true to a man which he troweth? And not rather, as the solution of a great mystery, that truth there is, and attainable it is, but that its rays stream in upon us through the medium of our moral as well as our intellectual being; and that, in consequence, that perception of its first principles which is natural to us is enfeebled, obstructed, perverted, by allurements of sense and the supremacy of self, and, on the other hand, quickened by aspirations after the supernatural; so that, at length, two characters of mind are brought out into shape, and two standards and systems of thought-each logical, when analyzed, yet contradictory of each other, and only not antagonistic because they have no common ground on which they can conflict? 1 of But, though no common ground, there may be a definite issue; and unless I have read my authors to little purpose, it emerges from all they have written touching the nature and course things, their origin, and the term to which they are moving forward. New man believes in a present Deity, Renan in a future; to the English saint God is the Eternal Self-Consciousness, who was before all worlds, and guides them according to the word of His wisdom, by a plan fore-ordained, every part of which He holds in perspective and contemplates ere it is realized. That which comes out of the seed is only the full development of what was stored up within it; and so in the ripe age of Christianity we have a clue to its founder's intention. For an intention He must have had, as well as foresight of the consequences inevitably following in a world like ours upon beginnings so disposed and ordered. He is hidden in Himself; clouds and darkness are round about Him; none ever felt more piercingly how thick are the curtains of His pavilion than did this mystic and philosopher; but a deliberate plan is something which can be understood even though its author be invisible; it has a language, a grammar, of its own which saves it from the charge of being mere haphazard or a succession of strokes at random. And though we cannot decipher all its syllables, or 1 Essay on Assent, p. 312. With Renan all these things must be read backward, as in some unhallowed juggling spell. There is no key to existence but the ancient Eastern one of universal delusion, if that can be termed delusion which has come about by accident; for design, consciousness, foresight, are words without sense when we would talk of the eternal process. God is in the making. Our infinite Cosmos puts forth innumerable feelers into the void; and, by experiments repeated through millenniums, it has come at last to be the unfinished yet promising enterprise which we behold. Some day, if luck attends it, the world will develop a triumphant ethical law; instead of brute matter blindly striving, and often annihilating what is most precious, it will have eyes and conscience; it will be just as well as almighty. But now "the real is a vast outrage on the ideal," and the noblest of all religions was itself due to prophecies misinterpreted, legends framed by dreaming enthusiasts, miracles expanded from simple occurrences through a mist of emotion, and hallucinations possessing the one human spirit which, without sacrilege or more than a pious metaphor, was worthy to be called Divine. All the gods are mortal, indeed; and the fairest of them pass away; "tout ici-bas n'est que rêve et symbole." seen will As they began, so did these two men finish their thought-one with his "L'Eau de Jouvence," and science turned to pagan mythology, the other with his "Dream of Gerontius," the vision of judgment. Prospero has no one to judge him; he is lawless and free, Let me tell you, Socrates, that when a man thinks himself to be near death, fears and cares enter into his mind which he never had before; the tales of a world below, and of the punishment which is exacted there of deeds done here, were once a laughing matter to him; but now he is tormented with the thought that they may be true; either from the weakness of age, or because he is now drawing nearer to that other place, he has a clearer view of these things; suspicions and alarms crowd thickly upon him, and he begins to reflect and consider what wrong he has done to others. And when he finds that the sum of his transgressions is great, he will many a time, like a child, start up in his sleep for fear, and he is filled with dark forebodings. But to him who is conscious of no sin, sweet hope, as Pindar charmingly says, is the kind nurse of his age. "Hope," he says, "cherishes the soul of him who lives in justice and holiness, and is the nurse of his age, and the companion of his journey -hope, which is the mightiest to sway the restless soul of man." subject only to the formulas of the "conjectural science" and serious frichemist, which he can elude if they volity. Cephalus, then, speaks to the press upon him too heavily. Gerontius logician, Socrates, in this wise:1belongs to a different race; he is of the sky and not mere sensuous flesh; he is Ariel in his lightness and purity, free, not from law, but from earthly passion -a winged nature, soaring upward like the fire to its eternal sphere. With Renan we feel ourselves falling into a darkness which thickens as we descend. With Newman our spirit springs aloft, we breathe an air tense and invigorating; we cannot think but that this should be the clime and atmosphere of highest human progress. Why go back to Athens or the Renaissance, famous above all else for their worship of a beauty which had in it too little of the moral element? If our instincts can be ranged upon any scale of objective worth and we all believe that there is such a scale-then the instinct which has stirred Gerontius, "the old man eloquent," to dream of a Divine Presence and of judgment to come, is infinitely higher than that which sees the conclusion of our days as an euthanasia, a tranquil suicide, and nothing beyond. Comparison itself is, in such disputes, the keenest criticism; and who, when his mind is clear and self-possessed, would not rather be this Ariel than that Prospero? Thinking over these things, I have sometimes likened Cardinal Newman, in his "gracious senescence"-if I may borrow an exquisite word from Mr. Lowell, to that Cephalus who is introduced at the beginning of Plato's "Republic," and who, "looking very much advanced in years, is seated on a cushioned chair, with a garland on his head, for he has been offering sacrifice in the court" to the immortals. Nor can I suggest the conclusion which, from his many teachings is to be gathered more appositely than by quoting that other "Dream of Gerontius" which I find attributed to Cephalus in the dialogue. It is Greek prose, lightsome and simple as Newman's own; and the moral which it holds out to us is not yet laid to heart; but far more likely to be a true one I consider it than all Ernest Renan's But hope in the life to come is the WILLIAM BARRY. 1 Republic, Bk. I., Jowett's translation. FROM THE ITALIAN OF NEERA. Translated for THE LIVING AGE by Mrs. Maurice PART III. were It was now the month of August; the heat grew more and more intense, although the days somewhat shorter, and the discomfort which the heavy temperature produced, seemed to explain the languor which often oppressed me, even in the midst of the reviving joy of life. Days and weeks passed in a leaden torpor; my strength faded away. The morning of the 26th of August I woke after a night troubled and full of dreams. I rose immediately, and as 1 Copyrighted by The Living Age Company. Alexis still slept tranquilly I went down into the garden to walk. But soon the garden seemed to be a furnace. I went out into the country, I followed the paths, I sauntered by the brooks, I entered the wood and breathed in the morning air with delight, holding up my face to the boughs so that they might sprinkle my burning cheeks with a rain of dew. My hair, caught by the frolicsome branches of the forest trees, fell down strewn with leaves and blossoms. In the wet grass my light slippers lost all consistency, and I felt the soft earth under my feet. I stepped along in the light of the rising sun, through the moist meadows set with the white cups of the morning glory, where the blue eyes of the periwinkle greeted me with sisterly glances. All the wood-sounds were songs, all the twitterings of the nestlings were prayers, and falling on my knees, I too prayed in the midst of this joyous nature as if I were in a temple of God. Towards evening the heaviness of the air increased; the sky was covered with clouds. I was unnerved to the point of exhaustion. When my cousin arrived he found me sitting under the rose trees by the side of the house without strength even to go as far as the paths. Perhaps he had come a little earlier than usual. Unconsciously he lengthened the time he passed with me, more and more. We felt an increasing desire for nearness, for communion; we experienced more and more the need to confide everything to each other, even the most pass ing thoughts. The simplest speech between us was invested with a mysterious fascination whose influence we both felt, felt too, so that we could often understand each other by a word, or a slight movement of the head, and sometimes we said the same thing at once. he went on gently, laying my hand back on my knee. I was obliged to answer, as I had so often done before, "Nothing," though I had the strongest desire to be able to tell him all sorts of fine and interesting things. We fell into silence; a strange silence which seemed to grow deeper in proportion as we wished to speak, but which was sweeter than I can say. In this very place, beside these same rose trees, there slowly rose before me my own little figure as I once sat, long ago between papa and mamma, full of pride because of a summer dress covered with bunches of cherries, which I wore for the first time. "Pick them, pick them," old Pietro would say, as he came and went. I remembered the day when I fell into the reservoir, trying to catch a butterfly resting on the surface of the water! And I remembered standing by the gate with my apron full of nuts, and giving them all to a poor beggar who was hungry, and who put them in his pocket with a look of despair. The garden had seen my whole life, year after year, day after day; it had seen me laugh, it had seen me weep, it saw me now absorbed in my thoughts, poor thoughts no doubt, feminine thoughts! I turned my head at this moment to see what my cousin was doing. He had in his hands a white lace scarf which I had taken off my neck when the heat was greatest, and was crushing it together in an agitated manner which alarmed me. Fearing that my silence had annoyed him I immediately spoke to him, but he only answered by an unintelligible monosyllable. Then a fresh breeze blew on us, and I asked him for my scarf. He gave it up unwillingly, without speaking, with a wild glance that I had never seen before. "The weather is changing," I said at last, troubled by this long continued "Are you ill?" he asked, taking my silence. hand in his. "Are you also a physician?" I said, smiling, questioning him in my turn. Then I added, without waiting for an answer, "No, I am well." "What have you been doing to-day?" 708 LIVING AGE. VOL XV. My cousin raised his eyes to the sky carelessly, and answered:"Perhaps it is." I sought in vain for something to say, but I could find nothing. In the mean time little evening sounds music, though I knew I could not play for fear of awakening Alexis. I took up my embroidery, but there was no more embroidery silk. Then I stood motionless for a long time in the middle of began to arise; insects rustling into their shelters, the distant barking of a dog, a falling leaf sighing that, resisting all day, it must fall at last. Within the house a lamp in Ursula's hand wandered from window to window as she the room with my hands clasped behind made preparation for the night. "Mamma," called Alexis from doorstep where he had been playing with Pietro, "I am sleepy." "I am coming, love." the me. I do not know whether it was my imagination, or whether some light object really struck against the glass, but I went over to the window and opened it. The weather was still threatening and I leaned on the window sill and looked down into the garden. If I should live a thousand years I should never forget the voice that spoke to me: "Myriam, it is I-I want to speak to you." "What nonsense," said I, forcing myself to speak in a low, even voice. "Why are you here yet? I will go and call Pietro; he did not know you had not gone." "Do not call any one-I want to speak to you." Seeing that I hesitated and did not know what to do, he continued, "Let me in, I entreat you." I took the light and went down. As I opened the door a puff of wind blew out my candle, and I gave a little cry. He shot the bolt to prevent the door from slamming, and taking my hand he led me without a word towards the half darkened staircase, guided by the light that streamed out of the salon. I was not afraid, I could not be afraid of him, He answered submissively, “Adieu." I went up the steps without look ing back, following Pietro, who was carrying the little boy, already half and yet I trembled. As soon as I was asleep. When Alexis was in his bed, and I had kissed him a thousand times, I went back to the ante-chamber to ask Pietro if he had lighted my cousin down the stairs this dark evening. He answered that M. de la Querciaia had already gone, and that he had only arrived at the gate in time to close it. "Very well," I said, "you can go to bed now." However, it was still early and I was not at all sleepy. I thought I would finish the evening with some quiet reading, but I could not lay my hands immediately on the book I wanted. I lingered by the piano, turning over my in the room I dropped into a chair and asked him anxiously: "What do you want?" O how could he have answered thus? He was pale, and there was a desperate look in his eyes from which I recoiled. He fell on his knees and hiding his face in my dress he murmured some words which I could not hear. I felt myself turning to stone under the misery that penetrated every fibre of my being, and as his head still rested on my knees and his arms were raised imploringly, I shrank back, rigid with terror, seeking to draw myself away from his touch. "Do I inspire you with such repul "Take care-this is your hour. You will never have me thus again, never again." I bowed my head beneath this mysterious threat. I shuddered and pressed my two hands hard against my breast. I do not know how long a time went by. A flash of lightning suddenly lit up the dark square of the window. Then I gently besought him to go back to his home. Tall and proud he stood in the middle of the room, the prey of some cruel struggle. Then he came back to me, he came back to me with supplication in his eyes. "Go, go!" I said. This prayer I repeated with all the persuasiveness and strength and gentleness I could put into my voice. He went out without a word. I followed him to the foot of the staircase hardly able to hold myself erect, listening with terror to the rain which had begun to fall. I opened the door as a sudden clap of thunder shook the house; his tall figure was lit up for a moment on the threshold, he bent slightly and disappeared. I let myself fall sobbing on the floor. The fury of the storm increased every moment, shrieking through the air, roaring in the chimneys, howling in the tree tops, shaking and tearing the branches, and sighing like a human creature. "My God! My God!" I murmured with my face against the floor, "have pity on him!" The rain streamed down in torrents; through the chinks of the door there came an icy wind; flashes of lightning and claps of thunder succeeded each other with frightful rapidity; one above all was so sharp that I was sure it had struck the earth. O where was he? alone in the darkness, exposed to the rage of the storm! At this thought, the cold that had paralyzed my limbs turned to a burning fire. For a moment I had the mad idea to rush out and follow him, and call him back. I sprang up only to fall back again; I pressed my burning head against the steps, and cried to God, to death! After that I knew no more until I found myself in the arms of Ursula and Pietro, who supported me up the stairs, helpless and docile, and put me in my bed. They had been awakened by the storm and had risen to see if all the windows were closed, and finding me unconscious at the foot of the staircase, supposed that I had come down for the same reason, and had been taken suddenly ill. Poor dear old people! who loved me so much. All night I lay awake and listened to the wind which blew and never ceased, always with the same sense of pain as when one is struck to the heart. I longed to weep and could not. The charm was broken. Six months of peace, almost of happiness! It had all vanished, never to come back, destroyed in a moment. I had wept much when my parents died, and yet I knew that they must die. But he, why had he done this? He had showed me the vision of a nobler life, but he had not thought me worthy to follow him in it. He had not loved me; no, he had not loved me, and I had had such faith in him. At this thought a burning heat flamed into my cheeks. I longed to strike him, to humiliate him, to accuse him of his baseness! Certain stories heard here and there, certain comments whose import my absolute ignorance of life had not understood, came back tumultuously to my memory, clearing up with sad swiftness all that had remained uncomprehended in my short and solitary woman's experience. It was thus then that women fell, and it was of this that men boasted? And he could do so! |