split for thinking, I cannot hit upon a single pious hymn, except 'The I sing gay songs, and lively grave is deep and still,' and that is so sad. airs, and yet my heart throbs with terror. out; here is a wide, beautiful, even meadow. hot. My cheeks burn, and I am wet as if just pulled out of the water. And over the meadow there is the humming of thousands and thousands of bees. O holy God! suppose you should step into a wasp's nest; and they should fly out, and over you, and you should be, as it were, intoxicated. My mother has told me how it is; one becomes just like a drunken man, and there is no help, if one does not spring directly into water. And there is no water here. Indeed, if there only were water, I have such a terrible thirst! But what is this? Does the path end? And up there it is so steep! And here are tremendously wild rocks. Am I among the rocks of Koskenthal, where, since the creation of the world, the foot of man has never been? There lie trunks of the finest trees, and decay there, and no man can fetch them away. Only the birds know how it looks up there. No, I cannot be so far away as that, but my path surely cannot lead up that way. I cry, Dear God, where am I? And an echo so awfully beautiful have I never heard before! Where am I? Where am I? Where am I? Surely it was repeated seven times, and exactly as though one tone were drawn out in heaven, far away, prolonged; it comes from the walls of rock, and the clefts; it sounds like clear music, as though one were singing the words, but with a longer breath than a man's. I call the name of all those whom I hold dear, and all who love me. I call and call, I hold all men dear; when one stands so in danger of death, all quarrels cease. I call and call, but no one hears me, not a human soul!" The story of Leegart's wanderings meets with many interruptions, though, as the night passes on, the women who are waiting the return of their husbands and brothers from their search for the lost boy listen more attentively. Leegart keeps on sewing, she will not leave off, for it is very "sure and certain that child of man will not die so long as one is sewing for it." They listen as she tells how she followed the course of a stream, now dry, down its precipitous banks, tearing a "pair of shoes that cost two gulden,-not half of that should I earn by my bonnet I am carrying," — down, at last, into the valley. "God be praised and thanked! here is the valley, and to be in the valley is like being at home again. How the water rushes along, so kindly, so true, so satisfying; it has quenched my thirst just hearing and seeing it. Now I have got through the heaviest task, clambering down into the valley. And now I am in the valley, now for the first time can I stand up straight. The sweat runs down, one drop chasing another; I seat myself on the trunk of a tree that lies there, just by the broad beech where the hat-maker saw Joseph. O, how hot I am! A horse that has been galloping seven hours could not breathe harder. I would gladly tear off all my clothes, but it is cool in the valley. The sun is going down behind the mountains, and it was not near noon when I left home. I see swallows flying; O how glad they make me feel! And now I hear a cock crowing. No nightingale ever sings so sweetly as a cock, when one is lost. Lo, now I am again in the world! I hear a hen cackling; where there is an egg laid, there must be a woman to be glad. I hear a dog bark; where a dog barks, there must be a man on his way. I am again in the world. And now I hear the clatter of a mill. Where am I, then? I have not, all the time I was lost, wept in my anguish, but now that I was saved, now I saw plainly in what danger I had been, and wept, so that I think I must give way to it, and cannot check myself. Then fortunately comes along a woodcutter. I ask, Where am I? . . . . "I go on my way towards the mill. But scarcely have I gone two hundred steps, when I see that I have left my bundle lying on the trunk of the tree, the bundle that has cost me so much pains, and I have taken care of it with so much trouble. Dear Heaven! this too! Perhaps the woodcutter has stolen it, and I shall have to pay for the materials, instead of earning anything by it. I run back. Indeed, men are good and honest, if they don't know where a thing is lying. My little bundle had fallen behind the tree; there it was still. "And when I came home again! O God! when one is lost so, one scarcely believes there is a home any longer; a place where your bed stands, your looking-glass, your table, chest-of-drawers, and hymn-book. But what good friends these are! And how dear they seem when one comes home, and one would like to thank the table and chair for standing and waiting there so still till one comes home again. And do you know what is the bitterest thing in being lost? That you only get laughed at when you tell about it. But I would not wish such a thing to happen to any one, not even Köttmänn's wife. And that was a beautiful summer day, the Sunday after St. John's, - no, not Sunday, it was Monday, St. Peter's and Paul's. O, how must it be when one is lost in the snow, and by night! Then one can do nothing but lie down and die. - "O, I certainly am the most unfortunate person, that I can think things out so, and I do think them out; but it is so in our family, and it was not untrue what was said of my mother, that she knew more than to eat her bread." As Leegart's story forms an episode in the course of the book, we have extracted more largely from it. There are other characters admirably drawn, among them the pastor and his wife. Of superior intellect to their parish, they are not merely the Sunday counsellors of their people, but the friends to whom they can apply in any difficulty. The pastor's sermon at the midnight service at Christmas is pithy, with an appeal to the simplest heart among his hearers. It has been announced that in Berlin Meyerbeer has set some music for a spectacle piece, founded upon this pretty story, called "The Forest Queen." We can easily imagine it might lend some dramatic points to the stage, enhanced by the quaint and spirited music of Meyerbeer. These simple village stories, varying in their local coloring, show how much alike is human nature beneath all its different aspects. There is one bond of human feeling, of which Auerbach speaks in his Dichter und Kaufmann, in his grander style. 66 enters. See, around this great earth, torn apart into a thousand hostile camps, there is drawn a girdle of light, into which all that is good In the hand of the Infinite Father which you are holding, you hold and you are a link of that infinite chain, of which you know the beginning, but not its end. Far away in distant zones there lives a soul, there beat a thousand hearts, moved by the same desires that you are touched with; yet you never see these intimate faces, you never feel the throbbings of their hearts, so long as your earthly eye drinks in the light. Where you stand is holy ground, and you can joyfully cry, God and his angels above me, man at my side. If you wander alone through foreign cities and villages, fear not; let your heart say to you, Behind these walls, beneath this tumult, live men who strive for the good as you do, who love you as your brothers; and with this thought may you be happy!" THE Controversy that has grown out of the "Essays and Reviews " makes the largest, if not the most important, chapter in the theological history of the time. A very curious and interesting feature of it is that it is going on at such length― calling in the help of secular powers too - within the boundaries of a Church that has fortified itself by no less than thirty-nine articles against the possibility of dissent. Judgments linger in the English courts; and we must wait till the November term, we are told, to learn whether the initiators of this debate are to be held Churchmen at all in the eye of the English law. Meantime, we have seen a memorial, from several men who have voluntarily withdrawn from holy orders, setting forth with much force the loss and disabilities they are under, not merely from the abandonment of their livings, but from rules which shut them out from almost every occupation, career, or ambition which can be open to an educated man. is a cruel alternative set before a conscientious priest, who can no longer" willingly and ex animo subscribe" to all points of his church creed, to be either disqualified for his sacred office by the integrity of conscience that should be his help in it, or else disfranchised from every other by his vows of canonical obedience, by which he wishes no longer to be bound. It -more Mr. Maurice has suffered something himself from the domineering temper of "conformity," and is not without his human sympathies for sincere heretics. The volume published under his auspices is unusually winning in its tone and interesting in its matter. It claims, quite earnestly, that the proscribed authors of the "Essays and Reviews are good Christian men and faithful ministers of the Church, so, in fact, than would appear from their own argument. Its dissatisfaction is with the undertone of doubt, the tendency to dwell on difficulties and objections, the absence of positive qualities and moral earnestness in the work, that have struck all of us, more or less, just as they have struck these liberal and enlightened Churchmen. The fault was partly unavoidable. The "Essays and Reviews are a protest against a certain style of bigoted dogmatism, a protest thoughtful, scholarly, conscientious, timely. How minds of that temper may be reconciled to the teaching of the Church, how ecclesiastical fidelity may consist with intellectual liberty, seems to be the question met in the "Tracts for Priests and People." It is answered partly by the declarations of sincere and intelligent men, like Mr. Hughes, that they do believe in conformity with the creed, and find their mental peace in so believing; and partly by the argument that, what with a layman being bound by no creed at all (unless the Apostles'), and what with the liberty of interpreting which every clergyman may claim, no one need be *Tracts for Priests and People. By Various Authors. Boston: Walker, Wise, & Co. VOL. LXXII. 5TH S. VOL. X. NO. III. 37 a dissenter who does not choose. The book has not much critical pretension or scholastic value. It is an apology for the Church of England, with reasons why the conscience of a good man need not be troubled at remaining in it. No fair-minded reader can fail to be won by its tone of genuine conviction and kindly feeling. The argument on miracles, especially, is as fair and able as any that we have seen; and the plea that creeds are a protection against intolerance is cleverly sustained. The very liberal range of sympathy in the volume, with its special pleading for the Church of England, has rather a tendency to make the reader feel well satisfied with his position, either in that Church or out of it. The other volume* is one of a good deal more bulk and pretension, more learning, and more weight of official authority. It also seems to us a good deal more genuine and consistent deduction from the postulates of Anglicanism, the "forty stripes save one." To its ability as a defence of rigid and high-toned orthodoxy, which it justifies by controversial handling of the cumbersome critical apparatus of modern learning, it is impossible for us to do justice in the space at our disposal. We have accordingly deferred to another number the discussion of these matters, together with the wider range of topics which the controversy has brought freshly before the public. WHILE the Calvinist Guizot amazes and saddens his admirers by appearing as the apologist of despotism, and lending his influence to retain the unnatural union of spiritual and temporal power in the hands of the Pope, the most eminent of Roman theologians suddenly appears as the vindicator of Italian unity against the Papal power, and the apologist for Victor Emanuel.† For ten years Passaglia was the official organ of the Roman court, and its oracle in questions of religious science. When the new dogma of the Immaculate Conception was decreed, he was its appointed champion before the nations of Europe; and his subtile pleadings went far to meet objections and disarm rebellion. No priest has been admitted more intimately into the confidence of Pius IX., or has received from the Pope more numerous and valuable marks of friendship. His scholarship is large and exact, his manners are winning, his morals pure, his eloquence persuasive, and his zeal for the faith has always been unquestioned and unbounded. To have said a year ago that the most determined of Jesuits would have become a heretic or a schismatic, or would have furnished a book for the Index of the Sacred College, would have been to utter a charge most wildly improbable. If the Vatican had any trustworthy servant, any champion "without fear or reproach," it was certainly Passaglia. Yet this devoted champion is now an outcast from favor, is denounced * Aids to Faith: a Series of Theological Essays by Several Writers. Being a Reply to "Essays and Reviews." Edited by WILLIAM THOMPSON, Lord Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol. New York: D. Appleton & Co. † Pour la Cause Italienne, aux Evêques Catholiques. Apologie par un Prêtre Catholique (P. PASSAGLIA). Traduit du Texte Latin. Paris Molini. 1861. 8vo. pp. 160. |