compassionate eagerness of youth they crowded round Euphrasie, whom
they persisted in saluting as "cousin," and were not a little
chagrined to find their advances met in so chilling a manner; they
spared no pains to distract her from her moodiness, or hauteur, or
ill-temper, or whatever it might be, that made her so different from
themselves. Yet moodiness it scarcely could be, for the young French
girl was cheerful in society, so far as the expression of her
countenance went; and when surprised in solitude, a calm serenity sat
on her youthful brow, and she bore the ill-temper of the countess with
wonderful sweetness; her mother's impatience, indeed, seemed but to
increase her patience, and the harshness she underwent served but to
make her more gentle. She was a mystery to her animated young friends,
who, loving a life of excitement and intellectual progress, could not
understand how Euphrasie could exist in so stupid and monotonous a
course.

Yet was the young French girl far from being deficient in those
branches of accomplishments which are especially feminine. She played
and sang with taste and feeling, but I the airs were generally of a
solemn character. She loved, also, to exercise her pencil, but it was
to delineate the head of the thorn-crowned Saviour, of the penitent
Magdalene, or of, "Mary, highly favored among women." Earthly subjects
and earthly thoughts had no attraction for her, yet there were moments
when, as if unconsciously, she gave utterance to fancies which
startled her young companions. She would walk with them by the
sounding shore, and while they were busy gathering and classifying
shells and sea-weed and geological specimens, she, too, would seem to
study' and listen and learn a lesson, but a far {33} different lesson
from the one they sought. The young ladies Godfrey were scientific,
though in a playful way; there was aim, object, utility, in short, in
all their seekings. "Knowledge is power," was the axiom of the family;
and the members of it might fairly challenge the world for the
consistency with which they sought to carry that axiom into practice.
But Euphrasie would wonder and ponder, and philosophize unconsciously.
She did not decompose the fragments of the mighty rocks with acids as
her young friends did; she did not classify and dissect the lovely
flower; but she stood in mute wonderment at the base of the rocks, and
heard their disquisitions on its strata having been once liquid and
gradually consolidating, and said: "What a wondrous history! what a
sight for the angels to behold the atomic attraction forming the
worlds grand order! A true theory of geology would be like a chapter
of the _life of God_--a true revelation of his spirit to man."

"Yes," said Adelaide; "science will yet and if superstition from the
earth."

"Superstition!" said Euphrasie. "Yes! if superstition means false
views of God's relation to the human soul. True science is mystic, and
must reveal God interiorly; but true science can scarcely be attained
by guesses or dissection. You destroy a beauteous flower by pulling it
to pieces, but I do not see how its separate petals and crushed leaves
can speak so plainly to the soul as the living plant on the stem, or
how your anatomy is a revelation."

"Nay, we discern the uses of the different parts thereby, and admire
the structure, seeing how each organ fulfils its office duly, in
minuteness as in grandeur."

"But your long words," said Euphrasie; "do they too reveal God? To me
they hide him in a cloud of dust. I feel the order, I love the beauty,
I am elevated by the grandeur of creation, because nature is a
metaphor in which God hides himself and reveals himself at once, but I
distrust a mere human key. How can we be sure of systems, unless we
spend a life in verification? Did not Pythagoras teach astronomy in
the Copernican fashion? and yet the world did not receive the teaching
till centuries after. The world receives the theory of Copernicus now
on trust; would it be wise to spend a life in verifying it?"

"Have you any other key?" asked Annie.

"There is a key to the lesson which nature teaches," said Euphrasie,
in a low tone; "but not so much as to its formation as to its being a
manifestation of God. We must not speak of these things; they are too
high for us."

"Nay," said Eugene; "they are the very things to speak about,
especially if, as you say, they lead to higher things; my idea of
science is utility. The old Magian astrologers, the Chaldean sages and
Eastern sophists, studied cloudy myths and wrapped up their theories
in a veil of obscurity; but the modern idea is usefulness; an
abridgment of man's toil, and promotion of his comfort. Do you reject
all human research?"

"I reject nothing that God has given," said Euphrasie; "but truth is
one, error is many. The science first to be taught, is how to discover
truth--the next, how to apply it. You say the ancients applied
science to other purposes than we; if they applied it to learn the
qualities of their own souls, and we apply it to the comfort of our
bodies merely, which is the highest object?"

"What, then, would you do?" said Adelaide, a little impatiently; "shut
up our books, and sit and dream on the sea-shore on matters beyond all
practical use?"

Euphrasie answered very gently, as she rose to walk to the seaside, "I
am not a teacher, _ma cher cousine_, but I think mind has its laws as
well as matter, and as on the government of our minds so much depends,
even in {34} our researches after material knowledge, it is likely
that the science of mind is more important than that of matter, and
necessary for the truth-seeker to study first. But I am getting quite
out of my depth; let us go and throw pebbles into the sea."

. . . . . .

Mrs. Godfrey was a kind-hearted and very reasonable woman, in the way
in which she understood reasoning. She was bent on rousing her young
inmate to energy and action. She was but a _girl_, she said--a girl of
seventeen could not have been so spoiled by the insipidities of a
convent as to be beyond reclaiming for the tangible world surrounding
her; or was it that her thoughts were with the dead, and that the deep
sorrow she had undergone had penetrated to the depths of her being?
Whatever the cause, Mrs. Godfrey was dissatisfied with the result, and
her motherly warmth of heart yearned to comfort the young orphan in
her desolation. She let a few weeks pass away in hopes of witnessing a
change, but when none came, or seemed likely to come, she thought it
her duty to remonstrate with Euphrasie, the more so as the countess
being now recovered sufficiently to join the family circle, Euphrasie
had no plausible excuse for passing hours together in the solitude of
her own chamber.

"It is not good for you, my dear, to be so much alone," said Mrs.
Godfrey to her, as one day she intruded on the young girl's privacy.
"Rouse your energies to some good purpose, and employ your mind in
some definite pursuit; it is very injurious, I assure you, to let your
faculties lie dormant so long."

Euphrasie laid aside the embroidery on which she had been employed,
and answered meekly, "What shall I do to please you, my dear madam?"

"Why, exercise your mental faculties--study."

"I am most willing to do so, madam; but what shall I begin?"

"Why, languages if you will; but you know enough of these, perhaps;
your own language and that of this country may content you. Or will
you study German and Italian?"

"I will, if you wish it, though I confess I have no great inclination.
It seems to me as if to learn different names for the same thing were
not very profitable; and unless I had occasion to visit the countries
in which these languages are spoken, I think it would be time thrown
away."

"How time thrown away? Could you not read the literature of the
languages? That will expand your mind."

"Literature? Do you mean poetry and fiction--such as your daughters
read? I do not care for them. I want to study truth."

"Truth? Yes, but fiction may be covert truth. Tales show us mankind as
they are. Literature has a refining tendency, and gives us elegance of
taste."

"I should defer to your opinion, madam," replied Euphrasie, with a
resigned air; "and when you wish, I will begin."

"Yes," said Mrs. Godfrey, "but not as a punishment; it is as a source
of attraction, of interest, that I wish you to cultivate literary
tastes."

"I cannot feel interest, madam, in that which will unfit me for my
duty."

"Unfit you for your duty! what do you mean?"

"Pray, madam, pardon me; I, of course, defer to you."

"I want no deference, child, save what your reason gives. Explain your
meaning."

"I only mean, dear madam, that too much refinement and elegance might
make us forget our inherent weakness; teach us to set too high a value
on exterior accomplishments, and to forget the tendency to sin ever
abiding within us."

"The girl is raving! Now, Euphrasie, do you honestly believe in the
corruption of your heart?"

{35}

"I know I am prone to evil in many ways, and that I must keep a
constant watch over all my dispositions. I suppose I do not know the
extent of evil in my own heart--that were a rare grace, vouchsafed to
few--but I see nothing in myself to lead me to suppose that I am
naturally better than the men who murdered my father."

"Do you feel disposed to murder, then?"

"No; but the very indignation I often feel at their crimes teaches me
not to trust myself. Did we give way to our passions, and had we
power, who can tell what we should do? Nero showed good dispositions
when he began his reign. Alfred the Great was a licentious youth till
Almighty God chastened him by adversity, and humbled him through life
by inflicting him with an incurable disease, which kept him ever
mindful of his former delinquencies."

"Do yon think that disease was a good to Alfred?"

"Decidedly; it helped to keep him mindful of the ever-present Deity
whom his former life had offended, and probably prevented his
relapsing into sin."

"You foolish child! his disease was probably occasioned by the
hardships he had undergone during his campaign; it was the natural
consequence to damp and wet and bad living. You must study science,
Euphrasie; that will rid you of all these foolish notions."

"I will study what you please, madam," replied Euphrasie.

But Mrs. Godfrey's endeavors to make her young _protégé_ comprehend
results as _inevitable_ signally failed, to her own great
astonishment. The girl pursued easily and willingly the course of
study marked out for her; was somewhat amused by chemical and other
experiments, but could never be brought to declare them necessary
results in the absolute sense. "The action of the same spirit that
established these relationships" said she "might at will disturb them;
even as the chemical relationship between two substances is disturbed
by the presence of a third substance more potent in its affinities."

"What, then, is a natural law?" demanded Mrs. Godfrey.

"A natural law," replied Euphrasie, "is the ordinary mode in which
Divine Providence causes one portion of insentient matter to act on
another portion of insentient matter."

Her instructor would object to this. "Nay, but there are natural laws
affecting mind also."

"Doubtless," said Euphrasie, "there are ordinary modes of acting upon
mind, both by the action of matter and by the action of other minds;
but as the special object of this life is to reunite, to re-bind man
to his Creator, supernatural means are ever at work to effect this
object, and of these we can predicate nothing certain."

"Supernatural nonsense, child--who put this precious style of
reasoning into your head?"

"Does not religion mean re-binding, madam? Was not man severed from
God by disobedience? Was not the whole spirit of religion, both before
and since our Lord's advent, founded on the fact that the mercy of God
wished to provide a remedy for that fatal act of Adam and Eve? And has
not insentient nature ever been made to depart from her ordinary
rules, when such departure could forward the cause for which Christ
died?"

Mrs. Godfrey was silenced. She did not wish to avow her scepticism and
infidelity, but in secret she rejoiced that her own children were free
from such a bar to improvement.

The arrival of a box of books as a present to Euphrasie from M. de
Villeneuve, who, in a note addressed to the countess, asked her
permission "to be allowed to present to the daughter of his departed
friend a few works which, he believed, would suit her taste, and which
she would be scarcely likely to find in Mr. Godfrey's library,
valuable as that library was in many respects," came to help the
enemy's {36} cause in Mrs. Godfrey's view of the case, for among the
works were selections from St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, from Bede, St.
Thomas Aquinas, and others of the fathers of the church. "I did not
know you read Latin, cousin," said the girls in surprise. "Nor do I,
except church Latin," said Euphrasie. "I learnt church Latin on
purpose to study these books, which my father had promised me as soon
as I could read them. M. de Villeneuve must have heard of this promise
from M. Bertolot. It was very kind in him to send them to me."

"I wonder you did not say 'it was a special providence'," bantered
Annie; but Eugene looked at her beseechingly and reprovingly, so she
said no more.

In spite of the new attraction, Euphrasie continued to study the
course appointed by Mrs. Godfrey, but in learning thus there was so
evidently a want of appreciation of the importance of the
study--science seemed to her so very little higher than a game of ball
with a little child--that her instructors were fairly discomfited, and
inclined to turn her over to the musty old fathers she had the bad
taste to prefer to their intelligent elucidations.

The young people, too, were annoyed, for they could not attribute to
stupidity the indifference she manifested, and that indifference
seemed felt as a tacit reproach of their own eagerness.

"She is not only not stupid,"' said Adelaide, the oldest of the girls;
"she is absolutely clever; she intuitively comprehends what it takes
me hours to make out. I began to explain algebra to her, and before a
month was up, she knew more of it than I did myself; and when I spoke
to her of this new discovery of locomotive power, which has taken us
so long fully to comprehend, she gave me what she calls the course of
the ordinary sequences of matter, in proof that the invention must
succeed, if this course of sequences be properly applied; and that
then we may travel without horses as fast as we can reasonably wish;
'but,' she added, 'it will be worth no one's while to perfect such an
invention, for, travel as fast as we may, we cannot run away from
ourselves by any material means.'"

"She is a monomaniac," said Mr. Godfrey; "sensible on all points but
one."

"Unless," urged Eugene, "it be true, as she once said, that there is
higher science than the science of matter, and that that science is
the necessary one for us to study."

"_Et tu, Brute_," shouted the father indignantly. "Now, children, let
us have no such trash in my own family. Pity your young friend, and
withhold your censure. Remember, she was brought up in superstition
and ignorance. It cannot be expected that her mind should awaken at
once to the beauty of the physical law. But for yourselves, after the
pains that have been taken to keep your minds unfettered by the
trammels of superstition, it were a disgrace indeed to see you yield
to any such worn-out fancies. The close of the eighteenth century must
witness higher thoughts."

"The close of the eighteenth century has witnessed terrific doings
over the water," said Eugene.

"Yes, and see there the effects of superstition," answered his father.
"Had those poor wretches been taught an enlightened philosophy instead
of an abject superstition, the reaction would not have produced such
awful results."

"Do you then believe, father, that when Euphrasie throws off her
religion, she will become such as these men are?"

"No; Euphrasie is better educated already, even from her intercourse
with us; besides, she is refined and elegant."

"But so they say is Robespierre. A Frenchman, and one not friendly to
him, said to me the other day that his house is the very picture of
simple elegance. Besides, the Roman emperors were excessive in their
luxurious magnificence at the very time they {37} were murdering by
wholesale. Nero sang to his lyre the Siege of Troy while Rome was
burning. What if it were true that he set the city on fire merely to
revel in the luxury of a new sensation, and to realize the emotion he
deemed he ought to feel at such a catastrophe?"

"Why, Eugene," said Hester, laughing, "you, too, are growing
metaphysical. What will come next?"

"Why, next we will inquire how far metaphysics are true when they
teach that mental sensation and moral power are distinct from each
other, and that a man may be consequently imaginatively great--capable
of every grand mental sensation--and be morally weak; nay, the very
slave of his lowest propensities. We have many examples of this."

"So says Euphrasie; and therefore she insists that what we call mental
culture is at best but of secondary value, well enough as an assistant
agent, but not to be considered as a principal means in attaining the
ultimatum of life."

"Euphrasie is a simpleton," said Mr. Godfrey.

Eugene rose to quit the room. He was considering within himself
whether Euphrasie were not in the right.

CHAPTER II.

THE EARTHLY UTOPIA, AND THE LOST EMPIRE.

In a little country town where society is scarce, it often happens
that people associate together whose rank is dissimilar, for the mere
sake of relieving ennui of solitude. Thus in Estcourt a half-pay
captain, his wife, the clergyman and his family, the lawyer, the
doctor, and their incumbrances, were occasionally admitted as visitors
to Estcourt Hall, as Mr. Godfrey's residence was called; and here,
though somewhat restrained by being found in such aristocratic
society, opinions were sometimes broached which plainly manifested
that "the spirit of the time" was working even in that remote
district.

St. Simon, Fourrier, Owen, had not then developed the social system
which is now endeavoring to sap the foundations of all that antiquity
held in solemn reverence; but the principles of socialism to which
these men afterwards gave a "shape" were even then fermenting in the
minds of many. Disturbed spirits were questioning the rights of landed
proprietors, while the sudden introduction of machinery was raising a
faction among the displaced artisans. Ominous signs were visible on
the political horizon, and perhaps an English "reign of terror," that
would have vied in horror with that of France, would have been
inaugurated, had not the threatened invasion of the island by Napoleon
united all classes anew to repel the foreign foe.

Certain it is that, early in the nineteenth century, it was found
necessary to have government agents in many a petty country town in
England to watch the progress of disaffection, and five or six
shopkeepers could hardly assemble together without the fact being
recorded, and inquiries set on foot respecting the purport of their
meeting. Rebellious spirits were mysteriously _pressed_ to man the
royal navy, and the magistrates not only connived at such kidnapping,
but frequently designated the individuals whom it was desirable to
remove.

This process, comparatively easy when it concerned apprentices,
journeymen, or those belonging to the laboring population, could not
be brought to bear upon obnoxious members of the gentry with equal
facility. Now, Alfred Brookbank was one of these. His father was
rector of Estcourt, and, independently of his living, was proprietor
of a pretty landed estate, the whole of which by right of
primogeniture was to fall to the eldest eon, a careless, unprincipled
prodigal, who had already involved his family in pecuniary
embarrassment {38} by his reckless expenditure, and brought disgrace
on his father's cloth by his loose morality.

His brother Alfred was the reverse of this--astute, aspiring,
ambitious, he was smitten with the prevailing mania, and at times
talked loudly of the folly and injustice of sacrificing the interests
of a whole family to one selfish fool. The girls, too, whose fortunes
had been injured by the elder brother's extravagance, lent no
unwilling ear to the doctrine of equal participation of property.

Alfred Brookbank was gifted with an eloquent tongue, an insinuating
manner, and a gentlemanly deportment. His figure was good, and his
features, without being handsome, were agreeable from their animated
expression. He was a general favorite; and being prudent enough to
avoid the expression of his opinions before the elder branches of the
family, it was seldom that he was suspected of spreading sedition and
disaffection among the young.

Of Mr. Godfrey's three daughters, the second one, Annie, was, at this
period of our tale, by far the most susceptible of these novel ideas.
She professed that she would follow truth wherever it should lead her,
even though it involved the relinquishment of her own superior rank in
society. Mr. Godfrey only laughed at such protestations from a girl of
seventeen, well knowing they would not stand the test of experience;
but however harmless might be her sallies, he had not calculated on
one result of freedom of opinion; Annie began to take pleasure in
Alfred Brookbank's attentions, and to feel flattered when he
expatiated to her on the beauty of such a system of co-operative
industry as would banish vice and misery from the globe and renew the
golden era.

"Is it to be wondered at," said Alfred, "that revolutions take place
in blood, when property is so unequally divided? nay, when oftentimes
the property is in the possession of the fool, while the wise man has
to get his living by hard labor? Look at the _rationale_ of the thing!
One man holds wealth, as it is called, and on the strength of it he
must compel fifty men to work for him, while be fives at his ease--the
roasted pigeons flying into his mouth, crying, 'come eat me!'"

"But some one must work," argued Annie.

"You mean to say," replied Alfred, "that food most be raised and
clothing furnished. True. But how many are employed in really useful
labor, compared with those whose occupations might be dispensed with
without loss to society, and those who are mere appendages of
wealth--mere creatures of idleness--men who, by forestalling their
master's wants, make _him_ dependent on themselves; who, by
surrounding him with luxuries, effeminate him; and who, by pandering
to his pleasures, surfeit him, at the same time that by doing these
things they degrade themselves; for why should one man be a mere
appendage to another?"

"But if all must work," said Annie, "all cannot work in the same way.
We most have hewers of wood and drawers of water, as well as poets and
philosophers. A community needs a head, as well as hands and feet.
Suppose you were elected head of a community, you would need servants
to do the manual labor?"

"True, but I would not badge them for it," answered Alfred, glancing
at the liveried servants, who were then bringing in refreshments. "All
men must work for the common weal; therefore, all labor is honorable;
and no man need lord it over another, as if himself were made of
porcelain, and the other of earthenware. An American philosopher has
lately calculated that in order to supply the world with necessaries,
if each grown individual were to work four hours a day, the whole
population of the world might be far better provided for than it is
now."

"And what would they do with their spare time?" asked Annie.

{39}

"What but improve their minds, and employ their energies in loftier
labors--what but grow out of the drudge into the man! Oh! we have yet
to learn the wonders that are to be achieved by a well-regulated
community. Men are scarcely men yet. Half of them are slaves to the
mere bread-winning to support their bodies, and the other half are
seeking phantoms--they are trying to find pleasure in lording it over
their fellows, or they are driven to excess by the mere necessity of
passing away time. It is an unfair position to place a man in, to set
him above that reciprocal dependence which binds man to man as equals.
It is a practical injustice to individuals to sever them thus from
their kind, and prevent their feeling their brotherhood." Alfred
continued, warming with his subject:

  "There are, deep seated in the human heart,
  A thousand thrilling, yearning sympathies--
  A thousand ties that bind us to our kind--
  A thousand pleasures only there enjoyed
  In cheering intercourse with fellow-man.
  'Tis thus the voice of nature speaks aloud,
  Proclaims from pole to pole the heav'n-born truth:
  'Ye are the children of one only God.
  Learn to acknowledge your fraternity.'

I think you have not seen my poem on Human Brotherhood, Miss Annie?"

"I have not, but to judge from the specimen you have just quoted, I
should like very much to read it. These truths seem so evident now, it
is wonderful they have not been discovered before."

"They have been discovered, though not acted on. The fact is that
men's minds have been so trammelled with superstition, they have been
afraid to tread out of the beaten track. They have been afraid to
reason, I scarce know why, even on their own grounds. Yet matters are
mending in this respect. I was present the other day when an indignant
orator thus addressed his audience:

Shall he, the Author of life and light, who has given to man, as the
reward of the use of reason, the power of traversing the trackless
deep, and of drawing down the lightning innocuous from the
skies--shall he deny to his creature the privilege of using his own
gift on themes that more immediately concern man's happiness? Oh no!
believe it not! Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above,
and cometh down from the Father of light, with whom is no
variableness, neither shadow of turning.' The audience he was
addressing shouted applause; so you see the people's cause is
progressing, and even Scripture is called in to aid this desirable
change."

"I wish Euphrasie could hear you speak," said Annie; "she might begin
to believe that there is some good in human learning, and that it can
promote true happiness. I must introduce you to her more particular
acquaintance."

"No; if she is a votary of ignorance, pray don't. I dislike silly
unideaed girls--they are the pest of society."

"But Euphrasie is neither; she is only original and opinionated. Ideas
seem to grow with her indigenously; for no one can tell how she gets
them; but they are very crude, and directly contrary to the spirit of
progression. I wish you would convert her."

"I doubt it would be difficult, and, to say the truth, I do not wish
to attempt it. She is not my taste at all. I prefer animation, zeal,
sympathy. She looks like a marble statue of Contemplation; well enough
in its way, but possessing no interest for me, who am all for
practical life."

"Euphrasie is a great thinker, and thought aids practice. You had
better enlist her on your side; for there is no saying how much she
might assist you, if once she could be brought to see how happy a
paradise you have planned for the human race."

But Alfred was by no means anxious for this. He evidently felt that
Euphrasie would not listen to him. Perhaps he feared that she would
set Annie against himself, and mar his own schemes in her regard; {40}
for different as was their rank in life, and improbable as it was that
Mr. Godfrey should condescend to ally himself with aught save the high
aristocracy, this young man intended, if possible, to secure an
interest in Annie's affections. Not that he loved her; his self-love
was so absorbing that it was almost impossible for him to love any one
save himself; but he thought such an alliance would forward his
ambitious projects, and enable him to begin life under favorable
auspices.

Annie had no idea whatever beyond the amusement of the passing hour,
and was more intent just now on making a convert of the young refugee
than in paying regard to the homage tendered her by Alfred. Euphrasie
was a difficult subject to deal with; but there are some minds to whom
difficulty is an incentive.

She was one day sitting in the library with Eugene, intent in
depicting on canvas the glories of the "Golden Era." Euphrasie
entered, and sat down to some work. Annie called to her:

"Now, my dear Euphrasie, come to me. You are a judge of painting; tell
me what you think of my picture."

Euphrasie drew near. "It is very pretty," she said, "but what does it
represent? Those peasants resting under the fig-trees, those
vine-dressers plucking the beautiful grapes, have very graceful
figures, and most happy and intelligent faces; but what do they belong
to?"

"To the new Utopia," said Annie, "where all are intelligent and
beautiful, and where discord enters not."

Euphrasie looked dreamily in Annie's face, and said doubtingly:
"Heaven? This is no picture of heaven."

"No; it is an earthly paradise, _ma chère amie_. One need not die in
order to enjoy it," laughingly rejoined Annie.

"Oh! a fancy piece," said Euphrasie; "well, it is very pretty, but I
am no judge of fiction;" and she sat down.

"Fiction or not, I cannot let you off so," said Annie; "do you not
think it would be very pleasant to dwell with a goodly number of
intelligent people, each taking his own share of work, and aiding in
making life happy--all good, all instructed and accomplished?"

"Pleasant? Yes, very pleasant I have lived with such," said Euphrasie;
"but their happiness was of a very different kind to that which is
delineated here."

"You have lived with such! Where, in the name of wonder?" asked Annie.

"In France," said Euphrasie.

"And what sort of happiness was theirs?" asked Eugene, now thoroughly
roused.

"I cannot tell you--that is, I could not make you understand. Excuse
me," said Euphrasie, evidently sorry she had said so much.

"And why not? why could we not understand?" asked brother and sister,
both in a breath.

"Because your principles are so different."

"Nay, then, explain the principles, _ma chère_. You have excited our
curiosity; you must gratify it now."

"Nay, I know not how. The principles belong to the interior life, and
on that I cannot speak."

"Why not? are you sworn to secrecy?" asked Annie. Eugene looked his
request for information, but spoke not.

"Not so," said Euphrasie; "but, in the first place, I am no teacher;
and, in the second, there are some subjects which can only be
approached with reverence, and I am afraid--" she hesitated.

"You are right, mademoiselle," said Eugene; "we have too little
reverence."

Euphrasie looked distressed. But Annie broke in with--"But we can be
reverent, and we will be reverent when the case demands it. Tell us
your principles, dear Euphrasie."

{41}

The young girl, with evident reluctance, said:

"My friends held that the soul had been originally endowed with power
over the mental faculties, as also over the senses and the appetites
of the body, and all inferior nature; and that that empire had been
lost through man's fault. They believe that no lasting, no high
enjoyment can be procured until that empire has been regained."

"What kind of empire do you mean?" said Annie.

"As thus," replied Euphrasie. "We _will_ our foot to tread here or
there, and it obeys us. We _will_ our hands to grasp or to work, and
it is done. But when we _will_ our feelings to be calm, or our
appetites to keep within certain limits, they do not always obey. We
resolve, and find that our resolutions fail. We determine, and do not
act. When children, nay, when grown people, are taxed with doing
wrong, they reply, 'I could not help it.' This is a confession of
failure in self-government, or, as might be said, a proof of empire
lost."

"That is, supposing it admitted such empire once existed. But do you
seriously think that perfect self-government may be acquired, or, as
you say, regained?"

"At least a near approach to it may, if the proper means are used."

"And those means?"

"Are too serious for me to mention; besides, they are paradoxical in
appearance; for, though impossible to mere humanity, they are
nevertheless possible. But you must carry your inquiry to a better
teacher than I am;" and Euphrasie rose to depart.

"No; we have no other teacher near us, and I shall not let you go
until you have told me what I want to know;" and Annie laid her hand
somewhat forcibly on the young stranger's arm, and compelled her to
reseat herself.

"Well, then," faltered out the poor girl, "when the soul was in
possession of its pristine empire, it had also the power of communion
with high spiritual intelligences--nay, with the highest--even with
the creative intelligence. The same fault that lost man the high
empire over all inferior natures, and over his own appetites and
passions, by disturbing the equilibrium which primarily existed in the
higher part of his soul, also severed the bond of that high spiritual
communion; and that bond must be reunited ere the empire be restored
to him. Man of himself cannot reunite that severed bond, nor can he be
happy without such reunion; because the higher part of man's soul was
created for such high spiritual communion, and can no more be content
without it than could our inferior senses without the gratification
they require. But what he cannot do will be done for him, if he
prepare himself duly. He must build the altar of sacrifice, lay on the
wood, prepare the victim. Fire from heaven will then descend for his
enlightenment, for his purification, and more than he had lost may be
regained."

"You speak oracularly, _ma belle amie_, but I want something more
tangible yet. Tell me some of the practical rules observed by your
friends; may be I shall better understand your sybilline wisdom then."

Euphrasie shook her head. "They are too minute," she said. "You might
even think them childish." But Annie had not yet relaxed her grasp,
and appeared determined to be satisfied; so Euphrasie continued:
"Nevertheless, if you will promise to let me go immediately after, I
will give you one of their rules of action."

"One, only one?"

"One will be enough at a time. When you have solved one rule, it will
be the time to ask for more."

"Solved one rule? What do you mean by that?"

"There is a body and a soul to every religious rule--the letter and
the spirit. Observance must be yielded to both. I can only give you
the body. God only can teach you to understand the spirit of it."

{42}

"Well; proceed with your enigma."

"You promise to let me go, whether you understand it or not."

"Yes, provided the rule is practical," said Annie.

"Well, then," said Euphrasie, "one reason that my friends were so
happy together--that though there were fifty of them, there was no
quarrelling, no ill will, no envy--was, that they constantly
endeavored, each one of them, to choose for herself the poorest
things; in her diet, the poorest fare; in her clothes, the coarsest
habit; in her employment, the most humbling functions."

"Impossible!" said Annie. "Stay, cousin!" But Euphrasie had already
made her escape, and her reluctance to dwell on these subjects in that
presence was so evident that Annie did not choose to pursue her, and
she was left to conjecture whether the young French girl had been
playing on her credulity or not. The mere fact that fifty ladies had
been guided practically by such a principle as that given, was clearly
beyond her belief. Not so, however, did Eugene decide. His interest in
their young and mysterious inmate was ever on the increase. Each word
she uttered was gathered up as food for thought. The ideas were new to
him, and, not only so, they were contrary to those in which he had
been educated, and he had but a faint glimmering of their meaning. Yet
they worked strangely within him, and fain would he have sought
explanation from that pale sybil, but that for to-day she had
forbidden it.

When Annie also had left the apartment, he walked up and down in deep
thought repeating to himself:

"Man has lost the empire over himself and over inferior nature."

"Man has lost the power of high spiritual communion."

"_But these may be regained._"

"If this be true, any privation or sacrifice may be undergone for
their repossession; too small the price, whatever the cost. But then,
how can contentment with the meanest things, or filling the humblest
offices, assist this conclusion? And this is but one rule; are the
others of a like fashion?" The young man was fairly mystified; that
the oracle had emitted truth, he doubted not; but a clue to the
meaning of that truth was wanting, and where should he find that clue?

CHAPTER III.

THE "MARIAGE DE CONVENANCE."

There was a visible excitement in the house; even Mr. Godfrey, ever so
solemn, and latterly so inclined to severity, put on a cheerful
appearance; people outside the family were _guessing_ at the cause.
For a long time, guessing was the only thing they could do; even
Madame de Meglior was not in the secret until one morning she received
a letter from M. de Villeneuve, which appeared to contain some news,
for she said to Mr. Godfrey, who happened to be the only one present:
"Brother, can this be true?"

"Can what be true, my good sister?" was the question returned.

"That the Duke of Durimond is coming here to marry Adelaide?"

"Why should it not be true?"

"Why, the duke is an old man!"

"Not at all; he was quite young when he made proposals for Adelaide;
surely you remember them."

"Remember them! Do you mean the agreement you made at the
dinner-table, when Adelaide was two years old."

"The agreement was made before, between his father and me; it was
ratified, then, by himself; he had just come of age."

"And that is sixteen years ago. Will you give Adelaide to a man of
seven-and-thirty?'

"Why not, if she makes no objection?"

"Has she ever seen him?"

{43}

"Yes, she saw him in town last winter; 'twas there he renewed his
offer; but, in fact, we have always corresponded. The duke is fond of
the arts; 'twas he sent those fine pictures you admire so much."

"He can't know whether he likes Adelaide or not, and she never struck
me as being in love all this time."

"Pshaw! The duke has proposed; Adelaide is satisfied. The marriage was
agreed upon years ago; what would you have? I thought you' knew the
world by this time."

This was taking madame by her foible, so she said no more. Mrs.
Godfrey was simply quiescent: she was not accustomed to oppose her
husband's will, and, incredible as it may seem, the young girl herself
offered no objection to the marriage announced to her. To deck her
brow with a coronet had charms enough for the deeply fostered pride of
that young heart to induce her to forego the prospect of love,
sympathy, and domestic happiness; she simply coveted rank and power.
The duke had immense revenues; he offered ample settlements: what
mattered it that he was thirty-seven, and she but sweet eighteen?
Marriages occurred every day in which the disparity was more glaring.
What mattered it that she had scarcely seen the noble duke; that she
knew little of his private life, or of his tastes and feelings? He was
a nobleman of high birth; he paid her courtly compliments, presented
her with a magnificent casket of jewels; pleaded his long absence on
the Continent in excuse for his apparent want of attention to herself;
and urged his long friendship and unbroken correspondence with her
father as a plea for hurrying on his happiness; and thus, almost
unwooed, the fair Adelaide was won. Poor girl, the chief idea in her
head was that she should like to be a duchess; and thus both she and
her father contrived to overlook the fact that but little allusion had
been made to the proposed alliance in the sixteen years'
correspondence on art and science that had been maintained between the
gentlemen. The matter had been settled years ago. There was little
occasion for the world to interfere, if the parties concerned were
satisfied. The father's scientific friend was necessarily a fitting
husband for the daughter. And so the preparations went forward. The
house was filled for a time with dress-makers and bandboxes, and when
these were dismissed, there came guests to witness the bridal. Among
these was the Comte de Villeneuve, whom we have already introduced to
our readers; a friend of both families was the comte, and had been a
friend too of the late Comte de Meglior. This made him welcome also to
Madame de Meglior and Euphrasie; indeed he treated the latter with
distinguished attention, and she seemed more at her ease with him than
with any person at the Hall. M. de Villeneuve was thirty-five years of
age, but good-looking and animated, and Madame de Meglior was in some
slight degree uneasy at first at the evident friendship he evinced for
Euphrasie, for she did not approve of disproportionate marriages, and
she thought Adelaide's example a bad one. Gradually, however, she
became so absorbed in the duties imposed upon her by Mrs. Godfrey of
directing the embellishments, that she forgot to look after the object
of her solicitude in the subject which suited her better. Living as
she had been wont to do in the gay circles of Parisian exclusives, she
was regarded as a very oracle of fashion and elegance, and
consequently she willingly took the lead in planning the arrangements
for the bridal day.

The young people were in a puzzle, Annie especially. It was the first
act of unblushing worldliness she had ever witnessed. She felt as if
she did not know the world she lived in. She looked at her mother;
there was no joy on her face; she looked at Adelaide; already the
young girl had {44} assumed her rank; the calm hauteur, the majestic
politeness, with which she received her guests, astonished every one.
Adelaide was born to command, every one felt it; none more so than
Annie, who had been so fondly attached to that sister from whom she
felt already severed.

"O Euphrasie!" she said to her cousin, as they were walking together
in the grounds that surrounded the house, "you must be my sister when
Adelaide is gone; it will be so dreary to have no one of my own age to
love and talk to; will you not try to love me?"

"I love you already, dear; you must not talk in that way--how can I do
other than love you?"

"I was afraid you thought me a reprobate whom it was a sin to love."
This was said half playfully, but the tears started to Euphrasie's
eyes.

"You a reprobate! a sin to love you who have been so kind to the poor
orphan girl! O Annie! have I really been so ungrateful as to give you
this idea?"

"No, dear, no! not so; but I seriously thought you deemed all human
nature utterly depraved, and did not wish to form strong attachments
with those not of your creed."

"If human nature were utterly depraved, how could it hear the voice of
God in the soul? and if you here were utterly depraved, would you have
opened your house and your heart to the wandering outcast?"

"Then you do not think religion essential to goodness? How is that,
then?"

"Man was made in the image of God, my dear Annie, and even his natural
qualities bear witness to this, unless, indeed, he become utterly
depraved."

"You do not, then, exclude us from your heaven," said Annie, embracing
her. "I am so glad; you will be my friend and sister, Euphrasie."

Euphrasie warmly returned the embrace, and said: "I have no heaven to
exclude you from, dear Annie, but if you wish for eternal bliss, you
must offer your natural qualities to him who alone can stamp eternity
upon them."

"And how shall I do that, dear?"

"Pray to God, and he will teach you."

"I would rather have your teaching just now; tell me, if you believe
human nature to be good, what is meant by 'original sin,' as it
affects us. I know the story of Adam and Eve, but not what it means."

"Adam was created with certain natural qualities, even as the inferior
animals were, adapted to the part he was to perform as lord of earth;
these qualities were good, nay, in Adam perfect. They are transmitted
to us, shorn of their brightness by the fall, but still they are good,
though imperfect now. Natures differ in individuals, but some have
very high qualities, very lofty aspirations. Have you not noticed
this?"

"Well, I used to think so, but--"

"But what?"

"No matter what; tell me, what are we to do with our high qualities
more than cultivate them, and act upon them?"

"Bring them under supernatural action, that they may be purified,
refined, and stamped with the seal of immortal truth."

"Is this your religion?"

"I know no other."

The approach of M. de Villeneuve, who was gathering flowers for Hester
to make into bouquets, prevented further conversation. The merry girl
was making garlands, and flung them round Euphrasie and Annie as they
approached. "Now sit down here," she said, "and I will crown you both
as victims to the sacrifice. M. de Villeneuve shall be the priest.
What deity will you offer these victims to, monsieur? They are ready
bound."

{45}

"That is a serious question; we must take time to consider, and
luckily here comes Eugene to solve the question for us. What divinity
rules here, young man? your sister wants to offer up these two victims
to the genius of the place."

"Indeed, it were difficult to say; ours is a pantheistic worship just
now, and we will defer the rite until we know what star is in the
ascendant. What beautiful ceremonies those old worshippers used to
have! We might raise an altar to Flora, I think, just to use to
advantage Hester's flowers."

"Mademoiselle Euphrasie would find a use for your flowers, without
going to a heathen goddess," said M. de Villeneuve. "All beauty
symbolizes good with her, and all nature reveals some truth."

"What a splendid idea, monsieur!" said Annie. "How did you know that
it was Euphrasie's? did she tell you so?"

"Not in words, but I know her of old; to her there was a spirit in
every flower, a mystic word in every form. Matter was the expression
of mind, its language in a certain sense; and she was ever inquiring
its meaning."

"You are laughing at me, monsieur," said Euphrasie; "but those were
pleasant days at the old chateau, when you used to scold me because I
would not reason, but only enjoy."

"Nay," said Annie, "by monsieur's account you did reason, and very
beautifully too. Some people want hard words and long-drawn deductions
for apprehension of what to others is inspiration. I like the
inspiration best."

"It is the easiest, at any rate," said Eugene.

"To those to whom it comes," said the Frenchman; "the materialism of
our day stifles inspiration; men see only in rocks and stones a
moneyed value. Niagara is valued less than a mill-turning stream.
Inspiration is no longer believed in."

. . . . . .

The wedding-day approached, and all were busy trying to make a show of
gladness, which, however, they but imperfectly succeeded in effecting;
but what was wanting in hilarity was more than compensated for in
dignity and magnificence. M. de Villeneuve acted as groomsman, Annie
and Hester as bridesmaids, Euphrasie excused herself on account of her
mourning habit, which she declined to remove; she was not visible
during the whole day and one or two subsequent ones. And now the hour
was come which was to place a coronet on that fair brow; but could the
courtly bridegroom have seen how little he entered into the thoughts
of his young bride, perchance he had been but half pleased, even
though she was as stately and as fair as his great pride demanded. But
love, esteem, or mutual respect entered into the thoughts of neither
during the time that the Bishop of Chichester was marrying them by
special license, in the drawing-room at Estcourt Hall.

This same arrangement was a great disappointment to the townspeople.
They had been desirous of witnessing the ceremony, and were not
well-pleased that the duke had not honored the church with his
presence. The duke, however, liked not to be gazed at, and the
sight-seers had no opportunity of gratifying their curiosity till the
bridal party left the house.

The public entrance was besieged by expectant congratulators, who
waited to shower bouquets over the blooming bride. But here again they
were doomed to disappointment; for, to avoid this publicity, which was
distasteful to them, the bridal party walked through that portion of
the splendid grounds which had been specially decorated for the
occasion, and entered their carriages at the opposite side of the
park. They were, however, obliged to pass through part of the town,
and shouts of "they come--they come!" resounded as the carriages made
their appearance. The road lay down a deep hollow, on the turn leading
to which stood a small inn. The road was so steep that the drivers
necessarily checked the horses, in order to pass safely down the
declivity. At the cry raised of "they come {46}--they come!" a woman
elegantly dressed ran out of the inn, and gazed wildly at the
carriages. At that moment the duke put his head out of the window to
see what occasioned the delay, caught the eye of the woman, turned
pale, and hastily bade the coachman drive on.

The woman shrieked, rather than said, "Tis he! O my God!" and fell to
the ground in a fainting fit.

The bystanders raised her--the carriage passed; but the spirit of the
crowd seemed changed, they scarcely knew why; they crowded round the
woman; they questioned her; and each seemed eager to afford her help.
But, as soon as her strength permitted, she withdrew without
gratifying their evident curiosity, merely apologizing for her passing
weakness, and deliberately saying she would recover best when alone.
The style, the manner, the elegance of the stranger interested them
all, and with difficulty did they persuade themselves to abandon their
inquiries. The groups which had collected to congratulate the bride
were now occupied in discussing the appearance of the stranger, and
many surmises were hazarded as to her connection with the newly wedded
pair.

Meantime that lady ordered a post-chaise to be got ready, and, ere
half recovered, entered it, to the great discomfiture of the gaping
crowd, whom she thus left to their conjectures.

The landlord was now besieged with questions, but he could tell
nothing of importance. The lady came the previous evening; gave her
name as Mrs. Ellwood; made many inquiries concerning the family at
Estcourt Hall, and had the duke's person described to her; seemed
restless, agitated; went out, and hovered round Mr. Godfrey's
residence till nightfall; then returned and locked herself immediately
in her bed-chamber. In the morning she rose late, ate little or
nothing, but sat watching and listening intently, till she issued
forth to enact the scene described. The townspeople shook their heads,
and wished Miss Godfrey, now the Duchess of Durimond, might not be the
worse for it. Adelaide had been very popular among them, and the
public festivities on the occasion of her wedding were not so mirthful
as, but for this incident, they would you have been.

The inmates of the hall, however, were as yet in happy ignorance of
the ominous conjectures raised respecting the fate of the fairest and
cleverest daughter of their house. The incident we have related came
to their knowledge as an accidental circumstance, altogether
unconnected with the wedding. Mr. and Mrs. Godfrey were well pleased
at their daughter's accession to rank and power, and the merry Hester
laughed delightedly at the anticipation of shortly visiting the
ancient castle of which her sister was now mistress, promising herself
much interest and delight in rambling amid the ancient chambers, which
had been the scene of famed historic deeds. Annie was pondering
whether her sister's rank could consist with the newfangled ideas of
liberty and equality that the times were teaching. She was wondering
whether high rank were a fetter or a privilege--a relic of man's
ignorance or a help to man's advancement, Eugene hoped that the "old
man" would use his sister well. He had not been pleased with his new
brother-in-law; he was too courtly, too stately for friendliness, and
altogether the whole affair had looked too much like bartering youth,
beauty, and intelligence for rank and wealth. He had entertained high
ideas of woman's purity, of woman's devotedness, of woman's
disinterestedness, and what was he to think? His beautiful, his
gifted, his cultivated sister had sold herself for a ducal coronet!
Was it true, then, as Shelley sings, "that all things are venal, and
that even a woman's heart may be put up in an auction mart?"

Soon after the wedding, the young man sought but did not obtain
permission to go abroad. In default of this he went to Cambridge, and
said to himself he intended to find out TRUTH.

{47}

The society of an English University is very various. Almost any
disposition may suit itself there. The boisterous, the idle, the
reckless, the gay, the meditative, and the sober, with the refined and
the sentimental, alike are there, and it is of no small importance to
a young man to be well introduced on the outset. Mr. Godfrey, himself
a Cambridge man, could not fail to procure every advantage for his
son, and that son felt himself entitled to stand proudly on his
father's position, not only as a country gentleman, but as a
scientific man, for, as we have already hinted, the Honorable Mr.
Godfrey was an exception to the ordinary stamp of the English country
gentlemen of that day. He cared more for his library than he did for
his hounds and horses, and though he himself was far from being a
profound searcher into nature's secrets, he was a great patron of
science and of scientific men. Eugene had then little to fear from
friendlessness; he was well cared for, and his friends were sober,
well-conducted men.

But accompanying him to college was one whose society he would not
willingly have sought.

Frederic Morley, son of the lawyer at Estcourt, had early given
evidence of a studious disposition, and his father wished to bring him
up to the church, as, by means of Mr. Godfrey's patronage, he hoped to
push him into some church preferment. The young man, however, was in
fact a sentimentalist, a transcendentalist, too refined, too
sensitive, for this world of stern reality. Petted at home as a poet,
he held himself superior to common influences, prided himself on
having a fine mind, on possessing elegant and cultivated tastes, and
affected disgust at the coarse, homespun ideas of ordinary people. He
wrote pathetic tales of unrealities; touching verses of despairing
affection, with which it was his delight to draw forth tears of
sympathy from young lady audiences.

A more uninteresting companion Eugene Godfrey could scarcely have met;
yet as his disposition was naturally kind and urbane, and as Morley
was without friends or acquaintances in the university, he continued
his friendship to him, and endeavored to direct his attention to
earnest themes and loftier subjects. This, however, was unwelcome to
so clever a person as Morley believed himself to be. He wanted no
direction even from the cleverest. All he sought for was appreciation,
sympathy. He could think for himself, and guide himself. The study of
Aristotle's Ethics was in his case soon supplanted by Paine's Age of
Reason and Volney's Ruins of Empires. The coarseness of the former
author he termed "wit" and the sophistry of the latter passed with him
for "wisdom." Eugene felt sorry for these freaks, for in indulging
them Frederic Morley was throwing away his livelihood; he endeavored
to reason with him, and then he became vexed that he had so few
efficient arguments to bring forward, and none but interested motives
to present. Was he to tell Frederic to be a hypocrite, and to study
theology for a "living?" He felt rather than knew the foolish boy was
pursuing a phantom, and was urged forward by very selfish motives, yet
he could not explain his own ideas, vague, mysterious, and undefined
as they were.

             "There is a fire
  And motion in the soul, which will not dwell
  In its own narrow being; but aspire
  Beyond the fitting medium of desire,
  And but once kindled, quenchless evermore."

This Eugene felt, but why he felt it, or how to satisfy it, he knew
not. The words of Euphrasie, "that perhaps there is a science of mind,
more worth than all the science of matter," recurred continually, for
in that science must lie the solution of every difficulty that beset
him. How could he learn this science? how investigate this truth, if
truth it were? And he wandered hour after hour on the banks of the
Cam, in profound meditation burying himself in the thickets near to
avoid observation.

{48}

"O truth!" exclaimed he aloud one day, in the intense excitement of
his feelings--"O truth! if ever thou deignest to visit mortals, reveal
thyself to me; teach me the way, and by all that is holy or dear to
me, I swear to follow thee!"

He was leaning against a tree; the drops stood on his forehead, caused
by the depth of his emotion, and suddenly the answer came: "PRAY,
child of aspirations, bow in prayer."

Eugene started; looked around; no form was visible, but again the
words were repeated: "Pray, seeker for truth, pray! it will come to
thee."

CHAPTER IV.

MAGNETIC INFLUENCES.

"Behold he prayeth."

"Pray, pray!" repeated Eugene; "what is prayer? Is it to hold
communion with a higher being? To be raised above the mists of this
murky earth? If so, how glad I should be to pray!" and involuntarily
he exclaimed: "O mighty Being, who rulest all, if indeed thou wiliest
to communicate with man, instruct me how to approach thee; my mind is
dark and sad. Oh! teach me truth." Eugene Godfrey was sincere; he
wished for truth; but educated in scornful intellectual supremacy,
educated to tolerate religion as a means of keeping in order the lower
classes, it was difficult for him to comprehend how "faith" could
exist otherwise than as a beautiful poetic fancy, to be classed with
the imagery of the Iliad or the Odyssey.

The real, the sentient, had been his study, and till the horrors of
the French Revolution turned his mind to consider how man could
influence man by higher motives than merely getting "good things for
one's self," he had been satisfied to leave these themes unthought of.
But now they were forced upon him. Events unprecedented in the annals
of the world bade him lay aside physical science and tun to study
mental and moral influences. He had heard enough in the little town to
which he belonged to feel sure that the multitude must be cared for,
most be looked to. He saw his father uneasy at every commotion, lest
the English aristocracy should likewise be sent on their travels. He
saw Alfred Brookbank hating his own brother, because that brother
stood between him and a property; and his sister--his fearless
sister, accomplished, beautiful, the very epitome of a refined
lady--he dared not think of her! Oh! for a motive to raise these
groveling aims! Oh! for purity, heroism, good. But for the vision of
Euphrasie, all would have been darkness then. Such were Eugene's
thoughts as he bent his steps to his chambers and sat down in his easy
chair to indulge in this absorbing reverie.

How long he sat he scarcely knew, but at length he became conscious
that he was not alone. He had forgotten to "sport his oak" (as closing
the outer door was called by the students) in token that he wished to
be alone, and Frederic Morley had entered, and, perceiving him so
engrossed, had quietly seated himself without speaking, till Eugene
gave signs of life.

"Ah, Morley, is that you? how long have you been there?"

"I scarcely know, Mr. Eugene; I have been watching your absent
thoughts. You were so still, I might have supposed you magnetized, but
I suppose the great wizard would not take so great a liberty with
you."

"What wizard?" asked Eugene.

"Have you not heard, then? There is a man here who can throw a person
into a trance, and make him reveal all kinds of secrets," answered
Frederic.

"Pshaw!" said Eugene.

"Nay," answered Frederic, "I will tell you what I saw. I was at Mrs.
Moreton's yesterday evening, singing duets with Isabel, and young
Moreton came in with a tall, dark-haired, mustachioed, whiskered
fellow, with eyes {49} like lighted coals, they were so large and
piercing. Where Moreton picked him up, I could not find out, but he
was evidently fascinated with him. He introduced him laughingly to his
mother as a great wizard, and they interrupted the music to hear him
talk. He was grandiloquent enough, told tales of spirits and
influences that haunt me still; but more than this, he insisted that
mind can influence mind irrespective of matter; that the old tales of
magic were true, and the deeds wrought by men of wondrous power, who
had found the key to nature's nighty secrets--only nature with him
does not mean inert matter as we mean by it, but matter and
intelligences who act upon matter. The universe, he says, is peopled
by wondrous forms, and these forms can be communicated with by a
privileged soul. Oh, he is a mighty man!" and Frederic shuddered.

"And you have no more sense than to believe such a cock-and-bull story
as that? Fie, Morley, I am ashamed of you!"

"But let me tell you what I saw with my own eyes. He first threw
Isabel into a trance, from which neither Mrs. Morley, nor her brother,
nor i could awaken her. Then when Mrs. Morley grew frightened, he
assured her there was no danger, that she was only bewitched by his
art, and that he would make her talk as he pleased. Then he put her
brother's hand in hers, and bade him think of the walk he had taken
that afternoon, of the people he had met and spoken to; he did so, and
the wizard bade the girl speak, and she recounted the events of the
walk from his leaving college to his meeting with the wizard, and
their entering the room in which we were--all, as her brother
declared, correctly. The wizard then disenchanted her, and she slowly
roused herself, pale and listless, but quite unconscious of what had
passed."

"I have heard of animal magnetism before, quietly responded Eugene.

"Have you? But do you know its power? It is absolutely frightful. He
lifted my arm before I knew what he was about, passed his hand two or
three times above and below it, and there it remained fixed
horizontally from the shoulder, without my having power to move it up
or down. Young Moreton tried to put it down for me, but he could not;
and there I stood fixed till it pleased the wizard to unloose the
spell he had cast around me."

"Yours was not an agreeable position, truly," said Eugene, "but he did
not hurt you; you are safe and sound now."

"Yes, but the most wonderful is yet to come. Little Helen Moreton came
into the room to bid her mamma good-night. Seeing the stranger, she
was shy, and went to the window-curtains to hide. Mrs. Moreton called
her, but she looked out for a minute, seemed to take a greater dislike
to the stranger than before, and hid again. Mrs. Moreton was annoyed,
and the wizard said: 'Do you want her, madam? If so, I will bring her
to you.' But Mrs. Moreton replied, 'Oh no! if you go near her she will
shriek and cry; she is so shy.' 'Nay,' said the man, 'I will stand
here, and here she shall come without a shriek, and lie down at my
feet.' What he did we could not find out, for he seemed perfectly
still. The window-curtain unfolded, and apparently against her will
the child came forward. She caught at a chair, as if determined to
resist the influence, but that seemed to urge her forward; she let it
go, and then grasped the table with both hands, as if determined to
resist. She pouted, she frowned, she strove to keep her place, but
keep it she could not. Step by step she came and laid herself quietly
down at the wizard's feet. Mrs. Moreton almost shrieked, but the child
lay as if she dared not leave until the magician gave permission."

"Well, and what do you infer from all this?" asked Eugene.

{50}

"I hardly know; I am terrified; what if it is true, as this man says,
that weak minds must obey the strong; that resistance is useless? I
should not like to become the slave of a spirit such as his."

"You believe him to be a wicked man?"

"I do, yet I know not why; I should not like to meet him when
unprotected."

"Why, Morley, you astonish me; I could not conceive you so weak. These
fears are unworthy a noble mind."

"But what are we to do if such theories be true?"

"They are not true--at least not in the way you state them. There are
protecting, counteracting influences for the weakest. I cannot explain
all this to-night; but all history, all experience go to prove that
the 'race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong'
--that bad power is often overcome by weak means. I will repeat to you
a piece of advice I received myself to-day, and which I intend to
take. It is one you must often have received, for your father intends
you for the church. Pray, Morley, to the highest of all intelligences,
to the greatest of all powers. The strongest will then be invoked to
your aid."

"_Pray?_ Are you serious, Mr. Eugene?"

"I am serious; why doubt it?"

"An advice so contrary to the spirit of the age! why, it is the last
to be expected."

"Perhaps so; but listen: That mind is not matter, your experience
proves, as does that of most people. What mind is, perhaps we do not
know; but that mind acts upon mind, irrespective of space and
obstacles, we feel. Listen! you know my family; a family less
superstitious scarcely exists. We are too much wedded to cause and
effect lightly to believe. My grandfather was as little credulous as
my father. Now hear what happened to him. He had a brother to whom he
was fondly attached, and by whom he was as fondly loved. Their
correspondence was constant. That brother went to India, as an
officer. One night about twelve o'clock, as my grandfather was going
to sleep, having sat up later than usual, the curtains at the foot of
the bed were with drawn, and his brother, pale, but in full
regimentals, appeared and said, 'Good-by, Frank.' My grandfather
related the circumstance at breakfast next morning, and noted it down
in writing, being confident that he was not asleep. After due time the
Indian mail arrived, giving an account of the brother's death on the
field of battle at the exact hour and day specified. Ere his spirit
winged its flight, we know not whither, it had communicated with the
being it loved best on earth."

Frederic turned pale. "What do you infer from this?" he asked.

"Simply this," returned Eugene; "that 'there are more things in heaven
and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,' and this
influence of mind on mind is one of them. If the Supreme Ruler have
made a law that man, to be assisted by him, must pray to him, must put
himself in communication with him, who are we that we should refuse
the means? If you fear the evil spirit in a man, try if there be no
good spirit capable of protecting you. The universal testimony of
mankind is in favor of supernatural agencies. We should ponder well
ere we throw from us such aid."

Frederic smiled, and rose to take his leave. Advice so different from
what he had expected was scarcely likely to be well received. He had
no answer ready, so he left the narrow-minded religionist to his own
crude fancies.

And Eugene closed the oaken door, and returned, and for the first time
of his life knelt down to beseech light from the Author of
light--light to guide him through these wearisome shoals of doubt and
darkness--light to show him something more than how to render matter
subservient to animal comfort--light to enlighten the {51} inward
feeling. Good and evil, what are they? Mind and matter--which is the
true reality? What are we to live for--the animal life, or the
spiritual? And is the purely spiritual distinct from the purely
intellectual as well as from the animal? Is there a soul, the
functions of which are different, distinct, from those of the body,
and to the knowledge of which mere intellect cannot arrive? What is
nature? What is revelation? How do they act upon each other? What is
the office, what the aim of each? Revolving these themes, it was deep
in the night ere the young man sought his couch.

TO BE CONTINUED.

--------

ORIGINAL.

INDEPENDENCE OF THE CHURCH.

Our age is more sentimental than intellectual, more philanthropic than
Christian, more material than spiritual. It may and no doubt does
cherish and seek to realize, with such wisdom as it has, many humane
and just sentiments, but it retains less Christian thought than it
pretends, and has hardly any conception of catholic principles. It
studies chiefly phenomena, physical or psychical, and as these are all
individual, particular, manifold, variable, and transitory, it fails
to recognize any reality that is universal, invariable, and permanent,
superior to the vicissitudes of time and place, always and everywhere
one and the same. It is so intent on the sensible that it denies or
forgets the spiritual, and so engrossed with the creature that it
loses sight of the creator.

Indeed, there are not wanting men in this nineteenth century who deny
that there is any creator at all, or that anything has been made, and
maintain that all has been produced by self-development or growth.
These men, who pass for the great scientific lights of the age, tell
us that all things are in a continual process of self-formation, which
they call by the general name of progress; and so taken up are they
with their doctrine of progress, that they gravely assert that God
himself, if God there be, is progressive, perfectible, ever proceeding
from the imperfect towards the perfect, and seeking by unremitting
action to perfect, fill out, or complete his own being. They seem not
to be aware that if the perfect does not already really exist, or is
wanting, there is and can be no progress; for progress is motion
towards the perfect, and, if the perfect does not exist there can be
no motion towards it, and in the nature of the case the motion can be
only towards nothing, and therefore, as St. Thomas has well
demonstrated, in proving the impossibility of progress without end, no
motion at all. Nor do they seem any more to be aware that the
imperfect, the incomplete, is not and cannot be self-active, or
capable of acting in and from itself alone, and therefore has not the
power in itself alone to develop and complete itself, or perfect its
own being. Creatures may be and are progressive, because they live,
and move, and have their being in their Creator, and are aided and
sustained by him whose being is eternally complete who is in himself
infinitely perfect. They forget also the important fact {52} that
where there is nothing universal, there can be nothing particular,
that where there is nothing invariable there can be nothing variable,
that where there is nothing permanent there can be nothing transitory,
and that where there is no real being there can be no phenomena, any
more than there can be creation without a creator, action without an
actor, appearance without anything that appears, or a sign that
signifies nothing.

Now the age, regarded in its dominant tendency, neglects or denies
this universal, invariable, persistent, real, or spiritual order, and
its highest and most catholic principles are mere classifications or
generalizations of visible phenomena, and therefore abstractions,
without reality, without life or efficiency. It understands not that
throughout the universe the visible is symbolical of the invisible,
and that to the prepared mind there is an invisible but living reality
signified by the observable phenomena of nature, as in the Christian
economy an invisible grace is signified by the visible sacramental
sign. All nature is in some sense sacramental, but the age takes it
only as an empty sign signifying nothing. Hence the embarrassment of
the Christian theologian in addressing it; the symbols he uses and
must use have for it no meaning. He deals and must deal with an order
of thought of which it has little or no conception. He is as one
speaking to a man who has no hearing, or exhibiting colors to a man
who has no sight, He speaks of the transcendental to those who
recognize nothing above the sensible--of the spiritual to men who are
of the earth earthy, and have lost the faculty of rising above the
material, and piercing beyond the visible. The age has fallen, even
intellectually, far below the Christian order of thought, and is
apparently unable to rise even in conception to the great catholic
principles in accordance with which the universe is created,
sustained, and governed.

Nobody in his senses denies that man is progressive, or that modern
society has made marvellous progress in the material order, in the
application of science to the productive arts. I am no _laudator
temporis acti_; I understand and appreciate the advantages of the
present, and do not doubt that steam navigation railroads, and
lightning telegraphs, which bid defiance to the winds and waves, and
as it were annihilate space and time, will one day be made to subserve
higher than mere material interests; but I cannot shut my eyes to the
fact that in many and very important respects, the modern world has
deteriorated instead of improving, and been more successful in losing
than in gaining. The modern nations commonly regarded, at least by
themselves, as the more advanced nations, have fallen in moral and
religious thought below the ancient Greeks and Romans. They may have
more sound dogmas, but they have less conception of principles, of the
invisible or spiritual order, excepting always the followers of
Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus, whose absurd materialism is
revived with hardly any disguise by the most approved thinkers of our
own age. The Gentiles generally held catholic principles, but
misapprehended and misapplied them, and thus fell into gross idolatry
and degrading and besotting superstition; but the moderns while
retaining many Catholic dogmas have lost the meaning of the word
principle. The Catholic can detect, no doubt, phases of truth in all
the doctrines of those outside the church, but the Christianity they
profess has no universal, immutable, and imperishable principle, and
degenerates in practice into a blind and fierce fanaticism, a watery
sentimentality, a baseless humanitarianism, or a collection of
unrelated and unmeaning dogmas, which are retained only because they
are never examined, and which can impart no light to the
understanding, infuse no life into the hearty and impose no restraint
on the appetites and passions.

{53}

Having fallen below the conception of a order above the visible and
phenomenal, and sunk to complete Sadduceeism, which believes in
neither angel nor spirit, the age makes war on the church because she
asserts such order, and remains fast anchored in it; because she is
immovable and invariable, or as her enemies say, stationary,
unprogressive, and therefore hostile to progress. She has, it is said,
the insolence to attempt to teach and govern men and nations, instead
of gracefully submitting to their views and wishes, and bestowing her
blessing on their exertions for the liberty and progress of society.
The age denies her to be the church of God, because she fails to prove
herself to be the church of man, holding simply from a human
authorities. It denies her divine origin, constitution, and authority,
because she is stable, cannot be carried away by every wind of
doctrine, does not yield to every popular impulse, and from time to
time resists individuals, civil rulers, the people even, and opposes
their favorite theories, plans, and measures, whenever she finds them
at war with her mission and her law. It applauds her, indeed, to the
echo, when she appears to be on the side of what happens to be
popular, but condemns her without mercy when she opposes popular
error, popular folly, popular injustice, and asserts the unpopular
truth, defends the unpopular cause, or uses her power and influence in
behalf of neglected justice, and please with her divine eloquence for
the poor, the wronged, the downtrodden. Yet this is precisely what she
should do, if the church of God, and what it would be contrary to her
nature and office on that supposition not to do.

The age concedes nothing to the unseen and eternal. In its view
religion itself is human, and ought to be subject to man, and
determinable by society, dictated by the people, who in the modern
mind usurp the place of God. It should not govern, but be governed,
and governed from below, not from above; or rather, in its subversion
of old ideas, it holds that being governed from below is being
governed from above. It forgets that religion, objectively considered,
is, if anything, the revelation and assertion of the divine order, or
the universal and eternal law of God, the introduction and maintenance
in the practical affairs of men and nations of the divine element,
without which there would and could be nothing in human society
invariable, permanent, or stable--persistent, independent, supreme, or
authoritative. The church is simply the divine constitution and organ
of religion in society, and must, like religion itself, be universal,
invariable, independent, supreme, and authoritative for all men and
nations. Man does not originate the church. She does not depend on
man, or hold from him either individually or collectively; for she is
instituted to govern him, to administer for him the universal and
eternal law, and to direct and assist him in conducting himself in the
way of his duty, to his supreme good, which she could not do if she
held from and depended on him.

The point here insisted on, and which is so far removed from the
thought of this age, is, that this order transcending the phenomenal
and the whole material or sensible universe, and which in the strictly
philosophical language of Scripture is called "the Law of the Lord,"
is eminently real, not imaginary, not factitious, not an abstraction,
not a classification or generalization of particulars, nor something
that depends for its reality on human belief or disbelief. Religion
which asserts this divine order, this transcendental order, is
objectively "the Law of the Lord," which, proceeding from the eternal
reason and will of God, is the principle and reason of things. The
church, as the divinely constituted organ of that law, is not an
arbitrary institution, is not an accident, is not an afterthought, is
not a superinduction upon the original plan of the Creator, but enters
integrally into that plan, and is therefore founded in the {54}
principle, the reason, and the constitution of things, and is that in
reference to which all things are created, sustained, and governed,
and hence our Lord is called "the Lamb slain from the foundation of
the world."

But this our age does not conceive. For it the divine, the invariable,
the universal, and the eternal are simply abstractions or
generalizations, not real being. Its only conception of immensity, is
space unlimited--of eternity, is time without end--of the infinite,
the undefined, and of the universal, totality or sum total.
_Catholic_, in its understanding, means accepting or ranking together
as equally respectable the doctrines, opinions, views, and sentiments
of all sects and denominations. Christian, Jewish, Mahometan, and
Pagan. He, in the sense of modern philosophers, has a catholic
disposition who respects all convictions, and has no decided
conviction of his own. Catholicity is held to be something made up by
the addition of particulars. The age does not understand that there is
no catholicity without unity, and therefore that catholicity is not
predicable of the material order, since nothing material or visible is
or can be strictly one and universal. The church is catholic, not
because as a visible body she is universal and includes all men and
nations in her communion; she was as strictly catholic when her
visible communion was restricted to the Blessed Virgin and the
Apostles as she is now, or would be if all the members of the race
were recipients of her sacraments. She is catholic because she is the
organ of the whole spiritual order, truth, or reality, and that order
in its own intrinsic nature is one and universal. All truth is
catholic, because all truth is one and invariable; all the dogmas of
the church are catholic, because universal principles, always and
everywhere true. The law of the Lord is catholic, because universally,
always and every where law, equally law for all men and nations in
every age of the world, on earth and is heaven, in time and eternity.
The church is catholic, because she holds under this law, and because
God promulgates and administers it through her, because he lives and
reigns in her, and hence she is called his kingdom, the kingdom of God
on earth, a kingdom fulfilled and completed in heaven. It is this
order of ideas that the age loses sight of and is so generally
disposed to deny. Yet without it there were no visible order, and
nothing would or could exist.

The principal, reason, nature, or constitution of things is in this
order, and men must conform to it or live no true, no real life. They
who recede from it advance towards nothing, and, as far as possible,
become nothing. The church is independent, superior to all human
control, and persistent, unaltered, and unalterable through all the
vicissitudes of time and place, because the order in which she is
founded is independent and persistent. She cannot be moved or harmed,
because she rests on the principle, truth, and constitution of things,
and is founded neither on the individual man, the state, nor the
people, but on God himself, the Rock of Ages, against which anything
created must rage and beat in vain. "On this rock will I build my
church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." The
church is therefore, by her own divine constitution, by the very
principle and law of her existence, indefectible. No weapon forged
against her shall prosper. The wicked may conspire for her
destruction, but in vain, because they conspire to destroy reality,
and all reality is always invincible and indestructible. They cannot
efface or overthrow her, because she is founded in the truth and
reality of things, or what is the same thing, in the unalterable
reason and will of God, in whom all creatures have their
principle--live, move, and have their being.

{55}

They who oppose the church in the name of humanity or human progress,
cannot succeed, because she is indivisible, and they would utterly
defeat themselves if they could. They would deprive the human race of
the law of God, which makes wise the simple and strengthens the weak,
and deprive men and nations of the truth and reality of things, the
very principle of all life, and of the very means and conditions of
all progress. Man no doubt is progressive, but not in and by himself
alone. Archimedes demanded a _pou sto_, a whereon to rest his fulcrum
outside the earth, in order to move it, and there is no conceivable
way by which a man can raise himself by a lever supported on himself.
How is it that our philosophers fail to see the universal application
of the laws which they themselves assert? All progress is by
assimilation, by accretion, as that hierophant of progress, Pierre
Leroux, has amply demonstrated, and if there is no reality outside of
man or above him, what is there for him to assimilate, and how is he
to become more than at any given time he already is? Swift ridiculed
the philosophers of Laputa, who labored to extract sunbeams from
cucumbers, but even more ridiculous are they who pretend that
something may be assimilated from nothing, or that a thing can in and
of itself make itself more than it is. Where there is nothing above
man with which he does or may commune, there is for him no possibility
of progress, and men and nations can never advance beyond what they
are. This is so in the nature of things, and it is only what is
implied in the maxim, _Ex nihilo nihil fit_.

An institution, no matter by what sacred name called, founded by
savages, embodying only what they are, and worked by them, would have
no power to elevate them above their savage state, and could only
serve to perpetuate their savagery. The age speaks of the applications
of science to the productive arts, of the marvels of the steam-engine,
steamboats, the locomotive, and the magnetic telegraph, and boasts
that it renders mind omnipotent over matter. Vain boast, poor
philosophy. We have in those things gained no triumph over matter, no
control over the forces of nature, which are as independent of our
reason and will as ever they were, as the first steamboat explosion
will suffice to convince the most skeptical. We have subjected none of
the forces of nature; we have only learned in some few instances to
construct our machinery so as to be propelled by them, as did the
first man who built a mill, constructed a boat, or spread his sails to
catch the breeze. We alter not, we control not by our machinery the
forces of nature, and all the advantage we have obtained is in
conforming to them, and in suffering them, according to their own
laws, or laws which we have not imposed on them, to operate for us.
The principle is universal, catholic, and as true in the moral or
spiritual as in the mechanical or physical world.

Man does not create, generate, or control the great moral and
spiritual forces on which he depends to propel his moral and spiritual
machinery. They exist and operate independently alike of his reason
and his will, and the advantages he derives from them are obtained by
his placing himself within the sphere of their influence, or, to be
strictly correct, by interposing voluntarily no obstacle to their
inflowing, for they are always present and operative unless resisted.
Withdraw him from their influence, or induce him obstinately to resist
them, which he may do, for he is a free moral agent, and he can make
no more progress than a sailing ship at sea in a dead calm. These
forces are divine, are embodied in the church as her living and
constitutive force--are in one sense the church herself, and hence men
and nations separated from her communion and influence are thrown back
on nature alone, and necessarily cease to be progressive. We may war
against this as much as we please, but we cannot alter it, for the
principle on which it rests is a universal and indestructible law.

{56}

Individuals and nations separated by schism or heresy from the visible
communion of the church do not become at once absolutely and in all
respects unprogressive, for they are carried on for a time by the
momentum she baa given them, and besides, they are not, as she
continues to exist, absolutely beyond or outside of the sphere of her
influence, though indirect and reflected. But from the moment of the
separation their progress begins to slacken, their spiritual life
becomes sickly and attenuated, and gradually they lose all that they
had received from the church, and lapse into helpless and unassisted
nature. This, which is demonstrable _à priori_, is proved by the
experience of those nations that separated from the church in the
sixteenth century. These nations at first retained a large portion of
their old Catholic culture, and many of the habits acquired under the
discipline and training of the church. But they have been gradually
losing them ever since, and the more advanced portions of them have
got pretty clear of them, and thrown off, as they express it, the last
rag of Popery. Indeed this is their boast.

In throwing off the authority of the church, they came in religious
matters under the authority of the state, or the temporal sovereign or
ruler--a purely human authority, without competency in spirituals--and
thus lost at once their entire religious freedom, or liberty of
conscience. In Catholic nations the civil authority has always, or
almost always, been prone to encroach on the authority of the church,
and to attempt to control her external discipline or ecclesiastical
administration; but, in the nations that were carried away by the
so-called reformation, the civil authority assumed in every instance
complete control over the national church, and prescribed its
constitution, its creed, its liturgy, and its discipline. This for
them completely humanized religion, and made it a department of state.
It is true these nations professed to recognize the Bible as
containing a divine revelation, and to be governed by it; and this
would have been something, even much, had they not remitted its
interpretation to the civil magistrate, the king, the parliament, the
public judgment of the people, or the private judgment of the
individual, which made its meeting, as practically received, vary from
nation to nation, and even from individual to individual.

This sacrificed, in principle, the sovereignty of God and the entire
spiritual order, departed to a fearful distance from the truth and
reality of things, and if it retained some of the precepts of the
Christian law, it retained them as precepts not of the law of God but
as precepts of the law of man, enjoined, explained, and applied by a
purely human authority. In process of time, the authority of the state
in religious matters was found to be usurped, tyrannical, and
oppressive, and the thinking part of the separated nations asserted
the right of private judgment, or of each believer to interpret the
Holy Scriptures for himself. Having gone thus far, they went still
farther, and assert for everyone the right to judge for himself not
only of the meaning, but of the inspiration, authenticity, and
authority of the Scriptures, though the civil government in none of
these nations, except the United States, not in existence at the time
of the separation, has disavowed its authority in spirituals.
Practically, the doctrine that each individual judges for himself is
now generally adopted.

The authority of the Scriptures has followed the authority of the
church, and is practically, when not theoretically, rejected. It was
perhaps asserted by the reformers at first for the purpose of
presenting some authority not precisely human, which no Catholic would
deny, as offset against that of the church, rather than from any deep
reverence for it, or profound conviction of it« reality. But, be this
as it may, it counts for little now. The authors of Essays and
Reviews, and the Anglican bishop of Natal, take hardly less liberty
with the {57} Scriptures than Luther and Calvin did with the church.
The more advanced thinkers, if thinkers they are, of the age go
further still, and maintain not only that a man may be a very
religious man, and a true follower of Jesus Christ, without accepting
either the authority of the church or that of the Bible, but without
even believing either in the existence of God or the immortality of
the soul. Schleiermacher, the great Berlin preacher, went thus far in
his Discourses on Religion, addressed to the Cultivated among its
Despisers; and equally far, if not farther, in the same direction, go
the rising school or sect called Positivists. Religion is reduced to a
spontaneous development--perhaps I should say, to a secretion of human
nature, implying no reality above or distinguishable from human nature
itself.

It is not pretended that all persons in these nations have as yet
reached this result; but as there is a certain logic in error as well
as in truth, all are tending and must tend to it. What is called
progress of religious ideas or religious enlightenment is not held to
consist in any accession to our stock of known truth, in penetrating
farther into the world of reality, and attaining a firmer grasp of its
principles, nor in a better understanding of our moral relations and
the duties growing out of them, but in simply casting off or getting
rid of so-called Popery--of everything that has been retained in the
nations, and the sects into which they divide and subdivide, furnished
by the Catholic Church in which the reformers had been reared, and in
reducing men and nations to the nakedness and feebleness of nature.
The more advanced portion are already seen sporting _in puris
naturalibus_, heedless alike of shame and winter's cold. The others
are following more or less rapidly in the same direction; for there is
no halting-place between Catholicity and naked naturalism, and men
must either ascend to the one or descend to the other. But those who
choose to descend can find no resting-place even in naturalism, for
nature, severed from Catholicity, is severed from its principle, is
severed from God, from the reality and truth of things, and is
therefore unreal, nothing, Hence the descent is endless. Falsehood has
no bottom, is unreal, purely negative, and can furnish no standing.
Men can stand only on the true, the real, and that is Catholicity, the
order represented in society by the church. Those who forsake the
church, Catholicity, God, forsake therefore the real order, have
nothing to stand on, and in the nature of the case can only drop into
what the Scripture calls "the bottomless pit."

We hear much of the ignorance, superstition, and even of idolatry of
Catholics, nothing of which is true; but this much is certain, that
those who abandon the church, and succeed in humanizing religion,
making it hold from man and subject to his control, do as really
worship gods of their fashioning as did the old worshippers of gods
made of wood and stone, because their religion is really only what
they make it, and fall into as gross an idolatry and into as besotted
and besotting a superstition as can be found among any heathen people,
ancient or modern.

It is easy therefore to understand why the church sets her face so
resolutely against modern reformers, liberals, revolutionists, in a
word, the whole so-called movement party, professing to labor for the
diffusion of intelligence and the promotion of science, liberty, and
human progress. It is not science, liberty, or progress that she
opposes, but false theories substituted for science, and the wrong and
destructive means and methods of promoting liberty and progress
adopted and insisted on by liberals and revolutionists. There is only
one right way of effecting the progress they profess to have at heart,
and that is by conforming to truth and reality, for falsehood is
impotent, and nothing can be gained by it. She opposes the movement
party, not as a movement party, not as a party of light, liberty, {58}
and progress, but as a party moving in the wrong direction, putting
forth unscientific theories, theories which amuse the imagination
without enlightening  the understanding, which if they dazzle it is
only to blind with their false glitter, which embraced as truth
to-day, must be rejected as falsehood to-morrow, and which in fact
tend only to destroy liberty, and render all real progress impossible.
As the party, collectively or individually, neither is nor pretends to
be infallible, the church, at the worst, is as likely to be right as
they are, and the considerations presented prove that she is right,
and that they are wrong. There is no science but in knowing the truth,
that which really is or exists, and there is no real progress,
individual or social, with nature alone, because nature alone has no
existence, and can exist and become more than it is only by the
gracious, the supernatural assistance of God, in whom all things live,
move, and have their being.

A great clamor has been raised by the whole movement party throughout
the world against the encyclical of the Holy Father, dated at Rome,
December 8, 1864, and even some Catholics, not fully aware of the
sense and reach of the opinions censured, were at first partially
disturbed by it; but the Holy Father has given in it only a proof of
his pastoral vigilance, the fidelity of the church to her divine
mission, and the continuous presence in her and supernatural
assistance of the Holy Ghost. The errors condemned are all aimed at
the reality and invariability, universality and persistency, of truth,
the reality of things, the supremacy of the spiritual order, and the
independence and authority of the divine law, at real science, and the
means and conditions of both liberty and progress. In it we see the
great value of the independence of the church,--of a church holding
from God instead of holding from man. If the church had been human or
under human control she would never have condemned those errors,
because nearly all of them are popular, and hailed as truth by the
age. Man condemns only what man dislikes, and the popular judgment
condemns only what is unpopular. It is only the divine that judges
according to truth, and without being influenced by the spirit of the
age, or by what is popular or unpopular. If the church had been human,
she would have been carried away by those errors, and proved herself
the enemy instead of the friend, the protector, and the benefactor of
society.

These remarks on the divine character and independence of the church
are not inappropriate to the present times, and may serve to calm,
comfort, and console Catholics amidst the national convulsions and
changes which, without the reflections they suggest, might deeply
afflict the Catholic heart. The successes of Italy and Prussia in the
recent unjustifiable war against Austria, and the humiliation of the
Austrian empire, the last of the great powers on which the church
could rely for the protection of her material interests, have
apparently given over the temporal government of this world to her
enemies. There is at this moment not a single great power in the world
that is officially Catholic, or that officially recognizes the
Catholic Church as the church of God. The majority of Frenchmen are or
profess to be Catholics, but the French state professes no religion,
and if it pays a salary to the Catholic clergy, Protestant ministers,
and Jewish rabbis, it is not as ministers of religion, but as servants
of the state. The Russian state is schismatic, and officially
anti-papal; the British state, as a state, is Protestant, and
officially hostile to the church; Italy follows France; and Prussia,
which at the moment means Germany, is officially Protestant and
anti-Catholic; and so are Holland, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway.
Belgium and our own great Republic profess officially no religion, but
give freedom and protection to all religions not held to be _contra
bonos mores_. Spain and Portugal, no longer great powers, and {59}
most of the Central and South American states, officially profess the
Catholic faith, but they count for next to nothing in the array of
nations. Hellas and the Principalities, like Russia, are schismatic,
and the rest of the world, including the greater part of Asia and all
of Africa, is Mahometan or pagan, and of course hostile to the church.

I have not enumerated Austria, for what is to be her fate no one can
now say; but as a portion of her population belong to the Greek
schismatic church, and a larger portion still are Protestants, the
most that can be expected of her is that she will, in regard to
religion, assume the attitude of France and Italy. There is then
really no power on which the church can now rely for the support of
her external and material interests. I will not say that the triumph
of Prussia is the triumph of Protestantism, for that would not be
true; but it is, at least for the moment, the success of the party
that denounced the papal encyclical, and would seem to be a complete
victory, perhaps a final victory, over that system of mixed civil and
ecclesiastical government which grew up on the downfall of the Roman
empire and the conversion of the barbarian nations that seated
themselves on its ruins. It is the total and final destruction of the
Christian empire founded, with the aid of the Pope and bishops, by
Charlemagne and his nobles, and not unlikely will end in the complete
severance of all official union of church and state--alike the
official union between the state and the heretical and schismatic
churches, and between the state and the Catholic Church; so that
throughout the civilized world the people will be politically free to
be of any religion they choose, and the state of no religion.

This result is already reached in nearly all the nations hitherto
called Catholic nations, but not in the officially Protestant and
schismatic nations; and for a long time to come the anti-Catholic or
anti-papal religions, schismatical, heretical, Mahometan, and pagan
religions, will be retained as official or state religions, with more
or less of civil tolerance for Catholics. For the moment, the
anti-papal party appears to be victorious, and no doubt believes that
it is all over with the Catholic Church. That party had persuaded
itself that the church, as a ruling body, was of imperial origin--that
the papal power had been created by the edicts of Roman emperors,
and that it depends entirely on the civil authority for its
continuance. Hence they concluded that, if the church could be
deprived of all civil support, it must fall. They said, the church
depends on the papacy, and the papacy depends on the empire; hence,
detach the empire--that is, the civil power--from the papacy, and the
whole fabric tumbles at once into complete ruin. It is not improbable
that, to confound them, to bring to naught the wisdom of the wise, and
to take the crafty in their own craftiness, Providence has suffered
them to succeed. He has permitted them to detach the empire, that they
may see their error.

The successful party have reckoned without their host. They have
reasoned from false premises, and come necessarily to false
conclusions. The church is, undoubtedly, essentially papal as well as
episcopal, and the destruction of the papacy would certainly be her
destruction as the visible church; but it is false to assume that the
papacy was created by imperial edicts and depends on the empire, for
it is an indisputable historical fact that it existed prior to any
imperial edict in its favor, and while the empire was as yet
officially pagan, and hostile to the church. Hence it does not follow
that detaching the empire from the papacy will prove its destruction.
The church was as papal in its constitution when the whole force of
the empire was turned against it, when it sought refuge in the
catacombs, as it is now, or was in the time of Gregory VII. or
Innocent III., and is as papal in this country, where it has no civil
{60} support or recognition, as in Spain, or the Papal States
themselves. The very principal, idea, and nature of the church, as we
have set them forth in asserting the independence and supremacy of the
spiritual order, of which she is the organ, contradict in the moat
positive manner the dependency of the papacy on the empire.

The church as a visible body has, no doubt, temporal relations, and
therefore temporal interests susceptible of being affected by the
changes which take place in states and empires, and it is not
impossible, nor improbable, that the recent changes in Europe may more
or less deeply affect those interests. The papacy has itself so
judged, and has resisted them with all the means placed at its
disposal. These changes, if carried out, if completed, will affect in
a very serious manner the relations of the papacy with temporal
sovereigns, or, to use the consecrated term, with the empire, and many
of its regulations and provisions for the administration of
ecclesiastical affairs will certainly need to be changed or modified,
and much inconvenience during the transition to the new state of
things will no doubt be experienced. All changes from an old
established order, though in themselves changes for the better, are
for a time attended with many inconveniences. The Israelite's escaping
from Egyptian bondage had to suffer weariness, hunger, and thirst in
the wilderness before reaching the promised land. But whatever
temporal changes or inconveniences of this sort the church in her
external relations may have to endure, they are accidental, and by no
means involve her destruction, or impair her power or integrity as the
church of God, or divinely instituted organ of the spiritual order.

There is no question that the party that regards itself as having
triumphed in the success of Italy and Prussia is bitterly hostile not
only to what it calls the papal politics, but to the Catholic Church
herself, and will not be satisfied with simply detaching the empire
from her support, but will insist on its using all its power and
influence against her. That party, indeed, demands religious liberty,
but religious liberty, in its sense of the term, is full freedom for
all religions except the Catholic, the only true, religion. Error,
they hold, is harmless when reason is free, but truth they
instinctively feel is dangerous to their views and wishes, and must
for their safety be bound hand and foot. But suppose the worst;
suppose the civil power becomes actively hostile to the church,
prohibits by law the profession and practice of the Catholic religion,
punishes Catholics with fines and imprisonment, fire and sword, the
dungeon and the stake, the church will be no worse off than she was
under the pagan emperors, hardly worse off than she was under even the
Arians. The empire under the Jew and the Gentile exerted its utmost
fury against her, and exerted it in vain. It found her irrepressible.
The more she was opposed and persecuted, the more she flourished, and
the blood of the martyrs fattened the soil for a rich growth of
Catholics. Individuals and nations may be, as they have been, detached
from her communion, and many souls for whom Christ died perish
everlastingly, which is a fearful loss to them, and society may suffer
the gains acquired to civilization during eighteen centuries to be
lost, and moral and intellectual darkness gather anew for a time over
the land, once enlightened by the Sun of righteousness, for God
governs men as free moral agents, not as machines or slaves; but the
church will survive her persecutors, and reconquer the empire for God
and his Christ. Is she not founded on the Rock of Ages, and is it not
said by him who is truth itself, that the gates of hell shall not
prevail against her?

It would be impossible to subject the church to a severer ordeal than
she has time and again passed through, and it is not likely that her
children will be exposed to greater trials than {61} those to which
they were subjected in the fifth and sixth centuries by the subversion
of the Roman empire by the pagan and Arian barbarians, or to suffer
heavier calamities than were inflicted on them by the so-called
reformation in the sixteenth century. The Protestants of today cannot
be fiercer, more intolerant or fanatical than they were in the age of
Luther and Calvin; and the infidels of to-day cannot be more envenomed
against the church, or more bloodthirsty and brutal, than were the
infidels in the French revolution; and all these the church has
survived.

The well-being of society, its orderly, peaceful, and continuous
progress, requires, as the Holy See has constantly maintained, the
co-operation and harmonious action of the church and the empire or
republic, but the church has seldom found the empire ready and willing
to co-operate with her, and the record of the struggles between her
and it fills more than a brief chapter in ecclesiastical and civil
history. In point of fact, the church has usually found herself
embarrassed and oppressed by officially Catholic states, and most of
the popular prejudices that still exist against her owe their origin
neither to her doctrines nor to her practices, but to the action of
secular governments officially Catholic. In the last century, her
bitterest enemies were the sovereigns of officially Catholic states;
the most generous friends of the Holy See were states officially
heretical or schismatic, as Russia, Great Britain, Sweden, and
Prussia. Austria is humiliated and suffering now for being in the way
of the anti-papal aggression, and every generous-hearted man
sympathizes with her noble-minded and well-disposed if not able
emperor, and it is no time to speak of her past shortcomings; but this
much may be said, she has seldom been a generous supporter of the Holy
See, and sometimes has been its oppressor.

Governments, like individuals, seldom profit by any experience but
their own; yet experience has proved, over and over again, that
governments the most powerful cannot, however determined on doing so,
extirpate Catholicity by force from their dominions. Pagan Rome, once
the haughty mistress of the world, tried it, made the profession of
the Christian faith punishable with death, and death in the most
frightful and excruciating forms, but failed. England, with all her
power, with all her Protestant zeal, aided by her intense national
prejudices, though she emulated the cruelties of the Caesars and even
surpassed the Caesars in her craft and treachery, has never been able
to extinguish the Catholic faith and love of the Irish people, the
great majority of whom have never ceased to adhere to the Catholic
religion. The church thrives under persecution, for to suffer for
Christ's sake is a signal honor, and martyrdom is a crown of glory.
The government can reach no farther than to the bodies and goods of
Catholics, and he who counts it an honor to suffer, a crown to die,
for his faith, fears nothing that can be done to those, and is
mightier than king or kaiser, parliament or congress. The Christians,
as Lactantius well says, conquered the world not by slaying but by
being slain. Woe to him who slays the Catholic for his religion, but
immortal honor and glory to him who is slain! Men are so constituted
that they rarely love that which costs them nothing, no sacrifice. It
is having suffered for our native land that hallows it in our
affections, and the more we suffer for the church, the more and the
more tenderly do we love her. St. Hilary accuses the Arian Constantius
of being a worse enemy to the church then Nero, Decius, or Diocletian,
for he seduced her prelates by favors, instead of enabling them to
acquire glory in openly dying for the faith.

The civil power can never uproot Catholicity by slaying Catholics, or
robbing the church of her temporalities. Impoverish the church as you
will, you cannot make her poorer than she was {62} in our Lord
himself, who had not where to lay his head, nor than she was in the
twelve apostles when they went forth from that "upper room" in
Jerusalem to conquer the world. She has never depended upon the goods
of this world as the means of accomplishing her mission, and her
possessions have often been an embarrassment, and exposed her to the
envy, cupidity, and rapacity of secular princes. If deprived by the
revolution of the temporalities of her churches, and left destitute,
so to apeak, of house or home, she can still offer up "the clean
oblation," as she has often done, in private houses, barns, groves,
catacombs, caverns in the earth, or clefts in the rocks.

The church has frequently been deprived of her temporal possessions
and of all temporal power, but the poor have suffered by it more than
she. She is really stronger in France today than she was in the age of
Louis XIV., and French society is, upon the whole, less corrupt than
in the time of Francis I. Religion revives in Spain in proportion as
the church losers her wealth. There are no countries where the church
has been poorer than in Ireland and the United Slates, and none where
her prosperity has been greater. Let matters, then, take the worst
turn possible, Catholics have little to fear, the church nothing to
apprehend, except the injury her enemies are sure to do themselves,
which cannot fail to afflict her loving heart.

Yet, whatever may be the extent of the changes effected or going on in
the states and empires of Europe, I apprehend no severe or prolonged
persecution of Catholics. The church in this world is and always will
be the church militant, because she is not of this world, and acts on
principles not only above but opposed to those on which kings and
kaisers and the men of this world act. She therefore necessarily comes
in conflict with them, and could render them no service if she did
not. Conflicts there will be, annoyances and vexations must be
expected; but in all the European states as well as our own, if we
except Sweden and Denmark, there is too large a Catholic population to
be either massacred, exiled, or deprived of the rights of person and
property common to all citizens or subjects. The British government
has been forced to concede Catholic emancipation, and all appearances
indicate that she will be forced ere long to place Catholics in all
respects on a footing of perfect equality with Protestants before the
state. Prussia, should she, as is possible, absorb all Germany, will
have nearly as many Catholic as Protestant subjects, and though she
may insist on remaining officially Protestant and anti-Catholic, she
will find it necessary to her own peace and security to allow her
Catholic subjects to enjoy liberty of religion and equal civil rights.
The mass of the Italian people are Catholic, and will remain
Catholics; and these are not times when even absolute, much less
constitutional, sovereigns can afford to is the it's and convictions
of any considerable portion of their people.

The anti-papal party may prove strong enough to deprive the Holy
Father of his temporal sovereignty and make Rome the capital of the
new kingdom of Italy; that is undoubtedly laid down in the programme,
and is only a natural, a logical result of Napoleon's campaign of 1859
against Austria and Napoleon holds that the logic of events must be
submitted to. He said in 1859 that there were two questions to be
settled, the Italian question and the Roman question. As the former
has been settled by expelling the Austrians from Italy, so the latter
is likely to be settled by the deprivation of the Pope as temporal
sovereign--the plan of settlement being evidently to secure to the
anti-papal party all it demands. Austria humiliated cannot interpose
in behalf of the temporal sovereignty, and is reported to have
abandoned it; Napoleon will not do it, unless compelled, for he has
been the determined but politic enemy of that sovereignty ever {63}
since, with his elder brother, he engaged in a conspiracy, in 1831, to
destroy the papal government; and Russia, Great Britain, and Prussia,
all anti-Catholic states, will abandon the papal throne to the logic
of events. Under the providence of God, it depends on the Italian
people whether the Holy Father shall retain his temporal sovereignty
or not, and what they will do nobody can say. They are capable of
doing anything hostile to the Pope one moment, and next falling on
their knees before him, and, with tears in their eyes, begging his
absolution.

But beyond the rights of the Supreme Pontiff as sovereign of the Roman
state, I cannot apprehend any serious attacks on the papacy; or after
the first fury has passed, even on ecclesiastical property. Much
hostility for a time will be displayed, no doubt, against the monastic
orders, and where they have any property remaining in their
possession. It, not unlikely, will be confiscated, and the right of
the church to be a proprietor legally denied or not recognized, yet
property dedicated to religious uses still will be passably secure
under the general law protecting citizens and their rights of
property, to make gifts _inter vivos_, and testamenary bequests. The
law will gradually become throughout Europe what it is with us. The
civil law in the United States knows nothing of the canons of the
Church establishing religious orders, or of the vows taken by the
religious; it takes no cognizance of the church herself, it recognizes
in her no proprietary rights, and gives her no standing in the courts,
and yet nowhere is ecclesiastical property better protected or more
secure, and nowhere are religious orders more free in person or more
secure in property. This proceeds from the right of property secured
to the citizens, and the right of the church, and of religious orders,
not as proprietors, but, if I may so speak, as recipiendaries, or
their right to receive enjoy eleemosynary gifts, grants, and bequests
in whatever form made, which the courts protect according to the will
of the donors or testators. There may be great inconveniences
resulting from the inevitable changes taking place, great wrong is
pretty sure to be done. The church has a valid right to be a
proprietor, and it is a great crime and a great sin to rob her of any
of her possessions; but she can carry on, and in most countries long
has carried on, her mission without the law recognizing any
proprietary rights.

Present appearances indicate that the church throughout the world will
be thrown back, as she was in the beginning, on her internal resources
as a spiritual kingdom; that she will cease to be the official church
any nation--at least for a time, if not for ever; and that she will
not henceforth govern or protect her children as civil life
communities, states, or empires through their civil rulers, but simply
as Catholics, individual members of her communion, through her own
spiritual ministry, her bishops and prelates alone, without any
official relation with the state. She can then exercise her full
spiritual authority over her own members, as the independent kingdom
of God on earth, free from all entangling alliances with the shifting
policies of nations.

It is not assumed that the changes recent events have produced, or are
producing, were desirable, are not evil, or are not brought about by
evil passions, and from motives which every lover of truth and right
does and must condemn; all that is argued is, that the church can
survive them, and with less detriment to her material interests than
her enemies have contemplated. Nothing that has taken place is
defended, or defensible; but who can say that God in his gracious
providence will not overrule all to the glory of his church and the
good of them that love him? Who knows but he has given the victory to
his enemies for the very purpose of confounding them, and showing them
how vain are all their strivings against him and the order he has
established? That is very victory, seemingly so {64} adverse and so
afflicting to the Catholic heart, may prove to be the means of
emancipating the church from her thraldom to the secular powers
officially Catholic, but really anti-Catholic in spirit, and of
preparing the way for her to labor more effectually than ever for the
advancement of truth, the progress of civilization, and the salvation
of souls! It is the prerogative of God to overrule evil for good, and
the church, though immovable in her foundation, inflexible in her
principles, and unchanging in her doctrines, has a wonderful capacity
of adapting herself to all stages of civilization, and to all the
changes in states and empires that may take place; she is confined
within no national boundaries, and wedded to no particular form of
civil government--she can subsist and carry on her work under Russian
autocracy or American democracy, with the untutored savage and the
most highly cultivated European, and is equally at her ease with the
high and the low, the learned and the unlearned, the rich and the
poor, the bond and the free. The events which, to all human judgment,
seem adverse often turn out to be altogether in our favor. "All those
things are against me," said the patriarch Jacob, when required to
send his son Benjamin down to Egypt, and yet the event proved that
they were all for him. When the Jews with wicked hands took our Lord
and slew him, crucified him between two thieves, they, no doubt,
thought that they had succeeded, and that it was all over with him and
his work; but what they did was a means to the end he sought, for it
was only in dying that he could accomplish the work he came to do.

The detachment of the empire from the church, which has been effected
for purposes hostile to her, and with the hope of causing her
destruction, perhaps will prove to her enemies that she does not rest
on the state, that the state is far more in need of her than she of
it, and show in a clear and unmistakable light her independence of all
civil support, her inexhaustible internal resources, her supernatural
energy and divine persistence. The empire detached from her and
abandoning her to herself, or turning its force against her, will
cease to incumber her with its official help, will no longer stand as
an opaque substance between her and the people, intercepting her
light, and preventing them from beholding her in her spiritual beauty
and splendor. The change will allay much political hostility, remove
most of the political prejudices against her, and permit the hearts of
the people to turn once more towards her as their true mother and best
friend. It may in fact tend to revive faith, and prepare the nations
to reunite under her divine banner. Be this as it may, every Catholic
knows that she is in herself independent of all the revolutions of
states and empires, of all the changes of this world, and feels sure
that she is imperishable, and that in some way the victories of her
enemies will turn out to be their defeat, and the occasion of new
triumphs for her.

{65}

From The Month

THE MYSTERY OF THE THATCHED HOUSE.

It was a clean, bright, wholesome, thoroughly lovable house. The first
time I saw it, I fell in love with it, and wanted to live in it at
once. It fascinated me. When I crossed its threshold, I felt as if I
had opened a book whose perusal promised enchantment. I felt a
passionate longing to have been born here, to have been expected by
the brown old watchful walls for years before it had been my turn to
exist in the world. I felt despoiled of my rights; because there was
here a hoard of wealth which I might not touch, placed just beyond the
reach of my hand. I was tantilized; because the secrets of a sweetly
odorous past hung about the shady corners, and the sunny
window-frames, and the grotesque hearth-places; and their breath was
no more to me than the scent of dried rose-leaves.

It was my fault that we bought the Thatched House. We wanted a country
home; and, hearing that this was for sale, we drove many miles one
showery April morning to view the place, and judge if it might suit
our need. Aunt Featherstone objected to it from the first, and often
boasted of her own sagacity in doing so, after the Thatched House had
proved itself an incubus--a dreadful Old Man of the Mountains, not to
be shaken from our necks. I once was bold enough to tell her that
temper, and not sagacity, was the cause of her dislike that April
morning. We drove in an open phaeton, and Aunt Featherstone got some
drops of rain on her new silk dress. Consequently she was out of humor
with everything, and vehemently pronounced her veto upon the purchase
of the Thatched House.

I was a spoiled girl, however; and I thought it hard that I might not
have my own way in this matter as in everything else. As we drove
along a lonely road, across a wild, open country, I had worshipped the
broken, gold-edged rain-clouds, and the hills, with their waving lines
of light and their soft trailing shadows. I had caught the shower in
my face, and laughed; and dried my limp curls with my
pocket-handkerchief. I was disposed to love everything I saw, and
clapped my hands when we stopped before the sad-looking old gates,
with their mossy brick pillars, and their iron arms folded across, as
if mournfully forbidding inquiry into some long hushed-up and
forgotten mystery. When we swept along the silent avenue my heart
leaped up in greeting to the grand old trees, that rose towering
freshly at every curve, spreading their masses of green foliage right
and left, and flinging showers of diamond drops to the ground whenever
the breeze lifted the tresses of a drowsy bough, or a bird poised its
slender weight upon a twig, and then shot off sudden into the blue.

Aunt Featherstone exclaimed against the house the very moment we came
in sight of it. It was not the sort of thing we wanted at all, she
said. It had not got a modern porch, and it was all nooks and angles
on the outside. The lower windows were too long and narrow, and the
upper ones too small, and pointing up above the eaves in that
old-fashioned, inconvenient manner. To crown its {66} absurdities, the
roof was thatched. No, no, Aunt Featherstone said, it was necessary
for such old houses to exist for the sake of pictures and romances;
but as for people of common sense going to live in them, that was out
of the question.

I left her still outside with her eyeglass levelled at the chimneys,
and darted into the house to explore. An old woman preceded me with a
jingling bunch of keys, unlocking all the doors, throwing open the
shutters and letting the long levels of sunshine fall over the
uncarpeted floors. It was all delicious, I thought; the long
dining-room with its tall windows opening like doors upon the broad
gravel, the circular drawing-room with its stained-glass roofing, the
double flights of winding stairs, the roomy passages, the numerous
chambers of all shapes and sizes opening one out of another, and
chasing each other from end to end of the house; and above all, the
charming old rustic balcony, running round the waist of the building
like a belt, and carrying one, almost quick as a bird could fly, from
one of those dear old pointed windows under the eaves down amongst the
flower-beds below.

I said to myself in my own wilful way, "This Thatched House must be my
home!" and then I set about coaxing Aunt Featherstone into my way of
thinking. It was not at all against her will that she completed the
purchase at last. Afterwards, however, she liked to think it was so.

In May it was all settled. The house was filled with painters and
paper-hangers, and all through the long summer months they kept on
making a mess within the walls, and forbidding us to enter and enjoy
the place in the full glorious luxuriance of its summer beauty. At
last, on driving there one bright evening, I found to my joy that the
workmen had decamped, leaving the Thatched House clean and fresh and
gay, ready for the reception of us, and our good's and chattels. I
sprang in through one of the open dining-room windows, and began
waltzing round the floor from sheer delight. Pausing at last for
breath, I saw that the old woman who took care of the place, she who
had on my first visit opened the shutters for me and jingled her keys,
had entered the room while I danced, and was standing watching me from
the doorway with a queer expression on her wrinkled face.

"Ah, ha! Nelly," I cried triumphantly, "what do you think of the old
house now?"

Nelly shook her gray head, and shot me a weird look out of her small
black eyes. Then she folded her arms slowly, and gazed all round the
room musingly, while she said:

"Ay, Miss Lucy! wealth can do a deal, but there's things it can't do.
All that the band of man may do to make this place wholesome to live
in has been done. Dance and see now, pretty lady--now, while you have
the heart and courage. The day'll come when you'd as soon think of
sleepin' all night on a tombstone as of standin' on this floor alone
after sunset."