Drink, weary pilgrim, drink and pray

For the poor soul of Sybil Gray,

Who built this cross and well."

Frequently, too, these were memorials also of historical events, to which piety gave an immortal remembrance, as at Ravenna, near which a simple Greek cross indicates the spot where formerly stood the superb basilica of St. Lorenzo, founded in the year 396, and destroyed in the sixteenth century. King Philip, carrying the body of St. Louis, his father, from Paris to the abbey of St. Denis, wherever he halted to repose crosses were erected on the spot, which stood till the revolution. On the similar occasion of the body of Queen Eleanor, wife of Edward I., being conducted from the north to Westminster, those beautiful crosses were erected, of which the ruins may still be seen at Waltham and other places. At Rievaulx Abbey, when the body of St. Wilfred had been washed, and the water then poured out upon the earth, a wooden cross was erected on the spot.

The first amongst the Christians who opposed the worship of the cross was Claudius, a Spaniard, in the ninth century, and in the same age the Paulicians, who appeared in the East. The Wickliffites called the images of the cross putrid trunks, less estimable than the trees of the wood, for the latter, said they, had life, but these were dead, a passage which shows how profoundly these first reformers could philosophize. The succeeding heretics were animated with a most invincible hatred against the crosses, so that they disappeared every where before them, while statues of kings, in the heathen style were erected in their stead, as at Charing Cross, the demolition of which was effected amidst loud cheers from an immense multitude. Yet such was the inconsistency of these men, who mistrusted or condemned the impression produced by the representation of the cross of Christ, that some of them were heard to say, that they could never hear the loud solitary whistle of the curlew in a summer noon, or the wild cadence of a troop of grey plover in an autumn morning, without feeling an elevation of soul, like the enthusiasm of devotion. Our forefathers, too, may have known nothing, or next to nothing, of the structure of their souls, but yet they could give a reasonable account for their attaching more importance to the impressions which they felt at the sight of a cross, than to any of the seeming caprices of their nature. "The mere sight of a crucifix is never useless to the soul," says Louis of Blois, speaking of the spiritual ascetic.* "A Christian of orthodox faith," he says again, can never behold the image of a crucified Redeemer without great utility." "The moderns are not unwilling to kiss the books of the Gospels before a judge,” observes Bossuet, "and what is the cross but the whole Gospels in one sign and character contracted? What is the cross unless the whole science of Jesus Christ crucified? Why then should we not kiss that and bow the knee to it?" Does not the very instinctive aversion with which it is regarded by all en

66

*Institutio Spiritual cap. VI.

Enchirid. Parvulorum, Lib. I. doc. XII. append.

emies to Christianity prove it to be holy? What other inference can be drawn from these late horrors in Gallic land, where the symbol of salvation was overthrown with such demoniacal ferocity, and replaced by the symbol of the revolution, by that of Atheism? The moral influence of the Christian symbol was so clearly seen by its enemies, that among the articles of capitulation to be observed by the Christians on the fall of Jerusalem, the Turks stipulated that they should place no crosses upon their churches, nor bear them or the Gospels about in procession, and that their bells should not be tolled, though they might be allowed to observe their religious rites in all the churches already built. Elsewhere, indeed, the same enactments, with the exception of the latter indulgence, were enforced by men who continued to profess a belief in Christianity; but the results proved the acuteness of the Sarassin policy, and the folly of those who, with different intentions imitated it. By degrees the race which had lost faith lost also the memory of Christianity; its thoughts were wholly engrossed with business or political debates, or with the delusive phantoms of sense; if it heard mention of God having come down on earth, chosen apostles, and sent them to found a religion, the impressions excited were not different from those with which it read the history of Romulus or Alexander. Now one can easily understand why, in a Catholic country, such a godless crew should feel startled and disquieted; for there men may indeed fall victims to passion, may aspire to rob or remain tangled in a net of sensual delight, but never for a single day can they forget the great and awful facts of the Christian dispensation. Faith has raised too many memorials of its history and of its mysteries for their minds, to be ever reduced to a state of nature or mere animal perception, that is left without either the consolations or the terrors of religion.

Thus then, during ages of faith, was nature enjoyed in connection with religion, by those to whom meekness imparted the privileges of simplicity. Thus was the exterior and interior life brought into perfect harmony, so as to produce that expansion of the heart which is the real cause that makes a Catholic country so delightful to men of good-will; for so sweet is it to them, that "they whose verse of yore the golden age recorded, and its bliss on the Parnassian mountain," may be thought to have foreseen it in a dream. The earth was adorned with beauteous monuments, and the luminous air itself seemed to diffuse sweet harmony, not alone those wild and melancholy strains of which the poet speaks as heard in Scottish land, rising from the bands of busy harvest,

"When falls before the mountaineer,

On lowland plains, the ripen'd ear;"

but oftener, as in the neighborhood of Rome when peasants in the evening return from the vintage, some litany or sacred hymn, for even festive songs, like those of that devout people, had in some manner still a religious burden. The author of the Martyrs ascribes this custom of pious ejaculations and responses by the rustic

laborers to the first Christians, and traces it to the days of Ruth.* In the time of St. Jerome, the laborers in Palestine conducting their carts, and the husbandmen in dressing their vines, used to refresh their spirits with the chant of Alleluia, and the presence of Christian youth was recognized by hearing the shepherds and peasants singing canticles of devotion by the side of their flocks, a scene which then recalled the primitive innocence of the pastoral life of the ancient patriarchs. The old French kings endeavored to promote this custom by their paternal ordinances, which said, "Let all sing on the Sabbath, going to vespers, or to matins, or to mass, chanting Kyrie Eleison; and in like manner let the herdsmen of cattle sing as they go into the fields or return to the house, ut omnes eos veraciter Christianos et devotos esse cognoscant." Wandering among the olive groves of Fiesole, I have heard children in cottages chanting the Kyrie Eleison, while mothers at the doors handled the distaff and the flax. The very reverence with which the humble friar and the village pastor were regarded was a source of social and serene enjoyment to the people among whom they walked. Their sweet and holy countenances were felt as a benediction, in the same manner as the entrance of the unblessed feet of modern sophists is always felt as an interruption to joy, though these are the men who have the confidence to speak of applying their moral energies to the gradual extinction of Catholicism, and the consequent increase of social enjoyment, "as if," cries an excellent writer, "men who are themselves incapable of social enjoyment, their principles being a condensation of selfishness and repugnant to all sociability, their rudeness, and even ferocity of look and manner, being sufficient to enable travellers to recognize them in any place, could increase or secure social enjoyment in others." In short, the meek felt themselves in every object that struck their senses, and at every hour of their existence, endowed with hidden riches, and in possession of an innocent and a happy earth. If they had lived more years than Abraham, they would not have had time to use this long series of sanctified pleasures and natural enjoyments which life distilled drop by drop, sweetly and secretly upon their lips. Thus "through a wilderness of primy sweets that never fade they walked in thoughtfulness, and yet expectant of beatitude more high."

So far we have considered the blessedness of the meek in relation to the material advantages which could be drawn from the possession of the earth. It remains to take a brief view of the more spiritual and interior riches which were attached to that inheritance, and the attempt to show in what manner it became subservient to the extension of intellectual good will be the object of our next disputation.

* Lib. II.

† Capit. Carol. mag. 202. Liv. VI.

I

ance.

CHAPTER IV.

T is the object of our enterprise to discover in what manner the meek, in ages of faith, availed themselves of the intellectual treasures which the

earth is capable of yielding, and for this purpose we must direct our thoughts to those spiritual and interior riches which are derived from poetry, from learning, and from friendship, for it is clear that, in one sense, these rise to mortals from the earth, and are an essential part of its inheritOf themselves, too piainly imperfect, and liable, as experience proves, to the most lamentable abuse, we shall find that they were enobled, perfected, and secured by an alliance with the principles of faith, which gave purity to their object and stability to their possession. Poetry was perhaps one of the original gifts which the bountiful Creator attached to the present condition of man's life, in order to enable him to sustain the wretchedness of his exile. Philosophers observe that the sensible world, being inferior in dignity to the rational soul, poesy seems to grant that to human nature which history denies, supplying shadows in place of substance to the mind; and Lord Bacon says that if any one should examine attentively, a firm argument is derived from poesy that there is a more illustrious and perfect order of things than can in any manner be found in Nature herself after the fall; therefore, as realities cannot satisfy the mind, poesy feigns actions more heroic; it corrects history, and therefore conferreth not only to delectation but to magnanimity.* Pindar had remarked that truly there are many things wonderful, and that legends adorned with varied fables lead away the minds of mortals more than a true discourse."+ Yet if attention be paid to the original source of all poetic fable, there is deeper penetration shown by Homer, where he invokes the muses as divinities who alone know all things, and then adds, but we hear only rumors and know nothing:

“ἡμεῖς δὲ κλέος οἷον ακούομεν οὐδέ τι ἴδμεν. ”

"Fancy itself," as Frederick Schlegel observes, "is one of the essential ground works of consciousness. It is in its foundation nothing but memory; and what we commonly call fancy is in fact only a delirium of the memory."§ True art and all higher poetry, is the beautifully adorned summit, the promising blossom, nay, the very flower of hope. "And man," as he says, "from childhood to youth, † Olymp. I. + II. II. 465.

* De Augment. Scientiæ, Lib. II. c. 13. Philosophie der Sprache, 136.

[ Id. 190.

from youth to manhood, from manhood to death, is, above all other creatures, a being of hope."* The same view is taken by Huet, in accounting for the disposition of men to love romance: "It arises," he says, "from the faculties of the human soul, which, being too vast in capacity to be satisfied with any present object, seeks gratification from the past and the future, from truth and fiction." St. Augustin had said that those fictions which are significative and emblematical are not falsehoods, but figures of truth, of which some of the wisest and most holy men have availed themselves, and we find the same doctrine well explained and diffused in the middle ages, in proof of which we may witness the words of John of Salisbury, where he says that "the lies of the poets serve truth;" and those of Christine de Pisan, where she says, "although in general the name of poesy be taken for some fiction, and though it is a common saying, Les poètes mentent de moult de choses, yet the end of poetry is truth, to advance which these feigned images are formed, enveloping the real and occult sense."§ Indeed, such has been the universal judgment of mankind. The Persians, who had such a reverence for truth, and who regarded every species of lie with such horror, were nevertheless peculiarly fond of works of ingenious fiction, and many of their books of instruction for youth were in the form of romances. Their legislator Zoroaster employed fabulous adventures for this object. Strabo says that their masters of youth gave their precepts of morality in tales and fictions. Seneca observes that the ancient Romans made frequent use of fabulous adventures for the purposes of instruction; and Macrobius reckons works of the nature of romances among those which administered instruction with delight. In the middle ages the title Romant was applied to true histories, as to that of Du Guesclin, for it signifies any work which was written in the langue Romane; but it was at length applied exclusively to those works which, as Huet observes, were true in their details, and false only in their general object, which differed from many of the ancient historians only on this account, that they were false in their details, though faithful in their general outline. After all, romances in this sense had their origin in the beautiful East, and they were allied to those parables which have the highest of all sanctions. Huet supposes the Egyptians, Arabians, Persians, Indians, and Syrians, to have been the first writers of romances, and he shows that the great authors of antiquity, who composed romances, were all of oriental origin.||

Aristotle, and after him Cornutus and Priscien, mention the Libyan fables. The Arabs brought their romantic poetry into Spain; but their dominion, during the first period, so far from assisting, kept down and stifled the genius of that people, and by imposing the Arabic tongue, put off the rise of the Spanish literature, so that Italy, Provence, and even Normandy, had their poets and writers in the language of their country before Spain had produced any. A Spanish

* Id. 125.

Huet, de l'Origine des Romans. De Nugis Curialium, Lib. II. cap. 6 § Livre des Fais et bonnes Mœurs du sage Roi Charles V. Liv. III. chap. 68.

De l'Origine des Romans, 13.