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human hands grew and flourished, and decayed and crumbled back into its original elements: the only object in that noble prospect of earth, sky, and sea, which bore the impress of man's hand, and gave its silent testimony to the perishable nature of all human things.

Silently we watched the departing sun. One small boat, the only sail visible on the wide expanse of water, came slowly landward, bound to the fishing village, hundreds of feet below us. As it crossed the wake of the setting sun, it showed against the intense light, as if made of polished jet; then gradually disappeared in the gathering shade, and was seen no more.

Still we watched silently-so slow, so gradual, was the decline of the great orb, that it seemed to fascinate the gaze till it became the only object visible in all the wide gorgeous prospect. As the last streak of intense crimson disappeared, I turned to look at my companions. Mabel was sitting with her hands clasped, the reins hanging loosely on her pony's neck, and her earnest gaze fixed on the horizon, as though she would follow with her eyes the sunken sun. She was very pale, and tears gathered slowly in her eyes as, with a sigh, she prepared to move away from the spot. Charlie had turned from the glorious sight to look at her; and an expression of infinite tenderness and pity was on his face.

'It will rise again,' he said, softly -but it was evident that he thought not then of the setting sun; and Mabel understood him, for the tears fell quietly over her cheeks, though she scarcely seemed to know that they did so. They did not think of me, and I followed them silently homeward through the rich afterglow of the evening and the gathering shades of the deep oak woods.

The following morning I left Monksleigh and returned to London. I had taken a house near Hyde Park for the Riversdales, and it was arranged that Charlie Powis should be their guest. I cannot describe the state of restless nervousness in which I passed the few days that intervened before that appointed for the distribution of the Victoria Cross. It was increased by the

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necessity of appearing calm and cheerful before my uncle and the others, who were all more or less anxious about the approaching ceremony. There was an unearthly serenity about Charlie which discomposed me more than anything else he listened to all the arrangements and discussions as if he were in no manner concerned in them, and more than once I could scarcely refrain from a passing feeling of impatience at his calm indifference. It was settled that I should take Mabel to the Stand, for which we had obtained admissions, as the Archdeacon and Mrs. Riversdale were both unequal to the fatigue and heat which must be encountered; and when the morning came, and after a sleepless night I joined the party in Grosvenor-street about eight o'clock in the morning, Mabel looked so pale and agitated, that I strove earnestly, but vainly, to dissuade her from the exertion.

'I must go,' she said; please do not think me obstinate if you can help it, Herbert; but I cannot give it up.' So we went. Any one who was present on that sultry summer morning will not need to be reminded of the physical suffering endured by the patient crowd; to those who were not it would be impossible for me to convey an idea of the discomforts we went through before winning our way to the muchenvied position to which our tickets admitted us. The Stand was already crowded, and I saw that it would be impossible for Mabel to witness the ceremony from the only spot where we could find standing-room. As I was whispering this to her, and trying to persuade her to give the thing up, and return home, I perceived that we attracted the notice of a fair young girl in the front row, who was watching us attentively. Presently she took

a

memorandum-book from her pocket, and hastily writing a few lines in it, tore out the leaf; and directing the attention of a lady near her to Mabel, in a moment the scrap of paper was passed from hand to hand till it reached us, and a bright smile from the writer showed that it had arrived at its destination. 'Pardon me,'-these were the words she had written

'I feel sure your interest in this scene is even deeper than mine. Let me change places with you.' A glow of grateful pleasure lighted up my poor Mabel's pale face as she read the words; an instinctive sympathy seemed to pervade the crowd around us; and in a moment I saw her safe beside the kind and feeling girl, who made way for her to pass to the front with a smile, and then considerately turned away that she might not appear to notice the almost overpowering emotion with which Mabel looked down on the bright array before her, and strove to single out the figure of Charlie Powis, while the whole scene wavered before her tearful eyes.

As he

And now the bright cortège, heralded by distant shouts, approached. The Queen took up her station, and the short, simple, but most interesting ceremony began. I could see nothing of what passed, but I read it in the changes of Mabel's countenance. I saw the brightening glance as she first caught sight of Charlie-the breathless interest with which she watched his approach, and the flush that mounted to her cheek as she saw him receive from his Queen's hand the hardearned badge of bravery. turned away to resume his place in the little band, a deep sigh of relief and thankfulness escaped from Mabel's lips. It was over the hour so long thought of-so much dreaded, and yet longed for-had come and gone, and he was there, safe, before her eyes. Another moment, and the advancing ranks had hidden him; and with a whispered word, and a cordial pressure of the hand, Mabel left the side of her unknown friend, and made her way to mine.

If these pages should ever meet the eye of that tender-hearted woman, sought for in vain at all possible places of public resort long after the remembrance of her gracious kindness has probably faded from her mind, she will learn from them how well it was bestowed, how deeply appreciated, and upon what thankful hearts its memory is graven.

I would fain linger here: I feel acutely the pain of my self-imposed

task, now that the short and uneventful story I have undertaken to record draws to its tragic close. I would gladly dwell on those last few happy moments when, with a tender joyful pride fluttering at her heart, Mabel walked homeward by my side, describing the scene she had witnessed. But the end must be told. As we neared the house, I noticed that a brougham was standing at the door, and two or three persons, a policeman among them, were lingering about. Mabel exclaimed hastily, 'Oh, there are visitors there-what a bore!' when, just as we approached the door, it was opened by a servant, who had evidently been watching for us, and on whose face I read at once that something unusual had occurred. Mabel did not notice him, however, and was passing quickly toward the staircase, when the dining-room door opened, and Doctor Riversdale, quite calm, but with his features set in a deathly pallor, ap. peared.

Mabel, my child, go to your mother,' he said; and laying his hand on my arm, he drew me silently into the small back room which he had used as a study.

I do not know at this moment whether he told me the dread tidings, or if untold,' I saw them in his eyes.' I seemed to feel it at once. Charlie was gone, and the light of Mabel's life was quenched for ever.

Presently the Archdeacon led me into the dining-room. He lay there, my beloved friend, in his last calm, blessed sleep, with his left hand on his breast clasping the

cross.

When I was able to listen, they told me how it happened. He had moved but a few paces onward, after receiving the cross, when he faltered and fell, apparently fainting; and his servant, who with great difficulty had made his way through the crowd, dreading, as he afterwards told me, that the excitement would be too much for his master, contrived, with the assistance of two or three spectators, to remove him from the ground. At this moment a surgeon happened to be passing, and stopped to inquire into the accident, and at his request Charlie

1859.1

Powis was placed, still insensible, in his brougham, and conveyed to the house. He breathed once or twice faintly, and as they were removing him from the carriage he put up his hand and clasped the cross on his breast. It was the last sign of life; and though every means were had recourse to without a moment's delay, all was in vain. The brave and blessed spirit had passed away with that slight but, to me, deeply significant action.

It is needless to say more. It was all accounted for by the sudden inward bleeding of the wounded lung, and in my dear friend's papers abundant evidence was found that he had expected and prepared for a sudden death; and when we could nerve our aching hearts to think of his gain, and forget for a moment Nov. 1857.

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our own irreparable loss, there seemed something strangely and touchingly appropriate in the time and manner of his death.

I am alone at Malta now. My silent solitary room is often peopled with the shadows of the past, and haunted with the memory of those who have gone from it for ever. I hear that Mabel bears her sorrow meekly and unrepiningly; and the thought of dear Charlie Powis comes ever with a healing balm to quiet the restless longing that possessed me when I first returned to my lonely home for his sorely missed companionship, by sweet and solemn images of his perfect bliss.

'He hath outsoared the shadow of our night,' and who would wish him back in this world of change and woe ?

de

Whether it is owing to the lecture's having been hitherto little known out of the pale of the Cardinal's circle, or to the incuriosity of readers in general, or to the indifference of readers in particular as to what his Eminence might think fit to assert, I cannot say; but nobody, to the best of my knowledge, having noticed either the passage itself or the points that are covertly connected with it, I venture, as one of the grateful readers of those poets, and one of the spectators of the Catholic movements of the day, whom circumstances have much interested in those movements (having been a sufferer of old in the cause of Catholic emancipation) to make some remarks on the subject. The use to which Catholics are apt to turn their assertions, if uncontradicted, appears to me to render the notice desirable; and if only as a matter of literary curiosity, I hope may be found not unamusing.

it

The following is his Eminence's exordium :

The title (he says) which a lecture bears, will seldom convey an accurate idea of what its author intends. He endeavours, no doubt, to express in a few words the subject of which it will treat, but it can hardly prepare the future hearer for his method, and his particular view. We might as well expect the inscription which once graced the front of a destroyed temple, found in a field, to teach us what were the proportions, the materials, or even the architecture of the ancient edifice. It may have inscribed on it-'To Jove the Thunderer,' or 'To Minerva the Healing,' or 'To the God Rediculus,' or 'To Antoninus and Faustina;' but what manner of building it indicated to the traveller no one could tell, unless some fragment at least, a broken capital, a shaft, or a splintered cornice, remained to guide us.

And yet, perhaps, to continue the illustration, the boldness and dimensions of the very inscription might allow us at least to conjecture, whether great or small was the structure to which it gave

a name.

And so far, I hope, the title of my Lecture may not mislead. Each one may have built up for it 'the fabric of a vision,' his own idea, probably more stately, more beautiful, more finished than the reality will prove; and so far he may be doomed to disappointment. But at any rate, the title will express how copious, how vast, how un

bounded is the theme which I have undertaken to illustrate.

For short as is that title, it incloses the whole range of natural beauty, from the mountain chain, with its snows and huge forests, to the green sward and its flowers; art pictorial in all its branches, descriptive in all its varieties, verse and prose. It comprises all ages and all nations-antiquity sacred and classical; the medieval and modern periods.

How then will it be possible to con tain one's self within reasonable bounds? Only, as it appears to me, by not running beyond those of one's own thoughts; by not wandering for new scenes into new roads, and losing one's self in other speculations. One's own mind is limited; one's reading circumscribed; one's views perhaps narrowed; at least one's vision is bounded by a horizon referable to position. Such is my only chance of not running riot, and carrying my audience over a vast field without path or landmark. I must be content to feed your kind curiosity only with such poor ideas as may spring from my own mind, or emanate from my own casual pursuits.

These italics are the transcriber's. Now the whole object of this, and of all the other proceedings of the Cardinal, is that of his one great and by no means 'casual' pursuit, the extension of the authority of the see of Rome.

Why couldn't he say so?

The answer to that single question would lay open the whole history of what has been false and foolish in the conduct of the see of Rome, what gave it worldly success for a time, what has filled it with secret unbelievers always, and what necessitates, in spite of occasional appearances to the contrary, its decay and dissolution. This answer is, that the see of Rome is not a thing true enough to afford speaking the truth.

Why should the title of a book and the contents of a book suggest such ideas of difference in the mind of a Roman Catholic advocate? And why, above all, when the book is his own?

The phrase 'we might as well expect,' applied to an inscription on a temple, is to intimate an equality of doubt between two things, one of which is not at all doubtful, or intended to be doubtful. For the object of the temple, be its architecture, &c., what it may, is the

worship of the god whom the inscription designates; whereas that of the book may indeed, as in the instance before us, be unguessable from the title.

The god Rediculus,' besides being intended to imply the ridiculousness of Pagan gods in general (though the meaning of the Latin word is not what it sounds in English), is made to precede the mention of 'Antoninus and Faustina,' in order to dishonour the memory of the good Pagan emperor, and to remind us that he had a wife to whose vices he was blind. But the gods and deified emperors of Pagan Rome are notoriously represented, or at least were succeeded in deification, by the saints of Rome Catholic. Gods, emperors, and saints, they were all alike objects of worship, and divine; all alike Divi. There was Divus Rediculus, Divus Augustus, Divus Trajanus, Divus Antoninus, &c.; and as there was once a Divus Antonius-Mare Antony, to wit-who reigned in Egypt by the side of a Diva Cleopatra, so there was, after him, and is still, another Divus AntoniusSaint Antony, to wit-who presides over pigs. The Divus or god Rediculus presided over people returning to their homes. His name comes from the word redire, to return, not from ridere, to laugh. Is presiding over pigs, then, a diviner office than protecting returners home? Or is the palm to be given to Saint Feriol, the Divus who presides over geese; to Saint Erasmus, who is the Divus of the stomach; to Saint Main, who guards us against pimples; Saint Blaise, who is the Divus against bones sticking in the throat;' or Saint Martin and Saint Urban (for it takes two saints to uphold this office), who are invoked to save gentlemen who have been drinking too freely at Catholic dinners, from falling into the gutter ?

Should Protestant readers take this list of saints for a jest, let them look into a work called the Perennial Calendar, the production of an honest Catholic, and they will find it to be but a small portion of a like array of divinities.

If ever there was a Pagan whose conduct and aspirations were saintly,

1859.]

His

Marcus Antoninus was one. whole life was saintly, which cannot be said of many a saint in the calendar, the best of them not excepted. Yet suppose, as a set-off against Antoninus and Faustina, the Catholic Church were to be confronted with Augustin and his 'wild oats;' or with Pope Clement and the Viscountess of Turenne; or with Pope Innocent and Donna Olympia Maldachini? I suppress worse instances for the sake of common humanity, and because I cannot believe them.

His Eminence proceeds to quote some passages from Chaucer and Spenser, descriptive of the beauties of nature; and here we are presented with the extraordinary charge against those poets which gave rise to the present remarks. Note the tone and the sigh of it, in connexion with what has been said, especially when a yearning is conceived for 'the wilderness or the hermitage.'

The lecture is On the Perception of Natural Beauty by the Ancients and the Moderns; and it is bound up in a pamphlet with another, subsequently delivered, entitled Rome, Ancient and Modern :

Before leaving these authors (observes the lecturer), I cannot but express a natural regret, that in both too much, but I think exclusively in the later one, every rich description of natural beauty is connected with wantonness, voluptuousness, and debauchery; so as almost to drive one to the fear, that, after all, virtue may well disdain to feed its thoughts even on the most innocent of earthly contemplations, and fly to the wilderness or the hermitage, and there habitually nourish penitential ideas.p. 8.

Habitually penitential ideas'! and forced, after all,' to fly to the hermitage'! Oh the good Lord Cardinal-jovial and pleasurable man! delighting to expatiate on the beauties of nature and art-what could induce him to conjure up this frightful image of his sudden abandonment of the world? of his desperate rush into solitude from books, and turning his noble person into a lath of mortification? and all because of those hitherto esteemed English poets, Chaucer and Spenser. Were there no previous poets to fly from? no pleasurable gentlemen of his own southern

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countries and creed?-poets at once sacred and seductive? singers of crusades, and absolute Inquisitors writing naughty comedies?

But this premature sally of the Cardinal in behalf of a life of roots and water must not betray me into a like irregularity. Let me begin at the beginning, and take all in order.

I have, then, a counter-charge, or rather series of counter-charges, to bring against the distinguished accuser, which may be thus stated:

First, That the accusation against the poets is not true.

Second, That such amount of truth as it might be admitted to contain, had it been far more qualified, had credit been given to exuberances for the lesson which they were intended to include, and had the license been charged not merely upon the poets in their own persons, but upon the age in which they lived, and upon writers before them, would be found, as the accuser knows, to have originated with Catholic, and not with Reforming or Protestant poets.

Third and fast, That the object of the whole lecture is not to compare ancients with moderns, except as a means to an end, but to insinuate Catholic associations and Catholic interests into the minds of its readers, and this too by the help and at the expense of opponents of the Catholic Church, notwithstanding the like better knowledge on the part of the lecturer, and in rash assumption of the ignorance of his hearers.

Proofs of the whole of these charges will be made manifest as the remarks proceed, chiefly in their order, but more or less throughout what is said; for the points on which they are founded are so artfully mixed up in the lecture, that they necessitate a like compound treatment in handling them.

To speak first, then, of Chaucer. Readers the best acquainted with that poet, and readers the least acquainted with him, provided in the latter case they know Dryden's modernization of the Flower and the Leaf, are equally qualified to refute the Cardinal's assertion: for though Dryden's production may be roughly stated to be as inferior to