'MMEAMS ENGLISHi 
 CLASSIC SERIES 
 
 WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES 
 
 P R 1 
 
 oi06 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 AoM 
 
 NEWMAN 
 
 NEW YORK. 
 
 MAyNARI>,MERRILL,&CO. 
 
Class TTls-iaib-- 
 
 Book L_,]VV2 
 
 GopglitN" 
 
 COPyRIGHT DEPOSIT. 
 
CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
MAYNARD'S ENGLISH CLASSIC SERIES. —SPECIAL NUMBER 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 FROM THE PROSE WRITINGS 
 
 OP 
 
 JOHN HENEY CAEDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 FOE THE USE OF SCHOOLS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 MAYNARD, MERRILL, & CO. 
 
LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
 Two Copies Received 
 
 J^W 18 »907 
 
 If] Ceoyrl^ht Entry 
 imss ^ XXc, No. 
 
 ] /Cc/s^/ 
 
 ^^ ^ COPY B. 
 
 .M3 
 
 Copyright, 1906, 
 
 BY 
 
 MAYNAED, MEERILL, & CO. 
 

 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction 5 
 
 Character Sketches : 
 
 Saul 13 
 
 Early Years of David 28 
 
 Basil and Gregory 45 
 
 Augustine and the Vandals 56 
 
 Clirysostom 84 
 
 The Turk: 
 
 The Tartar and the Turk Ill 
 
 The Turk and the Saracen 122 
 
 The Past and Present of the Ottomans . . .143 
 
 Universities : 
 
 What is a University ? 155 
 
 University Life : Athens 163 
 
 Supply and Demand : The Schoolmen . . . 180 
 The Strength and Weakness of Universities : Abe- 
 lard 186 
 
 Miscellaneous : 
 
 Poetry, with Reference to Aristotle's Poetics 
 The Infinitude of the Divine Attributes 
 Christ upon the Waters 
 The Second Spring .... 
 
 St. Paul's Characteristic Gift 
 
 Notes ........ 
 
 200 
 
 218 
 222 
 229 
 251 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 It has come to be universally admitted that Cardinal 
 Newman fulfills his own definition of a great author : 
 " One whose aim is to give forth what he has within him ; 
 and from his very earnestness it happens that whatever 
 be the splendor of his diction, or the harmony of his 
 periods, he has with him the charm of an incommuni- 
 cable simplicity. 
 
 "Whatever be his subject, high or low, he treats it 
 suitably and for its own sake. . . . He "writes pas- 
 sionately because he feels keenly ; forcibly, because he 
 conceives vividly ; he sees too clearly to be vague ; he 
 is too serious to be otiose ; he can analyze his subject, 
 and therefore he is rich; he embraces it as a whole 
 and in its parts, and therefore he is consistent; he has 
 a firm hold of it, and therefore he is luminous. 
 
 '' When his imagination wells up, it overflows in orna- 
 ment ; when his heart is touched, it thrills along his 
 verse. He always has the right word for the right idea, 
 and never a word too much. . , . 
 
 "He expresses what all feel but cannot say; and his 
 sayings pass into proverbs among his people, and his 
 phrases become household words, idioms of their daily 
 speech, which is tessellated with the rich fragments of 
 his language, as we see in foreign lands the marbles 
 of Roman grandeur worked into the walls and pave- 
 ments of modern palaces." 
 
 Newman may be said to have handled England's 
 
6 INTRODUCTION 
 
 prose as Shakespeare handled her verse. His language 
 was wrought up little by little to a finish and refine- 
 ment, a strength and a subtlety, thrown into the form 
 of eloquence, beyond which no English writer of prose 
 has gone. Nor is his excellence that of mere art in 
 form; he possesses not only skill, which he calls an 
 exercise of talent, but power — a second name for 
 genius — which itself implies personality and points 
 to inspiration. 
 
 His mind was large, logical, profoundly thoughtful, 
 imaginative, intense, sincere, and above all, spiritual; 
 his soul was keen, delicate, sympathetic, heroic; and 
 his life, at once severe and tender, passionate and self- 
 controlled, alone and unlonely, stands out in its lofti- 
 ness and saintliness, a strange, majestic contrast to the 
 agitation and turmoil of "confused passions, hesitating 
 ideals, tentative virtues, and groping philanthropies" 
 amidst which it was lived. 
 
 Both by word and work did Newman lead forth his 
 generation on the long pilgrimage to the shrine of 
 Truth, and England of the nineteenth century has no 
 surer claim to holiness and genius for her great sons 
 than that set upon John Henry Newman. 
 
 He was born in London, 1801 ; studied, taught, and 
 preached at Oxford; became the chief promoter of 
 the Tractarian Movement of 1833 ; entered the Catho- 
 lic Church in 1845; founded the Oratory at Birming- 
 ham, 1848; was created Cardinal by Pope Leo XIII, 
 1879; died at Edgbaston, 1890. 
 
 Any attempt to choose from the writings of Newman 
 what seems most desirable for brief class studies is 
 certain to be woefully embarrassed by the very wealth 
 of matter ; and apology for risking the choice would 
 be due, were it not lost sight of in the desire to see a 
 
INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 literary model so pure, varied, animated, forceful, 
 luminous — '*a thing of light and beauty '^ — given to 
 our students. 
 
 What is more significant of the Life Book of the 
 saintly Oxford Scholar than his self- written epitaph: 
 "Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem^'? 
 
APPRECIATIONS 
 
 Newman s best essays display a delicate and flex- 
 ible treatment of language, without emphasis, without 
 oddity, which hardly arrests the attention at first, — 
 the reader being absorbed in the argument or state- 
 ment, — but which, in course of time, fascinates, as 
 a thing miraculous in its limpid grace and suavity. — 
 Edmund Gosse's History of Modern English Literature. 
 
 The work of Newman reveals him as one of the 
 great masters of graceful, scholarly, finished prose. It 
 is individual, it has charm, and this is the secret of its 
 power to interest. No writer of our time has reflected 
 his mind and heart in his pages as has Newman. He 
 has light for the intellect and warmth for the heart. 
 — A. J. George's Types of Literary Art. 
 
 Newman towers, with only three or four compeers, 
 above his generation; and now that the benignity of 
 his great nature has passed from our sight, its majesty 
 is more evident year by year. 
 
 — Scudder's Modern English Poets. 
 
 The finish and urbanity of Newman's prose have 
 been universally commended even by those who are 
 most strenuously opposed to his opinions. 
 
 — H. J. Nicoll. 
 
 All the resources of a master of English style are at 
 Newman's command : pure diction, clear arrangement, 
 delicate irony, gracious dignity, a copious command of 
 8 
 
INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 words combined with a chaste reserve in using them. 
 All these qualities go to make up the charm of Newman's 
 style — the finest flower that the earliest system of a 
 purely classical education has produced. 
 
 — J. Jacobs's Literary Studies. 
 
 Newman combines a thoroughly classical training, 
 a scholarly form, with the incommunicable and almost 
 inexplicable power to move audiences and readers. 
 
 — George Saintsbury. 
 
 The pure style of Newman may be compared in its 
 distinguishing quality to the atmosphere. It is at 
 once simple and subtle, vigorous and elastic ; it pene- 
 trates into every recess of its subject ; it is transparent, 
 allowing each object it touches to display its own 
 proper color. — H. E. Beeching's English Prose. 
 
 There are touching passages characteristic of New- 
 man's writings which give them a peculiar charm. 
 They are those which yield momentary glimpses of a 
 very tender heart that has a burden of its own, unre- 
 vealed to man. ... It is, as I have heard it described, 
 as though he suddenly opened a book and gave you a 
 glimpse for a moment of wonderful secrets, and then 
 as quickly closed it. . . . In Newman's Sermons, 
 how the old truth became new ; how it came home, as 
 he spoke, with a meaning never felt before ! He laid 
 his finger how gently, yet how powerfully, on some in- 
 ner place in the hearer's heart, and told him things 
 about himself he had never known till then. Subtlest 
 truths, which it would have taken philosophers pages of 
 circumJocution and big words to state, were dropped out 
 by the way in a sentence or two of the most transpar- 
 ent Saxon. What delicacy of style, yet what strength ! 
 how simple, yet how suggestive ! how penetrating, yet 
 how refined! how homely, yet how tender-hearted! 
 
10 INTRODUCTION 
 
 You might come away still not believing the tenets 
 peculiar to the High Church System, but you would be 
 harder than most men if you did not feel more than 
 ever ashamed of coarseness, selfishness, worldliness, if 
 you did not feel the things of faith brought closer to the 
 soul. . . . Newman's innate and intense idealism is, 
 perhaps, his most striking characteristic. ... It is a 
 thought of his, always deeply felt and many times re- 
 peated, that this visible world is but the outward shell 
 of an invisible kingdom, a screen which hides from our 
 view things far greater and more wonderful than any 
 which we see, and that the unseen world is close to 
 us and ever ready to break through the shell and 
 manifest itself. — Shairp. 
 
 Newman's great reputation for prose and the 
 supreme interest attaching to his life seem to have 
 obscured the fame he might have won as a poet. He 
 was in poetry, as in theology, a more masculine Keble, 
 but with all the real purity of Keble, with also the in- 
 dispensable flavor of earth. — H. Walker. 
 
 The Dream of Gerontius resembles Dante more than 
 any other poetry written since the great Tuscan's time. 
 
 — Sir Henry Taylor. 
 
 The Dream is a rare poetic rendering into English 
 verse of that high ritual which from the deathbed to the 
 Mass of Supplication encompasses the faithful soul. . . . 
 Newman has no marked affinities with English writers 
 of his day. He is strikingly different from Macaulay, 
 whose eloquence betrays the fury, as it is annealed in the 
 fire, of the Western Celt. To Ruskin, who deliberately 
 built up a monument, stately as the palace of Kubla 
 Khan, he is a contrast, for the very reason that he 
 does not handle words as if they were settings in archi- 
 tecture or colors in a palette ; rather, he would look upon 
 
INTRODUCTION 11 
 
 them as transparencies which let his meaning through. 
 He is more hke De Quincey, but again no player upon 
 the organ for the sake of its music ; and that which is 
 common to both is the literary tradition of the eight- 
 eenth century enhanced by a power to which abstract 
 and concrete yielded in almost equal degree. . . . 
 With so prompt and intense an intellect at his call, 
 there was no subject, outside purely technical criti- 
 cism, which Newman could not have mastered. 
 
 — Barry's Literary Lives. 
 
 It is when Newman exerts his flexible and vivid 
 imagination in depicting the deepest religious passion 
 that we are most carried away by him and feel his 
 great genius most truly. . . . Whether tried by the 
 test of nobility, intensity, and steadfastness of his 
 work, or by the test of the greatness of the powers 
 which have been consecrated to that work, Cardinal 
 Newman has been one of the greatest of our modern 
 great men. — R. H. Mutton's Life of Newman. 
 
 Newman's mind was world-wide. He was interested 
 in everything that was going on in science, in the 
 highest form of politics, in literature. . . . Nothing 
 was too large for him, nothing too trivial, if it threw 
 light upon the central question, — what man really is 
 and what is his destiny. — J. A. Froude. 
 
 In Newman's sketch of the influence of Abelard on 
 his disciples is seen his belief in the immense power for 
 good or ill of a dominating personality. And he him- 
 self supplied an object-lesson in his theory. Shairp, 
 Froude, Church, Wilberforce, Gladstone, are only a 
 few of those who have borne testimony to the personal 
 magnetism which left its mark on the whole of think- 
 ing Oxford. "Cor ad cor loquitur," the motto chosen by 
 Newman on his receiving the Cardinal's hat, expressed 
 
12 INTRODUCTION 
 
 to him the whole reaUty of intercourse between man 
 and man, and man and God. 
 
 — Wilfrid Ward's Prohleyns and Persons. 
 Newman's mind swung through a wide arc, and 
 thoughts apparently antagonistic often were to him 
 supplemental each to each. ... A man of dauntless 
 courage and profound thoughtfulness, while his in- 
 tellect was preeminently a logical one, both the heart 
 and the moral sense possessed with him their sacred 
 tribunals in matters of reasoning as well as of senti- 
 ment. . . . The extreme subtlety of his intelligence 
 opposed no hindrance to his power of exciting vehe- 
 ment emotion. — A. De Vere's Literary Reininiscences. 
 
I. CHAKACTER SKETCHES 
 
 SAUL 
 
 " I gave them a king in mine anger, and took him away in 
 my wrath." — Rosea xiii. 11. 
 
 The Israelites seem to have asked for a king 
 from an unthankful caprice and waywardness. 
 The ill conduct, indeed, of Samuel's sons was the 
 occasion of the sin, but "an evil heart of unbe- 
 lief," to use Scripture language, was the real cause 5 
 of it. They had ever been restless and dissatis- 
 fied, asking for flesh when they had manna, fret- 
 ful for water, impatient of the wilderness, bent 
 on returning to Egypt, fearing their enemies, 
 murmuring against Moses. They had miracles 10 
 even to satiety; and then, for a change, they 
 wished a king like the nations. This was the 
 chief reason of their sinful demand. And further, 
 they were dazzled with the pomp and splendor 
 of the heathen monarchs around them, and they 15 
 desired some one to fight their battles, some 
 visible succor to depend on, instead of having 
 to wait for an invisible Providence, which came in 
 its own way and time, by little and little, being 
 dispensed silently, or tardily, or (as they might 20 
 13 
 
14 CHABACTER SKETCHES 
 
 consider) unsuitably. Their carnal hearts did 
 not love the neighborhood of heaven; and; like 
 the inhabitants of Gadara afterwards, they prayed 
 that Almighty God would depart from their 
 
 5 coasts. 
 
 Such were some of the feelings under which they 
 desired a king like the nations ; and God at length 
 granted their request. To punish them, He gave 
 them a king after their own heart, Saul, the son of 
 
 loKish, a Benjamite; of whom the text speaks in 
 these terms, " I gave them a king in Mine anger, 
 and took him away in My wrath." 
 
 There is, in true religion, a sameness, an absence 
 of hue and brilliancy, in the eyes of the natural 
 
 15 man ; a plainness, austereness, and (what he con- 
 siders) sadness. It is like the heavenly manna of 
 which the Israelites complained, insipid, and at 
 length wearisome, " like wafers made with honey." 
 They complained that " their soul was dried 
 
 20 away." "There is nothing at all," they said, 
 "beside this manna, before our eyes. . . . We 
 remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt 
 freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the 
 leeks, and the onions, and the garlick." ^ Such 
 
 25 were the dainty meats in which their soul de- 
 lighted; and for the same reason they desired a 
 king. Samuel had too much of primitive sim- 
 plicity about him to please them, they felt they 
 were behind the world, and clamored to be put 
 
 soon a level with the heathen. 
 
 * Exod. xvi. ; Numb. xi. 5. 
 
SAUL 15 
 
 Saul, the king whom God gave them, had much 
 to recommend him to minds thus greedy of the 
 dust of the earth. He was brave, daring, reso- 
 lute; gifted, too, with strength of body as well 
 as of mind — a circumstance which seems to 5 
 have attracted their admiration. He is described 
 in person as if one of those sons of Anak, before 
 whose giant-forms the spies of the Israelites in the 
 wilderness were as grasshoppers — "a choice 
 young man, and a goodly; there was not among lo 
 the children of Israel a goodlier person than he : 
 from his shoulders and upward he w^as higher 
 than any of the people." ^ Both his virtues and 
 his faults were such as became an eastern mon- 
 arch, and were adapted to secure the fear and 15 
 submission of his subjects. Pride, haughtiness, 
 obstinacy, reserve, jealousy, caprice — these, in 
 their way, were not unbecoming qualities in the 
 king after whom their imaginations roved. On 
 the other hand, the better parts of his character 20 
 were of an excellence sufficient to engage the 
 affection of Samuel himself. 
 
 As to Samuel, his conduct is far above human 
 praise. Though injuriously treated by his coun- 
 trymen, who cast him off after he had served them 25 
 faithfully till he was " old and gray-headed," ^ and 
 who resolved on setting over themselves a king 
 against his earnest entreaties, still we find no trace 
 of coldness or jealousy in his behavior towards 
 Saul. On his first meeting with him, he ad- so 
 
 ^ 1 Sam. ix. 2 — vide ibid. x. 23. ^ /jjc?, xii. 2. 
 
16 CHARACTER SKETCHES 
 
 dressed him in the words of loyalty — " On whom 
 is all the desire of Israel? is it not on thee, and 
 on all thy father's house ?" Afterwards, when he 
 anointed him king, he " kissed him, and said. Is it 
 
 5 not because the Lord hath anointed thee to be 
 captain over His inheritance?" When he an- 
 nounced him to the people as their king, he said, 
 "See ye him whom the Lord hath chosen, that 
 there is none like him among all the people?" 
 
 10 And, some time after, when Saul had irrecoverably 
 lost God's favor, we are told, " Samuel came no 
 more to see Saul until the day of his death: 
 nevertheless Samuel mourned for Saul.'^ In the 
 next chapter he is even rebuked for immoderate 
 
 15 grief — "How long wilt thou mourn for Saul, 
 seeing I have rejected him from reigning over 
 Israel?"^ Such sorrow speaks favorably for 
 Saul as well as for Samuel; it is not only the grief 
 of a loyal subject and a zealous prophet, but, 
 
 20 moreover, of an attached friend; and, indeed, 
 instances are recorded, in the first years of his 
 reign, of forbearance, generosity, and neglect of 
 self, which sufficiently account for the feelings 
 with which Samuel regarded him, David, under 
 
 25 very different circumstances, seems to have felt 
 for him a similar affection. 
 
 The higher points of his character are brought 
 out in instances such as the following: The 
 first announcement of his elevation came upon 
 
 30 him suddenly, but apparently without unsettling 
 
 1 1 Sam. ix. 20; x. 1, 24; xv. 35; xvi. 1. 
 
SAUL 17 
 
 him. He kept it secret, leaving it to Samuel, who 
 had made it to him, to publish it. "Saul said 
 unto his uncle, He" (that is, Samuel) "told us 
 plainly that the asses were found. But of the 
 matter of the kingdom, whereof Samuel spake, 5 
 he told him not." Nay, it would even seem he 
 was averse to the dignity intended for him; for 
 when the Divine lot fell upon him, he hid himself, 
 and was not discovered by the people, without 
 recourse to Divine assistance. The appointment lo 
 was at first unpopular. "The children of Belial 
 said, How shall this man save us ? They despised 
 him, and brought him no presents, hut he held his 
 peace." Soon the Ammonites invaded the coun- 
 try beyond Jordan, with the avowed intention of 15 
 subjugating it. The people sent to Saul for relief 
 almost in despair; and the panic spread in the 
 interior as well as among those whose country 
 was immediately threatened. The history pro- 
 ceeds : " Behold, Saul came after the herd out of 20 
 the field; and Saul said. What aileth the people 
 that they weep? and they told him the tidings 
 of the men of Jabesh. And the Spirit of God 
 came upon Saul, and his anger was kindled 
 greatly." His order for an immediate gathering 25 
 throughout Israel was obeyed with the alacrity 
 with which the multitude serve the strong-minded 
 in times of danger. A decisive victory over the 
 enemy followed; then the popular cry became, 
 " Who is he that said. Shall Saul reign over us ? 30 
 bring the men, that we may put them to death. 
 
18 CHARACTER SKETCHES 
 
 And Saul said, There shall not a man he put to 
 death this day, for to-day the Lord hath wrought 
 salvation in Israel." ^ 
 
 Thus personally qualified, Saul was, moreover, 
 
 5 a prosperous king. He had been appointed to 
 subdue the enemies of Israel, and success attended 
 his arms. At the end of the fourteenth chapter, 
 we read : " So Saul took the kingdom over Israel 
 and fought against all his enemies on every side, 
 
 10 against Moab, and against the children of Am- 
 mon, and against Edom, and against the kings of 
 Zobah, and against the Philistines; and whither- 
 soever he turned himself, he vexed them. And 
 he gathered an host, and smote the Amalekites, 
 
 15 and delivered Israel out of the hands of them that 
 spoiled them." 
 
 Such was Saul's character and success ; his 
 character faulty, yet not without promise ; his 
 success in arms as great as his carnal subjects 
 
 20 could have desired. Yet, in spite of Samuel's 
 private liking for him, and in spite of the good 
 fortune which actually attended him, we find that 
 from the beginning the prophet's voice is raised 
 both against people and king in warnings and 
 
 25 rebukes, which are omens of his destined destruc- 
 tion, according to the text, " I gave them a king in 
 Mine anger, and took him away in My wrath." 
 At the very time that Saul is publicly received as 
 king, Samuel protests, " Ye have this day rejected 
 
 30 your God, who Himself saved you out of all your 
 
 1 1 Sam. xi. 12, 13. 
 
SAUL 19 
 
 adversities and your tribulations." ^ In a sub- 
 sequent assembly of the people, in which he testi- 
 fied his uprightness, he says, " Is it not wheat 
 harvest to-day? I will call unto the Lord, and 
 He shall send thunder and rain ; that ye may per- 5 
 ceive and see that your wickedness is great, in asking 
 you a king." Again, " If ye shall still do wickedly, 
 ye shall be consumed, both ye and your king." ^ 
 And after this, on the first instance of disobedience 
 and at first sight no very heinous sin, the sentence lO 
 of rejection is passed upon him: "Thy kingdom 
 shall not continue; the Lord hath sought Him a 
 man after His own heart." ^ 
 
 Here, then, a question may be raised — Why 
 was Saul thus marked for vengeance from the 15 
 beginning? Why these presages of misfortune, 
 which from the first hung over him, gathered, fell 
 in storm and tempest, and at length overwhelmed 
 him? Is his character so essentially faulty that 
 it must be thus distinguished for reprobation 20 
 above all the anointed kings after him? Why, 
 while David is called a man after God's own heart, 
 should Saul be put aside as worthless? 
 
 This question leads us to a deeper inspection of 
 his character. Now, we know, the first duty of 25 
 every man is the fear of God — a reverence for His 
 word, a love of Him, and a desire to obey Him ; and, 
 besides, it was peculiarly incumbent on the king of 
 Israel, as God's vicegerent, by virtue of his office, to 
 promote His glory whom his subjects had rejected. 30 
 
 1 1 Sam. X. 19. 2 ji^^^ ^^ u^ 25. ^ jj^^^^ xiii. 14. 
 
20 CTIARACTER SKETCHES 
 
 Now Saul "lacked this one thing." His char- 
 acter, indeed, is obscure, and we must be cautious 
 while considering it; still, as Scripture is given us 
 for our instruction, it is surely right to make the 
 5 most of what we find there, and to form our judg- 
 ment by such lights as we possess. It would 
 appear, then, that Saul was never under the abid- 
 ing influence of religion, or, in Scripture language, 
 " the fear of God," however he might be at times 
 
 10 moved and softened. Some men are inconsistent 
 in their conduct, as Samson; or as Eli, in a dif- 
 ferent way; and yet may have lived by faith, 
 though a weak faith. Others have sudden falls, 
 as David had. Others are corrupted by pros- 
 
 I5perity, as Solomon. But as to Saul, there is no 
 proof that he had any deep-seated religious prin- 
 ciple at all ; rather, it is to be feared, that his his- 
 tory is a lesson to us, that the " heart of unbelief" 
 may exist in the very sight of God, may rule a man 
 
 20 in spite of many natural advantages of character, 
 in the midst of much that is virtuous, amiable, 
 and commendable. 
 
 Saul, it would seem, was naturally brave, ac- 
 tive, generous, and patient; and what nature 
 
 25 made him, such he remained, that is, without im- 
 provement ; with virtues which had no value, 
 because they required no effort, and implied the 
 influence of no principle. On the other hand, 
 when we look for evidence of his faith, that is, his 
 
 30 practical sense of things unseen, we discover in- 
 stead a deadness to all considerations not con- 
 
SAUL 21 
 
 nected with the present world. It is his habit to 
 treat prophet and priest with a coldness, to say 
 the least, which seems to argue some great internal 
 defect. It would not be inconsistent with the 
 Scripture account of him, even should the real 5 
 fact be, that (with some general notions concern- 
 ing the being and providence of God) he doubted 
 of the divinity of the Dispensation of which he was 
 an instrument. The circumstance which first in- 
 troduces him to the inspired history is not in hisio 
 favor. While in search of his father's asses, 
 which were lost, he came to the city where Sam- 
 uel was ; and though Samuel was now an old 
 man, and from childhood known as the especial 
 minister and prophet of the God of Israel, Saul 15 
 seems to have considered him as a mere diviner, 
 such as might be found among the heathen, who, 
 for "the fourth part of a shekel of silver," would 
 tell him his way. 
 
 The narrative goes on to mention, that after his 20 
 leaving Samuel "God gave him another heart," 
 and on meeting a company of prophets, "the 
 Spirit of God came upon him, and he prophesied 
 among them." Upon this, "all that knew him 
 beforetime" said, " What it this that is come unto 25 
 the son of Kish : is Saul also among the prophets ? 
 . . . therefore it became a proverb." From this 
 narrative we gather, that his carelessness and 
 coldness in religious matters were so notorious, 
 that, in the eyes of his acquaintance, there was 30 
 a certain strangeness and incongruity, which at 
 
22 CHARACTER SKETCHES 
 
 once struck the mind; in his being associated with 
 a school of the prophets. 
 
 Nor have we any reason to believe, from the 
 after history, that the Divine gift, then first im- 
 5 parted, left any religious effect upon his mind. 
 At a later period of his life we find him suddenly 
 brought under the same sacred influence on his 
 entering the school where Samuel taught; but, 
 instead of softening him, its effect upon his out- 
 
 10 ward conduct did but testify the fruitlessness of 
 Divine grace when acting upon a will obstinately 
 set upon evil. 
 
 The immediate occasion of his rejection was his 
 failing under a specific trial of his obedience, as 
 
 15 set before him at the very time he was anointed. 
 He had collected with difficulty an army against 
 the Philistines ; while waiting for Samuel to offer 
 the sacrifice, his people became dispirited, and 
 began to fall off and return home. Here he was 
 
 20 doubtless exposed to the temptation of taking 
 unlawful measures to put a stop to their defection. 
 But when we consider that the act to which he was 
 persuaded was no less than that of his offering 
 sacrifice — he being neither priest nor prophet, 
 
 25 nor having any commission thus to interfere 
 with the Mosaic ritual — it is plain " his forcing 
 himself '' to do so (as he tenderly described his 
 sin) was a direct profaneness — a profaneness 
 which implied that he was careless about forms, 
 
 30 which in this world will ever be essential to 
 things supernatural; and thought it mattered 
 
SAUL 23 
 
 little whether he acted in God's way or in his 
 own. 
 
 After this, he seems to have separated himself 
 from Samuel, whom he found unwilling to become 
 his instrument, and to have had recourse to the 5 
 priesthood instead. Ahijah or Ahimelech (as he 
 is afterwards called), the high priest, followed his 
 camp; and the ark, too, in spite of the warning 
 conveyed by the disasters which attended the 
 presumptuous use of it in the time of Eli. " And lo 
 Saul said unto Ahijah, Bring hither the ark of 
 God;" while it was brought, a tumult which was 
 heard in the camp of the Philistines increased. 
 On this interruption Saul irreverently put the ark 
 aside, and went out to the battle. 15 
 
 It will be observed, that there was no professed 
 or intentional irreverence in Saul's conduct; he 
 was still on the whole the same he had ever been. 
 He outwardly respected the Mosaic ritual — 
 about this time he built his first altar to the Lord,^ 20 
 and in a certain sense seemed to acknowledge God's 
 authority. But nothing shows he considered that 
 there was any vast distinction between Israel and 
 the nations around them. He was indifferent, and 
 cared for none of these things. The chosen people 25 
 desired a king like the nations, and such a one 
 they received. 
 
 After this he was commanded to " go and smite 
 the sinners, the Amalekites, and utterly destroy 
 them and their cattle." This was a judgment on 30 
 1 1 Sam. xiv. 35. 
 
24 CHARACTER SKETCHES 
 
 them which God had long decreed, though He had 
 delayed it; and He now made Saul the minister 
 of His vengeance. But Saul performed it so far 
 only as fell in with his own inclination and pur- 
 5 poses. He smote, indeed, the Amalekites, and 
 "destroyed all the people with the edge of the 
 sword" — this exploit had its glory; the best of 
 the flocks and herds he spared, and why? to 
 sacrifice therewith to the Lord. But since God 
 10 had expressly told him to destroy them, what 
 was this but to imply, that Divine intimations had 
 nothing to do with such matters ? what was it but 
 to consider that the established religion was but 
 a useful institution, or a splendid pageant suit- 
 is able to the dignity of monarchy, but resting on no 
 unseen supernatural sanction? Certainly he in 
 no sense acted in the fear of God, with the wish 
 to please Him, and the conviction that he was in 
 His sight. One might consider it mere pride and 
 20 willfulness in him, acting in his own way because 
 it was his own (which doubtless it was in great 
 measure), except that he appears to have had an 
 eye to the feelings and opinions of men as to his 
 conduct, though not to God's judgment. He 
 25 "feared the people and obeyed their voice." 
 Again, he spared Agag, the king of the Amalek- 
 ites. Doubtless he considered Agag as "his 
 brother," as Ahab afterwards called Ben-hadad. 
 Agag was a king, and Saul observed towards him 
 30 that courtesy and clemency which earthly mon- 
 archs observe one towards another, and rightly 
 
SAUL 25 
 
 when no Divine command comes in the way. But 
 the God of Israel required a king after His own 
 heart, jealous of idolatry; the people had desired 
 a king like the nations around them. 
 
 It is remarkable, moreover, that while he spared 5 
 Agag, he attempted to exterminate the Gibeonites 
 with the sword, who were tolerated in Israel by 
 virtue of an oath taken in their favor by Joshua 
 and "the princes of the congregation." This he 
 did "in his zeal to the children of Israel andio 
 Judah." 1 
 
 From the time of his disobedience in the matter 
 of Amalek, Samuel came no more to see Saul, 
 whose season of probation was over. The evil 
 spirit exerted a more visible influence upon him ; 15 
 and God sent Samuel to anoint David privately, 
 as the future king of Israel. I need not trace 
 further the course of moral degradation which is 
 exemplified in Saul's subsequent history. Mere 
 natural virtue wears away, when men neglect to 20 
 deepen it into religious principle. Saul appears 
 in his youth to be unassuming and forbearing; 
 in advanced life he is not only proud and gloomy 
 (as he ever was in a degree), but cruel, resentful, 
 and hard-hearted, which he was not in his youth. 25 
 His injurious treatment of David is a long his- 
 tory; but his conduct to Ahimelech, the high 
 priest, admits of being mentioned here. Ahime- 
 lech assisted David in his escape. Saul resolved 
 on the death of Ahimelech and all his father's 30 
 
 ^ Josh. ix. 2; 2 Sam. xxi. 1-5. 
 
26 CHARACTER SKETCHES 
 
 house.^ On his guards refusing to execute his 
 command, Doeg, a man of Edom, one of the 
 nations which Saul was raised up to withstand, 
 undertook the atrocious deed. On that day, 
 5 eighty-five priests were slain. Afterwards Nob, 
 the city of the priests, was smitten with the edge 
 of the sword, and all destroyed, " men and women, 
 children and sucklings, and oxen, and asses, and 
 sheep." That is, Saul executed more complete 
 
 10 vengeance on the descendants of Levi, the sacred 
 tribe, than on the sinners, the Amalekites, who 
 laid wait for Israel in the way, on their going up 
 from Egypt. 
 
 Last of all, he finishes his bad history by an open 
 
 15 act of apostasy from the God of Israel. His last 
 act is like his first, but more significant. He be- 
 gan, as we saw, by consulting Samuel as a diviner; 
 this showed the direction of his mind. It steadily 
 persevered in its evil way — and he ends by con- 
 
 20 suiting a professed sorceress at Endor. The 
 Philistines had assembled their hosts; Saul's 
 heart trembled greatly — he had no advisers or 
 comforters ; Samuel was dead — the priests he had 
 himself slain with the sword. He hoped, by magic 
 
 25 rites, which he had formerly denounced, to fore- 
 see the issue of the approaching battle. God 
 meets him even in the cave of Satanic delusions 
 — but as an Antagonist. The rebrobate king 
 receives, by the mouth of dead Samuel, who had 
 
 30 once anointed him, the news that he is to be 
 
 1 1 Sam. xxii. 16. 
 
SAUL 27 
 
 "taken away in God's wrath" — that the Lord 
 would deUver Israel, with him, into the hands of 
 the Philistines, and that on the morrow he and his 
 sons should be numbered with the dead.^ 
 
 The next day " the battle went sore against him, 5 
 the archers hit him; and he was sore wounded of 
 the archers." ^ " Anguish came upon him," ^ and 
 he feared to fall into the hands of the uncircum- 
 cised. He desired his armor-bearer to draw his 
 sword and thrust him through therewith. On his 10 
 refusing, he fell upon his own sword, and so came 
 to his end. 
 
 1 1 Sam. xxviii. 19. 2 jj^^^^. xxxi. 3. ^ 2 Sam. i. 9. 
 
EARLY YEARS OF DAVID 
 
 "Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse the Beth-lehemite, 
 that is cunning in playing, and a mighty valiant man, 
 and a man of war, and prudent in matters, and 
 a comely person, and the Lord is with him." — 
 1 Samuel xvi. 18. 
 
 Such is the account given to Saul of David, in 
 many respects the most favored of the ancient 
 Saints. David is to be accounted the most fa- 
 vored, first as being the principal type of Christ, 
 
 5 next as being the author of great part of the book 
 of Psalms, which have been used as the Church's 
 form of devotion ever since his time. Besides, he 
 was a chief instrument of God's providence, both 
 in repressing idolatry and in preparing for the 
 
 10 gospel; and he prophesied in an especial manner 
 of that Saviour whom he prefigured and preceded. 
 Moreover, he was the chosen king of Israel, a man 
 after God's own heart, and blessed, not only in 
 himself, but in his seed after him. And, further, 
 
 15 to the history of his life a greater share is given of 
 the inspired pages than to that of any other of 
 God's favored servants. Lastly, he displays in 
 his personal character that very temper of mind 
 in which his nation, or rather human nature 
 
 20 itself, is especially deficient. Pride and unbelief 
 
 28 
 
EABLY YEARS OF DAVID 29 
 
 disgrace the history of the chosen people; the 
 deUberate love of this world, which was the sin of 
 Balaam, and the presumptuous willfulness which 
 is exhibited in Saul. But David is conspicuous 
 for an affectionate, a thankful, a loyal heart 5 
 towards his God and defender, a zeal which was 
 as fervent and as docile as Saul's was sullen^ 
 and as keen-sighted and as pure as Balaam's was 
 selfish and double-minded. Such was the son 
 of Jesse the Beth-lehemite ; he stands midway lO 
 between Abraham and his predicted seed, Judah 
 and the Shiloh, receiving and transmitting the 
 promises; a figure of the Christ, and an inspired 
 prophet, living in the Church even to the end of 
 time, in his office, his history, and his sacred 15 
 writings. 
 
 Some remarks on his early life, and on his 
 character, as therein displayed, may profitably 
 engage our attention at the present time. 
 
 When Saul was finally rejected for not destroy- 20 
 ing the Amalekites, Samuel was bid go to Beth- 
 lehem, and anoint, as future king of Israel, one 
 of the sons of Jesse, who should be pointed out to 
 him when he was come there. Samuel accord- 
 ingly went thither and held a sacrifice; when, at 25 
 his command, Jesse's seven sons were brought by 
 their father, one by one, before the prophet ; but 
 none of them proved to be the choice of Almighty 
 God. David was the youngest and out of the 
 way, and it seemed to Jesse as unlikely that God's'30 
 choice should fall upon him, as it appeared to 
 
30 CHARACTER SKETCHES 
 
 Joseph's brethren and to his father, that he and 
 his mother and brethren should, as his dreams 
 foretold, bow down before him. On Samuel's in- 
 quiring, Jesse said, "There remaineth yet the 
 5 youngest, and, behold, he keepeth the sheep." 
 On Samuel's bidding, he was sent for. " Now 
 he was ruddy," the sacred historian proceeds, 
 "and withal of a beautiful countenance, and 
 goodly to look to. And the Lord said. Arise, 
 
 10 anoint him, for this is he." After Samuel had 
 
 anointed him, " the Spirit of the Lord came upon 
 
 David from that day forward." It is added, 
 
 " But the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul." 
 
 David's anointing was followed by no other 
 
 15 immediate mark of God's favor. He was tried 
 by being sent back again, in spite of the promise, 
 to the care of his sheep, till an unexpected occa- 
 sion introduced him to Saul's court. The with- 
 drawing of the Spirit of the Lord from Saul was 
 
 20 followed by frequent attacks from an evil spirit, as 
 a judgment upon him. His mind was depressed, 
 and a "trouble," as it is called, came upon him, 
 with symptoms very like those which we now 
 refer to derangement. His servants thought that 
 
 ^ music, such, perhaps, as was used in the schools 
 of the prophets, might soothe and restore him; 
 and David was recommended by one of them for 
 that purpose, in the words of the text : " Behold, 
 I have seen a son of Jesse the Beth-lehemite, 
 
 30 that is cunning in playing, and a mighty valiant 
 man, and a man of war, and prudent in matters. 
 
EARLY YEABS OF DAVID ol 
 
 and a comely person, and the Lord is with 
 him." 
 
 David came in the power of that sacred in- 
 fluence vvhom Saul had grieved and rejected. 
 The Spirit which inspired his tongue guided his 5 
 hand also, and his sacred songs became a medicine 
 to Saul's diseased mind. " When the evil spirit 
 from God was upon Saul, . . . David took an 
 harp, and played with his hand; so Saul w^as re- 
 freshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed lo 
 from him." Thus he is first introduced to us in 
 that character in which he still has praise in the 
 Church, as "the anointed of the God of Jacob, 
 and the sweet psalmist of Israel." ^ 
 
 Saul " loved David greatly, and he became his 15 
 armor-bearer;" but the first trial of his humility 
 and patience was not over, while many other trials 
 were in store. After a while he was a second time 
 sent back to his sheep ; and though there was war 
 with the Philistines, and his three eldest brethren 20 
 were in the army with Saul, and he had already 
 essayed his strength in defending his father's 
 flocks from wild beasts, and was "a mighty 
 valiant man," yet he contentedly stayed at home 
 as a private person, keeping his promise of great- 25 
 ness to himself, till his father bade him go to his 
 brethren to take them a present from him, and 
 report how^ they fared. An accident, as it ap- 
 peared to the world, brought him forward. On 
 his arrival at the army, he heard the challenge of 30 
 
 ^ 2 Sam. xxiii. 1, 
 
32 CHARACTER SKETCHES 
 
 the Philistine champion, Goliath of Gath. I need 
 not relate how he was divinely urged to engage 
 the giant, how he killed him, and how he was, in 
 consequence, again raised to Saul's favor; who, 
 
 5 with an infirmity not inconsistent with the de- 
 ranged state of his mind, seems to have altogether 
 forgotten him. 
 
 From this time began David's public life; but 
 not yet the fulfillment of the promise made to him 
 
 10 by Samuel. He had a second and severer trial 
 of patience to endure for many years; the trial 
 of "being still" and doing nothing before God's 
 time, though he had (apparently) the means in his 
 hands of accomplishing the promise for himself. 
 
 15 It was to this trial that Jeroboam afterwards 
 
 showed himself unequal. He, too, was promised 
 
 a kingdom, but he was tempted to seize upon it 
 
 in his own way, and so forfeited God's protection. 
 
 David's victory over Goliath so endeared him 
 
 20 to Saul, that he would not let him go back to his 
 father's house. Jonathan, too, Saul's son, at once 
 felt for him a warm affection, which deepened into 
 a firm friendship. "Saul set him over the men 
 of war, and he was accepted in the sight af all the 
 
 25 people, and also in the sight of Saul's servants." ^ 
 This prosperous fortune, however, did not long 
 continue. As Saul passed through the cities from 
 his victory over his enemies, the women of Israel 
 came out to meet him, singing and dancing, and 
 
 30 they said, "Saul hath slain his thousands, and 
 
 ^ ] Sam. xviii. 5. 
 
EARLY YEARS OF DAVID 33 
 
 David his ten thousands." Immediately the 
 jealous king was "very wroth, and the saying 
 displeased him"; his sullenness returned; he 
 feared David as a rival ; and " eyed him from that 
 day and forward." On the morrow, as David 5 
 was playing before him, as at other times, Saul 
 threw his javelin at him. After this, Saul dis- 
 placed him from his situation at his court, and 
 sent him to the war, hoping so to rid himself of 
 him by his falling in battle ; but, by God's bless- lo 
 ing, David returned victorious. 
 
 In a second war with the Philistines, David was 
 successful as before; and Saul, overcome with 
 gloomy and malevolent passions, again cast at him 
 with his javelin, as he played before him, with the is 
 hope of killing him. 
 
 This repeated attempt on his life drove David 
 from Saul's court ; and for some years after, that 
 is, till Saul's death, he was a wanderer upon the 
 earth, persecuted in that country which was after- 20 
 wards to be his own kingdom. Here, as in his 
 victory over Goliath, Almighty God purposed to 
 show us, that it was His hand which set David on 
 the throne of Israel. David conquered his enemy 
 by a sling and stone, in order, as he said at the 25 
 time, that all . . . might know "that the Lord 
 saveth not with sword and spear; for the battle 
 is the Lord's." ^ Now again, but in a different 
 way. His guiding providence was displayed. As 
 David slew Goliath without arms, so now he 30 
 
 1 1 Sam. xvii. 47. 
 
34 CHARACTER SKETCHES 
 
 refrained himself and used them not, though he 
 possessed them. Like Abraham, he traversed 
 the land of promise "as a strange land/' ^ waiting 
 for God's good time. Nay, far more exactly, even 
 5 than to Abraham, was it given to David to act and 
 suffer that life of faith which the Apostle describes, 
 and by which " the elders obtained a good report." 
 By faith he wandered about, "being destitute, 
 afflicted, evil-entreated, in deserts, and in moun- 
 
 10 tains, and in dens, and in caves of the earth." 
 On the other hand, through the same faith, he 
 "subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, ob- 
 tained promises, waxed valiant in fight, turned to 
 flight the armies of the aliens." 
 
 15 On escaping from Saul, he first went to Samuel 
 to ask his advice. With him he dwelt some time. 
 Driven thence by Saul he went to Bethlehem, his 
 father's city, then to Ahimelech, the high priest, 
 at Nob. Thence he fled, still through fear of Saul, 
 
 20 to Achish, the Philistine king of Gath; and find- 
 ing his life in danger there, he escaped to Adullam, 
 where he was joined by his kindred, and put him- 
 self at the head of an irregular band of men, such 
 as, in the unsettled state of the country, might be 
 
 25 usefully and lawfully employed against the rem- 
 nant of the heathen. After this he was driven to 
 Hareth, to Keilah, which he rescued from the 
 Philistines, to the wilderness of Ziph among the 
 mountains, to the wilderness of Maon, to the strong- 
 
 30 holds of Engedi, to the wilderness of Paran. After 
 
 1 Heb. xi. 9. 
 
EARLY TEARS OF DAVID 85 
 
 a time he again betook himself to Achish, king of 
 Gath, who gave him a city; and there it was that 
 the news was brought him of the death of Saul in 
 battle, which was the occasion of his elevation first 
 to the throne of Judah, afterwards to that of all 5 
 Israel, according to the promise of God made to 
 him by Samuel. 
 
 It need not be denied that, during these years of 
 wandering, we find in David's conduct instances 
 of infirmity and inconsistency, and some things 10 
 which, without being clearly wrong, are yet 
 strange and startling in so favored a servant of 
 God. With these we are not concerned, except 
 so far as a lesson may be gained from them for 
 ourselves. We are not at all concerned with them 15 
 as regards our estimate of David's character. 
 That character is ascertained and sealed by the 
 plain word of Scripture, by the praise of Almighty 
 God, and is no subject for our criticism; and if we 
 find in it traits which we cannot fully reconcile 20 
 with the approbation divinely given to him, we 
 must take it in faith to be what it is said to be, 
 and wait for the future revelations of Him who 
 "overcomes when He is judged." Therefore I 
 dismiss these matters now, when I am engaged 25 
 in exhibiting the eminent obedience and mani- 
 fold virtues of David. On the whole his situation 
 during these years of trial was certainly that of a 
 witness for Almighty God, one who does good and 
 suffers for it, nay, suffers on rather than rid him- 30 
 self from suffering by any unlawful act. 
 
36 CHARACTER SKETCHES 
 
 Now, then, let us consider what was, as far as 
 
 we can understand, his especial grace, what is his 
 
 gift; as faith was Abraham's distinguishing virtue, 
 
 meekness the excellence of Moses, self-mastery the 
 
 5 gift especially conspicuous in Joseph. 
 
 This question may best be answered by con- 
 sidering the purpose for which he was raised up. 
 When Saul was disobedient, Samuel said to him, 
 " Thy kingdom shall not continue : the Lord hath 
 
 10 sought Him a man after His own heart, and the 
 Lord hath commanded him to be captain over 
 His people, because thou hast not kept that which 
 the Lord commanded thee." ^ The office to 
 which first Saul and then David were called was 
 
 15 different from that with which other favored 
 men before them had been intrusted. From the 
 time of Moses, when Israel became a nation, God 
 had been the king of Israel, and His chosen 
 servants, not delegates, but mere organs of His 
 
 20 will. Moses did not direct the Israelites by his 
 own wisdom, but he spake to them, as God spake 
 from the pillar of the cloud. Joshua, again, was 
 merely a sword in the hand of God. Samuel was 
 but His minister and interpreter. God acted, the 
 
 25lsraehtes "stood still and saw" His miracles, then 
 followed. But, when they had rejected Him 
 from being king over them, then their chief ruler 
 was no longer a mere organ of His power and will, 
 but had a certain authority intrusted to him, 
 
 30 more or less independent of supernatural direc- 
 ^ 1 Sam. xiii. 14, 
 
EARLY YEARS OF DAVID 37 
 
 tion; and acted, not so much from God, as for 
 God, and in the place of God. David, when taken 
 from the sheepfolds " to feed Jacob His people and 
 Israel His inheritance," "fed them," in the words 
 of the Psalm, "with a faithful and true heart; 5 
 and ruled them prudently with all his power." ^ 
 From this account of his office, it is obvious that 
 his very first duty was that of fidelity to Almighty 
 God in the trust committed to him. He had 
 power put into his hands, in a sense in which lO 
 neither Moses had it nor Samuel. He was charged 
 with a certain office, which he was bound to 
 administer according to his abiUty, so as best to 
 promote the interests of Him who appointed him. 
 Saul had neglected his Master's honor; but 15 
 David, in this an eminent type of Christ, " came 
 to do God's will" as a viceroy in Israel, and, as 
 being tried and found faithful, he is especially 
 called "a man after God's own heart." 
 
 David's peculiar excellence, then, is that of 20 
 fidelity to the trust committed to him; a firm, un- 
 compromising, single-hearted devotion to the 
 cause of his God, and a burning zeal for His 
 honor. 
 
 This characteristic virtue is especially illus-25 
 trated in the early years of his life which have 
 engaged our attention. He was tried therein and 
 found faithful; before he was put in power, it 
 was proved whether he could obey. Till he came 
 to the throne, he was like Moses or Samuel, an so 
 
 1 Ps. lxx\dii. 71-73. 
 
38 CIIABACTER SKETCHES 
 
 instrument in God's hands, bid do what was told 
 him and nothing more ; — having borne this trial 
 of obedience well, in which Saul had failed, then 
 at length he was intrusted with a sort of dis- 
 
 5cretionary power, to use in his Master's service. 
 
 Observe how David was tried, and what 
 
 various high qualities of mind he displayed in 
 
 the course of the trial. First, the promise of 
 
 greatness was given him, and Samuel anointed 
 
 10 him. Still he stayed in the sheepfolds; and 
 though called away by Saul for a time, yet re- 
 turned contentedly when Saul released him from 
 attendance. How difficult is it for such as know 
 they have gifts suitable to the Church's need to 
 
 15 refrain themselves, till God make a way for their 
 use ! and the trial would be the more severe in 
 David's case, in proportion to the ardor and 
 energy of his mind; yet he fainted not under it. 
 Afterwards for seven 3^ears, as the time appears 
 
 20 to be, he withstood the strong temptation, ever 
 before his eyes, of acting without God's guidance, 
 when he had the means of doing so. Though 
 skillful in arms, popular with his countrymen, 
 successful against the enemy, the king's son-in- 
 
 25 law, and on the other hand grievously injured by 
 Saul, who not only continually sought his life, 
 but even suggested to him a traitor's conduct 
 by accusing him of treason, and whose life was 
 several times in his hands, yet he kept his 
 
 30 honor pure and unimpeachable. He feared God 
 and honored the king; and this at a time of 
 
EARLY YEARS OF DAVID 39 
 
 life especially exposed to the temptations of 
 ambition. 
 
 There is a resemblance between the early his- 
 tory of David and that of Joseph. Both dis- 
 tinguished for piety in youth, the youngest and 5 
 the despised of their respective brethren, they 
 are raised, after a long trial to a high station, 
 as ministers of God's Providence. Joseph was 
 tempted to a degrading adultery; David was 
 tempted by ambition. Both were tempted toio 
 be traitors to their masters and benefactors. 
 Joseph's trial was brief; but his conduct under it 
 evidenced settled habits of virtue which he could 
 call to his aid at a moment's notice. A long 
 imprisonment followed, the consequence of his 15 
 obedience, and borne with meekness and patience; 
 but it was no part of his temptation, because, 
 when once incurred, release was out of his power. 
 David's trial, on the other hand, lasted for years, 
 and grew stronger as time went on. His master, 20 
 too, far from "putting all that he had into his 
 hand," ^ sought his life. Continual opportunity 
 of avenging himself incited his passions; self- 
 defense, and the Divine promise, were specious ar- 
 guments to seduce his reason. Yet he mastered 25 
 his heart — he was " still " ; he kept his hands clean 
 and his lips guileless — he was loyal throughout 
 — and in due time inherited the promise. 
 
 Let us call to mind some of the circumstances 
 of his steadfastness recorded in the history. 30 
 
 • Gen. xxxix. 4. 
 
40 CHABACTER SKETCHES 
 
 He was about twenty-three years old when he 
 slew the Philistine; yet, when placed over Saul's 
 men of war, in the first transport of his victory, 
 we are told he " behaved himself wisely." ^ 
 
 6 When fortune turned, and Saul became jealous 
 of him, still " David behaved himself wisely in 
 all his ways, and the Lord was with him." How 
 like is this to Joseph under different circumstances ! 
 " Wherefore when Saul saw that he behaved him- 
 
 10 self very wisely he was afraid of him; and all 
 Israel and Judah loved David." Again, "And 
 David behaved himself more wisely than all the 
 servants of Saul, so that his name was much set 
 by." Here, in shifting fortunes, is evidence of 
 
 15 that staid, composed frame of mind in his youth, 
 which he himself describes in the one hundred 
 and thirty-first Psalm. " My heart is not haughty, 
 nor mine eyes lofty. . . . Surely I have behaved 
 and quieted myself, as a child that is weaned of his 
 
 20 mother." 
 
 The same modest deportment marks his sub- 
 sequent conduct. He consistently seeks counsel 
 of God. When he fled from Saul he went to 
 Samuel; afterwards we find him following the 
 
 25 directions of the prophet Gad, and afterwards of 
 Abiathar the high priest.^ Here his character is 
 in full contrast to the character of Saul. 
 
 Further, consider his behavior towards Saul, 
 when he had him in his power; it displays a most 
 
 ^ 1 Sam. xviii. 5-30. 
 
 2 Ibid. xxii. 5, 20 : xxiii. 6. 
 
EARLY YEARS OF DAVID 41 
 
 striking and admirable union of simple faith and 
 unblemished loyalty. 
 
 Saul, while in pursuit of him, went into a cave 
 in Engedi. David surprised him there, and his 
 companions advised to seize him, if not to take 5 
 his life. They said, " Behold the day of which the 
 Lord said unto thee." ^ David, in order to show 
 Saul how entirely his life had been in his power, 
 arose and cut off a part of his robe privately. 
 After he had done it, his " heart smote him" even lo 
 for this slight freedom, as if it were a disrespect 
 offered towards his king and father. " He said 
 unto his men. The Lord forbid that I should do 
 this thing unto my master, the Lord's anointed, 
 to stretch forth mine hand against him, seeing he is 
 is the anointed of the Lord." When Saul left 
 the cave, David followed him and cried, "My 
 Lord the king. And when Saul looked behind 
 him, David stooped with his face to the earth 
 and bowed himself." He hoped that he could 20 
 now convince Saul of his integrity. " Wherefore 
 hearest thou men's words," he asked, "saying, 
 Behold, David seeketh thy hurt? Behold, this 
 day thine eyes have seen how that the Lord had 
 delivered thee to-day into mine hand in the cave : 25 
 and some bade me kill thee. . . . Moreover, my 
 father, see, yea see the skirt of thy robe in my 
 hand : for in that I cut off the skirt of thy robe, 
 and killed thee not, know thou and see, that 
 there is neither evil nor transgression in mine 30 
 
 1 1 Sam. xxiv. 4. 
 
42 CHARACTER SKETCHES 
 
 hand, and I have not sinned against thee: yet 
 thou huntest my soul to take it. The Lord judge 
 between me and thee, and the Lord avenge me 
 of thee: but mine hand shall not be upon thee. 
 5 . . . After whom is the king of Israel come out ? 
 after whom dost thou pursue? after a dead dog, 
 after a flea. The Lord therefore judge . . . and 
 see, and plead my cause, and deliver me out of 
 thine hand." Saul was for the time overcome; 
 
 10 he said, "Is this thy voice, my son David? and 
 Saul lifted up his voice and wept." And he said, 
 "Thou art more righteous than I; for thou hast 
 rewarded me good, whereas I have rewarded thee 
 evil." He added, " And now, behold, I know well 
 
 15 that thou shalt surely be king." At another time 
 David surprised Saul in the midst of his camp, 
 and his companion would have killed him; but 
 he said, " Destroy him not, for who can stretch 
 forth his hand against the Lord's anointed and 
 
 20 be guiltless?" ^ Then, as he stood over him, he 
 meditated sorrowfully on his master's future 
 fortunes, while he himself refrained from inter- 
 fering with God's purposes. "Surely the Lord 
 shall smite him; or his day shall come to die; or 
 
 25 he shall descend into battle and perish." David 
 retired from the enemy's camp; and when at a safe 
 distance, roused Saul's guards, and blamed them 
 for their negligent watch, which had allowed a 
 stranger to approach the person of their king. Saul 
 
 30 was moved the second time ; the miserable man, 
 
 ^ 1 Sam. XX vi. 9, 
 
EAIiLY YEARS OF DAVID 43 
 
 as if waking from a dream wliich hung about 
 him, said, ''I have sinned; return, ni}'- son David 
 . . . behold, I have played the fool, and have erred 
 exceedingly." He added, truth overcoming him, 
 "Blessed be thou, my son David; thou shalt 5 
 both do great things, and also shalt still prevail." 
 How beautiful are these passages in the history 
 of the chosen king of Israel ! How do they draw 
 our hearts towards him, as one whom in his 
 private character it must have been an extreme lo 
 privilege and a great delight to know ! Surely, 
 the blessings of the patriarchs descended in a 
 united flood upon " the lion of the tribe of Judah," 
 the type of the true Redeemer who was to come. 
 He inherits the prompt faith and magnanimity 15 
 of Abraham; he is simple as Isaac; he is humble 
 as Jacob; he has the youthful wisdom and self- 
 possession, the tenderness, the affectionateness, 
 and the firmness of Joseph. And, as his own 
 especial gift, he has an overflowing thankfulness, 20 
 an ever-burning devotion, a zealous fidelity to 
 his God, a high unshaken loyalty towards his 
 king, an heroic bearing in all circumstances, such 
 as the multitude of men see to be great, but can- 
 not understand. Be it our blessedness, unless 25 
 the wish be presumptuous, so to acquit ourselves 
 in troubled times; cheerful amid anxieties, col- 
 lected in dangers, generous towards enemies, 
 patient in pain and sorrow, subdued in good 
 fortune ! How manifold are the ways of the 30 
 Spirit, how various the graces which He imparts; 
 
44 CHABACTEB SKETCHES 
 
 what depth and width is there in that moral truth 
 and virtue for which we are created ! Contrast 
 one with another the Scripture Saints; how dif- 
 ferent are they, yet how aUke ! how fitted for 
 5 their respective circumstances, yet how unearthly, 
 how settled and composed in the faith and fear 
 of God ! As in the Services, so in the patterns of 
 the Church, God has met all our needs, all our 
 frames of mind. "Is any afflicted? let him 
 
 10 pray; is any merry? let him sing Psalms."^ 
 Is any in joy or in sorrow? there are Saints at 
 hand to encourage and guide him. There is 
 Abraham for nobles, Job for men of wealth and 
 merchandise, Moses for patriots, Samuel for 
 
 15 rulers, Elijah for reformers, Joseph for those who 
 rise into distinction; there is Daniel for the for- 
 lorn, Jeremiah for the persecuted, Hannah for the 
 downcast, Ruth for the friendless,. the Shunam- 
 mite for the matron, Caleb for the soldier, Boaz 
 
 20 for the farmer, Mephibosheth for the subject; 
 but none is vouchsafed to us in more varied lights, 
 and with more abundant and more affecting les- 
 sons, whether in his history or in his writings, 
 than he whose eulogy is contained in the words of 
 
 25 the text, as cunning in playing, and a mighty 
 valiant man, and prudent in matters, and comely 
 in person, and favored by Almighty God. May 
 we be taught, as he was, to employ the gifts, in 
 whatever measure given us, to God's honor and 
 
 30 glory, and to the extension of that true and only 
 faith which is the salvation of the soul ! 
 
 1 Jarnos v. 13. 
 
BASIL AND GREGORY 
 
 What are these discourses that you hold one with 
 another, as you walk and are sad ?" 
 
 The instruments raised up by Almighty God 
 for the accomplishment of His purposes are of 
 two kinds, equally gifted with faith and piety, 
 but from natural temper and talent, education, 
 or other circumstances, differing in the means by 5 
 which they promote their sacred cause. The 
 first of these are men of acute and ready mind, 
 with accurate knowledge of human nature, and 
 large plans, and persuasive and attractive bear- 
 ing, genial, sociable, and popular, endued with 10 
 prudence, patience, instinctive tact and decision 
 in conducting matters, as well as boldness and 
 zeal. Such in a measure we may imagine the 
 single-minded, the intrepid, the much-enduring 
 Hildebrand, who, at a time when society was form- 15 
 ing itself anew, was the saviour, humanly speak- 
 ing, of the City of God. Such, in an earlier age, 
 was the majestic Ambrose; such the never- 
 wearied Athanasius. These last-named lumina- 
 ries of the Church came into public life early, 20 
 and thus learned how to cope with the various 
 46 
 
46 CHARACTER SKETCHES 
 
 tempers, views, and measures of the men they 
 encountered there. Athanasius was but twenty- 
 seven when he went with Alexander to the Nicene 
 Council, and the year after he was Bishop of 
 5 Alexandria. Ambrose was consecrated soon after 
 the age of thirty. 
 
 Again, there is an instrument in the hand of 
 Providence, of less elaborate and splendid work- 
 manship, less rich in its political endowments, 
 
 10 so to call them, 3^et not less beautiful in its tex- 
 ture, nor less precious in its material. Such is 
 the retired and thoughtful student, who remains 
 years and years in the solitude of a college or a 
 monastery, chastening his soul in secret, raising 
 
 15 it to high thought and single-minded purpose, 
 and when at length called into active life, con- 
 ducting himself with firmness, guilelessness, zeal 
 like a flaming fire, and all the sweetness of purity 
 and integrity. Such an one is often unsuccessful 
 
 20 in his own day; he is too artless to persuade, too 
 severe to please; unskilled in the weaknesses of 
 human nature, unfurnished in the resources of 
 ready wit, negligent of men's applause, unsus- 
 picious, open-hearted, he does his work, and so 
 
 25 leaves it ; and it seems to die ; but in the genera- 
 tion after him it lives again, and on the long run 
 it is difficult to say, which of the two classes of 
 men has served the cause of truth the more effec- 
 tually. Such, perhaps, was Basil, who issued 
 
 30 from the solitudes of Pontus to rule like a king, 
 and minister like the lowest in the kingdom ; yet 
 
BASIL AND GREGORY 47 
 
 to meet little but disappointment, and to quit 
 life prematurely in pain and sorrow. Such was 
 his friend, the accomplished Gregory, however 
 different in other respects from him, who left his 
 father's roof for an heretical city, raised a church 5 
 there, and was driven back into retirement by 
 his own people, as soon as his triumph over the 
 false creed was secured. Such, perhaps, St. Peter 
 Damiani in the middle age; such St. Anselm, 
 such St. Edmund. No comparison is, of course, lo 
 attempted here between the religious excellence 
 of the two descriptions of men; each of them 
 serves God according to the peculiar gifts given 
 to him. If we might continue our instances 
 by way of comparison, we should say that St. 15 
 Paul reminds us of the former, and Jeremiah of 
 the latter. . . . 
 
 It often happens that men of very dissimilar 
 talents and tastes are attracted together by their 
 very dissimilitude. They live in intimacy for a 20 
 time, perhaps a long time, till their circumstances 
 alter, or some sudden event comes to try them. 
 Then the peculiarities of their respective minds 
 are brought out into action; and quarrels ensue, 
 which end in coolness or separation. It would 25 
 not be right or true to say that this is exemplified 
 in the instance of the two blessed Apostles, whose 
 "sharp contention" is related in the Book of 
 Acts; for they had been united in spirit once for 
 all by a Divine gift ; and yet their strife reminds 30 
 us of what takes place in life continually. And it 
 
48 CHARACTER SKETCHES 
 
 so far resembled the everyday quarrels of friends, 
 in that it arose from difference of temper and 
 character in those favored servants of God. 
 The zealous heart of the Apostle of the Gentiles 
 
 5 endured not the presence of one who had swerved 
 in his course; the indulgent spirit of Barnabas 
 felt that a first fault ought not to be a last trial. 
 Such are the two main characters which are found 
 in the Church, — high energy, and sweetness of 
 
 10 temper; far from incompatible, of course, united 
 in Apostles, though in different relative propor- 
 tions, yet only partially combined in ordinary 
 Christians, and often altogether parted from each 
 other. 
 
 15 This contrast of character, leading, first, to 
 intimacy, then to differences, is interestingly dis- 
 played, though painfully, in one passage of the 
 history of Basil and Gregory: Gregory the af- 
 fectionate, the tender-hearted, the man of quick 
 
 20 feelings, the accomplished, the eloquent preacher, 
 — and Basil, the man of firm resolve and hard 
 deeds, the high-minded ruler of Christ's flock, 
 the diligent laborer in the field of ecclesiastical 
 politics. Thus they differed; yet not as if they 
 
 25 had not much in common still; both had the 
 blessing and the discomfort of a sensitive mind; 
 both were devoted to an ascetic life; both were 
 men of classical tastes; both were special cham- 
 pions of the Catholic creed; both were skilled 
 
 30 in argument, and successful in their use of it; 
 both were in highest place in the Church, the one 
 
BASIL AND GBEGORY 49 
 
 Exarch of Csesarea, the other Patriarch of Con- 
 stantinople. I will now attempt to sketch the 
 history of their intimacy. 
 
 II 
 
 Basil and Gregory were both natives of Cap- 
 padocia, but here, again, under different circum- 5 
 stances; Basil was born of a good family, and 
 with Christian ancestors : Gregory was the son of 
 the Bishop of Nazianzus, who had been brought 
 up an idolater, or rather an Hypsistarian, a 
 mongrel sort of religionist, part Jew, part Pagan, lo 
 He was brought over to Christianity by the efforts 
 of his wife Nonna, and at Nazianzus admitted by 
 baptism into the Church. In process of time he 
 was made bishop of that city; but not having a 
 very firm hold of the faith, he was betrayed in 15 
 360 into signing'the Ariminian creed, which caused 
 him much trouble, and from which at length his 
 son recovered him. Csesarea being at no unsur- 
 mountable distance from Nazianzus, the two 
 friends had known each other in their own coun- 20 
 try ; but their intimacy began at Athens, whither 
 they separately repaired for the purposes of edu- 
 cation. This was about a.d. 350, when each of 
 them was twenty-one years of age. Gregory 
 came to the seat of learning shortly before Basil, 25 
 and thus was able to be his host and guide on his 
 arrival; but fame had reported Basil's merits 
 before he came, and he seems to have made his 
 
50 CHARACTER SKETCHES 
 
 way, in a place of all others most difficult to a 
 stranger, with a facility peculiar to himself. He 
 soon found himself admired and respected by 
 his fellow-students; but Gregory was his only 
 5 friend, and shared with him the reputation of 
 talents and attainments. They remained at 
 Athens four or five years; and, at the end of the 
 time, made the acquaintance of Julian, since of 
 evil name in history as the Apostate. Gregory 
 10 thus describes in after life his early intimacy 
 with Basil : 
 
 " Athens and letters followed on my stage ; 
 Others may tell how I encountered them ; — 
 How in the fear of God, and foremost found 
 
 15 Of those who knew a more than mortal lore ; — 
 And how, amid the venture and the rush 
 Of maddened youth with youth in rivalry, 
 My tranquil course ran like some fabled spring, 
 Which bubbles fresh beneath the turbid brine; 
 
 20 Not drawn away by those who lure to ill, 
 But drawing dear ones to the better part. 
 There, too, I gained a further gift of God, 
 Who made me friends with one of wisdom high, 
 Without compeer in learning and in life. 
 
 25 Ask ye his name? — in sooth, 'twas Basil, since 
 My life's great gain, — and then my fellow dear 
 In home, and studious search, and knowledge earned. 
 May I not boast how in our day we moved 
 A truest pair, not without name in Greece; 
 
 30 Had all things common, and one only soul 
 In lodgment of a double outward frame? 
 Our special bond, the thought of God above, 
 And the high longing after holy things. 
 And each of us was bold to trust in each, 
 
BASIL AND GREGORY 51 
 
 Unto the emptying of our deepest hearts ; 
 And then we loved the more, for sympathy 
 Pleaded in each, and knit the twain in one." 
 
 The friends had been educated for rhetoricians, 
 and their oratorical powers were such, that they 5 
 seemed to have every prize in prospect which a 
 secular ambition could desire. Their names were 
 known far and wide, their attainments acknowl- 
 edged by enemies, and they themselves personally 
 popular in their circle of acquaintance. It was 10 
 under these circumstances that they took the 
 extraordinary resolution of quitting the world 
 together, — extraordinary the world calls it, 
 utterly perplexed to find that any conceivable 
 objects can, by any sane person, be accounted 15 
 better than its own gifts and favors. They re- 
 solved to seek baptism of the Church, and to 
 consecrate their gifts to the service of the Giver. 
 With characters of mind very different — the 
 one grave, the other lively ; the one desponding, 20 
 the other sanguine; the one with deep feelings, 
 the other with feelings acute and warm; — they 
 agreed together in holding, that the things that 
 are seen are not to be compared to the things that 
 are not seen. They quitted the world, while it 25 
 entreated them to stay. 
 
 What passed when they were about to leave 
 Athens represents as in a figure the parting which 
 they and the world took of each other. When 
 the day of valediction arrived, their companions 30 
 and equals, nay, some of their tutors, came about 
 
52 CHARACTER SKETCHES 
 
 them, and resisted their departure by entreaties, 
 arguments, and even by violence. This occasion 
 showed, also, their respective dispositions; for 
 the firm Basil persevered, and went; the tender- 
 
 5 hearted Gregory was softened, and stayed awhile 
 longer. Basil, indeed, in spite of the reputation 
 which attended him, had, from the first, felt dis- 
 appointment with the celebrated abode of philoso- 
 phy and literature; and seems to have given up 
 
 10 the world from a simple conviction of its emptiness. 
 
 "He," says Gregory, "according to the way of human 
 nature, when, on suddenly faUing in with what we hoped 
 to be greater, we find it less than its fame, experienced 
 some such feeling, began to be sad, grew impatient, and 
 15 could not congratulate himself on his place of residence. 
 He sought an object which hope had drawn for him; 
 and he called Athens 'hollow blessedness.' " 
 
 Gregory himself, on the contrary, looked at 
 things more cheerfully; as the succeeding sen- 
 2otences show. 
 
 "Thus Basil; but I removed the greater part of his 
 sorrow, meeting it with reason, and smoothing it with 
 reflections, and saying (what was most true) that charac- 
 ter is not at once understood, nor except by long time 
 25 and perfect intimacy ; nor are studies estimated, by 
 those who are submitted to them, on a brief trial and 
 by slight evidence. Thus I reassured him, and by con- 
 tinual trials of each other, I bound myself to him." — 
 Orat. 43. 
 
 Ill 
 
 30 Yet Gregory had inducements of his own to 
 leave the world, not to insist on his love of Basil's 
 
BASIL AND GREGORY 53 
 
 company. His mother had devoted him to God, 
 both before and after his birth ; and when he was 
 a child he had a remarkable dream, which made 
 a great impression upon him. 
 
 "While I was asleep," he says in one of his poems, 5 
 which runs thus in prose, " a dream came to me, which 
 drew me readily to the desire of chastity. Two virgin 
 forms, in white garments, seemed to shine close to me. 
 Both were fair and of one age, and their ornament lay 
 in their want of ornament, which is a woman' s beauty. 10 
 No gold adorned their neck, nor jacinth; nor had they 
 the delicate spinning of the silkworm. Their fair robe 
 was bound with a girdle, and it reached down to their 
 ankles. Their head and face were concealed by a veil, 
 and their eyes were fixed on the ground. The fair glow 15 
 of modesty was on both of them, as far as could be seen 
 under their thick covering. Their lips were closed in 
 silence, as the rose in its dewy leaves. When I saw 
 them, I rejoiced much; for I said that they were far 
 more than mortals. And they in turn kept kissing me, 20 
 while I drew light from their lips, fondling me as a dear 
 son. And when I asked who and whence the women 
 were, the one answered, 'Purity,' the other, 'Sobriety'; 
 * We stand by Christ, the King, and delight in the beauty 
 of the celestial virgins. Come, then, child, unite thy 25 
 mind to our mind, thy light to our light ; so shall we carry 
 thee aloft in all brightness through the air, and place 
 thee by the radiance of the immortal Trinity.' " — 
 Carm. p. 930. 
 
 He goes on to say, that he never lost the im- 30 
 pression this made upon him, as "a spark of 
 heavenly fire," or "a taste of divine milk and 
 honey." 
 
 As far, then, as these descriptions go, one might 
 
54 CHABACTER SKETCHES 
 
 say that Gregor3^'s abandonment of the world 
 arose from an early passion, as it may be called, 
 for a purity higher than his own nature; and 
 Basil's, from a profound sense of the world's 
 
 5 nothingness and the world's defilements. Both 
 seem to have viewed it as a sort of penitential 
 exercise, as well as a means towards perfection. 
 
 When they had once resolved to devote them- 
 selves to the service of religion, the question 
 
 10 arose, how they might best improve and employ 
 the talents committed to them. Somehow, the 
 idea of marrying and taking orders, or taking 
 orders and marrying, building or improving their 
 parsonages, and showing forth the charities, the 
 
 15 humanities, and the gentilities of a family man, 
 did not suggest itself to their minds. They fancied 
 that they must give up wife, children, property, 
 if they would be perfect; and, this being taken 
 for granted, that their choice lay between two 
 
 20 modes of life, both of which they regarded as 
 extremes. Here, then, for a time, they were in 
 some perplexity. Gregory speaks of two ascetic 
 disciplines, that of the solitary or hermit, and that 
 of the secular; ^ one of which, he says, profits 
 
 25 a man's self, the other his neighbor. Midway, 
 however, between these lay the Coenobite, or 
 what we commonly call the monastic; removed 
 from the world, yet acting in a certain select 
 circle. And this was the rule which the friends 
 
 30 at length determined to adopt, withdrawing from 
 
 1 d^vyes and fj-iyddes. 
 
BASIL AND GREGORY 55 
 
 mixed society in order to be of the greater service 
 to it. 
 
 The following is the passage in which Gregory 
 describes the life which was the common choice 
 of both of them: 5 
 
 "Fierce was the whirlwind of my storm-toss' d mind, 
 
 Searching, ' mid hohest ways, a hoher still. 
 
 Long had I nerved me, in the depths to sink 
 
 Thoughts of the flesh, and then more strenuously. 
 
 Yet, while I gazed upon diviner aims, 10 
 
 I had not wit to single out the best : 
 
 For, as is aye the wont in things of earth. 
 
 Each had its evil, each its nobleness. 
 
 I was the pilgrim of a toilsome course, 
 
 Who had o'erpast the waves, and now look'd round, 15 
 
 With anxious eye, to track his road by land. 
 
 Then did the awful Thesbite's image rise. 
 
 His highest Carmel, and his food uncouth; 
 
 The Baptist wealthy in his solitude; 
 
 And the unencumbered sons of Jonadab. 20 
 
 But soon I felt the love of holy books. 
 
 The spirit beaming bright in learned lore. 
 
 Which deserts could not hear, nor silence tell. 
 
 Long was the inward strife, till ended thus: — 
 
 I saw, when men lived in the fretful world, 25 
 
 They vantaged other men, but risked the while 
 
 The calmness and the pureness of their hearts. 
 
 They who retired held an uprighter port, 
 
 And raised their eyes with quiet strength towards heaven ; 
 
 Yet served self only, unfraternally. 30 
 
 And so, 'twixt these and those, I struck my path, 
 
 To meditate with the free solitary, 
 
 Yet to live secular, and serve mankind." 
 
AUGUSTINE AND THE VANDALS 
 
 The just perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart; and 
 men of mercy are taken away, for there is none to 
 understand; for the just man is taken away from 
 before the face of evil." 
 
 I BEGAN by directing the reader's attention to 
 the labors of two great bishops, who restored 
 the faith of Christianity where it had long been 
 obscured. Now, I will put before him, by way 
 
 5 of contrast, a scene of the overthrow of religion, 
 — the extinction of a candlestick, — effected, too, 
 by champions of the same heretical creed which 
 Basil and Gregory successfully resisted. It will 
 be found in the history of the last days of the 
 
 10 great Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, in Africa. 
 The truth triumphed in the East by the power of 
 preaching ; it was extirpated in the South by the 
 edge of the sword. 
 
 Though it may not be given us to appropriate 
 
 15 the prophecies of the Apocalypse to the real 
 events to which they belong, yet it is impossible 
 to read its inspired pages, and then to turn to 
 the dissolution of the Roman empire, without 
 seeing a remarkable agreement, on the whole, 
 
 20 between the calamities of that period and the 
 sacred prediction. There is a plain announce- 
 56 
 
AUGUSTINE AND THE VANDALS 57 
 
 ment in the inspired page, of " Woe, woe, woe, to 
 the inhabitants of the earth"; an announcement 
 of "hail and fire mingled with blood," the con- 
 flagration of " trees and green grass," the destruc- 
 tion of ships, the darkening of the sun, and the 5 
 poisoniig of the rivers over a third of their course. 
 There is a clear prophecy of revolutions on the 
 face of the earth and in the structure of society. 
 And, on the other hand, let us observe how fully 
 such general foretokenings are borne out, among lo 
 other passages of history, in the Vandalic con- 
 quest of Africa. 
 
 The coast of Africa, between the great desert 
 and the Mediterranean, was one of the most fruit- 
 ful and opulent portions of the Roman world. 15 
 The eastern extremity of it was more especially 
 connected with the empire, containing in it 
 Carthage, Hippo, and other towns, celebrated as 
 being sees of the Christian Church, as well as 
 places of civil importance. In the spring of the 20 
 year 428, the Vandals, Arians by creed, and bar- 
 barians by birth and disposition, crossed the 
 Straits of Gibraltar, and proceeded along this 
 fertile district, bringing with them devastation 
 and captivity on ev^ery side. They abandoned 25 
 themselves to the most savage cruelties and ex- 
 cesses. They pillaged, ravaged, burned, mas- 
 sacred all that came in their way, sparing not even 
 the fruit trees, which might have afforded some 
 poor food to the remnant of the population, who 30 
 had escaped from them into caves, the recesses 
 
68 CHABACTER SKETCHES 
 
 of the mountains^ or into vaults. Twice did this 
 desolating pestilence sweep over the face of the 
 country. 
 
 The fury of the Vandals was especially exercised 
 
 5 towards the memorials of religion. Churches, 
 cemeteries, monasteries, were objects of their 
 fiercest hatred and most violent assaults. They 
 broke into the places of worship, cut to pieces all 
 internal decorations, and then set fire to them. 
 
 10 They tortured bishops and clergy with the hope of 
 obtaining treasure. The names of some of the 
 victims of their ferocity are preserved. Mansuetus, 
 Bishop of tJtica, was burnt alive; Papinianus, 
 Bishop of Vite, was laid upon red-hot plates of 
 
 15 iron. This was near upon the time when the 
 third General Council was assembling at Ephesus, 
 which, from the insecure state of the roads, and 
 the universal misery which reigned among them, 
 the African bishops were prevented from attend- 
 
 2oing. The Clergy, the religious brotherhoods, the 
 holy virgins, were scattered all over the country. 
 The daily sacrifice was stopped, the sacraments 
 could not be obtained, the festivals of the Church 
 passed unnoticed. At length, only three cities 
 
 25 remained un visited by the general desolation, — 
 Carthage, Hippo, and Cirtha. 
 
 II 
 
 Hippo was the see of St. Austin, then seventy- 
 four years of age (forty almost of which had been 
 passed in ministerial labors), and warned, by 
 
AUGUSTINE AND THE VANDALS 59 
 
 the law of nature, of the approach of dissolution. 
 It was as if the light of prosperity and peace 
 were fading away from the African Church, as 
 sank the bodily powers of its great earthly orna- 
 ment and stay. At this time, when the terrors 5 
 of the barbaric invasion spread on all sides, a 
 bishop wrote to him to ask whether it was allowable 
 for the ruler of a Church to leave the scene of his 
 pastoral duties in order to save his life. Differ- 
 ent opinions had heretofore been expressed on lo 
 this question. In Augustine's own country Ter- 
 tullian had maintained that flight was unlawful, 
 but he was a Montanist when he so wrote. On 
 the other hand, Cyprian had actually fled, and 
 had defended his conduct when questioned by 15 
 the clergy of Rome. His contemporaries, Diony- 
 sius of Alexandria, and Gregory of Neocsesarea, 
 had fled also; as had Poly carp before them, and 
 Athanasius after them. 
 
 Athanasius also had to defend his flight, and he 20 
 defended it, in a work still extant, thus : First, 
 he observes, it has the sanction of numerous 
 Scripture precedents. Thus, in the instance of 
 confessors under the old covenant, Jacob fled 
 from Esau, Moses from Pharao, David from Saul ; 25 
 Elias concealed himself from Achab three years, 
 and the sons of the prophets were hid by Abdias 
 in a cave from Jezebel. In like manner under 
 the Gospel, the disciples hid themselves for fear 
 of the Jews, and St. Paul was let down in a basket 30 
 over the wall at Damascus. On the other hand. 
 
60 CHARACTER SKETCHES 
 
 no instance can be adduced of overboldness and 
 headstrong daring in the saints of Scripture. 
 But our Lord Himself is the chief exemplar of 
 fleeing from persecution. As a child in arms He 
 5 had to flee into Egypt. When He returned, He 
 still shunned Judea, and retired to Nazareth. 
 After raising Lazarus, on the Jews seeking His 
 life, " He walked no more openly among them," 
 but retreated to the neighborhood of the desert. 
 
 10 When they took up stones to cast at Him, He 
 hid Himself; when they attempted to cast Him 
 down headlong, He made His way through them: 
 when He heard of the Baptist's death. He retired 
 across the lake into a desert place, apart. If it 
 
 15 be said that He did so, because His time was not 
 yet come, and that when it was come, He de- 
 livered up Himself, we must ask, in reply, how a 
 man can know that his time is come, so as to 
 have a right to act as Christ acted? And since 
 
 20 we do not know, we must have patience; and, 
 till God by His own act determines the time, we 
 must "wander in sheepskins and goatskins," 
 rather than take the matter into our own hands; 
 as even Saul, the persecutor, was left by David 
 
 25 in the hands of God, whether He would "strike 
 him, or his day should come to die, or he should 
 go down to battle and perish." 
 
 If God's servants, proceeds Athanasius, have 
 at any time presented themselves before their 
 
 30 persecutors, it was at God's command : thus Elias 
 showed himself to Achab; so did the prophet 
 
AUGUSTINE AND THE VANDALS 61 
 
 from Juda, to Jeroboam; and St. Paul appealed 
 to Caesar. Flight, so far from implying coward- 
 ice, requires often greater courage than not to 
 flee. It is a greater trial of heart. Death is an 
 end of all trouble ; he who flees is ever expecting 5 
 death, and dies daily. Job's life was not to be 
 touched by Satan, yet was not his fortitude 
 shown in what he suffered? Exile is full of 
 miseries. The after-conduct of the saints showed 
 they had not fled for fear. Jacob, on his death- lo 
 bed, contemned death, and blessed each of the 
 twelve Patriarchs; Moses returned, and pre- 
 sented himself before Pharao; David was a 
 valiant warrior; Elias rebuked Achab and 
 Ochazias; Peter and Paul, who had once hid 15 
 themselves, offered themselves to martyrdom at 
 Rome. And so acceptable was the previous 
 flight of these men to Almighty God, that we 
 read of His showing them some special favor 
 during it. Then it was that Jacob had the 20 
 vision of Angels; Moses saw the burning bush; 
 David wrote his prophetic Psalms; Elias raised 
 the dead, and gathered the people on Mount 
 Carmel. How would the Gospel ever have been 
 preached throughout the world, if the Apostles 25 
 had not fled? And, since their time, those, too, 
 who have become martyrs, at first fled ; or, if they 
 advanced to meet their persecutors, it was by 
 some secret suggestion of the Divine Spirit. But, 
 above all, while these instances abundantly illus- 30 
 trate the rule of duty in persecution, and the 
 
62 CHARACTER SKETCHES 
 
 temper of mind necessary in those who observe 
 it, we have that duty itself declared in a plain 
 precept by no other than our Lord : " When they 
 shall persecute you in this city," He says, "flee 
 
 5 into another;" and "let them that are in Judea 
 flee unto the mountains." 
 
 Thus argues the great Athanasius, living in 
 spirit with the saints departed, while full of 
 labor and care here on earth. For the argu- 
 
 10 ments on the other side, let us turn to a writer, 
 not less vigorous in mind, but less subdued in 
 temper. Thus writes Tertullian on the same 
 subject, then a Montanist, a century and a half 
 earlier: Nothing happens, he says, without 
 
 15 God's will. Persecution is sent by Him, to put 
 His servants to the test; to divide between good 
 and bad : it is a trial ; what man has any right 
 to interfere ? He who gives the prize, alone can 
 assign the combat. Persecution is more than 
 
 20 permitted, it is actually appointed by Almighty 
 God. It does the Church much good, as leading 
 Christians to increased seriousness while it lasts. 
 It comes and goes at God's ordering. Satan 
 could not touch Job, except so far as God gave 
 
 25 permission. He could not touch the Apostles, 
 except as far as an opening was allowed in the 
 words, "Satan hath desired to have you, but I 
 have prayed for thee," Peter, "and thou, being 
 once converted, confirm thy brethren." We 
 
 30 pray, " Lead us not into temptation, but deliver 
 us from evil;" why, if we may deliver ourselves? 
 
AUGUSTINE AND THE VANDALS 63 
 
 Satan is permitted access to us, either for punish- 
 ment, as in Saul's case, or for our chastisement. 
 Since the persecution comes from God, we may 
 not lawfully avoid it, nor can we avoid it. We 
 cannot, because He is all powerful ; we must not, 5 
 because He is all good. We should leave the 
 matter entirely to God. As to the command of 
 fleeing from city to city, this was temporary. It 
 was intended to secure the preaching of the Gos- 
 pel to the nations. While the Apostles preached 10 
 to the Jews, — till they had preached to the 
 Gentiles, — they were to flee ; but one might as 
 well argue, that we now are not to go "into the 
 way of the Gentiles," but to confine ourselves 
 to "the lost sheep of the house of Israel," as that 15 
 we are now to "flee from city to city." Nor, in- 
 deed, was going from city to city a flight ; it was 
 a continued preaching; not an accident, but a 
 rule : whether persecuted or not, they were to go 
 about; and before they had gone through the 20 
 cities of Israel, the Lord was to come. The 
 command contemplated only those very cities. 
 If St. Paul escaped out of Damascus by night, 
 yet afterwards, against the prayers of the disciples 
 and the prophecy of Agabus, he went up to Jeru-25 
 salem. Thus the command to flee did not last 
 even through the lifetime of the Apostles; and, 
 indeed, why should God introduce persecution, 
 if He bids us retire from it? This is imputing 
 inconsistency to His acts. If we want texts to 30 
 justify our not fleeing, He says, "Whoso shall 
 
64 CHAEACTEB SKETCHES 
 
 confess Me before men, I will confess him before 
 My Father." " Blessed are they that suffer per- 
 secution;" "He that shall persevere to the end, 
 he shall be saved;" "Be not afraid of them that 
 
 skill the body;" "Whosoever does not carry his 
 cross and come after Me, cannot be My disciple." 
 How are these texts fulfilled when a man flees? 
 Christ, who is our pattern, did not more than 
 pray, "If it be possible, let this chalice pass:" 
 
 10 we, too, should both stay and pray as He did. 
 And it is expressly told us, that " We also ought 
 to lay down our lives for the brethren." Again, it 
 is said, "Perfect charity casteth out fear;" he 
 who flees, fears; he who fears, "is not perfected 
 
 15 in charity." The Greek proverb is sometimes 
 urged, "He who flees, will fight another day;" 
 yes, and he may flee another day, also. Again, 
 if bishops, priests, and deacons flee, why must 
 the laity stay? or must they flee also? "The 
 
 20 good shepherd," on the contrary, "layeth down 
 his life for his sheep"; whereas, the bad shepherd 
 "seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, 
 and fleeth." At no time, as Jeremiah, Ezekiel, 
 and Zechariah tell us, is the flock in greater dan- 
 
 25 ger of being scattered than when it loses its shep- 
 herd. Tertullian ends thus : " This doctrine, my 
 brother, perhaps appears to you hard; nay, in- 
 tolerable. But recollect that God has said, ' He 
 that can take, let him take it;' that is, he who 
 
 30 receives it not, let him depart. He who fears to 
 suffer cannot belong to Him who has suffered. 
 
AUGUSTINE AND THE VANDALS 65 
 
 He who does not fear to suffer is perfect in. love, 
 that is, of God. Many are called, few are chosen. 
 Not he who would walk the broad way is sought 
 out by God, but he who walks the narrow.'' 
 Thus the ingenious and vehement Tertullian. 5 
 
 III 
 
 With these remarks for and against flight in 
 persecution, we shall be prepared to listen to 
 Augustine on the subject; I have said, it was 
 brought under his notice by a brother bishop, 
 with reference to the impending visitation of the 10 
 barbarians. His answer happily is preserved to 
 us, and extracts from it shall now be set before 
 the reader. 
 
 "To HIS Holy Brothers and Fellow-bishop Honor- 
 ATUS, Augustine sends Health in the Lord 
 
 "I thought the copy of my letter to our brother 
 Quodvultdeus, which I sent to you, would have been 15 
 sufficient, dear brother, without the task you put on me 
 of counseling you on the proper course to pursue under 
 our existing dangers. It was certainly a short letter; 
 yet I included every question which it was necessary to 
 ask and answer, when I said that no persons were hin-20 
 dered from retiring to such fortified places as they were 
 able and desirous to secure ; while, on the other hand, we 
 might not break the bonds of our ministry, by which 
 the love of Christ has engaged us not to desert the Church, 
 where we are bound to serve. The following is what I 25 
 laid down in the letter I refer to : 'It remains, then,' 
 I say, ' that, though God' s people in the place where we 
 are be ever so few, yet, if it does stay, we, whose minis- 
 
66 CHARACTER SKETCHES 
 
 tration is necessary to its staying, must say to the Lord, 
 Thou art our strong rock and place of defense.' 
 
 " But you tell me that this view is not sufficient for 
 you, from an apprehension lest we should be running 
 5 counter to our Lord's command and example, to flee 
 from city to city. Yet is it conceivable that He meant 
 that our flocks, whom He bought with His own blood, 
 should be deprived of that necessary ministration with- 
 out which they cannot live? Is He a precedent for 
 
 10 this, who was carried in flight into Egypt by His parents 
 when but a child, before He had formed Churches which 
 we can talk of His leaving? Or, when St. Paul was let 
 down in a basket through a window, lest the enemy 
 should seize him, and so escaped his hands, was the Church 
 
 15 of that place bereft of its necessary ministration, seeing 
 there were other brethren stationed there to fulfill what 
 was necessary? Evidently it was their wish that he, 
 who was the direct object of the persecutors' search, 
 should preserve himself for the sake of the Church. 
 
 20 Let, then, the servants of Christ, the ministers of His 
 word and sacraments, do in such cases as He enjoined 
 or permitted. Let such of them, by all means, flee from 
 city to city, as are special objects of persecution; so 
 that they who are not thus attacked desert not the 
 
 25 Church, but give meat to those their fellow-servants, 
 who they know cannot live without it. But in a case 
 when all classes — I mean bishops, clergy, and people — 
 are in some common danger, let not those who need the 
 aid of others be deserted by those whom they need. Either 
 
 30 let one and all remove into some fortified place, or, if 
 any are obliged to remain, let them not be abandoned 
 by those who have to supply thejr ecclesiastical necessity, 
 so that they may survive in common, or suffer in common 
 what their Father decrees they should undergo." 
 
 35 Then he makes mention of the argument of a 
 certain bishop; that "if our Lord has enjoined 
 
AUGUSTINE AND THE VANDALS 67 
 
 upon us flight, in persecutions which may ripen 
 into martyrdom, much more is it necessary to 
 flee from barren sufferings in a barbarian and 
 hostile invasion," and he says, "this is true and 
 reasonable, in the case of such as have no ecclesi- 5 
 astical office to tie them"; but he continues: 
 
 "Why should men make no question about obeying 
 the precept of fleeing from city to city, and yet have 
 no dread of ' the hirehng who seeth the wolf coming, and 
 fleeth, because he careth not for the sheep'? Why do 10 
 they not try to reconcile (as they assuredly can) these 
 two incontrovertible declarations of our Lord, one of 
 which suffers and commands flight, the other arraigns 
 and condemns it? And what other mode is there of 
 reconcihng them than that which I have above laid down? 15 
 viz., that we, the ministers of Christ, who are under the 
 pressure of persecution, are then at liberty to leave our 
 posts, when no flock is left for us to serve; or again, 
 when, though there be a flock, yet there are others to 
 supply our necessary ministry, who have not the same 20 
 reason for fleeing, — as in the case of St. Paul ; or, 
 again, of the holy Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, 
 who was especially sought after by the emperor Con- 
 stantius, while the Catholic people, who remained to- 
 gether in Alexandria, were in no measure deserted by the 25 
 other ministers. But when the people remain, and the 
 ministers flee, and the ministration is suspended, what 
 is that but the guilty flight of hirelings, who care not for 
 the sheep ? For then the w^olf will come, — not man, but 
 the devfl, who is accustomed to persuade such believers 30 
 to apostasy, who are bereft of the dafly ministration of 
 the Lord's Body ; and by your, not knowledge, but igno- 
 rance of duty, the weak brother will perish, for whom 
 Christ died. 
 
 " Let us only consider, when matters come to an 35 
 
68 CHABACTEB SKETCHES 
 
 extremity of danger, and there is no longer any means 
 of escape, how persons flock together to the Church, of 
 both sexes, and all ages, begging for baptism, or recon- 
 ciliation, or even for works of penance, and one and 
 5 all of them for consolation, and the consecration and 
 application of the sacraments. Now, if ministers are 
 wanting, what ruin awaits those, who depart from this 
 life unregenerate or unabsolved ! Consider the grief 
 of their believing relatives, who will not have them as 
 
 10 partakers with themselves in the rest of eternal life ; 
 consider the anguish of the whole multitude, nay, the 
 cursings of some of them, at the absence of ministration 
 and ministers. 
 
 " It may be said, however, that the ministers of God 
 
 15 ought to avoid such imminent perils, in order to pre- 
 serve themselves for the profit of the Church for more 
 tranquil times. I grant it where others are present to 
 supply the ecclesiastical ministry, as in the case of Athana- 
 sius. How necessary it was to the Church, how bene- 
 
 20ficial, that such a man should remain in the flesh, the 
 Catholic faith bears witness, which was maintained 
 against the Arians by his voice and his love. But when 
 there is a common danger, and when there is rather 
 reason to apprehend lest a man should be thought to 
 
 25 flee, not from purpose of prudence, but from dread of 
 dying, and when the example of flight does more harm 
 than the service of living does good, it is by no means 
 to be done. To be brief, holy David withdrew himself 
 from the hazard of war, lest perchance he should ' quench 
 
 30 the light of Israel,' at the instance of his people, not on 
 his own motion. Otherwise, he would have occasioned 
 many imitators of an inactivity which they had in that 
 case ascribed, not to regard for the welfare of others, 
 but to cowardice." 
 
 35 Then he goes on to a further question, what is 
 to be done in a case where all ministers are likely 
 
AUGUSTINE AND THE VANDALS 69 
 
 to perish, unless some of them take to flight? or 
 when persecution is set on foot only with the view 
 of reaching the ministers of the Church? This 
 leads him to exclaim : 
 
 " O, that there may be then a quarrel between God's 5 
 ministers, who are to remain, and who to flee, lest the 
 Church should be deserted, whether by all fleeing or all 
 dying ! Surely there will ever be such a quarrel, where 
 each party burns in its own charity, yet indulges the 
 charity of the other. In such a difficulty, the lot seems 10 
 the fairest decision, in default of others. God judges 
 better than man in perplexities of this sort; whether it 
 be His will to reward the holier among them with the 
 crown of martydom, and to spare the weak, or again, 
 to strengthen the latter to endure evil, removing those 15 
 from life whom the Church of God can spare the better. 
 Should it, however, seem inexpedient to cast lots, — 
 a measure for which I cannot bring precedent, — at 
 least, let no one's flight be the cause of the Church's 
 losing those ministrations which, in such dangers, are 20 
 so necessary and so imperative. Let no one make him- 
 self an exception, on the plea of having some particular 
 grace, which gives him a claim to life, and therefore to 
 flight. 
 
 " It is sometimes supposed that bishops and clergy, 25 
 remaining at their posts in dangers of this kind, mislead 
 their flocks into staying, by their example. But it is 
 easy for us to remove this objection or imputation, by 
 frankly telling them not to be misled by our remaining. 
 ' We are remaining for your sake,' we must say, 'lest you 30 
 should fail to obtain such ministration, as we know to 
 be necessary to your salvation in Christ. Make your 
 escape, and you will then set us free.' The occasion for 
 saying this is when there seems some real advantage in 
 retiring to a safer position. Should all or some make 35 
 answer, ' We are in His hands from whose anger no one 
 
70 CHARACTER SKETCHES 
 
 can flee anywhere; whose mercy every one may find 
 everywhere, though he stir not, whether some necessary 
 tie detains him, or the uncertainty of safe escape deters 
 him'; most undoubtedly such persons are not to be 
 5 left destitute of Christian ministrations. 
 
 " I have written these lines, dearest brother, in truth, 
 as I think, and in sure charity, by way of reply, since you 
 have consulted me; but not as dictating, if, perchance, 
 you may find some better view to guide you. Hov/ever, 
 10 better we cannot do in these perils than pray the Lord 
 our God to have mercy upon us." — Ep. 228. 
 
 IV 
 
 The luminous judgment, the calm faith, and 
 the single-minded devotion which this letter 
 exhibits, were fully maintained in the conduct of 
 
 15 the far-famed writer, in the events which fol- 
 lowed. It was written on the first entrance of 
 the Vandals into Africa, about two years before 
 they laid siege to Hippo ; and during this inter- 
 val of dreadful suspense and excitement, as well 
 
 20 as of actual suffering, amid the desolation of the 
 Church around him, with the prospect of his own 
 personal trials, we find this unwearied teacher 
 carrying on his works of love by pen, and word 
 of mouth, — eagerly, as knowing his time was 
 
 25 short, but tranquilly, as if it were a season of 
 prosperity. . . . 
 
 His life had been for many years one of great 
 anxiety and discomfort, the life of one dissatisfied 
 with himself, and despairing of finding the truth. 
 
 30 Men of ordinary minds are not so circumstanced 
 
AUGUSTINE AND THE VANDALS 71 
 
 as to feel the misery of irreligion. That misery 
 consists in the perverted and discordant action 
 of the various faculties and functions of the soul, 
 which have lost their legitimate governing power, 
 and are unable to regain it, except at the hands 5 
 of their Maker. Now the run of irreligious men 
 do not suffer in any great degree from this dis- 
 order, and are not miserable; they have neither 
 great talents nor strong passions; they have not 
 within them the materials of rebellion in such 10 
 measure as to threaten their peace. They follow 
 their own wishes, they yield to the bent of the 
 moment, they act on inclination, not on principle, 
 but their motive powers are neither strong nor 
 various enough to be troublesome. Their minds 15 
 are in no sense under rule ; but anarchy is not in 
 their case a state of confusion, but of deadness; 
 not unlike the internal condition as it is reported 
 of eastern cities and provinces at present, in 
 which, though the government is weak or null, 20 
 the body politic goes on without any great em- 
 barrassment or collision of its members one with 
 another, by the force of inveterate habit. It is 
 very different when the moral and intellectual 
 principles are vigorous, active, and developed. 25 
 Then, if the governing power be feeble, all the 
 subordinates are in the position of rebels in arms ; 
 and what the state of a mind is under such cir- 
 cumstances, the analogy of a civil community will 
 suggest to us. Then we have before us the 30 
 melancholy spectacle of high aspirations without 
 
72 CHARACTER SKETCHES 
 
 an aim, a hunger of the soul unsatisfied, and a 
 never ending restlessness and inward warfare of 
 its various faculties. Gifted minds, if not sub- 
 mitted to the rightful authority of religion, be- 
 
 5 come the most unhappy and the most mischievous. 
 They need both an object to feed upon, and the 
 power of self-mastery; and the love of their 
 Maker, and nothing but it, supplies both the one 
 and the other. We have seen in our own day, in 
 
 10 the case of a popular poet, an impressive instance 
 of a great genius throwing off the fear of God, 
 seeking for happiness in the creature, roaming 
 unsatisfied from one object to another, breaking 
 his soul upon itself, and bitterly confessing and 
 
 15 imparting his wretchedness to all around him. 
 I have no wish at all to compare him to St, Augus- 
 tine; indeed, if we may say it without presump- 
 tion, the very different termination of their trial 
 seems to indicate some great difference in their 
 
 20 respective modes of encountering it. The one 
 dies of premature decay, to all appearance, a har- 
 dened infidel ; and if he is still to have a name, 
 will live in the mouths of men by writings at once 
 blasphemous and immoral : the other is a Saint 
 
 25 and Doctor of the Church. Each makes con- 
 fessions, the one to the saints, the other to the 
 powers of evil. And does not the difference of 
 the two discover itself in some measure, even to 
 our eyes, in the very history of their wanderings 
 
 30 and pinings ? At least, there is no appearance in 
 St. Augustine's case of that dreadful haughtiness, 
 
AUGUSTINE AND THE VANDALS 73 
 
 sullenness, love of singularity, vanity, irritability, 
 and misanthropy, which were too certainly the 
 characteristics of our own countryman. Augus- 
 tine was, as his early history shows, a man of af- 
 fectionate and tender feelings, and open and ami- 5 
 able temper; and, above all, he sought for some 
 excellence external to his own mind, instead of 
 concentrating all his contemplations on himself- 
 But let us consider what his misery was; it 
 was that of a mind imprisoned, solitary, and wild lo 
 with spiritual thirst; and forced to betake itself 
 to the strongest excitements, by way of relieving 
 itself of the rush and violence of feelings, of which 
 the knowledge of the Divine Perfections was the 
 true and sole sustenance. He ran into excess, 15 
 not from love of it, but from this fierce fever of 
 mind. "I sought what I might love," ^ he says 
 in his Confessions, " in love with loving, and safety 
 I hated, and a way without snares. For within 
 me was a famine of that inward food. Thyself, 20 
 my God; yet throughout that famine I was not 
 hungered, but was without any longing for incor- 
 ruptible sustenance, not because filled therewith, 
 but the more empty, the more I loathed it. For 
 this cause my soul was sickly and full of sores ; it 25 
 miserably cast itself forth, desiring to be scraped 
 by the touch of objects of sense." — iii. i. 
 
 "O foolish man that I then was," he says elsewhere, 
 " enduring impatiently the lot of man ! So I fretted, 
 
 ^ Most of these translations are from the Oxford edition 
 
 of 1838. 
 
74 CUARACTEB SKETCHES 
 
 sighed, wept, was distracted; had neither rest nor 
 counsel. For I bore about a shattered and bleeding 
 soul, impatient of being borne by me, yet where to repose 
 it I found not; not in calm groves, nor in games and 
 5 music, nor in fragrant spots, nor in curious banquetings, 
 nor in indulgence of the bed and the couch, nor, finally, in 
 books or poetry found it repose. All things looked ghastly, 
 yea, the very light. In groaning and tears alone found 
 I a little refreshment. But when my soul was withdrawn 
 
 10 from them, a huge load of misery weighed me down. 
 To Thee, O Lord, it ought to have been raised, for Thee 
 to lighten; I knew it, but neither could nor would; 
 the more, since when I thought of Thee, Thou wast not 
 to me any solid or substantial thing. For Thou wcrt not 
 
 15 Thyself, but a mere phantom, and my error was my God. 
 If I offered to discharge my load thereon, that it might 
 rest, it glided through the void, and came rushing down 
 against me; and I had remained to myself a hapless 
 spot, where I could neither be, nor be from thence. For 
 
 20 whither should my heart flee from my heart? whither 
 should I flee from myself? whither not follow myself? 
 And yet I fled out of my country; for so should mine 
 eyes look less for him, where they were not wont to see 
 him." — iv. 12. 
 
 25 He is speaking in this last sentence of a friend he 
 had lost, whose death-bed was very remarkable, 
 and whose dear familiar name he apparently has 
 not courage to mention. " He had grown from a 
 child with me," he says, " and we had been both 
 
 30 schoolfellows and playfellows." Augustine had 
 misled him into the heresy which he had adopted 
 himself, and when he grew to have more and more 
 sympathy in Augustine's pursuits, the latter united 
 himself to him in a closer intimacy. Scarcely had 
 
 35 he thus given him his hearty when God took him. 
 
AUGUSTINE AND THE VANDALS 75 
 
 " Thou tookcst him," he says, " out of this Ufe, when he 
 had scarce completed one whole year of my friendship, 
 sweet to me above all sweetness in that life of mine. 
 A long while, sore sick of a fever, he lay senseless in the 
 dews of death, and being given over, he was baptized 5 
 unwitting; I, meanwhile little regarding, or presuming 
 that his soul would retain rather what it had received 
 of me than what was wrought on his unconscious body." 
 
 The Manichees, it should be observed, rejected 
 baptism. He proceeds : lo 
 
 "But it proved far otherwise; for he was refreshed 
 and restored. Forthwith, as soon as I could speak with 
 him (and I could as soon as he was able, for I never left 
 him, and we hung but too much upon each other), I 
 essayed to jest with him, as though he would jest with 15 
 me at that baptism, which he had received, when ut- 
 terly absent in mind and feeling, but had now understood 
 that he had received. But he shrunk from me, as from 
 an enemy; and with a wonderful and sudden freedom 
 bade me, if I would continue his friend, forbear such 20 
 language to him, I, all astonished and amazed, sup- 
 pressed all my emotions till he should grow well, and his 
 health were strong enough for me to deal with him as I 
 would. But he was taken away from my madness, that 
 with Thee he might be preserved for my comfort : a few 25 
 days after, in my absence, he was attacked again by 
 fever, and so departed." — iv. 8. 
 
 From distress of mind Augustine left his native 
 place, Thagaste, and came to Carthage, where he 
 became a teacher in rhetoric. Here he fell in 30 
 with Faustus, an eminent Manichean bishop and 
 
76 CHARACTEB SKETCHES 
 
 disputant, in whom, however, he was disap- 
 pointed; and the disappointment abated his 
 attachment to his sect, and disposed him to look 
 for truth elsewhere. Disgusted with the license 
 
 5 which prevailed among the students at Carthage, 
 he determined to proceed to Rome, and disre- 
 garding and eluding the entreaties of his mother, 
 Monica, who dreaded his removal from his own 
 country, he went thither. At Rome he resumed 
 
 10 his professions; but inconveniences as great, 
 though of another kind, encountered him in that 
 city; and upon the people of Milan sending for a 
 rhetoric reader, he made application for the ap- 
 pointment, and obtained it. To Milan then he 
 
 15 came, the city of St. Ambrose, in the year of our 
 Lord 385. 
 
 Ambrose, though weak in voice, had the repu- 
 tation of eloquence; and Augustine, who seems 
 to have gone with introductions to him, and was 
 
 20 won by his kindness of manner, attended his ser- 
 mons with curiosity and interest. "I listened,'^ 
 he says, " not in the frame of mind which became 
 me, but in order to see whether his eloquence 
 answered, what was reported of it : I hung on his 
 
 25 words attentively, but of the matter I was but an 
 unconcerned and contemptuous hearer." — v. 23. 
 His impression of his style of preaching is worth 
 noticing : " I was delighted with the sweetness 
 of his discourse, more full of knowledge, yet in 
 
 30 manner less pleasurable and soothing, than that 
 of Faustus." Augustine was insensibly moved: 
 
AUGUSTINE AND THE VANDALS 77 
 
 he determined on leaving the Manichees, and re- 
 turning to the state of a catechumen in the 
 CathoUc Church, into which he had been admitted 
 by his parents. He began to eye and muse upon 
 the great bishop of Milan more and more, and tried 5 
 in vain to penetrate his secret heart, and to ascer- 
 tain the thoughts and feelings which swayed him. 
 He felt he did not understand him. If the 
 respect and intimacy of the great could make 
 a man happy, these advantages he perceived 10 
 Ambrose to possess ; yet he was not satisfied that 
 he was a happy man. His celibacy seemed a 
 drawback: what constituted his hidden life? or 
 was he cold at heart? or was he of a famished 
 and restless spirit ? He felt his own malady, and 15 
 longed to ask him some questions about it. But 
 Ambrose could not easily be spoken with. Though 
 accessible to all, yet that very circumstance 
 made it difficult for an individual, especially one 
 who was not of his flock, to get a private inter- 20 
 view with him. When he was not taken up with 
 the Christian people who surrounded him, he 
 was either at his meals or engaged in private 
 reading. Augustine used to enter, as all persons 
 might, without being announced ; but after stay- 25 
 ing awhile, afraid of interrupting him, he de- 
 parted again. However, he heard his expositions 
 of Scripture every Sunday, and gradually made 
 progress. 
 
 He was now in his thirtieth year, and since he 30 
 was a youth of eighteen had been searching after 
 
78 CHARACTER SKETCHES 
 
 truth ; yet he was still " m the same mire, greedy of 
 things present/' but finding nothing stable, 
 
 "To-morrow," he said to himself, "I shall find it; it 
 will appear manifestly, and I shall grasp it: lo, Faustus 
 5 the Manichee will come and clear everything ! O you 
 great men, ye academics, is it true, then, that no cer- 
 tainty can be attained for the ordering of life? Nay, 
 let us search diligently, and despair not. Lo, things in 
 the ecclesiastical books are not absurd to us now, which 
 
 10 sometimes seemed absurd, and may be otherwise taken 
 and in a good sense. I will take my stand where, as a 
 child, my parents placed me, until the clear truth be 
 found out. But where shall it be sought, or when? 
 Ambrose has no leisure; we have no leisure to read; 
 
 15 where shall we find even the books ? where, or when, 
 procure them? Let set times be appointed, and cer- 
 tain hours be ordered for the health of our soul. Great 
 hope has dawned; the Catholic faith teaches not what 
 we thought; and do we doubt to knock, that the rest 
 
 20 may be opened ? The forenoons, indeed, our scholars 
 take up; what do we during the rest of our time? why 
 not this? But if so, when pay we court to our great 
 friend, whose favors we need? when compose what we 
 may sell to scholars ? when refresh ourselves, unbending 
 
 25 our minds from this intenseness of care ? 
 
 "Perish everything: dismiss we these empty vani- 
 ties ; and betake ourselves to the one search for truth ! 
 Life is a poor thing, death is uncertain; if it surprises 
 us, in what state shall we depart hence ? and when shall 
 
 30 we learn what here we have neglected ? and shall we not 
 rather suffer the punishment of this negligence? What 
 if death itself cut off and end all care and feeling? 
 Then must this be ascertained. But God forbid this ! 
 It is no vain and empty thing, that the excellent dignity 
 
 35 of the Christian faith has overspread the whole world. 
 Never would such and so great things be wrought for 
 
AUGUSTINE AND THE VANDALS 79 
 
 us by God, if with the body the soul also came to an 
 end. Wherefore delay then to abandon worldly hopes, 
 and give ourselves wholly to seek after God and the 
 blessed life ? . . . 
 
 Finding Ambrose, though kind and accessible, 5 
 yet reserved, he went to an aged man named 
 Simplician, who, as some say, baptized St. 
 Ambrose, and eventually succeeded him in his 
 see. He opened his mind to him, and happen- 
 ing in the course of his communications to men-io 
 tion Victorinus's translation of some Platonic 
 works, Simplician asked him if he knew that per- 
 son's history. It seems he was a professor of 
 rhetoric at Rome, was well versed in literature and 
 philosophy, had been tutor to many of the sena- 15 
 tors, and had received the high honor of a statue 
 in the Forum. Up to his old age he had pro- 
 fessed, and defended with his eloquence, the old 
 pagan worship. He was led to read the Holy 
 Scriptures, and was brought, in consequence, to 20 
 a belief in their divinity. For a while he did not 
 feel the necessity of changing his profession; he 
 looked upon Christianity as a philosophy, he 
 embraced it as such, but did not propose to join 
 what he considered the Christian sect, or, as 25 
 Christians would call it, the Catholic Church. 
 He let Simplician into his secret; but whenever 
 the latter pressed him to take the step, he was 
 accustomed to ask, " whether walls made a 
 Christian." However, such a state could not 30 
 continue with a man of earnest mind : the leaven 
 
80 CUABACTEB SKETCHES 
 
 worked; at length he unexpectedly called upon 
 Simplician to lead him to church. He was ad- 
 mitted a catechumen, and in due time baptized, 
 "Rome wondering, the Church rejoicing." It 
 
 5 was customary at Rome for the candidates for 
 baptism to profess their faith from a raised place 
 in the church, in a set form of words. An offer 
 was made to Victorinus, which was not unusual 
 in the case of bashful and timid persons, to make 
 
 10 his profession in private. But he preferred to 
 make it in the ordinary way. "I was public 
 enough,'' he made answer, "in my profession of 
 rhetoric, and ought not to be frightened when 
 professing salvation." He continued the school 
 
 15 which he had before he became a Christian, till 
 the edict of Julian forced him to close it. This 
 story went to Augustine's heart, but it did not 
 melt it. There was still the struggle of two wills, 
 the high aspiration and the habitual inertness. 
 
 20 His conversion took place in the summer of 386. 
 
 He gives an account of the termination of the 
 conflict he underwent : 
 
 "At length burst forth a mighty storm, bringing 
 a mighty flood of tears; and to indulge it to the full 
 
 25 even unto cries, in solitude, I rose up from Alypius, . . . 
 who perceived from my choked voice how it was with 
 me. He remained where we had been sitting, in deep 
 astonishment. I threw myself down under a fig tree, I 
 know not how, and allowing my tears full vent, offered 
 
 30 up to Thee the acceptable sacrifice of my streaming eyes. 
 
AUGUSTINE AND THE VANDALS 81 
 
 And I cried out to this effect: 'And Thou, O Lord, 
 how long, how long. Lord, wilt Thou be angry ? For- 
 ever? Remember not our old sins !' for I felt that they 
 were my tyrants. I cried out, piteously, 'How long? 
 how long ? to-morrow and to-morrow ? why not now ? 5 
 why not in this very hour put an end to this my vileness ? ' 
 While I thus spoke, with tears, in the bitter contrition 
 of my heart, suddenly I heard a voice, as if from a house 
 near me, of a boy or girl chanting forth again and again, 
 'take up and read, take up and read!* Changing 10 
 countenance at these words, I began intently to think 
 whether boys used them in any game, but could not rec- 
 ollect that I had ever heard them. I left weeping and 
 rose up, considering it a divine intimation to open the 
 Scriptures and read what first presented itself. I had 15 
 heard that Antony had come in during the reading of the 
 Gospel, and had taken to himself the admonition, 'Go, 
 sell all that thou hast,' etc., and had turned to Thee at 
 once, in consequence of that oracle. I had left St. 
 Paul's volume where Alypius was sitting, when I rose 20 
 thence. I returned thither, seized it, opened, and read 
 in silence the following passage, which first met my eyes, 
 'Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and 
 impurities, not in contention and envy, but put ye on the 
 Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh in 25 
 its concupiscences' I had neither desire nor need to 
 read farther. As I finished the sentence, as though the 
 light of peace had been poured into my heart, all the 
 shadows of doubt dispersed. Thus hast Thou converted 
 me to Thee, so as no longer to seek either for wife or 30 
 other hope of this world, standing fast in that rule of 
 faith in which Thou so many years before hadst revealed 
 me to my mother." — viii. 26-30. 
 
 The last words of this extract relate to a dream 
 which his mother had had some years before, 35 
 concerning his conversion. On his first turning 
 
82 CHAEACTER SKETCHES 
 
 Manichee, abhorring his opinions, she would not 
 for a while even eat with him, when she had this 
 dream, in which she had an intimation that where 
 she stood, there Augustine should one day be 
 5 with her. At another time she derived great 
 comfort from the casual words of a bishop, who, 
 when importuned by her to converse with her 
 son, said at length with some impatience, " Go 
 thy ways, and God bless thee, for it is not possible 
 
 10 that the son of these tears should perish!'' It 
 would be out of place, and is perhaps unnecessary, 
 to enter here into the affecting and well-known 
 history of her tender anxieties and persevering 
 prayers for Augustine. Suffice it to say, she saw 
 
 15 the accomplishment of them ; she lived till Augus- 
 tine became a Catholic; and she died in her way 
 back to Africa with him. Her last words were, 
 "Lay this body anywhere; let not the care of it 
 in any way distress you; this only I ask, that 
 
 20 wherever you be, you remember me at the Altar 
 of the Lord." 
 
 "May she," says her son, in dutiful remembrance of 
 her words, ''rest in peace with her husband, before and 
 after whom she never had any; whom she obeyed, with 
 
 25 patience bringing forth fruit unto Thee, that she might 
 win him also unto Thee. And inspire, O Lord my God, 
 inspire Thy servants, my brethren, — Thy sons, my 
 masters, — whom, in heart, voice, and writing I serve, 
 that so many as read these confessions, may at Thy altar 
 
 30 remember Monica, Thy handmaid, with Patricius, her 
 sometime husband, from whom Thou broughtest me into 
 this life; how, I know not. May they with pious affec- 
 
AUGUSTINE AND THE VANDALS 83 
 
 tion remember those who were my parents in this 
 transitory Hght, — my brethren under Thee, our Father, 
 in our Catholic Mother, — my fellow-citizens in the 
 eternal Jerusalem, after which Thy pilgrim people sigh 
 from their going forth unto their return: that so, her 
 last request of me may in the prayers of many receive 
 a fulfillment, through my confessions, more abundant 
 than through my prayers." — ix. 37. 
 
CHRYSOSTOM 
 
 Introductory 
 
 I CONFESS to a delight in reading the Hves, and 
 dwelling on the characters and actions, of the 
 Saints of the first ages, such as I receive from none 
 besides them; and for this reason, because we 
 
 5 know so much more about them than about most 
 of the Saints who come after them. People are 
 variously constituted; what influences one does 
 not influence another. There are persons of 
 warm imaginations, who can easily picture to 
 
 10 themselves what they never saw. They can at 
 will see Angels and Saints hovering over them 
 when they are in church; they see their linea- 
 ments, their features, their motions, their ges- 
 tures, their smile or their grief. They can go 
 
 15 home and draw what they have seen, from the 
 vivid memory of what, while it lasted, was so 
 transporting. I am not one of such ; I am touched 
 by my five senses, by what my eyes behold and 
 my ears hear. I am touched by what I read 
 
 20 about, not by what I myself create. As faith 
 need not lead to practice, so in me mere imagi- 
 nation does not lead to devotion. I gain more 
 from the life of our Lord in the Gospels than from 
 a treatise de Deo, I gain more from three verses 
 84 
 
CHBYSOSTOM 85 
 
 of St. John than from the three points of a medi- 
 tation. I hke a Spanish crucifix of painted wood 
 more than one from Italy, which is made of gold. 
 I am more touched by the Seven Dolors than by 
 the Immaculate Conception; I am more devout 5 
 to St. Gabriel than to one of Isaiah's seraphim. 
 I love St. Paul more than one of those first Carme- 
 lites, his contemporaries, whose names and acts 
 no one ever heard of ; I feel affectionately towards 
 the Alexandrian Dionysius, I do homage to St. lo 
 George. I do not say that my way is better than 
 another's; but it is my way, and an allowable 
 way. And it is the reason why I am so specially 
 attached to the Saints of the third and fourth 
 century, because we know so much about them. 15 
 This is why I feel a devout affection for St. 
 Chrysostom. He and the rest of them have 
 written autobiography on a large scale; they 
 have given us their own histories, their thoughts, 
 words, and actions, in a number of goodly folios, 20 
 productions which are in themselves some of their 
 meritorious works. . . . 
 
 The Ancient Saints have left behind them just 
 that kind of literature which more than any other 
 represents the abundance of the heart, which 25 
 more than any other approaches to conversation; 
 I mean correspondence. Why is it that we feel 
 an interest in Cicero which we cannot feel in 
 Demosthenes or Plato? Plato is the very type 
 of soaring philosophy, and Demosthenes of forci-30 
 ble eloquence; Cicero is something more than 
 
86 CHARACTER SKETCHES 
 
 an orator and a sage ; he is not a mere ideality, he 
 is a man and a brother; he is one of ourselves. 
 We do not merely believe it, or infer it, but we 
 have the enduring and living evidence of it — 
 5 how? In his letters. He can be studied, criti- 
 cised if you will; but still dwelt upon and sym- 
 pathized with also. Now the case of the Ancient 
 Saints is parallel to that of Cicero. We have their 
 letters in a marvelous profusion. We have 
 10 above 400 letters of St. Basil's; above 200 of 
 St. Augustine's. St. Chrysostom has left us 
 about 240; St. Gregory Nazianzen the same 
 number; Pope St. Gregory as many as 840. . . . 
 A Saint's writings are to me his real "Life"; 
 15 and what is called his "Life" is not the outline 
 of an individual, but either of the auto-saint or 
 of a myth. Perhaps I shall be asked what I 
 mean by " Life." I mean a narrative which im- 
 presses the reader with the idea of moral unity, 
 20 identity, growth, continuity, personality. When 
 a Saint converses with me, I am conscious of the 
 presence of one active principle of thought, one 
 individual character, flowing on and into the 
 various matters which he discusses, and the dif- 
 25ferent transactions in which he mixes. It is 
 what no memorials can reach, however skillfully 
 elaborated, however free from effort or study, 
 however conscientiously faithful, however guar- 
 anteed by the veracity of the writers. Why can- 
 so not art rival the lily or the rose? Because the 
 colors of the flower are developed and blended 
 
CHRYSOSTOM 87 
 
 by the force of an inward life ; while on the other 
 hand, the lights and shades of the painter are 
 diligently laid on from without. A magnifying 
 glass will show the difference. Nor will it im- 
 prove matters, though not one only, but a dozen 5 
 good artists successively take part in the picture; 
 even if the outline is unbroken, the coloring is 
 muddy. Commonly, what is called " the Life," 
 is little more than a collection of anecdotes brought 
 together from a number of independent quarters ; lo 
 anecdotes striking, indeed, and edifying, but valu- 
 able in themselves rather than valuable as parts 
 of a biography; valuable whoever was the sub- 
 ject of them, not valuable as illustrating a par- 
 ticular Saint. It would be difficult to mistake 15 
 for each other a paragraph of St. Ambrose, or of 
 St. Jerome, or of St. Augustine; it would be very 
 easy to mistake a chapter in the life of one holy 
 missionary or nun for a chapter in the life of 
 another. 20 
 
 An almsgiving here, an instance of meekness 
 there, a severity of penance, a round of religious 
 duties, — all these things humble me, instruct 
 me, improve me; I cannot desire anything bet- 
 ter of their kind; but they do not necessarily 25 
 coalesce into the image of a person. From such 
 works I do but learn to pay devotion to an 
 abstract and typical perfection under a certain 
 particular name; I do not know more of the real 
 Saint who bore it than before. Saints, as other 30 
 men, differ from each other in this, that the 
 
88 CHARACTER SKETCHES 
 
 multitude of qualities which they have in com- 
 mon are differently combined in each of them. 
 This forms one great part of their personality. 
 One Saint is remarkable for fortitude; not that 
 
 5 he has not other heroic virtues by concomitance, 
 as it may be called, but by virtue of that one gift 
 in particular he has won his crown. Another is 
 remarkable for patient hope, another for renun- 
 ciation of the world. Such a particular virtue 
 
 10 may be said to give form to all the rest which are 
 grouped round it, and are molded and modified 
 by means of it. Thus it is that often what is 
 right in one would be wrong in another; and, in 
 fact, the very same action is allowed or chosen 
 
 15 by one, and shunned by another, as being con- 
 sistent or inconsistent with their respective char- 
 acters, — pretty much as in the combination of 
 colors, each separate tint takes a shade from 
 the rest, and is good or bad from its company. 
 
 20 The whole gives a meaning to the parts; but it 
 is difficult to rise from the parts to the whole. 
 When I read St. Augustine or St, Basil, I hold 
 converse with a beautiful grace-illumined soul, 
 looking out into this world of sense, and leavening 
 
 25 it with itself; when I read a professed life of him, 
 I am wandering in a labyrinth of which I cannot 
 find the center and heart, and am but conducted 
 out of doors again when I do my best to penetrate 
 within. 
 
 30 This seems to me, to tell the truth, a sort of 
 pantheistic treatment of the Saints. I ask some- 
 
CHRYSOSTOM 89 
 
 thing more than to stumble upon the disjecta 
 membra of what ought to be a Uving whole. I 
 take but a secondary interest in books which 
 chop up a Saint into chapters of faith, hope, 
 charity, and the cardinal virtues. They are too 5 
 scientific to be devotional. They have their 
 great utility, but it is not the utility which they 
 profess. They do not manifest a Saint, they 
 mince him into spiritual lessons. They are 
 rightly called spiritual reading, that is just what lo 
 they are, and they cannot possibly be anything 
 better; but they are not anything else. They 
 contain a series of points of meditation on par- 
 ticular virtues, made easier because those points 
 are put under the patronage and the invocation 15 
 of a Saint. With a view to learning real devo- 
 tion to him, I prefer (speaking for myself) to have 
 any one action or event of his life drawn out 
 minutely, with his own comments upon it, than 
 a score of virtues, or of acts of one virtue, strung 20 
 together in as many sentences. Now, in the an- 
 cient writings I have spoken of, certain transac- 
 tions are thoroughly worked out. We know all 
 that happened to a Saint on such or such an occa- 
 sion, all that was done by him. We have a view 25 
 of his character, his tastes, his natural infirmities, 
 his struggles and victories over them, which in 
 no other way can be attained. And therefore it 
 is that, without quarreling with the devotion of 
 others, I give the preference to my own. ... 30 
 Here another great subject opens upon us, 
 
90 CHARACTER SKETCHES 
 
 when I ought to be bringing these remarks to 
 an end; I mean the endemic perennial fidget 
 which possesses us about giving scandal; facts 
 are omitted in great histories, or glosses are put 
 5 upon memorable acts, because they are thought 
 not edifying, whereas of all scandals such omis- 
 sions, such glosses, are the greatest. But I am 
 getting far more argumentative than I thought 
 to be when I began; so I lay my pen down, and 
 10 retire into myself. 
 
 I 
 
 John of Antioch, from his sanctity and his 
 eloquence called Chrysostom, was approaching 
 sixty years of age, when he had to deliver himself 
 up to the imperial officers, and to leave Constan- 
 
 15 tinople for a distant exile. He had been the great 
 preacher of the day now for nearly twenty years; 
 first at Antioch, then in the metropolis of the 
 East; and his gift of speech, as in the instance of 
 the two great classical orators before him, was to 
 
 20 be his ruin. He had made an Empress his enemy, 
 more powerful than Antipater, — as passionate, 
 if not so vindictive, as Fulvia. Nor was this all; 
 a zealous Christian preacher offends not individ- 
 uals merely, but classes of men, and much more 
 
 25 so when he is pastor and ruler too, and has to 
 punish as well as to denounce. Eudoxia, the 
 Empress, might be taken off suddenly, — as 
 indeed she was taken off a few weeks after the 
 Saint arrived at the place of exile, which she per- 
 
CHBYSOSTOM 91 
 
 sonally, in spite of his entreaties, had marked out 
 for him ; but her death did but serve to increase 
 the violence of the persecution directed against 
 him. She had done her part in it, perhaps she 
 might have even changed her mind in his favor; 5 
 probably the agitation of a bad conscience was, 
 in her critical condition, the cause of her death. 
 She was taken out of the way ; but her partisans, 
 who had made use of her, went on vigorously 
 with the evil work which she had begun. When 10 
 Cucusus would not kill him, they sent him on his 
 travels anew, across a far wilder country than he 
 had already traversed, to a remote town on the 
 eastern coast of the Euxine; and he sank under 
 this fresh trial. 13 
 
 The Euxine ! that strange mysterious sea, 
 which typifies the abyss of outer darkness, as 
 the blue Mediterranean basks under the smile of 
 heaven in the center of civilization and religion. 
 The awful, yet splendid drama of man's history 20 
 has mainly been carried on upon the Mediter- 
 ranean shores ; while the Black Sea has ever been 
 on the very outskirts of the habitable world, 
 and the scene of wild unnatural portents ; with 
 legends of Prometheus on the savage Caucasus, 25 
 of Medea gathering witch herbs in the moist 
 meadows of the Phasis, and of Iphigenia sacri- 
 ficing the shipwrecked stranger in Taurica; and 
 then again, with the more historical, yet not more 
 grateful visions of barbarous tribes, Goths, Huns, 30 
 Scythians, Tartars, flitting over the steppes and 
 
92 CHARACTEB SKETCHES 
 
 wastes which encircle its inhospitable waters. 
 To be driven from the bright cities and sunny 
 clime of Italy or Greece to such a region, was 
 worse than death; and the luxurious Roman 
 
 5 actually preferred death to exile. The suicide 
 of Gallus, under this dread doom, is well known; 
 Ovid, too cowardly to be desperate, drained out 
 the dregs of a vicious life on the cold marshes 
 between the Danube and the sea. I need scarcely 
 
 10 allude to the heroic Popes who patiently lived on 
 in the Crimea, till a martyrdom, in which they 
 had not part but the suffering, released them. 
 
 But banishment was an immense evil in itself. 
 Cicero, even though he had liberty of person, the 
 
 15 choice of a home, and the prospect of a return, 
 roamed disconsolate through the cities of Greece, 
 because he was debarred access to the senate- 
 house and forum. Chrysostom had his own 
 rostra, his own curia; it was the Holy Temple, 
 
 20 where his eloquence gained for him victories not 
 less real, and more momentous, than the detec- 
 tion and overthrow of Catiline. Great as was 
 his gift of oratory, it was not by the fertility of 
 his imagination, or the splendor of his diction 
 
 25 that he gained the surname of " Mouth of Gold.'' 
 We shall be very wrong if we suppose that fine 
 expressions, or rounded periods, or figures of 
 
 / speech, were the credentials by which he claimed 
 to be the first doctor of the East. His oratorical 
 
 30 power was but the instrument by which he 
 readily, gracefully, adequately expressed — ex- 
 
CHRYSOSTOM 93 
 
 pressed without effort and with feUcity — the 
 keen feelings, the Uving ideas, the earnest prac- 
 tical lessons which he had to communicate to his 
 hearers. He spoke, because his heart, his head, 
 were brimful of things to speak about. His elo- 5 
 cution corresponded to that strength and flexi- 
 bility of limb, that quickness of eye, hand, and 
 foot, by which a man excels in manly games or 
 in mechanical skill. It would be a great mistake, 
 in speaking of it, to ask whether it was Attic orio 
 Asiatic, terse or flowing, when its distinctive 
 praise was that it was natural. His unrivaled 
 charm, as that of every really eloquent man, lies 
 in his singleness of purpose, his fixed grasp of his 
 aim, his noble earnestness. 15 
 
 A bright, cheerful, gentle soul; a sensitive 
 heart, a temperament open to emotion and im- 
 pulse; and all this elevated, refined, transformed 
 by the touch of heaven, — such was St. John 
 Chrysostom; winning followers, riveting affec-20 
 tions, by his sweetness, frankness, and neglect 
 of self. In his labors, in his preaching, he 
 thought of others only. " I am always in admi- 
 ration of that thrice-blessed man," says an able 
 critic,^ "because he ever in all his writings puts 25 
 before him as his object, to be useful to his 
 hearers; and as to all other matters, he either 
 simply put them aside, or took the least possible 
 notice of them. Nay, as to his seeming ignorant 
 of some of the thoughts of Scripture, or careless of 30 
 ^ Photius, p. 387. 
 
94 CHARACTER SKETCHES 
 
 entering into its depths, and similar defects, all 
 this he utterly disregarded in comparison of the 
 profit of his hearers." 
 
 There was as little affectation of sanctity in his 
 
 5 dress or living as there was effort in his eloquence. 
 In his youth he had been one of the most austere 
 of men; at the age of twenty-one, renouncing 
 bright prospects of the world, he had devoted 
 himself to prayer and study of the Scriptures. 
 
 10 He had retired to the mountains near Antioch, 
 his native place, and had lived among the monks. 
 This had been his home for six years, and he had 
 chosen it in order to subdue the daintiness of his 
 natural appetite. " Lately," he wrote to a friend 
 
 15 at the time, — " lately, when I had made up my 
 mind to leave the city and betake myself to the 
 tabernacle of the monks, I was forever inquir- 
 ing and busying myself how I was to get a sup- 
 ply of provisions; whether it would be possible 
 
 20 to procure fresh bread for my eating, whether 
 I should be ordered to use the same oil for my 
 lamp and for my food, to undergo the hardship 
 of peas and beans, or of severe toil, such as dig- 
 ging, carrying wood or water, and the like; in 
 
 25 a word, I made much account of bodily comfort." ^ 
 Such was the nervous anxiety and fidget of mind 
 with which he had begun: but this rough disci- 
 pline soon effected its object, and at length, even 
 by preference, he took upon him mortifications 
 
 30 which at first were a trouble to him. For the 
 ^ Ad Demetrium, i. 6. 
 
CIIBYSOSTOM 95 
 
 last two years of his monastic exercise, he Hved 
 by himself in a cave ; he slept, when he did sleep, 
 without lying down; he exposed himself to the 
 extremities of cold. At length he found he was 
 passing the bounds of discretion, nature would 5 
 bear no more; he fell ill, and returned to the 
 city. 
 
 A course of ascetic practice such as this would 
 leave its spiritual effects upon him for life. It 
 sank deep into him, though the surface might 10 
 not show it. His duty at Constantinople was to 
 mix with the world; and he lived as others, 
 except as regards such restraints as his sacred 
 office and archiepiscopal station demanded of 
 him. He wore shoes, and an under garment; 15 
 but his stomach was ever delicate, and at meals 
 he was obliged to have his own dish, such as it 
 was, to himself. However, he mixed freely with 
 all ranks of men; and he made friends, affection- 
 ate friends, of young and old, men and women, 20 
 rich and poor, by condescending to all of every 
 degree. How he was loved at Antioch, is shown 
 by the expedient used to transfer him thence to 
 Constantinople. Asterius, count of the East, had 
 orders to send for him, and ask his company to a 25 
 church without the city. Having got him into 
 his carriage, he drove off with him to the first 
 station on the highroad to Constantinople, where 
 imperial officers were in readiness to convey him 
 thither. Thus he was brought upon the scene of 30 
 those trials which have given him a name in his- 
 
96 CHARACTER SKETCHES 
 
 tory, and a place in the catalogue of the Saints. 
 At the imperial city he was as much followed, if 
 not as popular, as at Antioch. "The people 
 flocked to him,'' says Sozomen, "as often as he 
 5 preached; some of them to hear what would 
 profit them, others to make trial of him. He 
 carried them away, one and all, and persuaded 
 them to think as he did about the Divine Nature. 
 They hung upon his words, and could not have 
 
 10 enough of them; so that, when they thrust and 
 jammed themselves together in an alarming way, 
 every one making an effort to get nearer to him, 
 and to hear him more perfectly, he took his seat 
 in the midst of them, and taught from the pulpit 
 
 15 of the Reader." ^ He was, indeed, a man to make 
 both friends and enemies; to inspire affection, 
 and to kindle resentment; but his friends loved 
 him with a love "stronger" than "death," and 
 more burning than "hell"; and it was well to be 
 
 20 so hated, if he was so beloved. 
 
 Here he differs, as far as I can judge, from his 
 brother saints and doctors of the Greek Church, 
 St. Basil and St. Gregory Nazianzen. They were 
 scholars, shy perhaps and reserved; and though 
 
 25 they had not given up the secular state, they were 
 essentially monks. There is no evidence, that I 
 remember, to show that they attached men to 
 their persons. They, as well as John, had a 
 multitude of enemies; and were regarded, the 
 
 30 one with dislike, the other perhaps with con- 
 
 ^ Hist. viii. 5. 
 
CHEYSOSTOM 97 
 
 tempt; but they had not, on the other hand, 
 warm, eager, sympathetic, indignant, agonized 
 friends. There is another characteristic in Chrys- 
 ostom, which perhaps gained for him this great 
 blessing. He had, as it would seem, a vigor^ 5 
 elasticity, and, what may be called, sunniness of 
 mind, all his own. He was ever sanguine, sel- 
 dom sad. Basil had a life-long malady, involving 
 continual gnawing pain and a weight of physical 
 dejection. He bore his burden well and grace- lo 
 fully, like the great Saint he was, as Job bore his ; 
 but it was a burden like Job's. He was a calm, mild, 
 grave, autumnal day; St. John Chrysostom was 
 a day in springtime, bright and rainy, and glitter- 
 ing through its rain. Gregory was the full sum- 15 
 mer, with a long spell of pleasant stillness, its 
 monotony relieved by thunder and lightning. 
 And St. Athanasius figures to us the stern per- 
 secuting winter, with its wild winds, its dreary 
 wastes, its sleep of the great mother, and the 20 
 bright stars shining overhead. He and Chrysos- 
 tom have no points in common ; but Gregory was 
 a dethroned Archbishop of Constantinople, like 
 Chrysostom, and, again, dethroned by his breth- 
 ren the Bishops. Like Basil, too, Chrysostom was 25 
 bowed with infirmities of body ; he was often ill ; 
 he was thin and wizened; cold was a misery to 
 him; heat affected his head; he scarcely dare 
 touch wine; he was obliged to use the bath; 
 obliged to take exercise, or rather to be continu-30 
 ally on the move. Whether from a nervous or 
 
98 CHARACTER SKETCHES 
 
 febrile complexion, he was warm in temper; or 
 at least, at certain times, his emotion struggled 
 hard with his reason. But he had that noble 
 spirit which complains as little as possible; which 
 5 makes the best of things; which soon recovers 
 its equanimity, and hopes on in circumstances 
 when others sink down in despair. . . . 
 
 II 
 
 Whence is this devotion to St. John Chrysos- 
 tom, which leads me to dwell upon the thought of 
 
 10 him, and makes me kindle at his name, when so 
 many other great Saints, as the year brings round 
 their festivals, command indeed my veneration, 
 but exert no personal claim upon my heart? 
 Many holy men have died in exile, many holy 
 
 15 men have been successful preachers; and what 
 more can we write upon St. Chrysostom's monu- 
 ment than this, that he was eloquent and that he 
 suffered persecution? He is not an Athanasius, 
 expounding a sacred dogma with a luminousness 
 
 20 which is almost an inspiration; nor is he Athana- 
 sius, again, in his romantic life-long adventures, 
 in his sublime solitariness, in his ascendency over 
 all classes of men, in his series of triumphs over 
 material force and civil tyranny. Nor, except 
 
 25 by the contrast, does he remind us of that Am- 
 brose who kept his ground obstinately in an 
 imperial city, and fortified himself against the 
 heresy of a court by the living rampart of a 
 
CHRYS0ST03I 99 
 
 devoted population. Nor is he Gregory or Basil, 
 rich in the literature and philosophy of Greece, 
 and embellishing the Church with the spoils of 
 heathenism. Again, he is not an Augustine, de- 
 voting long years to one masterpiece of thought, 5 
 and laying, in successive controversies, the founda- 
 tions of theology. Nor is he a Jerome, so dead to 
 the world that he can imitate the point and wit 
 of its writers without danger to himself or scan- 
 dal to his brethren. He has not trampled upon lo 
 heresy, nor smitten emperors, nor beautified the 
 house or the service of God, nor knit together the 
 portions of Christendom, nor founded a religious 
 order, nor built up the framework of doctrine, nor 
 expounded the science of the Saints; yet I lovei5 
 him, as I love David or St. Paul. 
 
 How am I to account for it? It has not hap- 
 pened to me, as it might happen to many a man, 
 that I have devoted time and toil to the study of 
 his writings or of his history, and cry up that 20 
 upon which I have made an outlay, or love what 
 has become familiar to me. Cases may occur 
 when our admiration for an author is only ad- 
 miration of our own comments on him, and when 
 our love of an old acquaintance is only our love 25 
 of old times. For me, I have not written the 
 life of Chrysostom, nor translated his works, nor 
 studied Scripture in his exposition, nor forged 
 weapons of controversy out of his sayings or his 
 doings. Nor is his eloquence of a kind to carry 30 
 any one away who has ever so little knowledge 
 
100 CHABACTEB SKETCHES 
 
 of the oratory of Greece and Rome. It is not 
 force of words, nor cogency of argument, nor 
 harmony of composition, nor depth or richness of 
 thought, which constitute his power, — whence, 
 5 then, has he this influence, so mysterious, yet so 
 strong ? 
 
 I consider St. Chrysostom's charm to he in his 
 intimate sympathy and compassionateness for 
 the whole world, not only in its strength, but in 
 
 10 its weakness; in the lively regard with which he 
 views everything that comes before him, taken 
 in the concrete, whether as made after its own 
 kind or as gifted with a nature higher than its 
 own. Not that any religious man — above all, 
 
 15 not that any Saint — could possibly contrive to 
 abstract the love of the work from the love of 
 its Maker, or could feel a tenderness for earth 
 which did not spring from devotion to heaven; 
 or as if he would not love everything just in that 
 
 20 degree in which the Creator loves it, and accord- 
 ing to the measure of gifts which the Creator 
 has bestowed upon it, and preeminently for the 
 Creator's sake. But this is the characteristic 
 of all Saints; and I am speaking, not of what St. 
 
 25 Chrysostom had in common with others, but what 
 he had special to himself; and this specialty, I 
 conceive, is the interest which he takes in all 
 things, not so far as God has made them alike, 
 but as He has made them different from each 
 
 30 other. I speak of the discriminating affectionate- 
 ness with which he accepts every one for what is 
 
CHRYSOSTOM 101 
 
 personal in him and unlike others. I speak of his 
 versatile recognition of men, one by one, for the 
 sake of that portion of good, be it more or less, 
 of a lower order or a higher, which has severally 
 been lodged in them; his eager contemplation of 5 
 the many things they do, effect, or produce, of 
 all their great works, as nations or as states; 
 nay, even as they are corrupted or disguised by 
 evil, so far as that evil may in imagination be 
 disjoined from their proper nature, or may be 10 
 regarded as a mere material disorder apart from 
 its formal character of guilt. I speak of the 
 kindly spirit and the genial temper with which 
 he looks round at all things which this wonder- 
 ful world contains; of the graphic fidelity with 15 
 which he notes them down upon the tablets of 
 his mind, and of the promptitude and propriety 
 with which he calls them up as arguments or 
 illustrations in the course of his teaching as the 
 occasion requires. Possessed though he be by 20 
 the fire of Divine charity, he has not lost one 
 fiber, he does not miss one vibration, of the com- 
 plicated whole of human sentiment and affection; 
 like the miraculous bush in the desert, which, for 
 all the flame that wrapt it round, was not thereby 25 
 consumed. 
 
 Such, in a transcendent perfection, was the 
 gaze, as we may reverently suppose, with which 
 the loving Father of all surveyed in eternity that 
 universe even in its minutest details which He 30 
 had decreed to create; such the loving pity with 
 
102 CHABACTER SKETCHES 
 
 which He spoke the word when the due moment 
 came, and began to mold the finite, as He cre- 
 ated it, in His infinite hands ; such the watchful 
 solicitude with which he now keeps His cata- 
 
 slogue of the innumerable birds of heaven, and 
 counts day by day the very hairs of our head and 
 the alternations of our breathing. Such, much 
 more, is the awful contemplation with which He 
 encompasses incessantly every one of those souls 
 
 10 on whom He heaps His mercies here, in order 
 to make them the intimate associates of His own 
 eternity hereafter. And we too, in our measure, 
 are bound to imitate Him in our exact and vivid 
 apprehension of Himself and of His works. As to 
 
 15 Himself, we love Him, not simply in His nature, 
 but in His triple personality, lest we become mere 
 pantheists. And so, again, we choose our patron 
 Saints, not for what they have in common with 
 each other (else there could be no room for choice 
 
 20 at all) , but for what is peculiar to them severally. 
 That which is my warrant, therefore, for particular 
 devotions at all, becomes itself my reason for de- 
 votion to St. John Chrysostom. In him I recog- 
 nize a special pattern of that very gift of discrimi- 
 
 25 nation. He may indeed be said in some sense to 
 have a devotion of his own for every one who 
 comes across him, — for persons, ranks, classes, 
 callings, societies, considered as Divine works and 
 the subjects of his good offices or good will, and 
 
 30 therefore I have a devotion for him. 
 
 It is this observant benevolence which gives to 
 
CHRYSOSTOM 103 
 
 his exposition of Scripture its chief characteristic. 
 He is known in ecclesiastical literature as the 
 expounder, above all others, of its literal sense. 
 Now in mystical comments the direct object which 
 the writer sets before him is the Divine Author 5 
 Himself of the written Word. Such a writer 
 sees in Scripture, not so much the works of God, 
 as His nature and attributes; the Teacher more 
 than the definite teaching, or its human instru- 
 ments, with their drifts and motives, their courses lO 
 of thought, their circumstances and personal 
 peculiarities. He loses the creature in the glory 
 which surrounds the Creator. The problem be- 
 fore him is not what the inspired writer directly 
 meant, and why, but, out of the myriad of mean- 15 
 ings present to the Infinite Being who inspired him, 
 which it is that is most illustrative of that Great 
 Being's all-holy attributes and solemn dispositions. 
 Thus, in the Psalter, he will drop David and Israel 
 and the Temple together, and will recognize noth- 20 
 ing there but the shadows of those greater truths 
 which remain forever. Accordingly, the mysti- 
 cal comment will be of an objective character; 
 whereas a writer who delights to ponder human 
 nature and human affairs, to analyze the work- 25 
 ings of the mind, and to contemplate what is 
 subjective to it, is naturally drawn to investigate 
 the sense of the sacred writer himself, who was the 
 organ of the revelation, that is, he will investigate 
 the literal sense. Now, in the instance of St. 30 
 Chrysostom, it so happens that literal exposition 
 
104 CHARACTER SKETCHES 
 
 is the historical characteristic of the school in 
 which he was brought up ; so that if he commented 
 on Scripture at all, he anyhow would have 
 adopted that method; still, there have been 
 5 many literal expositors, but only one Chrysos- 
 tom. It is St. Chrysostom who is the charm of 
 the method, not the method that is the charm 
 of St. Chrysostom. 
 
 That charm lies, as I have said, in his habit and 
 
 10 his power of throwing himself into the minds 
 of others, of imagining with exactness and with 
 sympathy circumstances or scenes which were 
 not before him, and of bringing out what he has 
 apprehended in words as direct and vivid as the 
 
 15 apprehension. His page is like the table of a 
 camera lucida, which represents to us the living 
 action and interaction of all that goes on around 
 us. That loving scrutiny, with which he follows 
 the Apostles as they reveal themselves to us in 
 
 20 their writings, he practices in various ways 
 towards all men, living and dead, high and low, 
 those whom he admires and those whom he weeps 
 over. He writes as one who was ever looking 
 out with sharp but kind eyes upon the world of 
 
 25 men and their history; and hence he has always 
 something to produce about them, new or old, 
 to the purpose of his argument, whether from 
 books or from the experience of life. Head and 
 heart were full to overflowing with a stream of 
 
 30 mingled " wine and milk," of rich vigorous thought 
 and affectionate feeling. This is why his manner 
 
CHRYSOSTOM 105 
 
 of writing is so rare and special; and why, when 
 once a student enters into it, he will ever recog- 
 nize him, W'herever he meets with extracts from 
 him. 
 
 Letters of Chrysostom, written in Exile 
 
 "To Olympias 
 
 "Why do you bewail me? Why beat your breast, 5 
 and abandon yourself to the tyranny of despondency? 
 Why are you grieved because you have failed in effect- 
 ing my removal from Cucusus ? Yet, as far as your own 
 part is concerned, you have effected it, since you have 
 left nothing undone in attempting it. Nor have you any lO 
 reason to grieve for your ill success ; perhaps it has seemed 
 good to God to make my race course longer that my 
 crown may be brighter. You ought to leap and dance and 
 crown yourself for this, viz., that I should be accounted 
 w^orthy of so great a matter, which far exceeds my merit. 15 
 Does my present loneliness distress you? On the con- 
 trary, what can be more pleasant than my sojourn here? 
 I have quiet, calm, much leisure, excellent health. To 
 be sure, there is no market in the city, nor anything 
 on sale ; but this does not affect me ; for all things, as if 20 
 from some fountains, flow in upon me. Here is my lord, 
 the Bishop of the place, and my lord Dioscorus, making 
 it their sole business to make me comfortable. That 
 excellent person Patricius will tell you in what good 
 spirits and lightness of mind, and amid what kind 25 
 attentions, I am passing my time." — Ep. 14. 
 
 The same is his report to his friends at Csesarea, 
 and the same are his expressions of gratitude 
 and affection towards them. The following is 
 addressed to the President of Cappodocia: 30 
 
106 CHABACTER SKETCHES 
 
 "To Carterius 
 
 " Cucusus is a place desolate in the extreme ; however, 
 it does not annoy me so much by its desolateness as it 
 relieves me by its quiet and its leisure. Accordingly, I 
 have found a sort of harbor in this desolateness; and 
 5 have set me down to recover breath after the miseries 
 of the journey, and have availed myself of the quiet to 
 dispose of what remained both of my illness and of the 
 other troubles which I have undergone. I say this to 
 your illustriousness, knowing well the joy you feel in 
 
 10 this rest of mine. I can never forget what you did for 
 me in Caesarea, in quelling those furious and senseless 
 tumults, and striving to the utmost, as far as your powers 
 extended, to place me in security. I give this out pub- 
 licly wherever I go, feeling the liveliest gratitude to you, 
 
 15 my most worshipful lord, for so great solicitude towards 
 me." — Ep. 236. 
 
 ''To Diogenes 
 
 "Cucusus is indeed a desolate spot, and moreover 
 unsafe to dwell in, from the continual danger to which 
 it is exposed of brigands. You, however, though away, 
 
 20 have turned it for me into a paradise. For, when I 
 hear of your abundant zeal and charity in my behalf, 
 so genuine and w^arm (it does not at all escape me, far 
 removed as I am from you), I possess a great treasure 
 and untold wealth in such affection, and feel myself 
 
 25 to be dwelling in the safest of cities, by reason of the 
 great gladness which bears me up, and the high consola- 
 tion which I enjoy." — Ep. 144. 
 
 Diogenes was one of the friends who sent him 
 suppUes : he writes in answer : 
 
 30 "You know very well yourself that I have ever been 
 one of your most warmly attached admirers ; therefore 
 I beg you will not be hurt at my having returned your 
 presents. I have pressed out of them and have quaffed 
 
CHRYSOSTOM 107 
 
 the honor which they did me ; and if I return the things 
 themselves, it has been from no shght or distrust of you, 
 but because I was in no need of them. I have done the 
 same in the case of many others; for many others too, 
 with a generosity like yours, ardent friends of mine, have 5 
 made me the same offers ; and the same apology has set 
 me right with them which I now ask you to receive. If 
 I am in want, I will ask these things of you with much 
 freedom, as if they were my own property, nay with 
 more, as the event will show. Receive them back, then, 10 
 and keep them carefully; so that, if there is a call for 
 them some time hence, I may reckon on them." — Ep. 50. 
 
 As a fellow to the above, I add one of his 
 
 letters : 
 
 "To Carteria 
 
 " What are you saying ? that 3^our unintermitting 15 
 ailments have hindered you" from visiting me ? but you 
 have come, you are present with me. From your very 
 intention I have gained all this, nor have you any need 
 to excuse yourself in this matter. That warm and true 
 charity of yours, so vigorous, so constant, suffices to 20 
 make me very happy. What I have ever declared in 
 my letters, I now declare again, that, wherever I may be, 
 though I be transported to a still more desolate place 
 than this, you and your matters I never shall forget. 
 Such pledges of your warm and true charity have you 25 
 stored up for me, pledges which length of time can never 
 obliterate nor waste; but, whether I am near you or far 
 away, ever do I cherish that same charity, being as- 
 sured of the loyalty and sincerity of your affection for 
 me, which has been my comfort hitherto." — Ep. 227. 30 
 
 ''To Olympias 
 
 "It is not a light effort/' he says (Ep. 2), "but 
 it demands an energetic soul and a great mind to 
 
108 CHARACTER SKETCHES 
 
 bear separation from one whom we love in the 
 charity of Christ. Every one knows this who 
 knows what it is to love sincerely, who knows 
 the power of supernatural love. Take the blessed 
 
 5 Paul : here was a man who had stripped himself 
 of the flesh, and who went about the world 
 almost with a disembodied soul, who had exter- 
 minated from his heart every wild impulse, and 
 who imitated the passionless sereneness of the 
 
 10 immaterial intelligences, and who stood on high 
 with the Cherubim, and shared with them in their 
 mystical music, and bore prisons, chains, trans- 
 portations, scourges, stoning, shipwreck, and every 
 form of suffering; yet he, when separated from 
 
 15 one soul loved by him in Christian charity, was 
 so confounded and distracted as all at once to 
 rush out of that city, in which he did not find the 
 beloved one whom he expected. ' When I was 
 come to Troas,' he says, 'for the gospel of Christ, 
 
 20 and a door was opened to me in the Lord, I had 
 no rest in my spirit, because I found not Titus 
 my brother; but bidding them farewell, I went 
 into Macedonia.' 
 
 "Is it Paul who says this?" he continues; 
 
 25 " Paul who, even when fastened in the stocks, 
 when confined in a dungeon, when torn with 
 the bloody scourge, did nevertheless convert and 
 baptize and offer sacrifice, and was chary even 
 of one soul which was seeking salvation? and 
 
 30 now, when he has arrived at Troas, and sees the 
 field cleansed of weedS; and ready for the sowing, 
 
CHBYSOSTOM 109 
 
 and the floor full, and ready to his hand, sud- 
 denly he flings away the profit, though he came 
 thither expressly for it. ^So it was,' he answers 
 me, 'just so; I was possessed by a predominating 
 tyranny of sorrow, for Titus was away; and this 5 
 so wrought upon me as to compel me to this 
 course.' Those who have the grace of charity 
 are not content to be united in soul only, they 
 seek for the personal presence of him they love. 
 
 " Turn once more to this scholar of charity, and 10 
 you will find that so it is. 'We, brethren,' he 
 says, 'being bereaved of you for the time of an 
 hour, in sight, not in heart, have hastened the 
 more abundantly to see your face with great 
 desire. For we would have come unto you, 1, 15 
 Paul, indeed, once and again, but Satan hath 
 hindered us. For which cause, forbearing no 
 longer, we thought it good to remain at Athens 
 alone, and we sent Timothy.' What force is 
 there in each expression ! That flame of charity 20 
 living in his soul is manifested with singular 
 luminousness. He does not say so much as 
 'separated from you,' nor 'torn,' nor 'divided,' 
 nor 'abandoned,' but only 'bereaved'; moreover 
 not 'for a certain period,' but merely 'for the 25 
 time of an hour'; and separated, 'not in heart, 
 but in presence only'; again, 'have hastened 
 the more abundantly to see your face.' What ! 
 it seems charity so captivated you that you 
 desiderated their sight, you longed to gaze upon 30 
 their earthly, fleshly countenance? 'Indeed I 
 
110 CHARACTER SKETCHES 
 
 did/ he answers: 'I am not ashamed to say so; 
 for in that seeing all the channels of the senses 
 meet together, I desire to see your presence; 
 for there is the tongue which utters sounds and 
 
 5 announces the secret feelings; there is the hear- 
 ing which receives words, and there the eyes 
 which image the movements of the soul.' But 
 this is not all : not content with writing to them 
 letters, he actually sends to them Timothy, who 
 
 10 was with him, and who was more than any letters. 
 And, 'We thought it good to remain alone;' 
 that is, when he is divided from one brother, 
 he says, he is left alone, though he had so many 
 others with him." 
 
11. THE TURK 
 
 The Tartar and the Turk 
 
 You may think, Gentlemen, I have been very 
 long in coming to the Turks, and indeed I have 
 been longer than I could have wished; but I 
 have thought it necessary, in order to your taking 
 a just view of them, that you should survey them 5 
 first of all in their original condition. When they 
 first appear in history they are Huns or Tartars, 
 and nothing else; they are indeed in no unim- 
 portant respects Tartars even now ; but, had they 
 never been made something more than Tartars, lo 
 they never would have had much to do with the 
 history of the world. In that case, they would 
 have had only the fortunes of Attila and Zingis; 
 they might have swept over the face of the earth, 
 and scourged the human race, powerful to destroy, 15 
 helpless to construct, and in consequence ephem- 
 eral; but this would have been all. But this has 
 not been all, as regards the Turks; for, in spite 
 of their intimate resemblance or relationship to 
 the Tartar tribes, in spite of their essential bar- 20 
 barism to this day, still they, or at least great 
 portions of the race, have been put under edu- 
 cation; they have been submitted to a slow 
 course of change, with a long history and a prof- 
 Ill 
 
112 THE TURK 
 
 itable discipline and fortunes of a peculiar kind; 
 and thus they have gained those qualities of 
 mind, which alone enable a nation to wield and 
 to consolidate imperial power. 
 5 I have said that, when first they distinctly 
 appear on the scene of history, they are indis- 
 tinguishable from Tartars. Mount Altai, the 
 high metropolis of Tartary, is surrounded by a 
 hilly district, rich not only in the useful, but in 
 10 the precious metals. Gold is said to abound 
 there; but it is still more fertile in veins of iron, 
 which indeed is said to be the most plentiful in 
 the world. There have been iron works there 
 from time immemorial, and at the time that the 
 16 Huns descended on the Roman Empire (in the 
 fifth century of the Christian era), we find 
 the Turks nothing more than a family of slaves, 
 employed as workers of the ore and as blacksmiths 
 by the dominant tribe. Suddenly in the course 
 20 of fifty years, soon after the fall of the Hunnish 
 power in Europe, with the sudden development 
 peculiar to Tartars, we find these Turks spread 
 from East to West, and lords of a territory so 
 extensive, that they were connected, by relations 
 25 of peace or war, at once with the Chinese, the 
 Persians, and the Romans. They had reached 
 Kamtchatka on the North, the Caspian on the 
 West, and perhaps even the mouth of the Indus 
 on the South. Here then we have an inter- 
 so mediate empire of Tartars, placed between the 
 eras of Attila and Zingis; but in this sketch it has 
 
THE TARTAR AND THE TURK 113 
 
 no place, except as belonging to Turkish history, 
 because it was contained within the limits of 
 Asia, and, though it lasted for 200 years, it only 
 faintly affected the political transactions of 
 Europe. However, it was not without some sort 5 
 of influence on Christendom, for the Romans in- 
 terchanged embassies with its sovereign in the 
 reign of the then Greek Emperor Justin the 
 younger (a.d. 570), with the view of engaging 
 him in a warlike alliance against Persia. Theio 
 account of one of these embassies remains, and 
 the picture it presents of the Turks is important, 
 because it seems clearly to identify them with 
 the Tartar race. 
 
 For instance, in the mission to the Tartars 15 
 from the Pope, which I have already spoken of, 
 the friars were led between two fires, when they 
 approached the Khan, and they at first refused 
 to follow, thinking they might be countenancing 
 some magical rite. Now we find it recorded of 20 
 this Roman embassy, that, on its arrival, it was 
 purified by the Turks with fire and incense. As 
 to incense, which seems out of place among such 
 barbarians, it is remarkable that it is used in 
 the ceremonial of the Turkish court to this day. 25 
 At least Sir Charles Fellows, in his work on the 
 Antiquities of Asia Minor, in 1838, speaks of the 
 Sultan as going to the festival of Bairam with 
 incense-bearers before him. Again, when the 
 Romans were presented to the great Khan, they so 
 found him in his tent, seated on a throne, to which 
 
114 THE TURK 
 
 wheels were attached and horses attachable, in 
 other words, a Tartar wagon. Moreover, they 
 were entertained at a banquet which lasted the 
 greater part of the day; and an intoxicating 
 
 5 liquor, not wine, which was sweet and pleasant, 
 was freely presented to them; evidently the 
 Tartar koumiss} The next day they had a 
 second entertainment in a still more splendid 
 tent ; the hangings were of embroidered silk, and 
 
 10 the throne, the cups, and the vases were of gold. 
 On the third day, the pavilion, in which they were 
 received, was supported on gilt columns ; a couch 
 of massive gold was raised on four gold peacocks; 
 and before the entrance to the tent was what 
 
 15 might be called a sideboard, only that it was a 
 sort of barricade of wagons, laden with dishes, 
 basins, and statues of solid silver. All these 
 points in the description — the silk hangings, the 
 gold vessels, the successively increasing splendor 
 
 20 of the entertainments — remind us of the courts 
 of Zingis and Timour, 700 and 900 years after- 
 wards. 
 
 This empire, then, of the Turks was of a Tartar 
 character; yet it was the first step of their pass- 
 
 25 ing from barbarism to that degree of civilization 
 which is their historical badge. And it was their 
 first step in civilization, not so much by what 
 it did in its day, as (unless it be a paradox to 
 say so) by its coming to an end. Indeed it so 
 
 30 happens, that those Turkish tribes which have 
 
 ^ Univ. Hist. Modern, vol. iii. p. 346. 
 
THE TARTAR AND THE TURK 115 
 
 changed their original character and have a place 
 in the history of the world, have obtained their 
 status and their qualifications for it, by a process 
 very different from that which took place in the 
 nations most familiar to us. What this process 5 
 has been I will say presently; first, however, let 
 us observe that, fortunately for our purpose, w^e 
 have still specimens existing of those other 
 Turkish tribes, which were never submitted to 
 this process of education and change, and, inio 
 looking at them as they now exist, we see at this 
 very day the Turkish nationality in something 
 very like its original form, and are able to decide 
 for ourselves on its close approximation to the 
 Tartar. You may recollect I pointed out to 15 
 you. Gentlemen, in the opening of these lectures, 
 the course which the pastoral tribes, or nomads 
 as they are often called, must necessarily take 
 in their emigrations. They were forced along 
 in one direction till they emerged from their 20 
 mountain valleys, and descended their high 
 plateau at the end of Tartary, and then they had 
 the opportunity of turning south. If they did 
 not avail themselves of this opening, but went on 
 still westward, their next southern pass would 25 
 be the defiles of the Caucasus and Circassia, to 
 the west of the Caspian. If they did not use this, 
 they would skirt the top of the Black Sea, and 
 so reach Europe. Thus in the emigration of the 
 Huns from China, you may recollect a tribe of 30 
 them turned to the South as soon as they could, 
 
116 THE TURK 
 
 and settled themselves between the high Tartar 
 land and the sea of Aral, while the main body 
 went on to the furthest West by the north of the 
 Black Sea. Now with this last passage into 
 5 Europe we are not here concerned, for the Turks 
 have never introduced themselves to Europe by 
 means of it ; ^ but with those two southward 
 passages which are Asiatic, viz., that to the east 
 of the Aral, and that to the west of the Caspian. 
 
 10 The Turkish tribes have all descended upon the 
 civilized world by one or other of these two roads; 
 and I observe, that those which have descended 
 along the east of the Aral have changed their 
 social habits and gained political power, while 
 
 15 those which descended to the west of the Caspian 
 remain pretty much what they ever were. The 
 former of these go among us by the general 
 name of Turks; the latter are the Turcomans 
 or Turkmans. ... At the very date at which 
 
 2oHeraclius called the Turcomans into Georgia, at 
 the very date when their Eastern brethren 
 crossed the northern border of Sogdiana, an event 
 of most momentous import had occurred in the 
 South. A new religion had arisen in Arabia. 
 
 25 The impostor Mahomet, announcing himself the 
 Prophet of God, was writing the pages of that 
 book, and molding the faith of that people, which 
 was to subdue half the known world. The Turks 
 passed the Jaxartes southward in a. d. 626; just 
 
 ^ I am here assuming that the Magyars are not of the 
 Turkish stock ; vid. Gibbon and Pritchard. 
 
THE TARTAR AND THE TURK 117 
 
 four years before Mahomet had assumed the royal 
 dignity, and just six years after, on his death, 
 his followers began the conquest of the Persian 
 Empire. In the course of 20 years they effected 
 it; Sogdiana was at its very extremity, or its 5 
 borderland; there the last king of Persia took 
 refuge from the south, while the Turks were pour- 
 ing into it from the north. There was little to 
 choose for the unfortunate prince between the 
 Turk and the Saracen; the Turks were hisio 
 hereditary foe; they had been the giants and 
 monsters of the popular poetry; but he threw 
 himself into their arms. They engaged in his 
 service, betrayed him, murdered him, and meas- 
 ured themselves with the Saracens in his stead. 15 
 Thus the military strength of the north and south 
 of Asia, the Saracenic and the Turkish, came into 
 memorable conflict in the regions of which I have 
 said so much. The struggle was a fierce one, and 
 lasted many years; the Turks striving to force 20 
 their way down to the ocean, the Saracens to 
 drive them back into their Scythian deserts. 
 They first fought this issue in Bactriana or 
 Khorasan; the Turks got the worst of the fight, 
 and then it was thrown back upon Sogdiana 25 
 itself, and there it ended again in favor of the 
 Saracens. At the end of 90 years from the time 
 of the first Turkish descent on this fair region, 
 they relinquished it to their Mahometan oppo- 
 nents. The conquerors found it rich, populous, so 
 and powerful; its cities, Carisme, Bokhara, and 
 
118 THE TURK 
 
 Samarcand, were surrounded beyond their forti- 
 fications by a suburb of fields and gardens, which 
 was in turn protected by exterior works ; its plains 
 were well cultivated, and its commerce extended 
 
 5 from China to Europe. Its riches were propor- 
 tionally great; the Saracens were able to extort 
 a tribute of two million gold pieces from the 
 inhabitants; we read, moreover, of the crown 
 jewels of one of the Turkish princesses; and of 
 
 10 the buskin of another, which she dropt in her 
 flight from Bokhara, as being worth two thou- 
 sand pieces of gold.^ Such had been the prosperity 
 of the barbarian invaders, such was its end; but 
 not their end, for adversity did them service, as 
 
 15 well as prosperity, as we shall see. 
 
 It is usual for historians to say, that the 
 triumph of the South threw the Turks back again 
 upon their northern solitudes; and this might 
 easily be the case with some of the many hordes, 
 
 20 which were ever passing the boundary and flock- 
 ing down; but it is no just account of the his- 
 torical fact, viewed as a whole. Not often indeed 
 do the Oriental nations present us with an ex- 
 ample of versatility of character; the Turks, for 
 
 25 instance, of this day are substantially what they 
 were four centuries ago. We cannot conceive, 
 were Turkey overrun by the Russians at the 
 present moment, that the fanatical tribes, which 
 are pouring into Constantinople from Asia Minor, 
 
 30 would submit to the foreign yoke, take service 
 1 Gibbon. 
 
THE TARTAR AND THE TURK 119 
 
 under their conquerors, become soldiers, custom- 
 officers, police, men of business, attaches, states- 
 men, working their way up from the ranks and 
 from the masses into influence and power; but, 
 whether from skill in the Saracens, or from far- 5 
 reaching sagacity in the Turks (and it is difficult 
 to assign it to either cause), so it was, that a 
 process of this nature followed close upon the 
 Mahometan conquest of Sogdiana. It is to be 
 traced in detail to a variety of accidents. Manyio 
 of the Turks probably were made slaves, and the 
 service to which they were subjected was no 
 matter of choice. Numbers had got attached to 
 the soil; and inheriting the blood of Persians, 
 White Huns, or aboriginal inhabitants for three 15 
 generations, had simply unlearned the wildness 
 of the Tartar shepherd. Others fell victims to 
 the religion of their conquerors, which ultimately, 
 as we know, exercised a most remarkable in- 
 fluence upon them. Not all at once, but as 20 
 tribe descended after tribe, and generation fol- 
 lowed generation, they succumbed to the creed 
 of Mahomet; and they embraced it with the 
 ardor and enthusiasm which Franks and Saxons 
 so gloriously and meritoriously manifested in their 25 
 conversion to Christianity. 
 
 Here again was a very powerful instrument 
 in modification of their national character. Let 
 me illustrate it in one particular. If there is one 
 peculiarity above another, proper to the savage 30 
 and to the Tartar, it is that of excitability and 
 
120 TEE TURK 
 
 impetuosity on ordinary occasions; the Turks, 
 on the other hand, are nationally remarkable for 
 gravity and almost apathy of demeanor. Now 
 there are evidently elements in the Mahometan 
 
 5 creed, which would tend to change them from 
 the one temperament to the other. Its stern- 
 ness, its coldness, its doctrine of fatalism; even 
 the truths which it borrowed from Revelation, 
 when separated from the truths it rejected, its 
 
 10 monotheism untempered by mediation, its severe 
 view of the Divine attributes, of the law, and of a 
 sure retribution to come, wrought both a gloom 
 and also an improvement in the barbarian, not 
 very unlike the effect which some forms of 
 
 15 Protestantism produce among ourselves. But 
 whatever was the mode of operation, certainly 
 it is to their religion that this peculiarity of the 
 Turks is ascribed by competent judges. Lieu- 
 tenant Wood in his journal gives us a lively 
 
 20 account of a peculiarity of theirs, which he un- 
 hesitatingly attributes to Islamism. " Nowhere," 
 he says, " is the difference between European and 
 Mahometan society more strongly marked than 
 in the lower walks of life. ... A Kasid, or 
 
 25 messenger, for example, will come into a public 
 department, deliver his letters in full durbar, and 
 demean himself throughout the interview with 
 so much composure and self-possession, that an 
 European can hardly believe that his grade in 
 
 30 society is so low. After he has delivered his let- 
 ters, he takes his seat among the crowd, and 
 
THE TARTAR AND THE TURK 121 
 
 answers, calmly and without hesitation, all the 
 questions which may be addressed to him, or 
 communicates the verbal instructions with which 
 he has been intrusted by his employer, and 
 which are often of more importance than the let- 5 
 ters themselves. Indeed, all the inferior classes 
 possess an innate self-respect, and a natural 
 gravity of deportment, which differs as far from 
 the suppleness of a Hindustani as from the awk- 
 ward rusticity of an English clown." ... " Even 10 
 children," he continues, '' in Mahometan countries 
 have an unusual degree of gravity in their deport- 
 ment. The boy, who can but lisp his ^ Peace be 
 with you,' has imbibed this portion of the national 
 character. In passing through a village, these 15 
 little men will place their hands upon their 
 breasts, and give the usual greeting. Frequently 
 have I seen the children of chiefs approach their 
 father's durbar, and stopping short at the thresh- 
 old of the door, utter the shout of 'Salam Ali-20 
 Kum,' so as to draw all eyes upon them; but 
 nothing daunted, they marched boldly into the 
 room, and sliding down upon their knees, folded 
 their arms and took their seat upon the musnad 
 with all the gravity of grown-up persons." 25 
 
 As Islamism has changed the demeanor of the 
 Turks, so doubtless it has in other ways materially 
 innovated on their Tartar nature. It has given 
 an aim to their military efforts, a political prin- 
 ciple, and a social bond. It has laid them under 30 
 a sense of responsibility, has molded them into 
 
122 TUE TURK 
 
 consistency, and taught them a course of policy 
 and perseverance in it. But to treat this part 
 of the subject adequately to its importance would 
 require, Gentlemen, a research and a fullness of 
 
 5 discussion unsuitable to the historical sketch 
 which I have undertaken. I have said enough 
 for my purpose upon this topic; and indeed 
 on the general question of the modification of 
 national character to which the Turks were at 
 
 10 this period subjected. 
 
 The Turk and the Saracen 
 
 Mere occupation of a rich country is not 
 enough for civilization, as I have granted already. 
 The Turks came into the pleasant plains and 
 valleys of Sogdiana; the Turcomans into the 
 
 15 well-wooded mountains and sunny slopes of Asia 
 Minor. The Turcomans were brought out of 
 their dreary deserts, yet they retained their old 
 habits, and they remain barbarians to this day. 
 But why ? it must be borne in mind, they neither 
 
 20 subjugated the inhabitants of their new country 
 on the one hand, nor were subjugated by them 
 on the other. They never had direct or intimate 
 relations with it; they were brought into it by 
 the Roman Government at Constantinople as its 
 
 25 auxiliaries, but they never naturalized themselves 
 there. They were like gypsies in England, except 
 that they were mounted freebooters instead of 
 pilferers and fortune tellers. It was far other- 
 
THE TURK AND THE SARACEN 123 
 
 wise with their brethren in Sogdiana ; they were 
 there first as conquerors, then as conquered. 
 First they held it in possession as their prize for 
 90 or 100 years; they came into the usufruct and 
 enjoyment of it. Next, their poUtical ascendency 5 
 over it involved, as in the case of the White Huns, 
 some sort of moral surrender of themselves to it. 
 What was the first consequence of this? that, 
 like the White Huns, they intermarried with the 
 races they found there. We know the custom lo 
 of the Tartars and Turks; under such circum- 
 stances they would avail themselves of their 
 national practice of polygamy to its full extent 
 of license. In the course of twenty years a new 
 generation would arise of a mixed race ; and is 
 these in turn would marry into the native popu- 
 lation, and at the end of ninety or a hundred 
 years we should find the great-grandsons or the 
 great-great-grandsons of the wild marauders who 
 first crossed the Jaxartes, so different from their 20 
 ancestors in features both of mind and body, 
 that they hardly would be recognized as deserving 
 the Tartar name. At the end of that period their 
 power came to an end, the Saracens became 
 masters of them and of their country, but the 25 
 process of emigration southward from the Scyth- 
 ian desert, which had never intermitted during 
 the years of their domination, continued still, 
 though that domination was no more. 
 
 Here it is necessary to have a clear idea of the 30 
 nature of that association of the Turkish tribes 
 
124 THE TUBE 
 
 from the Volga to the Eastern Sea, to which I 
 have given the name of Empire : it was not so 
 much of a pohtical as of a national character; 
 it was the power, not of a system, but of a race. 
 
 5 They were not one well-organized state, but a 
 number of independent tribes, acting generally 
 together, acknowledging one leader or not, ac- 
 cording to circumstances, combining and coop- 
 erating from the identity of object which acted 
 
 10 on them, and often jealous of each other and 
 quarreling with each other on account of that 
 very identity. Each tribe made its way down to 
 the south as it could; one blocked up the way of 
 the other for a time; there were stoppages and 
 
 15 collisions, but there was a continual movement 
 and progress. Down they came one after another, 
 like wolves after their prey; and as the tribes 
 which came first became partially civilized, and 
 as a mixed generation arose, these would naturally 
 
 20 be desirous of keeping back their less polished 
 uncles or cousins, if they could; and would do so 
 successfully for a while : but cupidity is stronger 
 than conservatism; and so, in spite of delay and 
 difficulty, down they would keep coming, and 
 
 25 down they did come, even after and in spite of 
 the overthrow of their Empire; crowding down 
 as to a new world, to get what they could, as 
 adventurers, ready to turn to the right or the 
 left, prepared to struggle on anyhow, willing to 
 
 so be forced forward into countries farther still, 
 careless what might turn up, so that they did but 
 
TilE TURK AND THE SARACEN 125 
 
 get down. And this was the process which went 
 on (whatever were their fortunes when they 
 actually got down, prosperous or adverse) for 
 400, nay, I will say for 700 years. The store- 
 house of the north was never exhausted; it sus- 5 
 tained the never ending run upon its resources. 
 I was just now referring to a change in the 
 Turks, which I have mentioned before, and 
 which had as important a bearing as any other 
 of their changes upon their subsequent fortunes, lo 
 It was a change in their physiognomy and shape, 
 so striking as to recommend them to their mas- 
 ters for the purposes of war or of display. In- 
 stead of bearing any longer the hideous exterior 
 which in the Huns frightened the Romans and 15 
 Goths, they were remarkable, even as early as the 
 ninth century, when they had been among the 
 natives of Sogdiana only two hundred years, 
 for the beauty of their persons. An important 
 political event was the result: hence the intro-20 
 duction of the Turks into the heart of the Sara- 
 cenic empire. By this time the Caliphs had 
 removed from Damascus to Bagdad; Persia was 
 the imperial province, and into Persia they were 
 introduced for the reason I have mentioned, 25 
 sometimes as slaves, sometimes as captives taken 
 in war, sometimes as mercenaries for the Sara- 
 cenic armies: at length they were enrolled as 
 guards to the Caliph, and even appointed to 
 offices in the palace, to the command of the forces, 30 
 and to governorships in the provinces. The son 
 
126 THE TURK 
 
 of the celebrated Harun al Raschid had as many 
 as 50,000 of these troops in Bagdad itself. And 
 thus slowly and silently they made their way to 
 the south, not with the pomp and pretense of 
 
 5 conquest, but by means of that ordinary inter- 
 communion which connected one portion of the 
 empire of the Caliphs with another. In this man- 
 ner they were introduced even into Egypt. 
 This was their history for a hundred and fifty 
 
 10 years, and what do we suppose would be the 
 result of this importation of barbarians into the 
 heart of a flourishing empire? Would they be 
 absorbed as slaves or settlers in the mass of the 
 population, or would they, like mercenaries else- 
 
 15 where, be fatal to the power that introduced 
 them? The answer is not difficult, considering 
 that their very introduction argued a want of 
 energy and resource in the rulers whom they 
 served. To employ them was a confession of 
 
 20 weakness; the Saracenic power indeed was not 
 very aged, but the Turkish was much younger, 
 and more vigorous; then too must be con- 
 sidered the difference of national character be- 
 tween the Turks and the Saracens. A writer of 
 
 25 the beginning of the present century^ compares 
 the Turks to the Romans; such parallels are 
 generally fanciful and fallacious; but, if we must 
 accept it in the present instance, we may com- 
 plete the picture by likening the Saracens and 
 
 30 Persians to the Greeks, and we know what was 
 
 ^ Thornton. 
 
THE TUBK AND THE SABACEN 127 
 
 the result of the colUsion between Greece and 
 Rome. The Persians were poets, the Saracens 
 were philosophers. The mathematics, astronomy, 
 and botany were especial subjects of the studies of 
 the latter. Their observatories were celebrated, 5 
 and they may be considered to have originated 
 the science of chemistry. The Turks, on the 
 other hand, though they are said to have a lit- 
 erature, and though certain of their princes have 
 been patrons of letters, have never distinguished lo 
 themselves in exercises of pure intellect; but 
 they have had an energy of character, a perti- 
 nacity, a perseverance, and a political talent, in 
 a word, they then had the qualities of mind nec- 
 essary for ruling, in far greater measure, than is 
 the people they were serving. The Saracens, 
 like the Greeks, carried their arms over the sur- 
 face of the earth with an unrivaled brilliancy 
 and an uncheckered success ; but their dominion, 
 like that of Greece, did not last for more than 20 
 200 or 300 years. Rome grew slowly through 
 many centuries, and its influence lasts to this 
 day; the Turkish race battled with difficulties 
 and reverses, and made its way on amid tumult 
 and complication, for a good 1000 years from 25 
 first to last, till at length it found itself in pos- 
 session of Constantinople, and a terror to the 
 whole of Europe. It has ended its career upon 
 the throne of Constantine; it began it as the 
 slave and hireling of the rulers of a great empire, 30 
 of Persia and Sogdiana. 
 
128 THE TUBK 
 
 As to Sogdiana, we have already reviewed one 
 season of power and then in turn of reverse which 
 there befell the Turks; and next a more remark- 
 able outbreak and its reaction mark their presence 
 
 sin Persia. I have spoken of the formidable force, 
 consisting of Turks, which formed the guard of 
 the Caliphs immediately after the time of Harun 
 al Raschid: suddenly they rebelled against 
 their master, burst into his apartment at the 
 
 10 hour of supper, murdered him, and cut his body 
 into seven pieces. They got possession of the 
 symbols of imperial power, the garment and the 
 staff of Mahomet, and proceeded to make and 
 unmake Caliphs at their pleasure. In the course 
 
 15 of four years they had elevated, deposed, and 
 murdered as many as three. At their wanton 
 caprice, they made these successors of the false 
 prophet the sport of their insults and their blows. 
 They dragged them by the feet, stripped them, 
 
 20 and exposed them to the burning sun, beat them 
 with iron clubs, and left them for days without 
 food. At length, however, the people of Bagdad 
 were roused in defense of the Caliphate, and the 
 Turks for a time were brought under; but they 
 
 25 remained in the country, or rather, by the short- 
 sighted policy of the moment, were dispersed 
 throughout it, and thus became in the sequel 
 ready-made elements of revolution for the pur- 
 poses of other traitors of their own race, who, at 
 
 30 a later period, as we shall presently see, descended 
 on Persia from Turkistan. 
 
THE TURK AND THE SAB AC EN 129 
 
 Indeed, events were opening the way slowly, 
 but surely, to their ascendency. Throughout the 
 whole of the tenth century, which followed, they 
 seem to disappear from history; but a silent 
 revolution was all along in progress, leading them 5 
 forward to their great destiny. The empire of 
 the Caliphate was already dying in its extremi- 
 ties, and Sogdiana was one of the first countries 
 to be detached from his power. The Turks were 
 still there, and, as in Persia, filled the ranks of the lO 
 army and the offices of the government; but the 
 political changes which took place were not at 
 first to their visible advantage. What first oc- 
 curred was the revolt of the Caliph's viceroy, 
 who made himself a great kingdom or empire out 15 
 of the provinces around, extending it from the 
 Jaxartes, which was the northern boundary of 
 Sogdiana, almost to the Indian Ocean, and 
 from the confines of Georgia to the mountains 
 of Afghanistan. The dynasty thus established 20 
 lasted for four generations and for the space of 
 ninety years. Then the successor happened to 
 be a boy; and one of his servants, the governor 
 of Khorasan, an able and experienced man, was 
 forced by circumstances to rebellion against him. 25 
 He was successful, and the whole power of this 
 great kingdom fell into his hands; now he was a 
 Tartar or Turk; and thus at length the Turks 
 suddenly appear in history, the acknowledged 
 masters of a southern dominion. 30 
 
 This is the origin of the celebrated Turkish 
 
130 THE TUBK 
 
 dynasty of the Gaznevides, so called after Gazneh, 
 or Ghizni, or Ghuznee, the principal city, and it 
 lasted for two hundred years. We are not par- 
 ticularly concerned in it, because it has no direct 
 
 5 relations with Europe; but it falls into our sub- 
 ject, as having been instrumental to the advance 
 of the Turks towards the West. Its most dis- 
 tinguished monarch was Mahmood, and he 
 conquered Hindostan, which became eventually 
 
 10 the seat of the empire. In Mahmood the Gazne- 
 vide we have a prince of true Oriental splendor. 
 For him the title of Sultan or Soldan was invented, 
 which henceforth became the special badge of the 
 Turkish monarchs; as Khan is the title of the 
 
 15 sovereign of the Tartars, and Caliph of the sov- 
 ereign of the Saracens. I have already described 
 generally the extent of his dominions : he in- 
 herited Sogdiana, Carisme, Khorasan, and Cabul ; 
 but, being a zealous Mussulman, he obtained the 
 
 20 title of Gazi, or champion, by his reduction of 
 Hindostan, and his destruction of its idol tem- 
 ples. There was no need, however, of religious 
 enthusiasm to stimulate him to the war: the 
 riches, which he amassed in the course of it, were 
 
 25 a recompense amply sufficient. His Indian expe- 
 ditions in all amounted to twelve, and they abound 
 in battles and sieges of a truly Oriental cast. . . . 
 We have now arrived at what may literally be 
 called the turning point of Turkish history. We 
 
 30 have seen them gradually descend from the north, 
 and in a certain degree become acclimated in the 
 
THE TURK AND THE SARACEN 131 
 
 countries where they settled. They first appear 
 across the Jaxartes in the beginning of the seventh 
 century; they have now come to the beginning 
 of the eleventh. Four centuries or thereabout 
 have they been out of their deserts, gaining ex- 5 
 perience and educating themselves in such meas- 
 ure as was necessary for playing their part in 
 the civilized world. First they came down into 
 Sogdiana and Khorasan, and the country below 
 it, as conquerors ; they continued in it as sub- lo 
 jects and slaves. They offered their services to 
 the race which had subdued them; they made 
 their way by means of their new masters down to 
 the west and the south ; they laid the foundations 
 for their future supremacy in Persia, and gradu- is 
 ally rose upwards through the social fabric to 
 which they had been admitted, till they found 
 themselves at length at the head of it. The 
 sovereign power which they had acquired in the 
 line of the Gaznevides, drifted off to Hindostan;20 
 but still fresh tribes of their race poured down 
 from the north, and filled up the gap; and while 
 one dynasty of Turks was established in the 
 peninsula, a second dynasty arose in the former 
 seat of their power. 25 
 
 Now I call the era at which I have arrived the 
 turning point of their fortunes, because, when 
 they had descended down to Khorasan and the 
 countries below it, they might have turned to the 
 East or to the West, as they chose. They were so 
 at liberty to turn their forces eastward against 
 
132 THE TUBK 
 
 their kindred in Hindostan, whom they had driven 
 out of Ghizni and Afghanistan, or to face towards 
 the west, and make their way thither through the 
 Saracens of Persia and its neighboring countries. 
 
 5 It was an era which determined the history of the 
 world. . . . 
 
 But this era was a turning point in their his- 
 tory in another and more serious respect. In 
 Sogdiana and Khorasan, they had become con- 
 
 10 verts to the Mahometan faith. You will not sup- 
 pose I am going to praise a religious imposture, 
 but no Catholic need deny that it is, considered 
 in itself, a great improvement upon Paganism. 
 Paganism has no rule of right and wrong, no 
 
 15 supreme and immutable judge, no intelligible 
 revelation, no fixed dogma whatever; on the 
 other hand, the being of one God, the fact of His 
 revelation, His faithfulness to His promises, the 
 eternity of the moral law, the certainty of future 
 
 20 retribution, were borrowed by Mahomet from the 
 Church, and are steadfastly held by his followers. 
 The false prophet taught much which is materially 
 true and objectively important, whatever be its 
 subjective and formal value and influence in the 
 
 25 individuals who profess it. He stands in his 
 creed between the religion of God and the religion 
 of devils, between Christianity and idolatry, 
 between the West and the extreme East. And 
 so stood the Turks, on adopting his faith, at 
 
 30 the date I am speaking of ; they stood between 
 Christ in the West, and Satan in the East; and 
 
THE TUBK AND THE SABACEN 133 
 
 they had to make their choice ; and, alas ! they 
 were led by the circumstances of the time to 
 oppose themselves, not to Paganism, but to 
 Christianity. A happier lot indeed had befallen 
 poor Sultan Mahmood than befell his kindred 5 
 who followed in his wake. Mahmood, a Mahome- 
 tan, went eastward and found a superstition 
 worse than his own, and fought against it, and 
 smote it; and the sandal doors which he tore 
 away from the idol temple and hung up at hisio 
 tomb at Gazneh, almost seemed to plead for him 
 through centuries as the soldier and the instru- 
 ment of Heaven. The tribes which followed him, 
 Moslem also, faced westward, and found, not 
 error but truth, and fought against it as zealousl}^, is 
 and in doing so, were simply tools of the Evil One, 
 and preachers of a lie, and enemies, not witnesses 
 of God. The one destroyed idol temples, the 
 other Christian shrines. The one has been saved 
 the woe of persecuting the Bride of the Lamb; 20 
 the other is of all races the veriest brood of the 
 serpent which the Church has encountered since 
 she was set up. For 800 years did the sandal 
 gates remain at Mahmood's tomb, as a trophy 
 over idolatry; and for 800 years have Seljuk25 
 and Othman been our foe. 
 
 The year 1048 of our era is fixed by chronolo- 
 gists as the date of the rise of the Turkish power, 
 as far as Christendom is interested in its history.^ 
 Sixty-three years before this date, a Turk of high 30 
 
 ^ Baronius, Pagi. 
 
134 THE TURK 
 
 rank, of the name of Seljuk, had quarreled with 
 his native prince in Turkistan, crossed the Jax- 
 artes with his followers, and planted himself in 
 the territory of Sogdiana. His father had been 
 
 5 a chief officer in the prince's court, and was the 
 first of his family to embrace Islamism; but Sel- 
 juk, in spite of his creed, did not obtain permission 
 to advance into Sogdiana from the Saracenic gov- 
 ernment, which at that time was in possession of 
 
 10 the country. After several successful encounters, 
 however, he gained admission into the city of Bok- 
 hara, and there he settled. As time went on, he 
 fully recompensed the tardy hospitality which 
 the Saracens had shown him; for his feud with 
 
 15 his own countrymen, whom he had left, took the 
 shape of a religious enmity, and he fought against 
 them as pagans and infidels, with a zeal, which 
 was both an earnest of the devotion of his people 
 to the faith of Mahomet, and a training for the 
 
 20 exercise of it. . . . 
 
 For four centuries the Turks are little or hardly 
 heard of; then suddenly in the course of as many 
 tens of years, and under three Sultans, they make 
 the whole world resound with their deeds; and, 
 
 25 while they have pushed to the East through 
 Hindostan, in the West they have hurried down 
 to the coasts of the Mediterranean and the Archi- 
 pelago, have taken Jerusalem, and threatened 
 Constantinople. In their long period of silence 
 
 30 they had been sowing the seeds of future con- 
 quests; in their short period of action they were 
 
THE TUBE AND THE SARACEN 135 
 
 gathering the fruit of past labors and sufferings. 
 The Saracenic empire stood apparently as before; 
 but, as soon as a Turk showed himself at the head 
 of a military force within its territory, he found 
 himself surrounded by the armies of his kindred 5 
 which had been so long in its pay; he was joined 
 by the tribes of Turcomans, to whom the Romans 
 in a former age had shown the passes of the 
 Caucasus; and he could rely on the reserve of 
 innumerable swarms, ever issuing out of his lO 
 native desert, and following in his track. Such 
 was the state of Western Asia in the middle of 
 the eleventh century. 
 
 Alp Arslan, the second Sultan of the line of 
 Seljuk, is said to signify in Turkish " the coura- 15 
 geous lion" : and the Caliph gave its possessor the 
 Arabic appellation of Azzaddin, or " Protector of 
 Religion." It was the distinctive work of his 
 short reign to pass from humbling the Caliph to 
 attacking the Greek Emperor. Togrul had al-20 
 ready invaded the Greek provinces of Asia Minor, 
 from Cilicia to Armenia, along a line of 600 miles, 
 and here it was that he had achieved his tre- 
 mendous massacres of Christians. Alp Arslan 
 renewed the war; he penetrated to Csesarea in 25 
 Cappadocia, attracted by the gold and pearls 
 which incrusted the shrine of the great St. Basil. 
 He then turned his arms against Armenia and 
 Georgia, and conquered the hardy mountaineers 
 of the Caucasus, who at present give such trouble 30 
 to the Russians. After this he encountered, 
 
136 THE TUBE 
 
 defeated, and captured the Greek Emperor. He 
 began the battle with all the solemnity and 
 pageantry of a hero of romance. Casting away 
 his bow and arrows, he called for an iron mace and 
 5scimeter; he perfumed his body with musk, as 
 if for his burial, and dressed himself in white, 
 that he might be slain in his winding sheet. 
 After his victory, the captive Emperor of New 
 Rome was brought before him in a peasant's 
 
 10 dress; he made him kiss the ground beneath his 
 feet, and put his foot upon his neck. Then, rais- 
 ing him up, he struck or patted him three times 
 with his hand, and gave him his life and, on a 
 large ransom, his liberty. 
 
 15 At this time the Sultan was only forty-four 
 years of age, and seemed to have a career of glory 
 still before him. Twelve hundred nobles stood 
 before his throne ; two hundred thousand soldiers 
 marched under his banner. As if dissatisfied 
 
 20 with the South, he turned his arms against his 
 own paternal wildernesses, with which his fam- 
 ily, as I have related, had a feud. New tribes 
 of Turks seem to have poured down, and were 
 wresting Sogdiana from the race of Seljuk, as 
 
 25 the Seljukians had wrested it from the Gazne- 
 vides. Alp had not advanced far into the coun- 
 try, when he met his death from the hand of a 
 captive. A Carismian chief had withstood his 
 progress, and, being taken, was condemned to a 
 
 30 lingering execution. On hearing the sentence, he 
 rushed forward upon Alp Arslan ; and the Sultan, 
 
THE TURK AND THE SARACEN 137 
 
 disdaining to let his generals interfere, bent his 
 bow, but, missing his aim, received the dagger of 
 his prisoner in his breast. His death, which fol- 
 lowed, brings before us that grave dignity of the 
 Turkish character, of which we have already had 5 
 an example in Mahmood. Finding his end ap- 
 proaching, he has left on record a sort of dying 
 confession: "In my youth," he said, "I was 
 advised by a sage to humble myself before God, 
 to distrust my own strength, and never to despise lo 
 the most contemptible foe. I have neglected 
 these lessons, and my neglect has been deservedly 
 punished. Yesterday, as from an eminence, 1 be- 
 held the numbers, the discipline, and the spirit 
 of my armies ; the earth seemed to tremble under 15 
 my feet, and I said in my heart. Surely thou art 
 the king of the world, the greatest and most 
 invincible of warriors. These armies are no 
 longer mine; and, in the confidence of my per- 
 sonal strength, I now fall by the hand of an 20 
 assassin." On his tomb was engraven an inscrip- 
 tion, conceived in a similar spirit. " O ye, who 
 have seen the glory of Alp Arslan exalted to the 
 heavens, repair to Maru, and you will behold it 
 buried in the dust." ^ Alp Arslan was adorned 25 
 with great natural qualities both of intellect and 
 of soul. He was brave and liberal : just, patient, 
 and sincere: constant in his prayers, diligent in 
 his alms, and, it is added, witty in his conversa- 
 tion; but his gifts availed him not. 30 
 
 1 Gibbon. 
 
138 THE TURK 
 
 It often happens in the history of states and 
 races, in which there is found first a rise and then 
 a decUne, that the greatest glories take place just 
 then when the reverse is beginning or begun. 
 
 5 Thus, for instance, in the history of the Otto- 
 man Turks, to which I have not yet come. Soli- 
 man the Magnificent is at once the last and 
 greatest of a series of great Sultans. So was it 
 as regards this house of Seljuk. Malek Shah, the 
 
 10 son of Alp Arslan, the third sovereign, in whom 
 its glories ended, is represented to us in history 
 in colors so bright and perfect, that it is difficult 
 to believe we are not reading the account of some 
 mythical personage. He came to the throne at 
 
 15 the early age of seventeen; he was well-shaped, 
 handsome, polished both in manners and in 
 mind; wise and courageous, pious and sincere. 
 He engaged himself even more in the consolida- 
 tion of his empire than in its extension. He 
 
 20 reformed abuses; he reduced the taxes; he re- 
 paired the highroads, bridges, and canals; he 
 built an imperial mosque at Bagdad; he founded 
 and nobly endowed a college. He patronized 
 learning and poetry, and he reformed the calen- 
 
 25dar. He provided marts for commerce; he 
 upheld the pure administration of justice, and 
 protected the helpless and the innocent. He 
 established wells and cisterns in great numbers 
 along the road of pilgrimage to Mecca; he fed 
 
 30 the pilgrims, and distributed immense sums 
 among the poor. 
 
THE TURK AND THE SAEACEN 139 
 
 He was in every respect a great prince; he 
 extended his conquests across Sogdiana to the 
 very borders of China. He subdued by his 
 lieutenants Syria and the Holy Land, and took 
 Jerusalem. He is said to have traveled round 5 
 his vast dominions twelve times. So potent was 
 he, that he actually gave away kingdoms, and 
 had for feudatories great princes. He gave to 
 his cousin his territories in Asia Minor, and 
 planted him over against Constantinople, as anio 
 earnest of future conquests; and he may be said 
 to have finally allotted to the Turcomans the 
 fair regions of Western Asia, over which they 
 roam to this day. 
 
 All human greatness has its term; the more 15 
 brilliant was this great Sultan's rise, the more 
 sudden was his extinction; and the earlier he 
 came to his power, the earlier did he lose it. He 
 had reigned twenty years, and was but thirty- 
 seven years old, when he was lifted up with pride 20 
 and came to his end. He disgraced and aban- 
 doned to an assassin his faithful vizir, at the age 
 of ninety-three, who for thirty years had been the 
 servant and benefactor of the house of Seljuk. 
 After obtaining from the Caliph the peculiar 25 
 and almost incommunicable title of "the com- 
 mander of the faithful," unsatisfied still, he 
 wished to fix his own throne in Bagdad, and to 
 deprive his impotent superior of his few remain- 
 ing honors. He demanded the hand of the 30 
 daughter of the Greek Emperor, a Christian, in 
 
140 THE TURK 
 
 marriage. A few days, and he was no more; 
 he had gone out hunting, and returned indis- 
 posed; a vein was opened, and the blood would 
 not flow. A burning fever took him off, only 
 
 5 eighteen days after the murder of his vizir, and 
 less than ten before the day when the Caliph was 
 to have been removed from Bagdad. 
 
 Such is human greatness at the best, even were 
 it ever so innocent ; but as to this poor Sultan, 
 
 10 there is another aspect even of his glorious deeds. 
 If I have seemed here or elsewhere in these Lec- 
 tures to speak of him or his with interest or 
 admiration, only take me. Gentlemen, as giving 
 the external view of the Turkish history, and that 
 
 15 as introductory to the determination of its true 
 significance. Historians and poets may celebrate 
 the exploits of Malek ; but what were they in the 
 sight of Him who has said that whoso shall strike 
 against His cornerstone shall be broken; but 
 
 20 on whomsoever it shall fall, shall be ground to 
 powder? Looking at this vSultan's deeds as 
 mere exhibitions of human power, they were 
 brilliant and marvelous; but there was another 
 judgment of them formed in the West, and other 
 
 25 feelings than admiration roused by them in the 
 faith and the chivalry of Christendom. Espe- 
 cially was there one, the divinely appointed 
 shepherd of the poor of Christ, the anxious 
 steward of His Church, who from his high and 
 
 30 ancient watch tower, in the fullness of apostolic 
 charity, surveyed narrowly what was going on at 
 
THE TURK AND THE SARACEN 141 
 
 thousands of miles from him, and with prophetic 
 eye looked into the future age; and scarcely had 
 that enemy, who was in the event so heavily to 
 smite the Christian world, shown himself, when 
 he gave warning of the danger, and prepared 5 
 himself with measures for averting it. Scarcely 
 had the Turk touched the shores of the Mediter- 
 ranean and the Archipelago, when the Pope 
 detected and denounced him before all Europe. 
 The heroic Pontiff, St. Gregory the Seventh, was lo 
 then upon the throne of the Apostle ; and though 
 he was engaged in one of the severest conflicts 
 which Pope has ever sustained, not only against 
 the secular power, but against bad bishops and 
 priests, yet at a time when his very life was not 15 
 his own, and present responsibilities so urged 
 him, that one would fancy he had time for no 
 other thought, Gregory was able to turn his mind 
 to the consideration of a contingent danger in the 
 almost fabulous East. In a letter written during 20 
 the reign of Malek Shah, he suggested the idea 
 of a crusade against the misbeliever, which later 
 popes carried out. He assures the Emperor of 
 Germany, whom he was addressing, that he had 
 50,000 troops ready for the holy war, whom he 25 
 would fain have led in person. This was in the 
 year 1074. 
 
 In truth, the most melancholy accounts were 
 brought to Europe of the state of things in the 
 Holy Land. A rude Turcoman ruled in Jeru-30 
 salem; his people insulted there the clergy of 
 
142 THE TURK 
 
 every profession; they dragged the patriarch by 
 the hair along the pavement, and cast him into 
 a dungeon, in hopes of a ransom; and disturbed 
 from time to time the Latin Mass and office in the 
 
 5 Church of the Resurrection. As to the pilgrims, 
 Asia Minor, the country through which they had 
 to travel in an age when the sea was not yet safe 
 to the voyager, was a scene of foreign incursion 
 and internal distraction. They arrived at Jeru- 
 
 losalem exhausted by their sufferings, and some- 
 times terminated them by death, before they 
 were permitted to kiss the Holy Sepulchre. 
 
 It is commonly said that the Crusades failed 
 in their object; that they were nothing else but 
 
 15a lavish expenditure of men and treasure; and 
 that the possession of the Holy Places by the 
 Turks to this day is a proof of it. Now I will not 
 enter here into a very intricate controversy; this 
 only will I say, that, if the tribes of the desert, un- 
 
 20 der the leadership of the house of Seljuk, turned 
 their faces to the West in the middle of the 
 eleventh century; if in forty years they had 
 advanced from Khorasan to Jerusalem and the 
 neighborhood of Constantinople; and if in con- 
 
 25 sequence they w^ere threatening Europe and 
 Christianity; and if, for that reason, it was a 
 great object to drive them back or break them 
 to pieces; if it were a worthy object of the Cru- 
 sades to rescue Europe from this peril and to 
 
PAST AND PBESENT OF OTTOMANS 143 
 
 reassure the anxious minds of Christian multi- 
 tudes; then were the Crusades no failure in 
 their issue, for this object was fully accomplished. 
 The Seljukian Turks were hurled back upon the 
 East, and then broken up, by the hosts of the 5 
 Crusaders. The heutenant of Malek Shah, who 
 had been established as Sultan of Roum (as Asia 
 Minor was called by the Turks) , was driven to an 
 obscure town, where his dynasty lasted, indeed, 
 but gradually dwindled away. A similar fate 10 
 attended the house of Seljuk in other parts of 
 the Empire, and internal quarrels increased and 
 perpetuated its weakness. Sudden as was its 
 rise, as sudden was its fall; till the terrible 
 Zingis, descending on the Turkish dynasties, like 15 
 an avalanche, cooperated effectually with the 
 Crusaders and finished their work; and if Jeru- 
 salem was not protected from other enemies, 
 at least Constantinople was saved, and Europe 
 was placed in security, for three hundred years. 20 
 
 The Past and Present of the Ottomans 
 
 I think it is clear, that, if my account be only 
 in the main correct, the Turkish power certainly 
 is not a civilized, and is a barbarous power. 
 The barbarian lives without principle and with- 
 out aim; he does but reflect the successive out- 25 
 ward circumstances in which he finds himself, 
 and he varies with them. He changes sud- 
 denly, when their change is sudden, and is as 
 
144 THE TURK 
 
 unlike what he was just before, as one fortune 
 or external condition is unlike another. He 
 moves when he is urged by appetite; else, he 
 remains in sloth and inactivity. He lives, and 
 
 5 he dies, and he has done nothing, but leaves the 
 world as he found it. And what the individual 
 is, such is his whole generation; and as that 
 generation, such is the generation before and 
 after. No generation can say what it has been 
 
 10 doing ; it has not made the state of things better 
 or worse; for retrogression there is hardly room; 
 for progress, no sort of material. Now I shall 
 show that these characteristics of the barbarian 
 are rudimental points, as I may call them, in the 
 
 15 picture of the Turks, as drawn by those who 
 have studied them. I shall principally avail 
 myself of the information supplied by Mr. Thorn- 
 ton and M. Volney, men of name and ability, 
 and for various reasons preferable as authorities 
 
 20 to writers of the present day. 
 
 "The Turks," says Mr. Thornton, who, though 
 not blind to their shortcomings, is certainly 
 favorable to them, "the Turks are of a grave 
 and saturnine cast . . . patient of hunger and 
 
 25 privations, capable of enduring the hardships of 
 war, but not much inclined to habits of indus- 
 try. . . . They prefer apathy and indolence to 
 active enjoyments; but when moved by a power- 
 ful stimulus they sometimes indulge in pleasures 
 
 30 in excess." "The Turk," he says elsewhere, 
 " stretched at his ease on the banks of the Bos- 
 
PAST AND PBESEJSfT OF OTTOMANS 145 
 
 phorus, glides down the stream of existence 
 without reflection on the past, and without anx- 
 iety for the future. His hfe is one continued 
 and unvaried reverie. To his imagination the 
 whole universe appears occupied in procuring him 5 
 pleasures. . . . Every custom invites to repose, 
 and every object inspires an indolent voluptuous- 
 ness. Their delight is to recline on soft verdure 
 under the shade of trees, and to muse without 
 fixing the attention, lulled by the trickling of a lo 
 fountain or the murmuring of a rivulet, and in- 
 haling through their pipe a gently inebriating 
 vapor. Such pleasures, the highest which the 
 rich can enjoy, are equally within the reach of 
 the artisan or the peasant." 15 
 
 M. Volney corroborates this account of them: 
 "Their behavior,'' he says, "is serious, austere, 
 and melancholy; they rarely laugh, and the 
 gayety of the French appears to them a fit of 
 delirium. When they speak, it is with delibera-20 
 tion, without gestures and without passion; 
 they listen without interrupting you; they are 
 silent for whole days together, and they by no 
 means pique themselves on supporting conver- 
 sation. If they walk, it is always leisurely, and 25 
 on business. They have no idea of our trouble- 
 some activity, and our walks backwards and 
 forwards for amusement. Continually seated, 
 they pass whole days smoking, with their legs 
 crossed, their pipes in their mouths, and almost so 
 without changing their attitude." Englishmen 
 
146 THE TURK 
 
 present as great a contrast to the Ottoman as the 
 French; as a late Enghsh traveler brings before 
 us, apropos of seeing some Turks in quarantine: 
 "Certainly," he says, '^ Englishmen are the least 
 
 5 able to wait, and the Turks the most so, of any 
 people I have ever seen. To impede an English- 
 man's locomotion on a journey, is equivalent to 
 stopping the circulation of his blood; to disturb 
 the repose of a Turk on his, is to reawaken him 
 
 10 to a painful sense of the miseries of life. The 
 one nation at rest is as much tormented as Pro- 
 metheus, chained to his rock, with the vulture 
 feeding on him ; the other in motion is as uncom- 
 fortable as Ixion tied to his ever-moving wheel." ^ 
 
 15 However, the barbarian, when roused to action, 
 is a very different being from the barbarian 
 at rest. "The Turk," says Mr. Thornton, "is 
 usually placid, hypochondriac, and unimpas- 
 sioned; but, when the customary sedateness of 
 
 20 his temper is ruffled, his passions . . . are furi- 
 ous and uncontrollable. The individual seems 
 possessed with all the ungovernable fury of a 
 multitude; and all ties, all attachments, all 
 natural and moral obligations, are forgotten or 
 
 25 despised, till his rage subsides." A similar re- 
 mark is made by a writer of the day : " The Turk 
 on horseback has no resemblance to the Turk 
 reclining on his carpet. He there assumes a 
 vigor, and displays a dexterity, which few 
 
 30 Europeans would be capable of emulating; no 
 
 ^ Formby's Visit, p. 70. 
 
PAST AND PRESENT OF OTTOMANS 147 
 
 horsemen surpass the Turks; and, with all the 
 indolence of which they are accused, no people 
 are more fond of the violent exercise of ricUng." 
 
 So was it with their ancestors, the Tartars; 
 now dosing on their horses or their wagons, now 5 
 galloping over the plains from morning to night. 
 However, these successive phases of Turkish 
 character, as reported by travelers, have seemed 
 to readers as inconsistencies in their reports; 
 Thornton accepts the inconsistency. "The na-io 
 tional character of the Turks," he says, "is a 
 composition of contradictory qualities. We find 
 them brave and pusillanimous; gentle and 
 ferocious; resolute and inconstant; active and 
 indolent; fastidiously abstemious, and indis-is 
 criminately indulgent. The great are alternately 
 haughty and humble, arrogant and cringing, 
 liberal and sordid." What is this but to say in 
 one word that we find them barbarians ? 
 
 According to these distinct moods or phases 20 
 of character, they will leave very various impres- 
 sions of themselves on the minds of successive 
 beholders. A traveler finds them in their ordi- 
 nary state in repose and serenity ; he is surprised 
 and startled to find them so different from what 25 
 he imagined; he admires and extols them, and 
 inveighs against the prejudice which has slan- 
 dered them to the European w^orld. He finds them 
 mild and patient, tender to the brute creation, as 
 becomes the children of a Tartar shepherd, kind 30 
 ^ Bell's Geography. 
 
148 THE TURK 
 
 and hospitable, self-possessed and dignified, the 
 lowest classes sociable with each other, and the 
 children gamesome. It is true; they are as noble 
 as the lion of the desert, and as gentle and as 
 
 5 playful as the fireside cat. Our traveler observes 
 all this ; ^ and seems to forget that from the 
 humblest to the highest of the feline tribe, from 
 the cat to the lion, the most wanton and ty- 
 rannical cruelty alternates with qualities more 
 
 10 engaging or more elevated. Other barbarous 
 tribes also have their innocent aspects — from 
 the Scythians in the classical poets and historians 
 down to the Lewchoo islanders in the pages of 
 Basil Hall. 
 
 15 But whatever be the natural excellences of 
 the Turks, progressive they are not. This Sir 
 Charles Fellows seems to allow: "My intimacy, 
 with the character of the Turks," he says, " which 
 has led me to think so highly of their moral ex- 
 
 20cellence, has not given me the same favorable 
 impression of the development of their mental 
 powders. Their refinement is of manners and 
 affections; there is little cultivation or activity 
 of mind among them." This admission implies 
 
 25 a great deal, and brings us to a fresh considera- 
 tion. Observe, they were in the eighth century 
 of their political existence when Thornton and 
 Volney lived among them, and these authors 
 report of them as follows: "Their buildings," 
 
 30 says Thornton, "are heavy in their proportions, 
 ' Vid. Sir Charles Fellows' Asia Minor. 
 
PAST AND PRESEXT OF OTTOMANS 149 
 
 bad in detail, both in taste and execution, fan- 
 tastic in decoration, and destitute of genius. 
 Their cities are not decorated with public monu- 
 ments, whose object is to enliven or to embellish." 
 Their religion forbids them every sort of paint- 5 
 ing, sculpture, or engraving; thus the fine arts 
 cannot exist among them. They have no music 
 but vocal; and know of no accompaniment ex- 
 cept a bass of one note like that of the bagpipe. 
 Their singing is in a great measure recitative, lO 
 with little variation of note. They have scarcely 
 any notion of medicine or surgery; and they do 
 not allow of anatomy. As to science, the tele- 
 scope, the microscope, the electric battery, are 
 unknown, except as playthings. The compass 15 
 is not universally employed in their navy, nor 
 are its common purposes thoroughly understood. 
 Navigation, astronomy, geography, chemistry, 
 are either not known, or practiced only on anti- 
 quated and exploded principles. As to their 20 
 civil and criminal codes of law, these are unalter- 
 ably fixed in the Koran. . . . 
 
 Compare the Rome of Junius Brutus to the 
 Rome of Constantine, 800 years afterwards. In 
 each of these polities there was a continuous 25 
 progression, and the end was unlike the begin- 
 ning ; but the Turks, except that they have gained 
 the faculty of political union, are pretty much 
 what they were when they crossed the Jaxartes 
 and Oxus. Again, at the time of Togrul Beg, the 30 
 Greek schism also took place; now from Michael 
 
150 THE TURK 
 
 Cerularius, in 1054, to Anthimus, in 1853, Patri- 
 archs of Constantinople, eight centuries have 
 passed of religious deadness and insensibility: a 
 longer time has passed in China of a similar 
 5 political inertness: yet China has preserved at 
 least the civilization, and Greece the ecclesiastical 
 science, with which they respectively passed into 
 their long sleep; but the Turks of this day are 
 still in the less than infancy of art, literature, 
 10 philosophy, and general knowledge; and we may 
 fairly conclude that, if they have not learned 
 the very alphabet of science in eight hundred 
 years, they are not likely to set to work on it in 
 the nine hundredth. 
 
 15 It is true that in the last quarter of a century 
 efforts have been made by the government of 
 Constantinople to innovate on the existing con- 
 dition of its people; and it has addressed itself 
 in the first instance to certain details of daily 
 
 20 Turkish life. We must take it for granted that it 
 began with such changes as were easiest ; if so, its 
 failure in these small matters suggests how little 
 ground there is for hope of success in other 
 advances more important and difficult. Every 
 
 25 one knows that in the details of dress, carriage, 
 and general manners, the Turks are very differ- 
 ent from Europeans : so different, and so con- 
 sistently different, that the contrariety would 
 seem to arise from some difference of essential 
 
PAST AND PRESENT OF OTTOMANS 151 
 
 principle. "This dissimilitude," says Mr. Thorn- 
 ton, "which pervades the whole of their habits, 
 is so general, even in things of apparent insig- 
 nificance, as almost to indicate design rather than 
 accident. ..." 5 
 
 To learn from others, you must entertain a 
 respect for them; no one listens to those whom 
 he contemns. Christian nations make progress 
 in secular matters, because they are aware they 
 have many things to learn, and do not mind from lo 
 whom they learn them, so that he be able to teach. 
 It is true that Christianity, as well as Mahome- 
 tanism, which imitated it, has its visible polity, 
 and its universal rule, and its especial preroga- 
 tives and powers and lessons, for its disciples. 1.5 
 But, with a Divine wisdom, and contrary to its 
 human copyist, it has carefully guarded (if I 
 may use the expression) against extending its 
 revelations to any point which would blunt the 
 keenness of human research or the activity of 20 
 human toil. It has taken those matters for its 
 field in which the human mind, left to itself, 
 could not profitably exercise itself, or progress, 
 if it would; it has confined its revelations to the 
 province of theology, only indirectly touching 25 
 on other departments of knowledge, so far as 
 theological truth accidentally affects them; and 
 it has shown an equally remarkable care in pre- 
 venting the introduction of the spirit of caste 
 or race into its constitution or administration. 30 
 Pure nationalism it abhors; its authoritative 
 
152 THE TURK 
 
 documents pointedly ignore the distinction of 
 Jew and Gentile, and warn us that the first often 
 becomes the last; while its subsequent history 
 has illustrated this great principle, by its awful, 
 
 sand absolute, and inscrutable, and irreversible 
 passage from country to country, as its territory 
 and its home. Such, then, it has been in the 
 Divine counsels, and such, too, as realized in fact; 
 but man has ways of his own, and, even before 
 
 10 its introduction into the world, the inspired 
 announcements, which preceded it, were distorted 
 by the people to whom they were given, to min- 
 ister to views of a very different kind. The 
 secularized Jews, relying on the supernatural 
 
 15 favors locally and temporally bestowed on them- 
 selves, fell into the error of supposing that a con- 
 quest of the earth was reserved for some mighty 
 warrior of their own race, and that, in compen- 
 sation of the reverses which befell them, they 
 
 20 were to become an imperial nation. 
 
 What a contrast is presented to us by these 
 different ideas of a universal empire ! The dis- 
 tinctions of race are indelible; a Jew cannot 
 become a Greek, or a Greek a Jew; birth is an 
 
 25 event of past time; according to the Judaizers, 
 their nation, as a nation, was ever to be domi- 
 nant; and all other nations, as such, were in- 
 ferior and subject. What was the necessary 
 consequence? There is nothing men more pride 
 
 30 themselves on than birth, for this very reason, 
 that it is irrevocable; it can neither be given to 
 
PAST AND PRESENT OF OTTOMANS 153 
 
 those who have it not, nor taken away from 
 those who have. The Almighty can do anything 
 which admits of doing ; He can compensate every 
 evil; but a Greek poet says that there is one 
 thing impossible to Him — to undo what is 5 
 done. Without throwing the thought into a 
 shape which borders on the profane, we may see 
 in it the reason why the idea of national power 
 was so dear and so dangerous to the Jew. It was 
 his consciousness of inalienable superiority thatio 
 led him to regard Roman and Greek, Syrian and 
 Egyptian, with ineffable arrogance and scorn. 
 Christians, too, are accustomed to think of those 
 who are not Christians as their inferiors ; but the 
 conviction which possesses them, that they have 15 
 what others have not, is obviously not open to 
 the temptation which nationalism presents. Ac- 
 cording to their own faith, there is no insuperable 
 gulf between themselves and the rest of mankind; 
 there is not a being in the whole world but is 20 
 invited by their religion to occupy the same 
 position as themselves, and, did he come, would 
 stand on their very level, as if he had ever been 
 there. Such accessions to their body they con- 
 tinually receive, and they are bound under ob-25 
 ligation of duty to promote them. They never 
 can pronounce of any one, now external to them, 
 that he will not some day be among them; they 
 never can pronounce of themselves that, though 
 they are now within, they may not some day 30 
 be found outside, the Divine polity. Such are 
 
154 THE TURK 
 
 the sentiments inculcated by Christianity, even 
 in the contemplation of the very superiority 
 which it imparts; even there it is a principle, not 
 of repulsion between man and man, but of good 
 
 5 fellowship; but as to subjects of secular knowl- 
 edge, since here it does not arrogate any superi- 
 ority at all, it has in fact no tendency whatever 
 to center its disciple's contemplation on himself, 
 or to alienate him from his kind. He readily 
 
 10 acknowledges and defers to the superiority in 
 art or science of those, if so be, who are unhap- 
 pily enemies to Christianity. He admits the 
 principle of progress on all matters of knowledge 
 and conduct on which the Creator has not decided 
 
 15 the truth already by revealing it ; and he is at 
 all times ready to learn, in those merely secular 
 matters, from those who can teach him best. 
 Thus it is that Christianity, even negatively, and 
 without contemplating its positive influences, is 
 
 20 the religion of civilization. 
 
III. UNIVERSITIES 
 
 What is a University? 
 
 If I were asked to describe as briefly and 
 popularly as I could, what a University was, I 
 should draw my answer from its ancient desig- 
 nation of a Studium Generale, or "School of 
 Universal Learning." This description implies 5 
 the assemblage of strangers from all parts in one 
 spot — from all parts; else, how will you find 
 professors and students for every department of 
 knowledge? and in one spot; else, how can there 
 be any school at all ? Accordingly, in its simple lo 
 and rudimental form, it is a school of knowledge 
 of every kind, consisting of teachers and learners 
 from every quarter. Many things are requisite 
 to complete and satisfy the idea embodied in this 
 description ; but such as this a University seems 15 
 to be in its essence, a place for the communi- 
 cation and circulation of thought, by means of 
 personal intercourse, through a wide extent of 
 country. 
 
 Mutual education, in a large sense of the word, 20 
 is one of the great and incessant occupations of 
 human society, carried on partly with set pur- 
 pose, and partly not. One generation forms 
 155 
 
156 UNIVERSITIES 
 
 another; and the existing generation is ever act- 
 ing and reacting upon itself in the persons of its 
 individual members. Now, in this process, books, 
 I need scarcely say, that is, the litera scripta, 
 
 5 are one special instrument. It is true; and em- 
 phatically so in this age. Considering the pro- 
 digious powers of the press, and how they are 
 developed at this time in the never intermitting 
 issue of periodicals, tracts, pamphlets, works in 
 
 10 series, and light literature, we must allow there 
 never was a time which promised fairer for dis- 
 pensing with every other means of information 
 and instruction. What can we want more, you 
 will say, for the intellectual education of the 
 
 15 whole man, and for every man, Mian so exuberant 
 and diversified and persistent a promulgation 
 of all kinds of knowledge ? Why, you will ask, 
 need we go up to knowledge, when knowledge 
 comes down to us ? The Sibyl wrote her prophe- 
 
 20cies upon the leaves of the forest, and wasted 
 them; but here such careless profusion might be 
 prudently indulged, for it can be afforded with- 
 out loss, in consequence of the almost fabulous 
 fecundity of the instrument which these latter 
 
 25 ages have invented. We have sermons in stones, 
 and books in the running brooks; works larger 
 and more comprehensive than those which have 
 gained for ancients an immortality, issue forth 
 every morning, and are projected onwards to 
 
 30 the ends of the earth at the rate of hundreds of 
 miles a day. Our seats are strewed, our pave- 
 
WHAT IS A UNIVERSITY? 157 
 
 merits are powdered, with swarms of little tracts ; 
 and the very bricks of our city walls preach wis- 
 dom, by informing us by their placards where we 
 can at once cheaply purchase it. 
 
 I allow all this, and much more; such cer- 5 
 tainly is our popular education, and its effects are 
 remarkable. Nevertheless, after all, even in this 
 age, whenever men are really serious about get- 
 ting what, in the language of trade, is called " a 
 good article," when they aim at something pre- 10 
 cise, something refined, something really lumi- 
 nous, something really large, something choice, 
 they go to another market ; they avail themselves, 
 in some shape or other, of the rival method, the 
 ancient method, of oral instruction, of present 15 
 communication between man and man, of teachers 
 instead of learning, of the personal influence of a 
 master, and the humble initiation of a disciple, 
 and, in consequence, of great centers of pilgrim- 
 age and throng, which such a method of edu- 20 
 cation necessarily involves. 
 
 If the actions of men may be taken as any test 
 of their convictions, then we have reason for say- 
 ing this, viz. : that the province and the ines- 
 timable benefit of the litera scripta is that of 25 
 being a record of truth, and an authority of appeal, 
 and an instrument of teaching in the hands of a 
 teacher; but that, if we wish to become exact and 
 fully furnished in any branch of knowledge which 
 is diversified and complicated, we must consult 30 
 the living man and listen to his living voice. . . . 
 
158 UNIVEBSITIES 
 
 No book can convey the special spirit and deli- 
 cate peculiarities of its subject with that rapid- 
 ity and certainty which attend on the sympathy 
 of mind with mind, through the eyes, the look, 
 5 the accent, and the manner, in casual expressions 
 thrown off at the moment, and the unstudied 
 turns of familiar conversation. But I am already 
 dwelling too long on what is but an incidental 
 portion of my main subject. Whatever be the 
 10 cause, the fact is undeniable. The general prin- 
 ciples of any study you may learn by books at 
 home; but the detail, the color, the tone, the 
 air, the life which makes it live in us, you must 
 catch all these from those in whom it lives al- 
 io ready. You must imitate the student in French 
 or Germian, who is not content with his gram- 
 mar, but goes to Paris or Dresden: you must 
 take example from the young artist, who aspires 
 to visit the great Masters in Florence and in 
 20 Rome. Till we have discovered some intellect- 
 ual daguerreotype, which takes off the course of 
 thought, and the form, lineaments, and features 
 of truth, as completely and minutely, as the 
 optical instrument reproduces the sensible ob- 
 25Ject, we must come to the teachers of wisdom 
 to learn wisdom, we must repair to the fountain, 
 and drink there. Portions of it may go from 
 thence to the ends of the earth by means of 
 books; but the fullness is in one place alone. It 
 30 is in such assemblages and congregations of in- 
 tellect that books themselves, the masterpieces 
 
WHAT IS A UNIVERSITY ? 159 
 
 of human genius, are written, or at least origi- 
 nated. 
 
 The principle on which I have been insisting 
 is so obvious, and instances in point are so ready, 
 that I should think it tiresome to proceed with 5 
 the subject, except that one or two illustrations 
 may serve to explain my own language about it, 
 which may not have done justice to the doctrine 
 which it has been intended to enforce. 
 
 For instance, the polished manners and high- 10 
 bred bearing which are so difficult of attainment, 
 and so strictly personal when attained, — which 
 are so much admired in society, from society 
 are acquired. All that goes to constitute a gen- 
 tleman, — the carriage, gait, address, gestures, 15 
 voice; the ease, the self-possession, the courtesy, 
 the power of conversing, the talent of not offend- 
 ing; the lofty principle, the delicacy of thought, 
 the happiness of expression, the taste and pro- 
 priety, the generosity and forbearance, the can- 20 
 dor and consideration, the openness of hand 
 — these qualities, some of them come by nature, 
 some of them may be found in any rank, some of 
 them are a direct precept of Christianity; but 
 the full assemblage of them, bound up in the 25 
 unity of an individual character, do we expect 
 they can be learned from books? are they not 
 necessarily acquired, where they are to be found, 
 in high society? The very nature of the case 
 leads us to say so ; you cannot fence without an 30 
 antagonist, nor challenge all comers in disputa- 
 
160 UNIVERSITIES 
 
 tion before j^ou have supported a thesis; and in 
 Hke manner, it stands to reason, you cannot learn 
 to converse till you have the world to converse 
 with; you cannot unlearn your natural bashful- 
 
 sness, or awkwardness, or stiffness, or other be- 
 setting deformity, till you serve your time in 
 some school of manners. Well, and is it not so 
 in matter of fact? The metropolis, the court, 
 the great houses of the land, are the centers to 
 
 10 which at stated times the country comes up, as to 
 shrines of refinement and good taste; and then 
 in due time the country goes back again home, 
 enriched with a portion of the social accomplish- 
 ments, which those very visits serve to call out 
 
 15 and heighten in the gracious dispensers of them. 
 We are unable to conceive how the "gentleman- 
 like" can otherwise be maintained; and main- 
 tained in this way it is. . . . 
 
 Religious teaching itself affords us an illus- 
 
 2otration of our subject to a certain point. It 
 does not indeed seat itself merely in centers of 
 the world; this is impossible from the nature of 
 the case. It is intended for the many not the 
 few; its subject-matter is truth necessary for us, 
 
 25 not truth recondite and rare; but it concurs in 
 the principle of a University so far as this, that 
 its great instrument, or rather organ, has ever 
 been that which nature prescribes in all education, 
 the personal presence of a teacher, or, in theo- 
 
 30 logical language, Oral Tradition. It is the living 
 voice, the breathing form, the expressive counte- 
 
WHAT IS A UNIVEllSITYf 161 
 
 nance, which preaches, which catechises. Truth, 
 a subtle, invisible, manifold spirit, is poured into 
 the mind of the scholar by his eyes and ears, 
 through his affections, imagination, and reason; 
 it is poured into his mind and is sealed up there 5 
 in perpetuity, by propounding and repeating it, 
 by questioning and requestioning, by correcting 
 and explaining, by progressing and then recurring 
 to first principles, by all those ways which are 
 implied in the word "catechising." In the first 10 
 ages, it was a work of long time; months, some- 
 times years, were devoted to the arduous task 
 of disabusing the mind of the incipient Christian 
 of its pagan errors, and of molding it upon the 
 Christian faith. The Scriptures indeed were at 15 
 hand for the study of those who could avail 
 themselves of them; but St. Irenseus does not 
 hesitate to speak of whole races, who had been 
 converted to Christianity, without being able to 
 read them. To be unable to read or write was in 20 
 those times no evidence of want of learning : the 
 hermits of the deserts were, in this sense of the 
 word, illiterate; yet the great St. Anthony, 
 though he knew not letters, was a match in dis- 
 putation for the learned philosophers who came 25 
 to try him. Didymus again, the great Alex- 
 andrian theologian, was blind. The ancient dis- 
 cipline, called the Disciplina Arcani, involved the 
 same principle. The more sacred doctrines of 
 Revelation were not committed to books but 30 
 passed on by successive tradition. The teach- 
 
162 UNIVERSITIES 
 
 ing on the Blessed Trinity, and the Eucharist 
 appears to have been so handed down for some 
 hundred years; and when at length reduced to 
 writing, it has filled many folios, yet has not been 
 5 exhausted. 
 
 But I have said more than enough in illustra- 
 tion; end as I began — a University is a place 
 of concourse, whither students come from every 
 quarter for every kind of knowledge. You can- 
 10 not have the best of every kind everywhere ; you 
 must go to some great city or emporium for it. 
 There you have all the choicest productions 
 of nature and art all together, which you find 
 each in its own separate place elsewhere. All 
 15 the riches of the land, and of the earth, are car- 
 ried up thither; there are the best markets, and 
 there the best workmen. It is the center of 
 trade, the supreme court of fashion, the umpire 
 of rival talents, and the standard of things rare 
 20 and precious. It is the place for seeing galleries 
 of first-rate pictures, and for hearing wonderful 
 voices and performers of transcendent skill. It 
 is the place for great preachers, great orators, 
 great nobles, great statesmen. In the nature of 
 25 things, greatness and unity go together; excel- 
 lence implies a center. And such, for the third 
 or fourth time, is a University; I hope I do not 
 weary out the reader by repeating it. It is the 
 . place to which a thousand schools make con- 
 so tributions ; in which the intellect may safely 
 range and speculate, sure to find its equal in 
 
UNIVERSITY LIFE: ATHENS 163 
 
 some antagonist activity, and its judge in the 
 tribunal of truth. It is a place where inquiry 
 is pushed forward, and discoveries verified and 
 perfected, and rashness rendered innocuous, and 
 error exposed, by the collision of mind with mind, 5 
 and knowledge with knowledge. It is the place 
 where the professor becomes eloquent, and is a 
 missionary and a preacher, displaying his science 
 in its most complete and most winning form, 
 pouring it forth with the zeal of enthusiasm, and lO 
 lighting up his own love of it in the breasts of 
 his hearers. It is the place where the catechist 
 makes good his ground as he goes, treading in the 
 truth day by day into the ready memory, and 
 wedging and tightening it into the expandingi5 
 reason. It is a place which wins the admiration 
 of the young by its celebrity, kindles the affec- 
 tions of the middle-aged by its beauty, and rivets 
 the fidelity of the old by its associations. It is a 
 seat of wisdom, a light of the world, a minister of 20 
 the faith, an Alma Mater of the rising generation. 
 It is this and a great deal more, and demands a 
 somewhat better head and hand than mine to 
 describe it well. 
 
 University Life 
 
 ATHENS 
 
 It has been my desire, were I able, to bring 25 
 before the reader what Athens may have been, 
 viewed as what we have since called a University; 
 
164 UNIVERSITIES 
 
 and to do this, not with any purpose of writing 
 a panegyric on a heathen city, or of denying 
 its many deformities, or of conceahng what was 
 morally base in what was intellectually great, but 
 
 5 just the contrary, of representing as they really 
 were ; so far, that is, as to enable him to see what 
 a University is, in the very constitution of society 
 and in its own idea, what is its nature and object, 
 and what its needs of aid and support external to 
 
 10 itself to complete that nature and to secure that 
 object. 
 
 So now let us fancy our Scythian, or Armenian, 
 or African, or Italian, or Gallic student, after 
 tossing on the Saronic waves, which would be his 
 
 15 more ordinary course to Athens, at last casting 
 anchor at Piraeus. He is of any condition or rank 
 of life you please, and may be made to order, 
 from a prince to a peasant. Perhaps he is some 
 Cleanthes, who has been a boxer in the public 
 
 20 games. How did it ever cross his brain to betake 
 himself to Athens in search of wisdom ? or, if he 
 came thither by accident, how did the love of it 
 ever touch his heart ? But so it was, to Athens he 
 came with three drachms in his girdle, and he got 
 
 25 his livelihood by drawing water, carrying loads, 
 and the like servile occupations. He attached 
 himself, of all philosophers, to Zeno.the Stoic, — 
 to Zeno, the most high-minded, the most haughty 
 of speculators; and out of his daily earnings the 
 
 30 poor scholar brought his master the daily sum of 
 an obolus, in payment for attending his lectures. 
 
UNIVERSITY LIFE: ATHENS 165 
 
 Such progress did he make, that on Zeno's death 
 he actually was his successor in his school; and, 
 if my memory does not play me false, he is the 
 author of a hymn to the Supreme Being, which is 
 one of the noblest effusions of the kind in classical 5 
 poetry. Yet, even when he was the head of a 
 school, he continued in his illiberal toil as if he 
 had been a monk ; and, it is said, that once, when 
 the wind took his pallium, and blew it aside, he 
 was discovered to have no other garment at all — lo 
 something like the German student who came up 
 to Heidelberg with nothing upon him but a great 
 coat and a pair of pistols. 
 
 Or it is another disciple of the Porch — Stoic 
 by nature, earlier than by profession — who is 15 
 entering the city; but in what different fashion 
 he comes ! It is no other than Marcus, Emperor 
 of Rome and philosopher. Professors long since 
 were summoned from Athens for his service, when 
 he was a youth, and now he comes, after his vie- 20 
 tories in the battlefield, to make his acknowledg- 
 ments at the end of life, to the city of wisdom, and 
 to submit himself to an initiation into the Eleusin- 
 ian mysteries. 
 
 Or it is a young man of great promise as an 25 
 orator, were it not for his weakness of chest, which 
 renders it necessary that he should acquire the art 
 of speaking without over-exertion, and should 
 adopt a delivery sufficient for the display of his 
 rhetorical talents on the one hand, yet merciful 30 
 to his physical resources on the other. He is 
 
166 UNIVERSITIES 
 
 called Cicero; he will stop but a short time, and 
 will pass over to Asia Minor and its cities, before 
 he returns to continue a career which will render 
 his name immortal; and he will like his short 
 
 5 sojourn at Athens so well, that he will take good 
 care to send his son thither at an earlier age than 
 he visited it himself. 
 
 But see where comes from Alexandria (for we 
 need not be very solicitous about anachronisms), 
 
 10 a young man from twenty to twenty-two, who 
 has narrowly escaped drowning on his voyage, 
 and is to remain at Athens as many as eight or 
 ten years, yet in the course of that time will not 
 learn a line of Latin, thinking it enough to be- 
 
 15 come accomplished in Greek composition, and in 
 that he will succeed. He is a grave person, and 
 difficult to make out; some say he is a Christian, 
 something or other in the Christian line his father 
 is for certain. His name is Gregory, he is by 
 
 20 country a Cappadocian, and will in time become 
 preeminently a theologian, and one of the prin- 
 cipal Doctors of the Greek Church. 
 
 Or it is one Horace, a youth of low stature and 
 black hair, whose father has given him an edu- 
 
 25 cation at Rome above his rank in life, and now is 
 sending him to finish it at Athens; he is said to 
 have a turn for poetry : a hero he is not, and it 
 were well if he knew it; but he is caught by the 
 enthusiasm of the hour, and goes off campaigning 
 
 30 with Brutus and Cassius, and will leave his shield 
 behind him on the field of Philippi. 
 
UNIVEBSITT LIFE: ATHENS 167 
 
 Or it is a mere boy of fifteen : his name Euna- 
 pius; though the voyage was not long, sea sick- 
 ness, or confinement, or bad Uving on board the 
 vessel, threw him into a fever, and, when the 
 passengers landed in the evening at Piraeus, he 5 
 could not stand. His countrymen w^ho accom- 
 panied him, took him up among them and carried 
 him to the house of the great teacher of the day, 
 Pro2eresius, who was a friend of the captain's, 
 and whose fame it was which drew the enthusi-io 
 astic youth to Athens. His companions under- 
 stand the sort of place they are in, and, with the 
 license of academic students, they break into the 
 philosopher's house, though he appears to have 
 retired for the night, and proceed to make them- 15 
 selves free of it, with an absence of ceremony, 
 which is only not impudence, because Proseresius 
 takes it so easily. Strange introduction for our 
 stranger to a seat of learning, but not out of keep- 
 ing with Athens; for what could you expect of a 20 
 place where there was a mob of youths and not 
 even the pretense of control; where the poorer 
 lived any how, and got on as they could, and the 
 teachers themselves had no protection from the 
 humors and caprices of the students who filled 25 
 their lecture halls ? However, as to this Euna- 
 pius, Proseresius took a fancy to the boy, and told 
 him curious stories about Athenian life. He 
 himself had come up to the University with one 
 Hephsestion, and they were even worse off than 30 
 Cleanthes the Stoic; for they had only one cloak 
 
168 UNIVERSITIES 
 
 between them, and nothing whatever besides, 
 except some old bedding; so when Proaeresius 
 went abroad, Hephaestion lay in bed, and prac- 
 ticed himself in oratory; and then Hephsestion 
 
 5 put on the cloak, and Proseresius crept under the 
 coverlet. At another time there was so fierce 
 a feud between what would be called " town and 
 gown" in an English University, that the Pro- 
 fessors did not dare lecture in public, for fear of 
 
 10 ill treatment. 
 
 But a freshman like Eunapius soon got experi- 
 ence for himself of the ways and manners preva- 
 lent in Athens. Such a one as he had hardly 
 entered the city, when he was caught hold of by 
 
 15 a party of the academic youth, who proceeded to 
 practice on his awkwardness and his ignorance. 
 At first sight one wonders at their childishness; 
 but the like conduct obtained in the mediaeval 
 Universities; and not many months have passed 
 
 20 away since the journals have told us of sober 
 Englishmen, given to matter-of-fact calculations, 
 and to the anxieties of money making, pelting 
 each other with snowballs on their own sacred 
 territory, and defying the magistracy, when they 
 
 25 would interfere with their privileges of becom- 
 ing boys. So I suppose we must attribute it to 
 something or other in human nature. Meanwhile, 
 there stands the newcomer, surrounded by a circle 
 of his new associates, who forthwith proceed to 
 
 30 frighten, and to banter, and to make a fool of him, 
 to the extent of their wit. Some address him with 
 
UNIVERSITY LIFE: ATHENS 169 
 
 mock politeness, others with fierceness; and so 
 they conduct him in solemn procession across the 
 Agora to the Baths; and as they approach, they 
 dance about him like madmen. But this was to 
 be the end of his trial, for the Bath was a sort of 5 
 initiation; he thereupon received the pallium, or 
 University gown, and was suffered by his tor- 
 mentors to depart in peace. One alone is re- 
 corded as having been exempted from this perse- 
 cution; it was a youth graver and loftier thanio 
 even St. Gregory himself : but it was not from his 
 force of character, but at the instance of Gregory, 
 that he escaped. Gregory was his bosom friend, 
 and was ready in Athens to shelter him when 
 he came. It was another Saint and Doctor; the 15 
 great Basil, then, (it would appear,) as Gregory, 
 but a catechumen of the Church. 
 
 But to return to our freshman. His troubles 
 are not at an end, though he has got his gown 
 upon him. Where is he to lodge? whom is he 20 
 to attend? He finds himself seized, before he 
 well knows where he is, by another party of men 
 or three or four parties at once, like foreign port- 
 ers at a landing, who seize on the baggage of the 
 perplexed stranger, and thrust half a dozen cards 25 
 into his unwilling hands. Our youth is plied by 
 the hangers-on of professor this, or sophist that, 
 each of whom wishes the fame or the profit of 
 having a houseful. We will say that he escapes 
 from their hands, — but then he will have to 30 
 choose for himself where he will put up ; and, to 
 
170 UNIVERSITIES 
 
 tell the truth, with all the praise I have already 
 given, and the praise I shall have to give, to 
 the city of mind, nevertheless, between ourselves, 
 the brick and wood which formed it, the actual 
 
 5 tenements, where flesh and blood had to lodge 
 (always excepting the mansions of great men of 
 the place), do not seem to have been much better 
 than those of Greek or Turkish tow^ns, which are 
 at this moment a topic of interest and ridicule 
 
 10 in the public prints. A lively picture has lately 
 been set before us of Gallipoli. Take, says the 
 writer,^ a multitude of the dilapidated outhouses 
 found in farm-yards in England, of the rickety 
 old wooden tenements, the cracked, shutterless 
 
 15 structures of planks and tiles, the sheds and stalls, 
 which our bye lanes, or fish-markets, or river- 
 sides can supply; tumble them down on the 
 declivity of a bare bald hill; let the spaces be- 
 tween house and house, thus accidentally deter- 
 
 20 mined, be understood to form streets, winding of 
 course for no reason, and with no meaning, up and 
 down the town; the roadway always narrow, the 
 breadth never uniform, the separate houses bulg- 
 ing or retiring below, as circumstances may have 
 
 25 determined, and leaning forward till they meet 
 overhead — and you have a good idea of Gal- 
 lipoli. I question w^hether this picture would 
 not nearly correspond to the special seat of the 
 Muses in ancient times. Learned writers assure 
 
 sous distinctly that the houses of Athens were for 
 
 ^Mr. Russell's Letters in the Times newspaper (1854). 
 
UNIVERSITY LIFE: ATHENS 17 1 
 
 the most part small and mean; that the streets 
 were crooked and narrow; that the upper stories 
 projected over the roadway; and that staircases, 
 balustrades, and doors that opened outwards 
 obstructed it — a remarkable coincidence of 5 
 description. I do not doubt at all, though his- 
 tory is silent, that that roadway was jolting to 
 carriages, and all but impassable; and that it 
 was traversed by drains, as freely as any Turkish 
 town now. Athens seems in these respects to 10 
 have been below the average cities of its time. 
 " A stranger," says an ancient, " might doubt, on 
 the sudden view, if really he saw Athens." 
 
 I grant all this, and much more, if you will; 
 but, recollect, Athens was the home of the intel-15 
 lectual and beautiful; not of low mechanical 
 contrivances and material organization. Why 
 stop within your lodgings counting the rents in 
 your wall or the holes in your tiling, when nature 
 and art call you away? You must put up with 20 
 such a chamber, and a table, and a stool, and a 
 sleeping board, anywhere else in the three con- 
 tinents; one place does not differ from another 
 indoors; your magalia in Africa, or your grottoes 
 in Syria are not perfection. I suppose you did 25 
 not come to Athens to swarm up a ladder, or to 
 grope about a closet : you came to see and to 
 hear, what hear and see you could not elsewhere. 
 What food for the intellect is it possible to pro- 
 cure indoors, that you stay there looking about 30 
 you ? do you think to read there ? where are your 
 
172 UNIVERSITIES 
 
 books? do you expect to purchase books at 
 Athens — you are much out in your calculations. 
 True it is, we at this day, who live in the nine- 
 teenth century, have the books of Greece as a 
 
 5 perpetual memorial ; and copies there have been, 
 since the time that they were written; but you 
 need not go to Athens to procure them, nor would 
 you find them in Athens. Strange to say, strange 
 to the nineteenth century, that in the age of Plato 
 
 10 and Thucydides, there was not, it is said, a book- 
 shop in the whole place : nor was the book trade 
 in existence till the very time of Augustus. 
 Libraries, I suspect, were the bright invention of 
 Attains or the Ptolemies; ^ I doubt whether 
 
 15 Athens had a library till the reign of Hadrian. 
 It was what the student gazed on, what he heard, 
 what he caught by the magic of sympathy, not 
 what he read, which was the education furnished 
 by Athens. 
 
 20 He leaves his narrow lodging early in the 
 morning; and not till night, if even then, will he 
 return. It is but a crib or kennel, in which 
 he sleeps when the weather is inclement or the 
 ground damp; in no respect a home. And he 
 
 25 goes out of doors, not to read the day's news- 
 paper, or to buy the gay shilling volume, but to 
 imbibe the invisible atmosphere of genius, and 
 
 ^ I do not go into controversy on the subject, for which the 
 reader must have recourse to Lipsius, Morhof , Boeckh, Bekker, 
 etc. ; and this of course apphes to whatever historical matter I 
 introduce, or shall introduce. 
 
UNIVERSITY LIFE: ATHENS 173 
 
 to learn by heart the oral traditions of taste. 
 Out he goes; and, leaving the tumble-down 
 town behind him, he mounts the Acropolis to 
 the right, or he turns to the Areopagus on the left. 
 He goes to the Parthenon to study the sculptures 5 
 of Phidias; to the temple of the Dioscuri to see 
 the paintings of Polygnotus. We indeed take 
 our Sophocles or ^Eschylus out of our coat pocket; 
 but, if our sojourner at Athens would understand 
 how a tragic poet can write, he must betake 10 
 himself to the theater on the south, and see and 
 hear the drama literally in action. Or let him go 
 westward to the Agora, and there he will hear 
 Lysias or Andocides pleading, or Demosthenes 
 haranguing. He goes farther west still, along the 15 
 shade of those noble planes, which Cimon has 
 planted there; and he looks around him at the 
 statues and porticoes and vestibules, each by it- 
 self a work of genius and skill, enough to be the 
 making of another city. He passes through the 20 
 city gate, and then he is at the famous Ceramicus; 
 here are the tombs of the mighty dead ; and here, 
 we will suppose, is Pericles himself, the most ele- 
 vated, the most thrilling of orators, converting a 
 funeral oration over the slain into a philosophical 25 
 panegyric of the living. 
 
 Onwards he proceeds still; and now he has 
 come to that still more celebrated Academe, 
 which has bestowed its own name on Universities 
 down to this day ; and there he sees a sight which 30 
 will be graven on his memory till he dies. Many 
 
174 UNIVERSITIES 
 
 are the beauties of the place, the groves, and the 
 statues, and the temple, and the stream of the 
 Cephissus flowing by; many are the lessons 
 which will be taught him day after day by teacher 
 5 or by companion ; but his eye is just now arrested 
 by one object; it is the very presence of Plato. 
 He does not hear a word that he says; he does 
 not care to hear; he asks neither for discourse 
 nor disputation; what he sees is a whole, com- 
 
 10 plete in itself, not to be increased by addition, and 
 greater than anything else. It will be a point in 
 the history of his life; a stay for his memory to 
 rest on, a burning thought in his heart, a bond of 
 union with men of like mind, ever afterwards. 
 
 15 Such is the spell which the living man exerts on 
 his fellows, for good or for evil. How nature 
 impels us to lean upon others, making virtue, or 
 genius, or name, the qualification for our doing 
 so ! A Spaniard is said to have traveled to Italy, 
 
 20 simply to see Livy ; he had his fill of gazing, and 
 then went back again home. Had our young 
 stranger got nothing by his voyage but the sight 
 of the breathing and moving Plato, had he en- 
 tered no lecture room to hear, no gymnasium to 
 
 25 converse, he had got some measure of education, 
 and something to tell of to his grandchildren. 
 
 But Plato is not the only sage, nor the sight of 
 him the only lesson to be learned in this won- 
 derful suburb. It is the region and the realm 
 
 30 of philosophy. Colleges were the inventions of 
 many centuries later; and they imply a sort of 
 
UNIVERSITY LIFE: ATHENS 175 
 
 cloistered life, or at least a life of rule, scarcely 
 natural to an Athenian. It was the boast of the 
 philosophic statesman of Athens, that his coun- 
 trymen achieved by the mere force of nature and 
 the love of the noble and the great, what other 5 
 people aimed at by laborious discipline; and all 
 who came among them were submitted to the 
 same method of education. We have traced our 
 student on his wanderings from the Acropolis to 
 the Sacred Way; and now he is in the region of 10 
 the schools. No awful arch, no window of many- 
 colored lights marks the seats of learning there 
 or elsewhere; philosophy lives out of doors. No 
 close atmosphere oppresses the brain or inflames 
 the eyelid; no long session stiffens the limbs. 15 
 Epicurus is reclining in his garden ; Zeno looks 
 like a divinity in his porch ; the restless Aristotle, 
 on the other side of the city, as if in antagonism 
 to Plato, is walking his pupils off their legs in his 
 Lyceum by the Ilyssus. Our student has deter- 20 
 mined on entering himself as a disciple of Theo- 
 phrastus, a teacher of marvelous popularity, who 
 has brought together two thousand pupils from 
 all parts of the world. He himself is of Lesbos; 
 for masters, as well as students, come hither from 25 
 all regions of the earth — as befits a University. 
 How could Athens have collected hearers in such 
 numbers, unless she had selected teachers of such 
 power? it was the range of territory, which the 
 notion of a University implies, which furnished 30 
 both the quantity of the one and the quality of 
 
176 UNIVERSITIES 
 
 the other. Anaxagoras was from Ionia, Carneades 
 from Africa, Zeno from Cyprus, Protagoras from 
 Thrace, and Gorgias from Sicily. Andromachus 
 was a Syrian, Proseresius an Armenian, Hilarius 
 
 5 a Bithynian, Phihscus a Thessahan, Hadrian a 
 Syrian. Rome is celebrated for her liberality in 
 civil matters; Athens was as liberal in intellect- 
 ual. There was no narrow jealousy, directed 
 against a Professor, because he was not an Athe- 
 
 lOnian; genius and talent were the qualifications; 
 and to bring them to Athens, was to do homage 
 to it as a University. There was a brotherhood 
 and a citizenship of mind. 
 
 Mind came first, and was the foundation of the 
 
 15 academical polity; but it soon brought along with 
 it, and gathered round itself, the gifts of fortune 
 and the prizes of life. As time went on, wisdom 
 was not always sentenced to the bare cloak of 
 Cleanthes; but, beginning in rags, it ended in 
 
 20 fine linen. The Professors became honorable 
 and rich; and the students ranged themselves 
 under their names, and were proud of calling 
 themselves their countrymen. The University 
 was divided into four great nations, as the medise- 
 
 25val antiquarian would style them; and in the 
 middle of the fourth century, Proseresius was the 
 leader or proctor of the Attic, Hephsestion of 
 the Oriental, Epiphanius of the Arabic, and 
 Diophantus of the Pontic. Thus the Professors 
 
 30 were both patrons of clients, and hosts and 
 proxeni of strangers and visitors, as well as mas- 
 
UNIVERSITY LIFE: ATHENS 177 
 
 ters of the schools : and the Cappadocian, Syrian, 
 or SiciHan youth who came to one or other of 
 them, would be encouraged to study by his pro- 
 tection, and to aspire by his example. 
 
 Even Plato, when the schools of Athens were 5 
 not a hundred years old, was in circumstances 
 to enjoy the otium cum dignitate. He had a villa 
 out at Heraclea; and he left his patrimony to 
 his school, in whose hands it remained, not only 
 safe, but fructifying, a marvelous phenomenon in lo 
 tumultuous Greece, for the long space of eight 
 hundred years. Epicurus too had the property 
 of the Gardens where he lectured; and these too 
 became the property of his sect. But in Roman 
 times the chairs of grammar, rhetoric, politics, 15 
 and the four philosophies were handsomely 
 endowed by the State; some of the Professors 
 were themselves statesmen or high functionaries, 
 and brought to their favorite study senatorial 
 rank or Asiatic opulence. 20 
 
 Patrons such as these can compensate to the 
 freshman, in whom we have interested ourselves, 
 for the poorness of his lodging and the turbulence 
 of his companions. In everything there is a 
 better side and a worse; in every place a dis-25 
 reputable set and a respectable, and the one is 
 hardly known at all to the other. Men come 
 away from the same University at this day, with 
 contradictory impressions and contradictory state- 
 ments, according to the society they have found 30 
 there; if you believe the one, nothing goes on 
 
178 UNIVERSITIES 
 
 there as it should be : if you beheve the other, 
 nothing goes on as it should not. Virtue, how- 
 ever, and decency are at least in the minority 
 everywhere, and under some sort of a cloud or 
 
 5 disadvantage ; and this being the case, it is so 
 much gain whenever an Herodes Atticus is found, 
 to throw the influence of wealth and station on 
 the side even of a decorous philosophy. A con- 
 sular man, and the heir of an ample fortune, this 
 
 10 Herod was content to devote his life to a profes- 
 sorship, and his fortune to the patronage of 
 literature. He gave the sophist Polemo about 
 eight thousand pounds, as the sum is calculated, 
 for three declamations. He built at Athens a 
 
 15 stadium six hundred feet long, entirely of white 
 marble, and capable of admitting the whole popu- 
 lation. His theater, erected to the memory of 
 his wife, was made of cedar wood curiously carved. 
 He had two villas, one at Marathon, the place of 
 
 20 his birth, about ten miles from Athens, the other 
 at Cephissia, at the distance of six; and thither 
 he drew to him the elite, and at times the whole 
 body of the students. Long arcades, groves of 
 trees, clear pools for the bath, delighted and 
 
 25 recruited the summer visitor. Never was so 
 brilliant a lecture room as his evening banquet- 
 ing hall ; highly connected students from Rome 
 mixed with the sharp-witted provincial of Greece 
 or Asia Minor; and the flippant sciolist, and the 
 
 30 nondescript visitor, half philosopher, half tramp, 
 met with a reception, courteous always, but suit- 
 
UNIVERSITY LIFE: ATHENS 170 
 
 able to his deserts. Herod was noted for his 
 repartees; and we have instances on record of 
 his setting down, according to the emergency, 
 both the one and the other. 
 
 A higher hne, though a rarer one, was that 5 
 allotted to the youthful Basil. He was one of 
 those men who seem by a sort of fascination to 
 draw others around them even without wishing 
 it. One might have deemed that his gravity and 
 his reserve would have kept them at a distance ; lo 
 but, almost in spite of himself, he was the center 
 of a knot of 3^ouths, who, pagans as most of them 
 were, used Athens honestly for the purpose for 
 which they professed to seek it ; and, disappointed 
 and displeased with the place himself, he seems 15 
 nevertheless to have been the means of their 
 profiting by its advantages. One of these was 
 Sophronius, who afterwards held a high office in 
 the State : Eusebius was another, at that time 
 the bosom friend of Sophronius, and afterwards 20 
 a Bishop. Celsus too is named, who afterwards 
 was raised to the government of Cilicia by the 
 Emperor Julian. Julian himself, in the sequel of 
 unhappy memory, was then at Athens, and known 
 at least to St. Gregory. Another Julian is also 25 
 mentioned, who was afterwards commissioner of 
 the land tax. Here we have a glimpse of the better 
 kind of society among the students of Athens; and 
 it is to the credit of the parties composing it, 
 that such young men as Gregory and Basil, men 30 
 as intimately connected with Christianity, as they 
 
180 UNIVERSITIES 
 
 were well known in the world, should hold so high 
 a place in their esteem and love. When the two 
 saints were departing, their companions came 
 around them with the hope of changing their pur- 
 5 pose. Basil persevered ; but Gregory relented, 
 and turned back to Athens for a season. 
 
 Supply and Demand 
 
 the schoolmen 
 
 It is most interesting to observe how the 
 foundations of the present intellectual greatness 
 of Europe were laid, and most wonderful to think 
 
 10 that they were ever laid at all. Let us consider 
 how wide and how high is the platform of our 
 knowledge at this day, and what openings in 
 every direction are in progress — openings of 
 such promise, that, unless some convulsion of 
 
 15 society takes place, even what we have attained, 
 will in future times be nothing better than a poor 
 beginning; and then on the other hand, let us 
 recollect that, seven centuries ago, putting aside 
 revealed truths, Europe had little more than that 
 
 20 poor knowledge, partial and uncertain, and at 
 best only practical, which is conveyed to us by the 
 senses. Even our first principles now are beyond 
 the most daring conjectures then; and what has 
 been said so touchingly of Christian ideas as com- 
 
 25 pared with pagan, is true in its way and degree 
 of the progress of secular knowledge also in the 
 seven centuries I have named. 
 
SUPPLY AND DEMAND: SCHOOLMEN 181 
 
 " What sages would have died to learn, 
 [Is] taught by cottage dames." 
 
 Nor is this the only point in which the reve- 
 lations of science may be compared to the su- 
 pernatural revelations of Christianity. Though 5 
 sacred truth was delivered once for all, and 
 scientific discoveries are progressive, yet there is 
 a great resemblance in the respective histories of 
 Christianity and of Science. We are accustomed 
 to point to the rise and spread of Christianity as lo 
 a miraculous fact, and rightly so, on account of 
 the weakness of its instruments, and the appalling 
 weight and multiplicity of the obstacles which 
 confronted it. To clear away those obstacles 
 was to move mountains; yet this was done byi5 
 a few poor, obscure, unbefriended men, and 
 their poor, obscure, unbefriended followers. No 
 social movement can come up to this marvel, 
 which is singular and archetypical, certainly; 
 it is a Divine work, and we soon cease to admire 20 
 it in order to adore. But there is more in it 
 than its own greatness to contemplate; it is so 
 great as to be prolific of greatness. Those whom 
 it has created, its children who have become such 
 by a supernatural power, have imitated, in their 25 
 own acts, the dispensation which made them 
 what they were; and, though they have not car- 
 ried out works simply miraculous, yet they have 
 done exploits sufficient to bespeak their own 
 unearthly origin, and the new powers which had 30 
 come into the world. The revival of letters by 
 
182 UNlVEBSITmS 
 
 the energy of Christian ecclesiastics and laymen, 
 when everything had to be done, reminds us of 
 the birth of Christianity itself, as far as a work of 
 man can resemble a work of God. 
 
 5 Two characteristics, as I have already had oc- 
 casion to say, are generally found to attend the 
 history of Science : first, its instruments have 
 an innate force, and can dispense with foreign 
 assistance in their work; and secondly, these 
 
 10 instruments must exist and must begin to act, 
 before subjects are found who are to profit by 
 their action. In plainer language, the teacher is 
 strong, not in the patronage of great men, but 
 in the intrinsic value and attraction of what he 
 
 15 has to communicate; and next, he must come 
 forward and advertise himself, before he can gain 
 hearers. This I have expressed before, in saying 
 that a great school of learning lived in demand and 
 supply, and that the supply must be before the 
 
 20 demand. Now, what is this but the very history 
 of the preaching of the Gospel? who but the 
 Apostles and Evangelists went out to the ends 
 of the earth without patron, or friend, or other 
 external advantage which could insure their suc- 
 
 25 cess? and again, who among the multitude they 
 enlightened would have called for their aid unless 
 they had gone to that multitude first, and offered 
 to it blessings which up to that moment it had 
 not heard of? They had no commission, they 
 
 30 had no invitation, from man; their strength lay 
 neither in their being sent, nor in their being sent 
 
SUPPLY AND DEMAND : SCHOOLMEN 183 
 
 for; but in the circumstances that they had that 
 with them, a Divine message, which they knew 
 would at once, when it was uttered, thrill through 
 the hearts of those to whom they spoke, and 
 make for themselves friends in any place, stran- 5 
 gers and outcasts as they were when they first 
 came. They appealed to the secret wants and 
 aspirations of human nature, to its laden con- 
 science, its weariness, its desolateness, and its 
 sense of the true and the Divine; nor did theyio 
 long wait for listeners and disciples, when they 
 announced the remedy of evils which were so real. 
 Something like this were the first stages of the 
 process by which in mediaeval Christendom the 
 structure of our present intellectual elevation 15 
 was carried forward. From Rome as from a 
 center, as the Apostles from Jerusalem, went 
 forth the missionaries of knowledge, passing to 
 and fro all over Europe; and, as Metropolitan 
 sees were the record of the presence of Apostles, 20 
 so did Paris, Pavia, and Bologna, and Padua, 
 and Ferrara, Pisa and Naples, Vienna, Louvain, 
 and Oxford, rise into Universities at the voice of 
 the theologian or the philosopher. Moreover, as 
 the Apostles went through labors untold, by 25 
 sea and land, in their charity to souls; so, if 
 robbers, shipwrecks, bad lodging, and scanty fare 
 are trials of zeal, such trials were encountered 
 without hesitation by the martyrs and confessors 
 of science. And as Evangelists had grounded 30 
 their teaching upon the longing for happiness 
 
184 UNIVERSITIES 
 
 natural to man, so did these securely rest their 
 cause on the natural thirst for knowledge: and 
 again as the preachers of Gospel peace had often 
 to bewail the ruin which persecution or dissen- 
 ssion had brought upon their flourishing colonies, 
 so also did the professors of science often find or 
 flee the ravages of sword or pestilence in those 
 places, which they themselves perhaps in former 
 times had made the seats of religious, honorable, 
 
 10 and useful learning. And lastly, as kings and no- 
 bles have fortified and advanced the interests 
 of the Christian faith without being necessary 
 to it, so in like manner we may enumerate with 
 honor Charlemagne, Alfred, Henry the First of 
 
 15 England, Joan of Navarre, and many others, as 
 patrons of the schools of learning, without being 
 obliged to allow that those schools could not have 
 progressed w^ithout such countenance. 
 
 These are some of the points of resemblance 
 
 20 between the propagation of Christian truth and 
 the revival of letters; and, to return to the two 
 points, to which I have particularly drawn atten- 
 tion, the University Professor's confidence in his 
 own powers, and his taking the initiative in the 
 
 25 exercise of them, I find both these distinctly recog- 
 nized by Mr. Hallam in his history of Literature. 
 As to the latter point, he says, "The schools of 
 Charlemagne were designed to lay the basis of a 
 learned education, for which there was at that time 
 
 30 no sufficient desire" — that is, the supply was 
 prior to the demand. As to the former: "In 
 
SUPPLY AND DEMAND: SCHOOLMEN 185 
 
 the twelfth century," he says, "the impetuosity 
 with which men rushed to that source of what 
 they deemed wisdom, the great University of 
 Paris, did not depend upon academical privileges 
 or eleemosynary stipends, though these were un- 5 
 doubtedly very effectual in keeping it up. The 
 University created patrons, and was not created 
 by them'' — that is, demand and supply were all 
 
 in all. ... 
 
 Bee, a poor monastery of Normandy, set up m lo 
 the eleventh century by an illiterate soldier, who 
 sought the cloister, soon attracted scholars to its 
 dreary clime from Italy, and transmitted them 
 to England. Lanfranc, afterwards Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, was one of these, and he found the 15 
 simple monks so necessitous, that he opened a 
 school of logic to all comers, in order, says William 
 of Malmesbury, " that he might support his needy 
 monastery by the pay of the students." The 
 same author adds, that "his reputation went mto20 
 the most remote parts of the Latin world, and 
 Bee became a great and famous Academy of 
 letters." Here is an instance of a commence- 
 ment without support, without scholars, in order 
 to attract scholars, and in them to find support. 25 
 William of Jumieges, too, bears witness to the 
 effect, powerful, sudden, wide spreading, and 
 various, of Lanfranc's advertisement of himself. 
 The fame of Bee and Lanfranc, he says, quickly 
 penetrated through the whole world ; and " clerks, so 
 the sons of dukes, the most esteemed masters of 
 
186 UNIVERSITIES 
 
 the Latin schools, powerful laymen, high nobles, 
 flocked to him." What words can more strikingly 
 attest the enthusiastic character of the movement 
 which he began, than to say that it carried away 
 5 with it all classes; rich as well as poor, laymen as 
 well as ecclesiastics, those who were in that day 
 in the habit of despising letters, as well as those 
 who might wish to live by them? . . . 
 
 The Strength and Weakness of Universi- 
 ties 
 
 ABELARD 
 
 We can have few more apposite illustrations 
 
 10 of at once the strength and weakness of what 
 may be called the University principle, of what 
 it can do and what it cannot, of its power to col- 
 lect students, and its impotence to preserve and 
 edify them, than the history of the celebrated 
 
 i5Abelard. His name is closely associated with 
 the commencement of the University of Paris; 
 and in his popularity and in his reverses, in the 
 criticisms of John of Salisbury on his method, 
 and the protest of St. Bernard against his teach- 
 
 2oing, we read, as in a pattern specimen, what a 
 University professes in its essence, and what it 
 needs for its " integrity." It is not to be supposed, 
 that I am prepared to show this here, as fully as 
 it might be shown; but it is a subject so perti- 
 
 25nent to the general object of these Essays, that it 
 may be useful to devote even a few pages to it. 
 
STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS: ABELABD 187 
 
 The oracles of Divine Truth, as time goes on, 
 do but repeat the one message from above which 
 they have ever uttered, since the tongues of fire 
 attested the coming of the Paraclete; still, as 
 time goes on, they utter it with greater force and 5 
 precision, under diverse forms, with fuller lumi- 
 nousness, and a richer ministration of thought 
 statement, and argument. They meet the vary- 
 ing wants, and encounter the special resistance 
 of each successive age; and, though prescient of lo 
 coming errors and their remedy long before, they 
 cautiously reserve their new enunciation of the 
 old Truth, till it is imperatively demanded. And, 
 as it happens in kings' cabinets, that surmises 
 arise, and rumors spread, of what is said in coun- 15 
 cil, and is in course of preparation, and secrets per- 
 haps get wind, true in substance or in direction, 
 though distorted in detail; so too, before the 
 Church speaks, one or other of her forward chil- 
 dren speaks for her, and, while he does anticipate 20 
 to a certain point what she is about to say or 
 enjoin, he states it incorrectly, makes it error 
 instead of truth, and risks his own faith in the 
 process. Indeed, this is actually one source, or 
 rather concomitant, of heresy, the presence of 25 
 some misshapen, huge, and grotesque foreshadow 
 of true statements which are to come. Speaking 
 under correction, I would apply this remark to 
 the heresy of Tertullian or of Sabellius, which may 
 be considered a reaction from existing errors, and 30 
 an attempt, presumptuous, and therefore unsuc- 
 
188 UNIVEBSITIES 
 
 cessful, to meet them with those divinely ap- 
 pointed correctives which the Church alone can 
 apply, and which she will actually apply, when 
 the proper moment comes. The Gnostics boasted 
 5 of their intellectual proficiency before the time 
 of St. Irenseus, St. Athanasius, and St. Augus- 
 tine; yet, when these doctors made their ap- 
 pearance, I suppose they were examples of that 
 knowledge, true and deep, which the Gnostics 
 
 10 professed. ApoUinaris anticipated the work of 
 St. Cyril and the Ephesine Council, and became 
 a heresiarch in consequence; and, to come down 
 to the present times, we may conceive that 
 writers, who have impatiently fallen away from 
 
 15 the Church, because she would not adopt their 
 views, would have found, had they but trusted 
 her, and waited, that she knew how to profit by 
 them, though she never could have need to bor- 
 row her enunciations from them; for their writ- 
 
 20 ings contained, so to speak, truth in the ore, truth 
 which they themselves had not the gift to dis- 
 engage from its foreign concomitants, and safely 
 use, which she alone could use, which she would 
 use in her destined hour, and which became their 
 
 25 stone of stumbling simply because she did not 
 use it faster. Now, applying this principle to 
 the subject before us, I observe, that, supposing 
 Abelard to be the first master of scholastic philos- 
 ophy, as many seem to hold, we shall have still 
 
 30 no difficulty in condemning the author, while we 
 honor the work. To him is only the glory of 
 
STBENGTH AND WEAKNESS: ABELARD 189 
 
 spoiling by his own self-will what would have 
 been done well and surely under the teaching 
 and guidance of Infallible Authority. 
 
 Nothing is more certain than that some ideas 
 are consistent with one another, and others in- 5 
 consistent ; and, again, that every truth must be 
 consistent with every other truth — hence, that 
 all truths of whatever kind form into one large 
 body of Truth, by virtue of the consistency be- 
 tween one truth and another, which is a connect- lo 
 ing link running through them all. The science 
 which discovers this connection is logic; and, 
 as it discovers the connection when the truths are 
 given, so, having one truth given and the con- 
 necting principle, it is able to go on to ascertain 15 
 the other. Though all this is obvious, it was 
 realized and acted on in the middle age with 
 a distinctness unknown before; all subjects of 
 knowledge were viewed as parts of one vast 
 system, each with its own place in it, and from 20 
 knowing one, another was inferred. Not indeed 
 always rightly inferred, because the art might 
 be less perfect than the science, the instrument 
 than the theory and aim; but I am speaking of 
 the principle of the scholastic method, of which 25 
 Saints and Doctors were the teachers — such 
 I conceive it to be, and Abelard was the ill-fated 
 logician who had a principal share in bringing it 
 into operation. 
 
 Others will consider the great St. Anselm and 30 
 the school of Bee, as the proper source of Scholas- 
 
190 UNIVERSITIES 
 
 ticism; Lam not going to discuss the question; 
 anyhow, Abelard, and not St. Anselm, was the 
 Professor at the University of Paris, and it is 
 of Universities that I am speaking; anyhow, 
 
 5Abelard illustrates the strength and the weak- 
 ness of the principle of advertising and communi- 
 cating knowledge for its own sake, which I have 
 called the University principle, whether he is, 
 or is not, the first of scholastic philosophers or 
 
 10 scholastic theologians. And, though I could not 
 speak of him at all without mentioning the sub- 
 ject of his teaching, yet, after all, it is of him and 
 of his teaching itself, that I am going to speak, 
 whatever that might be which he actually taught. 
 
 15 Since Charlemagne's time the schools of Paris 
 had continued, with various fortunes, faithful, as 
 far as the age admitted, to the old learning, as 
 other schools elsewhere, when, in the eleventh 
 century, the famous school of Bee began to de- 
 
 2ovelop the powers of logic in forming a new 
 philosophy. As the inductive method rose in 
 Bacon, so did the logical in the mediaeval school- 
 men; and Aristotle, the most comprehensive 
 intellect of Antiquity, as the one who had con- 
 
 25ceived the sublime idea of mapping the whole 
 field of knowledge, and subjecting all things to 
 one profound analysis, became the presiding mas- 
 ter in their lecture halls. It was at the end 
 of the eleventh century that William of Cham- 
 
 sopeaux founded the celebrated Abbey of St. Vic- 
 tor under the shadow of St. Genevieve, and by 
 
STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS: ABEL ABB 191 
 
 the dialectic methods which he introduced into his 
 teaching, has a claim to have commenced the 
 work of forming the University out of the Schools 
 of Paris. For one at least, out of the two char- 
 acteristics of a University, he prepared the way; 5 
 for, though the schools were not public till after 
 his day, so as to admit laymen as well as clerks, 
 and foreigners as well as natives of the place, yet 
 the logical principle of constructing all sciences 
 into one system, implied of course a recognition lO 
 of all the sciences that are comprehended in it. 
 Of this William of Champeaux, or de Campellis, 
 Abelard was the pupil; he had studied the dia- 
 lectic art elsewhere, before he offered himself for 
 his instructions ; and, in the course of two years, is 
 when as yet he had only reached the age of 
 twenty-two, he made such progress, as to be 
 capable of quarreling with his master, and set- 
 ting up a school for himself. 
 
 This school of Abelard was first situated in 20 
 the royal castle of Melun; then at Corbeil, which 
 was nearer to Paris, and where he attracted to 
 himself a considerable number of hearers. His 
 labors had an injurious effect upon his health; 
 and at length he withdrew for two years to his 25 
 native Britanny. Whether other causes coop- 
 erated in this withdrawal, I think, is not known; 
 but, at the end of the two years, we find him 
 returning to Paris, and renewing his attendance 
 on the lectures of William, who was by this time 30 
 a monk. Rhetoric was the subject of the lee- 
 
192 UNIVERSITIES 
 
 tures he now heard; and after a while the pupil 
 repeated with greater force and success his 
 former treatment of his teacher. He held a 
 public disputation with him, got the victory, 
 sand reduced him to silence. The school of Wil- 
 liam was deserted, and its master himself became 
 an instance of the vicissitudes incident to that 
 gladiatorial wisdom (as I may style it) which was 
 then eclipsing the old Benedictine method of the 
 
 10 Seven Arts. After a time, Abelard found his 
 reputation sufficient to warrant him in setting 
 up a school himself on Mount St. Genevieve; 
 whence he waged incessant war against the un- 
 wearied logician, who by this time had rallied 
 
 15 his forces to repel the young and ungrateful 
 
 adventurer who had raised his hand against him. 
 
 Great things are done by devotion to one idea; 
 
 there is one class of geniuses, who would never 
 
 be what they are, could they grasp a second. 
 
 20 The calm philosophical mind, which contem- 
 plates parts without denying the whole, and the 
 whole without confusing the parts, is notoriously 
 indisposed to action; whereas single and simple 
 views arrest the mind, and hurry it on to carry 
 
 25 them out. Thus, men of one idea and nothing 
 more, whatever their merit, must be to a certain 
 extent narrow-minded; and it is not wonderful 
 that Abelard's devotion to the new philosophy 
 made him undervalue the Seven Arts out of which 
 
 30 it had grown. He felt it impossible so to honor 
 what was now to be added, as not to dishonor 
 
STRENGTB AND WEAKNESS: ABELARD 193 
 
 what existed before. He would not suffer the 
 Arts to have their own use, since he had found a 
 new instrument for a new purpose. So he op- 
 posed the reading of the Classics. The monks 
 had opposed them before him; but this is little 5 
 to our present purpose; it was the duty of men, 
 who abjured the gifts of this world on the prin- 
 ciple of mortification, to deny themselves litera- 
 ture just as they would deny themselves particu- 
 lar friendships or figured music. The doctrine lo 
 which Abelard introduced and represents was 
 founded on a different basis. He did not recog- 
 nize in the poets of antiquity any other merit 
 than that of furnishing an assemblage of elegant 
 phrases and figures ; and accordingly he asks 15 
 why they should not be banished from the city 
 of God, since Plato banished them from his own 
 commonwealth. The animus of this language is 
 clear, when we turn to the pages of John of Salis- 
 bury and Peter of Blois, who were champions of 20 
 the ancient learning. We find them complaining 
 that the careful "getting up," as we now call it, 
 " of books," was growing out of fashion. Youths ■ 
 once studied critically the text of poets or philoso- 
 phers; they got them by heart; they analyzed 25 
 their arguments ; they noted down their fallacies ; 
 they were closely examined in the matters which 
 had been brought before them in lecture; they 
 composed. But now, another teaching was com- 
 ing in; students were promised truth in a nut- 30 
 shell ; they intended to get possession of the sum- 
 
194 UNIVERSITIES 
 
 total of philosophy in less than two or three 
 years; and facts were apprehended, not in their 
 substance and details, by means of living and, 
 as it were, personal documents, but in dead 
 5 abstracts and tables. Such were the reclama- 
 tions to which the new Logic gave occasion. 
 
 These, however, are lesser matters; we have 
 a graver quarrel with Abelard than that of his 
 undervaluing the Classics. As I have said, my 
 
 10 main object here is not what he taught, but why 
 and how, and how he lived. Now it is certain 
 his activity was stimulated by nothing very high, 
 but something very earthly and sordid. I grant 
 there is nothing morally wrong in the mere desire 
 
 15 to rise in the world, though Ambition and it are 
 twin sisters. I should not blame Abelard merely 
 for wishing to distinguish himself at the Uni- 
 versity; but when he makes the ecclesiastical 
 state the instrument of his ambition, mixes up 
 
 20 spiritual matters with temporal, and aims at a 
 bishopric through the medium of his logic, he 
 joins together things incompatible, and cannot 
 complain of being censured. It is he himself, 
 who tells us, unless my memory plays me false, 
 
 25 that the circumstance of William of Champeaux 
 being promoted to the see of Chalons, was an in- 
 centive to him to pursue the same path with an 
 eye to the same rew^ard. Accordingly, we next 
 hear of his attending the theological lectures of 
 
 30 a certain master of William's, named Anselm, an 
 old man, whose school was situated at Laon. This 
 
STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS: ABELARD 195 
 
 person had a great reputation in his day; John 
 of Salisbury, speaking of him in the next genera- 
 tion, calls him the doctor of doctors; he had been 
 attended by students from Italy and Germany; 
 but the age had advanced since he was in his 5 
 prime, and Abelard was disappointed in a teacher, 
 who had been good enough for William. He left 
 Ansel m, and began to lecture on the prophet 
 Ezekiel on his own resources. 
 
 Now came the time of his great popularity, 10 
 which was more than his head could bear; which 
 dizzied him, took him off his legs, and whirled 
 him to his destruction. I spoke in my foregoing 
 Chapter of those three qualities of true wisdom, 
 which a University, absolutely and nakedly con- 15 
 sidered, apart from the safeguards which consti- 
 tute its integrity, is sure to compromise. Wis- 
 dom, says the inspired writer, is desursum, is 
 pudica, is pacifica, "from above, chaste, peace- 
 able." We have already seen enough of Abelard's 20 
 career to understand that his wisdom, instead of 
 being "pacifica," was ambitious and contentious. 
 An Apostle speaks of the tongue both as a blessing 
 and as a curse. It may be the beginning of a fire, 
 he says, a " Universitas iniquitatis"; and alas! 25 
 such did it become in the mouth of the gifted 
 Abelard. His eloquence was wonderful; he daz- 
 zled his contemporaries, says Fulco, "by the 
 brilliancy of his genius, the sweetness of his elo- 
 quence, the ready flow of his language, and the 30 
 subtlety of his knowledge." People came to 
 
196 UNIVERSITIES 
 
 him from all quarters — from Rome, in spite of 
 mountains and robbers; from England, in spite 
 of the sea; from Flanders and Germany; from 
 Normandy, and the remote districts of France; 
 
 5 from Angers and Poitiers; from Navarre by the 
 Pyrenees, and from Spain, besides the students 
 of Paris itself; and among those, who sought his 
 instructions now or afterwards, were the great 
 luminaries of the schools in the next generation. 
 
 10 Such were Peter of Poitiers, Peter Lombard, John 
 of Salisbury, Arnold of Brescia, Ivo, and Geoffrey 
 of Auxerre. It was too much for a weak head 
 and heart, weak in spite of intellectual power; 
 for vanity will possess the head, and worldliness 
 
 15 the heart, of the man, however gifted, whose wis- 
 dom is not an effluence of the Eternal Light. 
 
 True wisdom is not only "pacifica," it is 
 "pudica"; chaste as well as peaceable. Alas for 
 Abelard ! a second disgrace, deeper than ambi- 
 
 20 tion, is his portion now. The strong man — the 
 Samson of the schools in the wildness of his course, 
 the Solomon in the fascination of his genius — 
 shivers and falls before the temptation which 
 overcame that mighty pair, the most excelling 
 
 25 in body and in mind. 
 
 In a time when Colleges were unknown, and the 
 young scholar was commonly thrown upon the 
 dubious hospitality of a great city, Abelard might 
 even be thought careful of his honor, that he 
 
 30 went to lodge with an old ecclesiastic, had not 
 his host's niece Eloisa lived with him. A more 
 
STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS: ABELABB 197 
 
 subtle snare was laid for him than beset the he- 
 roic champion or the all-accomplished monarch of 
 Israel; for sensuality came upon him under the 
 guise of intellect, and it was the high mental 
 endowments of Eloisa, who became his pupil, 5 
 speaking in her eyes, and thrilling on her tongue, 
 which were the intoxication and the delirium of 
 Abelard. . . . 
 
 He is judged, he is punished; but he is not 
 reclaimed. True wisdom is not only " pacifica," lO 
 not only "pudica;" it is "desursum" too. It is 
 a revelation from above; it knows heresy as 
 little as it knows strife or license. But Abelard, 
 who had run the career of earthly wisdom in two 
 of its phases, now is destined to represent itsis 
 third. 
 
 It is at the famous Abbey of St. Denis that we 
 find him languidly rising from his dream of sin, 
 and the suffering that followed. The bad dream 
 is cleared away; clerks come to him, and the 20 
 Abbot begging him to lecture still, for love 
 now, as for gain before. Once more his school is 
 thronged by the curious and the studious; but 
 at length a rumor spreads, that Abelard is ex- 
 ploring the way to some novel view on the 25 
 subject of the Most Holy Trinity. Wherefore is 
 hardly clear, but about the same time the monks 
 drive him away from the place of refuge he had 
 gained. He betakes himself to a cell, and thither 
 his pupils follow him. " I betook myself to a 30 
 certain cell," he says, "wishing to give myself to 
 
198 UNIVERSITIES 
 
 the schools, as was my custom. Thither so great 
 a multitude of scholars flocked; that there was 
 neither room to house them, nor fruits of the 
 earth to feed them," such was the enthusiasm of 
 5 the student, such the attraction of the teacher, 
 when knowledge was advertised freely, and its 
 market opened. 
 
 Next he is in Champagne, in a delightful soli- 
 tude near Nogent in the diocese of Troyes. Here 
 
 10 the same phenomenon presents itself, which is 
 so frequent in his history. " When the scholars 
 knew it," he says, " they began to crowd thither 
 from all parts ; and, leaving other cities and strong- 
 holds, they were content to dwell in the wilder- 
 
 15 ness. For spacious houses they framed for them- 
 selves small tabernacles, and for delicate food they 
 put up with wild herbs. Secretly did they 
 whisper among themselves : ' Behold, the whole 
 world is gone out after him!' When, however, 
 
 20 my Oratory could not hold even a moderate por- 
 tion of them, then they were forced to enlarge 
 it, and to build it up with wood and stone." 
 He called the place his Paraclete, because it had 
 been his consolation. 
 
 25 I do not know why I need follow his life further. 
 I have said enough to illustrate the course of one, 
 who may be called the founder, or at least the first 
 great name, of the Parisian Schools. After the 
 events I have mentioned he is found in Lower 
 
 soBritanny; then, being about forty-eight years of 
 age, in the Abbey of St. Gildas; then with St. 
 
STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS: ABELARD 199 
 
 Genevieve again. He had to sustain the fiery 
 eloquence of a Saint, directed against his novelties; 
 he had to present himself before two Councils; 
 he had to burn the book which had given offense 
 to pious ears. His last two years were spent at 5 
 Clugni on his way to Rome. The home of the 
 weary, the hospital of the sick, the school of the 
 erring, the tribunal of the penitent, is the city 
 of St. Peter. He did not reach it; but he is 
 said to have retracted what had given scandal in 10 
 his writings, and to have made an edifying end. 
 He died at the age of sixty-two, in the year of 
 grace 1142. 
 
 In reviewing his career, the career of so great 
 an intellect so miserably thrown away, we are 15 
 reminded of the famous words of the dying 
 scholar and jurist, which are a lesson to us all, 
 " Heu, vitam perdidi, operose nihil agendo." A 
 happier lot be ours ! 
 
IV. MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 Poetry, with Reference to Aristotle's 
 Poetics 
 
 Poetry, according to Aristotle, is a represen- 
 tation of the ideal. Biography and history rep- 
 resent individual characters and actual facts; 
 poetry, on the contrary, generalizing from the 
 5 phenomenon of nature and life, supplies us with 
 pictures drawn, not after an existing pattern, 
 but after a creation of the mind. Fidelity is the 
 primary merit of biography and history; the 
 essence of poetry is fiction. "Poesis nihil aliud 
 
 10 est," says Bacon, "quam historiae imitatio ad 
 placitum." It delineates that perfection which 
 the imagination suggests, and to which as a 
 limit the present system of Divine Providence 
 actually tends. Moreover, by confining the atten- 
 
 istion to one series of events and scene of action, it 
 bounds and finishes off the confused luxuriance 
 of real nature; while, by a skillful adjustment of 
 circumstances, it brings into sight the connection 
 of cause and effect, completes the dependence of 
 
 20 the parts one on another, and harmonizes the 
 
 proportions of the whole. It is then but the type 
 
 and model of history or biography, if we may be 
 
 allowed the comparison, bearing some resemblance 
 
 200 
 
POETRY: ARISTOTLE'S POETICS 201 
 
 to the abstract mathematical formulae of physics, 
 before they are modified by the contingencies of 
 atmosphere and friction. Hence, while it recreates 
 the imagination by the superhuman loveliness of 
 its views, it provides a solace for the mind broken 5 
 by the disappointments and sufferings of actual 
 life; and becomes, moreover, the utterance of 
 the inward emotions of a right moral feeling, 
 seeking a purity and a truth which this world 
 will not give. 10 
 
 It follows that the poetical mind is one full of 
 the eternal forms of beauty and perfection ; these 
 are its material of thought, its instrument and 
 medium of observation; these color each ob- 
 ject to which it directs its view. It is called 15 
 imaginative, or creative, from the originality and 
 independence of its modes of thinking, compared 
 with the commonplace and matter-of-fact con- 
 ceptions of ordinary minds vv^hich are fettered 
 down to the particular and individual. At the 20 
 same time it feels a natural sympathy with every- 
 thing great and splendid in the physical and 
 moral world; and selecting such from the mass 
 of common phenomena, incorporates them, as it 
 were, into the substance of its own creations. 25 
 From living thus in a world of its own, it speaks 
 the language of dignity, emotion, and refinement. 
 Figure is its necessary medium of communication 
 with man ; for in the feebleness of ordinary words 
 to express its ideas, and in the absence of terms of 30 
 abstract perfection, the adoption of metaphorical 
 
202 MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 language is the only poor means allowed it for im- 
 parting to others its intense feelings. A metrical 
 garb has, in all languages, been appropriated to 
 poetry — it is but the outward development of 
 
 5 the music and harmony within. The verse, far 
 from being a restraint on the true poet, is the 
 suitable index of his sense, and is adopted by his 
 free and deliberate choice. We shall presently 
 show the applicability of our doctrine to the 
 
 10 various departments of poetical composition; 
 first, however, it will be right to volunteer an 
 explanation which may save it from much mis- 
 conception and objection. Let not our notion 
 be thought arbitrarily to limit the number of 
 
 15 poets, generally considered such. It will be 
 found to lower particular works, or parts of 
 works, rather than the authors themselves; 
 sometimes to disparage only the vehicle in which 
 the poetry is conveyed. There is an ambiguity 
 
 20 in the word "poetry," which is taken to signify 
 both the gift itself, and the written composition 
 which is the result of it. Thus there is an appar- 
 ent, but no real, contradiction in saying a poem 
 may be but partially poetical; in some passages 
 
 25 more so than in others; and sometimes not 
 poetical at all. We only maintain, not that the 
 writers forfeit the name of poet who fail at times 
 to answer to our requisitions, but that they are 
 poets only so far forth, and inasmuch as they do 
 
 30 answer to them. We may grant, for instance, 
 that the vulgarities of old Phoenix in the ninth 
 
POETRY: ARISTOTLE'S POETICS 203 
 
 Iliad, or of the nurse of Orestes in the Choephom, 
 are in themselves unworthy of their respective 
 authors, and refer them to the wantonness of 
 exuberant genius; and yet maintain that the 
 scenes in question contain much incidental poetry. 5 
 Now and then the luster of the true metal catches 
 the eye, redeeming whatever is unseemly and 
 worthless in the rude ore; still the ore is not the 
 metal. Nay, sometimes, and not unfrequently in 
 Shakspeare, the introduction of unpoetical mat-io 
 ter may be necessary for the sake of relief, or as 
 a vivid expression of recondite conceptions, and, 
 as it were, to make friends with the reader's 
 imagination. This necessity, however, cannot 
 make the additions in themselves beautiful and 15 
 pleasing. Sometimes, on the other hand, while 
 we do not deny the incidental beauty of a poem, 
 we are ashamed and indignant on witnessing the 
 unworthy substance in which that beauty is 
 embedded. This remark applies strongly to the 20 
 immoral compositions to which Lord Byron 
 devoted his last years. 
 
 Now to proceed with our proposed investiga- 
 tion. 
 
 1. We will notice descriptive poetry first. 25 
 Empedocles wrote his physics in verse, and 
 Oppian his history of animals. Neither were 
 poets — the one was an historian of nature, the 
 other a sort of biographer of brutes. Yet a poet 
 may make natural history or philosophy the 30 
 material of his composition. But under his hands 
 
204 MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 they are no longer a bare collection of facts or 
 principles, but are painted with a meaning, 
 beauty, and harmonious order not their own. 
 Thomson has sometimes been commended for 
 5 the novelty and minuteness of his remarks upon 
 nature. This is not the praise of a poet, whose 
 office rather is to represent known phenomena in 
 a new connection or medium. In U Allegro and 
 // Penseroso the poetical magician invests the 
 
 10 commonest scenes of a country life with the hues, 
 first of a cheerful, then of a pensive imagination. 
 It is the charm of the descriptive poetry of a 
 religious mind, that nature is viewed in a moral 
 connection. Ordinary writers, for instance, com- 
 
 15 pare aged men to trees in autumn — a gifted 
 poet will in the fading trees discern the fading 
 men.^ Pastoral poetry is a description of rus- 
 tics, agriculture, and cattle, softened off and 
 corrected from the rude health of nature. Virgil, 
 
 20 and much more Pope and others, have run into 
 the fault of coloring too highly ; instead of draw- 
 ing generalized and ideal forms of shepherds, they 
 have given us pictures of gentlemen and beaux. 
 Their composition may be poetry, but it is not 
 
 25 pastoral poetry. 
 
 2. The difference between poetical and his- 
 torical narrative may be illustrated by the Tales 
 
 1 Thus :— 
 
 "How quiet shows the woodland scene! 
 Each flower and tree, its duty done, 
 Reposing in decay serene, 
 Like weary men when age is won/' etc. 
 
POETRY: ABISTOTLE'S POETICS 205 
 
 Founded on Facts, generally of a religious char- 
 acter, so common in the present day, which we 
 must not be thought to approve, because we use 
 them for our purpose. The author finds in the 
 circumstances of the case many particulars too 5 
 trivial for public notice, or irrelevant to the main 
 story, or partaking perhaps too much of the 
 peculiarity of individual minds: these he omits. 
 He finds connected events separated from each 
 other by time or place, or a course of action dis- lo 
 tributed among a multitude of agents; he limits 
 the scene or duration of the tale, and dispenses 
 with his host of characters by condensing the 
 mass of incident and action in the history of a 
 few. He compresses long controversies into a 15 
 concise argument, and exhibits characters by 
 dialogue, and (if such be his object) brings 
 prominently forward the course of Divine Provi- 
 dence by a fit disposition of his materials. Thus 
 he selects, combines, refines, colors — in fact, 20 
 poetizes. His facts are no longer actual, but 
 ideal ; a tale founded on facts is a tale generalized 
 from facts. The authors of Peveril of the Peak, 
 and of Brambletye House, have given us their 
 respective descriptions of the profligate times of 25 
 Charles II. Both accounts are interesting, but 
 for different reasons. That of the latter writer 
 has the fidelity of history; Walter Scott's pic- 
 ture is the hideous reality, unintentionally softened 
 and decorated by the poetry of his own mind. 30 
 Miss Edge worth sometimes apologizes for certam 
 
20G MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 incident in her tales by stating they took place 
 "by one of those strange chances which occur in 
 life, but seem incredible when found in writing." 
 Such an excuse evinces a misconception of the 
 5 principle of fiction, which, being the perfection of 
 the actual, prohibits the introduction of any such 
 anomalies of experience. It is by a similar im- 
 propriety that painters sometimes introduce un- 
 usual sunsets, or other singular phenomena of 
 
 10 lights and forms. Yet some of Miss Edgeworth's 
 works contain much poetry of narrative. Maneu- 
 vering is perfect in its way, — the plot and char- 
 acters are natural, without being too real to be 
 pleasing. 
 
 15 3. Character is made poetical by a like process. 
 The writer draws indeed from experience; but 
 unnatural peculiarities are laid aside, and harsh 
 contrasts reconciled. If it be said the fidelity 
 of the imitation is often its greatest merit, we 
 
 20 have only to reply, that in such cases the pleasure 
 is" not poetical, but consists in the mere recogni- 
 tion. All novels and tales which introduce real 
 characters are in the same degree unpoetical. 
 Portrait painting, to be poetical, should furnish 
 
 25 an abstract representation of an individual ; the 
 abstraction being more rigid, inasmuch as the 
 painting is confined to one point of time. The 
 artist should draw independently of the accidents 
 of attitude, dress, occasional feeling, and transient 
 
 30 action. He should depict the general spirit of 
 his subject — as if he were copying from memory, 
 
POETRY: ABISTOTLE'S POETICS 207 
 
 not from a few particular sittings. An ordinary 
 painter will delineate with rigid fidelity, and will 
 make a caricature; but the learned artist con- 
 trives so to temper his composition, as to sink all 
 offensive peculiarities and hardnesses of Individ- 5 
 uality, without diminishing the striking effect of 
 the likeness, or acquainting the casual spectator 
 with the secret of his art. Miss Edgeworth's rep- 
 resentations of the Irish character are actual, and 
 not poetical — nor were they intended to be so. lo 
 They are interesting, because they are faithful. 
 If there is poetry about them, it exists in the 
 personages themselves, not in her representation 
 of them. She is only the accurate reporter in 
 word of what was poetical in fact. Hence, more- 15 
 over, when a deed or incident is striking in itself, 
 a judicious writer is led to describe it in the most 
 simple and colorless terms, his own being unneces- 
 sary; for instance, if the greatness of the action 
 itself excites the imagination, or the depth of the 20 
 suffering interests the feelings. In the usual 
 phrase, the circumstances are left "to speak for 
 themselves." 
 
 Let it not be said that our doctrine is adverse 
 to that individuality in the delineation of charac- 25 
 ter, which is a principal charm of fiction. It is 
 not necessary for the ideality of a composition to 
 avoid those minuter shades of difference between 
 man and man, which give to poetry its plausibil- 
 ity and life; but merely such violation of gen- 30 
 eral nature, such improbabilities, wanderings, or 
 
^08 MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 coarseness, as interfere with the refined and deli- 
 cate enjoyment of the imagination; which would 
 have the elements of beauty extracted out of 
 the confused multitude of ordinary actions and 
 
 5 habits, and combined with consistency and ease. 
 Nor does it exclude the introduction of imperfect 
 or odious characters. The original conception of 
 a weak or guilty mind may have its intrinsic 
 beauty; and much more so, when it is connected 
 
 10 with a tale which finally adjusts whatever is 
 reprehensible in the personages themselves. 
 Richard and lago are subservient to the plot. 
 Moral excellence in some characters may become 
 even a fault. The Clytemnestra of Euripides is 
 
 15 so interesting, that the Divine vengeance, which 
 is the main subject of the drama, seems almost 
 unjust. Lady Macbeth, on the contrary, is the 
 conception of one deeply learned in the poetical 
 art. She is polluted with the most heinous crimes, 
 
 20 and meets the fate she deserves. Yet there is 
 nothing in the picture to offend the taste, and 
 much to feed the imagination. Romeo and 
 Juliet are too good for the termination to which 
 the plot leads; so are Ophelia and the Bride of 
 
 25 Lammermoor. In these cases there is something 
 inconsistent with correct beauty, and therefore 
 unpoetical. We do not say the fault could be 
 avoided without sacrificing more than would be 
 gained; still it is a fault. It is scarcely possible 
 
 30 for a poet satisfactorily to connect innocence with 
 ultimate unhappiness, when the notion of a future 
 
POETRY: ARISTOTLE'S POETICS 209 
 
 life is excluded. Honors paid to the memory of 
 the dead are some alleviation of the harshness. 
 In his use of the doctrine of a future life, Southey 
 is admirable. Other writers are content to 
 conduct their heroes to temporal happiness; 5 
 Southey refuses present comfort to his Ladurlad, 
 Thalaba, and Roderick, but carries them on 
 through suffering to another world. The death 
 of his hero is the termination of the action; yet 
 so little in two of them, at least, does this catas- 10 
 trophe excite sorrowful feelings, that some 
 readers may be startled to be reminded of the 
 fact. If a melancholy is thrown over the con- 
 clusion of the Roderick, it is from the peculiarities 
 of the hero's previous history. 15 
 
 4. Opinions, feelings, manners, and customs 
 are made poetical by the delicacy or splendor 
 with which they are expressed. This is seen in 
 the ode, elegy, sonnet, and ballad, in which a sin- 
 gle idea, perhaps, or familiar occurrence, is in- 20 
 vested by the poet with pathos or dignity. The 
 ballad of Old Robin Gray will serve for an instance 
 out of a multitude; again, Lord Byron's Hebrew 
 Melody, beginning, " Were my bosom as false," 
 etc.; or Cowper's Lines on his Mother^ s Picture; 26 
 or Milman's Funeral Hymn in the Martyr of 
 Antioch; or Milton's Sonnet on his Blindness; or 
 Bernard Barton's Dream. As picturesque speci- 
 mens, we may name Campbell's Battle of the 
 Baltic; or Joanna Baillie's Chough and Crow; 2,0 
 and for the more exalted and splendid style, 
 
210 MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 Gray's Bard; or Milton's Hymn on the Nativity; 
 in which facts, with which every one is familiar, 
 are made new by the coloring of a poetical im- 
 agination. It must all along be observed, that 
 
 5 we are not adducing instances for their own sake ; 
 but in order to illustrate our general doctrine, and 
 to show its applicability to those compositions 
 which are, by universal consent, acknowledged to 
 be poetical. 
 
 10 The department of poetry we are now speaking 
 of is of much wider extent than might at first 
 sight appear. It will include such moralizing and 
 philosophical poems as Young's Night Thoughts, 
 and Byron's Childe Harold. There is much bad 
 
 15 taste, at present, in the judgment passed on com- 
 positions of this kind. It is the fault of the day 
 to mistake mere eloquence for poetry; whereas, 
 in direct opposition to the conciseness and sim- 
 plicity of the poet, the talent of the orator consists 
 
 20 in making much of a single idea. " Sic dicet ille ut 
 verset saepe multis modis eandem et unam rem, 
 ut hsereat in eadem commoreturque sententia." 
 This is the great art of Cicero himself, who, 
 whether he is engaged in statement, argument, or 
 
 25 raillery, never ceases till he has exhausted the sub- 
 ject; going round about it, and placing it in every 
 different light, yet without repetition to offend or 
 weary the reader. This faculty seems to consist 
 in the power of throwing off harmonious verses, 
 
 30 which, while they have a respectable portion of 
 meaning, yet are especially intended to charm the 
 
POETRY: ARISTOTLE'S POETICS 211 
 
 ear. In popular poems, common ideas are un- 
 folded with copiousness, and set off in polished 
 verse — and this is called poetry. Such is the 
 character of Campbell's Pleasures of Hope; it is 
 in his minor poems that the author's poetical 5 
 genius rises to its natural elevation. In Childe 
 Harold, too, the writer is carried through his 
 Spenserian stanza with the unweariness and 
 equable fullness of accomplished eloquence; open- 
 ing, illustrating, and heightening one idea, before lo 
 he passes on to another. His composition is an 
 extended funeral sermon over buried joys and 
 pleasures. His laments over Greece, Rome, and 
 the fallen in various engagements, have quite the 
 character of panegyrical orations; while by the 15 
 very attempt to describe the celebrated buildings 
 and sculptures of antiquity, he seems to confess 
 that they are the poetical text, his the rhetorical 
 comment. Still it is a work of splendid talent, 
 though, as a whole, not of the highest poetical 20 
 excellence. Juvenal is perhaps the only ancient 
 author who habitually substitutes declamation for 
 poetry. 
 
 5. The philosophy of mind may equally be made 
 subservient to poetry, as the philosophy of nature. 25 
 It is a common fault to mistake a mere knowledge 
 of the heart for poetical talent. Our greatest 
 masters have known better — they have sub- 
 jected metaphysics to their art. In Hamlet, Mac- 
 beth, Richard, and Othello, the philosophy of 30 
 mind is but the material of the poet. These per- 
 
212 MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 sonages are ideal ; they are effects of the contact 
 of a given internal character with given outward 
 circumstances, the results of combined conditions 
 determining (so to say) a moral curve of original 
 5 and inimitable properties. Philosophy is ex- 
 hibited in the same subserviency to poetry in 
 many parts of Crabbe's Tales of the Hall. In the 
 writings of this author there is much to offend a 
 refined taste ; but, at least in the work in question, 
 
 10 there is much of a highly poetical cast. It is a 
 representation of the action and reaction of two 
 minds upon each other and upon the world around 
 them. Two brothers of different characters and 
 fortunes, and strangers to each other, meet. Their 
 
 15 habits of mind, the formation of those habits by 
 external circumstances, their respective media of 
 judgment, their points of mutual attraction and 
 repulsion, the mental position of each in relation 
 to a variety of trifling phenomena of everyday 
 
 20 nature and life, are beautifully developed in a 
 series of tales molded into a connected narrative. 
 We are tempted to single out the fourth book, 
 which gives an account of the childhood and edu- 
 cation of the younger brother, and which for 
 
 25 variety of thought as well as fidelity of descrip- 
 tion is in our judgment beyond praise. The 
 Waverley Novels would afford us specimens of a 
 similar excellence. One striking peculiarity of 
 these tales is the author's practice of describing 
 
 30 a group of characters bearing the same general 
 features of mind, and placed in the same general 
 
POETRY: ARISTOTLE'S POETICS 213 
 
 circumstances; yet so contrasted with each other 
 in minute differences of mental constitution, that 
 each diverges from the common starting point into 
 a path peculiar to himself. The brotherhood of 
 villains in Kenilworth, of knights in Ivanhoe, 5 
 and of enthusiasts in Old Mortality are instances 
 of this. This bearing of character and plot on 
 each other is not often found in Byron's poems. 
 The Corsair is intended for a remarkable person- 
 age. We pass by the inconsistencies of his char- 10 
 acter, considered by itself. The grand fault is, 
 that whether it be natural or not, we are obliged 
 to accept the author's word for the fidelity of his 
 portrait. We are told, not shown, what the hero 
 was. There is nothing in the plot which results 15 
 from his peculiar formation of mind. An every- 
 day bravo might equally well have satisfied the re- 
 quirements of the action. Childe Harold, again, 
 if he is anything, is a being professedly isolated 
 from the world, and uninfluenced by it. One 20 
 might as well draw Tityrus's stags grazing in the 
 air, as a character of this kind; which yet, with 
 more or less alteration, passes through successive 
 editions in his other poems. Byron had very 
 little versatility or elasticity of genius; he did not 25 
 know how to make poetry out of existing materials. 
 He declaims in his own way, and has the upper- 
 hand as long as he is allowed to go on; but, if 
 interrogated on principles of nature and good 
 sense, he is at once put out and brought to a 30 
 stand. 
 
214 MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 Yet his conception of Sardanapalus and Myrrha 
 is fine and ideal, and in the style of excellence 
 which we have just been admiring in Shakspeare 
 and Scott. 
 5 These illustrations of Aristotle's doctrine may 
 suffice. 
 
 Now let us proceed to a fresh position; which, 
 as before, shall first be broadly stated, then 
 modified and explained. How does originality 
 
 10 differ from the poetical talent? Without affect- 
 ing the accuracy of a definition, we may call the 
 latter the originality of right moral feeling. 
 
 Originality may perhaps be defined the power 
 of abstracting for one's self, and is in thought 
 
 15 what strength of mind is in action. Our opinions 
 are commonly derived from education and society. 
 Common minds transmit as they receive, good and 
 bad, true and false ; minds of original talent feel a 
 continual propensity to investigate subjects, and 
 
 20 strike out views for themselves, so that even old 
 and established truths do not escape modifica- 
 tion and accidental change when subjected to this 
 process of mental digestion. Even the style of 
 original writers is stamped with the peculiarities 
 
 25 of their minds. When originality is found apart 
 from good sense, which more or less is frequently 
 the case, it shows itself in paradox and rashness 
 of sentiment, and eccentricity of outward conduct. 
 Poetry, on the other hand, cannot be separated 
 
 30 from its good sense, or taste, as it is called, which 
 is one of its elements. It is originality energizing 
 
POETRY: ARISTOTLE'S POETICS 215 
 
 in the world of beauty; the originalit}^ of grace, 
 purity, refinement, and good feeling. We do not 
 hesitate to say, that poetry is ultimately founded 
 on correct moral perception; that where there is 
 no sound principle in exercise there will be no 5 
 poetry ; and that on the whole (originality being 
 granted) in proportion to the standard of a writer's 
 moral character will his compositions vary in 
 poetical excellence. This position, however, re- 
 quires some explanation. lo 
 
 Of course, then, we do not mean to imply that 
 a poet must necessarily display virtuous and re- 
 ligious feeling; we are not speaking of the actual 
 material of poetry, but of its sources. A right 
 moral state of heart is the formal and scientific 15 
 condition of a poetical mind. Nor does it follow 
 from our position that every poet must in fact be 
 a man of consistent and practical principle; ex- 
 cept so far as good feeling commonly produces or 
 results from good practice. Burns was a man of 20 
 inconsistent life; still, it is known, of much really 
 sound principle at bottom. Thus his acknowl- 
 edged poetical talent is in no wise inconsistent with 
 the truth of our doctrine, which will refer the 
 beauty which exists in his compositions to the 25 
 remains of a virtuous and diviner nature within 
 him. Nay, further than this, our theory holds 
 good, even though it be shown that a depraved 
 man may write a poem. As motives short of the 
 purest lead to actions intrinsically good, so frames 30 
 of mind short of virtuous will produce a partial 
 
216 MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 and limited poetry. But even where this is 
 instanced, the poetry of a vicious mind will be in- 
 consistent and debased; that is, so far only poetry 
 as the traces and shadows of holy truth still re- 
 
 5 main upon it. On the other hand, a right moral 
 feeling places the mind in the very center of that 
 circle from which all the rays have their origin 
 and range; whereas minds otherwise placed com- 
 mand but a portion of the whole circuit of poetry. 
 
 10 Allowing for human infirmity and the varieties of 
 opinion, Milton, Spenser, Cowper, Wordsworth, 
 and Southey may be considered, as far as their 
 writings go, to approximate to this moral center. 
 The following are added as further illustrations of 
 
 15 our meaning. Walter Scott's center is chivalrous 
 honor; Shakspeare exhibits the characteristics of 
 an unlearned and undisciplined piety ; Homer the 
 religion of nature and conscience, at times debased 
 by polytheism. All these poets are religious. The 
 
 20 occasional irreligion of Virgil's poetry is painful 
 to the admirers of his general taste and delicacy. 
 Dryden's Alexander's Feast is a magnificent com- 
 position, and has high poetical beauties; but to a 
 refined judgment there is something intrinsically 
 
 25unpoetical in the end to which it is devoted, the 
 praises of revel and sensuality. It corresponds to 
 a process of clever reasoning erected on an untrue 
 foundation — the one is a fallacy, the other is out 
 of taste. Lord Byron's Manfred is in parts in- 
 
 30 tensely poetical; yet the delicate mind naturally 
 shrinks from the spirit wliich here and there re- 
 
POETRY: ARISTOTLE'S POETICS 217 
 
 veals itself, and the basis on which the drama is 
 built. From a perusal of it we should infer, ac- 
 cording to the above theory, that there was right 
 and fine feeling in the poet's mind, but that the 
 central and consistent character was wanting. 5 
 From the history of his life we know this to be 
 the fact. The connection between want of the 
 religious principle and want of poetical feeling is 
 seen in the instances of Hume and Gibbon, who 
 had radically unpoetical minds. Rousseau, itio 
 may be supposed, is an exception to our doctrine. 
 Lucretius, too, had great poetical genius; but his 
 work evinces that his miserable philosophy was 
 rather the result of a bewildered judgment than 
 a corrupt heart. 15 
 
 According to the above theory. Revealed Reli- 
 gion should be especially poetical — and it is so 
 in fact. While its disclosures have an originality 
 in them to engage the intellect, they have a beauty 
 to satisfy the moral nature. It presents us with 20 
 those ideal forms of excellence in which a poetical 
 mind delights, and with which all grace and har- 
 mony are associated. It brings us into a new 
 world — a world of overpowering interest, of the 
 sublimest views, and the tenderest and purest 25 
 feelings. The peculiar grace of mind of the New 
 Testament writers is as striking as the actual effect 
 produced upon the hearts of those who have im- 
 bibed their spirit. At present we are not con- 
 cerned with the practical, but the poetical nature 30 
 of revealed truth. With Christians, a poetical 
 
218 MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 view of things is a duty — we are bid to color all 
 things with hues of faith, to see a Divine meaning 
 in every event, and a superhuman tendency. Even 
 our friends around are invested with unearthly 
 
 5 brightness — no longer imperfect men, but beings 
 taken into Divine favor, stamped with His seal, 
 and in training for future happiness. It may be 
 added, that the virtues peculiarly Christian are 
 especially poetical — meekness, gentleness, com- 
 
 10 passion, contentment, modesty, not to mention 
 the devotional virtues; whereas the ruder and 
 more ordinary feelings are the instruments of 
 rhetoric more justly than of poetry — anger, in- 
 dignation, emulation, martial spirit, and love of 
 
 15 independence. 
 
 The Infinitude of the Divine Attributes 
 
 The attributes of God, though intelligible to us 
 on their surface, — for from our own sense of 
 mercy and holiness and patience and consistency, 
 we have general notions of the All-merciful and 
 
 20 All-holy and All-patient, and of all that is proper 
 to His Essence, — yet, for the very reason that 
 they are infinite, transcend our comprehension, 
 when they are dwelt upon, when they are followed 
 out, and can only be received by faith. They are 
 
 25 dimly shadowed out, in this very respect, by the 
 great agents which He has created in the material 
 world. What is so ordinary and familiar to us 
 as the elements, what so simple and level to us 
 
INFINITUDE OF DIVINE ATTRIBUTES 219 
 
 as their presence and operation? yet how their 
 character changes, and how they overmaster us, 
 and triumph over us, when they come upon us in 
 their fullness ! The invisible air, how gentle is it, 
 and intimately ours ! we breathe it momentarily, 5 
 nor could we live without it; it fans our cheek, 
 and flows around us, and we move through it with- 
 out effort, while it obediently recedes at every 
 step we take, and obsequiously pursues us as we 
 go forward. Yet let it come in its power, andio 
 that same silent fluid, which was just now the 
 servant of our necessity or caprice, takes us up 
 on its wings with the invisible power of an Angel, 
 and carries us forth into the regions of space, and 
 flings us down headlong upon the earth. Or go is 
 to the spring, and draw thence at your pleasure, 
 for your cup or your pitcher, in supply of your 
 wants; you have a ready servant, a domestic ever 
 at hand, in large quantity or in small, to satisfy 
 •your thirst, or to purify you from the dust and 20 
 mire of the world. But go from home, reach the 
 coast ; and you will see that same humble element 
 transformed before your eyes. You were equal to 
 it in its condescension, but who shall gaze with- 
 out astonishment at its vast expanse in the bosom 25 
 of the ocean? who shall hear without awe the 
 dashing of its mighty billows along the beach? 
 who shall without terror feel it heaving under him, 
 and swelling and mounting up, and yawning wide, 
 till he, its very sport and mockery, is thrown to 30 
 and fro, hither and thither, at the mere mercy of 
 
220 MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 a power which was just now his companion and 
 almost his slave ? Or, again, approach the flame : 
 it warms you, and it enlightens you; yet approach 
 not too near, presume not, or it will change its 
 5 nature. That very element which is so beautiful 
 to look at, so brilliant in its character, so graceful 
 in its figure, so soft and lambent in its motion, 
 will be found in its essence to be of a keen, resist- 
 less nature; it tortures, it consumes, it reduces to 
 
 10 ashes that of which it was just before the illumina- 
 tion and the life. So it is with the attributes 
 of God ; our knowledge of them serves us for our 
 daily welfare ; they give us light and warmth and 
 food and guidance and succor; but go forth with 
 
 15 Moses upon the mount and let the Lord pass by, 
 or with Elias stand in the desert amid the wind, 
 the earthquake, and the fire, and all is mystery 
 and darkness; all is but a whirling of the reason, 
 and a dazzling of the imagination, and an over- 
 
 20 whelming of the feelings, reminding us that we 
 are but mortal men and He is God, and that the 
 outlines which Nature draws for us are not His 
 perfect image, nor to be pronounced inconsistent 
 with those further lights and depths with which it 
 
 25 is invested by Revelation. 
 
 Say not, my brethren, that these thoughts are 
 too austere for this season, when we contemplate 
 the self-sacrificing, self-consuming charity where- 
 with God our Saviour has visited us. It is for that 
 
 30 very reason that I dwell on them ; the higher He 
 is, and the more mysterious, so much the more 
 
INFINITUDE OF DIVINE ATTRIBUTES 221 
 
 glorious and the more subduing is the history of 
 His humihation. I own it, my brethren, I love 
 to dwell on Him as the Only-begotten Word ; nor 
 is it any forgetfulness of His sacred humanity to 
 contemplate His Eternal Person. It is the very 5 
 idea, that He is God, which gives a meaning to 
 His sufferings; what is to me a man, and nothing 
 more, in agony, or scourged, or crucified? there 
 are many holy martyrs, and their torments were 
 terrible. But here I see One dropping blood, 10 
 gashed by the thong, and stretched upon the 
 Cross, and He is God. It is no tale of human woe 
 which I am reading here; it is the record of the 
 passion of the great Creator. The Word and 
 Wisdom of the Father, who dwelt in His bosom 15 
 in bliss ineffable from all eternity, whose very 
 smile has shed radiance and grace over the whole 
 creation, whose traces I see in the starry heavens 
 and on the green earth, this glorious living God, 
 it is He who looks at me so piteously, so tenderly 20 
 from the Cross. He seems to say, — I cannot 
 move, though I am omnipotent, for sin has bound 
 Me here. I had had it in mind to come on earth 
 among innocent creatures, more fair and lovely 
 than them all, with a face more radiant than the 25 
 Seraphim, and a form as royal as that of Arch- 
 angels, to be their equal yet their God, to fill 
 them with My grace, to receive their worship, to 
 enjoy their company, and to prepare them for the 
 heaven to which I destined them; but, before 1 30 
 carried My purpose into effect, they sinned, and 
 
222 MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 lost their inheritance; and so I come indeed, but 
 come, not in that brightness in which I went forth 
 to create the morning stars and to fill the sons of 
 God with melody, but in deformity and in shame, 
 5 in sighs and tears, with blood upon My cheek, and 
 with My limbs laid bare and rent. Gaze on Me, 
 
 My children, if you will, for I am helpless; gaze 
 on your Maker, whether in contempt, or in faith 
 and love. Here I wait, upon the Cross, the ap- 
 
 10 pointed time, the time of grace and mercy ; here 
 
 1 wait till the end of the world, silent and motion- 
 less, for the conversion of the sinful and the con- 
 solation of the just; here I remain in weakness 
 and shame, though I am so great in heaven, till 
 
 15 the end, patiently expecting My full catalogue of 
 souls, who, when time is at length over, shall be 
 the reward of My passion and the triumph of My 
 grace to all eternity. 
 
 Christ upon the Waters 
 
 The earth is full of the marvels of Divine power ; 
 
 20 " Day to day uttereth speech, and night to night 
 showeth knowledge." The tokens of Omnipo- 
 tence are all around us, in the world of matter, 
 and the world of man; in the dispensation of 
 nature, and in the dispensation of grace. To do 
 
 25 impossibilities, I may say, is the prerogative of 
 Him who made all things out of nothing, who 
 foresees all events before they occur, and controls 
 all wills without compelling them. In emblem of 
 
CUBIST UPON THE WATERS 223 
 
 this His glorious attribute, He came to His dis- 
 ciples in the passage I have read to you, walking 
 upon the sea, — the emblem or hieroglyphic 
 among the ancients of the impossible, to show 
 them that what is impossible with man is pos- 5 
 sible with God. He who could walk the waters, 
 could also ride triumphantly upon what is still 
 more fickle, unstable, tumultuous, treacherous — 
 the billows of human wills, human purposes, hu- 
 man hearts. The bark of Peter was struggling lo 
 with the waves, and made no progress; Christ 
 came to him walking upon them; He entered the 
 boat, and by entering it He sustained it. He did 
 not abandon Himself to it, but He brought it 
 near to Himself ; He did not merely take refuge 15 
 in it, but He made Himself the strength of it, 
 and the pledge and cause of a successful passage. 
 "Presently," another gospel says, "the ship was 
 at the land, whither they were going." 
 
 Such was the power of the Son of God, the 20 
 Saviour of man, manifested by visible tokens in 
 the material world, when He came upon earth; 
 and such, too, it has ever since signally shown 
 itself to be, in the history of that mystical ark 
 which He then formed to float upon the ocean of 25 
 human opinion. He told His chosen servants to 
 form an ark for the salvation of souls: He gave 
 them directions how to construct it, — the length, 
 breadth, and height, its cabins and its windows; 
 and the world, as it gazed upon it, forthwith 30 
 began to criticise. It pronounced it framed quite 
 
224 MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 contrary to the scientific rules of shipbuilding; it 
 prophesied, as it still prophesies, that such a craft 
 was not sea-worthy ; that it was not water-tight ; 
 that it would not float ; that it would go to pieces 
 
 5 and founder. And why it does not, who can say, 
 except that the Lord is in it ? Who can say why 
 so old a framework, put together nineteen hun- 
 dred years ago, should have lasted, against all 
 human calculation, even to this day; always 
 
 10 going, and never gone; ever failing, yet ever 
 managing to explore new seas and foreign coasts 
 — except that He, who once said to the rowers, 
 "It is I, be not afraid," and to the waters, 
 "Peace," is still in His own ark which He has 
 
 15 made, to direct and to prosper her course ? 
 
 Time was, my brethren, when the forefathers of 
 our race were a savage tribe, inhabiting a wild 
 district beyond the limits of this quarter of the 
 earth. Whatever brought them thither, they had 
 
 20 no local attachments there or political settlement; 
 they were a restless people, and whether urged 
 forward by enemies or by desire of plunder, they 
 left their place, and passing through the defiles of 
 the mountains on the frontiers of Asia, they in- 
 
 25vaded Europe, setting out on a journey towards 
 the farther west. Generation after generation 
 passed away; and still this fierce and haughty 
 race moved forward. On, on they went; but 
 travel availed them not; the change of place 
 
 30 could bring them no truth, or peace, or hope, or 
 stability of heart; they could not flee from them- 
 
CUBIST UPON THE WATERS 225 
 
 selves. They carried with them their supersti- 
 tions and their sins, their gods of iron and of clay, 
 their savage sacrifices, their lawless witchcrafts, 
 their hatred of their kind, and their ignorance 
 of their destiny. At length they buried themselves 5 
 in the deep forests of Germany, and gave them- 
 selves up to indolent repose; but they had not 
 found their rest ; they were still heathens, making 
 the fair trees, the primeval work of God, and the 
 innocent beasts of the chase, the objects and the lo 
 instruments of their idolatrous worship. And, 
 last of all, they crossed over the strait and made 
 themselves masters of this island, and gave their • 
 very name to it; so that, whereas it had hitherto 
 been called Britain, the southern part, which was 15 
 their main seat, obtained the name of England. 
 And now they had proceeded forward nearly as 
 far as they could go, unless they were prepared 
 to look across the great ocean, and anticipate the 
 discovery of the world which lies beyond it. 20 
 
 What, then, was to happen to this restless race, 
 which had sought for happiness and peace across 
 the globe, and had not found it ? Was it to grow 
 old in its place, and dwindle away, and consume 
 in the fever of its own heart, which admitted 25 
 no remedy ? or was it to become great by being 
 overcome, and to enjoy the only real life of man, 
 and rise to his only true dignity, by being sub- 
 jected to a Master's yoke? Did its Maker and 
 Lord see any good thing in it, of which, under 30 
 His Divine nurture, profit might come to His elect, 
 
226 MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 and glory to His name ? He looked upon it, and 
 He saw nothing there to claim any visitation of 
 His grace, or to merit any relaxation of the awful 
 penalty which its lawlessness and impiety had 
 
 5 incurred. It was a proud race, which feared 
 neither God nor man — a race ambitious, self- 
 willed, obstinate, and hard of belief, which would 
 dare everything, even the eternal pit, if it was 
 challenged to do so. I say, there was nothing 
 
 10 there of a nature to reverse the destiny which 
 His righteous decrees have assigned to those who 
 sin wilfully and despise Him. But the Almighty 
 Lover of souls looked once again ; and He saw in 
 that poor, forlorn, and ruined nature, which He 
 
 15 had in the beginning filled with grace and light, 
 He saw in it, not what merited His favor, not 
 what would adequately respond to His influences, 
 not what was a necessary instrument of His pur- 
 poses, but what would illustrate and preach abroad 
 
 20 His grace, if He took pity on it. He saw in it, 
 a natural nobleness, a simplicity, a frankness of 
 character, a love of truth, a zeal for justice, an 
 indignation at wrong, an admiration of purity, a 
 reverence for law, a keen appreciation of the 
 
 25 beautif ulness and majesty of order, nay, further, 
 a tenderness and an affectionateness of heart, 
 which He knew would become the glorious instru- 
 ments of His high will when illuminated and 
 vivified by His supernatural gifts. And so He 
 
 30 who, did it so please Him, could raise up children 
 to Abraham out of the very stones of the earth, 
 
CHRIST UPON THE WATER8 227 
 
 nevertheless determined in this instance in His 
 free mercy to unite what was beautiful in nature 
 with what was radiant in grace; and, as if those 
 poor Anglo-Saxons had been too fair to be heathen, 
 therefore did He rescue them from the devil's 5 
 service and the devil's doom, and bring them 
 into the house of His holiness and the mountain 
 of His rest. 
 
 It is an old story and a familiar, and I need not 
 go through it. I need not tell you, my Brethren, lo 
 how suddenly the word of truth came to our 
 ancestors in this island and subdued them to its 
 gentle rule; how the grace of God fell on them, 
 and, without compulsion, as the historian tells us, 
 the multitude became Christian ; how, when all 15 
 was tempestuous, and hopeless, and dark, Christ 
 like a vision of glory came walking to them on 
 the waves of the sea. Then suddenly there was 
 a great calm; a change came over the pagan 
 people in that quarter of the country where the 20 
 gospel was first preached to them; and from 
 thence the blessed influence went forth, it was 
 poured out over the whole land, till one and all, 
 the Anglo-Saxon people, were converted by it. In 
 a hundred years the work was done; the idols, 25 
 the sacrifices, the mummeries of paganism flitted 
 away and were not, and the pure doctrine and 
 heavenly worship of the Cross were found in their 
 stead. The fair form of Christianity rose up and 
 grew and expanded like a beautiful pageant from 30 
 north to south; it was majestic, it was solemn, it 
 
228 MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 was bright, it was beautiful and pleasant, it was 
 soothing to the griefs, it was indulgent to the 
 hopes of man; it was at once a teaching and a 
 worship; it had a dogma, a mystery, a ritual of 
 5 its own; it had an hierarchical form. A brother- 
 hood of holy pastors, with miter and crosier and 
 uplifted hand, walked forth and blessed and ruled 
 a joyful people. The crucifix headed the proces- 
 sion, and simple monks were there with hearts in 
 
 10 prayer, and sweet chants resounded, and the holy 
 Latin tongue was heard, and boys came forth in 
 white, swinging censers, and the fragrant cloud 
 arose, and mass was sung, and the Saints were 
 invoked; and day after day, and in the still night, 
 
 15 and over the woody hills and in the quiet plains, 
 as constantly as sun and moon and stars go forth 
 in heaven, so regular and solemn was the stately 
 march of blessed services on earth, high festival, 
 and gorgeous procession, and soothing dirge, and 
 
 20 passing bell, and the familiar evening call to 
 prayer; till he who recollected the old pagan 
 time, would think it all unreal that he beheld and 
 heard, and would conclude he did but see a vision, 
 so marvelously was heaven let down upon earth, 
 
 25 so triumphantly were chased away the fiends of 
 darkness to their prison below. 
 
THE SECOND SPRING 229 
 
 The Second Spring 
 Cant., c. ii. v. 10-12 
 
 Surge, propera, arnica mea, columba mea, formosa 
 mea, et veni. Jam enim hiems transiit, imber abiit et 
 recessit. Flores apparuerunt in terra nostra. 
 
 Arise, make haste, my love, my dove, my beautiful 
 one, and come. For the winter is now past, the rain is 
 over and gone. The flowers have appeared in our land. 
 
 We have familiar experience of the order, the 
 constancy, the perpetual renovation of the material 
 world which surrounds us. Frail and transitory 
 as is every part of it, restless and migratory as 
 are its elements, never ceasing as are its changes, 5 
 still it abides. It is bound together by a law of 
 permanence, it is set up in unity; and, though it 
 is ever dying, it is ever coming to life again. Dis- 
 solution does but give birth to fresh modes of 
 organization, and one death is the parent of a 10 
 thousand Uves. Each hour, as it comes, is but 
 a testimony, how fleeting, yet how secure, how 
 certain, is the great whole. It is like an image 
 on the waters, which is ever the same, though 
 the waters ever flow. Change upon change — 15 
 yet one change cries out to another, like the 
 alternate Seraphim, in praise and in glory 
 of their Maker. The sun sinks to rise again; 
 the day is swallowed up in the gloom of the 
 night, to be born out of it, as fresh as if it 20 
 had never been quenched. Spring passes into 
 
230 MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 summer, and through summer and autumn into 
 winter, only the more surely, by its own ultimate 
 return, to triumph over that grave, towards which 
 it resolutely hastened from its first hour. We 
 
 5 mourn over the blossoms of May, because they 
 are to wither; but we know, withal, that May is 
 one day to have its revenge upon November, by 
 the revolution of that solemn circle which never 
 stops — which teaches us in our height of hope, 
 
 10 ever to be sober, and in our depth of desolation, 
 never to despair. 
 
 And forcibly as this comes home to every one 
 of us, not less forcible is the contrast which exists 
 between this material world, so vigorous, so re- 
 
 15 productive, amid all its changes, and the moral 
 world, so feeble, so downward, so resourceless, 
 amid all its aspirations. That which ought to 
 come to naught, endures; that which promises a 
 future, disappoints and is no more. The same 
 
 20 sun shines in heaven from first to last, and the 
 blue firmament, the everlasting mountains, re- 
 flect his rays; but where is there upon earth 
 the champion, the hero, the law giver, the body 
 politic, the sovereign race, which was great three 
 
 25 hundred years ago, and is great now? Moralists 
 and poets, often do they descant upon this innate 
 vitality of matter, this innate perishableness of 
 mind. Man rises to fall : he tends to dissolution 
 from the moment he begins to be; he lives on, 
 
 30 indeed, in his children, he lives on in his name, 
 he lives not on in his own person. He is, as re- 
 
THE SECOND SPRING 231 
 
 gards the manifestations of his nature here below, 
 as a bubble that breaks, and as water poured out 
 upon the earth. He was young, he is old, he is 
 never young again. This is the lament over him, 
 poured forth in verse and in prose, by Christians 5 
 and by heathen. The greatest work of God's 
 hands under the sun, he, in all the manifestations 
 of his complex being, is born only to die. 
 
 His bodily frame first begins to feel the power 
 of this constraining law, though it is the last to lo 
 succumb to it. We look at the gloom of youth 
 with interest, yet with pity ; and the more grace- 
 ful and sweet it is, with pity so much the more; 
 for, whatever be its excellence and its glory, soon 
 it begins to be deformed and dishonored by the 15 
 very force of its living on. It grows into ex- 
 haustion and collapse, till at length it crumbles 
 into that dust out of which it was originally 
 taken. 
 
 So is it, too, with our moral being, a far higher 20 
 and diviner portion of our natural constitution; 
 it begins with life, it ends with what is worse 
 than the mere loss of life, with a living death. 
 How beautiful is the human heart, when it puts 
 forth its first leaves, and opens and rejoices in 25 
 its spring-tide ! Fair as may be the bocUly form, 
 fairer far, in its green foliage and bright blossoms, 
 is natural virtue. It blooms in the young, like 
 some rich flower, so delicate, so fragrant, and so 
 dazzling. Generosity and lightness of heart and 30 
 amiableness, the confiding spirit, the gentle tem- 
 
232 MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 per, the elastic cheerfulness, the open hand, the 
 pure affection, the noble aspiration, the heroic 
 resolve, the romantic pursuit, the love in which 
 self has no part, — are not these beautiful ? and 
 
 5 are they not dressed up and set forth for admira- 
 tion in their best shapes, in tales and in poems? 
 and ah ! what a prospect of good is there ! who 
 could believe that it is to fade ! and yet, as night 
 follows upon day, as decrepitude follows upon 
 
 10 health, so surel}^ are failure, and overthrow, and 
 annihilation, the issue of this natural virtue, if 
 time only be allowed to it to run its course. 
 There are those who are cut off in the first open- 
 ing of this excellence, and then, if we may trust 
 
 15 their epitaphs, they have lived like angels; but 
 wait awhile, let them live on, let the course of 
 life proceed, let the bright soul go through the 
 fire and water of the world's temptations and 
 seductions and corruptions and transformations; 
 
 20 and, alas for the insufficiency of nature ! alas for 
 its powerlessness to persevere, its waywardness 
 in disappointing its own promise ! Wait till 
 youth has become age; and not more different 
 is the miniature which we have of him when a 
 
 25 boy, when every feature spoke of hope, put side 
 by side of the large portrait painted to his honor, 
 when he is old, when his limbs are shrunk, his 
 eye dim, his brow furrowed, and his hair gray, 
 than differs the moral grace of that boyhood from 
 
 30 the forbidding and repulsive aspect of his soul, 
 now that he has lived to the age of man. For 
 
THE SECOND SPBING 233 
 
 moroseness, and misanthropy, and selfishness, is 
 the ordinary winter of that spring. 
 
 Such is man in his own nature, and such, too, 
 is he in his works. The noblest efforts of his 
 genius, th'e conquests he has made, the doctrines 5 
 he has originated, the nations he has civihzed, 
 the states he has created, they outhve himself, 
 they outlive him by many centuries, but they 
 tend to an end, and that end is dissolution. 
 Powers of the world, sovereignties, dynasties, 10 
 sooner or later come to nought; they have their 
 fatal hour. The Roman conqueror shed tears 
 over Carthage, for in the destruction of the rival 
 city he discerned too truly an augury of the fall 
 of Rome; and at length, with the weight and the 15 
 responsibilities, the crimes and the glories, of cen- 
 turies upon centuries, the Imperial City fell. 
 
 Thus man and all his w^orks are mortal; they 
 die, and they have no power of renovation. 
 
 But what is it, my Fathers, my Brothers, what 20 
 is it that has happened in England just at this 
 time? Something strange is passing over this 
 land, by the very surprise, by the very commotion, 
 which it excites. Were we not near enough the 
 scene of action to be able to say what is going on, 25 
 — were we the inhabitants of some sister planet 
 possessed of a more perfect mechanism than this 
 earth has discovered for surveying the transac- 
 tions of another globe, — and did we turn our 
 eyes thence towards England just at this season, 30 
 we should be arrested by a political phenomenon 
 
234 MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 as wonderful as any which the astronomer notes 
 down from his physical field of view. It would 
 be the occurrence of a national commotion, almost 
 without parallel, more violent than has happened 
 
 5 here for centuries — at least in the judgments 
 and intentions of men, if not in act and deed. 
 We should note it down, that soon after St. 
 Michael's day, 1850, a storm arose in the moral 
 world, so furious as to demand some great ex- 
 
 loplanation, and to rouse in us an intense desire to 
 gain it. We should observe it increasing from 
 day to day, and spreading from place to place, 
 without remission, almost without lull, up to this 
 very hour, when perhaps it threatens worse still, 
 
 15 or at least gives no sure prospect of alleviation. 
 Every party in the body politic undergoes its 
 influence, — from the Queen upon her throne, 
 down to the little ones in the infant or day school. 
 The ten thousands of the constituency, the sum- 
 
 20 total of Protestant sects, the aggregate of re- 
 ligious societies and associations, the great body 
 of established clergy in town and country, the bar, 
 even the medical profession, nay, even literary 
 and scientific circles, every class, every inter- 
 
 25 est, every fireside, gives tokens of this ubiqui- 
 tous storm. This would be our report of it, seeing 
 it from the distance, and we should speculate 
 on the cause. What is it all about ? against what 
 is it directed? what wonder has happened upon 
 
 30 earth ? what prodigious, what preternatural event 
 is adequate to the burden of so vast an effect? 
 
THE SECOND SPRING 235 
 
 We should judge rightly in our curiosity about 
 a phenomenon like this; it must be a portentous 
 event, and it is. It is an innovation, a miracle, 
 I may say, in the course of human events. The 
 physical world revolves year by year, and begins 5 
 again; but the political order of things does not 
 renew itself, does not return ; it continues, but it 
 proceeds; there is no retrogression. This is so 
 well understood by men of the day, that with 
 them progress is idolized as another name forio 
 good. The past never returns — it is never good ; 
 if we are to escape existing ills, it must be by 
 going forward. The past is out of date ; the past 
 is dead. As well may the dead live to us, as well 
 may the dead profit us, as the past return. This, 15 
 then, is the cause of this national transport, this 
 national cry, which encompasses us. The past has 
 returned, the dead lives. Thrones are overturned, 
 and are never restored; States live and die, and 
 then are matter only for history. Babylon was 20 
 great, and Tyre, and Egypt, and Nineveh, and 
 shall never be great again. The English Church 
 was, and the English Church was not, and the 
 English Church is once again. This is the por- 
 tent, worthy of a cry. It is the coming in of a 25 
 Second Spring; it is a restoration in the moral 
 world, such as that which yearly takes place in 
 the physical. 
 
 Three centuries ago, and the Catholic Church, 
 that great creation of God's power, stood in this 30 
 land in pride of place. It had the honors of near 
 
236 MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 a thousand years upon it; it was enthroned on 
 some twenty sees up and down the broad coun- 
 try; it was based in the will of a faithful people; 
 it energized through ten thousand instruments of 
 5 power and influence; and it was ennobled by a 
 host of Saints and Martyrs. The churches, one 
 by one, recounted and rejoiced in the line of 
 glorified intercessors, who were the respective 
 objects of their grateful homage. Canterbur}^ 
 
 10 alone numbered perhaps some sixteen, from St. 
 Augustine to St. Dunstan and St. Elphege, from 
 St. Anselm and St. Thomas down to St. Edmund. 
 York had its St. Paulinus, St. John, St. Wilfrid, 
 and St. William; London, its St. Erconwald; 
 
 15 Durham, its St. Cuthbert; Winton, its St. 
 Swithun. Then there were St. Aidan of Lin- 
 disfarne, and St. Hugh of Lincoln, and St. 
 Chad of Lichfield, and St. Thomas of Here- 
 ford, and St. Oswald and St. Wulstan of 
 
 20 Worcester, and St. Osmund of Salisbury, and 
 St. Birinus of Dorchester, and St. Richard of 
 Chichester. And then, too, its religious orders, 
 its monastic establishments, its universities, 
 its wide relations all over Europe, its high pre- 
 
 25rogatives in the temporal state, its wealth, its 
 dependencies, its popular honors, — where was 
 there in the whole of Christendom a more glo- 
 rious hierarchy ? Mixed up with the civil insti- 
 tutions, with kings and nobles, with the people, 
 
 30 found in every village and in every town, — it 
 seemed destined to stand, so long as England 
 
THE SECOND SPBING 237 
 
 stood, and to outlast, it might be, England's 
 greatness. 
 
 But it was the high decree of heaven, that the 
 majesty of that presence should be blotted out. 
 It is a long story, my Fathers and Brothers — 5 
 you know it well. I need not go through it. The 
 vivifying principle of truth, the shadow of St. 
 Peter, the grace of the Redeemer, left it. That 
 old Church in its day became a corpse (a mar- 
 velous, an awful change !) ; and then it did but lo 
 corrupt the air which once it refreshed, and cum- 
 ber the ground which once it beautified. So all 
 seemed to be lost; and there was a struggle for 
 a time, and then its priests were cast out or 
 martyred. There were sacrileges innumerable. 15 
 Its temples were profaned or destroyed ; its reve- 
 nues seized by covetous nobles, or squandered 
 upon the ministers of a new faith. The presence 
 of Catholicism was at length simply removed, — 
 its grace disowned, — its power despised, — its 20 
 name, except as a matter of history, at length 
 almost unknown. It took a long time to do this 
 thoroughly; much time, much thought, much 
 labor, much expense; but at last it was done. 
 Oh, that miserable day, centuries before we were 25 
 born ! What a martyrdom to live in it and see 
 the fair form of Truth, moral and material, 
 hacked piecemeal, and every limb and organ 
 carried off, and burned in the fire, or cast into 
 the deep ! But at last the work was done. Truth 30 
 was disposed of, and shoveled away, and there 
 
238 MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 was a calm, a silence, a sort of peace — and such 
 was about the state of things when we were born 
 into this weary world. 
 
 My Fathers and Brothers, you have seen it on 
 
 5 one side, and some of us on another; but one and 
 all of us can bear witness to the fact of the utter 
 contempt into which Catholicism had fallen by 
 the time that we were born. You, alas, know it 
 far better than I can know it ; but it may not be 
 
 10 out of place, if by one or two tokens, as by the 
 strokes of a pencil, I bear witness to you from 
 without, of what you can witness so much more 
 truly from within. No longer the Catholic 
 Church in the country; nay, no longer, I may 
 
 15 say, a Catholic community; but a few ad- 
 herents of the Old Religion, moving silently 
 and sorrowfully about, as memorials of what had 
 been. The "Roman Catholics," — not a sect, 
 not even an interest, as men conceived of it, — 
 
 20 not a body, however small, representative of the 
 Great Communion abroad, — but a mere handful 
 of individuals, who might be counted, like the 
 pebbles and detritus of the great deluge, and 
 who, forsooth, merely happened to retain a creed 
 
 25 which, in its day indeed, was the profession of a 
 Church. Here a set of poor Irishmen, coming and 
 going at harvest time, or a colony of them lodged 
 in a miserable quarter of the vast metropolis. 
 There, perhaps an elderly person, seen walking 
 
 30 in the streets, grave and solitary, and strange, 
 though noble in bearing, and said to be of good 
 
THE SECOND SPRING 239 
 
 family, and a "Roman Catholic.*' An old- 
 fashioned house of gloomy appearance, closed in 
 with high walls, with an iron gate, and yews, and 
 the report attaching to it that " Rom^n Catholics" 
 lived there; but who they were, or what they did, 5 
 or what was meant by calling them Roman 
 Catholics, no one could tell — though it had an 
 unpleasant sound, and told of form and supersti- 
 tion. And then, perhaps, as we went to and fro, 
 looking with a boy's curious eyes through theio 
 great city, we might come to-day upon some 
 Moravian chapel, or Quaker's meeting-house, and 
 to-morrow on a chapel of the " Roman Catholics" ; 
 but nothing was to be gathered from it, except 
 that there were lights burning there, and some 15 
 boys in white, swinging censers; and what it all 
 meant could only be learned from books, from 
 Protestant Histories and Sermons; and they did 
 not report well of the "Roman Catholics," but, 
 on the contrary, deposed that they had once had 20 
 power and had abused it. And then, again, we 
 might on one occasion hear it pointedly put out 
 by some literary man, as the result of his careful 
 investigation, and as a recondite point of informa- 
 tion, which few knew, that there was this differ- 25 
 ence between the Roman Catholics of England 
 and the Roman Catholics of Ireland, that the 
 latter had bishops, and the former were governed 
 by four officials, called Vicars-Apostolic. 
 
 Such was about the sort of knowledge possessed 30 
 of Christianity by the heathen of old time, who 
 
240 MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 persecuted its adherents from the face of the 
 earth, and then called them a gens lucifuga, a 
 people who shunned the light of day. Such were 
 Catholics in England, found in corners, and alleys, 
 
 5 and cellars, and the housetops, or in the recesses 
 of the country; cut off from the populous world 
 around them, and dimly seen, as if through a 
 mist or in twilight, as ghosts flitting to and fro, 
 by the high Protestants, the lords of the earth. 
 
 10 At length so feeble did they become, so utterly 
 contemptible, that contempt gave birth to pity; 
 and the more generous of their tyrants actually 
 began to wish to bestow on them some favor, 
 under the notion that their opinions were simply 
 
 15 too absurd ever to spread again, and that they 
 themselves, were they but raised in civil impor- 
 tance, would soon unlearn and be ashamed of 
 them. And thus, out of mere kindness to us, 
 they began to vilify our doctrines to the Protes- 
 
 20 tant world, that so our very idiotcy or our secret 
 unbelief might be our plea for mercy. 
 
 A great change, an awful contrast, between the 
 time-honored Church of St. Augustine and St. 
 Thomas, and the poor remnant of their children 
 
 25 in the beginning of the nineteenth century ! It 
 was a miracle, I might say, to have pulled down 
 that lordly power; but there was a greater and a 
 truer one in store. No one could have prophesied 
 its fall, but still less would any one have ventured 
 
 30 to prophesy its rise again. The fall was wonder- 
 ful; still after all it was in the order of nature; 
 
THE SECOND SPRING 241 
 
 all things come to naught : its rise again would 
 be a different sort of wonder, for it is in the order 
 of grace, — and who can hope for miracles, and 
 such a miracle as this? Has the whole course of 
 history a like to show? I must speak cautiously 5 
 and according to my knowledge, but I recollect 
 no parallel to it. Augustine, indeed, came to 
 the same island to which the early missionaries 
 had come already; but they came to Britons, and 
 he to Saxons. The Arian Goths and Lombards, lo 
 too, cast off their heresy in St. Augustine's age, 
 and joined the Church; but they had never fallen 
 away from her. The inspired word seems to imply 
 the almost impossibility of such a grace as the 
 renovation of those who have crucified to them- 15 
 selves again, and trodden under foot, the Son of 
 God. Who then could have dared to hope that, 
 out of so sacrilegious a nation as this is, a people 
 would have been formed again unto their Saviour ? 
 What signs did it show that it was to be singled 20 
 out from among the nations? Had it been 
 prophesied some fifty years ago, would not the 
 very notion have seemed preposterous and wild? 
 My Fathers, there was one of your own order, 
 then in the maturity of his powers and his reputa- 25 
 tion. His name is the property of this diocese; 
 yet is too great, too venerable, too dear to all 
 Catholics, to be confined to any part of England, 
 when it is rather a household word in the mouths 
 of all of us. What w^ould have been the feelings ;iO 
 of that venerable man, the champion of God's ark 
 
242 MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 in an evil time, could he have lived to see this 
 day? It is almost presumptuous for one who 
 knew him not, to draw pictures about him, and 
 his thoughts, and his friends, some of whom are 
 
 5 even here present; yet am I wrong in fancying 
 that a day such as this, in w^iich we stand, would 
 have seemed to him a dream, or, if he prophesied 
 of it, to his hearers nothing but a mockery? Say 
 that one time, rapt in spirit, he had reached for- 
 
 10 ward to the future, and that his mortal eye had 
 wandered from that lowly ' chapel in the valley 
 which had been for centuries in the possession of 
 Catholics, to the neighboring height, then waste 
 and solitary. And let him say to those about 
 
 15 him : " I see a bleak mount, looking upon an open 
 country, over against that huge town, to whose 
 inhabitants Catholicism is of so little account. 
 I see the ground marked out, and an ample in- 
 closure made; and plantations are rising there, 
 
 20 clothing and circling in the space. 
 
 "And there on that high spot, far from the 
 haunts of men, yet in the very center of the island, 
 a large edifice, or rather pile of edifices, appears 
 with many fronts, and courts, and long cloisters 
 
 25 and corridors, and story upon story. And there 
 it rises, under the invocation of the same sweet 
 and powerful name which has been our strength 
 and consolation in the Valley. I look more at- 
 tentively at that building, and I see it is fashioned 
 
 30 upon that ancient style of art which brings back 
 the past, which had seemed to be perishing from 
 
THE SECOND SPBING 243 
 
 off the face of the earth, or to be preserved only 
 as a curiosity, or to be imitated only as a fancy. 
 I listen, and I hear the sound of voices, grave 
 and musical, renewing the old chant, with which 
 Augustine greeted Ethelbert in the free air upon 5 
 the Kentish strand. It comes from a long pro- 
 cession, and it winds along the cloisters. Priests 
 and Religious, theologians from the schools, and 
 canons from the Cathedral, walk in due precedence. 
 And then there comes a vision of well-nigh 10 
 twelve mitered heads; and last I see a Prince of 
 the Church, in the royal dye of empire and of 
 martyrdom, a pledge to us from Rome of Rome's 
 unwearied love, a token that that goodly com- 
 pany is firm in Apostolic faith and hope. And 15 
 the shadow of the Saints is there; St. Benedict 
 is there, speaking to us by the voice of bishop 
 and of priest, and counting over the long ages 
 through which he has prayed, and studied, and 
 labored; there, too, is St. Dominic's white wool, 20 
 which no blemish can impair, no stain can dim: 
 and if St. Bernard be not there, it is only that 
 his absence may make him be remembered more. 
 And the princely patriarch, St. Ignatius, too, the 
 St. George of the modern world, with his chivalrous 25 
 lance run through his writhing foe, he, too, sheds 
 his blessing upon that train. And others, also, 
 his equals or his juniors in history, whose pictures 
 are above our altars, or soon shall be, the surest 
 proof that the Lord's arm has not waxen short, 30 
 nor His mercy failed, — they, too, are looking 
 
244 MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 down from their thrones on high upon the throng. 
 And so that high company moves on into the holy 
 place; and there, with august rite and awful 
 sacrifice, inaugurates the great act which brings 
 
 5 it thither." What is that act? it is the first 
 synod of a new Hierarchy; it is the resurrection 
 of the Church. 
 
 my Fathers, my Brothers, had that revered 
 Bishop so spoken then, who that had heard him 
 
 10 but would have said that he spoke what could 
 not be ? What ! those few scattered worshipers, 
 the Roman Catholics, to form a Church ! Shall 
 the past be rolled back? Shall the grave open? 
 Shall the Saxons live again to God? Shall the 
 
 15 shepherds, watching their poor flocks by night, 
 be visited by a multitude of the heavenly army, 
 and hear how their Lord has been new-born in 
 their own city? Yes; for grace can, where 
 nature cannot. The world grows old, but the 
 
 20 Church is ever young. She can, in any time, at 
 her Lord's will, " inherit the Gentiles, and inhabit 
 the desolate cities." "Arise, Jerusalem, for thy 
 light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen 
 upon thee. Behold, darkness shall cover the 
 
 25 earth, and a mist the people; but the Lord shall 
 arise upon thee, and His glory shall be seen upon 
 thee. Lift up thine eyes round about, and see; 
 all these are gathered together, they come to 
 thee; thy sons shall come from afar, and thy 
 
 30 daughters shall rise up at thy side." "Arise, 
 make haste, my love, my dove, my beautiful one, 
 
THE SECOND SPBING 245 
 
 and come. For the winter is now past, and the 
 rain is over and gone. The flowers have appeared 
 in our land . . . the fig tree hath put forth her 
 green figs; the vines in flower yield their sweet 
 smell. Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and 5 
 come." It is the time for thy Visitation. Arise, 
 Mary, and go forth in thy strength into that north 
 country, which once was thine own, and take 
 possession of a land which knows thee not. Arise, 
 Mother of God, and with thy thrilling voice speak lo 
 to those who labor with child, and are in pain, 
 till the babe of grace leaps within them ! Shine 
 on us, dear Lady, with thy bright countenance, 
 like the sun in his strength, stella matutina, O 
 harbinger of peace, till our year is one perpetual is 
 May. From thy sweet eyes, from thy pure smile, 
 from thy majestic brow, let ten thousand in- 
 fluences rain down, not to confound or over- 
 whelm, but to persuade, to win over thine enemies. 
 O Mary, my hope, O Mother undefiled, fulfill to 20 
 us the promise of this Spring. A second temple 
 rises on the ruins of the old. Canterbury has 
 gone its way, and York is gone, and Durham is 
 gone, and Winchester is gone. It was sore to 
 part with them. We clung to the vision of past 25 
 greatness, and would not believe it could come 
 to naught ; but the Church in England has died, 
 and the Church lives again. Westminster and 
 Nottingham, Beverley and Hexham, Northamp- 
 ton and Shrewsbury, if the world lasts, shall be30 
 names as musical to the ear, as stirring to the 
 
246 MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 heart, as the glories we have lost; and Saints 
 shall rise out of them, if God so will, and Doc- 
 tors once again shall give the law to Israel, 
 and Preachers call to penance and to justice, as 
 
 5 at the beginning. 
 
 Yes, my Fathers and Brothers, and if it be 
 God's blessed will, not Saints alone, not Doctors 
 only, not Preachers only, shall be ours — but 
 Martyrs, too, shall re-consecrate the soil to God. 
 
 10 We know not what is before us, ere we win our 
 own; we are engaged in a great, a joyful work, 
 but in proportion to God's grace is the fury of 
 His enemies. They have welcomed us as the 
 lion greets his prey. Perhaps they may be 
 
 15 familiarized in time with our appearance, but 
 perhaps they may be irritated the more. To set 
 up the Church again in England is too great an 
 act to be done in a corner. We have had reason 
 to expect that such a boon would not be given 
 
 20 to us without a cross. It is not God's way that 
 great blessings should descend without the sacri- 
 fice first of great sufferings. If the truth is to be 
 spread to any wide extent among this people, how 
 can we dream, how can we hope, that trial and 
 
 25 trouble shah not accompany its going forth ? And 
 we have already, if it may be said without pre- 
 sumption, to commence our work withal, a large 
 store of merits. We have no slight outfit for our 
 opening warfare. Can we religiously suppose that 
 
 30 the blood of our martyrs, three centuries ago and 
 since, shall never receive its recompense ? Those 
 
THE SECOND SPRING 247 
 
 priests, secular and regular, did they suffer for 
 no end? or rather, for an end which is not yet 
 accomplished ? The long imprisonment, the fetid 
 dungeon, the weary suspense, the tyrannous trial, 
 the barbarous sentence, the savage execution, the 5 
 rack, the gibbet, the knife, the caldron, the num- 
 berless tortures of those holy victims, my God, 
 are they to have no reward? Are Thy martyrs 
 to cry from under Thine altar for their loving 
 vengeance on this guilty people, and to cry in lo 
 vain? Shall they lose life, and not gain a bet- 
 ter life for the children of those who persecuted 
 them? Is this Thy way, O my God, righteous 
 and true? Is it accorchng to Thy promise, O 
 King of Saints, if I may dare talk to Thee of is 
 justice? Did not Thou Thyself pray for Thine 
 enemies upon the cross, and convert them? Did 
 not Thy first Martyr win Thy great Apostle, then 
 a persecutor, by his loving prayer? And in that 
 day of trial and desolation for England, when 20 
 hearts were pierced through and through with 
 Mary's woe, at the crucifixion of Thy body 
 mystical, was not every tear that flowed, and 
 every drop of blood that was shed, the seeds of a 
 future harvest, when they who sowed in sorrow 25 
 were to reap in joy? 
 
 And as that suffering of the Martyrs is not yet 
 recompensed, so, perchance, it is not yet ex- 
 hausted. Something, for what we know, remains 
 to be undergone, to complete the necessary sacri- 30 
 fice. May God forbid it, for this poor nation's 
 
248 MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 sake ! But still could we be surprised, my Fathers 
 and my Brothers, if the winter even now should 
 not yet be quite over? Have we any right to 
 take it strange, if, in this English land, the spring- 
 5 time of the Church should turn out to be an Eng- 
 lish spring, an uncertain, anxious time of hope 
 and fear, of joy and suffering, — of bright promise 
 and budding hopes, yet withal, of keen blasts, and 
 cold showers, and sudden storms ? 
 
 10 One thing alone I know, — that according to 
 our need, so will be our strength. One thing I 
 am sure of, that the more the enemy rages against 
 us, so much the more will the Saints in Heaven 
 plead for us ; the more fearful are our trials from 
 
 15 the world, the more present to us will be our 
 Mother Mary, and our good Patrons and Angel 
 Guardians; the more malicious are the devices of 
 men against us, the louder cry of supplication will 
 ascend from the bosom of the whole Church to 
 
 20 God for us. We shall not be left orphans; we 
 shall have within us the strength of the Paraclete, 
 promised to the Church and to every member of 
 it. My Fathers, my Brothers in the priesthood, 
 I speak from my heart when I declare my con- 
 
 25viction, that there is no one among you here 
 present but, if God so willed, would readily be- 
 come a martyr for His sake. I do not say you 
 would wish it ; I do not say that the natural will 
 would not pray that that chalice might pass 
 
 30 away ; I do not speak of what you can do by any 
 strength of yours; but in the strength of God, 
 
THE SECOND SPRING 249 
 
 in the grace of the Spirit, in the armor of justice, 
 by the consolations and peace of the Church, by 
 the blessing of the Apostles Peter and Paul, and 
 in the name of Christ, you would do what nature 
 cannot do. By the intercession of the Saints on 5 
 high, by the penances and good works and the 
 prayers of the people of God on earth, you would 
 be forcibly borne up as upon the waves of the 
 mighty deep, and carried on out of yourselves by 
 the fullness of grace, whether nature wished it or 10 
 no. I do not mean violently, or with unseemly 
 struggle, but calmly, gracefully, sweetly, joyously, 
 3^ou would mount up and ride forth to the battle, 
 as on the rush of Angels' wings, as your fathers 
 did before you, and gained the prize. You, who 15 
 day by day offer up the Immaculate Lamb of 
 God, you who hold in your hands the Incarnate 
 Word under the visible tokens which He has 
 ordained, you who again and again drain the 
 chalice of the Great Victim; who is to make you 20 
 fear? what is to startle you? what to seduce 
 you? who is to stop you, whether you are to 
 suffer or to do, whether to lay the foundations of 
 the Church in tears, or to put the crown upon the 
 work in jubilation ? 25 
 
 My Fathers, my Brothers, one word more. It 
 may seem as if I were going out of my way in 
 thus addressing you; but I have some sort of 
 plea to urge in extenuation. When the English 
 College at Rome was set up by the solicitude of a 30 
 great Pontiff in the beginning of England's sor- 
 
250 MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 rows, and missionaries were trained there for con- 
 fessorship and martyrdom here, who was it that 
 saluted the fair Saxon youths as they passed by 
 him in the streets of the great city, with the salu- 
 
 5tation, "Salvete flores martyrum"? And when 
 the time came for each in turn to leave that peace- 
 ful home, and to go forth to the conflict, to whom 
 did they betake themselves before leaving Rome, 
 to receive a blessing which might nerve them for 
 
 10 their work? They went for a Saint's blessing; 
 they went to a calm old man, who had never 
 seen blood, except in penance; who had longed 
 indeed to die for Christ, what time the great St. 
 Francis opened the way to the far East, but who 
 
 15 had been fixed as if a sentinel in the holy city, 
 and walked up and down for fifty years on one 
 beat, while his brethren were in the battle. Oh ! 
 the fire of that heart, too great for its frail tene- 
 ment, which tormented him to be kept at home 
 
 20 when the whole Church was at war! and there- 
 fore came those bright-haired strangers to him, 
 ere they set out for the scene of their passion, 
 that the full zeal and love pent up in that burning 
 breast might find a vent, and flow over, from him 
 
 25 who was kept at home, upon those who were to 
 face the foe. Therefore one by one, each in his 
 turn, those youthful soldiers came to the old man ; 
 and one by one they persevered and gained the 
 crown and the palm, — all but one, who had not 
 
 30 gone, and would not go, for the salutary blessing. 
 My Fathers, my Brothers, that old man was 
 
ST. PAUL'S CHARACTERISTIC GIFT 251 
 
 my own St. Philip. Bear with me for his sake. 
 If I have spoken too seriously, his sweet smile 
 shall temper it. As he was with you three cen- 
 turies ago in Rome, when our Temple fell, so 
 now surely when it is rising, it is a pleasant token 5 
 that he should have even set out on his travels to 
 you; and that, as if remembering how he inter- 
 ceded for you at home, and recognizing the rela- 
 tions he then formed with you, he should now be 
 wishing to have a name among you, and to be 10 
 loved by you, and perchance to do you a service, 
 here in your own land. 
 
 St. Paul's Characteristic Gift 
 Ep. II. S. Paul ad Cor., c. xii. v. 9 
 
 Libenter igitur gloriabor in infirmitatibus meis, ut 
 inhabitet in me virtus Christi. 
 
 Gladly therefore will I glory in my infirmities, that 
 the power of Christ may dwell in me. 
 
 All the Saints, from the beginning of history 
 to the end, resemble each other in this, that their 
 excellence is supernatural, their deeds heroic, their 15 
 merits extraordinary and prevailing. They all 
 are choice patterns of the theological virtues; 
 they all are blessed with a rare and special union 
 with their Maker and Lord ; they all lead lives of 
 penance; and when they leave this world, they 20 
 are spared that torment, which the multitude of 
 holy souls are allotted, between earth and heaven, 
 
252 MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 death and eternal glory. But, with all these va- 
 rious tokens of their belonging to one and the 
 same celestial family, they may still be divided, 
 in their external aspect, into two classes. 
 5 There are those, on the one hand, who are so 
 absorbed in the Divine life, that they seem, even 
 while they are in the flesh, to have no part in 
 earth or in human nature; but to think, speak, 
 and act under views, affections, and motives 
 
 10 simply supernatural. If they love others, it is 
 simply because they love God, and because man 
 is the object either of His compassion, or of His 
 praise. If they rejoice, it is in what is unseen; if 
 they feel interest, it is in what is unearthly; if 
 
 15 they speak, it is almost with the voice of Angels; 
 if they eat or drink, it is almost of Angels' food 
 alone — for it is recorded in their histories, that 
 for weeks they have fed on nothing else but that 
 Heavenly Bread which is the proper sustenance 
 
 .20 of the soul. Such w^e may suppose to have been 
 St. John; such St. Mary Magdalen; such the 
 hermits of the desert; such many of the holy 
 Virgins whose lives belong to the science of mys- 
 tical theology. 
 
 25 On the other hand, there are those, and of the 
 highest order of sanctity too, as far as our eyes 
 can see, in whom the supernatural combines with 
 nature, instead of superseding it, — invigorating 
 it, elevating it, ennobling it; and who are not 
 
 30 the less men, because they are saints. They do 
 not put away their natural endowments, but use 
 
ST. PAUL'S CHABACTEBISTIC GIFT 253 
 
 them to the glory of the Giver; they do not act 
 beside them, but through them; they do not 
 edipse them by the brightness of Divine grace, 
 but only transfigure them. They are versed in 
 human knowledge; they are busy in human 5 
 society ; they understand the human heart ; they 
 can throw themselves into the minds of other 
 men; and all this in consequence of natural gifts 
 and secular education. While they themselves 
 stand secure in the blessedness of purity andio 
 peace, they can follow in imagination the ten 
 thousand aberrations of pride, passion, and re- 
 morse. The world is to them a book, to which 
 they are drawn for its own sake, which they read 
 fluently, which interests them naturally, — 15 
 though, by the reason of the grace which dwells 
 within them, they study it and hold converse 
 with it for the glory of God and the salvation 
 of souls. Thus they have the thoughts, feelings, 
 frames of mind, attractions, sympathies, antipa-20 
 thies of other men, so far as these are not 
 sinful, only they have these properties of human 
 nature purified, sanctified, and exalted; and they 
 are only made more eloquent, more poetical, more 
 profound, more intellectual, by reason of their 25 
 being more holy. In this latter class I may per- 
 haps without presumption place many of the early 
 Fathers, St. Chrysostom, St. Gregory Nazianzen, 
 St. Athanasius, and above all, the great Saint of 
 this day, St. Paul the Apostle. 30 
 
 I think it a happy circumstance that, in this 
 
254 MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 Church, placed, as it is, under the patronage of 
 the great names of St. Peter and St. Paul, the 
 special feast days of these two Apostles (for such 
 we may account the 29th of June as regards St. 
 
 5 Peter, and to-day as regards St. Paul) should, in 
 the first year of our assembling here, each have 
 fallen on a Sunday. And now that we have 
 arrived, through God's protecting Providence, at 
 the latter of these two days, the Conversion of 
 
 10 St. Paul, I do not like to forego the opportunity, 
 with whatever misgivings as to my ability, of 
 offering to you, my brethren, at least a few re- 
 marks upon the wonderful work of God's creative 
 grace mercifully presented to our inspection in 
 
 15 the person of this great Apostle. Most unworthy 
 of him, I know, is the best that I can say ; and even 
 that best I cannot duly exhibit in the space of 
 time allowed me on an occasion such as this; 
 but what is said out of devotion to him, and for 
 
 20 the Divine glory, will, I trust, have its use, defec- 
 tive though it be, and be a plea for his favorable 
 notice of those who say it, and be graciously 
 accepted by his and our Lord and Master. 
 
 Now, since I have begun by contrasting St. 
 
 25 Paul with St. John, and by implying that St. 
 John lived a life more simply supernatural than 
 St. Paul, I may seem to you, my brethren, to be 
 speaking to St. Paul's disparagement; and you 
 may therefore ask me whether it is possible for 
 
 30 any Saint on earth to have a more intimate com- 
 munion with the Divine Majesty than was granted 
 
ST. PAUL'S CHARACTERISTIC GIFT 255 
 
 to St. Paul. You may remind me of his own 
 words, "I live, now not I, but Christ liveth in 
 me ; and, that I now live in the flesh, I live in the 
 faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and de- 
 livered Himself for me." And you may refer to 5 
 his most astonishing ecstasies and visions; as 
 when he was rapt even to the third heaven, and 
 heard sacred words, which it "is not granted to 
 man to utter." You may say, he "no way came 
 short" of St. John in his awful initiation into the 10 
 mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. Certainly 
 you may say so; nor am I imagining anything 
 contrary to you. We indeed cannot compare 
 Saints; but I agree with you, that St. Paul was 
 visited by favors, equal, in our apprehensions, to 15 
 those which were granted to St. John. But then, 
 on the other hand, neither was St. John behind 
 St. Paul in these tokens of Divine love. In truth, 
 these tokens are some of those very things which, 
 in a greater or less degree, belong to all Saints 20 
 whatever, as I said when I began; whereas my 
 question just now is, not what are those points in 
 which St. Paul agrees with all other Saints, but 
 what is his distinguished mark, how we recognize 
 him from others, what there is special in him; 25 
 and I think his characteristic is this, — that, as I 
 have said, in him the fullness of Divine gifts does 
 not tend to destroy what is human in him, but to 
 spiritualize and perfect it. According to his own 
 words, used on another subject, but laying down, 30 
 as it w^ere, the principle on which his ow^n char- 
 
256 MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 . acter was formed, — " We would not be un- 
 clothed/' he says, but " clothed upon, that what 
 is mortal may be swallowed up by life." In him, 
 his human nature, his human affections, his hu- 
 
 5 man gifts, were possessed and glorified by a new 
 and heavenly life; they remained; he speaks of 
 them in the text, and in his humility he calls 
 them his infirmity. He was not stripped of 
 nature, but clothed with grace and the power of 
 
 10 Christ, and therefore he glories in his infirmity. 
 This is the subject on which I wish to enlarge. 
 
 A heathen poet has said. Homo sum, humani 
 nihil a me alienum puto. " I am a man; nothing 
 human is without interest to me:" and the sen- 
 
 15 timent has been widely and deservedly praised. 
 Now this, in a fullness of meaning which a heathen 
 could not understand, is, I conceive, the charac- 
 teristic of this great Apostle. He is ever speak- 
 ing, to use his own words, "human things," and 
 
 20 "as a man," and "according to man," and 
 "foolishly"; that is, human nature, the com- 
 mon nature of the whole race of Adam, spoke in 
 him, acted in him, with an energetical presence, 
 with a sort of bodily fullness, always under the 
 
 25 sovereign command of Divine grace, but losing 
 none of its real freedom and power because of 
 its subordination. And the consequence is, that, 
 having the nature of man so strong within him, 
 he is able to enter into human nature, and to 
 
 30 sympathize with it, with a gift peculiarly his own. 
 Now the most startling instance of this is this, 
 
ST. PAUL'S CHABACTEBISTIC GIFT 257 
 
 — that, though his Ufe prior to his conversion 
 seems to have been so conscientious and so pure, 
 nevertheless he does not hesitate to associate 
 himself with the outcast heathen, and to speak 
 as if he were one of them. St. Philip Neri, before 5 
 he communicated, used to say, " Lord, I protest 
 before Thee that I am good for nothing but to 
 do evil.'' At confession he used to say, "I have 
 never done one good action." He often said, "I 
 am past hope.'' To a penitent he said, "Be sure 10 
 of this, I am a man like my neighbors, and noth- 
 ing more." Well, I mean, that somewhat in this 
 way, St. Paul felt all his neighbors, all the whole 
 race of Adam, to be existing in himself. He 
 knew himself to be possessed of a nature, he was 15 
 conscious of possessing a nature, which was 
 capable of running into all the multiplicity of 
 emotions, of devices, of purposes, and of sins, 
 into which it had actually run in the wide world 
 and in the multitude of men; and in that sense 20 
 he bore the sins of all men, and associated him- 
 self with them, and spoke of them and himself 
 as one. He, I say, a strict Pharisee (as he de- 
 scribes himself), blameless according to legal 
 justice, oonversing with all good conscience be- 25 
 fore God, serving God from his forefathers with a 
 pure conscience, he nevertheless elsewhere speaks 
 of himself as a profligate heathen outcast before 
 the grace of God called him. He not only counts 
 himself, as his birth made him, in the number of 30 
 "children of wrath," but he classes himself with 
 
258 MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 the heathen as "conversing in the desires of the 
 flesh," " and fulfilUng the will of the flesh." And 
 in another Epistle, he speaks of himself, at the 
 time he writes, as if "carnal, sold under sin"; 
 
 5 he speaks of "sin dwelling in him," and of his 
 "serving with the flesh the law of sin"; this, I 
 say, when he was an Apostle confirmed in grace. 
 And in like manner he speaks of concupiscence as 
 if it were sin ; all because he vividly apprehended, 
 
 10 in that nature of his which grace had sanctified, 
 what it was in its tendencies and results when 
 deprived of grace. 
 
 And thus I account for St. Paul's liking for 
 heathen writers, or what we now call the classics, 
 
 15 which is very remarkable. He, the Apostle of the 
 Gentiles, was learned in Greek letters, as Moses, 
 the lawgiver of the Jews, his counterpart, was 
 learned in the wisdom of the Egyptians; and he 
 did not give up that learning when he had 
 
 20 " learned Christ." I do not think I am exaggerat- 
 ing in saying so, since he goes out of his way three 
 times to quote passages from them; once, speak- 
 ing to the heathen Athenians; another time, to 
 his converts at Corinth; and a third time, in a 
 
 25 private Apostolic exhortation to his disciple St. 
 Titus. And it is the more remarkable, that one 
 of the writers whom he quotes seems to be a 
 writer of comedies, which had no claim to be read 
 for any high morality which they contain. Now 
 
 30 how shall we account for this? Did St. Paul de- 
 light in what was licentious? God forbid; but 
 
ST. PAUL'S CHABACTEBISTIC GIFT 259 
 
 he had the feeUng of a guardian-angel who sees 
 every sin of the rebeUious being committed to 
 him, who gazes at him and weeps. With this 
 difference, that he had a sympathy with sinners, 
 which an Angel (be it reverently said) cannot 5 
 have. He was a true lover of souls. He loved 
 poor human nature with a passionate love, and 
 the literature of the Greeks was only its expres- 
 sion ; and he hung over it tenderly and mourn- 
 fully, wishing for its regeneration and salvation, lo 
 
 This is how I account for his familiar knowl- 
 edge of the heathen poets. Some of the ancient 
 Fathers consider that the Greeks were under a 
 special dispensation of Providence, preparatory 
 to the Gospel, though not directly from heaven 15 
 as the Jewish was. Now St. Paul seems, if I may 
 say it, to partake of this feeling; distinctly as he 
 teaches that the heathen are in darkness, and in 
 sin, and under the power of the Evil One, he will 
 not allow that they are beyond the eye of Divine 20 
 Mercy. On the contrary, he speaks of God as 
 "determining their times and the limits of their 
 habitation," that is, going along with the revolu- 
 tions of history and the migrations of races, "in 
 order that they should seek Him, if haply they 25 
 may feel after Him and find Him," since, he con- 
 tinues, " He is not far from every one of us.'' 
 Again, when the Lycaonians would have wor- 
 shiped him, he at once places himself on their 
 level and reckons himself among them, and at 30 
 the same time speaks of God's love of them, 
 
260 MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 heathens though they were. "Ye men/' he cries, 
 "why do ye these things? We also are mortals, 
 men like unto you;" and he adds that God in 
 times past, though suffering all nations to walk 
 
 5 in their own ways, " nevertheless left not Himself 
 without testimony, doing good from heaven, 
 giving rains and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts 
 with food and gladness." You see, he says, " our 
 hearts," not "your," as if he were one of those 
 
 10 Gentiles; and he dwells in a kindly human way 
 over the food, and the gladness which food causes, 
 which the poor heathen were granted. Hence it 
 is that he is the Apostle who especially insists on 
 our all coming from one father, Adam; for he 
 
 15 had pleasure in thinking that all men were 
 brethren. " God hath made," he says, " all man- 
 kind of one"; "as in Adam all die, so in Christ 
 all shall be made alive," I will cite but one 
 more passage from the great Apostle on the same 
 
 20 subject, one in which he tenderly contemplates 
 the captivity, and the anguish, and the longing, 
 and the deliverance of poor human nature. " The 
 expectation of the creature," he says, that is, of 
 human nature, "waiteth for the manifestation 
 
 25 of the sons of God. For the creature was made 
 subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of 
 Him that made it subject, in hope; because it 
 shall be delivered from the servitude of corrup- 
 tion into the liberty of the glory of the children 
 
 30 of God. For we know that every creature 
 groaneth and travaileth in pain until now." 
 
ST. PAUL'S CHARACTEEISTIC GIFT 261 
 
 These are specimens of the tender affection 
 which the great heart of the Apostle had for all 
 his kind, the sons of Adam : but if he felt so much 
 for all races spread over the earth, what did he 
 feel for his own nation ! what a special mix- 5 
 ture, bitter and sweet, of generous pride (if I may 
 so speak), but of piercing, overwhelming anguish, 
 did the thought of the race of Israel inflict upon 
 him ! the highest of nations and the lowest, his 
 own dear people, whose glories were before his 10 
 imagination and in his affection from his child- 
 hood, who had the birthright and the promise, 
 yet who, instead of making use of them, had 
 madly thrown them away ! Alas, alas, and he 
 himself had once been a partner in their madness, 15 
 and was only saved from his infatuation by the 
 miraculous power of God ! O dearest ones, O 
 glorious race, O miserably fallen ! so great and so 
 abject ! This is his tone in speaking of the Jews, 
 at once a Jeremias and a David; David in his 20 
 patriotic care for them, and Jeremias in his plain- 
 tive and resigned denunciations. 
 
 Consider his words: "I speak the truth in 
 Christ," he says; "I lie not, my conscience bear- 
 ing me witness in the Holy Ghost; that I have 25 
 great sadness and continual sorrow in my heart.'' 
 In spite of visions and ecstasies, in spite of his 
 wonderful election, in spite of his manifold gifts, 
 in spite of the cares of his Apostolate and "the 
 solicitude for all the churches" — you would 30 
 think he had had enough otherwise both to grieve 
 
262 MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 him and to gladden him — but no, this special con- 
 templation remains ever before his mind and in 
 his heart. I mean, the state of his own poor 
 people, who were in mad enmity against the' 
 
 5 promised Saviour, who had for centuries after 
 centuries looked forward for the Hope of Israel, 
 prepared the way for it, heralded it, suffered for 
 it, cherished and protected it, yet, when it came, 
 rejected it, and lost the fruit of their long patience. 
 
 10 " Who are Israelites," he says, mournfully linger- 
 ing over their past glories, " who are Israelites, to 
 whom belongeth the adoption of children, and 
 the glory, and the testament, and the giving of 
 wealth, and the service of God, and the promises : 
 
 15 whose are the fathers, and of whom is Christ ac- 
 cording to the flesh, who is over all things, God 
 blessed forever. Amen." 
 
 What a hard thing it was for him to give them 
 up! He pleaded for them, while they were per- 
 
 20secuting his Lord and himself. He reminded his 
 Lord that he himself had also been that Lord's 
 persecutor, and why not try them a little longer? 
 "Lord," he said, "they know that I cast into 
 prison, and beat in every synagogue, them that 
 
 25 believed in Thee. And, when the blood of 
 Stephen, Thy witness, was shed, I stood by and 
 consented, and kept the garments of them that 
 killed him." You see, his old frame of mind, the 
 feelings and notions under which he persecuted 
 
 30 his Lord, were ever distinctly before him, and he 
 realized them as if they were still his own. " I 
 
ST. PAUL'S CHABACTERISTIC GIFT 263 
 
 bear them witness," he says, "that they have a 
 zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.'' 
 O blind ! blind ! he seems to say ; O that there 
 should be so much of good in them, so much zeal, 
 so much of religious purpose-, so much of stead- 5 
 fastness, such resolve like Josias, Mathathias, or 
 Machabjsus, to keep the whole law, and honor 
 Moses and the Prophets, but all spoiled, all un- 
 done, by one fatal sin ! And what is he prompted 
 to do ? Moses, on one occasion, desired to suffer lo 
 instead of his rebellious people : " Either forgive 
 them this trespass," he said, "or if Thou do not, 
 strike me out of the book." And now, when the 
 New Law was in course of promulgation, and the 
 chosen race was committing the same sin, its 15 
 great Apostle desired the same: "I wished my- 
 self," he says, speaking of the agony he had 
 passed through, "I wished myself to be an 
 anathema from Christ, for my brethren, who are 
 my kinsmen according to the flesh." And then, 20 
 when all was in vain, when they remained obdu- 
 rate, and the high decree of God took effect, still 
 he would not, out of very affection for them, he 
 would not allow after all that they were repro- 
 bate. He comforted himself with the thought of 25 
 how many were the exceptions to so dismal a 
 sentence. "Hath God cast away His people?" 
 he asks ; " God forbid. For I also am an Israelite, 
 of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin." 
 "All are not Israelites that are of Israel." And 30 
 he dwells upon his confident anticipation of their 
 
264 MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 recovery in time to come. " They are enemies," 
 he says, writing to the Romans, ^' for your sakes;" 
 that is, you have gained by their loss ; " but they 
 are most dear for the sake of the fathers ; for the 
 5 gifts and the caUing of God are without repent- 
 ance." "BUndness in part has happened to 
 Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles should 
 come in; and so all Israel should be saved." 
 My Brethren, I have now explained to a cer- 
 
 10 tain extent what I meant when I spoke of St. 
 Paul's characteristic gift, as being a special ap- 
 prehension of human nature as a fact, and an 
 intimate familiarity with it as an object of con- 
 tinual contemplation and affection. He made it 
 
 15 his own to the very full, instead of annihilating 
 it; he sympathized with it, while he mortified it 
 by penance, while he sanctified it by the grace 
 given him. Though he had never been a heathen, 
 though he was no longer a Jew, yet he was a 
 
 20 heathen in capability, as I may say, and a Jew 
 in the history of the past. His vivid imagination 
 enabled him to throw himself into the state of 
 heathenism, with all those tendencies which lay 
 dormant in his human nature carried out, and 
 
 25 its infirmities developed into sin. His wakeful 
 memory enabled him to recall those past feel- 
 ings and ideas of a Jew, which in the case of 
 others a miraculous conversion might have oblit- 
 erated; and thus, while he was a Saint inferior 
 
 30 to none, he was emphatically still a man, and to 
 his own apprehension still a sinner, 
 
ST. PAUL'S CHARACTERISTIC GIFT 265 
 
 And this being so, do you not see, my brethren, 
 how well fitted he was for the office of an Ecu- 
 menical Doctor, and an Apostle, not of the Jews 
 only, but of the Gentiles? The Almighty some- 
 times works by miracle, but commonly He pre- 5 
 pares His instruments by methods of this world; 
 and, as He draws souls to Him, " by the cords of 
 Adam," so does He select them for His use accord- 
 ing to their natural powers. St. John, who lay 
 upon His breast, whose book was the sacred heart lO 
 of Jesus, and whose special philosophy was the 
 "scientia sanctorum," he was not chosen to be 
 the Doctor of the Nations. St. Peter, taught in 
 the mysteries of the Creed, the Arbiter of doctrine 
 and the Ruler of the faithful, he too was passed 15 
 over in this work. To him specially was it given 
 to preach to the world, who knew the world; he 
 subdued the heart, who understood the heart. It 
 was his sympathy that was his means of influence ; 
 it was his affectionateness which was his title and 20 
 instrument of empire. " I became to the Jews a 
 Jew," he says, "that I might gain the Jews; to 
 them that are under the Law, as if I were under 
 the Law, that I might gain them that were under 
 the Law. To those that were without the Law, 25 
 as if I were without the Law, that I might gain 
 them that were without the Law. To the weak 
 I became weak, that I might gain the weak. I 
 became all things to all men, that I might save 
 all." 30 
 
 And now, my brethren, my time is out, before 
 
266 MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 I have well begun my subject. For how can I 
 be said yet to have entered upon the great 
 Apostle, when I have not yet touched upon his 
 Christian affections, and his bearing towards the 
 
 5 children of God? As yet I have chiefly spoken 
 of his sympathy with human nature unassisted 
 and unregenerate ; not of that yearning of his 
 heart, as it showed itself in action under the 
 grace of the Redeemer. But perhaps it is most 
 
 10 suitable on the feast of his Conversion, to stop 
 at that point at which the day leaves him; and 
 perhaps too it will be permitted to me on a future 
 occasion to attempt, if it be not presumption, to 
 speak of him again. 
 
 15 Meanwhile, may this glorious Apostle, this 
 sweetest of inspired writers, this most touching 
 and winning of teachers, may he do me some 
 good turn, who have ever felt a special devotion 
 towards him ! May this great Saint, this man of 
 
 20 large mind, of various sympathies, of affectionate 
 heart, have a kind thought for every one of us 
 here according to our respective needs ! He has 
 carried his human thoughts and feelings with 
 him to his throne above; and, though he sees 
 
 25 the Infinite and Eternal Essence, he still remem- 
 bers well that troublous, restless ocean below, of 
 hopes and fears, of impulses and aspirations, of 
 efforts and failures, which is now what it was 
 when he was here. Let us beg him to intercede 
 
 30 for us with the Majesty on high, that we too may 
 have some portion of that tenderness, compassion. 
 
.ST. PAUL'S CHARACTERISTIC GIFT 267 
 
 mutual affection, love of brotherhood, abhorrence 
 of strife and division, in which he excelled. Let 
 us beg him especially, as we are bound, to bless 
 the most reverend Prelate, under whose juris- 
 diction we here live, and whose feast day this is; 
 that the great name of Paul may be to him a 
 tower of strength and fount of consolation now, 
 and in death, and in the day of account. 
 
NOTES 
 
 SAUL 
 
 Introductory Note. The sketches of Saul and David 
 are contained in the third volume of Parochial and Plain 
 Sermons. These discourses were delivered at Oxford 
 before Newman's conversion to the Catholic Church. 
 
 Saul. The first king of Israel reigned from 1091 to 
 1051 B.C. He ruled conjointly with Samuel the prophet 
 eighteen years, and alone, twenty-two years. Samuel 
 had been judge of Israel twelve years when the discon- 
 tented Jew^s demanded a king, and Saul was elected by 
 lot. 
 
 13 : 7. Manna. Miraculous food supplied to the Jews, 
 wandering in the desert of Sin, after their exodus from 
 Egypt. The taste of manna was that of flour mixed with 
 honey. 
 
 13 : 10. Moses. Deliverer, lawgiver, ruler, and prophet 
 of Israel, 1447 b.c. The author of the Pentateuch is 
 probably the greatest figure of the Old Law and the 
 most perfect type of Christ. 
 
 14 : 3. Gadara. Noted for the miracle of casting out 
 demons, wrought there by our Lord. The inhabitants 
 in fear besought Him to leave their coasts. Mark v. 17. 
 
 16 : 24. David. The prophet and king famous as the 
 royal psalmist. From his line sprang the Messias. 
 
 17:4. The asses. Saul, searching for his father's 
 asses, was met by Samuel and anointed king. 
 
 17 : 14. The Ammonites and Moabites. Warlike heathen 
 
 269 
 
270 NOTES 
 
 tribes probably descended from Lot. They dwelt near 
 the Dead Sea; were very hostile to the Jews. 
 
 17 : 15. The Jordan. Largest river of Palestine, es- 
 pecially consecrated by the baptism of Christ in its 
 waters; is called the river of judgment. An air line 
 from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea is sixty miles, 
 but so tortuous is the Jordan, its length is two hundred 
 miles. 
 
 18 : 12. Philistines (strangers). Gentiles beyond the 
 Western Sea, frequently at war with the Hebrews. 
 Samson, Saul, and David were famous for their victories 
 over these powerful enemies. 
 
 19:29. God's vicegerent. Representative as king. 
 Before Saul the Jewish government was theocratic, i.e. 
 directly from God. 
 
 20 : 15. Solomon. Son and successor of David, called 
 the wisest of men: built the temple; became exalted 
 with pride ; was punished for his sins: died probably 
 unrepentant. A striking example of the vanity of 
 human success unblessed by God. 
 
 20 : 16. Religious principle. A fundamental truth 
 upon which conduct is consistently built. A conviction 
 of the intellect and hence distinguished from instinct, 
 disposition, feeling, often the spring of men's actions. 
 
 21 : 18. Shekel. A silver coin worth about fifty-seven 
 cents. 
 
 22 : 23. Sacrifice offered by Saul. Sacrilegious in Saul, 
 as the right was limited to the priesthood of Aaron. 
 
 23 : 11. Ark of God. A figure of the Christian Tab- 
 ernacle; divinely ordained for the Mosaic worship; 
 contained the covenant of God with His chosen people. 
 
 24 : 13. Religion a utility. Inversion of Christ's com- 
 mand, — " Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God 
 and His justice and all these things shall be added unto 
 you." Matthew vi. 33. 
 
NOTES 2T1 
 
 25 : 8. Joshua. Successor of Moses and leader of the 
 Jews into the Promised Land. 
 
 27 : 8. The uncircumcised. Term apphed to all 
 outside the Hebrew people. Circumcision, a figure of 
 baptism, was the sign of covenant given by God to 
 Abraham and his descendants. 
 
 EARLY YEARS OF DAVID 
 
 28 : 6. The Psalms. One hundred and fifty inspired 
 hymns of praise, joy, thanksgiving, and repentance, 
 composed chiefly by David. Humanly speaking, they 
 form the most exquisite lyric poetry extant, and in their 
 strong, majestic beauty are most suitable to the Divine 
 Offices of the Church. 
 
 29 : 3. Balaam. An Oriental prophet of Mesopotamia, 
 1500 B.C. Sent for by the Moabite king to curse the 
 Israelites. 
 
 29 : 11. (a) Judah. (6) Shiloh. (a) The fourth son 
 of Jacob and Leah. (6) The Messias. 
 
 30 : 14. Anointing of David. To signify that the 
 kingship, like the priesthood, is a sacred office, all power 
 coming from God. 
 
 31:6. Sacred songs. The inspired music of David 
 was the means of restoring grace to the troubled spirit 
 of Saul. Browning's Saul paints strikingly the char- 
 acter of the shepherd boy and of the distracted old 
 king. 
 
 32 : 1. Goliath of Gath. A type of the giant. Sin; 
 also of Lucifer, overcome by the meek Christ, who is 
 prefigured by David. 
 
 34 : 6. The Apostle. St. Paul, who recounts to the 
 Hebrews his sufferings for Christ. 
 
 36 : 5. Joseph. Son of Jacob; governor of Egypt 
 under Pharaoh. 
 
272 NOTES 
 
 36 : 16. From Moses. A fine distinction between the 
 theocratic and the royal government of Israel. 
 
 38 : 24. The king's son-in-law. Saul in envy married 
 his daughter Michol to David ''that she might prove a 
 stumbling-block to him." 
 
 39 : 4. David and Joseph. Note the consistent and 
 forcible parallel. 
 
 43 and 44. The patriarchs. This passage illustrates 
 the exquisite choice of words, the perfect finish of sen- 
 tence, and the wonderful beauty of thought characteris- 
 tic of Newman. 
 
 BASIL AND GREGORY 
 
 Introductory Note. These Essays on the Fathers are 
 to be found in Historical Sketches, Vol. III. They were 
 written to illustrate the tone and mode of thought, the 
 habits and manners of the early times of the Church. 
 
 Athens. Most of those who sought Attic wisdom 
 were natures without control. "Basil and Gregory were 
 spoiled for subtle, beautiful, luxurious Athens. They 
 walked their straight and loving road to God, with the 
 simplicity which alone could issue out of the intense 
 purpose of their lives — the love and service of Christ 
 their Lord." 
 
 45 : 15. Hildebrand. St. Gregory VII, one of the 
 greatest among the great Roman pontiffs. He combated 
 the evils of the eleventh century, within and without 
 the Church, and effected incalculable good, especially 
 in the war of Investitures waged against Henry IV of 
 Germany. 
 
 45 : 17. City of God. The Church. 
 
 45 : 18. Ambrose. Archbishop of Milan, noted for 
 zeal in spreading the faith; remembered for his fearless 
 rebuke of the Emperor Theodosius. 
 
NOTES 273 
 
 46 : 30. Pontus. Part of Cappadocia in Asia Minor; 
 founded by Alexander the Great. 
 
 47 : 28. The contention. See Acts of the Apostles 
 XV. 39. 
 
 49 : 16. Armenian creed. Similar to that of the Greek 
 Church. 
 
 55 : 17. The Thesbite. Elias, who dwelt on Carmel, 
 as did St. John the Baptist, in most rigorous penance. 
 
 55:18. Carmel. A mountain on the coast of Palestine, 
 noted in sacred history.. 
 
 AUGUSTINE AND THE VANDALS 
 
 56 : 7. Heretical creed. The Arians were followers of 
 Arius of Alexandria, who boldly denied the Divinity of 
 Jesus Christ. The heresy was condemned by the Coun- 
 cil of Nice, 325 a.d., but its baneful effects were widely 
 felt for centuries. 
 
 56 : 15. Apocalypse. Wonderful revelations made to 
 St. John at Patmos concerning the Church, the final 
 judgment, the future life. 
 
 57 : 21. The Vandals. A barbarian race of Southern 
 Germany, who in the fifth century ravaged Gaul, Spain, 
 Italy, and Northern Africa. 
 
 59 : 13. Montanists. A sect of the second century 
 that believed in Montanus as a prophet, and in the near 
 advent of Christ to judge the world. 
 
 60 : 31. (a) The prophet. (6) Jeroboam, (a) Ahias. 
 (6) The first king of Israel after the separation of the 
 tribes; a man perverse and irreverent in his relations 
 with God and subject. 
 
 59 to 70. The argument. The apology for flight in 
 times of religious persecution, made by Athanasius, the 
 great bishop of Alexandria, fourth century, and the 
 cogent argument against it of TertuUian, a celebrated 
 
274 NOTES 
 
 writer of the second century, show how circumstances, 
 above all, Divine inspiration, justify opposite lines of 
 action. St. Augustine's letter, written in his strong and 
 luminous style, reconciles the two points of view. 
 
 71 to 74. The misery of irreligion. A profound analy- 
 sis of the two classes of men without religion, — the one 
 distorted, brutahzed, and deadened; the other confused, 
 wild, and hungering after what is to them indefinable, 
 yet alone satisfying. Compare in its source, tenor, and 
 effect the unhappiness of the "popular poet" Byron 
 and that of Augustine. 
 
 76 : 8. St. Monica. ' One of the greatest women of 
 all times ; a model of faith, constancy, and maternal 
 love. 
 
 79:23. Christianity a philosophy. Such it is accounted 
 by many modern thinkers who, in spite of clear, full 
 evidences of its divinity, affect to doubt or deny alto- 
 gether the supernatural." These reduce the Gospels to 
 a code of ethics, and regard Christ as merely a teacher 
 of morality; the earnestness of Augustine would lead 
 them by a short road to recognize and worship God in 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 CHRYSOSTOM 
 
 84 to 90. The Introduction. The personal touch of 
 these pages gives an insight into the tender, sensitive 
 nature of Cardinal Newman. He was a man not only 
 of intense and powerful intellect, but of delicate and 
 affectionate heart. It is his gracious, winning appeal 
 that renders him irresistible in influence. 
 
 90 : 12. Chrysostom. "Golden mouth," from his elo- 
 quence. He is counted among the great Patristic writers. 
 
 90 : 21. Antipater. Son of Herod the Great ; called 
 by Josephus "a monster of iniquity." He was put to 
 death, 1 B.C. 
 
NOTES 275 
 
 90 : 22. Fulvia. Wife of Marc Antony; noted for her 
 cruelty and ambition. 
 
 92 : 6. (a) Gallus. (6) Ovid, (a) Governor of Egypt 
 under Augustus; accused of crime and oppression, and 
 banished. (6) A celebrated Roman poet, author of 
 Metamor phases; exiled by Augustus for some grave 
 offense never revealed. 
 
 97 : 12. The seasons. This apt and ingenious anal- 
 ogy is regarded as one of Newman's more beautiful 
 passages. 
 
 100 : 30. Chrysostom' s discriminating affectionateness. 
 The reason, probably, why he has so great a hold upon 
 the heart of posterity — love begets love. 
 
 105 : 8. Cucusus. In Caucasus, east of the Black Sea 
 and north of Persia. 
 
 108 : 19. Troas. In Northwest Asia Minor. Troad 
 contains ancient Troy. 
 
 105 to no. The letters of Chrysostom. The charm of 
 his genius, the sweetness of his temper under suffering, 
 and the unselfishness of his lofty soul appear in these sim- 
 ple lines written on the road or in the desert of his banish- 
 ment. 
 
 THE TARTAR AND THE TURK 
 
 Introductory Note. These sketches of Turkish history 
 form the substance of lectures delivered in Liverpool, 
 1853. Special interest attached to them at the time, 
 as England was about to undertake the defense of the 
 Turks against Russia in the Crimean War. Selections 
 from only three are here possible. 
 
 111 : 7. The Tartars. Fierce, restless tribes originally 
 inhabiting Manchuria and Mongolia. 
 
 112 : 31. (a) Attila. (6) Zingis. (a) Leader of the 
 Huns, who overran Southern Europe in the fifth century. 
 He was defeated by Aetius at Chalons, 451, and miracu- 
 
276 NOTES 
 
 lously turned from Rome by Pope Leo the Great. (6) 
 Zenghis Khan, a powerful Mongol chief whose hordes 
 descended upon Eastern Europe in the thirteenth 
 century. 
 
 114 : 21, Timour. Known as Tamerlane, founder of a 
 Mongol empire in Central Asia; victor over Bajazet at 
 Angora, 1402 a.d. 
 
 1 16 : 20. Heraclius. Emperor of Greece in the seventh 
 century; noted for his rescue of the true Cross from 
 the Persians, with whom he waged long wars. 
 
 116 : 26. That book. The Koran or bible of the Ma- 
 hometans. It is a mixture of Judaism, Nestorianism, 
 and Mahomet's own so-called "revelations." 
 
 120 : 10. Monotheism . . . mediation. Belief in one 
 God, but denial of the Redemption of fallen man by 
 Jesus Christ, the God-Man. 
 
 120 : 26. Durbar. A levee held by a dignitary in Brit- 
 ish India; also the room of reception. 
 
 THE TURK AND THE SARACEN 
 
 Saracens. Eastern Mahometans that crossed into 
 Turkey, Northern Africa, and Spain. The Moors are a 
 type. 
 
 122 : 14. Sogdiana. Northeast of the river Oxus; in- 
 cluded in modern Bokhara. 
 
 123 : 6. White Huns. Ancient people living near the 
 Oxus; called ivhite from their greater degree of civiliza- 
 tion. 
 
 125 : 23. Damascus. In Asiatic Turkey; thought to 
 be the oldest city in the world. 
 
 126 : 1. Harun al Raschid. Caliph of Bagdad; con- 
 temporaneous with Charlemagne in the eighth century. 
 
 127 : 28. Ended its career. The power of the European 
 Turks, virtually broken at Lepanto, 1571, has continued 
 
NOTES 277 
 
 to decline, so that were it not for the jealousy of the 
 Powers, Turkey would long since have been dismembered. 
 
 129 : 24. Khorasan. North central province of Persia. 
 
 133 : 25. (a) Seljuk. (6) Othman. (a) Grandfather of 
 Togrul Beg, who founded a powerful dynasty in Central 
 Asia. (6) Third successor of Mahomet; caliph in 644; 
 noted for his extensive conquests and for having given 
 his name to the Ottomans. 
 
 135 : 20. Greek Emperor. Romanus Diogenes, de- 
 feated in 1071 A.D. 
 
 THE PAST AND PRESENT OF THE OTTOMANS 
 
 144 : 17. (a) Thornton. (6) Volney. (a) An English 
 writer on political economy, belonging to the nineteenth 
 century. (5) A distinguished French author. His 
 Travels in Egypt and Syria is a work of high reputation. 
 
 148 : 12. Scythians. In ancient times the inhabitants 
 of all North and Northeastern Europe and Asia. 
 
 149 : 31. The Greek schism. Separation of the Greek 
 Church from Rome. The schism was begun by the 
 crafty, ambitious Photius in the ninth century, and 
 consummated by Michael Cerularius in 1054. 
 
 154. Principle of superiority. A forcible proof that 
 Christianity must be and is the religion of civilization. 
 See Balmes on the Civilization of Europe. 
 
 WHAT IS A UNIVERSITY? 
 
 Introductory Note. Newman's purpose in these 
 Essays is to set forth by description and statement the 
 nature, the work, and the peculiarities of a University; 
 the aims with which it is established, the wants it may 
 supply, the methods it adopts, its relation to other in- 
 stitutions, and its general history. 
 
278 NOTES 
 
 The illustrations of his idea of a University first 
 appeared in the Dublin University Gazette; later, in 
 one volume, Office and Work of Universities. In the 
 present form the author has exchanged the title to His- 
 torical Sketches, but has retained the pleasantly con- 
 versational tone of the original, lest, as he says, he might 
 become more exact and solid at the price of becoming less 
 readable, in the judgment of a day which considers that 
 "a great book is a great evil." 
 
 159 : 14. A gentleman. Dr. Newman is unconsciously 
 painting his own portrait in this passage. 
 
 161 : 17. St. Irenaeus. A Christian martyr of the sec- 
 ond century. He was a Greek by birth, a pupil of St. 
 Polycarp, and an eminent theologian of his day. 
 
 163 : 19. Its associations. Universities are both the 
 cause and the effect of great men; and these cherish their 
 Alma with unlimited devotion. Read Gray's Eton, 
 Lowell's Commemoration Ode, etc., as illustrations of this 
 point. 
 
 UNIVERSITY LIFE : ATHENS 
 
 164 : 14. (a) Saronic waves, (b) Piraeus, (a) The Gulf 
 of iEgina. (6) Commercial port of Athens. 
 
 164 : 31. Obolus. A Greek coin worth about three 
 cents. Paid by spirits to Charon for ferriage over the 
 Styx, according to legend. 
 
 165 : 23. Eleusinian mysteries. Secret rites of the 
 goddess Ceres, celebrated at Eleusis. 
 
 166 : 31. Philippi. Battle in which Antony defeated 
 the conspirators that had slain Csesar. 
 
 167 : 9. Proaeresius. Student of Athens, a native 
 of Armenia, famous for his gigantic stature as well 
 as for an astounding memory, displayed in the field of 
 rhetoric. 
 
 170 : 11. Gallipoli. In Turkey, at the entrance to the 
 
NOTES 279 
 
 Dardanelles. It was the first conquest of the Turks 
 in Europe, 1354 a.d. 
 
 173 : 3. (a) Acropolis. (b) Areopagus, (a) The cita- 
 del of Athens, ornamented by groups of statuary im- 
 mortal in beauty. (6) The chief tribunal, held on a 
 hill named for Ares or Mars. 
 
 173 : 5. Parthenon. The official temple of Pallas, 
 protectress of Athens; it is the work of Phidias, under 
 Pericles. 
 
 173 : 7. Polygnotus. A Greek painter, contempora- 
 neous with Phidias. His work is in statuesque style, 
 few colors, form and outline exquisite. 
 
 173:13. Agora. The commercial and political market 
 place, located near the Acropolis. It was designed by 
 Cimon. 
 
 173 : 14. Demosthenes. The most famous orator of 
 Greece, if not of all times. He learned philosophy 
 of Plato, oratory of Isocrates. His Philippics are of 
 world-wide note. 
 
 174 : 6. Plato. The Divine, on whose infant lips the 
 bees are said to have dropped their honey. He was 
 the pupil of Socrates and the master of Aristotle; he 
 founded the Academy, or the Platonic School of Phi- 
 losophy, and wrote the Republic. Plato was a man 
 of vast intellect, high ideals, and exceptionally pure 
 life. 
 
 175 : 17. Aristotle. Called the Stagyrite from Stage- 
 rius, his birthplace. He was preceptor to Alexander 
 the Great and founder of the Peripatetic School, i.e. of 
 scholasticism. Aristotle undoubtedly possessed the most 
 comprehensive, keen, and logical intellect of antiquity, 
 and his influence on the philosophical thought of all 
 succeeding ages is incalculable. His work in the field 
 of physical science was also profound and extensive. 
 
 176 : 26. The fourth century. The Golden Age of 
 
280 NOTES 
 
 Athenian art, letters, civil and military prestige; it 
 was the age that crowned Athens Queen of Mind. 
 
 177 : 12. Epicurus. Founder of a school of material- 
 ism whose maxim was, " Eat, drink, and be merry, for 
 to-morrow we die," The Epicurean said, "indulge the 
 passions," the Stoic, " crush them," the Peripatetic, — 
 like the Christian of later times, — " control them." 
 Imperial Athens, no less than other powers, fell when her 
 sons ceased to follow the counsel of her wisest philoso- 
 phers. — " Play the immortal." 
 
 SUPPLY AND DEMAND: THE SCHOOLMEN 
 
 183 :21. Paris, etc. The great Universities reached 
 the zenith of excellence in the thirteenth century, the 
 age of Pope Innocent III, St. Thomas, and Dante. 
 
 185 : 10. Bee. Famous monastery founded by a 
 poor Norman knight, Herluin. Bee drew the great Lan- 
 franc and others to its school. Many are accustomed 
 to regard the Renaissance as the fountain whence have 
 issued all streams of art, literature, and science. It is 
 only necessary to turn to any of the teeming university or 
 monastic centers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to 
 dispel this so common illusion. 
 
 THE STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS OF UNIVER- 
 SITIES : ABELARD 
 
 186 : 15. Abelard. Born in Brittany, 1079. He was 
 a contentious, arrogant, but brilliant and fascinating 
 rationalist. He triumphed over William of Champeaux, 
 but was defeated in a theological contest by St. 
 Bernard. 
 
 187 : 29. Heresy of (a) Tertullian, (h) Sabellius. (a) 
 Modified Montanism; belief in rigid asceticism, the 
 
NOTES 281 
 
 Montanists being, according to their doctrine, ''Pneu- 
 matics," the CathoUcs, "Psychics," i.e. men of heaven, 
 men of earth, (b) A heresy which attempted to explain 
 the Trinity, and which denied the PersonaUty of Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 1 88 : 28. Scholastic philosophy. A constructive sys- 
 tem founded by Aristotle, Christianized by Boethius, 
 amplified by St. Anselm, Albert the Great, and others, 
 perfected as a school, in its being harmonized with 
 theology, by St. Thomas of Aquin. Love of subtilizing 
 and of display, and barbarity of terminology, caused its 
 decline after the thirteenth century. Political and re- 
 ligious strife also accelerated decadence, until the Council 
 of Trent restored philosophy to its true position as 
 queen of human sciences and handmaid of Religion. 
 The chief feature of Christian scholastic philosophy 
 is the harmonizing of natural and supernatural truth, 
 i.e. the unifying of philosophy and theology, or the perfect 
 conciliation of reason with faith — distinction without 
 opposition. 
 
 192 : 10. The Seven Arts. The Trivium and Quad- 
 rivium: Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric; Music, Arithmetic, 
 Astronomy, and Geometry, — these seven comprising the 
 Liberal Arts. 
 
 193 : 19. John of Salisbury. Noted English scholar 
 of the twelfth century. In disfavor with Henry II, 
 because of his defense of St. Thomas a Becket. 
 
 195 : 17. St. James iii. 17. 
 
 195 : 23. St. James iii. 6. 
 
 196 : 21. Samson and Solomon. Type of bodily and 
 of spiritual strength — strength forfeited by folly. One 
 of Newman's striking comparisons. 
 
 199 : 18. Heu, vitam. . . . Alas, I have w^asted my 
 life by doing nothing thoroughly. 
 
282 NOTES 
 
 POETRY ACCORDING TO ARISTOTLE 
 
 Introductory Note. This instructive Essay on poetry 
 forms one of the series titled Critical and Historical 
 Essays. Cardinal Newman's own gifts and tastes for 
 music and poetry render his appreciation of these arts 
 keen, delicate, and true. 
 
 200 to 203. Nature and office of poetry. A profound 
 and beautiful definition of poetry and of the poetical 
 mind. 
 
 203 : 1. (a) Iliad. (6) Choephorae. (a) Epic of the 
 Fall of Troy by Homer. (6) A tragedy by iEschylus, 
 so named from the chorus that bear offerings to the 
 tomb of Agamemnon. 
 
 203:26. (a) Empedocles. (6) Oppian. (a) A Sicilian; 
 haughty, passionate; proclaimed himself a god; plunged 
 into the crater of Mt. Etna. (6) A Greek poet of Cilicia; 
 lived in the second century. 
 
 208 : 15. The Divine vengeance. Does not the same 
 criticism apply to Milton's Satan, a majestic spirit, 
 punished beyond his due, and therefore worthy our ad- 
 miration and pity? Compare Dante and Milton in their 
 conception of Lucifer. 
 
 210 : 17. Eloquence mistaken for poetry. A finely 
 distinguished truth, which explains why much rhetoric, 
 even declamation, passes in our day for poetry. 
 
 215 : 16. Conditions of the poetical mind. Mark the 
 line drawn between the sources of true poetry and the 
 actual practices of the poet. Compare with the theory 
 of Wordsworth, to find likenesses on this point. 
 
 THE INFINITUDE OF THE DIVINE ATTRIBUTES 
 
 Introductory Note. This and other typical addresses 
 are comprised in Disco^irscs to Mixed Congregations. 
 The unerring taste of Newman employs the grave, dig- 
 
NOTES 283 
 
 nified style suited to the subject-matter, which, however, 
 never loses the simplicity and charm we expect in him. 
 218 : 28. The elements. Earth, air, fire, and water 
 were believed primal elements by the ancients. 
 
 220 : 27. This season. Lent, which commemorates 
 the Sacred Passion of Christ. 
 
 221 : 21. He seems to say: to the end. An illustration 
 of Newman's sweet, impassioned eloquence. His sen- 
 tences roll on like music of indefinable tenderness and 
 beauty. What wonder if men "who came to scoff re- 
 mained to pray," when the tones of that voice Matthew 
 Arnold could not describe — for its singular sweetness 
 — fell upon their listening souls ? 
 
 CHRIST UPON THE WATERS 
 
 Introductory Note. This discourse was written from 
 notes of a sermon preached at Birmingham, on occasion 
 of the installation of Dr. Ullathorne as first bishop of the 
 see. Again it says to us, "I beheve, therefore I have 
 spoken." 
 
 222 : 20." "Day to day." See Psalm xviii. 2. 
 
 222 : 25. Impossibilities. Extrinsic impossibilities, that 
 is, those things whose elements are not metaphysically 
 opposed, one to another. 
 
 223 : 1. He came. See St. Matthew xiv. 24, 27. 
 
 223 : 24. That mystical ark. The Church, called the 
 ark because prefigured by the Ark of Noe, — the House of 
 Salvation. 
 
 224 : 14. Christ in His ark. " Behold I am with you 
 all days, even to the consummation of the world." St. 
 Matthew xxviii. 20. 
 
 224 : 17. A savage tribe. The Anglo-Saxons of Teu- 
 tonic stock and sprung from the Aryan branch of the 
 human family. 
 
284 NOTES 
 
 226 to 228. It was a proud race . . . hierarchical 
 form. A passage of inimitable grace and simplicity. 
 Note the sentence-structure, the repetition of "it" in 
 the last sentence, and other features of the consummate 
 master. 
 
 227 : 4. Too fair to be heathen. On seeing some 
 Angles in Rome, Pope Gregory exclaimed, " They 
 should rather be called Angels than Angles." 
 
 228 : 5. A brotherhood . . . below. Where in the 
 range of English prose is to be found form wedded to 
 sense in a more surpassingly beautiful way? Neither 
 music, nor painting, nor poetry, can have anything more 
 exquisite to yield, it would seem. 
 
 Other numbers of this volume equally admirable are 
 The Second Spring, The Tree beside the Waters, and 
 Intellect the Instrument of Religious Training. 
 
 THE SECOND SPRING 
 
 Introductory Note. This discourse was given in St. 
 Mary's, Oscott, on the restoration of the Catholic hier- 
 archy to England. It furnishes an excellent specimen 
 of the simplicity and grace of Newman's style. The 
 climax is reached in the glory of the last pages. 
 
 229 : 17. Alternate Seraphim. The angelic choirs 
 whom St. John in vision heard crying, "Holy, Holy, 
 Holy, Lord God Almighty." Apocalypse iv. 8. 
 
 231 : 24. How beautiful. ... A strong presentation 
 of the weakness of human nature left to itself. " With- 
 out me you can do nothing," says Christ. John xv. 5. 
 
 233 : 12. Roman conqueror. Scipio Africanus, victor 
 of the Carthaginians in the Third Punic War. 
 
 235 : 22. The English Church. The Cathohc Church 
 in England was virtually destroyed by Henry VIII, re- 
 stored by Mary I, and offically re-destroyed by Elizabeth, 
 
NOTES 285 
 
 who attempted, through Matthew Parker, to create 
 new orders. The Second Spring is the resuscitation of 
 the Church in England, 1850. 
 
 237:11. Cumber the ground. "Why doth it (the 
 barren fig tree) cumber the ground? " Newman' s writ- 
 ings, like St. Augustine's, are saturated with Scripture. 
 
 240 : 23. (a) St. Augustine. (6) St. Thomas, (a) 
 Called St. Austin, sent by Gregory the Great to convert 
 the Anglo-Saxons, 597 a.d. (6) Martyred at Canterbury 
 by the nobles of Henry II because of his fearless defense 
 of the rights of the Church. The Pilgrims in Chaucer's 
 Canterbury Tales are on their way to the shrine of St. 
 Thomas a Becket. 
 
 241 : 10. Arian Goths and Lombards. Barbarians 
 that successively conquered and occupied Italy; from 
 the fifth to the eighth century their power was felt. 
 They embraced the heresy of Arius instead of true 
 Christianity. 
 
 242 : 29. That building. Cathedral of Westminster, 
 built in Gothic style. 
 
 243 : 11. Prince of the Church. Cardinal Archbishop 
 Wiseman, clad in purple as bishop; in red, as cardinal. 
 In his person the hierarchy was restored to England. 
 
 243 : 16. St. Benedict. Founder of monasticism in 
 the West. Europe owes much of its progress in early 
 centuries to the zeal and intelligence of the Benedictine 
 monks, — builders of churches and schools, makers of 
 laws, tillers of lands. 
 
 244:15. The shepherds. They who heard from angels 
 the tidings of Christ's birth in Bethlehem. 
 
 244 : 22. Arise, Jerusalem. . . . Quotations from 
 Isaias and the Canticle of Canticles. 
 
 245 : 6. Thy visitation. Allusion to Mary's going 
 over the hill country to visit her cousin Elisabeth. At 
 the presence of Mary, the unborn child of Elisabeth, 
 
286 NOTES 
 
 John the Baptist, leaped for joy and was sanctified by 
 the grace of Christ. 
 
 247 : 1. Regular and secular priests. The first are 
 those bound by vows to observe a religious rule, as the 
 Dominicans; the second are those under obedience to 
 their bishop, and bound only by the vow of celibacy. 
 
 247 : 18. Thy first Martyr. St. Stephen, whose death 
 won the conversion of St. Paul. Note the beauty of the 
 apostrophe. 
 
 248 : 20. Orphans. " I will not leave you orphans." 
 John xiv. 18. 
 
 249 : 15, You . . . victim. Reference to the august 
 Sacrifice of the Mass. 
 
 249 : 31. A great Pontiff. Gregory XIII, 1572-1585, 
 established colleges for the spread of the Faith; his work 
 was continued by Gregory XV in the Propaganda; but 
 it was left for Pope Urban VIII to create the great 
 missionary colleges for the six nations. 
 
 250 : 13. St. Francis. Xavier, the illustrious Jesuit, 
 who converted millions to Christ in India and Japan; 
 he died on his way to China, in the latter part of the 
 sixteenth century. 
 
 251 : 1. St. Philip. 1515-1595. An Italian saint, 
 contemporaneous with St. Ignatius of Loyola, who es- 
 tablished the Society of Jesus. St. Philip Neri founded 
 the Oratorians, a body devoted to preaching and to 
 education. 
 
 The Second Spring. This sermon is very character- 
 istic of Newman in its appeal to the whole man lis- 
 tening; he not only rivets the intelligence, but stirs 
 the will and moves the heart by the intensity, the 
 vigor, and the tenderness that breathe in every word. 
 
NOTES 287 
 
 ST. PAUL'S CHARACTERISTIC GIFT 
 
 Introductory Note. This discourse on St. Paul, de- 
 livered in Dublin, 1857, forms one of the Sermons on 
 Various Occasions. Paul — that godlike man who 
 longed to be anathema from Christ if thereby he could 
 serve the brethren — was Newman's saint by predilec- 
 tion; and allusions to his character and mission are 
 frequent in the Cardinal's writings. 
 
 As these selections for study began with Saul, they 
 may well finish with a sketch of the greater Saul — the 
 Apostle of the Gentiles. 
 
 251 : 17. Theological virtues. Faith, hope, and char- 
 ity; so-called because God is their direct object and 
 motive. 
 
 252 : 19. Heavenly Bread. The Holy Eucharist. "I 
 am the living bread which came down from heaven." 
 St. John vi. 51. "And the bread that I will give is 
 my flesh for the life of the world." St. John vi. 52. 
 
 254 : 9. Conversion of St. Paul. Commemorated 
 January 25. 
 
 256 : 12. Heathen poet. Terence. There is much phi- 
 lanthropy in these latter times, — even to altruism, — 
 but less of charity, which loves the neighbor for God's 
 sake. 
 
 257 : 5. St. Philip Neri. Lived in the sixteenth 
 century. Founder of the Oratorians, a congregation 
 devoted to preaching and works of charity. Newman 
 introduced the Oratorians into England. 
 
 259 : 28. Lycaonians. People of south central part 
 of Asia Minor; evangelized by St. Paul. 
 
 262 : 26. Stephen. The first Christian martyr; stoned 
 to death by the Jews, outside the walls of Jerusalem. 
 
 263 : 6. (a) Josias, (6) Mathathias. (c) Machabeus. 
 (a) King of Juda, seventh century b.c. A great war- 
 
288 NOTES 
 
 rior and defender of the Jewish religion, (b) "Gift of 
 God." Lived in the second century b.c. and fought 
 bravely in defense of Juda, during the bloody persecu- 
 tions of Antiochus. He appointed Judas Machabeus, the 
 most famous of his five sons, to succeed him in the 
 struggle, (c) "The Hammer." Judas gained glorious 
 victories over the Idumeans, Ammonites, and other 
 heathen tribes, and the Bible immortalizes his character 
 as that of one of the greatest of the sons of Juda. " He 
 made Jacob glad with his works and his memory is 
 blessed forever." 
 
 The books of the Machabees are the history of the 
 final struggles of the Jews against their Syrian and Per- 
 sian foes, 
 
 265 : 2. Ecumenical Doctor. A teacher of the universal 
 Church. 
 
 265 : 31, And now my time is out. This conclusion 
 exhibits once more the felicity of diction, the delicate 
 rhythm of structure, the simple grace, the direct force — 
 above all, the unconsciousness, almost disdain of pro- 
 ducing literary effect, that everywhere characterize 
 Newman's writings, whatever be the subject. 
 
 267 : 4. Reverend Prelate. Paul Cardinal Cullen, 
 primate of Ireland in 1850. 
 
JAN 18 1907 
 
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