After this I inquired in general into what is essential to the truth and certainty of a proposition; for since I had discovered one which I knew to be true, I thought that I must likewise be able to discover the ground of this certitude. And as I observed that in the words "I think, hence I am," there is nothing at all which gives me assurance of their truth beyond this, that I see very clearly that in order to think it is necessary to exist,—I concluded that I might take, as a general rule, the principle that all the things which we very clearly and distinctly conceive are true; only observing however that there is some difficulty in rightly determining the objects which we distinctly conceive.

In the next place, from reflecting on the circumstance that I doubted, and that consequently my being was not wholly perfect (for I clearly saw that it was a greater perfection to know than to doubt), I was led to inquire whence I had learned to think of something more perfect than myself; and I clearly recognized that I must hold this notion from some Nature which in reality was more perfect. As for the thoughts of many other objects external to me, as of the sky, the earth, light, heat, and a thousand more, I was less at a loss to know whence these came; for since I remarked in them nothing which seemed to render them superior to myself, I could believe that if these were true, they were dependences on my own nature in so far as it possessed a certain perfection; and if they were false, that I held them from nothing,—that is to say, that they were in me because of a certain imperfection of my nature. But this could not be the case with the idea of a Nature more perfect than myself: for to receive it from nothing was a thing manifestly impossible; and because it is not less repugnant that the more perfect should be an effect of and dependence on the less perfect, than that something should proceed from nothing, it was equally impossible that I could hold it from myself: accordingly it but remained that it had been placed in me by a Nature which was in reality more perfect than mine, and which even possessed within itself all the perfections of which I could form any idea,—that is to say, in a single word, which was God....

I was disposed straightway to search for other truths; and when I had represented to myself the object of the geometers, which I conceived to be a continuous body, or a space indefinitely extended in length, breadth, and height or depth, divisible into divers parts which admit of different figures and sizes, and of being moved or transposed in all manner of ways (for all this the geometers suppose to be in the object they contemplate), I went over some of their simplest demonstrations. And in the first place, I observed that the great certitude which by common consent is accorded to these demonstrations is founded solely upon this, that they are clearly conceived in accordance with the rules I have already laid down. In the next place, I perceived that there was nothing at all in these demonstrations which could assure me of the existence of their object: thus, for example, supposing a triangle to be given, I distinctly perceived that its three angles were necessarily equal to two right angles, but I did not on that account perceive anything which could assure me that any triangle existed; while on the contrary, recurring to the examination of the idea of a Perfect Being, I found that the existence of the Being was comprised in the idea in the same way that the equality of its three angles to two right angles is comprised in the idea of a triangle, or as in the idea of a sphere, the equidistance of all points on its surface from the centre, or even still more clearly; and that consequently it is at least as certain that God, who is this Perfect Being, is, or exists, as any demonstration of geometry can be.



THE IDEA OF GOD

From the 'Meditations'

There only remains, therefore, the idea of God, in which I must consider whether there is anything that cannot be supposed to originate with myself. By the name God I understand a substance infinite, eternal, immutable, independent, all-knowing, all-powerful, and by which I myself, and every other thing that exists,—if any such there be,—were created. But these properties are so great and excellent, that the more attentively I consider them, the less I feel persuaded that the idea I have of them owes its origin to myself alone. And thus it is absolutely necessary to conclude, from all that I have before said, that God exists; for though the idea of substance be in my mind owing to this,—that I myself am a substance,—I should not however have the idea of an infinite substance, seeing I am a finite being, unless it were given me by some substance in reality infinite.

And I must not imagine that I do not apprehend the infinite by a true idea, but only by the negation of the finite, in the same way that I comprehend repose and darkness by the negation of motion and light: since, on the contrary, I clearly perceive that there is more reality in the infinite substance than in the finite, and therefore that in some way I possess the perception (notion) of the infinite before that of the finite, that is, the perception of God before that of myself; for how could I know that I doubt, desire, or that something is wanting to me, and that I am not wholly perfect, if I possessed no idea of a being more perfect than myself, by comparison with which I knew the deficiencies of my nature?

And it cannot be said that this idea of God is perhaps materially false, and consequently that it may have arisen from nothing (in other words, that it may exist in me from my imperfection), as I before said of the ideas of heat and cold, and the like; for on the contrary, as this idea is very clear and distinct, and contains in itself more objective reality than any other, there can be no one of itself more true, or less open to the suspicion of falsity.

The idea, I say, of a being supremely perfect and infinite, is in the highest degree true; for although perhaps we may imagine that such a being does not exist, we nevertheless cannot suppose that this idea represents nothing real, as I have already said of the idea of cold. It is likewise clear and distinct in the highest degree, since whatever the mind clearly and distinctly conceives as real or true, and as implying any perfection, is contained entire in this idea. And this is true, nevertheless, although I do not comprehend the infinite, and although there may be in God an infinity of things that I cannot comprehend, nor perhaps even compass by thought in any way; for it is of the nature of the infinite that it should not be comprehended by the finite: and it is enough that I rightly understand this, and judge that all which I clearly perceive, and in which I know there is some perfection, and perhaps also an infinity of properties of which I am ignorant, are formally or eminently in God, in order that the idea I have of him may become the most true, clear, and distinct of all the ideas in my mind.

But perhaps I am something more than I suppose myself to be; and it may be that all those perfections which I attribute to God in some way exist potentially in me, although they do not yet show themselves and are not reduced to act. Indeed, I am already conscious that my knowledge is being increased and perfected by degrees; and I see nothing to prevent it from thus gradually increasing to infinity, nor any reason why, after such increase and perfection, I should not be able thereby to acquire all the other perfections of the Divine nature; nor in fine, why the power I possess of acquiring those perfections, if it really now exist in me, should not be sufficient to produce the ideas of them. Yet on looking more closely into the matter I discover that this cannot be; for in the first place, although it were true that my knowledge daily acquired new degrees of perfection, and although there were potentially in my nature much that was not as yet actually in it, still all these excellences make not the slightest approach to the idea I have of the Deity, in whom there is no perfection merely potentially, but all actually existent; for it is even an unmistakable token of imperfection in my knowledge, that it is augmented by degrees. Further, although my knowledge increase more and more, nevertheless I am not therefore induced to think that it will ever be actually infinite, since it can never reach that point beyond which it shall be incapable of further increase. But I conceive God as actually infinite, so that nothing can be added to his perfection. And in fine, I readily perceive that the objective being of an idea cannot be produced by a being that is merely potentially existent,—which properly speaking is nothing, but only a being existing formally or actually.

And truly, I see nothing in all that I have now said which it is not easy for any one who shall carefully consider it, to discern by the natural light; but when I allow my attention in some degree to relax, the vision of my mind being obscured and as it were blinded by the images of sensible objects, I do not readily remember the reason why the idea of a being more perfect than myself must of necessity have proceeded from a being in reality more perfect. On this account I am here desirous to inquire further whether I, who possess this idea of God, could exist supposing there were no God. And I ask, from whom could I in that case derive my existence? Perhaps from myself, or from my parents, or from some other causes less perfect than God; for anything more perfect, or even equal to God, cannot be thought or imagined. But if I were independent of every other existence, and were myself the author of my being, I should doubt of nothing, I should desire nothing, and in fine, no perfection would be wanting to me; for I should have bestowed upon myself every perfection of which I possess the idea, and I should thus be God. And it must not be imagined that what is now wanting to me is perhaps of more difficult acquisition than that of which I am already possessed; for on the contrary, it is quite manifest that it was a matter of much higher difficulty that I, a thinking being, should arise from nothing, than it would be for me to acquire the knowledge of many things of which I am ignorant, and which are merely the accidents of a thinking substance; and certainly, if I possessed of myself the greater perfection of which I have now spoken,—in other words, if I were the author of my own existence,—I would not at least have denied to myself things that may be more easily obtained, as that infinite variety of knowledge of which I am at present destitute. I could not indeed have denied to myself any property which I perceive is contained in the idea of God, because there is none of these that seems to be more difficult to make or acquire; and if there were any that should happen to be more difficult to acquire, they would certainly appear so to me (supposing that I myself were the source of the other things I possess), because I should discover in them a limit to my power.



PAUL DESJARDINS

(———)

BY GRACE KING

What a man stands for, in the life and literature of his day, is easily enough estimated when his name passes current in his language for a hitherto undesignated shade of meaning. One of the most acute and sensitive of contemporary French critics, M. Jules Lemaitre, in an article on an evolutionary phase in modern literature, expresses its significant characteristic to be—"L'ideal de vie interieure, la morale absolue,—si je puis m'exprimer ainsi, le Desjardinisme" (The ideal of spiritual life, absolute morality,—if I may so express myself, Desjardinism). The term, quickly appropriated by another French critic, and one of the remarkable women of letters of her day,—the late Baronne Blaze de Bury,—is literally interpreted as "summing up whatever is highest and purest and of most rare attainment in the idealism of the present hour." And she further, with the intuition of her sex, feeling a pertinent question before it is put, singles out the vital germ of difference which distinguishes this young writer as typical of the idealism of the hour, and makes him its name-giver:—"What is in other men the indirect and hidden source of their public acts, is in Paul Desjardins the direct source of life itself—the life to be lived; and also of the mode in which that life is to be conceived and to be made apparent to the world." Of the life, "sincerity is its prime virtue. Each leader proves his faith by his individual conduct, as by his judgments on events and men. The pure passion of abstract thought fires each to do the best that is his to do. His life is to be the word-for-word translation of his own spirit."

The death-bed repentance of a century, born skeptical, reared decadent, and professing practical materialism; the conversion of a literature from the pure passion of the senses to the pure passion of abstract thought; the assumption of an apostolic mission by journalists, novelists, playwrights, college professors, and scientific masters, will doubtless furnish the century to come with one of its most curious and interesting fields of study. It is an episode in evolution which may indeed be termed dramatic, this fifth act of the nineteenth-century epic of France,—or it might be called, of Paris; the story of its pilgrimage from revolution to evolution. M. Melchior de Vogue, himself one of the apostles of the new life, or of the new work in the old life, of France, describes the preparation of the national soil for the growth of Desjardinism. He says:—

"The French children who were born just before 1870 grew up in an atmosphere of patriotic mourning and amidst the discouragement of defeat. National life, such as it became reconstituted after that terrible shock, revealed to them on all sides nothing but abortive hopes, paltry struggles of interest, and a society without any other hierarchy but that of money, and without other principle or ideal than the pursuit of material enjoyment. Literature ... reflected these same tendencies; it was dejected or vile, and distressed the heart by its artistic dryness or disgusted it by its trivial realism. Science itself ... began to appear to many what it is in reality, namely, a means, not an end; its prestige declined and its infallibility was questioned.... Above all, it was clear from too evident social symptoms that if science can satisfy some very distinguished minds, it can do nothing to moralize and discipline societies....

"For a hundred years after the destruction of the religious and political dogmas of the past, France had lived as best she could on some few fragile dogmas, which had in their turn been consecrated by a naive superstition; these dogmas were the principles of 1789—the almightiness of reason, the efficacy of absolute liberty, the sovereignty of the people—in a word, the whole credo of the revolution.... In order to shake that faith [in these principles] ... it was necessary that human reason, proclaimed infallible, should turn its arms against itself. And that is what happened. Scientific criticism, after having ruined old dogmatism, ... made as short work of the revolutionary legend as of the monarchical one, and showed itself as pitiless for the rights of man as it had been for the rights of God. All these causes combined, sufficiently explain the nihilism and pessimism which invaded the souls of the young during the past ten years.... Clear-sighted boys analyzed life with a vigor and a precision unknown to their predecessors; having analyzed it, they found it bad; they turned away from life with fear and horror. There was heard from the peaks of intelligence a great cry of discouragement:—'Beware of deceitful nature; fear life, emancipate yourselves from life!' This cry was first uttered by the masters of contemporary thought,—a Schopenhauer, a Taine, a Tolstoy; below them, thousands of humbler voices repeat it in chorus. According to each one's turn of mind, the new philosophy assumed shades different in appearance—Buddhist nirvana, atheistic nihilism, mystic asceticism; but all these theories proceeded from the same sentiment, and all these doctrines may be reduced to the same formula:—'Let us depreciate life, let us escape from its snares.'"

Paul Desjardins, by name and family, belongs to the old bourgeoisie of France, that reserve force of Gallic virtue to which the French people always look for help in political and moral crises. Like most of the young men of distinction in the French world of letters, he combines professional and literary work; he is professor of rhetoric at the Lycee Veuves in Paris, and a member of the brilliant editorial staff of the Journal des Debats. Paris offered to his grasp her same old choice of subjects, to his eye the same aspects of life, which form her one freehold for all artists, and he had but the instrument of his guild—his pen; the series of his collected contributions to journals and magazines bear a no more distinctive title than the hackneyed one of 'Notes Contemporaines,' but the sub-titles betray at once the trend of originality: 'Great Souls and Little Lives,' 'The Obscure Ones,' 'Companions of the New Life'; and in the treatment of these subjects, and especially in his sketches of character and critical essays upon the literature of his day, Desjardins's originality resolves itself more and more clearly into spirituality of thought, expressed in an incorruptible simplicity of style. To quote from Madame de Bury again:—"One of the chief characteristics of Paul Desjardins's utterances is their total disinterestedness, their absolute detachment from self. Nowhere else have you the same indescribable purity, the same boundless generosity of joy in others' good, the same pervading altruism."

These writings were the expression of a mind on a journey, a quest,—not of any one definite mind, for so completely has the personality of the author been subdued to his mission, that his mind seems typical of the general mind of young France in quest of spirituality, his individuality a common one to all participants in the new movement, as it is called.

In 1892 the boldest effort of Desjardins's,—a small pamphlet, 'The Present Duty,'—appeared. It created a sensation in the thinking world of Paris. It marked a definite stage accomplished in the new movement, and an arrival at one stopping-place at least. While the critics were still diagnosing over the pamphlet as a theory, a small band of men, avowing the same convictions as Desjardins, proceeded to test it as a practical truth. They enrolled themselves into a "Union for Moral Action," which had for its object to associate together, without regard to religious or political beliefs, all serious-minded men who cared to work for the formation of a healthy public opinion, for a moral awakening, and for the education and strengthening of the modern decadent or enervated will power. In general, it is common interests, doctrines, needs, that bring men together in associations. The Union for Moral Action sought, on the contrary, to associate men of diverse interests and opinions—adversaries even,—into collaboration for the common morality. In response to the interpellations, questions, and doubts evoked by 'The Present Duty,' Desjardins published in the Debats a series of articles on 'The Conversion of the Church.' They contributed still more to differentiate him from the other leaders of the new movement; in fact, few caring to share the responsibility of such radical utterances, he has been left in literary isolation in his advanced position: a position which, although it can but command the admiration and respect of the press and the educational and religious contingent of Paris, none the less attracts sarcasm and irony in the world's centre of wit, sensual tolerance, and moral skepticism. As the reproach of his literary confreres expresses it, the author has given way before the apostle. The "life to be lived" commanded the sacrifice. Desjardins makes now but rare appearances in his old journalistic places, and in literature he has determinately severed connections through which fame and fortune might confidently be expected. He now gives his writings anonymously to the small weekly publication, the official organ of the Union for Moral Action, depending for his living upon his professorial position in the College St. Stanislas.

'Une Critique,' one of Desjardins's earliest essays, strikes the note of his life and writings at a time when he himself was unconscious of its portentous meaning to his world and his literature:—

"Whatever deserves to be, deserves the best attention of our intellect. Everything calls for interest, only it must be an interest divested of self-interest, and sincere. But above all we must labor—labor hard—to understand, respect, and tenderly love in others whatever contains one single grain of simple intrinsic Goodness. Believe me, this is everywhere, and it is everywhere to be found, if you will only look for it....

"The supremacy of the truly Good!—here lies the root of the whole teaching—the whole new way of looking at things and judging men....

"New views of the universality of our world, of poetry, of religion, of kindness (human kindness), of virtue, of worth!... Think it over; these are the objects on which our new generation is fixing its thoughts, and trying to awaken yours. This it is which is so new!"

Translation of Madame Blaze de Bury.



THE PRESENT DUTY

There are many of us who at times have forgotten our personal troubles, however great they were, by picturing to ourselves the moral distress of souls around us, and by meditating on the possible remedy for this universal ill. Some remain serene before this spectacle; they resign themselves to fatal evil and inextricable doubt; they look with cold blood on that which is. Others, like the one who speaks here, are more affirmative because they are more impassioned, more wounded, knowing neither how to forget nor how to be patient, nor yet how to despair peaceably; they are less troubled by that which is, than by that which ought to be; they have even turned towards that which ought to be, as towards the salvation for which their whole heart is calling. It is their weakness not to know how to interest themselves for any length of time in what does not in some way assume the aspect of a duty that concerns them. They do not contest, in fact, that it is a weakness not to be able to look with a disinterested eye on disease, corporal or spiritual; a weakness to feel the necessity of having something to do at the bedside of the dying, even if that something be in vain,—to employ the anguish of one's heart in preparing, even up to the supreme moment, remedies in the shadow of the chamber.

We are in a state of war. It would be almost cowardly to be silent about our intimate beliefs, for they are contradicted and attacked. We must not content ourselves with a pacification or truce which will permit us with facile weakness to open all the pores of our intelligence to ideas contrary to our conviction. It is necessary on the contrary to gird ourselves, to intrench ourselves. There is to-day, between us and many of our contemporaries, an irreconcilable disagreement that must be faced, a great combat in which parts must be taken. As far as I can see this is what it is. In a word, are subjection to animal instinct, egoism, falsehood, absolutely evil, or are they merely "inelegances"?—that is to say, things deprecated just at present, but which, well ornamented and perfumed with grace, might not again attract us, satisfy us, furnish us a type of life equivalent after all to the life of the sages and saints; for nothing shows us with certainty that the latter is any better than the former. Are justice and love a sure good, a sure law, and the harbor of safety? Or are they possible illusions, probable vanities? Have we a destiny, an ideal, or are we agitating ourselves without cause and without purpose for the amusement of some malicious demiurge, or simply for the absurd caprice of great Pan? This is the question that divides consciences. A great subject of dispute; surely greater than that of the divinity of Jesus Christ, for example, than that even of the existence of a personal God, or of any other purely speculative question you please; and above all, one more urgent: for there are counter-blows in it, which frighten me in my every-day existence,—me, a man kept to the business of living from the hour I awake to the light until the hour I go to sleep; and according to the answer I may give myself on this point, is the spirit in which I dig in my little garden.

Personally I have taken sides, after reflection; after experience also, I do profess with conviction that humanity has a destiny and that we live for something. What is to be understood exactly by this word humanity? In short, I know not, only that this, of which I know nothing, does not exist yet, but it is on the road to existence, on the road to make itself known; and that it concerns me who am here. What must be understood by this word destiny? I do not know much more; I have only, so far, dreams about it, dreams born of some profound but incommunicable love, which an equal love only could understand; my conscience is not pure enough to conceive a stronger conviction; I only affirm that this destiny of humanity, if it were known, would be such that all men, ignorant or simple, could participate in it. It is already something to know that, in short, I see at least by lightning-flashes, from which side the future will shine; and I walk towards it, and live thus, climbing up in a steep dark forest towards a point where a light is divined, a light that cannot deceive me, but which the obtruding branches of a complicated and apparent life hide from me. That which will bring me nearer it is not arguing about the probable nature of the light, but walking; I mean, fortifying in myself and others a will for the Good....

We have on one side undecided and lukewarm allies, on the other adversaries; and we are forced necessarily to combat. This necessity will become clearer each day; ... it is the "antagonism of negatives and positives—of those who tend to destroy and those who tend to reconstruct."... There is no question here, be it understood, of knowing whether we are deceiving ourselves in choosing such or such a particular duty; that I would concede without trouble, having always estimated that our moral judgments, like our acts, have need of ceaseless revision and amelioration, according to an endless progression. There is a question of much more; of knowing in an absolute manner whether there be a duty for us or not.... Good is in fact that which ought to be. Like Christ, who according to St. Paul is not a Yes and a No, but a Yes, duty is a Yes; to slip into it the shadow of a possibility of a No is to destroy it....

The men of to-day are thus negatives or positives, as they range themselves under one opinion or the other. And they must range themselves under one of the two. They cannot escape. The question which divides us, to know whether we live in vain, imposes itself upon every one who opens his lips or moves his finger, upon every conscious being who breathes. That So-and-so never speaks of it, never thinks of it, may be; but their lives answer for them and testify loudly enough. I confess that at first sight the negatives seem for the moment the more numerous. They include many groups, which I shall not enumerate here. I range with them the charming uncertain ones, like M. Renan and his melodious disciples, the sombre and nihilistic Buddhists; all those to whom the law of the completion of man through the good is indeed foolish and chimerical, since their lives imply the negation of it: I mean to say the immense multitude of those who live in any kind of way, good easy people, refined possibly, from caprice, coquetry or laziness, but in complete moral anaesthesia.

Now we come to the positives. They include first of all, true Christians, and all true Jews, attached to the profound spirit of their religion; then the philosophers and poets who affirm or sing the moral ideal, the new disciples of Plato, the Stoics, the Kantians, famous or unknown, to whom life alone, outside of all speculation, is a solid affirmation of the possibility and sufficiency of the good. That the actions of these men and women, on the way to creating themselves free beings, human beings, have the same value as doctrine, cannot be denied. They labor and suffer here and there, each one in his own cell; each one making his own goodness consist in the realization of what he believes to be the absolute good; making themselves faithful servants of something; existing outside of themselves; the city, religion, charity, justice, truth even, or beauty, conceived as modes of adoration.... All these compose, it seems to me, one and the same Church, having the philosophers and poets of duty for doctors of divinity, the heroes of duty for congregation. These may be called by the general name of "Positives."

Let our eyes be opened: everything that surrounds us is vitiated; many of the children playing on the promenades are sickly, their little faces are often enough marked with livid blotches, their bones are often enough twisted, sad symptoms of the degradation of parents. At every street corner are distributed libertine productions by traders in the depravity of the weak. If any one wishes to recognize the furnace of vice burning within us, let him observe merely the looks cast upon an honest woman as she passes, by respectable men, old men. What savage expressions intercepted under the feverish light of the electric lamps! What tension, what spasms of covetousness! What hallucinations of pleasure and of gold! Tragic matter here, but low tragedies a la Balzac, not those acted under an open sky by heroes. A few pistol-shots from time to time, a few poisonings, some drownings: that is all that transpires of the interior evil. The rest passes away in suppressed tears, brooding hatreds, in accepted shame. In such confusion the consciences of the best, of the most disinterested ones, lose the cleanness of their stamp. "You are smiling there at an obscenity," said I to a friend; he protested; then reflecting, agreed with me, quite astonished that he had not perceived it. Honest men are troubled by all this circumjacent corruption. And rightly so, for at the bottom they are parts of it; they are distinguished from it only by more cleanliness, education, elegance, but not by principle.

In fact, from top to bottom, all this society lives on sensation; that is the common trait through it all, and it is graded according to the quality of its sensations.... Fundamentally there is only sensation, with here and there unequally subtle nerves. There are no terms less reconcilable one to another than research of sensation and moral obligation. There is nothing more opposed. Therefore he who expects all from his sensations depends absolutely on externals, upon the fortuitous things of life, in all their incoherence; he is no longer a self-centre, he feels himself no longer responsible, his personality is dissolved, evaporated; it does not react, and ambient nature already absorbs him, like some dead thing....

And this is where we are. I recognize then the evil; I see it in its extent. Nevertheless, to paint this lamentable picture once more is not to show our moral ideas. Our moral idea is what we believe touching the life which shall be best; it is not exactly our life.

Ever since the antique Medea of Ovid uttered that cry, many others, one after another, have groaned over the fact that, seeing the best and approving it, they yet follow the worst—alas!

* * * * *

Such a sorrow is to-day profound and universal; there where vice abounds, sorrow superabounds. It is no longer that melancholy born of the insufficiency of external reality, once for all recognized, that felt by Obermann and proud romanticists; but a humble, narrow, ragged rancor, mixed with disdain, with disgust, born of our insufficiency to ourselves, perceived thoroughly. Never, I believe, have we been more generally sad than in these times. And it is that which saves us; I find here our greatness. He alone is lost who feels himself at ease and healthful in evil; consciences without anxiety are the only hopeless ones. Let us hope then, for it cannot be denied that we feel we are very ill. It is apparent that we are in labor with something which shall be our cure. The symptoms of this painful labor are not lacking. The works which are appearing now, pre-eminent in form, but obscure and hesitating in principles, bear signs of the stress in which they were conceived; soon they will seem merely specious. In the poetry, romance, painting, music, of to-day, how many exquisite works are born, not of energy guided by love, but only of a dream of energy, a dream of love, on the shores of inconsolable exile! The truth is, we no longer know what to become; when any one of the antique misfortunes strikes us,—death, abandonment, ruin,—we no longer bear it as our fathers did. We no longer know the dignified, peaceful mournings of old; but under an unexpected stroke, the torment, the complicated rending in the heart, show that it has been secretly undermined. We feel indeed divided within ourselves, and we need to be unified; but the inward unification is possible only for the absolutely debauched or the absolutely good man; there is no via media; half-virtue rends us....

Our spiritual life being in truth miracle and mystery, I do not know how to explain what each one knows so well; I do not know how there is developed within us that sublime state known and described under different names by Socrates, Plato, Plotinus, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, St. Paul, St. Augustine, Tauler, the author of the 'Imitation,' Shelley, Emerson, Tolstoy: but I know that such a state, which we all know by experience, merits alone the name of positive morality.... Well then, history shows that what is true of each one of us personally, is true of society.



THE CONVERSION OF THE CHURCH

While a purer spirit is visibly awakening in ailing humanity and turning it again to Christ, the religion of Christ is rejuvenating. His church is no longer motionless. Thus, in the midst of a great confusion, two religious movements which correspond with one another are defining themselves with sufficient clearness.

On the one side, men without any precise faith, and who thought themselves without any faith, have perceived that they carry within themselves that which they sought: an explanation of themselves, say a principle of salvation. At whatever point these thinking men arrive, it is apparent at the present that they are progressing in the way of the Evangel, and following the path of the cross.... On the other side, the Roman Catholic Church, governed by a vigilant Pope, has declared herself. She has spoken of love, at the moment when all were thirsty for love and self-forgetfulness; she intercedes for the suffering masses, at the moment when others were going to do it outside of her, perhaps against her. And more, she is resolutely to-day accenting spirituality, after having so long accented ritual or policy. The new spiritualists and the renewed Christians are thus pushed forward to a meeting with one another by the need of their practical co-operation, and also perhaps by the consciousness of their intimate kinship. They are marching from both sides, with the same rallying cry, Fraternity and sacrifice! Here they are flying from the city of the plain, where a material civilization reigns, and claiming to suffice all; they are emigrating, they know not whither, if it be only towards the heights; there they are descending from their high, narrow, clerical, shut-in fastness.

The conversion that the Church should make is a conversion of the heart. It must become again a school of true liberty and love. Herein lies all the anxiety of the moment; and the great Catholic question lies not between the Church and the Republic, but between the Church and the People, or rather between the Church and the pure Spirit. By loving the people in truth, and by making itself the people, it is clear that the Catholic Church would simply be returning to its original source. Now, returning to its original source is, in a word, all that the Church should do; and that which, following her example, all old institutions should do so as to live and to make us live. To last, means to be re-born perpetually. In truth, each one of these institutions was born in former times, from a definite need of the soul. And at first they responded exactly to it, and that is why they prevailed; all their strength came from the fact that they were necessary; their weakness comes from the fact that they are no longer so. At first the religious community was formed of the imperious necessity of a deliverance from evil; it was not for ornament, not for the charm of burning incense under arches; ... neither was it formed to do what kings, warriors, and judges are sufficient to do; these last would have absorbed it, but they cannot,—although they try to do so every day; but they can never do so, unless the Church abandons her own functions to usurp theirs. She would then, by forgetting her destination, commit suicide. But even then, another church would form in response to the spiritual hunger and thirst which never ceases. Thus the whole problem of the existence of an institution is to remain forever necessary, and therefore faithful to its original source.

Let us add that civil society cannot maintain itself without also constant rejuvenation,—becoming young again; it also exists only by the active consent of willing minds. It is essential for the harmony of the whole that each person should be an individual and not an automaton. As men, divided by the external accidents of habit, condition, fortune, and united by that which is fundamental within them, the weakening of that which is within them disintegrates them; and thence the principal cause of our divisions comes from hardly any one to-day being in his heart that which he appears to be. Therefore, to bring back diverse conditions to their original source and to the reason of their being, to re-establish the principle in the centre of the life of each, is to do the work of unification. To say to the priests, "Be primitive Christians, imitate the chosen Master," is, socially speaking, a good action which all Christians and non-Christians should applaud, for the salvation of all depends upon it. The remedy of our malady, without doubt, lies not in having all France to mass, but first that all should make their faith the rule of their actions. That which lies at the bottom of our consciences is the thing by which we are brothers.



TWO IMPRESSIONS

From 'Notes Contemporaines'

Two impressions have remained with me. They date from a month's wandering in Switzerland, at a time when there are no tourists to be met. The first is of the exquisite scenes of wintry Nature, as she shows herself at this season, when none come to visit her—still, reposeful, silent, veiled—how much more touching and impressive than when profaned by the summer crowd! This is the moment when the Jura should be seen! The pine woods on the hills are but faintly powdered with snow, and the patches of dry rusty vegetation beneath lie on the gray stones like the broad red stains of blood. Seeds hang here and there on the bare branches, mixed with the tendrils of the wild vine, or with ghostly clusters of what were the flowers of the clematis. The falling leaves are golden; those already fallen are of an ashen gray. The delicate tracery overhead is of infinite complexity, exquisite in its endless detail; and the whole of this disrobed Nature, in its unadorned simplicity, has an impress of sincerity that reminds you of the drawings of Holbein. Flat pools of shallow water lie about, carpeted with mosses and mirroring the sky; the smoke of the huts rises upward gaunt and straight. No one is near; there are no passers-by; and there is no sound, except that of a waterfall, fuller in its rush than at any other season. Silence—a silence so fragile that the step of a single wayfarer on the road would be enough to break it—reigns undisturbed, and covers everything like a winding-sheet.

My second impression is of another kind, though almost as comforting, at least by the contrast; it was given me by the conversation of the peasant folk, plain humble mountaineers. The speech and thought of these men is plain and direct, devoid of artifice, clear and fathomable; they furnish you an unvarnished tale of their own simple experience—the life experience of a man, no more! They neither invent nor disguise, and are totally incapable of presenting either fact or circumstances in a way that shall suggest to the hearer another or a different sense. Our woeful habit of ridiculing what lies indeed at the bottom of our hearts they have never learned; they copy, line by line and stroke by stroke, the meaning that is in them, the intentions of their inner mind. In our Parisian haunts, it seems to me that their success would be a problem; but they are heedless of "success"; and to us, when we escape from our vitiated centres, from an atmosphere poisoned by that perpetual straining after effect, the pure undressed simplicity of these "primitives" is as refreshing as to our over-excited and exhausted nerves are the green, quiet, hidden nooks of their Alpine solitudes. With them there is no need of imaginative expression; the trouble of thought is useless; their words are the transparent revelation of their beliefs. The calm brought to the hyper-civilized spirit by this plainness and directness of Nature is absolutely indescribable; and when I came to reflect on the profoundness of mental quietude—I might say of consolation—that I had attained to during my wanderings, I could not help recognizing what a cruel, fatal part is played in the lives of all of us by irony. It is, with Frenchmen, a kind of veneer, worn even by the most unpretentious in place of whatever may be real in them; and where this outward seeming is absent, they are completely at a loss.

Well-bred Frenchmen rarely if ever have or pronounce an opinion, or pass a judgment—unless with a playful obliquity of judgment, and on things in general. They assume an air of knowing what they are talking about, and of having probed the vanity of all human effort before they have ever attempted or approached it; and even this indifference, this disdain, this apparent dislike to the responsibility of so much as an opinion,—even this is not natural, not innate; its formula is not of its own creation; it is but the repetition of what was originated by some one else. The truth is, that in our atmosphere all affirmative action is difficult; it is hard either to be or to do. This habit of irony has destroyed all healthful activity here. It is a mere instrument of evil; if you grasp it, it turns to mischief in your hands, and either slips from and eludes them, or wounds you, as often as not, mortally.



SIR AUBREY DE VERE

(1788-1846)



At Curragh Chase, in the picturesque county of Limerick, Ireland, Aubrey Hunt was born in 1788. On the death of his father he succeeded to the baronetcy and took the name of De Vere. Though his deep love of nature prompted him while very young to write descriptive verses, it was the drama that first seriously attracted him. This form he chose for his first painstaking work, 'Julian the Apostate.' The play opens at the time when Julian, having renounced the faith of his household oppressors, is allowed as a pagan worshiper to participate in the Eleusinian mysteries; when, it is said, he consented to the assassination of his uncle the Emperor Constantius. It found an admiring and enthusiastic audience and received unstinted praise from the critics. One wrote, "Lord Byron has produced nothing equal to it;" and another, "Scott has nothing so intellectual or so elevated among his exquisite sketches."

'Mary Tudor,' a drama written two years before his death in 1846, is his "most considerable work," says his son, and "an expression of his sympathy with great qualities obscured by great errors and great calamities." The sonnet was however the form of composition he preferred, and as a sonneteer he will be remembered. His sonnets are mainly historical, though he wrote also some religious and descriptive ones which Wordsworth considered "the most perfect of our age." His earlier ones, modeled after those of Petrarch and Filicaja, are inferior in imagery, phraseology, and nobility of thought to those produced under the influence of Wordsworth, a poet whose genius De Vere was among the first to acknowledge, and whose friendship he regarded as one of the chief honors of his life.

Like his friend, De Vere was a patriot, and in his historical sonnets he has recorded his love for the land of his remoter ancestors, whereas in the 'Lamentations of Ireland' he has expressed with great ardor his love for the land of his birth. In 1842 he published 'The Song of Faith,' which with the exception of a few translations was all he gave the world in twenty years. Devoted to his occupations as a country gentleman, and being of a singularly modest disposition, he neither loved nor courted fame, nor found in it any incentive to action.

Sir Aubrey De Vere was not in the modern acceptance of the term a national poet, nor was he, as so many of his contemporaries, anti-Irish. He modeled his poems on the great English writers, but all he wrote is pervaded with a deep sympathy for Ireland, and that at a time when such sympathy was rare.



THE CRUSADERS

The flattering crowd wreathe laurels for the brow Of blood-stained chief or regal conqueror; To Caesar or the Macedonian bow; Meteors of earth that set to rise no more: A hero-worship, as of old? Not now Should chieftain bend with servile reverence o'er The fading pageantry of Paynim lore. True heroes they whose consecrated vow Led them to Jewry, fighting for the Cross; While not by Avarice lured, or lust of power Inspired, they combated that Christ should reign, And life laid down for him counted no loss. On Dorylaeum's plain, by Antioch's tower, And Ascalon, sleep well the martyred slain.



THE CHILDREN BAND

From 'The Crusaders'

All holy influences dwell within The breast of childhood; instincts fresh from God Inspire it, ere the heart beneath the rod Of grief hath bled, or caught the plague of sin. How mighty was this fervor which could win Its way to infant souls!—and was the sod Of Palestine by infant Croises trod? Like Joseph went they forth, or Benjamin, In all their touching beauty to redeem? And did their soft lips kiss the Sepulchre? Alas! the lovely pageant, as a dream, Faded! They sank not through ignoble fear; They felt not Moslem steel. By mountain stream, In sands, in fens, they died—no mother near!



THE ROCK OF CASHEL

Royal and saintly Cashel! I would gaze Upon the wreck of thy departed powers Not in the dewy light of matin hours, Nor in the meridian pomp of summer blaze, But at the close of dim autumnal days, When the sun's parting glance, through slanting showers, Sheds o'er thy rock-throned battlements and towers Such awful gleams as brighten o'er decay's Prophetic cheek. At such a time, methinks, There breathes from thy lone courts and voiceless aisles A melancholy moral; such as sinks On the lone traveler's heart amid the piles Of vast Persepolis on her mountain stand, Or Thebes half buried in the desert sand.



THE RIGHT USE OF PRAYER

Therefore when thou wouldst pray, or dost thine alms, Blow not a trump before thee; hypocrites Do thus, vaingloriously; the common streets Boast of their largess, echoing their psalms. On such the laud of man, like unctuous balms, Falls with sweet savor. Impious counterfeits! Prating of heaven, for earth their bosom beats! Grasping at weeds, they lose immortal palms! God needs not iteration nor vain cries: That man communion with his God might share Below, Christ gave the ordinance of prayer: Vague ambages and witless ecstasies Avail not: ere a voice to prayer be given, The heart should rise on wings of love to heaven.



THE CHURCH

Ay, wisely do we call her Mother—she Who from her liberal breath breathes sustenance To nations; a majestic charity! No marble symbol cold, in suppliant glance Deceitful smiling; strenuous her advance, Yet calm; while holy ardors, fancy-free, Direct her measured steps: in every chance Sedate—as Una 'neath the forest tree Encompassed by the lions. Why, alas! Must her perverse and thoughtless children turn From her example? Why must the sulky breath Of Bigotry stain Charity's pure glass? Poison the springs of Art and Science—burn The brain through life, and sear the heart in death?



SONNET

Sad is our youth, for it is ever going, Crumbling away beneath our very feet; Sad is our life, for onward it is flowing In currents unperceived, because so fleet; Sad are our hopes, for they were sweet in sowing— But tares, self-sown, have overtopped the wheat; Sad are our joys, for they were sweet in blowing— And still, oh still, their dying breath is sweet; And sweet is youth, although it hath bereft us Of that which made our childhood sweeter still; And sweet is middle life, for it hath left us A nearer good to cure an older ill; And sweet are all things, when we learn to prize them Not for their sake, but His who grants them, or denies them!



BERNAL DIAZ DEL CASTILLO

(1498-1593)

Bernal Diaz del Castillo, one of the chief chroniclers of the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards, was born at Medina del Campo in Old Castile, about the year 1498. Concerning the date of his death, authorities differ widely. He died in Guatemala, perhaps not long after 1570, but some say not until 1593.

Of humble origin, he determined while still a youth to seek his fortune in the New World. In 1514 he went with Pedrarias to Darien and Cuba. He was a common soldier with Cordoba in the first expedition to Yucatan in 1517. He accompanied Grijalva to Mexico in the following year, and finally enlisted under the banner of Cortes. In every event that marked the career of that brilliant commander in Mexico, Diaz had a part; he was engaged in one hundred and nineteen battles, and was present at the siege and surrender of the capital in 1521. Of unswerving loyalty and bravery, according to his own naive statement, he was frequently appointed by Cortes to highly important missions. When Cortes set out to subdue the defection under Cristoval de Olid at Honduras, Diaz followed his old chief in the terrible journey through the forests and swamps.

On his return he presumably adopted the life of a planter, although he had complained loudly of the meagre allotment of land and laborers which the conqueror gave him. In 1568, however, after the lapse of half a century, when Cortes had been dead twenty-one years, we find the veteran comfortably established as regidor (a civic officer) of the city of Guatemala, and busily engaged on the narrative of the heroic deeds of his youth. In his introduction to the 'Historia' Diaz frankly admits that his principal motive in taking up his pen was to vindicate the valor of himself and others, who had been completely overshadowed by the exaggerated reputation of Cortes.

When fairly started, he happened to run across the 'Cronica de la Nueva Espana' (Saragossa, 1554) of Gomara, secretary and chaplain to Cortes, 1540-47. At first the rough old soldier threw down his pen in despair, on noting the polished style of the scholar; but when he became aware of the gross inaccuracies of his predecessor, who had never even set foot in America, he determined, so he declares, to write above all things a faithful narrative of the stirring events in which he had participated. Thus was completed his 'Historia Verdadera de la Conquista de la Nueva Espana.' For some reason this valuable manuscript lay neglected in a private library for about sixty years. Finally it fell into the hands of Father Alonso Remor, a sagacious priest, who published it at Madrid in 1632.

The narrative of this soldier historian, although clumsy, full of digressions and repetitions, and laying bare his ignorance, simplicity, and vanity, will nevertheless always be read with far more interest than the weightier works of Las Casas, Gomara, or Herrera. Prescott explained the secret of its fascination when he said:—

"Bernal Diaz, the untutored child of nature, is a most true and literal copyist of nature. He transfers the scenes of real life by a sort of daguerreotype process, if I may so say, to his pages. He is among chroniclers what Defoe is among novelists.... All the picturesque scenes and romantic incidents of the campaign are reflected in his pages as in a mirror. The lapse of fifty years has had no power over the spirit of the veteran. The fire of youth glows in every line of his rude history, and as he calls up the scenes of the past, the remembrance of the brave companions who are gone gives, it may be, a warmer coloring to the picture than if it had been made at an earlier period."

A fairly good English translation of the work of Bernal Diaz appeared in London in 1800, under the title of 'True History of the Conquest of Mexico.'



FROM THE 'TRUE HISTORY OF THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO'

Translation of Maurice Keatinge: London, 1800

THE CAPTURE OF GUATIMOTZIN

Sandoval at this moment made a signal for the flotilla to close up to him, and perceived that Guatimotzin was prisoner to Holguin, who was taking him to Cortes. Upon this he ordered his rowers to exert their utmost to bring him up to Holguin's vessel, and having arrived by the side of it, he demanded Guatimotzin to be delivered to him as general of the whole force; but Holguin refused, alleging that he had no claim whatever.

A vessel which went to carry the intelligence of the great event, brought also to Cortes, who was then on the summit of the great temple in the Taltelulco, very near the part of the lake where Guatimotzin was captured, an account of the dispute between his officers. Cortes immediately dispatched Luis Marin and Francisco de Lugo to bring the whole party together to his quarters, and thus to stop all litigation; but he enjoined them not to omit treating Guatimotzin and his queen with the greatest respect. During the interval he employed himself in arranging a state, as well as he could, with cloths and mantles. He also prepared a table with refreshments, to receive his prisoners. As soon as they appeared he went forward to meet them, and embracing Guatimotzin, treated him and all his attendants with every mark of respect.

The unfortunate monarch, with tears in his eyes, and sinking under affliction, then addressed him in the following words:—"Malintzin! I have done that which was my duty in the defense of my kingdom and people; my efforts have failed, and being now brought by force a prisoner in your hands, draw that poniard from your side and stab me to the heart."

Cortes embraced and used every expression to comfort him, by assurances that he held him in high estimation for the valor and firmness he had shown, and that he had required a submission from him and the people at the time that they could no longer reasonably hope for success, in order to prevent further destruction; but that was all past, and no more to be thought of it; he should continue to reign over the people as he had done before. Cortes then inquired after his queen, to which Guatimotzin replied that in consequence of the compliance of Sandoval with his request, she and her women remained in the piraguas until Cortes should decide as to their fate. The general then caused them to be sent for, and treated them in the best manner his situation afforded. The evening was drawing on, and it appeared likely to rain; he therefore sent the whole royal family to Cuyoacan, under the care of Sandoval. The rest of the troops then returned to their former quarters; we to ours of Tacuba, and Cortes, proceeding to Cuyoacan, took the command there, sending Sandoval to resume his station at Tepeaquilla. Thus was the siege of Mexico brought to a conclusion by the capture of Guatimotzin and his chiefs, on the thirteenth of August, at the hour of vespers, being the day of St. Hyppolitus, in the year of our Lord one thousand five hundred and twenty-one. Glorified by our Lord Jesus Christ, and Our Lady the Holy Virgin Mary his blessed mother, Amen!

Guatimotzin was of a noble appearance both in person and countenance; his features were rather large and cheerful, with lively eyes. His age was about twenty-three or four years, and his complexion very fair for an Indian. His queen, the niece of Montezuma, was young and very handsome.



THE MORTALITY AT THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO

What I am going to mention is truth, and I swear and say amen to it. I have read of the destruction of Jerusalem, but I cannot conceive that the mortality there exceeded this of Mexico; for all the people from the distant provinces which belonged to this empire had concentrated themselves here, where they mostly died. The streets, the squares, the houses, and the courts of the Taltelulco were covered with dead bodies; we could not step without treading on them; the lake and canals were filled with them, and the stench was intolerable. For this reason, our troops, immediately after the capture of the royal family, retired to their former quarters. Cortes himself was for some time ill from the effect of it.



CORTES

I will now proceed to describe the person and disposition of the Marquis [Cortes]. He was of good stature and strongly built, of a rather pale complexion and serious countenance. His features were, if faulty, rather too small; his eyes mild and grave. His beard was black, thin, and scanty; his hair in the same manner. His breast and shoulders were broad, and his body very thin. He was very well limbed, and his legs rather bowed; an excellent horseman, and dexterous in the use of arms. He also possessed the heart and mind which is the principal part of the business. I have heard that when he was a lad in Hispaniola he was very wild about women, and that he had several duels with able swordsmen, in which he always came off with victory. He had the scar of a sword wound near his under lip, which appeared through his beard if closely examined, and which he received in some of those affairs. In his appearance, manners, transactions, conversation, table, and dress, everything bore the appearance of a great lord. His clothes were according to the fashion of the time; he was not fond of silks, damasks, or velvets, but everything plain, and very handsome; nor did he wear large chains of gold, but a small one of fine workmanship bearing the image of Our Lady the Blessed Virgin with her precious Son in her arms, and a Latin motto; and on the reverse, St. John the Baptist with another motto. He wore on his finger a ring with a very fine diamond, and in his cap, which according to the fashion of that day was of velvet, he bore a medal, the head and motto of which I do not recollect; but latterly he wore a plain cloth cap without any ornament.

His table was always magnificently attended and served, with four major-domos or principal officers, a number of pages, and a great quantity of plate, both gold and silver. He dined heartily at midday, and drank a glass of wine mixed with water, of about half a pint. He was not nice in his food, nor expensive, except on particular occasions where he saw the propriety of it. He was very affable with all his captains and soldiers, especially those who accompanied him in his first expedition from Cuba. He was a Latinist, and as I have been told, a bachelor of laws. He was also something of a poet, and a very good rhetorician; very devout to Our Holy Virgin and to St. Peter, St. Jago, and St. John the Baptist, and charitable to the poor. When he swore he used to say, "By my conscience!" and when he was angry with any of us his friends, he would say, "Oh! may you repent it." When he was very angry, the veins in his throat and forehead used to swell, and when in great wrath he would not utter a syllable to any one. He was very patient under insults or injuries; for some of the soldiers were at times very rude and abusive to him; but he never resented their conduct, although he had often great reason to do so. In such cases he used only to say "Be silent!" or "Go away, in God's name, and take care not to repeat this conduct or I will have you punished." He was very determined and headstrong in all business of war, not attending to any remonstrances on account of danger; an instance of which he showed in the attack of those fortresses called the Rocks of the Marquis, which he forced us to scale, contrary to our opinions, and when neither courage, council, nor wisdom could give any rational hope of success....

Where we had to erect a fortress, Cortes was the hardest laborer in the trenches; when we were going into battle, he was as forward as any.

Cortes was very fond of play, both at cards and dice, and while playing he was very affable and good-humored. He used frequently at such times those cant expressions which are customary amongst persons who game. In military service he practiced the most strict attention to discipline, constantly going the rounds in person during the night, visiting the quarters of the soldiers and severely reprehending those whom he found without their armor and appointments and not ready to turn out; repeating to them the proverb that "It is a bad sheep which cannot carry its own wool."

On our expedition to Higueras I perceived that he had acquired a habit which I had never before observed in him, and it was this: after eating, if he did not get his siesta or sleep, his stomach was affected and he fell sick. For this reason, when on the journey, let the rain be ever so heavy or the sun ever so hot, he always reposed for a short time after his repast, a carpet or cloak being spread under a tree, on which he lay down; and having slept a short time, he mounted his horse and proceeded on his journey. When we were engaged in the wars during the conquest of New Spain, he was very thin and slender; but after his return from Higueras he grew fat, and acquired a belly. He at this time trimmed his beard, which had now begun to grow white, in the short fashion. In his early life he was very liberal, but grew close latterly, some of his servants complaining that he did not pay them as he ought; and I have also to observe that in his latter undertakings he never succeeded. Perhaps such was the will of Heaven, his reward being reserved for another place; for he was a good cavalier, and very devout to the Holy Virgin, and also to St. Paul and other Holy Saints. God pardon him his sins, and me mine; and give me a good end, which is better than all conquests and victories over Indians.



OF DIVINE AID IN THE BATTLE OF SANTA MARIA DE LA VITORIA

In his account of this action, Gomara says that previous to the arrival of the main body of the cavalry under Cortes, Francisco de Morla appeared in the field upon a gray dappled horse, and that it was one of the holy Apostles, St. Peter or St. Jago, disguised under his person. I say that all our works and victories are guided by the hand of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that in this battle there were so many enemies to every one of us, that they could have buried us under the dust they could have held in their hands, but that the great mercy of God aided us throughout. What Gomara asserts might be the case, and I, sinner as I am, was not worthy to be permitted to see it. What I did see was Francisco de Morla, riding in company with Cortes and the rest upon a chestnut horse; and that circumstance and all the others of that day appear to me, at this moment that I am writing, as if actually passing in view of these sinful eyes. But although I, unworthy sinner that I am, was unfit to behold either of those holy Apostles, upwards of four hundred of us were present: let their testimony be taken. Let inquiry also be made how it happened that when the town was founded on that spot, it was not named after one or other of those holy Apostles, and called St. Jago de la Vitoria, or St. Pedro de la Vitoria, as it was Santa Maria, and a church erected and dedicated to one of those holy saints. Very bad Christians were we indeed, according to the account of Gomara, who, when God sent us his Apostles to fight at our head, did not every day after acknowledge and return thanks for so great a mercy! Would to heaven that it were so; but until I read the chronicle of Gomara I never heard of it, nor was it ever mentioned amongst the conquerors who were then present.



CORTES DESTROYS CERTAIN IDOLS

There was on the island of Cozumel a temple, and some hideous idols, to which all the Indians of the neighboring districts used to go frequently in solemn procession.... Cortes summoned all the caciques and chief persons to come to him, and as well as he could, by signs and interpretations, explained to them that the idols which they worshiped were not gods, but evil things which would draw their souls down to hell, and that if they wished to remain in a brotherly connection with us, they must pull them down and place in their stead the crucifix of our Lord, by whose assistance they would obtain good harvests and the salvation of their souls; with many other good and holy reasons, which he expressed very well. The priests and chiefs replied that they worshiped these gods as their ancestors had done, because they were kind to them; and that if we attempted to molest them, the gods would convince us of their power by destroying us in the sea. Cortes then ordered them to be prostrated, which we immediately did, rolling them down some steps. He next sent for lime, of which there was abundance in the place, and Indian masons, by whom under our direction a very handsome altar was constructed, whereon we placed an image of the Holy Virgin; and the carpenters having made a crucifix, which was erected in a small chapel close to the altar, mass was said by the Reverend Father Juan Diaz, and listened to by the priests, chiefs, and the rest of the natives, with great attention.



CHARLES DIBDIN

(1745-1814)



The saying, "Let me make the songs of a nation and I care not who makes its laws," receives an interesting illustration in the sea songs of Charles Dibdin. They were written at a momentous period in English history. The splendid gallantry and skill of England's sailors, and the genius of her naval commanders, had made her mistress of the seas, and the key of all combinations against the French Caesar. The sterling qualities of the British seaman are the inspiration of Dibdin's songs.

Many of these were first given at Dibdin's monodramatic entertainments at the Sans Souci Theatre in London, or as parts of his musical dramas. They appealed at once to Englishmen, and were sung by every ship's crew; they fired the national spirit, and played so important a part in the quickening of English patriotism that the government, recognizing their stirring force in animating the naval enthusiasm during the Napoleonic wars, granted a pension of L200 a year to the "Ocean Bard of England."

Charles Dibdin was born in 1745, in a small village near the great seaport of Southampton. His love of the salt air drew him often to the ocean's shores, where he saw the ships of all lands pass and repass, and heard the merry sailors' songs. And yet his own songs, upon which his title to a place in literature rests, were incidental products of his active mind. He was an actor, a dramatist, and a composer as well. He wrote some thirty minor plays and the once popular operettas of 'The Shepherd's Artifice,' 'The Padlock,' 'The Quaker,' and 'The Waterman.' He wrote also a 'History of the Stage,' 'Musical Tour through England,' and an autobiography which bore the title 'Professional Life.' His two novels are now forgotten, but it is interesting to recall that for the Stratford Jubilee in honor of Shakespeare, the words of which were by Garrick, Dibdin composed the much admired songs, dances, and serenades. He wrote more than thirteen hundred songs, most of which had of course only a brief existence; but there were enough of them, burning with genuine lyric fire, to entitle him to grateful remembrance among England's poets.

In all of these songs, whether the theme be his native land or the wind-swept seas that close it round, love is the poet's real inspiration; love of old England and her sovereign, love of the wealth-bringing ocean, love of the good ship that sails its waves. This fundamental affection for the things of which he sings has endeared the songs of Dibdin to the heart of the British sailor; and in this lies the proof of their genuineness. His songs are simple and melodious; there is a manly ring in their word and rhythm; they have the swagger and the fearlessness of the typical tar; they have, too, the beat of his true heart, his kindly waggery, his sturdy fidelity to his country and his king. There is nothing quite like them in any other literature.



SEA SONG

I sailed in the good ship the Kitty, With a smart blowing gale and rough sea; Left my Polly, the lads call so pretty, Safe at her anchor. Yo, Yea!

She blubbered salt tears when we parted, And cried "Now be constant to me!" I told her not to be down-hearted, So up went the anchor. Yo, Yea!

And from that time, no worse nor no better, I've thought on just nothing but she, Nor could grog nor flip make me forget her,— She's my best bower-anchor. Yo, Yea!

When the wind whistled larboard and starboard, And the storm came on weather and lee, The hope I with her should be harbored Was my cable and anchor. Yo, Yea!

And yet, my boys, would you believe me? I returned with no rhino from sea; Mistress Polly would never receive me, So again I heav'd anchor. Yo, Yea!



SONG: THE HEART OF A TAR

Yet though I've no fortune to offer, I've something to put on a par; Come, then, and accept of my proffer,— 'Tis the kind honest heart of a tar.

Ne'er let such a trifle as this is, Girls, be to my pleasure a bar; You'll be rich though 'tis only in kisses, With the kind honest heart of a tar.

Besides, I am none of your ninnies; The next time I come from afar, I'll give you a lapful of guineas, With the kind honest heart of a tar.

Your lords, with such fine baby faces, That strut in a garter and star,— Have they, under their tambour and laces, The kind honest heart of a tar?



POOR JACK

Go patter to lubbers and swabs, do you see, 'Bout danger, and fear, and the like; A tight-water boat and good sea-room give me, And it ain't to a little I'll strike. Though the tempest topgallant-mast smack smooth should smite And shiver each splinter of wood, Clear the deck, stow the yards, and house everything tight, And under reef foresail we'll scud: Avast! nor don't think me a milksop so soft, To be taken for trifles aback; For they say there's a Providence sits up aloft, To keep watch for the life of poor Jack!

I heard our good chaplain palaver one day About souls, heaven, mercy, and such; And, my timbers! what lingo he'd coil and belay; Why, 'twas just all as one as High Dutch; For he said how a sparrow can't founder, d'ye see, Without orders that come down below; And a many fine things that proved clearly to me oft That Providence takes us in tow: For, says he, do you mind me, let storms ne'er so oft Take the topsails of sailors aback, There's a sweet little cherub that sits up aloft, To keep watch for the life of poor Jack!

I said to our Poll (for d'ye see, she would cry When last we weighed anchor for sea), What argufies sniveling and piping your eye? Why, what a young fool you must be! Can't you see the world's wide, and there's room for us all, Both for seamen and lubbers ashore? And so if to old Davy I go, my dear Poll, Why, you never will hear of me more. What then? all's a hazard: come, don't be so soft; Perhaps I may, laughing, come back; For d'ye see? there's a cherub sits smiling aloft, To keep watch for the life of poor Jack.

D'ye mind me? a sailor should be every inch All as one as a piece of the ship, And with her brave the world, without offering to flinch, From the moment the anchor's a-trip. As for me, in all weathers, all times, sides, and ends, Naught's a trouble from duty that springs; For my heart is my Poll's, and my rhino's my friend's, And as for my life, 'tis the King's. Even when my time comes, ne'er believe me so soft; As for grief to be taken aback; For the same little cherub that sits up aloft Will look out a good berth for poor Jack.



TOM BOWLING

Here, a sheer hulk, lies poor Tom Bowling, The darling of our crew; No more he'll hear the tempest howling, For Death has broached him to. His form was of the manliest beauty, His heart was kind and soft; Faithful below he did his duty, But now he's gone aloft.

Tom never from his word departed His virtues were so rare; His friends were many and true-hearted, His Poll was kind and fair: And then he'd sing so blithe and jolly; Ah, many's the time and oft! But mirth is turned to melancholy, For Tom is gone aloft.

Yet shall poor Tom find pleasant weather, When He who all commands Shall give, to call life's crew together, The word to pipe all hands. Thus Death, who kings and tars dispatches, In vain Tom's life has doffed; For though his body's under hatches, His soul is gone aloft.



CHARLES DICKENS

(1812-1870)

When a great genius arises he makes his place in the world and explains himself. Criticism does not make him and cannot unmake him. He may have great defects and great faults. By exposing them and dwelling upon them, the critics may apparently nibble him all away. When the critics get through, however, he remains pretty much the force he was originally. For real genius is a sort of elemental force that enters the human world, both for good and evil, and leaves its lasting impression. It is like a new river, of waters sweet and bitter, clear and muddy, bearing on its bosom ships and wrecks, the lovely and the ugly, the incongruous elements of human life and human contrivance. When it floods and overflows, the critics run away; when it subsides the critics come back and begin to analyze it, and say, "It wasn't much of a shower."

Charles Dickens is to be judged, like any other genius, by what he created, what he brought into the world. We are not called on to say whether he was as great as Homer, as Shakespeare, as Cervantes, as Fielding, as Manzoni, as Thackeray. He was always quite himself, and followed no model, though thousands of writers have attempted to follow him and acquire the title of being Dickens-y. For over half a century he had the ear of the English-reading public the world over. It laughed with him, it cried with him, it hungered after him. Whatever he wrote, it must read; whenever he read, it crowded to hear his masterly interpretations; when he acted, it was delighted with his histrionic cleverness. In all these manifestations there was the attraction of a most winning personality.

He invented a new kind of irresistible humor, he told stories that went to the heart of humanity, he amused, he warmed, he cheered the world. We almost think that modern Christmas was his invention, such an apostle was he of kindliness and brotherly love, of sympathy with the poor and the struggling, of charity which is not condescension. He made pictures of low life, and perhaps unreal shadows of high life, and vivid scenes that lighted up great periods of history. For producing effects and holding the reader he was a wizard with his pen. And so the world hung on him, read him and re-read him, recited him, declaimed him, put him into reading-books, diffused him in common speech and in all literature. In all English literature his characters are familiar, stand for types, and need no explanation. And now, having filled itself up with him, been saturated with him, made him in some ways as common as the air, does the world tire of him, turn on him, say that it cannot read him any more, that he is commonplace? If so, the world has made him commonplace. But the publishers' and booksellers' accounts show no diminution in his popularity with the new generation.

At a dinner where Dickens was discussed, a gentleman won distinction by this sole contribution to the conversation:—"There is no evidence in Dickens's works that he ever read a book." It is true that Dickens drew most of his material from his own observation of life, and from his fertile imagination, which was often fantastic. It is true that he could not be called in the narrow sense a literary writer, that he made no literary mosaic, and few allusions to the literature of the world. Is it not probable that he had the art to assimilate his material? For it is impossible that any writer could pour out such a great flood about the world and human nature without refreshing his own mind at the great fountains of literature. And when we turn to such a tale as 'The Tale of Two Cities,' we are conscious of the vast amount of reading and study he must have done in order to give us such a true and vivid picture of the Revolutionary period.

It has been said that Dickens did not write good English, that he could not draw a lady or a gentleman, that he often makes ear-marks and personal peculiarities stand for character, that he is sometimes turgid when he would be impressive, sometimes stilted when he would be fine, that his sentiment is often false and worked up, that his attempts at tragedy are melodramatic, and that sometimes his comedy comes near being farcical. His whole literary attitude has been compared to his boyish fondness for striking apparel.

There is some truth in all these criticisms, though they do not occur spontaneously to a fresh reader while he is under the spell of Dickens, nor were they much brought forward when he was creating a new school and setting a fashion for an admiring world. His style, which is quite a part of this singular man, can easily be pulled in pieces and condemned, and it is not a safe one to imitate. No doubt he wrought for effects, for he was a magician, and used exaggeration in high lights and low lights on his crowded canvas. Say what you will of all these defects, of his lack of classic literary training, of his tendency to melodrama, of his tricks of style, even of a ray of lime-light here and there, it remains that he is a great power, a tremendous force in modern life; half an hour of him is worth a lifetime of his self-conscious analyzers, and the world is a more cheerful and sympathetic world because of the loving and lovable presence in it of Charles Dickens.

A sketch of his life and writings, necessarily much condensed for use here, has been furnished by Mr. Laurence Hutton.



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF DICKENS

BY LAURENCE HUTTON

Charles Dickens was born at Landport in Portsea, on the 7th of February, 1812. His childhood was a very unhappy one. He describes himself in one of his essays as "a very queer, small boy," and his biographer tells us that he was very sickly as well as very small. He had little schooling, and numberless hard knocks, and rough and toilsome was the first quarter of his journey through life. Many of the passages in 'David Copperfield' are literally true pictures of his own early experiences, and much of that work may be accepted as autobiographical. He was fond of putting himself and his own people into his books, and of drawing his scenes and his characters from real life, sometimes only slightly disguised. Tradition says that he built both Mr. Micawber and Mr. Turveydrop out of his own father; that Mrs. Nickleby was based upon his own mother; and that his wife, who was the Dora of 'Copperfield' in the beginning of their married life, became in later years the Flora of 'Little Dorrit.' The elder Dickens had unquestionably some of the traits ascribed to the unpractical friend of Copperfield's youth, and something of the cruel self-indulgence and pompous deportment of the dancing-master in 'Bleak House.' And it was during his father's imprisonment for debt when the son was but a youth, that Dickens got his intimate knowledge of the Marshalsea, and of the heart-breaking existence of its inmates. Some years before 'Copperfield' was written, he described in a fragment of actual autobiography, quoted by Forster, the following scene:—

"My father was waiting for me in the lodge [of the Debtor's Prison]; and we went up to his room, on the top story but one, and cried very much. And he told me, I remember, to take warning by the Marshalsea, and to observe that if a man had twenty pounds a year, and spent nineteen pounds nineteen shillings and sixpence, he would be happy; but that a shilling spent the other way would make him wretched."

In these chambers Dickens afterwards put Mr. Dorrit. And while the father remained in confinement, the son lived for a time in a back attic in Lant Street, Borough, which was to become the home of the eccentric Robert Sawyer, and the scene of a famous supper party given to do honor to Mr. Pickwick "and the other chaps." "If a man wishes to abstract himself from the world, to remove himself from the reach of temptation, to place himself beyond the possibility of any inducement to look out of the window, he should by all means go to Lant Street." Lant Street still exists, as Mr. Pickwick found it, and as Dickens knew it between 1822 and 1824. He had numerous lodgings, alone and with his family, during those hard times; all of them of the same miserable, wretched character; and it is interesting to know that the original of Mrs. Pipchin was his landlady in Camden Town, and that the original of the Marchioness waited on the elder Dickens during his stay in the Marshalsea.

The story of the unhappy drudgery of the young Copperfield is the story of the young Dickens without exaggeration.

"No words can express the secret agony of my soul as I sunk into this companionship," he wrote in 1845 or 1846,—"compared these every-day associates with those of my happier childhood, and felt my early hopes of growing up to be a learned and distinguished man crushed in my breast. The deep remembrance of the sense I had of being utterly neglected and hopeless; of the shame I felt in my position; of the misery it was to my young heart to believe that, day by day, what I had learned, and thought, and delighted in, and raised my fancy and my emulation up by, was passing away from me, never to be brought back any more, cannot be written. My whole nature was so penetrated with the grief and humiliation of such considerations, that even now, famous and caressed and happy, I often forget, in my dreams, that I have a dear wife and children; even that I am a man; and I wander desolately back to that time of my life."

In the course of a few years, happily, the cloud lifted; and in 1831, when Dickens was a youth of nineteen, we find him beginning life as a reporting journalist. He wrote occasional "pieces" for the magazines, and some faint hope of growing up to be a distinguished and learned man rose again, no doubt, in his breast. N. P. Willis met him one day in 1835, when, as Willis expresses it, Dickens was a "paragraphist" for the London Morning Chronicle. The "paragraphist," according to Willis, was lodging in the most crowded part of Holborn, in an uncarpeted and bleak-looking room, with a deal table, two or three chairs, and a few books. It was up a long flight of stairs, this room; and its occupant "was dressed very much as he has since described Dick Swiveller—minus the swell look. His hair was cropped close to his head, his clothes were scant, though jauntily cut; and after exchanging a ragged office coat for a shabby blue, he stood by the door collarless and buttoned up, the very personification, I thought, of a close sailer to the wind.... Not long after this Macrone sent me the sheets of 'Sketches by Boz,' with a note saying they were by the gentleman [Dickens] who went with us to Newgate. I read the book with amazement at the genius displayed in it; and in my note of reply assured Macrone that I thought his fortune was made, as a publisher, if he could monopolize the author." This picture is very graphic. But it must be accepted with a grain of salt.

The 'Sketches by Boz, Illustrative of Every-Day Life and Every-Day People,' Dickens's first printed book, appeared in 1835. A further series of papers, bearing the same title, was published the next year. "Boz" was the nickname he had bestowed upon his younger brother Augustus, in honor of the Moses of the 'Vicar of Wakefield.' The word, pronounced through the nose, became "Boses," afterwards shortened to "Boz," which, said Dickens, "was a very familiar household word to me long before I was an author. And so I came to adopt it." The sketches, the character of which is explained in their sub-title, were regarded as unusually clever things of their kind. They attracted at once great attention in England, and established the fact that a new star had risen in the firmament of British letters.

Dickens was married on the 2d of April, 1836, to Miss Catherine Hogarth, just a week after he had published the first shilling number of 'The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club: Edited by Boz.' The work appeared in book form the next year. Its success was phenomenal, and it brought to its author not only fame but a fixed sum per annum, which is better. It assured his comfort in the present and in the future, and it wiped out all the care and troubles of his past. It was in itself the result of an accident. Messrs. Chapman and Hall, attracted by the popularity of the Sketches, proposed to their author a series of monthly articles to illustrate certain pictures of a comic character by Robert Seymour, an artist in their employment. Dickens assented, upon the condition that "the plates were to be so modified that they would arise naturally out of the text." And so between them Mr. Pickwick was born, although under the saddest of circumstances; for only a single number had appeared when Seymour died by his own hand. Hablot K. Browne succeeded him, signing the name of "Phiz"; and with "Boz" was "Phiz" long associated in other prosperous ventures. Mr. Pickwick is a benevolent, tender-hearted elderly gentleman, who, as the president of a club organized "for the purpose of investigating the source of the Hampstead ponds," journeys about England in all directions with three companions, to whom he acts as guide, philosopher, and friend. He is an amiable old goose, and his companions are equally verdant and unsophisticated; but since 1837 they have been as famous as any men in fiction. The story is a long one, the pages are crowded with incidents and with characters. It is disconnected, often exaggerated, much of it is as improbable as it is impossible, but it has made the world laugh for sixty years now; and it still holds its own unique place in the hearts of men.

From this period the pen of Dickens was never idle for thirty-three years. 'Pickwick' was succeeded by 'Oliver Twist,' begun in Bentley's Magazine in January, 1837, and printed in book form in 1838. It is the story of the progress of a parish boy, and it is sad and serious in its character. The hero was born and brought up in a workhouse. He was starved and ill-treated; but he always retained his innocence and his purity of mind. He fell among thieves,—Bill and Nancy Sykes, Fagin and the Artful Dodger, to whom much powerful description is devoted,—but he triumphed in the end. The life of the very poor and of the very degraded among the people of England during the latter end of the first half of the nineteenth century is admirably portrayed; and for the first time in their existence the British blackguards of both sexes were exhibited in fiction, clad in all their instincts of low brutality, and without that glamour of attractive romance which the earlier writers had given to Jack Sheppard, to Jonathan Wild, or to Moll Flanders.

Two dramatic compositions by Dickens, neither of them adding very much to his reputation, appeared in 1836, to wit:—'The Stranger Gentleman, A Comic Burletta in Three Acts'; and 'The Village Coquette,' a comic opera in two acts. They were presented upon the stage towards the close of that year, with fair success.