choose from. Poor Jones! his story might almost be predicted from the start. Yet this inheritor of the (latent) genius of any half-dozen masters, ancient or modern, you choose to name, believed, perhaps with some reason, that this daughter of Dives liked him; and as for himself, he vowed with hyperbole that he adored her. They had frequently met—their families then being neighbors in the country—before he went to Italy, where he had spent two years studying and wandering about. No avowal of affection had been made between them, but he had gone away with the consciousness many little signs and tokens give that he was not disliked. Since his return a year ago some meetings had taken place—at rarer intervals—in society. At an evening party some months before she had given him, he said, a slight but unmistakable opportunity of declaring himself, if he had wished to do so.
“But I did not take it,” said Jones, who, spite of his being in love, was as manly a young fellow as one could meet. “She knows I am poor; and I don’t want to be thought a fortune-hunter.”
I laughed at this quixotic declaration.
“My dear fellow,” I said, “you fly at high game. But I should not let theauri sacra famesinterfere, one way or the other, with my tender emotions. If I did so at all, Plutus would have his due weight in the scale, believe me!”
“What would you do?” said Jones. This was in one of those “tobacco parliaments” in early spring—if so they might be called, where one, only, smoked, and the other looked on with sympathy; for I had abandoned the “weed” some years before—hardly of such profundity, nor yet so silent, as those Mr. Carlyle speaks of. Jones had recurred to his usual topic of hopes and perplexities.
“Do?” I answered, looking at him retrospectively, as it were, as if contemplating my own departed youth, as he sat there in his favorite attitude after dinner, gracefully balancing one leg over the arm of my chintz-covered easy-chair, while I was stretched out on the sofa. “Ah! that is an easy question to propound, but not so easy to answer. At your age I should not think you would need much prompting. But if you ask me, I would say, leave it alone! Love is a luxury for the rich or the evenly-mated poor. But you are not likely to take that advice. A good deal would depend on the reinforcements she might bring to the struggle. A woman is not always a passive instrument in those affairs, but sometimes has a will of her own. I have never seen your fair one, and know nothing about her. But if she be a girl of some strength of character, and her love do not prove a mere school-girl’s fancy, she might possibly gain her father’s consent. But it is not a promising adventure, at the best; and I would not recommend you to embark your hopes in it. Keep clear of serious entanglements until you see your way before you. Above all, avoid anything like a clandestine engagement. It will not add to your happiness or hers. I don’t suppose you will think thisa very encouraging opinion. But there may be circumstances in your favor I know nothing of. Marry her, if you can, and can get the father’s consent; and go into “railroading” with him in his office. You will make more money at that than you are ever likely to do sticking little dabs of color on a piece of canvas.”
I saw Jones wince at this mercenary view of his art. But he bore it like a man, and continued silent. The suggestion of such a change of vocation did not appear to surprise him, though it was plain no active intention of throwing up his art had yet entered his mind. The fact is, Jones is one of those young men—not inconsiderable in numbers in the profession—who “have a studio,” but are not likely ever to send many master-pieces out of it. Developing some precocious talent for drawing when they are boys, and seizing with boyish eagerness upon the suggestion of being “an artist,” they are offered by fond but undiscerning parents upon the altar of art. But they never advance beyond a mechanical dexterity in putting conventional scenes upon canvas. They haven’t a spark of that genius that is often observed where other pursuits have prevented a devotion to the profession. Eventually they abandon altogether the study or practice of their art, or sink into drudges for the picture or chromo dealers, or grind out a living as drawing-masters, or—Heaven knows how. I will not say that Jones was altogether deficient in talent, but the talent that makes an agreeable accomplishment for the rich amateur is a different thing from that which will pay the piper or win eminence in the art. Jones painted his pictures for the autumn and spring exhibitions, and had one or two on view in one of the up-town windows. But at Du Vernet’s big sale I know that a clever little bit of coloring on which he had spent some time was knocked down to a chromo-dealer for sixteen dollars! How was he going to live on such prices? And as for marrying Agnes Cortland—it was simply preposterous to think of it. Nor is this redundancy of young native artists on whom neither genius nor fashion smiles confined to New York alone. In Boston, which is the only other city boasting of a native school of art, the same low prices prevail. It is disheartening; but a more disheartening thing still is that those prices often represented the actual value of the picture.
Jones was imperfectly educated, though his continental travel had made him a fair linguist. He certainly drew very little inspiration from the antique, for he knew next to nothing about it; nor had he much of that sympathy with the undercurrent of life, and its relations with nature, which gives significance to common things. He had a fondness for pleasure which, of course, did not contribute to his success. Yet he was one of those young fellows whom it is impossible to meet without liking. He was frank, honorable, and spirited, and had a robust shrewdness about him in dealing with men and things that made him a pleasant companion. That he would eventually choose a more active kind of life—and probably succeed in it—I was half-convinced, and my advice about “railroading,” though spoken partly in jest, was inwardly meant in good faith.
On this particular July evening on which our paper opens Jones followed up the announcement ofmy proposed trip to L—— by expressing a wish that he were going there too, so that he might come to a definite understanding with Agnes Cortland; and the wish was soon followed by the determination to act on it.
“How long do you intend to stay there?” he asked.
“Till the first week in September,” I said.
“Then I will come back that way, and join you for a few days about the first of September. The Cortlands don’t leave there till October. We can come back to New York together.”
It would have been ungracious on my part to have objected to this proposal, though I had a good many doubts about its wisdom. So it happened that my little excursion to L——, which I had innocently designed to be a season of simple lotus-eating such as Mr. Tennyson ascribes to his Olympian deities, “reclined upon the hills together, careless of mankind,” was complicated by a subordinate interest in a comedy from real life which had that quiet village for a stage.
The next day I started, taking Bostonen route. That staid, quiet, cleanly city seems always to be, compared with New York, like a good school-boy by the side of a big, blustering brother fonder of a street row than his books. Then to Fitchburg, where I stopped over night, as some stage travelling was to be done from our “jumping-off” place, and riding over the country roads in the morning was more promising than on a dark and cloudy night. In the morning the Fitchburg Railroad again, and one of its branches to L——. The unwonted coolness of the morning breeze, as the train entered the New Hampshire hills, already began to refresh mind and body alike. The pines and hemlocks extending back into deep, dim recesses carpeted with moss and ferns; the cattle moving slowly over the pastures in the distance; the pastures themselves stretching up the sides of the highest hills, still of the freshest green, without a hint of the yellow undertone that I watched gradually overspread them as the summer ripened into autumn; a lake in the foreground, silent, unvisited, its clear waters unpolluted by the dregs of commerce or the drainage of a vast metropolis; even the caw! caw! of the ravens flying off from the tops of the pine stumps, send a novel and delicious feeling of freedom through the breast of the city traveller who has put care and work behind him for a season. Nor is this feeling altogether evanescent. Even now, as winter approaches and the north winds from the same hills come sweeping down over the great city, sending us chattering and freezing to our cosey firesides, the glory of the July foliage moves our memory like a far-off dream of youth. Yet, after all, it may be doubted whether the charm of country scenes is not due in great part to their novelty and the feeling that we are not bound to them longer than we please. Of all that has been written in praise of country life, how much is the work of the city resident; how little, comparatively speaking, springs from the country itself! There drudgery too often takes the place of sentiment. It is the Epicurean poet, Horace, satiated with the noise of the Forum and the gossip of the baths, who sings sweetest of rural contentment, of the “lowing herds,” the “mellow fruits of autumn,” and the “brooks murmuring over stony beds.” But when he gives play tohis satiric vein, none pictures more truthfully than the Venusian the grumbling of the husbandman, who “turns the heavy clay with the hard plough.” Embowered in some shady arbor on the windings of the Digentia through his Sabine farm, or doing a little amateur farming, to the amusement, as he confesses, of his blunt country neighbors, who laughed at the dandy poet with a hoe in his hand, it was easy for Horace to chant the smooth and sunny side of country life. But the eight laborers on his estate, chained literally to the soil, as many a New England farmer morally is by the burden of debt or family, no doubt saw things differently. And the bailiff of his woodlands we know to have despised those “desert and inhospitable wilds,” and to have longed for the streets and shows of Rome. It is amazing upon what inattentive ears the music of our wild birds falls in a secluded farm-house. Often it seems absolutely unheard; while the clatter of the long street of the country town that the farmer visits once a month is for ever in his mind.
But we delay too long at the way station at L——. Let us onwards.
The carrier of the United States mail, who is at the same time the Jehu of the passenger stage, slings ourimpedimentaup behind with an energy to be envied by a veteran “baggage-smasher” at some of our big depots, straps it down, and jumps upon the box. We mount more slowly beside him, disdaining to be shut up in the close interior, and intent upon looking at the country we pass through this lovely morning. The two stout grays breast the hill leading to L—— Centre, eight miles distant.
The surface of the country is hilly and broken; as we approach L——, mountainous. Mounting the crest of the first steep hill, a beautiful natural panorama spreads out before us: long, narrow, intersecting lines of timber, like giant hedges, dividing the hill farms from each other. A rolling country spreads toward the east, bounded on the horizon by a low range of mountains wooded to the summit, and with a white steeple flashing out here and there among the trees at their base. The effects of light and shade, caused by the clouds on a brilliant day, on one of those white steeples, standing out solitarily against the side of a mountain eight or ten miles distant, are peculiar. Sometimes it becomes invisible, as the circle of the shadow is projected upon that area of the mountain which includes it. Then, as the dark veil moves slowly, with a sliding motion, up the side and over the crest of the mountain, the white spire flashes out from the obscure background of the forest with a sudden brilliancy. On this side patches of blue water among the trees in the hollows revealed the presence of numerous ponds, as the small lakes, and some of the large ones, are universally called in New England.
To the northwest what seemed to be a level plain from the height over which we rode, but which was in reality broken and undulating ground, stretched beneath us for ten or twelve miles to the base of Mt. Monadnock. The mountain, grand, massive, and still veiled by a thin mist, rose boldly from the low country at its foot to a height of nearly four thousand feet.
A ride of an hour and a half brought us to the top of the hill on the side of which stands L——. A dozen scattered houses flank thebroad village green, and a Congregational meeting-house, with white belfry tower and green blinds, stands half-way down the incline.
The post-office and country store combined is at the cross-roads as you drive down the hill, and some ancient elms on the green seem to nod at the stranger with a friendly air as he enters the village. “Here,” said I to myself, “is rural quiet and simplicity. Farewell for many slumberous weeks the busy haunts of men.” L—— is quite out of the beaten track of summer travel, and had been recommended me by a friend who had spent some seasons there, on the ground of economy, charming scenery, good fishing, and repose. Nor did I find any reason to regret having listened to him. A country tavern offers entertainment to man and beast, and is resorted to by the drummers and sample men who invade L——, as elsewhere, with their goods. But I was not forced to be dependent on it, as a letter from my friend opened to me the hospitable doors of the comfortable farm-house where he had boarded two years before.
Here let it be said at the outset that whatever the other drawbacks of village life in New Hampshire, there is among the farming class a natural courtesy, and, among the women, even an inherited refinement of manner, especially in their treatment of strangers, which speaks well for the native stock. Prejudices there are among both men and women—deep-rooted, as we shall see—and narrow-minded opinions in plenty; but even these are concealed where to manifest them might give offence. The family in which I was domiciled consisted of Mr. Allen and his wife, their married daughter—who, together with her husband, resided with them—an unmarried daughter, and a pretty little girl, the grandchild. Mr. Allen kept a country store—for L—— boasted of two—and traded also in cattle with Canada, making a journey sometimes as far as Montreal in the spring to buy stock, which he fattened on his pastures through the summer and autumn, and sold in the early part of the winter. These various ventures, which were on the whole successful—as the command of a little ready money enabled him to take his time and buy and sell to advantage—had made him more “forehanded” than most of his neighbors. He was one of the selectmen of L——. His dwelling-house, a large, white, well-kept two-story edifice, with a garden-plot facing the village street, a piazza on the sunny side, and two beautiful maples dividing the carriage yard from the road, was one of the handsomest in L——. Mrs. Allen was one of those energetic housewives whose sound sense and domestic capacity had evidently contributed not a little to her husband’s present prosperity.
They were a sturdy couple, intelligent, honest, and knowing what was due to themselves and others; now going down the hill together with mutual dependence and confidence in each other. I consider them a good example of the best type of the New Hampshire farming class.
The married daughter did not compare favorably with the mother. One could not say of her in any sense:
“O matre pulchra filia pulchrior!”
“O matre pulchra filia pulchrior!”
“O matre pulchra filia pulchrior!”
“O matre pulchra filia pulchrior!”
for, as to the question of female beauty, I will not say, as far as my observations extend, that the New Hampshire, or indeed the New Englandwomen generally, outside the radius of Boston and some of the large towns, are very generously endowed by nature with that gracious but dangerous gift. The lines of the face are too strongly marked; they are sallow, the form angular; or, where the figure is fuller, it is apt to be as redundant as the old Flemish painters make the women at a village fair.
But this absence of feminine beauty is not universal. I have seen a young mother with her babe in her lap—a visitor sitting in Mrs. Allen’s parlor—who made a picture of beautiful maternity as dignified and simple as Murillo ever painted. As for that more lasting moral beauty which, where it is feminine, puts on its most delightful and engaging charm, Mrs. Harley, the married daughter, was too much engaged with her own little cares and gossip—poor woman!—to think much of so intangible a possession. Brought up, probably, in habits of more leisure and pleasure-seeking than her mother, who still took all the household work upon herself, she was a victim ofennuiand of that blight of too many American homes—only one child to care for. Her health was delicate and uncertain, and she bade fair to sink eventually into that class of invalid wives which forms such an unhappily large percentage of American women. How often have I heard her complain of the dreadful dulness of the day! “But,” I asked, “what will you do in the winter, if you find the summer so unbearable?” Her answer was that they generally enjoyed themselves enough in the summer-time to be able to get through the winter. I don’t know whether this was a covert thrust at my lack of entertaining power; but I laughed at the stroke of satire at my expense, innocent or intended. That long dreary, snow-shrouded New Hampshire winter—it demanded indeed a stout heart to face it in one of those isolated villages. Mrs. Harley had given up her music when she married; the piano stood idle in the best room. She read nothing—unless looking at the fashion-plates in a ladies’ magazine be considered reading. A Sunday-school picnic, a day’s shopping in the nearest country town, were white days in her calendar. Is such a picture of life cheerless? Yet too many women are forced to endure it elsewhere. Happy they if the abounding resources of the faith and its literature come to their aid! Mrs. Harley was a kind woman withal, if her attention were drawn for a moment from herself; and an affectionate and anxious wife. This and her love for her child—fretful and over-indulgent as the latter sentiment was apt to be—were her redeeming qualities. Placed in a large city, with means equal in proportion to those within her reach in L——, she would have made a more agreeable woman, and would have been tenfold happier herself. The influence of semi-solitary life—where a religious vocation does not exalt and sanctify it—is more unfavorable in its effects upon women than upon men. The latter commonly have work to do which keeps their faculties from rusting. Woman’s nature is essentially social.
Mr. Harley assisted his father-in-law in the store—a tall, handsome young man with a city air, who, at that season, sat in the store the whole afternoon with perhaps one customer. Such a life for youth, with its superabundant energies ready to pour like a torrentinto any channel, is stagnation. The highest of man’s natural powers rust and decay. But natural forces have their sway in the great majority of such cases, and force an outlet for themselves. The youth of these villages leave their homes for the great cities, or take Horace Greeley’s advice and “go West.” Life is hard, and it is monotonous, which adds a new slavery to hardship. The exodus is constant. L—— has less population and fewer inhabited houses now than it had forty years ago. The same is true of other villages—a striking fact in a comparatively new country. One rambles along some by-road overgrown with grass, and presently comes upon a deserted and ruined house and barn, the rafters only standing, or perhaps nothing more than a heap of bricks in the cellar. He asks about the people, and is told that they have “gone away.” The answer is vague and uncertain as their fate. I spoke to an old man of eighty-seven, seated in the shade on the long bench before the country store, where he could hear the news in the morning. He remembered with distinctness the events of the war of 1812. He spoke with regret of the flourishing times of his youth in L—— and its dulness to-day. This roving disposition of the American youth is the result of immense elbow-room, and has been providential in building up new States and subduing the virgin wilderness. The manufacturing cities of New Hampshire also gain yearly at the expense of the small villages. The township—or town, as it is most commonly called—embraces three or four of such villages, and is subject to the same reciprocal movement. Comparatively few new farms have been broken in during the last twenty or thirty years; and too rarely it happens on the old farms that fresh ground is taken in from the pasture for cultivation. The son tills what his father or grandfather cleared.
The first few days in L—— I spent rambling about the pastures—some of them literally red with the raspberry, which, though it has not the delicacy or fragrance of the wild strawberry, is not to be disdained by the city palate—or climbing to the tops of the highest neighboring hills. What a sense of elastic joy and freedom to me, who had not spent a summer in the country for three years, to lie stretched at full length on the top of a new-mown hill, and let the eye wander over the valley beneath, with its intervening woods and ponds, till it rested upon the distant mountains, the cloud-shadows chasing each other over their sides and summits! If this were not in truth an Arcadia to those who lived and died there, and were buried in the white-stoned churchyard among the elms—if to them life brought its cares, its jealousies, and sorrows—to the stranger who sought nothing more than to enjoy its natural beauties it renewed all the associations of rural happiness and simplicity. Not that one might hope to see a Corydon and Phillis issue from the New Hampshire woods—for there is a sternness among those northern scenes, even in the brightest bloom of summer, foreign to the poetry of the South—but that in its dark pine groves and on its windy hills fancy might picture an eclogue or a romance not less sweet and tender because more real.
L—— is on the height of land between the valleys of the Connecticut and Merrimac, between twentyand thirty miles distant from each. It is from one thousand to one thousand three hundred feet above the sea level. It is said of the rain that falls on the roof of the village church that part of it eventually runs into the Connecticut, part into the Merrimac, so evenly does its roof-tree divide the water-shed of those rivers. But as the same story is told of other churches in the central belt of Cheshire County, it may be regarded rather in the light of a rhetorical illustration than as a fact of physical geography. The scenery is not of the grand or sublime order to be seen further north among the White Mountains, except where Mt. Monadnock raises its dark and solemn front above the surrounding landscape; but it is beautiful and picturesque. Its greatest charm is its variety. In the morning, when the sun was well towards the zenith—for the fresh air of those hills made the day at all hours delightful—I would stroll out over the pastures to a hill a quarter of a mile distant from the farm-house. There would I seat myself, protected from the sun’s ardent rays, under a young maple bush, the elastic branches of which, with the sloping ground thick with ferns, made a natural easy-chair. The valley is below me, the farms stretch along the nearer hills, and in the further distance the blue-veiled mountains define the skyline. I bend down a branch of the maple, and before me is the upper half of Mt. Monadnock, a thin gray mist still enveloping it. The base of the mountain is hidden by an intervening hill. Leaving this pasture, and walking a few hundred rods further on, I enter a field where the hay has just been cut, and which is now as smooth as a croquet lawn, but not so level; for it is the crest of one of the highest hills. Here a new scene awaits me. To the north and west the hill has the shape almost of a perfect dome. Stretched on the top, I cannot see the declivities of the sides, but only the tops of the trees at some distance. One has the sensation of being on the roof of a high building with a deep drop between him and the surrounding country. The view is superb. The whole mass of Mt. Monadnock, from its base to the highest elevation, rises from the valley ten miles distant. At its foot is the village of West Jaffrey, a fashionable watering place. The white spire of the church is conspicuous among the trees. Further south is Gap Mountain and Attleborough Mountain; and sweeping round to the east, the view stretches along the New Ipswich Mountains to Watatick Hill. The circuit extends about twenty or thirty miles, making a picture of great natural beauty. The English hay, as the timothy and red clover are generally called, was still standing in many of the fields, but here and there the whirr of the mowing-machine could be heard, and the eye, following the direction of the sound, could discern the mower in his shirt-sleeves driving his pair of horses in the distant field. The meadow-grass of the lowlands was still in most places untouched. On the sides of the hills the scattered fields of wheat, barley, and oats, still green, made darker patches of verdure on the yellowish ground-color.
But the view I most preferred was from a hill a little to the south of the village near some deserted buildings. Here the scene was wilder and more extensive. To the west Mt. Monadnock could beseen through a gorge between two hills; to the east was a wild and broken country; while to the south the woods seemed to extend as far as the eye could reach, and over the furthest range of hills the great dome of Mt. Wachusett in Massachusetts, nearly thirty miles distant, was plainly seen, gray and massive, with the naked eye. It was only when one turned to Mt. Monadnock, ten miles distant, and observed how plainly he could distinguish the different colors of the mountain—the dark woods, the brown, bare surfaces, and the slate-colored rocks—that, looking at Mt. Wachusett, and noting its uniform pale gray outline, he was able to estimate the real distance of the latter, so comparatively close at hand did it appear.
Seated at ease on the smooth turf on the summit of this “heaven-kissing” hill, and looking at this wide and beautiful prospect, one might repeat to himself Mr. Longfellow’s lines:
“Pleasant it was, when woods were greenAnd winds were soft and low,To lie amid some sylvan scene,Where, the long, drooping boughs between,Shadows dark and sunlight sheenAlternate come and go;”
“Pleasant it was, when woods were greenAnd winds were soft and low,To lie amid some sylvan scene,Where, the long, drooping boughs between,Shadows dark and sunlight sheenAlternate come and go;”
“Pleasant it was, when woods were greenAnd winds were soft and low,To lie amid some sylvan scene,Where, the long, drooping boughs between,Shadows dark and sunlight sheenAlternate come and go;”
“Pleasant it was, when woods were green
And winds were soft and low,
To lie amid some sylvan scene,
Where, the long, drooping boughs between,
Shadows dark and sunlight sheen
Alternate come and go;”
substituting only for “drooping boughs” the irregular ranges of hills.
But descriptions of natural scenery, if long continued, are wearisome. Even a Ruskin is read best in snatches. The mind otherwise becomes clogged with images. Let us return, therefore, to animated life.
As Sunday approached, I made inquiries about the nearest Catholic church. I found it was at W——, eight or nine miles distant. I had no means of getting there the first Sunday. I retired to my room and read some chapters of that sublime and affecting work, theImitation of Christ, the gift of a good and beloved mother.
A Catholic is still almost a being from another moral world in some of the isolated New Hampshire villages. Nowhere are the traditions of Puritanism more zealously or rigidly maintained. These good folk seem hardly yet to have emerged from a fog of wild amazement that “popish” priests and their followers should be tolerated by the selectmen. Not that any overt or offensive change of manner follows the announcement that one is a Catholic—as I have elsewhere said, there is a natural or inherited vein of good manners among the people that forbids it—but a momentary silence reveals to the speaker that he has stated something strange and unlooked for. There is an unmistakable tone of intolerance manifest, however, in any allusion to the poorer class of Irish and French that congregate in the larger towns, and are sometimes found in the villages in a wooden-ware factory, or cutting wood or hemlock-bark, or doing an odd job of haymaking. They are looked upon with dislike and distrust, mixed with a feeling of contempt. Curious it is that the native-born New Englander, with his mind saturated with hereditary theories of personal liberty, equality, and fraternity, should yet evince a more unconquerable aversion to the foreign element, which has contributed so largely to the greatness of the country, than is shown in European countries to men of a different race, unless war has temporarily embittered national feeling. Yet the explanation is not hard to find. This descendant of the Puritan, chained to the rocky and ungrateful soil his forefathers won from the Indians and the wilderness, sees with sullenindignation and jealousy the same rights and privileges which he enjoys under our free institutions extended so largely to those of a different nationality and religion. In revenge he draws himself more jealously into his shell. Nor is this feeling confined to the rich and refined; it penetrates the mass of the native-born New England population.
To speak of lighter things. Society in L—— is eminently aristocratic. Better, perhaps, it would be to say that the lines of society are very strongly marked, and that the aristocratic element is essentially conservative.
Mrs. Cortland, the wife of the New York capitalist, who resides there three months in the summer, a stout, refined, tight-gloved, graciously condescending lady, gives a metropolitan tone to L—— society. Mr. Cortland, an easy-going, easy-tempered man in private life, but reported to be hard as flint in business matters, seldom finds time to leave New York, and his visits to L—— are uncertain. His country house, a large, handsome mansion with well-kept grounds, croquet-lawn, coach-house, and stables, is on the highest ground in the village; and Mrs. Cortland occupies without dispute the highest ground socially. It is an imperial elevation, after the manner of the saying attributed to Cæsar. A call on Mrs. Cortland is the event of a week, and a return call from her is a matter not to be lightly treated. How have I seen this good Mrs. Allen, my landlady, prepare her best room for the grand occasion, and Mrs. Harley speculate about it with well-assumed indifference a whole afternoon. One or two other magnates from Boston, scattered through L—— and adjacent townships, save Mrs. Cortland from complete exhaustion by contact with the village people during the summer.
Then there is the local aristocracy, consisting of the wife of the Congregational pastorex-officio, and Mrs. Parsons, the wife of “Squire” Parsons, who owns a small bucket-factory near L——. These two ladies maintain a strict alliance, offensive and defensive, with Mrs. Cortland during the summer. Then come the middle classes, comprising Mrs. Allen and Mrs. Harley, the young doctor’s wife—a stranger and somewhat snubbed by the autochthonousélite—and the well-to-do farmers’ wives. Finally, we have theprofanum vulgus, the tail of L—— society, or, to speak more correctly, those whom society does not recognize—some farmers’ wives whose husbands were too much in debt to allow them to keep up appearances; one or two hapless women who sold milk in a wagon to the neighboring towns, and drove the wagon themselves; and the village washerwoman, who went around doing “chores.” I think I have exhausted the classification of the social strata of L——. I observed that the men eschewed as much as possible the aristocratic distinctions made by their wives, and were apt to resent by silence or the assumption of an unwonted bluntness the empty airs and loud voice with which some vulgar rich man from a neighboring large town would sometimes stride through the village.
Wanderers and waifs, destined apparently to be at some time drawn into the great caldron of city life—perhaps to their own destruction—were not wanting in L——. I have said that the women were not remarkable for beauty. But therewas one exception. A girl belonging to one of the most destitute families in the village, by one of those whims of nature which are not uncommon, was gifted with a face and figure to attract even an unobservant eye, and which seemed out of place in that quiet and homely neighborhood. The mother, a poor, struggling woman with a growing-up family of all ages, managed to live somehow by the days’ work and occasional assistance given her by the well-to-do families. The father was living, but spent most of his time in the county jail for drunkenness. The daughter of whom I speak was about nineteen or twenty years of age; tall, of fair complexion, with a naturally elegant carriage and a proud and almost defiant air, as if she resented the caprice of fortune which had placed her in that lowly station. She had the art of dressing well with limited means, which some women possess to the envy of others. On Sundays and at picnics she outshone the more expensively-dressed daughters of the farmers. She had been, and perhaps still is, the maid at the village inn. It may be imagined that gossip was not idle about this poor girl, thus singularly placed and dangerously gifted. Dreadful quarrels had taken place between the father and mother about the girl’s staying at the hotel; the drunken father, with a true sense of what was becoming, insisting that she should leave, the mother as strenuously maintaining that she should remain. The beauty of the girl herself was not of that domestic type I have elsewhere noticed in the mother and her babe I saw in Mrs. Allen’s parlor, but of that showy, restless, naturally haughty stamp which presaged storm, perhaps disaster. It is this class misfortune follows and the great cities sweep into their net. Poverty often makes vice of that which, under happier fortunes, might have been attractive virtue.Absit omen. May this rustic beauty find a happier, if more homely, destiny as the wife of some honest farmer in L——!
The summer passed, week after week. I fished, I walked, I rode, I read, I loitered. The barley ripened on the hill behind the farm-house, and a golden tint began to spread over the distant fields. The apples grew large and ruddy on one side where the sun struck the laden branch in the orchard. The tassels of the corn showed purple. August blazed. The doves flew thirstily to the large blue pump, and perched on the edges of the horse-trough after the farmer watered his horse at mid-day. The bees hummed three at a time in the big yellow cups of the squash-vines. Have you ever observed of that homely vegetable how ingeniously and dexterously it fastens its daring and aggressive vines to the ground as it shoots out over the close-cut grass? Stoop down among the after-math, or rowen, as it is called in New Hampshire, and you will see that at the inosculation of each successive joint of the vine, where it throws out its tendrils and blossoms, it also thrusts forth slender, white, curling ligaments that twist, each of them, tightly around a tiny tuft of the short grass. Thus it moors itself, as if by so many delicate living cables, to the bosom of the life-giving earth.
I might, if space allowed, tell of my fishing ventures, and how one glorious morning we rode out of L—— in a big yellow wagon with three horses—a party of seven of us, ladies and gentlemen, fromthe village—to make the ascent of Mt. Monadnock. This is the lion of all the country round. Parties are made up every week to climb its rugged summit. Over the hills and rolling ground we gaily rattled. Through the sandy country roads, where the branches of the trees met overhead and made dim aisles of verdure, we smoothly sped. And then what panting, laughing, climbing, shrill screaming, as we toiled up the winding path from the half-way house to the top of the mountain! What a magnificent, boundless view repaid us! The day was clear. To the north, Mt. Kearsarge and rolling ranges of mountains; to the southeast, a diversified surface of country spreading onwards far as the eye could reach towards the unseen ocean; to the south, Mt. Wachusett; below us woods, valleys, and lakes. A feeling of awe creeps over one in these mountain solitudes.
As to the fishing, I will confess that to me, who had thrown a fly over more than one Canadian river, and had killed my twenty-pound salmon on the Nipisiquit, loafing with a pole in a boat over a lily-covered pond for a half-pound pickerel was not tremendously exciting sport. But what mattered it? The mornings were soft and wooing; the woods were full of mysterious shadows; the water was limpid as if Diana and her nymphs bathed there in the spectral moonlight. Life passed smoothly and agreeably. I sought no more.
The blackberries began to ripen, first one by one and then in sable clusters, in the pastures. The days were growing shorter. The twilight sank more quickly into night. September approached, and I began to look for the appearance of my friend Jones. I had seen Miss Cortland two or three times coming from or going to the meeting-house on Sunday mornings, when all the beauty and fashion of L—— for miles around rode up in buggies, carryalls, or open wagons; but I had never met her to be introduced to her—a little imperial beauty, with a fresh and rosy color, and a mouth shaped like Cupid’s bow, that needed only to smile to conquer.
On a bright September morning, when the surrounding atmosphere was clear as a bell, but a thin haze still clung about Mt. Monadnock and the far-off mountains, Jones rode over on the stage-coach from the railroad station and joined me at L——. He asked eagerly about Miss Cortland.
Was she in the village?
Yes.
Had I met her?
No; but I had seen her two or three times.
What did I think of her?
Well, I thought her pretty enough to excuse a little wildness of imagination on his part. He would be a lucky fellow if he got her and some of her father’s money or a position in his business!
Did I think he would give up his Art so easily?
“My dear Jones,” I replied, “I don’t want to appear cold-blooded, or to dash your enthusiasm for your art in the least; but, to speak candidly, I should not be surprised if you did some day under sufficient temptation—the prospect of marrying Miss Cortland, for example.”
Jones declared his intention of calling on Miss Cortland that very day. He had a sketch-book full of studies, spirited, but many of them mere hints. He came back before dinner, full of life, and proposinga score of schemes for to-morrow. He made a sort of small whirlwind in my quiet life. Mrs. Cortland had received him civilly, but he thought a little coolly. But he had seen Agnes, and had spoken a few words to her that might mean much or little as they were taken, and he was happy—rather boisterously happy, perhaps, as a young fellow will be at such times—full of jokes, and refusing to see a cloud on his horizon.
Jones fell easily into our farm-house ways, though he was apt to steal off in the mornings to play croquet on the Cortlands’ lawn with Miss Cortland and Miss Parsons, and any other friend they could get to join them.
One afternoon, when the sun was getting low and a southerly wind blowing, we started to try for some fish at a pond about half an hour’s walk from the house. As we turned off the highway into a by-road covered with grass that led to the pond, I saw Miss Cortland standing on the rising ground some distance before us. She was looking from us towards the sinking sun, now veiled in quick-drifting clouds. Her dog, a large, powerful animal, a cross between a Newfoundland and Mount St. Bernard, was crouched at her feet. Some vague thoughts about Una and her lion flitted through my mind. But I was more struck by the way the light touched her figure, standing out motionless against the gray sky. It reminded me very much of the general effect of a painting by a foreign artist—Kammerer, I think it was—that I saw at the exhibition of the Boston Art Club last year. It was the picture of a girl standing on a pier on the French coast, looking out to sea. Her golden hair was slightly stirred by the breeze, her lips a little parted, and there was a far-away look in her eyes, as if she may have expected a lover to be coming over the sea in one of the yachts that lined the horizon. The dress of the girl and the stone-work of the pier were both white. It was a good example of the striking effects produced by the free use of a great deal of almost staring white, which is a favorite device of the latest school of French art.
As we advanced, the dog growled and rose, but, recognizing Jones, wagged his tail inoffensively as we drew nearer. Miss Cortland turned towards us.
“Shall I introduce you?” said Jones.
“No,” I said. “I’ll go on to the pond. I’ll see you to-night.”
Jones advanced, hat in hand. “What happy fortune,” he said, addressing her, “has led me to meet the goddess of these woods?” Then, altering his tone, he added in a bantering way: “I see you have been poaching on our preserves, Miss Cortland. But I do wonder at your taste, fishing for eels!” pointing to a small basket on her arm from which hung some of the long stems of the pond-lily. This he said to vex her, knowing her horror of those creatures. “Eels?” she exclaimed indignantly, with a tone and gesture of aversion at the thought. “They are pond-lilies.”
“Oh! that is very well to say,” replied Jones, “when you have the lid of the basket down to hide them; but I insist upon their being eels unless you show them to me.”
By this time I was out of hearing. I left them together, and kept on down the road to the pond.
That night Jones came into myroom with a quieter manner than usual. He was evidently very happy, but his happiness had a sobering effect upon him. He told me that he had made a plain avowal of his feelings to Agnes Cortland as they walked home together, and that he had won from her the confession that she loved him and had not been indifferent to him before he left for Europe. I wished him joy of his good-fortune, though I could foresee plainly enough that his difficulties had only begun. For a little time these two innocent young souls—for Jones I knew to be singularly unsullied by the world for a man of his age—would enjoy their paradise undisturbed together. Then would come maternal explanations, and the father’s authority would be invoked. A solemn promise would be exacted from her to see him no more. Miss Cortland was much attached to her parents, who would be sincerely anxious for her welfare. She would not make much resistance. Some day there would come a storm of tears, and poor Jones’s letters and the ring he gave her would be returned to him by a faithful messenger, and a little note, blotted with tears, asking him to forgive her and praying for his happiness. This must be the end. A year or two of separation and a summer and winter in Europe with her parents would leave nothing more than a little sad memory of her brief New Hampshire romance; and in five years she would be married to some foreigner of distinction or successful man of business, and would be a happy wife and mother. As for poor Jones, he would probably be heard of at rare intervals for a year or two as a trader on the Pacific coast or prospecting a claim in Nevada. But men like him, vigorous, powerful, well equipped in body and temper for the struggle with the world, are not kept down long by such disappointments. The storm is fierce, and leaves its scars after it; but the man rises above it, and is more closely knit thereafter. Jones will make his mark in the world of business, if not of art.
No unwelcome prophecies of mine, however, disturbed his happiness for those few days. I let events take their course. Why should I interrupt his dream by Cassandra-like anticipations of woe, which would have been resented as a reflection upon the constancy of his idol? I know that they met frequently for the following three or four days. Then came the packing up for departure. My long holiday was over.
On a foggy morning in September we steamed up the Sound on a Fall River boat. Through Hell Gate the stately boat sped on her way, past Blackwell’s Island, and across the bows of the Brooklyn ferry-boats, crowded with passengers for the city in the early morning. Around the Battery we swept, into the North River, and slowly swung alongside of Pier 28. Then the hackmen yelled at us; our coach stuck at the corner of the street; a jam followed; the drivers swore; the policemen shouted and threatened; the small boys grinned and dodged between the horses; and a ward politician, with a ruby nose, looked on complacently from the steps of a corner “sample” room. In one word, we were in New York, and our village life in Hampshire was a thing of the past.
Whatever is connected with our Holy Father must have an interest for Catholics; and at the present time especially it would seem desirable to know something about the origin and functions of those faithful prelates of whom this article treats, and with some of whom American visitors to Rome may be likely to have relations. They are called palatine prelates because lodged in the same palace as the sovereign, and in these days of trouble are the nearest to his most sacred Majesty in his solitude and sufferings. They are four in number, and belong to the pope’s intimate court and confidence, their names being registered in the RomanNotizieimmediately after those of the palatine cardinals among the members of the pontifical family.
The majordomo, called in good Latin, the official language of the church,Magister Domus Papæ, is the first of these prelates and one of the highest dignitaries of the Holy See. The chief of the royal palace has had in all countries immense influence and power; and in France and Scotland, at least, theMaires du palaisand stewards succeeded in mounting the throne. This officer, who, like the other three, is always a clergyman, is the high steward of his Holiness and master of his household, remaining day and night conveniently near to the Pope’s person, of which he has the special care, and for the safety of which he is responsible to the Sacred College. Until the present reign he was supreme under the sovereign, in the civil, military, and ecclesiastical affairs of the court, having his own tribunal of civil and criminal jurisdiction.[141]Some years ago, however, a part of the prerogatives of this office was transferred to the Cardinal Secretary of State; but even now the majordomo is at the head of the administration of the palace in which the Pope may reside for the time being, and on a vacancy of the see isex-officio, by a decree of Clement XII. in 1732, governor of the conclave.[142]In this latter capacity, by a natural order of things which cannot be long delayed (yet God grant it may!), he will have to act a part during one of the most critical periods in the history of Christian Rome. He has the privilege[143]for life of using the pope’s arms with his own, and consequently retains this heraldic distinction even after he has been promoted to the cardinalate to which his office surely leads, sooner or later, according to a court custom that began inthe middle of the XVIIth century.[144]The origin of this office is involved in some doubt, owing to its antiquity. It must have been that, in the palace given to Pope Melchiades by the Emperor Constantine, some person conspicuous for piety and prudence was appointed to keep the members of a large and constantly-increasing court in mutual harmony and subjection to authority, while relieving the pontiff of the immediate superintendence of his household, and leaving him free to give his precious time to public and more important matters. At all events, at a very early period after this there is mentioned among the officers attached to thePatriarchium Lateranense—as the oldÆdes Lateranæwere then called—aVice-dominus, who was chosen from the Roman clergy, and was often, as the more modern prelates have been, invested with the episcopal dignity. He was answerable for the good order and harmonious administration of the palace; and the extent of that portion of it in which he dwelt and had his offices, as well as held his court of jurisdiction over the papal domestics,[145]must have been large, since it was called thevicedominium; and although his successor fifteen hundred years later has not the same ample powers that he enjoyed, he is still a personage so considerable that the part of the Vatican in which he resides is known officially as theMaggiordomato. The earliest name (not title) of such an officer which has come down to us is that of a certain priest Ampliatus, who is mentioned in the year 544 as having accompanied Pope Vigilius to Constantinople for the affair of the Three Chapters, and being detached from the pontiff’s suite at Sicily on their way back, with orders to hurry on to Rome, where the concerns of the Lateran seem to have suffered by his absence. Anatolius, a deacon, held the office under S. Gregory the Great, who was very particular to have only virtuous and learned men about him; and in 742 Benedict, a bishop, held it under S. Zachary, who sent him on a mission to Luitprand, King of the Lombards. This officer is mentioned for the last time in history asVice-dominusin the year 1044, when an archdeacon Benedict served under Benedict IX. After this period, those who held the analogous position were styled chamberlains of the Holy Roman Church until 1305, when, the court being at Avignon, a large share of their duties and privileges was given to a nobleman of high standing, who was calledMaestro del sacro Ospizio.[146]
Under Alexander V., in 1409, the Holy Father having returned to Rome, mention is made for the first time, in a paper drawn up for the guidance of the court, of a prefect of the apostolic palace—Magister domus pontificiæ—who was the same as the later majordomo, the name only having been changed by Urban VIII. in 1626. The series of these high prelates, to the number of 99—belonging generally to the very first nobility of Italy,and showing such illustrious names as Colonna, Gonzaga, Farnese, Frangipani, Visconti, Acquaviva, Cybo, Cenci, Caraffa, Pico della Mirandola, Piccolomini, Borghese, Borromeo, etc.—begins with Alexander Mirabelli, a Neapolitan, who was named to the office by Pius II. in the month of August, 1458.
This officer, whose official title in Latin isPrefectus cubiculi Sanctitatis suæ, is the second palatine prelate. He is the grand chamberlain of his Holiness, carries out the entire court ceremonial, and has the supervision of all audiences, as well as admittances of whatever kind to the presence of the Pope. How important and confidential is this post which he holds at the door of the papal chambers may best be judged from the single fact that no one can approach the sovereign without his knowledge in all and his consent[147]in most cases. He has sometimes the episcopal character—in truth, was usually in times past an archbishopin partibus; but it is now more customary for him to be simply in priest’s orders. If, however, he be not already a prelate of high rank, he is always, immediately after his nomination to the office, made an apostolic prothonotary, with precedence over all his brethren in that ancient and honorable college. Like his immediate superior, he has the privilege of quartering the Pope’s arms with his own. He is the keeper of the Fisherman’s ring, and at the Pope’s death delivers it up to the cardinal chamberlain of the Holy Roman College, who gives him a notarial receipt for it. This celebrated ring is the official one of the popes, and gets its name from having the figure of S. Peter in a bark and casting his net into the sea engraved upon it. Above this figure is cut the name of the reigning pontiff. It is the first among the rings, but the second in the class of seals, since it only serves as the privy seal or signet used on apostolic briefs and matters of subordinate consequence,[148]whereas the Great Seal is used to impress the heads of SS. Peter and Paul in lead (sometimes, but rarely, in gold) on papal bulls. At first this ring was a private and not an official one of the pope; for in a letter from Perugia of March 7, 1265, addressed by Clement IV. to his nephew Peter Le Gros, he says that he writes to him and to his other relatives, notsub bulla, sed sub piscatoris sigillo, quo Romani Pontifices in suis secretis utuntur; from which we gather that the ring was in use some time before, but by whom introduced is unknown, as is also the precise period when it became official, although this happened during one or other of the XVth century pontificates. Perhaps the first time that the now familiar expression, “Given under the Fisherman’s ring,” is met with in the manner of a formal statement or curial formula, such as it has been ever since retained, is in a document of Nicholas V. dated from Rome—Datum Romæ—on the 15th of April, 1448.
The institution of this office is extremely ancient, but, like most others of the court, it has had differentnames and increased or diminished attributions at various periods. The modern Romans take a legitimate pride in being able to deduce many of their great court offices from the corresponding ones of the Cæsars, to whom their sovereign has succeeded. Thus this officer is sometimes called in classical LatinMagister admissionum, such an one being mentioned by the historian Ammianus Marcellinus (xv. 5); and his officeOfficium admissionis, which is found in Suetonius’Life of Vespasian(xiv.) Among the members of the household of S. Gregory the Great in the year 601 there was a certain (S.) Paterius,Secundiceriusof the Holy See (corresponding to the modern sub-dean of the apostolic prothonotaries, the dean beingPrimicerius). He had to make known to the pope the names of those who solicited the favor of an interview; and it is probable that he also gave (as is now given) along with the name some account of the quality and business of the visitor, for fear that the pontiff should be unnecessarily intruded upon or brought in contact with unworthy and perhaps dangerous characters. Investigators into the origin of the offices of the Holy See have fixed upon this person as the remote predecessor of the presentMaestro di Camera; but all the charges of the palace having been remodelled and placed nearly on their present footing about four hundred and fifty years ago, and many of the court records having been lost or stolen during the disturbed era between the pontificates of Clement V. (1305) and Martin V. (1417)—which includes the periods of Avignon and the schism—the authentic roll of the holders of these high offices of state rarely begins earlier than the XVth century. Thus the first grand chamberlain of the modern series is Bindaccio Ricasoli of Florence, who wasMagister aulæ palatiito John XXIII. in 1410. The present one is Monsignor Ricci-Paracciani, a Roman, who, however, has become majordomo by Monsignor Pacca’s promotion. TheMaestro di Camera, being constantly in company with exalted personages who seek an audience of the Holy Father and wait their turn in, or at all events pass through, theAnticamera nobile, which opens immediately into the Pope’s reception-room, must be distinguished for good breeding and courtliness, and serve as a model to his subordinates in that august apartment, lest it be said of him: