(JJurncll Iniucriiity Slibrani 3tl)ata. Nem lark WORDSWORTH COLLECTION MADE BY CYNTHIA MORGAN ST. JOHN ITHACA. N. Y. THE GIFT OF VICTOR EMANUEL CLASS OF 1919 1925 OJori \ RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE r^: '< Cornell University Library The original of tinis book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924104096874 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE SECOND EDITION EDWARD ARNOLD LONDON NE:W YORK 37 Bedford Street 70 Fifth Avenue 1897 •^TT^' " ^^ ^"^ 7"^ "^4^ T ^ V PREFACE RECOLLECTIONS " and " Autobiographies " are very different things ; and this book belongs to the former class, not to the latter. We have seen persons and places which have amused or in- terested us, and it occurs to us that if accurately described they miglit amuse or interest others also ; but this is a very different thing from writing one's biography, with which the world has little concern. Moreover, Self is a dangerous personage to let into one's book. He is sure to claim a larger place than he deserves in it and to leave less space than their due for worthier company. Several of the portraits drawn by me are prevented by lack of room from taking place in the present volume, amongst others those of Ambrose de Lisle, Kenelm Digby, Sir John Simeon, the Baron Theodore von Schroeter, Maurice FitzGerald Knight of Kerry, and Father Faber of the Oratory. I should have wished to describe Maurice FitzGerald as known to me in the days of my youth, with his " Lofty port and spiritual eye, Like some embodied dream of chivalry,'* l if only as a type of the old Irish Norman noble, corresponding to that of the old GaeHc chieftain presented in my sketch of the late Sir Edward O'Brien. Another volume may, however, remedy such deficiencies. The chapter on the great Irish Famine (1846 to 1850) is but one of two projected. The second, intended to describe more largely the severer part of that awful calamity, is deferred both from lack of room in the present volume and in the hope that if read at a later time the facts recorded may be less subject to unjust mis- representations. Such were the charges brought in recent times against the Government existing at that of the Irish famine as if several mistakes into which it fell had been acts proceeding from negligence or from evil design. Charges equally untrue have been as recently made against the, Irish proprietors in those terrible years (many of whom fell victims to their labours for the poor), charges in direct contradiction to the impartial evidence of a strong Irish Liberal, A. M. Sullivan, Esq. He censures the absentees; but he says also "The bulk of the Irish landlords manfully did their best in that dread hour. . . . Cases might be named by the score in which such men scorned to avert by pressure on their suffering tenantry the fate they saw impending over themselves. They went down with the ship." 2 It is only just to remark that charges as untrue, or as exaggerated, have often been brought by a very different class of accusers against ^ ** The Lamentation of Ireland," by the late Sir Aubrey de Vere. 2 *' New Ireland," 187S. VI PREFACE the great mass of the Catholic clergy in Ireland in later years. Violent expressions used by some among them, and probably long since regretted by many, have been quoted as if they represented the language of the majority ; and few have taken the trouble to enquire what proportion of the Irish clergy joined in the recent agi- tation, and how many abstained from doing so. The marvel is surely not that many of the clergy in all denomi- nations should be unskilled or heated politicians, but that trained and experienced statesmen, whose studies included History, Politi- cal Philosophy and Political Economy, should so often in late years have extemporised political principles or defended political courses to the full as Jacobinical as any of those promulgated at those meetings so justly condemned. But there is another side to this matter which it is both our duty and our interest not wholly to ignore. What would have been the condition of Ireland by this time if the Catholic clergy of Ireland had not during the whole period of Irish agitation from first to last denounced the Secret Societies and refused the sacraments to those who joined them ? It was thus lately, and it was thus long since. The Secret Societies will not soon forget the great Bishop Doyle, who waged against them an incessant war, or his last appeal to them shortly before his premature death, " My people, you have broken your Bishop's heart." There are few in connection with whom I have so many Recollec- tions as with the earliest of my friends and my near kinsman, Stephen Spring Rice. I see from the window at which I write, the trees which we used to climb together as boys. I have been allowed to grace one of my volumes with not a few of his Sonnets. Many of them abound in poetic merits, but, to those who knew and loved him, their highest charm will be the vividness with which they recall the many beautiful qualities of head and heart which were combined in him with a rich imagination and a profound sense of social and political duty. In the Memoirs of Lord Tennyson, Lord Houghton and Sara Coleridge, are many Recollections embodied in letters of mine to their respective biographers. Additional personal Recollections will be found in my literary critiques on the poems of Wordsworth, Sir Henry Taylor, Archbishop Trench, Coventry Patmore, Landor and Sir Samuel Ferguson. ^ AUBREY DE VERE. CuRRAGir Chase. June, 1897. i *' Essays in three Vohimes '^ (Macmillan). Contents Chapter Page I. Childhood and Boyhood i it. Youth 27 III. Poems of my Youth — 1832-42 ...... 59 IV. Old Times and New 62 V. My Sister's Marriage — 1835 7^ VI. Adventures in Switzerland — 1839 93 VII. Early Years in England — 1841-45 .... 108 VIII. Travels with Sir Henry Taylor and his Wife, chiefly in Italy — 1843-44 145 IX. A Short Tour in Scotland in 1845 ^^i X. 1844-45 192 XI. My Father's Death in 1846. My Mother's in 1856 210 XII. The Great Irish Famine — 1846-50 . . . . 221 XIII. Cardinal Newman 255 XIV. Reminiscences of Cardinal Manning . . . . 288 XV. My Submission to the Roman Catholic Church 307 XVI. Political Changes witnessed between 1848 and 1895 XVII. Some of my PoexMS : Their Aims and Objects . 35 Recollections of Aubrey de Vere CHAPTER I CHILDHOOD AND BOYHOOD Rural Dances at the Avenue Gate — Duels the favourite Irish Sport — My Grandfather^s Ways — He made his Son, when only five years old, a Captain in a Regiment of Volunteers which he had raised — The con- dition of the Poor was that of a merry misery — A large Emigration wisely assisted by the State was the necessary Preliminary to serious Improve- ment — Neither English Statesmen nor Irish Proprietors saw this in time — My Father was strongly in Favour of '* Catholic Emancipation," and in his Politics generally a " Liberal Tory " or " Canningite " — A Summer on the Shannon — A Residence in England from 1821 to 1824 — Richmond Hill — The Sunsets from its Terrace — Ham House and its Groves — My Father's early Dramas — Our first Tutor, William St. George Pelis- sier — Pleasant Christmases at Adare — Adventure on Knockfiema, or the Hill of the Fairies. 1\ TY earliest recollections are of our Irish home, Curragh ^^^ Chase, and I always see it bathed as in summer sunshine. It was not once, however, as it is now. At the bottom of the lawn there now spreads a lake, but at that time it was rich meadow land, divided by a slender stream, with fair green hills beyond. The pleasure ground now blends insensibly with the lawns and woods ; but it had then a wall around it, which, as my father's old friend and schoolfellow, the then Sir Thomas Acland, said on visiting us, when both had left youth behind, gave it a look of mon- astic seclusion. It was then divided into four grassy spaces, Recollections of Aubrey de Vere CHAPTER I CHILDHOOD AND BOYHOOD Rural Dances at the Avenue Gate — Duels the favourite Irish Sport — My Grandfather's Ways — He made his Son, when only five years old, a Captain in a Regiment of Volunteers which he had raised — The con- dition of the Poor was that of a merry misery — A large Emigration wisely assisted by the State was the necessary Preliminary to serious Improve- ment — Neither English Statesmen nor Irish Proprietors saw this in time — My Father was strongly in Favour of ** Catholic Emancipation," and in his Politics generally a " Liberal Torv *' or " Canninmte " — A .9nmm*ir rtn ERRATA. Page 44, line 3 from bottom, /^r *' chuch " read '* church." Page 46, line i,/or *' Brenkley" read '^Brinkley." Page 87, line 12, /or ^' Ballibunion " j^ead '' Ballybunion." Pa^e 89, line 20,/or '' Cretloe " read " Cratloe." Page 119, line S^for '' Radnor " read "^ Radley." Page 151, line 20, for ** Hospital " read '' Hospenthal." Page 159, line 15, >r *' baldachino " read *' baldacchino." Page 163, line 2, for '' Vesvuius " read " Vesuvius." Page 163, line 2 from bottom,/?;- '* Terra" read '' Torre." Page 169, line 12, for " Camalaoli " read '' Camaldoli." Page 169, line 16, for '' Capodemonte " r i . CHAPTER VIII TRAVELS WITH SIR HENRY TAYLOR AND HIS WIFE, CHIEFLY IN ITALY, 1 843-44 :St. Omer — Aix-la-Chapelle — Cathedral of Cologne — Freddy Elliot — Heidelberg — Lucerne — Henry Taylor's Dislike of the Alps and Delight in the Italian Mountains — Lugano — Bellagio — Death of Edward Villiers at Nice — The Comiche Road — The Cathedral of Milan — Henry Taylor's Poetry at Naples — Wonderful Beauty of the Bay of Naples — The Contrast between it and the City — Strange Ways of the Natives — Capri and Anacapri — Pompeii — Sorrento — Tasso's Abode in Youth — Deep historic Interest of many among the Sites near Naples — Those associated with Marius — Brutus — Cicero — Scipio Africanus — The Gracchi — Cornelia — Virgil — '* Tu Marcellus Eris " — H. Tay- lor's Poem in memory of a Day at Lugano — Neapolitan Pickpockets — Our Sojourn at Rome — Return Home. TN the September of 1843, Henry Taylor, whose health ^ had been a subject of anxiety, was ordered to pass the winter in the South, and the authorities of the Colonial Office gave him a liberal holiday in return for important services. Sir James Stephen, the Under-Secretary to the Colonies, spoke to me with sadness on the subject as w^e walked one day in Richmond Park. '^ It is a pity, to see Taylor breaking dow^n so early.'* But Henry Taylor lived a much longer life than he did, though then a picture of stately strength. I gladly became his fellow-traveller, under the impres- sion that my earlier travels must have given me some -experiences likely to be of use. On that earher occasion 10 146 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE a cousin of mine, a rough old soldier, just returned from- an Italian tour, bade me farewell with these words : '' If you are sharp you need not spend more than a hundred pounds a month ; but you are not, and before you have been long in Italy you will have been carried off by rob- bers, married and murdered ! " Our party consisted of four beside myself: Henry Tay- lor, his wife, her maid, and a delightful little boy of five or six years of age, Freddy Elliot, taken charge of by the Taylors during the absence of his father, Sir Charles Elliot, then Governor of Bermuda, one of Henry Taylor's chief friends, and the " Athulf " of his drama, '' Edwin the Fair." A more amusing, vivacious, or intelligent child I have never seen, and many of his quaint sayings live on in my memory to this day. AYe started from London early enough to surprise our relatives and especial friends, the Calverts, in the middle of their dinner at Dover, and walk with them on the seaside later. The next day we saw that ominous memorial of the French Revolution, the tower of the ruined abbey of St. Omer, looming out like a phantom through the evening air. Out of rever- ence for Charlemagne, we visited the cathedral of Aix-la- Chapelle, built by him, and chosen by him as his place of sepulchre. It was night when vre reached it; but we could not have seen it to more advantage than by the autumnal moonlight, — walking round it several times, and gazing on the shadowy domes that surmount its Gothic buttresses. As we walked home I repeated my father's sonnet — ^^The Tomb of Charlemagne/' We visited also, as in duty bound — not only to the **men of old," but to those who in our degenerate days TRAVELS 147 walk in their footsteps — the vast and glorious Cathedral of Cologne, beneath the roof of whose chancel the towers of Westminster Abbey might stand. There we found nearly four hundred men employed on the works, and learned that in eighteen years more that stupendous pile would reach its completion, an encouragement to all builders who build in faith. We all know that the work stood in abeyance for centuries ; but some may forget how an apparent accident caused the renewal of the enterprise. During those centuries a crane once used for the lifting of stones stood on the stunted tower. The people would not allow it to be removed, for it implied a promise. One stormy night it fell. A small local subscription wc:s raised to restore it. That act renewed the great enterprise. Our way was by the Rhine, and our progress w^as slow. The weather was delightful, and the scenery not such as one wishes to rush through rapidly. Our only trouble was that connected with our luggage ; for, as many persons disembarked at each station, there seemed always a danger of their carrying away our luggage with their own. To avert such a mischance, we made a pile of all our impedi- meiita in a spot by itself, and on its summit the devoted lady's-maid sat, like an old hen hatching her eggs. She cast no glance at castle or crag. Her affections, with a natural piety, gravitated exclusively to their legitimate objects. There she sat, now fixing a tender eye on some special basket ; now flashing an angry glance on an equi- vocal stranger too near it. We admired, conversed, or read one of the books enclosed in our netted bag, till the boat stopped for the night. This hfe contented us all except the youngest. 148 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERB One night, when Ahce Taylor had put httle Freddy to bed, and was leaving the room, she heard a little squeaky voice from behind the curtains — ''Oh, I am afraid that all the pleasant part of my life is now over; and all the corrowful part is to come/* She returned : " Six years old is young for an end of all happiness, Freddy; what makes you so sorrowful?'* '' Oh, Alice," he said, '' every day in the steamboat I fmd such a nice little girl, and play with her, and love her; and every evening she is taken to a different hotel from ours ; and the next day there is another nice little girl in the steamboat; and I love her and play with her, and when evening comes I see her no more ; and this is the fourth day I have lost her ! " Constancy was no part of his moral ideal. What interested us far the most on or near the Rhine was the ruined castle of Heidelberg. Its position, 33a feet above the lovely river Neckar, is all that painter could desire, and in vastness and picturesque variety of outline it cannot be surpassed. Amongst all the feudal ruins which I have seen I should give the highest place to Heidelberg castle and palace — as, among monastic ruins, I should give the highest to England's Fountains, or Tin- tern. As we advanced, a glory streamed from it, reflected from the setting sun, which might have made us fancy that the vast pile was assailed by one more conflagration ; for during the long centuries since its foundation in A.D. 1294 to A.D. 1784, when it was struck by lightning, there were few of the chances and chancres of warlike o times which it had escaped. We walked in the pic- turesque woods adjoining Heidelberg, w^iile the autumnal sun TRAVELS 149 " Reddened the fiery hues, and shot Transparence through the golden," ^ and next day pursued our journey till the Rhine laid us down at Basle. Our route included Lucerne, and I had looked forward eagerly to the pleasure of making my companions ac- quainted with what I have ever regarded as the grandest of the Swiss lakes, as well as the most interesting in its historical associations, from the days of WiUiam Tell to those when wives and sisters fell by hundreds beside their husbands and brothers on the battle-plain, in defence of their native land against republican France. On our arrival there, however, the weather, which had favoured us so long, began to change. We arrived late ; and Henry Taylor and I went to get our letters. To reach the post-office we had to cross one of those quaint old bridges the roofs of which are deco- rated with religious pictures. It was so dark that before we had advanced far upon it we fell down a flight of steps. On reaching the bottom we were grateful to find that, though a little bruised, we were still on the bridge, and not in the lake. The next day we went to see the lake. A disappoint- ment met me there. It had never occurred to me that the same person could look upon one class of mountains with delight and on another with dislike, and indeed with distress. When we passed on into Italy, I found that the Italian mountains were to Henry Taylor far more than they are to most people. Their long majestic summits, shaped, as Landor says, as if for the winds to run races 1 Wordsworth — " Yarrow revisited." 150 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE on them, and the infinite grace of the curves adown which they sank into the broad rich plains below, charmed him ; and he did not hke them the less when they kept a re- spectful distance, and thus inflicted on their inmate no sense of imprisonment. I well remember how long he stood beneath the ruined arch of the bridge at Narni, looking forth on the lovely view it commands. But it was wholly different in Switzerland. We sat upon a cliff on the lake-side which commanded one of those views which in my earlier travels had saddened me, because there was then no one with whom to share my admiration. He never raised his eyes or spoke a word. At last a mangy old dog drew near, and upon it he fixed an atten- tion which rubbed my sympathies the wrong way. I concluded, however, that he was fatigued, and would behave better the next day. The next day we took boat, and visited the grandest portions of a lake 40 miles long, and in many parts girdled by snow-crowned mountains from ten to twelve thousand feet high. Before our reaching the finest of these views I brought him a cup of hot strong coffee. All would not do ; he was grateful for the coffee, but had not a word for the mountains ! I forgave him, however, his incivility to the Alps, w^hen I discovered his admiration for the Apennines; and still more when I found that that incivility implied no indif- ference, but was a very cordial dislike. The Alps op- pressed his spirits like whispers implying painful mysteries or threatening news. The lines of great mountains have a mathematics of their own ; they are hieroglyphics. By those who apprehend them in part, but only in part, they TRAVELS 151 are regarded with aversion. To him they were perplexing and distressing, as the minor key eminently was in music ; for he felt that there was a deep significance in them: but they would neither reveal what they meant nor let him alone. Alpine scenery was to him a sphinx that threatened to devour those that could not guess her riddle. They were a chaos reasserting its primeval claims upon a world which had submitted long since to a milder control. On our return from Southern Italy, I took him to one more Alpine view, thinking that his opinion of such scenes might have changed. After a long silence he looked up and said : *^ I pray to Heaven I may never see mountains of this sort again." I turned on my heel and walked home ; and his wife, on his return, accused him of having insulted my mountains ; to which he replied that mountains were neither my brothers nor my sisters ! The w^eather gave signs of breaking; and we decided that as the Pass of St. Gothard rose between us and the south, it would be wise to place ourselves on its sunny side. We hired a carriage at Hospital and set off for Lugano. In the first ravine on our ascent we encountered a sharp snowstorm. Alice Taylor, being much accustomed to her own way, was a little displeased by it, but soon passed into a gayer mood. ^' Every one knows," I said, '' that an Alpine ravine is nothing without its storm, which is one of quite a peculiar sort. A poem of mine" — I had repeated two or three lines of it when she laid her hand on my arm and exclaimed, '' Stop ! stop ! I will bear the snow ! '* All the other little mishaps of the way were met in the same pleasant way, till, when pretty well advanced 152 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE on the descent, we all of us suddenly exclaimed '* Italy! '^ and saw the Italian sun flashing on Italian vegetation, and knew that in another hour we should be in the land of the vine and the maize, of the orange grove and the lemon grove. Soon afterwards we saw the glitter of the Ticino,. and Bellinzona with its battlemented walls and its three castles. From Bellinzona we made our way the next day to Lugano, passing through a country every spot of which laughed in our faces. Just as we had sat down to lun- cheon, three old friends of the Taylors walked into the room — Bingham Baring, Lady Harriet Baring, and their friend Charles Buller, who was travelling with them, and whose elastic step and beaming eye, as they advanced, showed that he was glad to see us. We passed a day or two together there. Charles Buller and I made the ascent of the far-famed Monte Salvadore, approved by Wordsworth, who concedes to it a view more sublime than; can be enjoyed anywhere else from the same elevation / for it does not rise above the lake higher than 2000 feet. Charles Buller was a most agreeable converser, and he would have become important in the political world but for " That blind Fury with the abhorred shears That shts the thin-spun life." My chief recollection in connection with Lugano is its church, Santa Maria degli Angioli, and its magnificent frescoes by Luini. No one can look at his pictures with- out being deeply impressed by the sympathetic power through which the genius of Leonardo da Vinci passed into the intellect of his greatest pupil. The short time we passed at Lugano left behind it a noble poetical memoriaL TRAVELS 155 During a walk on its shore, Henry Taylor and his wife made acquaintance with one of the peasant famihes living there. He was deeply impressed by all that humble hap- piness, geniality, and unconscious moral elevation which dignified that unpretending abode, and was grateful to its^ inmates for their hospitality and for the thoughts which they had left with him. The result was a poem v,Titten' at Naples. From Lugano we went by boat to Porlezza at the eastern end of the lake, and drove thence to Menaggio, on the lake of Como, passing next to Cadenabbia, and Bellagio, the loveliest spot on that lake. About the same time when Henry Taylor was ordered to winter in Italy, his *' chief of friends/' Edward Ernest Villiers, then suffering from a pulmonary complaint, was sent to Nice. From that place, disquieting news reached' us, and Henry Taylor determined upon seeing his friend. We did so, taking the Lago Maggiore and Baveno on our way in hopes of receiving there a later letter. While there we saw the noblest views on the Italian lakes, backed, as they seldom are, by perpetual snows, and visited of course the Borromean Islands and the huge palace of that ancient family, inscribed somewhat superat^undantly with its motto: ^' Humilitas,'' or as Southey calls it ''The Obtru- sive Motto's proud Humility." Among the legends connected with the great Cardinal Borromeo this is an amusing- one. When Cardinal Giulio had shown to Cardinal Borromeo the vast abode which he had just completed, the latter maintained a strict silence until they had inspected the whole. When departing, he said: '' Your Eminence, I have been reflecting that the huge 154 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE sums spent on this palace might have been given to the poor.'* Cardinal Giulio replied : '' Your Eminence, they /laz'c been all given to the poor. But our notions of charity differ. I pay the poor for their labour; and your Eminence for their idleness." On our arrival at Nice we found that Edward Villlers's health had rapidly declined since his arrival at Nice. He had exchanged his hotel for the neighbouring hill of Cimiez, and was living with his wife and their two elder children in the Maison Nicolas, among the olive woods and orange bowers. We found a very small abode within five minutes' walk of it, close to the little chapel of St. Rosalie on a narrow terrace lined by acacia trees which scented the spot with a fragrance more delicate than that of the adjoining lemon bowers. Nice had not then been changed into a French Brighton. The rest may be told in a letter written to my mother. ^' Edward Villiers was still well enough, when we arrived here a week ago, to derive comfort from his friend's visit, and always spoke to him of his own approaching departure in terms cheerful and contented. During the last two days he hardly suffered, and I am full of hope that this visit, which wt.s so much feared for Henry Taylor by his friends, will be to him no physical injury, while morally a lasting consolation. It was a deep if a sad com- fort to him to have been on the spot, to have witnessed the peacefuhiess of his friend's last days, to have received the Sacra- ment with him, to have attended him to his grave, and to have assisted in helping his widow and children who would otherwise have been friendless in a foreign land. That widow had nursed her husband with an unremitting attention, hardly ever leaving his bedside night or day. The day but one before his death she read to him the burial service at his wish, and would never speak TRAVELS 155 of his approaching death as other than as he regarded it, that is, as to him a blessing. It was better, she said, that she should be the bereft one than that he should. She now rides about the woods with her children. I saw her to-day, lifting up a butterfly before their eyes, and explaining to them the Greek allegory of the Soul. When they understood it, a brightness shone upon their faces, which was at once reflected on her own, worn as it had grown." Returning over the way we had already travelled from Genoa, my friends had the leisure necessary for the enjoy- ment of its gladsome loveliness. The air was at once soft and bracing, and embalmed by a vegetation far richer than that which borders the Lombard lakes. Alternately we drove along a road cut like a groove along the cliffs, or dragged our wheels slowly through the sands on the shore, now gazing on the waves that indolently swayed about in masses of azure, purple or green, and now listen- ing to their murmur, as they slid along the ledges of rock, or tossed their spray upon the myrtle bowers, or flashed from some distant promontory, reddened by the western sunset. Often we got out of the carriage to visit some church whose campanile crested a village, and in which rested the tomb of the Saint who first brought the Chris- tian tidings to that spot, and whose feast was more hon- oured by torchlight processions or rural dances than would be the memory of any conqueror. Little Freddy had, however, cause of complaint. Once he said, on rejoining us, *' I have been looking for river nymphs in the streams ; but I never can find one, though the gentleman who wrote that book you showed me saw them in all the streams ! '' 156 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE We passed several days at Milan, and no small part of each in that wonderful cathedral, probably the grandest completed specimen of the Italian Gothic, in the creation of which, while the main design came from northern art (for its founder was a German '' Freemason ''), a large part was contributed by the chief Itahan intellects of an early day, including Brunelleschi, Bramante, and Leonardo da Vinci, while the work was further stimulated by the saintly zeal of St. Charles Borromeo. The exterior of the build- ing has the great merit of being sui generis, while several of its characteristics, including its exquisite elaboration, are rendered mxore effective still by the radiant marble of which its countless pinnacles are fashioned. At least I thought so, though Henry Taylor complained that a lack of mas- siveness was thus produced. The quasi-classical *' West End *' built in the revived barbarism of a later day, and under such patronage as might be expected from a Napo- leon, is a sad blemish which can only be removed by the substitution for it of such a fagade as was originally in- tended, and as is represented in an old plan of the church. As to the interior, there can be no question : it reminds one of the verse, '* The Queen's daughter is all glorious, within," a text more applicable to Italian churches than to those of other countries. It has not the severity or perhaps the stern spirituality of the Northern Gothic, but. it has few rivals in its union of vastness with richness, and in the sacred and mysterious gloom which, notwithstand- ing its redundance of ornament, pervades it. St. Peter's at Rome is of a character the extreme op- posite of that which belongs to the interior of Milan: yet the gloom of the one and the glory of the other are TRAVELS 157 jiot without a latent affinity to each other, as the radi- ance in the faces of Fra Angehco's saints have a remote harmony with the holy sadness in those of saints by Perugino, both classes being saintly. It was thus that the great Medieval Art sustained her great antiphonal song, ''O ye Nights and Days, bless ye the Lord, praise Him and magnify Him for ever." The interior of Milan cathedral is dark, not only because nearly all the win- dows are of storied glass, but by reason of that multi- tudinous forest of pillars which shadow its double aisles. An immense additional greatness is conferred upon this •church also by a sacrifice which was well worth making — the sacrifice of the usual triforium gallery, beautiful as is that feature of Gothic architecture. It is directly from the pillars that the vaulting of the roof soars aloft. Those pillars are themselves eighty feet in height. The vaulted roof of the nave hangs above the pavement at a height of more than one hundred and fifty feet. The mystic dimness is enhanced rather than diminished by the gleam that streams occasionally from the dusky marble of a pillar smitten by the light of a painted win- dow itself unseen, or a flash from the tall reed-like tapers that stand before some distant altar. The eye loses itself in the labyrinth of that columned grove w^here the pillars of the transepts and chancel group with those of the nave. The vast arches which those pillars support are encrusted with sculpture ; nay, the capitals of the pillars themselves, besides being enriched by a marble Avreath of blended foliage and children, are surmounted by a range of niches, each with its saint, and a canopy -above him. The upper portions of the high and cav- 158 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE ernous windows are embossed all over with sculpture. Indeed the unbounded use made of the human form, both in the interior as well as the exterior of this mar- vellous cathedral, the manifold details of which are all subordinated to a single great and pervading idea, cause it to differ in kind as well as in degree from all other churches. In it statues are not mere ornaments intro- duced into the structure. They were evidently part of that high vision which revealed itself to the inspired im- agination of its architect when brooding over his original plan. They constitute, rather than adorn, a great and sohd portion of the higher structure. It looks as if its designer had been reading that chapter in Saint Paul in which the Apostle speaks of faithful Christians as *'hving stones'' in the mystical church. The architect seems to have said, ^^ There is no shape more noble than the human form — that temple of a soul made in God's im- age — which is worthy of suggesting the antitype of a temple reared for the worship of an ever-present God.'* But those who ascend to the marble roof of the ca- thedral of Milan enjoy a view which no modern degen- eracy can impair. In the midst of that army of statues crowning its countless spires, you might think that you stood amid the assembly of the blest. The statue of the Blessed Virgin stands at the height of three hundred and fifty-five feet from the ground. In prospect beneath spreads the whole plain of Lombardy with its rivers and its cities. Beyond these rise several of the Apennines, and the chief summits among the Alps — those that em- bosom the Lombard lakes — St. Gothard, Monte Rosa^ Mont Cenis. If the morning is clear, the unrisen sua TRAVELS 159 flashes its crimson and gold successively from crest to crest. Alas ! my travelling companions were not able to as- cend to that temple in the skies: but they enjoyed the cathedral of Milan more than any other Italian church. We saw also with a deep interest, what, to all who rev- erence Christian antiquity, will impart no less delight than the Duomo itself, namely, the Basilica of St. Ambrogio, founded by St. Ambrose, A. D. 387. It was largely re- stored in the ninth century, but both then and later, the main arrangements of the original church were preserved. It has still its atriitin, or outer court, not to be passed by Catholic penitents not yet in full communion with the Church; and it is without a transept. It boasts its mag- nificent baldachino, which rises above the bodies of SS. Gervasius and Protasius, to whom the original church was dedicated. At its eastern end it has still its ancient ''tribune," with a grand mosaic on a gold ground, and **the chair of St. Ambrose.'' Its chief treasure, however, is a portion of the gates which, at the command of St. Ambrose, were barred against the Christian Emperor, Theodosius, when he approached them stained by the massacre of Thessalonica. From Milan we made our way to Florence, where we enjoyed the warm-hearted hospitality of Roland and Lady Lucy Standish, the aunt of Alice Taylor ; and cer- tainly the most friendly of hostesses. I must reserve for another opportunity my Recollections of Italy's chief cities. In a few days we hurried on. We reached Rome in time to ascend the Pincian hill for the sunset. It was announced to us by that marvellous pealing of church l60 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE bells for which Rome has no rival. The four great ba- silicas claimed as usual their ancient precedence. First — the true cathedral of Rome, not St. Peter's, but St. John Lateran. As the bells of the last rolled forth their thunders, they seemed to put into music the words of that proud superscription which runs round the whole building: *'To me it has been conceded by mandate both Papal and Imperial that of all the churches on the orb of earth, I should be the mother and the head/' The bells of St. Peter's, St. Paul's, and Santa Maria Maggiore then made response successively in the order prescribed ; after which all the bells of Rome's greater churches joined simultaneously in full chorus. Within a few days more we reached the end of our jour- ney, Naples, sleeping one night at Mola di Gaeta, one of the loveliest spots on the seacoast, especially w^hen seen as I saw it first, in 1839, with the morning star suspended over its blue waves and glimmering on its orange bowers, still dewy from the night. My friends took up their abode on the Chiaia and I at an hotel opposite to the public gar- den. I wrote thus to a friend : — " Henry Taylor has made a sudden spring forward here in health and spirits. At first he did not like the climate, for if the wind blows from the sea it is hot, and if from the snow it is bit- terly cold. He calls it ' winter, toasted at one side.* He has taken to poetry again ; and as some of it is inspired by the scenes around us, his occupation will doubtless make him enjoy this spot all the more, while they, in turn, will not fail to enlarge his mind poetic, and increase its sensibilities. His old friends, Lord and Lady Ashburton, are here. The former is a singularly active and intelligent old gentleman, who insists upon seeing everything, as if TRAVELS l6l he were only now beginning his education. He asks every one his opinion upon every subject, without, however, much caring to communicate his own ; because, as they say, his own is very apt to change, according to the point of view from which his active and versatile intellect regards a subject successively. We have been once to one of the great Accademia balls, but are not likely to go to another/' Again I wrote: " We have, of course, been at the great Picture Gallery. The collection of pictures is one of the largest and one of the worst that I have seen anywhere ; that of statues is good, and the bronzes are magnificent. The great glory of the collection is, of course, that part of it which comes from Pompeii and Plercula- neum. But Naples is a city more devoted to amusement than to art. It is dinned with a perpetual clatter of trivial dissipation. The result has been one more fatal both to thought and action than all the swamps of Holland or the snows and volcanoes of Iceland would have proved ; and I believe that Naples has never produced a great man, and seldom adopted any. The house in which the Taylors live is let to them by the aide-de-camp of one of the king's brothers. He complains of the monotony of their daily life. One of the modes in which they fight against it is this. At a certain hour each day, his royal master and he strip all the beds, and rival each other in a chase after fleas ! " Among our most interesting expeditions was that which we made to Pozzuoli and its amphitheatre, where the glad- iators had to measure their strength against that of lions and tigers. Henry Taylor had always been a stern enemy to field sports. The sight of this celebrated amphitheatre stimulated that enmity to the utmost, and he wrote on our return some powerful verses threatening the present lovers II l62 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERB of such sports that they will themselves be one day judged, as they themselves now judge those who, in pagan time^, frequented the amphitheatres. " Pain in man Bears the high mission of the flail and fan i In beasts 't is purely piteous." Close to Pozzuoli is the Bay of Baiae, the favourite retreat — owing both to its beauty and its luxurious cli- mate — of the most dissolute among the Roman nobles. Pompeii is, of course, the chief marvel near Naples. To walk there, from street to street, and see not only the fres- coes still fresh on the walls, but all the details of daily life — the wheel-ruts, the hinges of the vanished doors, the signs over the shops, the ovens with their rolls of bread baked before the day of destruction, the lamps and the -snuffers, the pipes for the baths, and the advertisement of shops to be sold, and, amongst these trifles, the image, impressed upon the lava, of a woman arrested in her flight, and still clasping her babe to her breast — to see these things is to shake hands with antiquity, and not to stare at it alone. The past lives again, and the illusion is aided by the resemblance between the men gone by and those here at the present day, who in their characters and their manners are thorough Greeks still, though without a touch of the Greek genius, while in many places they retain much of the Greek costume. To enter into the spirit of the region it is necessary to forget Italy, and to remember that Southern Italy is still Magna Graecia. There are there hardly any remains of the middle ages, and none of the Roman Empire, except what may be found in the ruined villas. TRAVELS 163 Another of the characteristics of this region is its mar- vellous fertility. Half the way up Vesvuius the country people plant vines in a soil which seems to consist of nothing but lava and titfo. As you ascend you look down on a scene well entitled to its name, the Campagna Felice. — a tract of mulberries, oranges, and almonds, glowing with flowers at almost all times of the year ; gardens divided by hedges of aloe, and occasional cornfields that triple the produce of less fortunate lands. With the single exception of Capri, which is a rock of limestone, the whole region is volcanic. In past ages Ischia was what Vesuvius is now ; while the summit of Vesuvius, then not half its present height, was covered with vineyards. In many places are the craters of extinct volcanoes. In not a few is a small lake like that of Avernus, with a ruin reflected in its gloomy pool, and a ridge of flat-headed pines hanging like a cloud beneath the yellow green of the evening sky. Boiling streams, issuing through fis- sures in the rock, are so common that you hardly remark them. On the coast of Baiae there is an island which rose in the course of a week about two hundred years ago, while near Pompeii spreads a league of rich pasture over which boats sailed in days of old. Vesuvius is a different mountain every year both in size and shape, and the quan- tity of matter flung up by it is said to have been sufficient to form four mountains of its present size. Again and again all becomes ruin, but the fugitive inhabitants always return. The last time I made the ascent of Vesuvius it was from Terra dell' Annunziata. I was alone, and after chmbing about half-way up the mountain, I found myself in a black 164 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE wilderness of embers, such as we might imagine to be ruins of a planet after its conflagration. Appalling as the region was in colour, nothing could exceed it in its beauty of shape. The waves of the sea after a subsiding storm could not be more graceful than the hills and hollows into which the mountain was moulded by the gradual drifting of its sands. At last I found myself on the edge of the crater, and started back. The abyss below me was two thousand feet in depth. Round it clouds of sulphureous smoke eddied like tormented spirits beating against the walls of their prison. I heard the sound as of distant seas. Suddenly an immense column of smoke leaped up out of the depth, and reached, as in a moment, a vast height above it, distending itself as it rose, and then — caught by the storm it had itself raised — drifted away over the remoter side of the crater. As that column grew thinner I saw within it showers of stone and burning metal, which fell along the slopes of the crater in red-hot masses. The same thing recurred at brief intervals — the respirations of the mountain. The scene was a very awful one; but I remembered that I stood on the windward side of the mountain. I must not allow my recollections of Nature's great things to make me forget the little boy whose lively ways helped us to bear the inevitable crosses of the pleasantest travel, while his misfortunes were all his own. On one occasion he had felt the touch of what he called '* a very dangerous whip '* ; and on another he had been sentenced to go to bed without his supper. On this last occasion his remonstrances took the form of a skilful rhetoric. ''It is not for myself I am unhappy, Alice,'' he said, TRAVELS 165 Still clasping the handle of the open door. '' It is all for you ! Oh, how can you ever send the story to my poor mother at Bermuda? You will have to write — * How can I tell you the dreadful news? Your darling little Freddy is dead ! He died last night of starvation. He was put to bed without a morsel of supper, and in the course of the night he died from hunger! Oh, what a sight it was in the morning when there he lay dead before me.' It is not for myself I am unhappy, Alice. I am only thinking of you ! " The next morning he was as bright as ever. It was suggested to him that as he was now such a traveller, he should learn geography. He answered, " How much I should hke that if I had but time ! But no sooner am I dressed in the morning than I have to eat my breakfast; then I have to play with my little paper cocks ; then I have to see how many boys are in the garden/' and so on, recounting the amusements of each half-hour, and ending: ** I have not one hour to myself in the whole course of the day ! " But it was not to Freddy alone that we owed many a laugh. The ways of the people were always amusing. One day I dined at Torre del Greco alone. The cook, v/hen all his work in the kitchen was over, came upstairs in a white paper cap, and stood behind my chair for half an hour, expatiating on the special merits of every dish, and on the mode in which a wide experience had made him understand how they should be dressed. When this grand official had disappeared, the son of mine host, a youth of about twenty, took his place, and told me stories in some Neapolitan palois. Suddenly a thought occurred 1 66 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE to him, which denoted something of great importance had to be shown to me. The passages about the house were long and dark, but he beckoned me to follow him. When my patience was nearly exhausted, he opened a door^ and brought me into a large room, with a large table, on which lay a small infant, apparently of a month old. He snatched it up, danced all about the room with it, and then affirmed that neither Italy nor Sicily could show another child to equal it in beauty. While his raptures were at their height, a horn was heard in the street ; and he hur- ried me to a circus just under the windows, in which a girl rode round and round standing on a horse. The crowd were contented with clapping their hands ; but he leaped up on his seat and exclaimed, at the highest pitch of his voice : ** How much I should wish to have that girl for my wife ! " While my friends remained at Naples I made solitary expeditions. One of the most interesting of them was that to Capri, at which I had intended to pass but a nighty but where I was detained for a week by a rough sea. The twelve palaces built on that island by the Emperor Tibe* rius in his old age commanded its t\velve finest views, and suggest the fancy that among the divine attributes claimed for themselves by the Roman emperors, that of omnipresence was one. In each palace he dwelt for one month in the year. Hardly a vestige of them remains,, except of that one near the " Azure Grotto," a thing more curious than beautiful. Anacapri lifts up its precipices to the height of i,8oo feet. Five hundred steps carved — no one knows when — out of those precipices, lead toward this unwarlike acropolis, itself surrounded by meadows TRAVELS 167 and pastures that breathe a cooler climate, than the lands below. On my way to this spot I passed through the village of Capri. Its population gathered around, and put many questions to me. On learning that I was on my way to Anacapri, they loudly expressed their surprise. ''What can take you there?" they enquired. **The people up there are a savage race. They will probably murder you ! You will never be heard of again.'' " How often have you been there? *' I asked. *^ Never since we were born,'' was their answer. ** We are civilised folk down here ! " I soon reached the five hundred steps, and, though I had to sit down more than once, reached Anacapri within an hour. The villagers drew round me in surprise more than curiosity, and we conversed half by words and half by signs. ''How long had I been at Capri?" "A week." "A week ! How could you live so long among such rogues and thieves?" "Do you see much of them?" I asked. *'We! We never went down into that dirty hole in our lives. We should grow as corrupt a set as they are if we did ! We have all we want up here. We spin our own wool, and make our own clothes, and drink out of our own well, and milk our own cows, and go to our little church twice a day. The old padre is quite perplexed to find a single mortal sin to absolve us from, unless he has the luck to light on some mad youth who has gone down into Capri out of curiosity. There was such a youth sixty years ago. He went a second time, and soon afterwards he died ; and a holy nun had a vision. 1 68 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERB and saw Satanasso fling the reprobate down the abyss of Vesuvius/* **What can make the men and women of Capri so wicked?" '* What else could they be? We pity them very much. They are always living in the world, running out on the shore to cheat foreigners, or getting on board ships from every nation under the sun, and learning the vices of all. You had better let them alone, and live up here with us for the rest of your life." Old Lord Ashburton laughed long when I told him the tale, and affirmed that Capri and Anacapri were an epitome of the world. When the storm ceased I landed at Sorrento, and thought it the loveliest spot upon that coast. To hold one's nose over the ridge that overhangs its piano^ and see at once, and smell, its multitudinous thickets of orange and lemon, while the sea-breeze blows over them, is an enjoyment to be equalled by few. When you approach the town, a mystic character is imparted to it by a ravine two hundred feet in depth with which nature has protected it on three sides, the fourth being girt by the sea. The woody walls of that ravine create a gloom out of which glitter lamps from many oratories, themselves unseen, scat- tered about it at various heights. I enjoyed all the walks and drives in the neighbourhood, and the numberless frag- ments of antiquity adjoining them, especially along the seacoast road to Massa, and thence on to the southern extremity of the Bay — a promontory on which, as the classic authorities affirmed, Ulysses built a temple to his guardian goddess, Minerva. I made my way next to TRAVELS 169 Amalfi, with its wonderful cliffs and its views of the Bay of Salerno ; and afterwards to Castellamare, where night after night I took my walk, beside its bay, over which the evening star cast a pathway of silver as bright as that which, in the north, is cast by the moon. That line of glory seemed to be a bond connecting the Tomb of Virgil at the northern side of the bay with the birthplace of Tasso at the southern — Tasso, the only epic poet who chose an entirely Christian theme. The noblest spot in the immediate neighbourhood of Naples, and the view which I enjoyed most, is that oc- cupied by the monastery of the Camalaoli. The pros- pect from it includes the bays of Naples and Gaeta, as w^ell as the mountains that girdle and the islands that stud them. Next in beauty to that view I thought the prospects from Capodemonte and the Certosa of St. Mar- tino, near the castle of St. Elmo. This Carthusian church, besides being rich in really fine pictures, commands far the finest view to be enjoyed from within the city. The northern side of the Bay of Naples, if inferior in beauty to the southern, is the richer in associations con- nected with the saddest and the most critical periods of the Roman Republic. If Baise was the abode of Rome's vilest sons, near it were spots made touching by their connection with her greatest, and that in their most memorable days. In the little island of Nisida, the son of Lucullus possessed a villa. Brutus had retired to it after the assassination of Caesar; Cicero joined him there; and there the two conversed on the fortunes and fates of that country which both loved so well, and upon v/hich both were so soon to close their eyes for ever. What I/O RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE manner of discourse was held is probably known by those who have read the ** Imaginary Conversation between Cicero and his Brother," by Walter Savage Landor. It was in this villa that Brutus and Portia parted. But another and not distant spot had witnessed, not for a few days, but for many silent years, the silent sorrows of a man greater than either of these — the Roman to whom Rome had owed most, and to whom the world had owed that her greatest empire was Roman, and not Cartha- ginian — Scipio Africanus. Disowned by the country he had saved, he retired into voluntary exile at his villa on the seacoast, not many miles from Parthenope, where those who hated his greatness dared not molest him. The spot in which he passed those solitary years is known by the single word '* Patria,'' taken from the inscrip- tion placed on his tomb by his command — ** Ingrata patria, nee ossa quidem mea habes." Perhaps the inscrip- tion became all the nobler when it consisted of the single word '' Patria,** which expressed a surviving affection, and did not condescend to reproach. Pliny records that near that spot he had seen an olive tree, and a myrtle, both of them said to have been planted by the hand of Scipio Africanus two hundred and fifty years before. His daughter, the mother of the Gracchi, retired to a spot, once the residence of Marius, about ten miles to the south of her father's tomb. After the death of her husband, the King of Egypt sued her to share his throne, but in vain. Of those twelve children whom she had shown to the Campanian lady, all died in childhood except a girl and those two illustrious sons, Caius and Tiberius. It was to her that those sons owed their TRAVELS 171 Greek learning, their heroic characters, and those patriotic labours their devotion to which cost them their lives. She named the spots their blood had dyed *' consecrated places/* The Gracchi were no enemies to the noble order. They had warred but against their vices, and in defence of the ancient right of the Poor. If they had not warred in vain, slavery might never have superseded honest Roman labour, nor the vices engendered by slavery corrupted her domestic life, nor the Roman armies in her decay given place to the mercenaries that betrayed her. Seventeen centuries later, the widowed Vittoria Colonna must often have looked down from her castle cresting the heights of Ischia upon the ruins of Cornelia's house on the promontory of Misenum. One of these women had lost her great father and her noble sons; the other her husband ; yet neither was crushed beneath the blow. Henry Taylor wrote several poems at Naples. Of these the most important is the one entitled *'Lago Lugano." It recorded a day spent beside that lake, the preceding October, and with a rare union of philosophy and eloquence it embodied the reflections that day had bequeathed to him on a momentous theme, namely, *' Civil and Moral Liberty.'* There may be any amount of civil freedom where yet there exists no freedom of the heart, because it is ruled by pride or by worldliness. Such its theme. " From pride plebeian and from pride high-born, From pride of knowledge no less vain and weak, From overstrained activities that seek ' Ends worthiest of indifference or scorn; From pride of intellect that uplifts its horn In contumely above the wise and meek, 172 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERB Exulting in coarse cruelties of the pen ; From pride of drudging souls to Mammon sworn Where shall we flee and when ? " The stanza employed in this poem, in some respects the converse of the Spenserian stanza, was the invention of the poet. The poem was almost wholly written within one day, though Henry Taylor was generally a slow writer. During my rambles I too had written a poem, entitled " A Farewell to Naples/' Three-fourths of it celebrated the praise of the bay ; and the remaining fourth is a fare- well to the city. I subjoin the last. "A FAREWELL TO NAPLES. From her whom genius never yet inspired. Nor virtue raised, nor pulse heroic fired ; From her who, in the grand historic page, Maintains one barren blank from age to age ; From her, with insect life and insect buzz, Who, evermore unresting, nothing does ; \ From her who, with the future and the past, No commerce holds, no structure rears to last ; From streets where spies and jesters, side by side, Range the rank markets, and their gains divide ; Where Faith in Art, and Art in sense is lost, And toys and gewgaws form a nation's boast ; Where passion, from affection's bond cut loose, Revels in orgies of its own abuse ; And appetite, from passion's portals thrust. Creeps on its belly to its grave of dust; Where Vice her mask disdains, where Fraud is loud, And naught but Wisdom dumb and Justice cowed ; — Lastly, from her who, planted here unawed, 'Mid heaven-topped hills, and waters bright and broad, From these but nerves more swift to err hath gained, And the dread stamp of sanctities profaned, TRAVELS 173 And, girt not less with ruin, lives to show That worse than wasted weal is wasted woe, — ^ We part, forth issuing through her closing gate With unreverting faces, not ingrate. " We did not remain in Naples long after the weather had become reliable. Every day we heard stories that quaintly illustrated the ways of the people. Many of them were connected with the marvellous proficiency which its inhabitants had attained in the art of thieving. On the day of my arrival there I lost my pocket-hand- kerchief, though fully on my guard, within five minutes after leaving my hotel. On complaining, the answer I received was — '' Why did you not keep it in your hat? '* I once heard this warning given: ''Do you chance to have a hollow tooth stuffed with gold? If so, do not yawn in the street ! Some one will whip the gold out of it, and be off before you have time to close your mouth ! " The fault, however, was not always on one side. Such must be our inference if we are to give credence to the following story. In a hotel much frequented by the English, there abode a burly and hot-tempered man who never ceased from denouncing the two chief objects of his aversions, namely, the pickpockets and the Jesuits. Against the former he had a new story every day. He alone was secure against them. They were no match for him. He knew their ways ! One day he came to dinner somewhat late, but flushed and triumphant '' They would let him alone for the future ! " He told his tale. In the best street in Naples, the Toledo, and when it was still nearly broad 1 In substance Alice Taylor's line quoted in page 144. 174 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE daylight, an attempt had been made on him by a villain — who had evidently many confederates. He was passing through a crowd. It pressed upon him — always a bad sign. Suddenly he felt distinctly a hand pressing his waistcoat pocket: the next moment a man pushed past him and fled. He felt for his watch: it was gone! He pursued the robber, shouting to the crowd, and command- ing them to stop him. On the contrary, they plainly facilitated his escape. The villain rushed through a by- street to the left. He pursued him — next through a by-street to the right; there he closed upon him, and knocked him down with a single blow of his fist. *' The coward prayed me to spare his life; and I in turn demanded my watch back. The villain surrendered it to me. I pushed it down to the bottom of my pocket,, and dismissed the rogue with a parting kick ! " The moment he had crammed his dinner, he exclaimed,^ '' I must dress for the ball at the Accademia. My story will make some of those Neapolitan grandees a Httle ashamed of their Naples ! '' He ran upstairs and rushed to his toilet table. What was his amazement at finding there his watch ! At last there came to him a horrid recollection. Before going out, he had left his watch on his table to keep it safe from the pickpockets. He had to return to the sa/Ic d manger, and confess the latter half of the story. He ended with : '' I shall return the watch at once to its owner.'* *' Do not trouble yourself about that/' drily replied an Italian nobleman. " The watch is a gold watch, and its owner must be a gentleman. He will neither claim the watch, nor accept it back, for that would be to confess that he had run away, thinking that TRAVELS 175 his assailant was mad^ as all Englishmen are supposed to be by our ignorant common people here." We were not sorry to leave Naples. One gets tired of seeing ecstatic groups cheering mountebanks on the quays ; crowds surrounding a single actor whirling him- self about with mad gesticulations on the top of a tub ; dozens of boys galloping their crazy little carriages right at the luckless stranger; scores of strong men lying asleep in the sun with fleas on their faces. This is the undelightful side of Naples. Did such things exist when those most majestic of structures first stood side by side between the neighbouring desert and the sea? Three thousand years ago, did the temples of Pestum share their reign with Punchinello? In a few days more we were at rest ; for we were at Rome, and Rome is rest to those who understand it; and, to make our visit there perfect, we were at Rome during the Holy Week. But my recollections connected with Rome on this and other occasions would need many chapters. I may record them elsewhere, but not now. Here I need hardly add that our regrets when obliged later to leave Rome were of a very different sort from what they had been when leaving the Bay of Naples. Henry Taylor had very greatly enjoyed Rome, especially its music during the Holy Week, and its pictures, for of pictures he had acquired a great knowledge and a fine appreciation in Italy. He admired most the Florentine school, which most represents strength, action, and passion, as I admired most the Roman school. He en- joyed also very much his daily drives in the Campagna, of which I remember Edwin Lear, the painter, affirmed 176 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE that in its simple majesty it resembled, more than any other region that he knew, the noblest and most char-^ acteristic scenery of the Holy Land. I must tell one story more of little Freddy Elliot, though it seems to imply that, even before his sixth year had taken its departure, the more worldly motives of action had begun to assail him. When we first reached Italy, his attention had been often drawn to the grave- eyed Franciscan monks, whom he met walking along the road in their brown cloaks and wooden sandals. To his enquiries Alice Taylor replied that they were holy men called monks, who renounced the world and all thought of themselves, that they might devote themselves entirely to prayer, to the service of others, and the mortification of the body. There were also holy women, she said, who lived the same life, and were called nuns. He was delighted. There was nothing, he said, he would enjoy so much as living wholly for others, and keeping his body under. When he was a man he would become a monk. Alas, before we left Ital)^, his scheme had undergone a serious modification. One day he came to her and said : " Alice, I have made a little change in my plan of life. I have been thinking that it might be better still if, instead of becoming a monk, I were to marry a nun ! She would then have to be always practising prayer and mortification ; and as she would never think about herself, she would be always thinking about me^ and finding new ways of making me happy.*' We returned to England by Florence, where we passed several more delightful days with Lady Lucy Standish and her family. Next we visited Bologna, Venice, the TRAVELS 177 Tyrol, and Germany. We travelled at our ease, and were .able to spend a day or two at each place of importance. The weather was delightful, and Henry Taylor's health had improved far beyond what we had hoped when we started on our nine months* travels. All things had gone well with us, and we had cause for nothing but gratitude. Henry Taylor and I left Alice Taylor and Freddy at a German wateringplace, and returned to England in time for him to keep his appointment to the hour at the Colonial Office. I may be allowed to add a few words respecting the great poet, and the great man with whom I travelled. When poets were first given the title of the *' irritable race,'* the term must have been intended to apply, I think, rather to the Latin poets than to the Greek. At least, it is •difficult to suppose that one so large-hearted as Homer or -SO high-hearted as Sophocles, could have had about him anything so petty as habitual irritability when in health ; still less can we attribute it to the '' myriad-minded man '' — Shakespeare. In the England of our own day the poet most entirely free from it was probably Sir Henry Taylor. This could not have been otherwise, for his most marked char- -acteristic was " magnanimity. After an intimacy with him extending much over forty years, I never saw him once out of temper or once made anxious about trifles. He lived in a large world, built up by justice and truth, and in him there was no small world. In this he was unlike another ^reat man once described to me by an ardent admirer, yet one whose description ended — '' And yet I can tell you that inside that great man there sits a little man ! '' He had no small ambitions, and needed none as a stimulus. 12 178 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE Without it he could work hard for a friend, for any task of duty, for his country; but for personal success he cared little, and failure gave him little or no annoyance. Immediately after the failure of his first drama he devoted seven years to the composition of '' Philip Van Artevelde,'* and if that had failed also, it would not have cost him an. hour's serious distress. He was not only free from mor- bidness, but without a touch of sensitiveness. No criti- cism pained him, and no friend feared to speak to him with entire frankness. In his young days he was said to be a severe censor; but as life advanced, his judg- ments became more indulgent without becoming less just. He judged deeds as before; but not always those who did them. He was a man of extraordinary moral strength, though of a temperament far from strong. He had no fear of public opinion, and was always not only foremost to defend an absent friend when unjustly assailed — witness his poem designated *^ Greatness in the Shade," written when Sir Charles Elliot was the object of attack — but fearless in resisting all false judgments, especially when opposed to justice and to the public weal. In this respect he resembled his friend and mine, James Spedding, one of the few who did not side with the South during the American War. As a character such as I have described is sometimes more tempted than others to the vice of pride, it may be well to add that by no virtue was he more signally marked than by humility. Of that no one could have doubted who had ever heard him read morning or evening prayers, or seen him learn lessons in science from his son, when, at TRAVELS 179 the age of twelve years, the boy — already marked by extraordinary abilities — strove not to smile at his father's occasional mistakes. I should have wished to have writ- ten more at large of a character so rich in noble quaHties, but this is needless, as the true greatness of a character depends less upon the number of its great qualities than on the genuine greatness of those few qualities which suffice for true greatness. His life, like his character, was a great one — too inwardly and too simply great, and also too unconsciously great to allow of its greatness being appreciated except by the few. It was much enriched by his many friend- ships ; for what was said, I think, of Southey, might have been said of him, namely, that he had a ^' genius for friendship.'* His home was pre-eminently a happy home ; although in the death of his eldest son the same shadow had crept across it which darkened the home of Southey. Above all, that house was gladdened to the end by the brightness of that devoted wife, whom, when he married her, he introduced to his old friends as his '* wife and child." She suited him in all respects, delighting him with an entire sympathy, and ministering to him with equal success when he was in sickness and when in health. The sparkling wit, the bright intelligence, and the gen- erous affections, which from her youth had attracted so many to her, never diminished as the years went by; while by herself they were valued chiefly because they enabled her to cheer him more effectually in the more languid moods of advancing years. She kept his eye as bright in his eighty-seventh year as it had been on his 1/ l80 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE marriage-day. Well might that have been said of her which he said of Edward Villiers's wife, in an elegy alike pathetic and true: ** For one was with him, ready at all hours His griefs, his joys, his inmost thoughts to share. Who buoyantly his burthens helped to bear, And decked his altar daily with fresh flowers*" CHAPTER IX A SHORT TOUR IN SCOTLAND IN 1 845 Edinburgh — Melrose and Roslin — Glen Etive and its Irish Legends — Inversneyd — Wordsworth's " Highland Girl " — Loch Awe — Loch Katrine — Stirling. TN the November of 1845 I niade an expedition into -■- Scotland. As I left Miss Fenwick's house beside Windermere she put a small volume of Burns's poems into my hand, and said, **You know nothing about Burns's poetry: read that book in Burns's country, and tell me what you think of him when you return." I made my way to Glasgow. Its stone streets were cleaner and state- lier than most of the commercial cities in England, and the Clyde, down which I steamed as far as Bute, com- bines majesty and loveliness in a very remarkable de- gree. Next I went to Edinburgh, the most picturesque metropolis I know to the north of the Alps. Few cities boast an AcropoHs. Edinburgh boasts two — the Castle Hill, lacking nothing but a building worthy to crown it, and the Calton Hill, lacking nothing but the completion of its Parthenon and the removal of Nelson's monument, the size of which dwarfs many a better one not far off. The Salisbury Crags and Arthur's Seat, though I believe only eight hundred feet high, are far more mountainous in character, owing to the grandeur of their outlines and the solidity of their cliffs, than many a spongy mountain 1 82 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE that lifts its pig's back to the height of three or four thousand feet elsewhere. Few cities have such an historical character as Edin^ burgh. No one can pass by Holyrood Palace without recalling the day when *' To the Lords of Convention, 't was Claverhouse spoke : ' Ere the King's crown goes down there are crowns to be broke/ " and a hundred incidents recorded by the heroic man who strode down that street, humming his own ballad, to announce to the meeting of his printers and creditors that the wand of Prospero was broken, and that he stood before them a ruined man ; but that he would work on for the discharge of debts only nominally his own, as long as God continued his life. He redoubled his la- bours; and within a very few years one of the Abbeys of his native land received him to her rest. I was too short a time in Edinburgh to see much of its society ; but two of its celebrated men of letters were very kind to me — Lord Jeffrey and John Wilson. In the house of the former I had the good fortune to make acquaintance with a delightful person, afterwards well known as Lady Eastlake. Wilson I had long known as a poet, and as the ''Christopher North'* of ''Blackwood's Magazine, '* in his contributions to which he always wrote with the full " courage of his opinions '' about Words- worth till he taught the world to put aside the patron- izing as well as the contemptuous tone, and to recognise in him the chief poet of the age. I did not see Wilson in his own house in which his daughter then lay lamentably ill; but I met him in A SHORT TOUR IN SCOTLAND jgj Messrs. Blackwood's reading room and elsewhere, and ivas much struck by him. The lofty stature and massive frame seemed types of a nature high and strong. He told me that when a young man he had walked all round Ireland with a blackthorn stick in his hand and a knap- sack on his shoulder. The younger Mr. Blackwood took me one day to the University to hear him lecture. He was very eloquent. I was much pleased with the neighbourhood of Edin- burgh, and well remember how much struck I was by the happy effect of the white evening mists, which, sep- arating ridge from ridge in the landscape, changed large stretches of it from a hilly to what seemed a mountain- ous land. I was deeply touched both by Melrose and by Roslin Abbey, the former of which I saw by moon- hght, obedient to the command of ''The Last Minstrel — : not the last." Those ruins have spoken their penulti- mate word in the language of poetry. Possibly their ultimate word may be spoken in the language of religion, the older of the two powers. After a reluctant adieu to Edinburgh, I saw a consid- erable part of the Highlands, and though I lost much by the lateness of the season, I gained perhaps more by escaping the crowd of travellers. I had had more than enough of London crowds and hurry; and I went to the far north in search of space and time. I found both in the Scotch Highlands. Loch Katrine delighted me, perhaps all the more because I reached it just as the dusk of the evening was descending and mingling with the steely gleam of its mirror. I was pleased to find that the poor people spoke of 1 84 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERB Ellen Douglas and other characters of the '* Lady of the Lake " as if they had been as real as the scenes de- scribed. The Trosachs deserve all the praise they have received, nor can I ever hear them named without a fair vision rising up before me of rocks, and birch-trees with their silver stems, and the tangle of their golden broideries waving amid branches that would not let the autumn wholly go, — though the Highlands have many scenes that exceed it, some in grandeur and some in loveliness. I was not then able to visit Glencoe, but I have seen it in a recent delightful visit to the Scotch Highlands,, beginning with the glorious scenery of Inveraray and ending with the sacred island of lona — two spots so. closely connected, both with the later political destinies of Great Britain and her earlier Christian memories. Glencoe, even independently of its terrible associations, has a character so awful about it, as well as so sublime, that no one who has ever seen it can forget it. The same thing may well be said of Loch Etive, its winding waters and the crowding mountains that overshadow them. Loch Etive assisted me several years ago in writing a poem taken from an ancient Irish epic, said by high authorities, such as Eugene O'Curry, to have descended by oral transmission from times earlier than the Christian era. This fragment, one of Ireland's ''Three Sorrows of Song," is named *'The Sons of Usnach,"^ who, when exiled from Ireland, passed over to '' Alba,'' and effected large conquests, chiefly in the neighbourhood of Loch Etive, records of which are amply supplied in a work 1 Macmillan and Co. A SHORT TOUR IN SCOTLAND l8j published in 1879^ and attested largely by local tra- ditions and by the Irish names of many spots. Of all the Scotch lakes, few are so fine as Loch Etive. I was delighted also by Loch Awe, especially as seen from a point which commands, from a hill at the opposite ' side of the water, a view of Kilchurn Castle, asserted by Edmund Burke to be the finest view in the Highlands. \ Wordsworth, during his Scotch tour with his sister, was \ greatly struck by Kilchurn Castle, and addressed a solemn \ and imp.ressive poem to it. When still but a boy, I was asked by two lady friends (two of the party of ladies who had visited O'Connell at Derrinane) to read to them sonie^of Wordsworth's poems. The volume opened at his "Address to the Ruins of Kilchurn Castle,'' and I | began to read in a tone which I intended to be solemn : \ ** Skeleton of unfleshed Humanity ! '* One of the two ' ladies (she was certainly as thin as a skeleton) leaped up indignantly, and exclaimed, "Well, I am the tlminest woman in Ireland ; but I cannot approve of personal remarks!' She thought I was addressing her. I found, on arriving at the village late in the evening, a large hotel with lights and fires in all the rooms. It was with difficulty that I got a small one at the back of the house. They told me that the house belonged to Lord Breadalbane ; that they expected him that evening ; that, whenever he came, the whole of the house was pre- pared for him, and that when he took his departure he made them a present, but was never presented with a bill. I was unfortunate in the weather at Loch Lomond, but 1 " Loch Etive and the sons of Usnach," by R. Angus Smith (Macmillan). 1 86 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERB was fully compensated at one spot on it — Inversneyd. It is the glory of that lake. I tarried there, and read Wordsworth's poem, '^The Highland Girl/' at the foot of the waterfall, and close to the trees which, *^ like a veil just half withdrawn,'' enhanced the beauty it in part concealed. The Highland Girl was gracious to me, emerging out of the mist with no grace impaired, and not a month added to her '^ twice seven consenting years," the lovehest object in a scene all loveliness. She was still as free as ever from the '' embarrassed look of shy distress," though her endeavours to speak to the stranger in English were still as imperfect as when her poet gave us that tenderest of all metaphors : — ^' So have I, not unmoved in mind, \ Seen birds of tempest-loving kind Thus straining up against the wind.'' Many years later Wordsworth added to the girl two companions, the Italian ''Votaress" at Lugano, and the *' Helvetian Shepherdess," but of her alone he then said: — ** Time cannot thin thy flowing hair Nor take one ray of light from thee." The mill, alas ! was gone ; an inn had taken its place ; and the ''household lawn" had been changed into a garden. The Highland Girl had not lacked^Jier little local fame: and they told me that she had long^since been living beside another lake. I took up my knap- sack and struggled on for a whole day, pushing against a storm. I arrived to find that she had left the spot a few days before. The immediate neighbourhood of Inversneyd is so A SHORT TOUR IN SCOTLAND 1 8/ exquisite that, had I not known Wordsworth's severe jeracity, I should have supposed that he had placed the girl there as the only spot worthy of her. Coleridge would not have scrupled to do so. He would have pro- nounced the statement *' subjectively true.'* Higher up on Loch Lomond I remember seeing a lovely island on which stood a few yew trees, remnants of the ancient forests. There, too, remained the ruins of a solitary tower; and there dwelt for upwards of forty years a lonely man, the last descendant of the ancient house of Macfarlane, though no longer its heir. Can that have been Wordsworth^_ Brownie's Cell? The re- cluse had died nine years before the poet had looked upon the spot and asked in vain ''How disappeared he?'' All that is recorded of him is that he never spoke, and that he perseveringly pulled up all the larch trees planted from year to year on that island. In Ireland how many a chief, Gael or Norman, may have died in such a retreat ! How many may yet so die ! Of course I did not leave Scotland without visiting the Vale of Yarrow, the classic river of Scottish song, one probably as well sung as either the Ilyssus or the Cephy- sus. But I could only succeed in seeing St Mary's Loch by climbing a hill. Wordsworth visited the Yarrow a third time with Sir Walter Scott and wrote a third poem on it. It was sent in MS. by Dora Wordsworth to Mrs. Hemans, who read it to Sir William Rowan Hamilton and me in Dublin with much sweetness and pathos. In a very short time she too was " one of the departed," and found her place in that noble dirge breathed by Wordsworth over Scott, Coleridge and the other English poets who 1 88 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE had so swiftly followed each other '* from sunlight to the sunless land/* I passed on to Abbotsford. Every- thing there was touching, not the least so the bust of Shakespeare which must have been looked on so often with reverence and tenderness by the Shakespeare of prose. There too I saw the ponderous shoes in which Scott pushed his way through his plantations, and the knife with which he hacked at them. During the days of his dying, he repeated at times the old Latin hymns of the Catholic Church. I visited that great and good man's grave at Dryburgh Abbey. There he lies in one among the loveliest ruins which conse- crate still the land of Wallace and Bruce, and of those earlier Scotch kings who repose with the Norwegian kings in lona. I was not then able to visit that sacred island, to w^hose Irish monks two-thirds of Saxon Enc^- land, and more, as Montalembert affirms, owed its conver- sion to Christianity; but I passed a night and part of two days there last year. The best book I have seen on that island is the Duke of Argyll's. He has also done much to preserve its ruins — a real boon to his country. Among the most striking objects in Scotland I should place the city of Stirling and the prospect commanded by its castle which looks down upon the ** mazy Forth un- ravelled/' I visited there what had been one of Scotland's stateliest cathedrals. The interior was then divided into three churches, wholly separated, and in w^hich three ser- mons were often preached at the same time. A verger led me around the buildinc:. Standing before what had once been the high altar, I observed one surviving piece of ancient sculpture, apparently the emblematic Lamb» A SHORT TOUR IN SCOTLAND 1 89 "The Lamb?" I said, pointing to it. '* Na, na," replied the verger; ** that 's na a Lamb! that's just the wolf, the arms of the gude city of StirHng ! '* The Cathedral of Glasgow, however, when I saw it in 1845, was in as bad a condition as that of Stirling; and it has since then been splendidly restored : perhaps that of Stirling may be restored by this time, or is destined to be so. The Highlands of Scotland, if less " well finished,'" seemed to me to possess two advantages over those of England; their colouring is richer and the region is vaster. They comprise two-thirds of the kingdom ; and the imagination if not the eye, gains by one's conscious- ness that one may travel for many days without reaching their limit. I was also greatly pleased by the southern Lowlands of Scotland, by its far-famed " Border-land,** and by its rivers with their steep and wooded banks. I soon discovered also that we owe but to a false tradition the notion so common that the Highland race — that is, the descendants of the early Irish race in Scotland — have an exclusive possession of imagination, the Lowland having on the other hand monopolized all its prudence, industry and thrift The Lowlanders too cherish their legends, reverence antiquity, enjoy song, and fully appreciate the pathos of human life. An Edinburgh Scotsman, evidently belon^rine to the mercantile class, was highly offended because I had chanced to name a certain duke of un- bounded wealth as '' one of Scotland's great men." He answered, ''He is not one of Scotland's great men, for he is not a real chief" • But I soon discovered that, both in the Lov/lands and IQO RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERB the Highlands, the real chief was not dependent either on wealth or on heraldry. That real chief was the chief of Scotland's peasant bards — Burns. On the plains, on the hillsides, and on the lakes they all sang his songs. I do not know that any other country now possesses a national poet in as full a sense as Scotland possesses one in Burns. She honours him, and therefore deserves to have had him. I stood by his grave before leaving Scotland^ and remembered Wordsworth's lines to him : " He shewed my youth How verse may build a princely throne On simple Truth. ^' I was his convert, and owed him a loyalty. The book had been my guide book in Scotland. It did not guide me to the best hotels, or to the best views ; but it p-uided me to the heart of a *' never-vanquished nation " and him who sat there enthroned. I read his book on mountain and moor, by the fruitful slope and the torrent's fall, by the woodland red with the embers of the dying year, and by the cottage hearth. It had interpreted for me every- thing that I came across, whether of character or of manners, whether of mirthful or of sad. I saw all things with Burns's eyes: and Scotland became in turn the inter- preter of Burns. During my farewell visit to Edinburgh I wrote a poem in token of gratitude to Burns. Parts of that theme were a painful record. But Burns's '' High- land Mary '' stretched forth to me a fresh young hand, still white though it had done a day's work in this lower world. The poem, intended to be a tribute to one alone. A SHORT TOUR IN SCOTLAND IQI turned out to be addressed to three — to the one great Lowland bard, to his Highland love, and to Scotland, doubtless well loved by both. Burns's *' Highland Mary " was published by '' Christopher North '' in *' Blackwood's Magazine/' I believe in 1846. CHAPTER X. 1844-45. It was my Father's Illness that stimulated him to write '* Mary Tudor " -— Our Expedition in 1845 to Paris, and next to Cumberland — His Love for Windermere — Our Visit to Miss Fenwick there — Derwentwater — Rydal and Ulleswater — Southey's house — Sara Coleridge — Her Genius and noble Character.^ Our Correspondence on Wordsworth — My Reply to her Letter, and to her Remarks on the Comparative^MfiLrits of Milton and Dante. ARLY in the year 1844 my father had been attacked E by a painful and dangerous malady. It was to him a summons to action. He had often affirmed that in the great gallery of royal portraits bequeathed to England by her dramatic poets, there was one serious omission, — that of Queen Mary Tudor and that if none worthier undertook the theme he would himself do so. The character of that sovereign he aid frequently, had been misconceived, and it had also been designedly mis- represented even in her lifetime, as Dr. Maitland had abundantly proved, by political enemies bent on her destruction. These men took no account of all that was highest in her character while they exaggerated all that was worst in it, till a false tradition had taken possession of the nation's mind. What we lacked was an impartial representation of her. When his life became precarious he considered that to leave a just representation of her behind was on his part a debt of honour. He began his 1844-45 193 task on the lOth of April, 1844, ^nd finished it on the 14th of September, 1844, that task consisting of two dramas, completed within five months of suffering and anxiety, and published without the author's final correc- tions. On its completion he went to London and placed himself in the hands of Sir Benjamin Brodie. The imme- diate prospect of a series of painful operations did not daunt him. He was a man of strong courage ; and the hour before the arrival of his surgeon w^as spent in reading aloud an account of a picture gallery filled with paintings by old masters, accompanied with occasional remarks of his own respecting the mode in which the different subjects were probably treated by their respective painters. In the summer of 1845 he had to submit himself again •to the same severe discipline. When released, the first use to which he put his renewed strength was a visit to Paris, with my mother and me. There he was never tired of inspecting the Louvre and the many magnificent churches. On our return to London my parents became acquainted with my dear and honoured friend, Mrs. Henry Nelson Coleridge, daughter of a poet for whom he had a great admiration. That year also they became friends with one who had long wished to know them, Miss Fenwick. From London we had gone to the lake-land of the north, passing a week or ten days at Halsteads with Mrs. Marshall, then a widow. After we had visited once more all our favourite spots on UUeswater, we crossed the Pass of Kirkstone and descended into the valley of Windermere. The Pass was grander still than it is now, for the mountain road had 13 194 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE then no walls and the mountains no fences: there was indeed *' no hint of man," no " Wages of folly, baits of crime, Of Life's uneasy game the stake, Playthings that keep the eyes awake Of drowsy, dotard Time." And Wordsworth had then a full right to say that ''he ]oved a country in which Almighty God kept a good deal of the land in his own hands." We passed about a week with Miss Fenwick, who was then in health for -her unusually good, and we enjoyed our visit as much as she enjoyed the society of her new friends. Brief as was the acquaintance, the friendship into which it turned at once seemed as if it were an old one ; for sometimes people fall into friendship at first sight, as others fall in ioye. My father spent there, I am convinced, the happiest ^veek of his later life. His childhood was with him again; for his mother, it will be remembered, had sent her child at ten years old to a tutor at Ambleside. He seemed to have forgotten nothing in that neighbourhood. He had been accustomed to climb its precipices and track the course of its streams, and he never forgot anything '.beautiful there that he had once seen. Walking with me beside the Rothay near the spot where it joins the I>rathay, he pointed with a grave delight to the rock from which he had first cast his line into the water forty-eight years previously, when a boy of eleven years old. He Tused to speak with such minute detail of Windermere 'in my boyhood that when I first visited it I seemed but ''to return to something long loved. It was his favourite /-among the English lakes. Derwentwater might be more IS44-45 195 exquisite in details, and UUeswater grander, because closer to the mountains, but he had a fuller satisfaction in the placid amplitude of Windermere, and the grace of those winding bays, with curves as sinuous as those of a sea- shell. His favourite points of view had always been those from the hill of Elleray and those from the grassy slopes above Low Wood Hotel, with the Langdale Pikes leaning forth their bulls' heads from the distance towards the lake. We have a picture of him as a boy from a spot close to JLow Wood Hotel. It may have been from that spot that, as a boy, he swam across the lake where it is three miles across. Just before reaching the opposite shore he was seized with a cramp and was with difficulty saved. On leaving Miss Fenwick I revisited Derwentwater where my father had in 1833 made the acquaintance of Southey, whom he had long admired as a poet and as a man. The lake must have interested him profoundly, not only from its beauty but from its associations with the heroic Lord Derwentwater and his not less heroic wife, of whose perilous night escape wath her infant child, Walna Crag remains the memorial. To me that lake has another and very special interest in connection with many remembered friends and especially with Sara Coleridge, who was brought up in the house of her uncle Southey and who had spoken to me often of the scenes among which she had wandered as a child. She wrote of it thus when she w^as a child no more : '' Keswick and Rydal and Grasmere are my Eden — watered with my tears as they were — but how truly says the poet : ' Dew-drops are the gems of Morning But the tears of mournful Eve.' " jg6 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE I cannot better describe Sara Coleridge than by repub- lishing here the substance of a letter which I wrote to her daughter, when, in 1873, she published that delightful book *' The Memoir and Letters of Sara Coleridge." ^ " In their memories she will ever possess a place apart from all others. With all her high literary powers she was utterly unlike the mass of those who are called literary persons. Few have possessed such learning and when one calls to mind the arduous character of those studies, which seemed but a refresh- ment to her clear intellect, like a walk in mountain air, it seems a marvel how a woman's faculties could have grappled with those Greek philosophers and Greek Fathers, just as no doubt it seemed a marvel when her father at the age of fourteen ' woke the echoes' of that famous old cloister with declamations from Plato and Plotinus. But in the daughter, as in the father, the real marvel was neither in the accumulated knowledsre nor in the j; literary power. It was the spiritual mind. I |i * The rapt-one of the God-like forehead, { The Heaven-eyed creature,' I ' was Wordsworth's description of Coleridge, the most spiritual perhaps of English poets — certainly of her modern poets. Of her some one had said : ^ Her father had looked down into her eyes, and left in them the light of his own.' ** Her great characteristic was the radiant spirituality of her intellectual and imaginative being. This it was that looked forth from her countenance. When Henry Taylor saw Sara Coleridge first as she entered Southey's study at Keswick, she seemed to him, as he told me, a form of compacted light, not of flesh and blood, so radiant was her hair, so slender her form, so buoyant her step and heaven-like her eyes. 1 " Memoir and Letters of Sara Coleridge." Edited by her daughter (Henry King & Co.) 1544-45 197 " Great and varied as were your mother's talents, it was not from them that she derived what was special to her. It was from the degree in which she had inherited the feminine portion of genius. She had a keener appreciation of what was highest and most original in thought than of subjects nearer the range of ordinary intellects. She moved with the lightest step when she ranged over the highest ground. Her ^feet were beautiful •on the mountains ' of ideal thought. They were her native- land ; for her they were not barren ; ^ honey came up from the stony rock.' In this respect I should suppose that she must have differed from almost all women w^hom we associate with literature. I remember hearing her say that she hardly con- sidered herself to be a woman of letters. She felt herself more at ease when musing on the mysteries of the soul, or discussing the most arduous speculations of philosophy and theology, than when dealing with the humbler themes of literature. '^ As might have been expected, the department of literature Avhich interested her most was that of poetry — that is poetry of the loftiest and most spiritual order, for to much of what is now popular she would have refused the name. How well I remem- ber our discussions about Wordsworth ! She was jealous of my admiration for his poems because it extended to too many of them ! No one could be a true Wordsworthian, she maintained, who admired so much as I did some of his later ^ poems of ^'accomplishment,"' such as 'The Triad.' It implied a -disparagement of his earlier poems, such as ' Resolution and Independence,' in which alone, she said, the Wordsworthian inspiration uttered itself. I suspect, however, that she must have taken a yet more vivid delight in some of her father's poems. Besides their music and their spirituality, they possess another quality in which they stand almost without a rival, their subtle sweetness. I remember Leigh Hunt once remarking to me on this characteristic of them, and observing that, in this respect, they were unapproached. He was right. It is like dis- 198 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE tant music when the tone comes to us pure and without anjr coarser sound of wood or wire ; or like the odour on the air when we smell the flower without detecting in it that of the stalk or of the earth. To this characteristic of her father's genius a certain quality of her own bore a resemblance ; and one is reminded of it by the fairy-like music of some of the songs in her ^ Phantasmion.' " There is a certain gentleness and modesty which belong to real genius, and which are in striking contrast with the self-con- fidence so often found in persons possessed of vigorous talents,, but to whom literature is but a rough sport. It was these quali- ties that gave to her manners their charm of feminine grace, self-possession, and sweetness. She was one of those whose thoughts are growing while they are in the act of speaking, and who never speak to surprise. Her intellectual fervour was not that which runs over in excitement ; a quietude belonged to it^ and it was ever modulated by a womanly instinct of reserve and dignity. She never thought for effect, as many do. She never found it difficult to conceive how others should differ from her in their conclusions. She was more a woman than those who had not a tenth part of her intellectual energy. The serious- ness and softness of her nature raised her far above vanity, its coldness and its contortions. Her mind could move at once and be at rest. '^ I fear the type of character and intellect alike to which your mother belonged must grow rarer in these days of ' fast ' thinking. Talent rushes to the market, the theatre, or the arena, and genius itself grows vulgarised for want of that * hermit heart ' which ought to belong to it whether it be genius of the masculine and creative order, or of the feminine and susceptive. There will always, however, be those whose discernment can trace in your mother's correspondence, and in her works, the impress of what was once so fair ; yet, alas, how little will be known of her even by such persons ! Something they will guess of her mind ; but 1844-45 199= it is only a more fortunate few who will appreciate her yet higher- gifts, those that belong to the moral being. Yet if these have a.- loss which is theirs only, they have also remembrances which none can share with them. They remember the wide sympathies- and the high aspirations, the courageous love of knowledge, and the devout submission to Revealed Truth ; the domestic affections so tender, so dutiful, and so self-sacrificing ; the friendships so- faithful and so unexacting. For her, great things and little lived . on together, through the fidelity of a heart that seemed never to forget. I seldom walk beside the Greta or the Derwent without hearing her describe the flowers she had gathered on their mar- gin in her early girlhood. For her tliey seemed to preserve their fragrance and their freshness amid the din and the smoke of the great metropolis.'* A little before we left Gate House, Miss Fenwick's resi- dence, I wrote thus to Sara Coleridge : " A thousand thanks to you, my dear friend, for that lock of" your father's hair. I could hardly have valued more a tress fronx a saint's head, than I value one which may once have touched, that * God-like forehead ' seen so often in my youthful fancies,, but never, alas, in the light of day. I shall never again feel that, veneration for any other man which my sister and I used to feeL for your father, when we read him together, and thought, on laying down the book, that we could gather amaranths from, every meadow. I am not now quite so much a believer ia heroes as once ere a certain * Idoloclastes Satyrane ' taught me to shun idols, or later, ere that wicked and unfeeling thing, Ex- perience, had bullied me into believing that every man has his. infirmities. This new philosophy does not yet, however, wholly tyrannise over my old habits. I threw off Byron early, as a. vicious young horse throws off a bad rider, and I have outgrowa. Shelley, though not at all my admiration for his wonderful genius ; but there remains one unsubverted throne occupied by an aged. 200 ^" RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE man \vith dreamy eyes, and lips once brightened by Parnassian springs, and still breathing Elysian airs. I believe his name is S. T. C. I have been lately reading a letter from my great scien- tific friend, Sir William Rowan Hamilton, Astronomer Royal of Ireland, of whom Wordsworth told me that he was the only man of genius to whom he would apply the title of ^wonderful * except vour father. Hamilton used to tell me that the shallow views of almost all the scientific men whom he met at the British Associa- tion made him melancholy ; and that nearly the only Englishman of our time whom he regarded as a philosopher was Coleridge. **0n Wednesday last I accompanied my father and mother to Keswick. We arrived after dark at the Royal Oak ; but, led by *Hhe spirit in my feet," I groped my way to the spot where the boats are moored. The lake stretched before me, not with a silver gleam, but a steely gleam, so that the shadow of the moun- tains could hardly make it darker. After ten o'clock I went out again ; but moon there was none, and I looked in vain for the mountain ridge at the opposite side of the lake, whose fresh and gladdening brightness had exhilarated me the last night I spent here, several years ago, and made me fancy that the whole hill- side must be one bed of primroses. I next went in search of the house of your Uncle Southey, that true poet whose poetry never preached, though before its face all the vices and all the furies fled, while all the human affections flowered, and changed into virtues without knowing it ! In earlier days that spot had a great interest for me on his account only ; on that night for your sake also. I came to the bridge on the Greta, and only dis- covered that it was a bridge from the light of the water w^hich dashed itself obliquely in a white line under and against the arch. I felt sure that his house must be near, and heard next morning on enquiry that it was, though the night had hidden it. '^ The next morning we went out boating. First we landed on Derwent Island, that surviving fragment of Eden, where a cousin of mine, the wife of Henry Marshall, now reigns as queen. We 1844-45 201 •passed next by St. Herbert's Island, and rejoiced to learn that the dwellers in that region still remember how dearly St. Herbert and St. Cuthbert loved each other; how the anchoret of Der- went bade the bishop at Holy Island to pray that they might die on the self-same day, and how that prayer was granted, the friends expiring at the same hour, St. Herbert with the whispers of Greta and Derwent in his ears, St. Cuthbert with the sea-dirge that murmurs round Lindisfarne. We passed the dusky vale of Borrodale, landed at Lodore, and tracked the waterfall far up its rocky bed. Later in the day I returned alone to the little bridge near Southey's dwelling, turned up a narrow walk to the right, and soon found myself opposite the small square house which had been so long the abode of so much genius, so much learn- ing, so much industry, so much unpretending piety, and so much happiness. You at least will remember ^The Poet's Pilgrim- age.' It does not rank as high as Southey's greatest poems, such as Thalaba, Kehama, and Roderick, or as the finest of his short pieces, such as the ^Funeral Song on the death of the Princess Charlotte,' and the ' Ode ' written ' during the negotia- tions for peace with Buonaparte in 1S15,' but we owe to that poem the touching description of the poet's house ; and as I stood beside that honoured door a vivid picture rose up before my eyes. I seemed to have shared Henry Taylor's privilege, ■and looked in upon that beautiful household when its circle was yet unbroken, and its brightness undimmed. "' My gentle Kate, and my sweet Isabel, My dark-eyed Bertha, timid as a dove,' and he, the ' only and the studious boy,' seemed again reunited, •as I trust that they and another, though not named in that poem, will one day be united, a family in Heaven. I remembered your mother telling me what a beautiful sight it was to watch her daughter and her cousins, then not quite litde girls, from an upper window, as they played in a field behind the house. I 202 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE found the field at last ; but there were no fair and happy girls in it. I passed into the garden ; and found there but a single flower, a rose-bud, which I brought home with me. The little kitchen garden was sad and forlorn, and the gate in the corner would not open ; and I had to retrace my way along the weedy walks. I had intended to have entered the house, but did not do so ; it seemed like intruding. Southey's library ought to have remained at Keswick, together with his house, preserved as his monument.*' A short time before* while at Paris, I received a most remarkable letter from Sara Coleridge, one that cannot but interest all who appreciate the higher criticism, and especially all admirers of Wordsworth. They will find it in the *^ Memoir and Letters of Sara Coleridge.'' Vol. II. (Henry King and Co. 1873.) My answer to it may inter- est some readers. We agreed entirely in our admiration of that great poet; but differed much in our comparative estimate of his earlier and later works. Paris, September 28th, 1845. I have been reading again your *^ Scale of Wordsworth's poetry.'* I shall profit by it much, though we shall not always agree on the subject. I read as far as I could with your eyes, and hope I have thus improved the clear-sightedness of my own. In the volume which you allowed me to take to this loud and vainglorious city, I had already marked, but only in ^^pencil- touches easily effaced'' (I quote a line of John Auster's), in the table of contents, the poems which had hitherto been my favourites, and also the few for which I have no liking, the latter by a different mark. We agreed much more often than we dif- fered. To this, however, there are exceptions. You have given two marks of approbation to **The Brothers." I am ashamed to say that I had not given that poem one. I see no fault in it. / 1844-45 203 And the omission was solely some strange lack of appreciation. \ I have often, though such a strong Wordsworth ian, thus been surprised at the amount of beauty which I have eventually found in poetry of his which had yet remained long undetected by me. The late Lord Chancellor Cranworth used to laugh at me for my enthusiasm about Wordsworth, ^* though," he once added, '^ I must admit that he wrote two very good sonnets. One of them begins, * Pure element of waters ; ' and the other, ' Hail, Twi- light, sovereign of one peaceful hour.' " ^' He never wrote any such sonnets!" I replied; ^'1 have read all his sonnets twenty times over, and know a large proportion of them by heart ; I am certain that no sonnet of his contains those lines." He took down the volume, and there they were ! Again and again I had read them ; but some mysterious veil had always hidden wholly their beauty. It may prove thus with me again. Those sonnets are beautiful. However, I am not going to assume that in all cases where we differ I am to end by adopting your opinion, least of all where mine is the positive opinion and yours only the negative one. For instance, how could you have given one mark alone to ^^ The Happy Warrior ? " Again, vou can spare two only to the most | 7najestic "^o^xviVCi the language — "Laodamia"; while " The old j Cumberland Beggar" has extorted three from your liberahty. \ You will reply that the latter is a true Wordsworthian poem. I ( admit that. His early poems have doubtless most of what you \ call his ^ idiosyncrasy ' ; but then, some of his later poems have 1 enough of it, and are richer in other high qualities than any, \ except quite the first class of his early poems. Remember that the decline in the great Roman school in painting was chiefly caused by such a devotion to Raffael's idiosyncrasy that the invariable question became not whether a new picture was good, but whether it was like Raffael. My admiration of Wordsworth is composed of two different elements, namely, my admiration of what is peculiar to his genius, and my admiration of what he has ^,g^i^^yJ^giWB»*0«*^ »*'**'' ■ 204 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERB in common with other first-class poets ; I must therefore adjust the balance between these two admirations ; and therefore I cannot agree with those who admire even the inferior poems of his earlier and most characteristic manner more than the best poems written in his later style, such as his magnificent ^'Stanzas on the Power of Sound," or his exquisite '* Triad/' On the contrary, I prefer several poems which belong to the better, but not to the best, poems of his second manner, such as *^The Armenian Lady's Love," "A Flower Garden at Coleor- ton," ^^The Poet and the Caged Turtle-Dove," '' Ode to Lycoris," to many poems of his earlier style, though not to the best among them. The earlier, it will be said, are always strong. True, but they are often greatly inferior in grace, sweetness, and refine- ment, both of thought and expression. Without what is abso- lutely peculiar to his genius, and to it alone, Wordsworth would not have been a very great, that is, an original poet ; but if this, his special merit, had been his only merit, he would have lacked several of those perfections w^hich, in their aggregate alone, make up a first-class poet, as well as an original poet. Some will say that this amounts to a concession that you are a more thorough Wordsworthian than I am. In one sense it does; you are a greater admirer of the special Wordsworthian genius — I of Wordsworth's poetry taken as a whole. You could spare a large proportion of it. 1 could spare at most one volume out of his six. \ Why do you give ^^ Michael " but one mark of approval? ) Why have you nothing to say for " Yarrow Revisited," and the \ exquisite sonnets in the volume which bears that name — sonnets I w^hich have a mellowness made up of wisdom, love, and rest \ about them that amply atones for any slight diminution of strength j with w^hich some few may be charged, when compared with his I ^' Sonnets Dedicated to Liberty," which constitute a single great i poem in themselves, and his noblest save one. It is hard to say ^- which of the three poems named after the Yarrow is the most 1844-45 205 beautiful ; and to me it seems that his ^' Vernal Ode/' his ode beginning '' Who rises on the banks of Seine '' (a palinode like your father's '^ France"), the ^'Stanzas on the Power of Sound," and his " Dion," are quite equal in depth of thought and moral elevation to anything except the '^ Great Ode," which last, doubt- less, he regarded as the high altar of his cathedral of song, and to which he always assigned the highest place in all his editions. To this letter on Wordsworth I may be permitted to add another in reply to one from Sara Coleridge, and discussing with her the comparative merits of Milton and Dante. ^ " It seems to me strange that you should prefer Milton to Dante, and that on the ground that he possesses more of sweetness and pathos. Only turn to the passages in the ' Paradiso,' beginning in Canto m., lines 93 and 104; Canto vi., line 14; Canto xvii., line 56 ; Canto xxv., line i ; Canto xii., line 31 ; Canto xii., line 3; Canto XIV.; Canto xxii., line 41. The sweetness of Dante^s genius, in spite of its severity, is illustrated in countless ways, as, for instance, by his frequent and exquisite allusions to birds and to children. Among these he is ever at home, and they would no more have fled from him than from St. Francis. What can unite more of tenderness and pathos with a noble severity than. the passage in which Beatrice reproaches Dante because he had' loved her less faithfully when ennobled by death than while still begirt with the imperfections of earth ? His poetry, I grant, has not as much majesty as Milton's, but there belongs to it, on the other hand, a far more pervading sense of the infinite, and also — a converse merit — far more of the beautiful in detail. He is also much more consistently philosophical. Dante could never' have built up for himself such an utterly false and incoherent an ideal as Milton's ' Satan.' No one can admire what is so splen- 1 (1896.) The most interesting works on Dante with which I am acquainted are those by Dean Church and by Dr. Hettinger, translated. by Father Sebastian Bowden of the Oratory. 206 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE didly great as Milton's higher poetry than I admire it : but that is the very reason that I find it difficult to forgive him for not doing more justice to such greatness. Without going so far as Dr. Johnson, who affirmed that Satan is the hero of * Paradise Lost/ we cannot deny that Milton invested him with a high poetic interest, and that he did so by (notwithstanding passages which seem disclaimers of this), representing him, even after his revolt, as still remaining ^ not less than Archangel fallen,' heroic, at least in comparison with those who shared his fall, but dared not further share his fortunes. Compared with them, he alone retains magnanimity. Surely such a conception was an absolute misconception, whether measured by a philosophical or by a poetical standard, not to speak of one higher than these. He lived in an age indulgent to revolt, but I will not say that this had anything to do with the choice of his subject or with his treatment of it. It may be referred to causes solely within the limit of letters. His studies had been chiefly classical and Bibli- cal ; and by a singular error of art he resolved to treat a spiritual subject after the model of a classical epic, though his first inten- tion had been to make it a tragedy, beginning with Satan's address to the sun. His second plan was one which Dante could never have adopted. A classical epic might have been written by a Greek on the subject of the Giant War ; for the giants and the Olympian divinities were alike finite powers. It was far otherwise with the subject chosen by Milton; and ought not the treatment of it to have been equally different? A rebel against earthly potentates may yet possess many high quahties. A rebel against infinite Goodness and Sanctity must be the enemy of all that is high and pure — all that is worthy of reverence and love. He cannot be represented as retaining any one high quality v/ith- out a proportionate degradation of the being against whom he rebels. I remember that Archbishop W^hateley once remarked to me on the dulness of those who did not know that Milton had become an Arian, until the publication of his ' Latin Treatise/ I 844-45 207 avowedly such ; and he asserted that ' Paradise Lost ' was une- quivocally Arian no less, referring especially to one particular passage. That passage could never have been written when he wrote his beautiful early poems, which in their spirit leaned far more to the Catholic than to the Puritan side ; especially if we take note of ^The Pilot of the Galilean Lake,' who bore the sacred keys and the word ' hasmony ' as interpreted by your father, in a sacramental and mystical sense. Remember, too, the sonnet to a ' Virgin wise and pure,' and the exquisite ' Praise of Chastity ' in 'Comus,' which is written wholly in the spirit of the medieval ascetics and not of the later moraHsts. At that time Milton would have shown something of that sacred reserve which Dante never dis- carded when dealing with holy things ; he would never have made the Almighty discuss predestination, like a school-divine, or made spiritual angels hurl material mountains on their foes — spiritual not less. Yet Dante was himself a great master of the scholastic philosophy — a man deeply read in Scotus, Aquinas, and Buen- aventura. He knew well what Platonism had done for Chris- tianity, and yet with what dangers it had threatened Christianity when used by those who did not know that there was a yet higher truth to which Platonism owed allegiance. I cannot doubt that Dante would have immeasurably preferred transcendentalism like that of your father to Locke's philosophy or that of his more materialistic successors. It seems to me not a little hkely that in his musings the great poet-prophet of Italy may have seen that later birth from a German soil — the transcendentalism of recent times. I allude to certain philosophers, not of the materiahstic but of the ^ subjective ' school, who at once recognise and dis- parage several great revealed truths, affirming that though they are to be held in honour because they are derived from ' pure reason ' and represent great ideas, yet it does not follow that that ideal truth corresponds with any external and objective truth. Such a philosophy sees whatever it sees upside down. The Christian creed confesses that God made man in his image. If 208 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERB he had not done this, obviously man could never have known God., A revelation would have been impossible. That subjective phil- osophy, which separates ideas from external realities, replies with. its counter creed, ' No, it is the human Mind which creates to itself a God in its own image ! ' Theism itself it brands as an anthropomorphic religion. May English transcendentalism long resist what is said to have so deeply infected that of Germany ! " Against this error Dante protests in many places — amongst others in the Paradiso, Canto iii. There he represents himself as- beguiled by a singular form of delusion. A glorious vision is pre- sented to him. He is tempted to turn away from it, and why?^ That temptation comes from the assumption that the vision is not a reality but a reflection — a reflection from something behind, himself. Later, when corrected by Beatrice, the type of Catholic theology, he speaks of this form of error as : *' 'Delusion opposite to that which raised Between the man and fountain amorous flame.' This form of error comes from a diseased individualism. The. Church, which is historical and universal, seems to me our protec- tion against it. ^' Dante's most special merits often hide a greatness higher- still. The vividness of his imagery makes many of his readers — nay, of his loudest admirers — insensible comparatively to a nobler characteristic of his poetry, namely, its spirituality, which is quite as remarkable as its strength; and his mastery over details blinds them to his sense of the Infinite. Almost all the long poems of the world, except Llomer's, fall off" towards the end. On the contrary, it is at the close of Dante's 'Paradiso' that his: unrivalled sense of the infinite asserts itself most strondv. The poet has advanced through Heaven from sphere to sphere of' glory. At the end of the poem a glimpse of the supreme of wonders is vouchsafed to him. But it is only for a single mo- ment. That vision is the ineffable mystery of the Trinity in: I 844-45 209 Unity and the Incarnation — the Beatific Vision upon which the ^yes of the blessed are fixed in everlasting trance. It is only for >a moment that a mortal, clad in man's flesh, can endure it. God, brought infinitely near, remains not less infinitely remote ; the intellect sinks in stupor, for it is finite. But still the will rushes forward toward the vision ; still love holds its own ! This is indeed to grapple in song with the infinite. I quote again irom Gary's translation : " * Here vigour failed the tow'ring phantasy ; But yet the will rolled onward like a wheel In even motion, by the love impell'd, That moves the sun in heaven and all the stars.' '^ All the great faculties and quahties needful to inspire the highest poetry are found in Dante — originality, invention, imag- ination, beauty, passion, suggestiveness, conciseness, thought, pathos, self-possession. The last of these is, as Shelley affirmed, possessed by Dante in such a marvellous degree that when he •compared, in connection with that characteristic, Dante's poetry with his own, it made him despair. The concentration of all those qualities upon one great poem, and that a poem devoted to the theme most v>^orthy of song, made Kenelm Digby affirm that, though Shakespeare was the greatest of all poets, yet Dante had .given to the world the greatest of all poems. I cannot but con- cur with that judgment. I do not think that with it the '^Paradise Lost' can compare." H CHAPTER XI MY father's death IN 1 846. MY MOTHER'S IN 1 856 My Father's Death, preceded by but a Week's Illness — It took place in 1846 — He had never had any Fear of Death; and when it came he met it without Alarm, and with a most humble Confession of his entire Belief in the Christian Religion, a Belief strongly expressed in his Poetry — The Year after his Death, I published his Two Dramas on *' Mary Tudor " — Total Neglect of them during Twenty-eight Years — After that Time a growing Recognition of their Merits — The Death of my Mother, nearly Ten Years after that of my Father. THE year 1846 was a year of deep calamity to me and mine. In it my father died. I had passed the spring at Curragh Chase, and his health had seemed to be good. In June I went to London. Late in July I received a letter informing me that he had been taken suddenly ill, and that his life was in great danger. I reached home a few hours before his death. His strength was rapidly failing. That morning he had fre- quently asked whether I had arrived. As I entered the room he saw me, and exclaimed : '^ I am so happy ! " All his family were around him except his two younger sons, then on professional duty. He knew that he was dying, but he uttered no com.plaint. At the end there was no struggle. When the last breath had been drawn, his wife rose, and slowly and silently closed his eyes — the last sad office with which she had ministered to him during forty years, and more, of a happy married life. MY father's death 211 He passed way at about two P. M. of the 28th of July, 1846, in the fifty-eighth year of his age. The reverence and affection with which he was regarded by the poor was attested by the crowds in which they followed him to his grave. I may here quote a few sentences from a letter written by a friend, at our house an ever-welcome guest, one remarkable alike for learning, piety, and high principle — the Reverend Dr. John Jebb. *^I had ample opportunities of knowing him intimately, and it is my conviction that every sentiment of his heart was based upon the purest principles of a sound, deeply seated, and influential religion. How unostentatious was his religious faith ! This to me was one of the great charms of his char- acter. Intellectually, no one of common feeling and informa- tion but must have admired him ; I am thankful that so many opportunities were given me of knowing how entirely subserv- ient he made his highly gifted intellect to the best purposes of morality and Christianity ; and this pious inclination strength- ened ever with his years. His surely was a happy life, in the best sense of the word. I rejoice also to know that he had at the last so fully the comforts of religion administered to bim; and above all that he had that within, the answer of a good conscience towards God.'* I often regretted that one so eminently patriotic as my father was in the highest sense of that often-abused word (for to the real interests, and to the honour both of England and Ireland he was ever devoted) had not had an: opportunity of serving his country in Parliament. For a parliamentary career he had special qualifications, though whether the gift of eloquence was among them I 212 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERB do not know. His was a singularly well-balanced mind; he no more thought than spoke after a rhetorical fashion; and his absolute conscientiousness of intellect would have caused the strife of parties to present to him many painful dilemmas. He would probably if in Parliament, have admitted with Burke that parties were there inev- itable; but to join any of them would to him have been difficult, for with none was he in more than partial accord. He was with the Liberals as regards all laws that imposed civil penalties on religious convictions, and from the first had ardently supported Catholic Emancipa- tion. He was also in favour of Free Trade so far as duties on corn were concerned. But on the other hand he was opposed to whatever disturbed, in the democratic interest, the balance which it had long been the boast of the English Constitution to sustain between the monarch- ical, the aristocratic, and the democratic powers. He used to call himself a Liberal Tory, or a Canningite, except on the question of Parliamentary Reform, a mod- erate measure in favour of which he regarded as our only defence against a revolutionary one at a later time. If he had entered the House of Commons he would have exerted his influence to prevent parties from degent^rat- ing into factions whether by exaggerated violence, by unfaithfulness to their respective principles, or by taking tricky advantages over the opposite party. If he had been in the Plouse of Lords his position would have been less trying to him than in the House of Commons. On one occasion a member of the government wrote to inform him that he would probably be offered a peerage; but he was not in sympathy v/ith that government, and stated as MY father's death 213 much, thus declining a title, as his father had done before him. That the conservative elements in my father's political convictions were in harmony with a love of liberty equally strong, is shown in many of his sonnets, such as those entitled '' Liberty of the Press '' and ^'The True Basis of Power/' The latter I will here quote. THE TRUE BASIS OF POWER. " Power's footstool is opinion, and his throne The human heart: thus only kings maintain Prerogatives God-sanctioned. The coarse chain Tyrants would bind around us may be blown Aside like foam that with a breath is gone. For there 's a tide within the popular vein That despots in their pride may not restrain, Swollen with a vigour that is all its own. Ye who would steer along those doubtful seas, Lifting your proud sails to high heaven, beware ! Rocks throng the waves, and tempests load the breeze; — Go, search the shores of history — mark there The oppressor's lot — the tyrant's destinies. Behold the wrecks of ages, and despair ! " With him the claims of liberty and those of authority rested upon the same basis, and that was a moral one. He believed that liberty could not exist long where reverence and obedience to lawful authority were not exercised too. He believed that where a supremacy at once of popular power and physical force was erected, the educated minority would soon be practically disfran- chised. On the other hand he believed that while the chief ijiitiative power ought to belong to the educated class the majority ought to possess a substantial restrain- ing influence sufficient to prevent a selfish class-legisla- 214 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE tion. While the Reform Bill of 1832 was being discussed, I remember his walking up and down the library and say- ing: "I never agreed with Canning in his opposition to reform in Parliament. I was always in favour of cancel- ling rotten boroughs and representing large towns; but this bill is not a reform, but a revolution." A person then present replied, "That is a hard say- ing!'* He answered, ''I do not mean that it is a revo- lution at this moment, nor in ten years, nor in twenty years.'' He stopped and thought, and after a few minutes proceeded, ''It will be a revolution in fifty years. " He spoke in 1S32. The recent revolutionary legislation began in 1881, /.^., within a year of the time he had pre- dicted. My father, of all the men I have known, was the most long-sighted. People used to say of him, "He saw distant things as through a telescope," and his predic- tions almost always turned out correct. This was because he combined a great imagination with a great reasoning power, and because many of the passions which obscure other men's vision did not for him exist. He had no resentments. A short time after my father's death I wrote thus to Sara Coleridge : <^ Your prayers for my mother hav^e been heard. She thinks only of him, not of self. It is said that maternal love is the most unselfish of the affections. I am disposed now to think that a wife's affection is more unselfish still. A mother some- times seems to regard her child as in some sort her own property, and when it is snatched away, to feel amerced of her own. My mother always felt as if she belonged entirely to her husband. The expression of her countenance is changed : much that MY FATHER'S DEATH 21$ belonged to it is gone, and something new has come into it. It was otherwise on the death of her two young daughters. She has settled an annuity upon every widow in this place, dating it from his death. Her faith is probably strengthened by that which supported him, when first informed that his mal- ady was fatal. He answered : ^ I am a Christian, a humble Christian, saved by the mercy of God, through the merits and death of our Saviour.' One of the last things we heard him murmur was : ^ All is peace and quietness here,' laying his hand on his breast." "He was saved by his unexpected death from the in- tense suffering which must otherwise have been inflicted on him during the next three years by the great Irish famine.'* I published his "Mary Tudor '* during the next year (1847). There was a "conspiracy of silence'' about it. On the other hand, even then a few of our most distin- guished men of letters greeted it with an ardour such as is seldom bestowed on a drama. Cardinal Manning wrote to me thus in 1847: "Perhaps my feeling as to the work may be tinged by sympathy w^ith the ' Idola Ecclesiastica ' ; but Gladstone's is not; and we agreed in placing * Mary Tudor ' next to Shakespeare " ; and Sir Henry Taylor, Lord Blackford, Lord Coleridge, and many others wrote of it in terms hardly less strong. My judgment would hardly be accepted as impartial. What they especially remarked upon in the work was its manli- ness, its dramatic insight, its pathos, its grace as regards diction and metre, and, above all, its absolute impar- tiality. As I have said in the latest edition of the work,^ 1 George Bell and Sons. 1884. 2l6 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE "The author was an Anglican, and could have had nO' bias in favour of Mary, neither had he any against her. His mind knew no partisanship, and in the subject he recognised a theme too high for one-sided zeal. The interest which he took in the chief characters of that age was a human and historical, not a controversial interest." After lying neglected for twenty-eight years, it was called out of obscurity. Lord Tennyson had written his. " Queen Mary '' without knowing that the subject had- been treated before, though of course that need have been no reason for his rejecting it. In some critique on '' Queen Mary '' there happened to be a reference to "Mary Tudor." All the copies except about a hundred had been lost long before at the printers*. These copies were then speedily sold off. It has since been republished by George Bell and Sons. It is not my purpose to write here in detail of my father's character; but I may quote the conclusion of a. brief memoir of him, prefixed to the latest edition of his- *'Mary Tudor." ^^His was a nature more common in past days than at present ;. a character obedient to high laws, and a disposition affluent in affections ; an intellect large, proportioned, and judicious ; a soar- ing spirit, and a temper ardent, but also magnanimous and urbane ; and I remember that one who bent above him after his death said : 'In that brow I see three things — imagination, reverence.^ and honour.' '' L "At times I lift mine eves unto 'the Hills Whence my salvation cometh ' — aye and higher — And, the mind kindling with the heart's desire, Mount to that realm nor blight nor shadow chills: MY father's death 21/ With concourse of bright forms that region thrills: I see the Lost One midmost in the choir: From heaven to heaven, on wings that ne^er can tire, I soar; and God Himself my spirit fills. If that high rapture lasted need were none For aid beside, nor any meaner light, Nothing henceforth to seek, and nought to shun: — But my soul staggers at its noonday height And stretching forth blind hands, a shape undone, Drops back into the gulfs of mortal night. August 6, 1846. II. *' To-night upon thy roof the snows are lying; The Christmas snows lie heavy on thy trees : A dying dirge that soothes the year in dying Swells from thy woodlands on the midnight breeze. Our loss is ancient : many a heart is sighing This night, a late one, or by slow degrees Heals some old wound, to God's high grace replying: A time there was when thou wast like to these. Where art thou? In v/hat unimagined sphere Liv'st thou, sojourner, or no transient guest? By whom companioned ? Access hath she near, In life thy nearest;, and beloved the best ? What memory hast thou of thy loved ones here ? Hangs the great vision o'er thy place of rest?" Christmas^ 1S60. After the death of my father, my mother continued to live in Curragh Chase, the beloved home of her married life, though darkened by the death of two lovely girls, one at the age of eleven years, the other at that of fifteen. My eldest brother, Sir Vere de Vere, and his wife took the same tender care of her, as in the preceding genera- tion had been ta,ken by both my parents of their widowed mother. Very soon after my father's death those dread- 2l8 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE fill years of the great Irish famine succeeded, years dur- ing which it was hardly possible for a mourner to lift her head again. At last, however, they were over, and a spring came that felt like a spring, and helped to restore their light to eyes long dimmed, and their old tones to voices long changed. It was thus with my mother. The words of Artevelde when speaking of Adriana would have applied to her: " She was one made up Of feminine affections, and her life Was one full stream of love from fount to sea." As much of gladness as was needed for the peace of others returned to her; not more. Again she enjoyed the wild flowers of May, and again in the evenings she and my eldest brother played together the music of Mozart and Beethoven. Occasionally in the summer she passed a few weeks at Derwent Island and on the shores of Coniston Lake with her nieces, who regarded her almost as a mother. Nearly ten years passed thus away, and many more might thus have passed. She took a renewed interest in things new and old. Now she passed a week with her surviving daughter and her chil- dren. At another time her eldest son read her the last page he had written of a translation on which he was engaged. The original was a work on political philos- ophy by Donoso Cortes, Marquis of Valdegames, the friend of Montalembert, a work not less needed by the present time than by that for which it was written. But to all these things an end was brought by the Russian War. She had two younger sons, a soldier and a sailor, MY mother's death 2ig who fought in the Crimea. The anxieties of that war were too much for her. A few months of horrors such as we read of in all the newspapers during that winter of unprecedented severity developed a heart complaint; and she died, but not until she had seen both those sons again after their return. How often the mortality among soldiers may be exceeded by that among their wives and mothers ! The following sonnet was written by my sister. I sent it to Cardinal Newman, who was deeply moved by it. TO HER MOTHER'S BIBLE. She read thee to the last, beloved book ! Her wasted fingers 'mid thy pages stray'd ; Upon thy promises her heart was stay'd; Upon thy letters linger'd her last look Ere life and love those gentlest eyes forsook : Upon thy gracious words she daily fed ; And by thy light her faltering feet were led When loneliness her inmost being shook. O Friend. O Saviour, O sustaining Word, Whose conquering feet the Spirit-land have trod, Be near her where she is. Incarnate Lord! In the mysterious silence of the tomb Where righteous spirits wait their final doom, Forsake her not, O Omnipresent God ! Ellen O'Brien. Her youngest son, the soldier, was the first to follow his mother. He married the daughter of an ancient Norman stock which had come to Ireland in the days of Strongbow, and become known as that of the Burkes of St. Clerans. Two of her brothers died heroic deaths, 220 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE one of them being the celebrated Australian explorer. My youngest brother's two names were Francis and Hor* ace, bestowed in memory of the two '* Fighting Veres" of Queen Elizabeth's time. His married life was a happy one, and he left behind him three daughters. But it was a short life, and its end was strange. As an engineer he was charged with the execution of certain military works at Woolwich. One of the soldiers employed on them misconducted himself repeatedly, and my brother had to reprove him severely. The offender watched his opportunity, and soon afterwards fired at him from one of the windows of the barrack as he stood in the court beneath. The bullet pierced his lungs, and after a few weeks he died. He bore his sufferings during that period not only with perfect fortitude, but with cheer- fulness and often with gaiety. He entirely forgave his murderer; and a little before his death said, '^Take me out into the Barrack court, and lay me there on the ground. A soldier should die in the open air.'' CHAPTER XII THE GREAT IRISH FAMINE 1846-185O The first remedial Measure — Great Meeting of Irish Proprietors, in January, 1846 — The Temporary Relief Act — Depots of Food formed — Relief Committees — Indian Meal distributed widely and gratuit- ously — The private Charity of England immense — Letters from emi- nent Irishmen — Lord George Bentinck's Proposal — Unjust Charges brought against Irish Proprietors — Labours of many Irish Ladies — The terrible Sufferings of the Irish Poor, chiefly in the Latter Part of the Visitation and from the Diseases generated by Famine — The large Proportion who died of Fever in the Emigrant Ships or after landing. ^T^HE county of Limerick, in which I resided during -*• the famine, was not one of those with the densest population or the most dependent on the potato crop. It therefore suffered less than many other portions of Ireland from the Great Famine, which has often been spoken of as if it lasted but for one year, whereas it lasted for large portions of four, namely, 1846, 1847, 1848, and 1849, ^vhile for several years later, the enormous emigration proved that the Terror, ''though baffled, still retired with strife.*' During those successive years the calamity assumed different characteristics, and was met by different reme- dies, all of them well-intended, and carried out with great energy, but, unhappily, not selected with equal judgment, or attended by equal success. The first remedy applied was that of public works; but those works were professedly introduced almost wholly as a test of destitution. This was to copy from a very 222 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERB questionable original. In England, before the Poor Law Reform of 1835, paupers were often employed in alter- nately digging gravel pits and filling them up again; but that test seemed to have originated rather with the wiseacres of the time than with its wise men, for it did not check such pauperism as brought the country which had vanquished Napoleon from approaching the brink of destruction. That the problem of Ireland when the ordinary food of a whole people melted away before their eyes, was one of extreme difficulty we are bound to con- fess. If the State resorts to great public works, such as railways, it must prevent companies from undertaking them; and if it spends large sums on local drainage, it must interfere with the ordinary rate of wages, and check the ordinary agricultural efforts both of proprietors and farmers. Many other difficulties stood in the way; and among them a wrong method of relief was the first adopted, that of works being nearly valueless. Present- ment sessions were held everywhere, roads were half made and left unfinished; but the old English test of destitution was at that time neither needful nor safe. It was not wise to assemble thousands of men on works that seemed but a mockery. Labour has its moral relations as well as its material. It has its dignity, and it retains that dignity so long as the employer and the employed alike gain an honest livelihood out of it, and the land is thus made to support its children. In the absence of such mutual aid and mutual respect, labour acquires a bitterness which nature never intended. No doubt the labourers were often unreasonable; but that was exactly what many of the wisest men in Ireland had THE GREAT IRISH F^UHNE 223 reminded Parliament and the Government of before tlie experiment had been tried, insisting on it that measures of a different sort were necessary in the first instance especially the formation in nearly all parts of the country of depots at which food might be given gratuitously to those obviously destitute. Important public bodies reit- erated the statement that charity should bear the name of charity, and that the works on which, in the second place, the people were employed, should be works either directly tending to increase the produce of the land, or else works that indirectly enriched the country. In the middle of September, 1845, ^ committee of land- lords was formed in Dublin. On the 14th of January, 1846, a great meeting of peers and members of Parlia- ment took place, in the Rotunda, a meeting almost unex- ampled in the number and the high position of those who attended it, and who beloaged to all parties alike. Among their chief resolutions were these: ^' We deem it our solemn duty — the present system having failed — to call upon the Government in the most imperative terms to take such measures as will secure local supplies of food sufficient to keep the people alive, and to sacri- fice any quantity of money that may be necessary to attain that object. That we regret that the means hitherto adopted . . . have on the one hand proved incommensu- rate with the evil, and, on the other hand, have induced the expenditure of vast sums of money upon useless or pernicious works. That this most wasteful expenditure, tending, as it does, to diminish our resources, and increase the probability of future famines, has not been the result of neglect on the part of the resident proprie- 224 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERB tors of Ireland, but of an impolitic and pernicious law, which they were compelled to carry into effect, notwith- standing repeated protests to the contrary. . . . That any system of relief to the able-bodied that does not lead to the production of food, or articles that may be ex- changed for food, will diminish the capital of the coun- try, and that in proportion as capital decreases, poverty will increase/' Many other resolutions were passed, especially recommending assisted emigration, the reclam- ation of waste lands, loans to farmers, as well as proprie- tors, for the improvement of their lands, with a right to compensation on their part in case of their removal. This great meeting in Dublin was attended by more than fourteen peers, twenty-six members of Parliament, and six hundred landed proprietors. Its resolutions were marked by public spirit and practical wisdom. Its one great fault was that it was not held very much earlier. Parliament met a few days afterwards. The Irish Secre- tary made a deeply significant statement. He quoted from the report of the Commission of Poor Law in 1835. This was its statement, namely, that Ireland then contained 1,131,000 agricultural labourers whose average earnings did not exceed from two shillings to two shillings and sixpence a week; and that of these one-half were desti- tute during thirty weeks of every year. There had been many Parliaments and many Governments, and they had created many commissions which had prescribed many remedies; but it was the prescriptions not the remedies which had been swallowed, and the disease had not been removed. No doubt many an eminent statesman and many a great proprietor had to share a great blame THE GREAT IRISH FAMINE 22$ between them, one belonging both to a remote and to a proximate past. Alas, there is no sleep so profound as that of habit! The Irish people itself had long slept that sleep, and hardly knew that aught was amiss! Except during the rude awakening times of recurrent lesser famines they were merrier than they are now; and their cheerfulness proved a snare to their rulers. The treatment of the great Irish Famine passed through three periods. The first was that of unproductive public works used as a test of destitution. That system soon detected itself. It was demoralising. The destitute believed that as these test works were a sham, the pay- ment would prove a sham too ; and they saw no reason why their labour should not be a third sham. To their amazement, when their work came to be measured in some places, their payment turned out to be more than double that given for good work on farms. It was a competition between the official measurers and the agita- tors, a rehearsal, as some affirm, of an analogous compe- tition in subsequent times between the '' Land League " and the "Land Court.'* The agitators were beaten. Soon afterward, the labourers professed at least to give some work, though I remember that an old man com- plained, when dying of a chill, that ''the boys had not allowed him to work enough to keep himself warm.*' The second period was far better managed. It soon became apparent that relief through a system of false labour was twice as costly as a system of relief by supply- ing the destitute with Indian meal. Moreover, it left wholly without relief many who from age or infirmity could neither work nor pretend to work, and lastly it 226 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE produced an ever-increasing animosity among all classes in Ireland who knew that one-half of the cost of these imaginary works was legally charged upon Irish land, while the money that might have helped to develop its vast resources was almost wholly thrown away. These things spoke for themselves. Several momentous changes took place in rapid succession. The first of these was a permission by the Lord Lieutenant, on his own authority, through what was called "Mr. Labouchere's letter/' to include various reproductive works among those on which the destitute population w^ere employed. The letter authorizing this expenditure was issued on the 5th of October, 1846; and the amount actually expended under it was about ;£239.476. This change was a frank con- fession of error and a very salutary improvement. But the evil continued to be immense. Destitution Vv^as still at best but imperfectly relieved, while the number of labourers employed rose in three months from 20,000 to 400,000. A new system of relief was introduced under the name of the " Temporary Relief Act,*' by which Relief Committees were formed in nearly all parts of the country and established depots from which food was dis- tributed to the destitute. The relief thus given in Indian meal cost less than half what the unproductive works had cost, and gave relief far more effectually, and with far less suffering to the aged and infirm. The measure passed on the 26th of February, 1847. But, most unfortunately, its operation did not extend beyond the ist of November, 1847. No serious provision for future ''State aid" was then enacted, and the desti- tute were left to such aid as could be afforded by a poor THE GREAT IRISH FAMINE 22/ rate raised locally from land the chief produce of which had failed. Beyond this, private charity was nearly the only remaining resource. I have already stated that the private contributions from England, from America, and from the few in Ireland who (rents having nearly ceased) still had resources, were truly magnificent; but long after the autumn of 1847 there remained in Ireland a destitu- tion such as large aid from the State can alone cope with. A Poor Law was never intended to deal with vast and prolonged famine except partially. To do more is beyond its competence, and can but drive out of culti- vation the land which has already refused to yield its increase. Private charity has also its limits. The State must do the rest, for she alone has the power of antici- pating her future resources. The whole nation, when its total forces are drawn upon at once in its two spheres, of space and of time, can on such occasions adequately assist the suffering part ; which, however, when it recovers itself, is bound both to repay its own debt and assist the other parts when the trial successively falls upon them. It was during and after the autumn of 1847 that the chief suffering connected with the famine prevailed; but, for the reasons already assigned, the harrowing scenes associated with it in too many parts of Ireland were com- paratively rare in our neighbourhood. There was much suffering; but not that prostration which for a time causes a nation to change its character. The extraordinary elasticity, which has always imparted to Ireland a strength such as robustness imparts to other countries remained. There was a perpetual excitement ; the alter- nation of the tragic and the comic remained; the change- 228 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE ful humours held their own. Many scenes that illustrate them recur to my memory as I muse on past time, and others find a place in my correspondence, a few passages of which I will record, leaving sadder themes for a later time. I will copy here some portions of my letters to my kinsman, Stephen Spring Rice, early in 1847. He was at once a devoted lover of Ireland and an admirable man of business, as well as one of boundless energy, and with his great friend, Mr. William Prescott, both of whom had a large acquaintance with the v/ealthy men of "the City,'' contributed largely to the formation of the chief among the charitable societies of that time, namely, "The British Association for Relief of extreme distress in England, Ireland, and Scotland.'* He was a practical man. Once, I remember, after there had been much discussion as to whether rations of Indian meal would suffice to keep up a man's physical strength, he said, "Nothing like trying the experiment; I will eat nothing else for a week." He kept his word, but failed to con- vince his opponents, who told him, when the week was over, that his strength had been sustained by his previotts- good dinners. At another time I remember his saying, "We should not blame our poor people for being riotous when they see their families in danger of starvation. If they give me a good beating on some occasion you will see how little grudge I shall bear them on that account."" I wrote to him thus on the 14th of February, 1847: "I rode to Shanagolden last Tuesday, having heard that * Shanid ' was in insurrection from that place to Glin," and that on Tuesday a meeting of a very singular kind THE GREAT IRISH FAMINE 229 was about to take place. It was not one of the ordinary ''presentment sessions.'' It was a committee put on its trial on a charge of maladministration, a committee over which a singularly respectable and conscientious country gentleman presided, and on which there sat a number of farmers, and one or more of the parochial Catholic priests, the three judges consisting of three other priests belonging to a distant parish; while a mob of angry peasants surrounded the place of meeting. Fortunately the military mustered strong. The mob would have been larger still, and probably hotter also, but for the inclemency of the v/eather. During my ride I had some- times difficulty in preventing myself from being blown •off my horse. I did what I could to keep the people quiet. They assented to what I said, but reiterated the same state- ment, namely, that a certain dreadful engineer, who was "after starving the people at Skibbereen," had been sent to them in place of a predecessor who had won their confidence, and for that reason had incurred the dislike of their committee. The resident magistrate informed me that he had nearly evidence sufficient to justify him in sending certain conspirators to prison for setting the mob against the newly appointed engineer, and also for an attempt to coerce the committee into signing a memo- rial in favour of retaining the engineer removed by the Government. The inferior members of the committee acted after a very equivocal fashion. The chairman stood his ground gallantly. He declared that he would rather be torn in pieces than sign such a memorial; and, throughout a day of very considerable danger to him. 230 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE acted with sense and spirit, notwithstanding the evident intention of some among the intimidated farmers on the committee to leave him a mark for popular indignation as soon as the military had taken their departure. This capitulation was averted, however, or else the committee must have lost its influence for ever. The moral of my tale is this: place as few as possible of the farmer class upon a committee; or jobbing will not turn out its sole defect. I shall not soon forget the alarmed surprise exhibited on that occasion by some among the members of the committee, when one of their number started up and denounced the inhumanity of the rest. His eye flashed, the cheek flushed, the whole burly frame shook, the lifted arm trembled with emotion. It was not alto- gether hypocrisy, it was also the temporary, sympathetic sincerity of a good actor who merges himself wholly in his part. He was for the moment the convert of his own eloquence. The courses he denounced so unexpectedly were right courses ; he had been one of their advocates ; and every one in the mob who cheered him knew that well. The local knowledge of the farmer class on those occasions did not atone for their lack of independence. They thought what they had to think, and changed their thoughts as well as their language when the occasion changed. The meeting broke up; nothing having been done, and the whole matter ended in what Father T. calls a ''bottle of smoke.'' The military took their departure. The chairman was in no hurry to depart. He was right. For about an hour we walked up and down the street^ THE GREAT IRISH FAMINE 23 1 which became every moment more crowded and tumult- uous. At last a window was thrown open. A bulky man, the parish priest, leaned out of it, and exclaimed in a loud voice, "What are you all doing there, making such a confusion in the street that I cannot walk down it as far as Sullivan's the butcher's to order a leg of mutton for my dinner?'' The next moment the window closed with a slam. The appeal was irresistible, and the crowd dispersed. The chairman remained a chairman as long as it was his duty to do so. He then went to another county, and the neighbourhood lost its most sensible resident magistrate. About this time, the proprietors took great pains to replace the potato with a more advanced agricultural industry, and established a large number of agricultural societies. Their intention was ultimately to affiliate all those lesser societies to the Royal Agricultural Society, and to enlist the services of a skilled agriculturist for each barony. They intended next to give prizes, dis- tribute tracts, provide good seed for the farmers, and urge upon the Government a large scheme for the found- ing of agricultural schools, with model farms attached to them. These excellent efforts came to nothino:. The trouble of the time was too great for their success. Another great endeavour was made — Lord George Bentinck's measure for the expenditure of sixteen mil- lions on the construction of Irish railways. Lord George was intensely in earnest on the subject, and maintained that the measure would give employment to 108,000 labourers, out of the 500,000 then employed on unpro- ductive works, affirming also, on elaborate calculations. 232 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE that the State could not eventually lose a farthing by the enterprise. The scheme was opposed not only by the then Government, but by Sir Robert Peel, and rejected. I can well remember the intense excitement in Ireland on that occasion. Of course it would, though so costly a scheme, have required supplementary aid for the relief of multitudes remote from the proposed railways; and the plan adopted by the Government when it substituted the ** Temporary Relief Act '' for the '' Labour Rate Act,*' if it had but continued long enough in operation, would have effected all that was absolutely necessary at that time. If, however. Lord George's proposal had been adopted in conjunction with another proposal then strongly urged in Ireland, for the reclamation of improvable waste lands, or lands but half drained, the cost of such enter- prises being chargeable upon the lands improved, it may reasonably be believed that, after the cessation of the famine, Ireland might have made a great and rapid advance in prosperity. But, alas — "These are imperial works and worthy kings." The age does not favour them, neither does the ignoble strife of parties; and, though political economy does not by any means rebuke them, political economists commonly disparage them. Here is a fragment of a letter to an English critic: — ^'AU measures of relief must depend for success on the machinery through which they are worked. Our machinery is complicated, and therefore not easily extemporised. It con- sists chiefly in ' Relief Committees ! ' Do you know what that THE GREAT IRISH FAMINE 233 means too often? Here are the dramatis personae of one. ist, a man of high principles, but so modest that he can seldom get in a word : 2nd, a man who seconds every motion : 3rd, a wrong-headed man who contradicts every one, and does not Icnow what he himself wants : 4th, a quiet, dry official, who, when questioned, answers that he is there to execute orders, and, when threatened, replies that if his career should be sud- denly closed by assassination, he supposes that some other official gentleman will receive orders and execute them: 5th, (outside) a gloomy-looking crowd staring in through the v^^in- dows with sharp, wolfish eyes, a clasped fist, and the other hand clutching a neighbour's shoulder : 6th, a few little boys w^aiting for the 'scrimmage:' 7th, a frantic old woman scream- ing like a Banshee : 8th, a big man who lives on whisky and snuff, with great staring eyes, a gaping mouth wide open, and dilated nostrils as black as if the jackdaws had built their nests in them : 9th, a smiling young girl pushing through the crowd to sell her cakes, and civilly requesting a policeman to stand out of her way: and, loth, an angry multitude blowing horns in the distance. Perhaps, however, you v/ill say that we must not pity ourselves (and self-pity is certainly one especial source of Irish weakness), merely because gentlemen who choose to boat on Bantry Bay, and measure their strength against the Atlantic waves, do not find the water as smooth as the Thames just above Twickenham. " All this will not read much to the credit of my poor fellow- countrymen ; but the marvel is, that, considering their sufferings, and the dangers before them, their deeds should be so much Letter than their words. The legislation of this century has teen generally benevolent. If it had also been sagacious, and sympathetic; if it had not been tardy; if, when the sins of commission ceased, there had been no serious sins of omission on the part of statesmen who made Ireland the battlefield of parties, the Irish difficulty would long since have ceased; and 234 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE the Irish character would have been better understood, both in what it possesses of noble, and in its weaknesses. The child- like would have remained ; the childish would have put on man- hood ; but the two qualities have a common root/' A fragment. To an Irish friend, S. E. S. R. : "Since 'prayer and provender hinder no man,' here is a story to make you laugh amid your labours. Do you know old D. O'G.? He is the agent of Lord G. the most amusing man of his day, who tells me that ' a Revolution comes up his approach every day, and goes down again without doing any harm,' and that, though assured by his agent that he has the finest estate in Ireland, he could not have a dish of beef or mutton on his table but for the aid of a single rich field in his domain. The fierce ways of his agent, at a time when nearly all proprietors abstain from claiming rents, are enough to set the whole country in a blaze. A letter from this unceremonious old fellow was shown to me the other day. It was addressed to a bailiff who had shirked the 'serving' of certain 'notices,' intimidated by a wild flock of anonymous missives, decorated with ' cross-bones,' and warning him, the bailiff, to prepare his coffin. The agent's answer to the bailiff ran thus: — 'Paddy Madigan ! What bloody jackasses those fellows at Askeaton must be to think they could vex me by shooting you ! Sure you know well that if they shot ten like you I could get twenty more to do my bidding ! Serve those notices forthwith ! ' Some days later D. O'G. went to sei-ve the 'notices' himself, accompanied by police. A few of the non-paying tenants had come to meet him, while the main body of them waited in the distant region called 'mountainous,' because wild and wet, though flat. They accompanied him on his way. He did not conceal the contempt in which he held them ; but a Gael pardons a good deal to a member of a surviving and important THE GREAT IRISH FAMINE 235 family belonging to that ancient race. Their faces darkened as they listened, but they made no reply. The police suggested a retreat. He, most likely, told them that they might ^go to Hell or Connaught,* but that he would go where he intended to go. They returned home. He pursued his way through a thunder- storm, as swiftly as an immense greatcoat saturated with rain permitted. The tenants gathered round him in dark masses as he advanced. At last it seemed to him time to tell them a bit of his mind. The sky had suddenly cleared ; he stripped off the greatcoat, and gave it to one of the tenants to hold, placing his dripping umbrella in the hand of another. He then made them a brief harangue, which ended thus : ^ I '11 extermi- nate the whole of you.' ** He then turned round and pursued his homeward way, bending a litde forward, and with his clasped hands behind him, but never looking back — the two men with the wet great- coat and the umbrella trudging next to him, and a huge crowd behind whispering in low tones. It was his absolute absence of fear that saved him. Six days later he had a greater escape. He went to Rathkeale, and mounted a flight of steps leading into a house where some of the tenants had promised to meet him with a portion of their rents. The steps, as well as the street below them, were thronged ; he stood on the highest step, with his bailiff beside him. Through the crowd a man pushed his way, and up the steps, drew a pistol, placed its barrel close to the breast of his intended victim, and fired. The pistol flashed in the pan. The crowd divided; and the stranger es- caped. The intended victim turned and clutched his bailiff" round the shoulders, exclaiming, 'This is your doing ! It was you that set him on ! ' The bailiff* rephed, ' Sure it was not I ! Your Honour well knows I would be the last man to do anything of the kind.' The fearless old man buttoned up his greatcoat, and strode down the steps, red with wrath, and exclaiming, 'I never was more insulted in my life!'" 236 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE I add the postscript of a letter from a poor man to his landlord : " Postscript, — Well, Honoured Sir, is it not a long time you are staying away from your devoted people, among your friends in Manchester? I am told that the Enghsh are a mighty wild people/' Another fragment: May 9, 1847. My dear S. — It was a trying day when the experiment of relieving distress through unprofitable works was initiated, and we shall have another formidable day when the second and wiser experiment takes its turn, that of distributing Indian meal gratis. The change is unpopular ; for half labour at a double rate of payment grows to have its attractions ; moreover, the people are assured that the rations distributed will be unwhole- some food and insufficient. To make a new system overlap upon an old one is a difficult matter. A poor man, when reproved the other day for the violence threatened, made me an answer full of pathos : ^^ Ah, Sir, what we are in dread of is this, that while the gentlemen are doing their best, and the Government is doing its best, ourselves and our little families will die of the hunger, unknown to God and the world. But we cannot die unknown to the great God ! '* Riding to Rathkeale, where, as you are aware, nearly the whole of the work is transacted by my eldest brother, I met lately a large crowd rushing out of the town like men flying from an invading foe. The sight was a tragic one. It was impossible to make them stop, or give me any further informa- tion than that they were speeding somewhere to kill cattle. I got a man to hold my horse, clambered to the top of a wall and addressed them. Those near stopped, and some of those far ahead came back. Observing that the gathering seemed a quiet one, the military and police, who had followed them, returned THE GREAT IRISH FAMINE 237 to the town ; and not long afterward a priest took his place beside me, and when I had finished, addressed them much more effectively. He told them that if they plundered the carts of meal, no more would be sent, that the gentlemen on the Relief Committees would have to '' rise out of them,'* and that the destitution would soon be such that not a priest would be able to get his breakfast ! After about half-an-hour, they gave us three cheers, and we led them back into the town. The next day another crowd went to the residence of the Protestant clergyman, and told him that they had come to kill his sheep. He answered that in that case they would do him a great ser- vice. ^^I have a better living in England," he said, ^'and if you kill my sheep, I shall have a fair excuse for residing on it in future.'* Another fragment: ^'We had lately a curious instance of mother-wit on the part of an Irish engineer, who had received orders to remove ten per cent, of the labourers from the Famine works, the system of relief by food depots being gradually substituted for them. It placed him in great danger. Neither the inspecting officer nor the Rehef Committee dared to give him any Hst of the labourers to be displaced. He had to face an angry crowd, and no police force could have protected him except for the moment. He named a spot on which he engaged to meet the malcontents, rode up to it alone, and ostentatiously unarmed, and smilingly informed them that, though the Government was. disbanding its labourers elsewhere, he had won leave to retain eighty per cent, of them for an indefinite time, that number being of course to be selected by themselves as the best judges ; but that his opinion was that the labourers retained should be exclusively of the poorest class. The next morning the walls, gateposts, etc., were covered with warnings to all persons who had land, to leave the works, or prepare their coffins. This engineer is now the most popular of his class." 238 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE Another fragment : "My dear S. — Lest you should be disquieted by some news- paper paragraph, I write to tell you that we are nothing the worse here for having been visited by an ugly armed party, not even the ladies taking it as anything ominous. Almost close to the house I met six men, armed with guns, who informed me that they had not come in order to insult any one in the house- hold ; on the contrary, they held our whole family in the highest respect ; but only to shoot Coghlan, the steward — who had gone away only two minutes before. They demanded that I should get him dismissed, which I refused to do. They were perfectly civil with one exception, namely, that as often as I advanced towards them they raised their guns, and pointed them at me, thus giving me to understand that they did not choose that I should have a chance of recognising them. After a little time they made a second apology, discharged one gun and walked off. William Monsell says that they would not let me near them, because they could bear anything except a long speech from me ; and certainly it is neither every orator nor every singer who has sufficient command of voice to stop when he likes it. Coghlan was the head of two factions which had been at war for many years, plotting against each other day and night. Both he and his rival died ; but that rival's w^ife lived on for many years, cherishing an immortal hatred against her husband's enemy. When old and dying, she declared that she forgave all her enemies except Coghlan. Her priest refused to give her absolution unless she forgave him also. Again and again he implored her to have pity on herself; and all her neighbours adjured her to ' be said by his Reverence.' Months passed, but she remained implacable. The last night came, and the neigh- bours sat round her bed, some affirming that she still breathed, others, that she had already passed away. Suddenly, she raised herself to a sitting position, and said, ' Coghlan, I forgive you THE GREAT IRISH FAMINE 239 now ; and the Almighty God may forgive you if he chooses ' — sank back and died. It will be observed that those last words are susceptible of two diflferent interpretations. ..." Another fragment : '^ My dear S. — It was a very trying day ; but it is over. During most of it wild mobs marched about in all directions, blowing horns. An immense meeting was held on Newtown hill; but the wind there was very cold, and they descended towards evening without having reached any conclusion ; but eventually most of those placed on the Relief lists came in and claimed their portion. In Pallas the people refused to accept the rations, declaring that they were too small to support a family, and threatened to kill the clerk who distributed them.' It was a tragic thing to see the white face of his wife, who watched everything and every one in silence. I found it was the best plan to ask the ringleaders of each group a number of questions about himself and his own circumstances. As those circumstances often differed much from those of his neighbours, the spokesman by degrees lost his representative character, a thing fatal to his influence ; and it became more easy to raise a laugh against him. ^^The poor people made strong complaints as regards many of the Rehef rules ; but as we had a printed copy of the Instruc- tions it was easy to make the poor fellows understand that we must either obey those Instructions or cease to be members of the Committee. *' I had a singular illustration of the transient nature of politi- cal considerations compared with those of a personal character. The day that news arrived of O'Connell's death, I informed a huge crowd of the event. There was a minute's silence ; and, after that, nothing more except an enquiry respecting the next meeting of the Relief Committee. The priests are doing their utmost to keep the people quiet, and never tell them, what some 240 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE theologians, I believe, hold — namely, that in cases of absolute necessity, men have a right to kill their neighbours* herds, in order to save their own families from starvation, provided that this be done with the full intention of repairing the loss whenever it is possible to do so. The people are much more in a panic than in a bad temper. Many of them say that after the Relief System by rations has been tried for a time, it will be abandoned. IVhai if this prophecy should prove true ] " The relief depots were established within two or three miles of each other, under the management of local mem- bers of the Relief Committees, who had to decide among: the several claimants for food, which was given in pro- portion to the numbers in their respective families. I was in charge of the depot nearest to our residence, with the parish priest as my coadjutor. Father T., a man friendly to all and devotedly attached to his flock. He was a practical man, always looking to the useful, and caring nothing either for the sentimental or the popular. That part of his character I had learned when the potata failure was still but a rumour. I met him walking in a high state of excitement. " Have you heard the news } *' he exclaimed, "What is this new Government about? Is this a time to allow arms to all the people in Ireland.'*' The Irish Secretary is after making a great harangue in Parliament, saying that the Irish are * fine spirited fellows, and would be proud to have arms,' and the ^ Freeman's Journal ' says he is a great statesman ! Arms, indeed !! Arms! What to do with them?" After a minute's meditation, he proceeded, "The Government is calculat- ing that, when they have all got arms, one-half of the Irish people will shoot the other half; and then the Govern- THE GREAT IRISH FAMINE] 241 ment will step in and hang the first half/' Again he paused, meditated, and resumed, *' I had rather than a good shoulder of mutton have the breaking of that great statesman's nose/' Father T. was as much incensed as he had been when the eight ruffians who had terrorised the parish for years, but against whom none would inform, carried off a young ^irl from her father's house by niglit, thus to force her into a marriage with one of them ; but who, in defiance of all traditional usage in Ireland on such occasions, neither brought a horse for her, nor a "side-car," nor a "highly respectable woman," to prevent the girl from "feeling in dread!" All else the old priest could for- give; but not this lack of respect to a girl. She felt with him; informed against the men, and got them all transported except one, who had lifted her on his shoulders as they were crossing a bog. When the day for distributing the Indian meal had ■arrived, Father T. furnished me with my instructions. "^^Do you see that big crowd there surrounding the house? There are twice as many far away with a greater right to relief than half of these have; and if we give all the meal to these, there will be none left for the starving crea- tures ! I '11 begin by telling that crowd that we can only admit one man into the room at a time, for fear some argument might arise between them. Each man is to take his turn and shov/ the v/ay that he is in, how much land he has, and v/hat family he has. We will work on as long as there is light, putting all their names down into a list; and then we '11 give the quickest relief to the worst cases. Now observe ! When a man has told his 16 242 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE story, I never will contradict him, for if I did you would not get through five cases in an hour. If I consider the case is one for relief, I '11 say little or nothing to the man; but if I know that it 's only tricking us the man is, I '11 say what is fitting to say; and the last word you '11 hear from me is the word tra7iscat,'' The first to enter was Pat Molony, best described in the very language of Gerald Griffin's peasant as **a mighty intricate little cratur." "Well, Pat/' I asked, '' how much land have you ? " '' Indeed," was the answer,. *' I believe, your Honour, it was up to thirteen acres they counted it; but what good is that when it is not land at all, but a corner of a bog, which no one knows better than the Reverend Father T. " "It would not give a breakfast to a jack-snipe in Au- gust," replied Father T., taking a long and resonant pinch of snuff, and adding in a lower voice the word trajiseat "Long life to your Reverence," rejoined Pat. "Send in the next," said his Reverence, "and lose no time about it," remarking to me in a whisper; '"his land's bad, but he has £y^ lodged in bank." We had to deal with about forty men before the even- ing darkened about us. Many of these got a good place in the list; but the fatal word transeat stretched like a bar before the expectations of many more — persons who had no real claims. As we walked home through the wood I remarked, "But, Father T., some of those poor fellows will be dis- appointed when they see the lists; and it is you they will cross-question, for they regard me as a mere * innocent that gets his information from you." THE GREAT IRISH FAMINE 243 "Well, sir/' he answered, '* if I answered all the ques- tions they ask, I should have enough to do. I am not bound to answer questions that might do them mischief. They know this well — that it is for them and their interests I am at work day and night. Those that want the relief will get it; but in that big crowd there was many a man that in five minutes would tell you lies enough to thatch a gallows.'' He desired his people to keep the peace at all times, and knew how to bring his teaching home to them. On one occasion it was thus described to me. Said Father T. : *'The Government has you entirely in their hands, and if you do anything out-of-the-way, they can put you into a hobble at any moment. I '11 make it plain to you." Providentially he had a string in his pocket. He took it out and placed one end of it in his left hand. Next he said, "The potatoes are gone, and there's no food except what Government gives you at the depots. If you refuse to accept it, they will force it on no one; but when you come for it next there will be none for you. It will be just like this." Then he made a loop on the string, and dropped it down the forefinger of his right hand, and next looked round and said, " See that ! there they have you caught ! They need not spend a penny more; and whom will you have to thank but yourselves.? " "When we saw the thing with our eyes we could not but believe him," they said to me. In other parts of the country, matters sometimes went less quietly. At F — there was a large attendance of the Relief Committee, but a small police force for their pro- tection, though on that committee sat gentlemen of high 244 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERB influence, besides the burly parish priest and a small Protestant clergyman. After hours spent in profitless debate, a mob came up from a distant part of the county. The court house was sacked and the ejected committee took up its stand on a sheltered spot near. It was not sheltered, however, from those warlike strangers, half of whom occupied a hill in the vicinity, and in a few minutes the sky was darkened by a flight of stones, which fortunately whizzed above the heads of the com- mittee, most of whom expressed their sentiments briefly but characteristically enough. **I charge this upon the Government,'' exclaimed a very ruddy-faced gentleman. "Where are the police.^ '' demanded his next neighbour. "It 's likely they went for a lark to the races at W. ; they have had no sport lately,'' said another. " If I had known we should have had such a shower as that, I should have brought my Scotch plaid," remarked a fourth, "and left at home this cloak with its velvet cape. " "It's likely that that English military force called ' the police ' stopped a bit on the top of the hill just to * make their meditation,'" remarked the schoolmaster; "they are a mighty devout lot." In a few minutes more the crowd on the hill reap- peared, after having made a collection of all the stones to be found. It was plain that they were in earnest. The wisest member of the committee, a dry old man, very deliberately took off his spectacles, pushed them far down a well-worn spectacle case, with the remark, "I 'm sorry this minute that I refused Sir George R. THE GREAT IRISH FAMINE 245 last Wednesday, when he offered me thirty-nine pounds ten for my brown mare ! My son Tom never was able to drive her and never will.** The Catholic priest, looking at his watch, summed up thus: ''I *11 tell you what it is, gentlemen, if you do not see a troop of cavalry riding down that road within three minutes from this time nothing will remain for you but to put your trust in the Lord,'* to which the little Protes- tant pastor softly made response, "The Lord forbid.'* Within three minutes the troop was in sight. Earlier still it had come in sight of the crowd on the hill. One among that crowd exclaimed, "The army entirely,'* and another, " It would be fitter to give a taste of the stones to them than to our own gentlemen.'* The finale was thus described to me by a lady : " Mr. G. F. came up to me yesterday afternoon, with his usual scared look, and exclaimed, ' Oh, Lady D., did you hear of the accident that happened to her Majesty's Regiment, the , this day? They were riding smartly along to save the lives of the Relief Committee at F. The people got sight of them and rushed down and gave battle to them with stones. It was a long road, and the walls were so high that the soldiers could not get at the villains, and her Majesty's army was badly hurt, and many were knocked from their horses ; and, what is worse than all, one of them lost his helmet, and a smart boy jumped the wall, and ran off with it. They hid it at first in a bog-hole close by ; but now they have sent it to a poet who lives in a parish twelve miles off, and he has engaged to write a song on it in time for the great horse-fair at Rathkeale ; and he is to get los. 6d. for it; and that song will be sung at every fair, and all the races, and wakes, and other places of entertainment in the south of Ireland for the next fifty years ! * ** 246 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VEKE It must seem strange that in the midst of that most deplorable of all things — a famine — the tragic and the comic should be thus inextricably interwoven. All who know Ireland, however, are aware that this intermixture is with her an almost invariable characteristic, and, far from mitigating the tragedy, often increases it by contrast. The quainter scenes were hardly remarked by us at the time. Here is a sketch of an Irish country gentleman's life, written by Stephen Spring Rice, in a pamphlet not published, and commenting on one written by an English statesman, who had himself worked hard and with high ability in connection with the famine, but who laboured under the delusion that Irish proprietors were reposing on a bed of roses. " What was the life led by an Irish squire at that time ? You might have seen him leaving home before dayhght, that sunrise may find him within his relief district, into the destitution of which he has to enquire. Till sunset makes it impossible for him to continue his work, he has to pass ceaselessly from house to house, making every possible enquiry, and exerting all his inge- nuity to detect the frauds attempted by those who wish to job. . . . Being well known, the people troop down from the hill tops to meet him, in their tens or twenties, threatening or im- ploring; and he has to use his best eloquence for soothing, cheering, or for checking and reproving them. Wearied at last, he returns in the twilight to his home, doubting whether he is not carrying to it the seeds of disease caught in the hovels he has visited. But he does not go home to rest. His whole night, and far into the next morning, is occupied in reducing into an available form the rough memoranda of each case which he has collected in the daytime. The next day, perhaps, he has to THE GREAT IRISH FAMINE 247 attend presentment sessions. Amidst roars of anger and cries of suffering he has to attempt to work out a novel and compUcated system ; sick at heart with seeing the gradual realisation of his worst fears — the famine, fever, and gradual demoralisation of the lower classes, the ruin of the higher. Throughout the day little notes are showered in scores on the table; these are the peti- tions of the poor, materials for his work by night ; for when he at last goes home they must be all deciphered, classified, con- sidered, and prepared for the next meeting of the Relief Com- mittee. . . . And what rest does he get by night? Every half- hour he starts up from an uneasy sleep, haunted by one idea that still recurs. He dreams that he has lost a little scrap of paper on which he had recorded the name of one that required immediate jelief, and that from his carelessness a family is starving." What VJ3.S the reward for all this suffering? The most unbounded misrepresentation, both in England and in Ireland, and in the latter country frequent violence. The letter from which I have quoted records a case in which several members of a Relief Committee were carried off and imprisoned, and another in which four members of one, including the chairman, barely escaped with their lives. And the district described, far from being among the most afflicted portion of Ireland, was at that time one of the least suffering, one in which a single propri- etor was at his own cost executing an industrial work valued at ;^8,ooo, to provide support for the labourers employed on it.^ The same letter (S. E. Spring Rice's), one memorable alike for its ability, its energy, and its moderation in tone, refutes the charges brought against the Irish pro- prietors for not having, in response to "Mr. Labouchere's 1 Foynes. 248 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE letter," availed themselves more largely of the govern- ment loans for drainages, etc., the sum spent on those- works amounting to ;^200,ooo. The answer was briefly this. The proprietors had from the first demanded that, while the charity distributed by the State should be given under the name of charity, the relief works should be of a reproductive, not an unproductive character. But on this subject the concession was not made until the labouring population had become profoundly demoralised. The writer says, ^* I rejoice that the efforts which were made for taking advantage of it were not more success- ful, knowing at what ruinous expense the works were conducted under it by the officers of the Government who had the exclusive control in the matter'' (p. 19). Again he shows that the practical abandonment of task work had raised the rate of wages so high that the works became ruinously costly. **The gentry had no authority for checking it ; and in many cases where they pro- nounced an opinion against it, their lives were placed in imminent danger . . . For raising stone in a quarry, the workmen asked a price that in ordinary years would have raised the stone and built the house into the bar- gain '' (p. 27). Under those circumstances the money to be borrowed from the Government could not possibly have been repaid. Everywhere, and in all classes, there was then a reign of helpless suffering. The worst part of that suffering was the part endured by the humbler class; but that suffering was not confined to it, or to men only. Ladies, laboured hard in aid of the poor, and especially among- those of them who struggled to emigrate. Many ladies THE GREAT IRISH FAMINE 249 succumbed under the labours of those years, or under the privations which they endured in silence. Over others there came a change which did not pass away for years. The eyes which had witnessed what theirs had witnessed never wholly lost that look which then came into them ; and youth had gone by before their voices had recovered their earlier tone. I refer to these things because most unworthy misrep- resentations have been made, both long since, and in late years, sometimes in ignorance, sometimes with a politi- cal aim, respecting the general conduct of the Irish upper classes during the famine years. As long ago as 1878, an eloquent writer as well as an ardent politician on the popular side, and, I believe, a '' Home Ruler," Mr. Alexander M. Sullivan, distinctly contradicted those charges in a w^ell-knovvn work entitled "New Ireland." He does not spare the absentees, cowardly and selfish deserters of a brave and faithful people, nor deny that there were bad landlords, as well as good; but he affirms that the overwhelming balance is the other way " (p. 63). Cases might be named by the score in which such men scorned to avert by pressure on their suffering tenantry the fate they saw impending over themselves. ''They went down with the ship " (p. 64). Mr. Sullivan did justice not less to the magnificent /m'^/^ charities sent to Ireland from England and from America, and to the labours and vast contributions of the Quakers; while of the terrible sufferings of the Irish poor, especially in the later and direr period of the famine, and of the patience with which those sufferings were borne, when the dreadful reality was felt in its fulness, he writes with 250 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERB the pathos of an absolute sincerity and without exag- geration. From his work and that of an Irish Catholic priest (''The History of the Great Irish Famine/* by the Rev. John O'Rourke), I shall have to make many quotations when dealing later with the sadder part of the subject.^ Father O'Rourke refers often to the exertions made by many of the gentlemen of Ireland on behalf of their fellow-countrymen, whether in the way of active labours, or labours of the brain. In many cases I was a witness of these efforts. Among those who worked hardest was Mr. Monsell, later Lord Emly. I accompanied him and Lord Arundel and Surrey (the late Duke of Norfolk) to Kilkee, and we passed the next day in roaming over famine-stricken moors and bogs in its neighbourhood, then among the most severely tried districts of Ireland. I shall not soon forget one visit, which, accompanied by the local inspector, we paid to a deserted cabin among the morasses. Its only inmate Vv^as a little infant, whose mother was most likely seeking milk for it. On slightly moving the tattered coverlet of the cradle, a shiver ran over the whole body of the infant, and the next moment the dark, emaciated little face relapsed again into still- ness. Probably the mother returned to find her child dead. Mr. Monsell burst into a flood of tears. Nothing was said; but a few days later, on Lord Arundel's return to England, the inspector at Kilkee received a letter from him enclosing a cheque for two hundred pounds, to be added to the local relief fund. Mr. Monsell addressed an admirable letter to the then Irish Secretary. He 1 I hope to write a second chapter at a later time. THE GREAT IRISH FAMINE 2$ I insisted on it that the labours upon which the starving people were employed should be productive labours, and that charity should bear the name of charity. " If you use your opportunities well, if you develop Ireland's resources, if you increase its capital, if you improve its agriculture, if you distribute its wealth as it ought to be distributed, its progress in the next two or three years will be greater than the progress ever made by any coun- try within the same time/* This appeal no doubt tended largely to elicit ^' Labouchere's letter,*' including agri- cultural improvements among the destitution works. Another friend of mine to whom Ireland was deeply indebted was Mr. John Godley, a man highly honoured by all that knew him, not for his great abilities only, but still more for the noble energy and the exalted practical purposes to which they were ever applied. He had made colonisation a subject of deep philosophical study, and had found in Ireland (his country, though his character was, as often happens in Ireland, especially an English one) a field on which it was possible to realise his loftiest ideal of colonisation, its old Greek ideal, namely, the crea- tion of a new colony retaining the civilisation of the parent one, and as far as possible, reproducing its image on a new soil. To effect this, and at the same time to find a remedy for a calamity almost unexampled, was a work worthy of aspirations and energies like his. He wrote a pamphlet expounding his scheme, and drew up a memorial in its favour, signed by eighty persons, many of them men of known abilities, and including numerous members of both houses of Parliament, and Irish proprie- tors in large numbers, (i) A million and a half of Irish 252 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE emigrants were to be located in a settlement to be made in Canada, with the assistance of the State. (2) A religious provision was to be made for them and their pastors from the first. (3) To help the emigrants to settle on the land, "aids to location'' were to be pro- vided. (4) The enterprise was to be under the manage- ment of a '* joint-stock company,'' entitled ''The Irish Canadian Company." (5) The Government was to lend nine millions in aid of this scheme. Unfortunately it was opposed both by the Government and by Sir Robert Peel, then in opposition, and rejected by Parliament. Mr. Godley founded the settlement of Canterbury in New Zealand ; but Ireland lost the benefit of his services. Another Irishman who laboured in a special manner for his suffering fellow-countrymen at that time, and did so with entire success, was my brother, Sir Stephen E. de Vere, Emigration had then assumed enormous pro- portions. In 1845 the emigrants were 74,000; in 1846, above 108,000; in 1847, they had reached 215,444. It was attended by extraordinary sufferings and an immense mortality. The emigrant ships were then sailing vessels; the voyage to the United States and Canada occupied about six weeks and often many more. The accommo- dations had from the first been insufficient, and by the sudden increase in the number of emigrants had become incomparably worse. Remonstrances were in vain. The grievances were denied by interested parties; the emi- grants were flying for their lives, and had to accept what- ever was offered to them. My brother was resolved that at least an accurate knowledge of the facts, a knowledge derived from personal experience, should be supplied to- THE GREAT IRISH FAMINE 253 the public and to Parliament. On the sudden cessation of the public works, he took passage for Canada with a considerable number of those who had been employed on them under his supervision, and conducted them to Quebec, sharing with them all the sufferings and perils which then belonged to a crowded steerage passage. Those who escaped fever on their sea-passage frequently caught it on landing, the dormant seeds of disease becom- ing rapidly developed by the stimulus of better air and food, and by infection. It v/as so on this occasion. They reached Quebec in the June of 1847, ^^d in a short time nearly all of those whom he had taken with him and lodged in a large, healthy house were stricken down in succession, during a period covering about eight months, and received from him personally all the ministrations which they could have had from a hospital nurse. After their recovery, they found work in Canada, and settled later chiefly in the United States. He returned to Europe in the autumn of 1848, bringing home with him a few for whom the American climate was unfit. But the aim for which he had toiled was accomplished. His letter ■describing the sufferings of emigrants was read aloud in the House of Lords by Earl Grey, then Secretary for the Colonies, and the "Passengers Act '* was amended, due •accommodations of all sorts being provided in the emi- grant vessels. Most of those emigrants who on reaching Quebec went into the crowded and infected hospitals died there. It is impossible to guess how many thousands of emigrants may have been saved by this enterprise, for the enormous Irish emigration continued and increased for several years after the famine. In 1850 the emigrants 254 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE were above 209,000; in 1851, they exceeded 257,000, The deaths on the voyage to Canada had at one time risen from five in the thousand to sixty in the thousand; and the deaths while the ships were in quarantine, from one to forty in the thousand. Still larger numbers died at Quebec, Montreal, and the interior, according to Sir Charles Trevelyan's official record. Large numbers of the Catholic clergy who had ministered to the sick caught the infection and died, amongst others the good Catholic Bishop of Montreal. The loss of life among the minister- ing nuns was frightful. A second detachment of emigrants, sent out wholly at the expense of my brother, followed during the next autumn those who had first gone, and were also received and provided for in his house, until the natural fear of infection had abated, and it became possible to procure employment for an Irish emigrant restored to health. CHAPTER XIII CARDINAL NEWMAN TT T'HEN first I made acquaintance with Newman I was ^ ' young and impressionable, and for that reason all the more able to appreciate at least a portion of what was most remarkable about him. It was late in 1838, and Oxford, apart from its illustrious inmate, would have well repaid me for my journey from Ireland, not then a short one. The sun was setting as I approached it, and its last light shone brightly from the towers, spires, and domes of England's holy city. Such a city I had never seen before, and the more I saw of it the more deeply was I touched. Its monastic stillness is not con- fined to its colleges; much of the city besides, in spite of modern innovations, wore then an aspect of antiquity, and the staid courtesy of those whom I met in the streets, contrasted delightfully with the bustle, the roughness, and the surly self-assertion encountered in the thorough- fares of our industrial centres. I had often to ask my way ; and the reply was generally an offer to accompany me on my way. It reminded me of what I had heard respecting Spain — namely, that every peasant there is a gentleman. As I walked I recited to myself Words- worth's sonnet on Bruges, and wondered why the most patriotic of poets had not rather addressed it to Oxford. There seemed a rest about that city, bequeathed to it 256 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERB by the strength of old traditions, which I have nowhere else enjoyed so much, except at Rome. *' While these courts remain," I said to myself, *' and nothing worse is heard than the chiming of these clocks and bells, the best of all that England boasts will remain also.'* " Nothing come to thee new or strange'* is written upon every stone in those old towers, which seem to have drunk up the sunsets of so many centuries and to be quietly breathing them back into modern England's more troubled air. How well those caps and gowns harmonise with them ! Certainly Oxford and Cambridge, Avith all the clustered colleges, are England's two anchors, let down into the past. May they keep her long from drifting from the regions dedicated to piety and learning into those devoted but to business or pleasure. " The ancient spirit is not dead : Old times, I said, are breathing here." In Oxford there then abode a man, himself a lover of old times, and yet one who in fighting his way back to them had in the first instance to create an order of things relatively new — John Henry Newman. I had left for him a letter of introduction from an eminent Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, the Rev. J. H. Todd, to whose learning, liberality, and patriotism, Ireland has owed much. Early in the evening a singularly graceful figure in cap and gown glided into the room. The slight form and gracious address might have belonged either to a youthful ascetic of the middle ages or a graceful and high-bred lady of our own days. He was pale and thin almost to emaciation, swift of pace, but, v/hen not walk- CARDINAL NEWMAN 257 ing, intensely still, with a voice sweet and pathetic both, but so distinct that you could count each vowel and consonant in every word. When touching upon subjects which interested him much, he used gestures rapid and decisive, though not vehement; and while in the expres- sion of thoughts on important subjects there was often a restrained ardour about him ; yet if individuals were in question he spoke severely of none, however widely their opinions might differ from his. As we parted, I asked him why the cathedral bells rang so loud at so late an hour. *' Only some young men keeping themselves warm/' he answered. '' Here,'* I thought, '* even amusements have an ecclesiastical character." He had asked me to break- fast with him the next morning and meet his young friend, Frederick Rogers, afterwards Lord Blachford, a man later as remarkable for high ability as high principle, and especially for what Sir Henry Taylor called his marvellous gift of *' sure-footed rapidity " in the despatch of business. After breakfast he placed me in the hands of Mr. Mozley, who became my guide among the objects of especial interest at Oxford, an office not less kindly discharged the next day by Mr. Palmer, afterwards Sir William Palmer, well known from his theological works. I shall never fors^et the kindness which I received at that time and later from distinguished men, several of whom reminded me that my family name had old associations with Oxford, while others gave me letters to eminent persons in Rome. I did not see Newman again till after the lapse of three or four years. Many things had occurred in the interval. He had read much, he had thought much, and he had 17 258 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE written much. His fame had grown; so had the devo- tion of his friends, the animosity of his enemies, and the alarms of many admirers. Those alarms had been much increased by one of the recent *' Tracts for the Times," the celebrated Tract No. 90. The wits were contented with averring that No. 90 only meant '' No Go." Several of the University authorities, however, thought that the tract was no laughing matter, and instituted proceedings against its author, Newman, probably with regret, but in the conviction that it was injurious to the Thirty-nine Articles — which Mr. O'Connell had called the '* forty stripes save one " inflicted by Queen EHzabeth on the Church of England ; but the High Church reply was that if the Thirty-nine Articles felt aggrieved, so much the worse for them, since in that case they must be opposed to *' patristic antiquity," by which the Church of England professed to stand. Many pamphlets were written on the subject, one of them by a layman, my old friend, R. M. Milnes, afterwards Lord Houghton. I re- member Wordsworth reading it and giving it high praise ; and I remember also Dr. WhewelFs reply to some one who expressed surprise at Milnes holding any opinion upon such a subject. '' Oh, he holds none ; but he took a fancy to write a philosophic essay on the subject of the day; so he wrote what he thought a philosophic mind like Thirlwall's might think." It was a very briUiant essay. The stir made by Tract 90 gave it an immense cir- culation, with the proceeds of which Newman bought a library, now included in that at the Edgbaston Oratory ; but though he bore with a dignified self-control what his CARDINAL NEWMAN 259 friends regarded as a persecution, yet a tract generally regarded as one that explained the Thirty-nine Articles by explaining them away could not but increase the distrust with which he had long been regarded both by the Evan- gelical and the Establishment party in the Church of Eng- land. Several recent occurrences, on the other hand, had impaired Newman's confidence in her position, especially the *' Jerusalem bishopric," which he regarded as a frater- nisation of that church with a German non-episcopal com- munity, and also as a hostile intrusion into the diocese of an Eastern bishop possessing the *' apostolical succession and primitive doctrine." Against that measure he and Dr. Pusey had solemnly protested, but in vain. Their interference had given great offence in high ecclesiastical quarters ; and not a few made themselves merry at the war between the bishops and their chief supporters, while a story went round that the wife of some dignitary had openly stated that she could not approve of the indiscriin- inate study of " the Fathers " among the clergy, because it tended to '^ put thoughts into the heads of young curates." Newman was then qitadraginta annos natus, yet even he apparently had not escaped this danger; for though his mastery of ^^ the Fathers" was almost as much an acknowl- edged fact as his mastery of Holy Scripture, their teaching no longer, as once, seemed to him much to resemble that of the Established Church. He wished to be at liberty, and he resigned his Oxford preferment and retired to Lit- tlemore. That voice of which the *' solemn sweetness," as Mr. Gladstone described it, had pierced all hearts at St. Mary's, was heard there no more except in sad memory and sadder anticipation. Men remembered that pathos 26o RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE SO much more powerful than any vehemence could have been, that insight which made his gentleness so formidable a thing, those dagger-points of light flashed in upon the stricken conscience, and, most of all, that intense reality which sent a spiritual vibration over the land, with the warning, ^^ words have a meaning, whether we mean that meaning or not." These things men remembered, per- haps the more because they saw the man no more. Littlemore was but three miles from Oxford. He had retired there to a hermitage stiller even than Oxford, that Oxford described by *' Wulfstan the Wise" as serener than the summit of Olympus, the Olympus which he thus describes : " So tranquil were the elements there, 'tis said That letters by the fingers of the priest Writ in the ashes of the sacrifice Remained throughout the seasons uneffaced." ^ To Littlemore I walked alone through the fields from Oxford. The little hermitage had been changed to a lit- tle monastery by the addition of some small rooms which sheltered a few young men who, like those that accom* panied Plato in the garden of Academe, walked with him that they might learn from him. One of these youths was afterwards well-known as Father Ambrose St. John, who, but for his premature death, would have been Newman's biographer. Another was Father Dalgairns. I asked one of them whether they recited the '* canonical hours ** of the breviary, and understood that they did so. I was deeply interested that day by my interview with Newman, though he seemed to me more reserved than when I had 1 '' Edwin the Fair," by Sir Henry Taylor. CARDINAL NEWMAN 26 1 first made his acquaintance, and very grave, if not actually depressed. The final casting-up of an account is a more difficult process than the preliminary ranging of the figures one beneath another. Newman's long and arduous studies had collected a vast mass of philosophical and theological materials ; and the details were doubtless arranmnp* them- selves in his mind and pointing towards the sum total. That sum total, perhaps, looked daily less like what he had contemplated in his youthful anticipations — a Church of England triumphant here below, pure as the earhest day-dawn of the faith, venerable as the sagest antiquity, cleansed from medieval accretions^ enriched by modern science, daily rising up out of the confusions of the six- teenth century, and delivering itself from secular bonds at no loss but that of diminished revenues ; a gradually in- creased colonial extension, making her the inheritor of a second orbis tcrrarinn — and ultimately a reunion with the earlier one. Such, ever since my boyhood, had been my aspiration: how much more must it have been his ! Yet that day as we walked together — for he w^as good enough to accom- pany me most of the way to Oxford — those aspirations did not seem to smile upon him amid the summer field flowers as they had smiled four years previously that night when the cold Christmas w^inds blew^ the cathedral chimes over us. Newman^s mind, how^ever, was not like Mr. Ward's, which always saw with a diamond clearness what it saw at all; it included a large crepuscular region through v/hich his intelligence had to pass before its dawn broadened into day. No one could appreciate better than he the subtlety of illusions or their dangerous conse- 262 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERB quences ; no one could feel more profoundly the pain of severing old ties ; but he has told us that he could never see why any number of difficulties need produce a single doubt as regards matters of faith ; and perhaps he might have added that he could never see why any amount of suffering need paralyse action in matters of duty, when at last certainty had emerged from the region of doubt Daily I heard reports, which he met neither with encour- agement nor denial, but with reserve. Some of his followers began to whisper, '' Our great admiral will transfer his flag to another ship." Others said : '' The Church of England will be the better for losing a for- midable guest. The acorn blown by a chance gust into a china vase if it continued to grow there would break it up." In 1845, Newman's secession was not attended by that of as many others as had been expected, though it in- cluded one a great power in himself — the poet Faber — who renounced poetry for a higher work; but it left profound misgivings in the breasts of others, who con- tinued their researches, carried their principles out in their parochial labours, and watched the signs of the times. They had not to wait long. The '' Gorham judg- ment" was pronounced, and within a few years about three hundred of the Anglican clergy — some say four hundred — had followed his example, many of them, like Mr. Allies, to their worldly ruin and that of their families, together with a far larger number of highly educated laymen. Newman's lectures were believed to have as- sisted many persons in doubt at that crisis. Mr. R. H. Hutton, whose work on Newman appears to me far the CARDINAL NEWMAN 263 best thing on the subject which I have seen, wrote in it as follows : " When Newman at last made up his mind to join the Church of Rome, his genius bloomed out with a force and freedom such as he never displayed in the Anglican communion''; and elsewhere he thus illustrates that remark: "The 'Lectures on Anglican Difficulties' was the first book generally read, amongst Protestants, in which the measure of his literary power could be adequately taken. . . . Here was a great subject with which Newman was perfectly intimate, giving the fullest scope to his powers of orderly and beautiful exposition, and opening a far greater range to his singular genius for gentle and delicate irony than anything which he had hith- erto written. Never did a voice seem better adapted to per- suade without irritating." I was among the many present at those lectures in 1850, and to me nothing, with the exception of the ^'Di- vina Commedia'' and Kenelm Digby's wholly uncontrover- sial '* Mores Catholici," had been so impressive, sugges- tive, and spiritually helpful. I was also struck by their impassioned eloquence, which brought to me the belief that if this man had chosen for himself a Parliamentary career he must have carried all before him. The ex- treme subtlety which belonged to his intelligence was then shown to be but one of many faculties, and opposed no hindrance to his equal power of exciting vehement emotion; though he did so apparently unconsciously, on this occasion, perhaps, restrained by the solemnity of the subject discussed, and the circumstance that the lec- tures were dehvered in a church. Many passages might 264 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE be cited in illustration of this remark, such as the last half-dozen pages of the tenth lecture, contrasting the calamitous condition of the Church in the days of Jan- senism, the French Revolution, and Napoleon, when the Pope was a prisoner, and when many among the Churches enemies boasted that the papacy was at an end, with the sudden change when her chief enemies had vanished, and there had returned to her an energy and health not hers for a very long preceding time. Nothing about those lectures was more remarkable than the celerity with which they were composed. They were written as they were read — once or twice a week, I think — a ra- pidity as great as that with which the successive chapters of his *' Apologia" followed each other many years later. His genius was always stimulated by a sudden pressure. I had become a Catholic more than five years later than Newman. The time when I saw most of him was in 1856. Soon after the Catholic University had been opened by him in Dublin at the command of Pope Pius IX., he requested me to deliver at it a series of lec- tures on literature. I considered myself incompetent for such a task; but I could not refuse compliance with a wish of his, and, although not a professor, I delivered about a dozen lectures, the substance of two among which was long afterwards (a. D. 1889) pubHshed in a volume of essays.^ When the day for the delivery of the first lecture arrived, Newman invited me to take up my abode in the larger of the two University houses, over which he presided personally, surrounded by a consid- erable number of Irish students, together with a few 1 Essays Literary and Ethical (Macmillan). CARDINAL NEWMAN 265 foreign youths of distinguished famihes attracted by his name. The arduous character of Newman's enterprise in Dublin became the more striking from the contrast pre- sented by the humble houses which bore the name of the ''Catholic University," to the monumental buildings of Trinity College, Dublin, not to speak of the magnifi- cent homes provided for learning and religion at Oxford and Cambridge by the piety of Catholic ages. The difficulties connected with the creation of a new univer- sity are great under the most favourable circumstances ; here they were immeasurably increased by the deter- mined opposition of successive governments and Parlia- ments, which steadily refused to concede to the Catholic University a charter, a public endowment, or University buildings. The opposition Vv^as stimulated by a vehe- ment doctrinaire enthusiasm in favour of the ''Queen's Colleges," long since admitted (excepting that at Bel- fast) to be a comparative failure. The purely secular character of those colleges was solemnly protested against by the larger part of Ireland, both Catholic and Protes- tant, on the double ground that they violated the " rights of parents," nearly all of whom preferred "religious edu- cation," and also because in them, though not in Ire- land's popular education, religion was banished from those higher studies with which it is so vitally connected, and banished at a time when youths are deprived of the safeguards of home. The error was a grievous one, and both England and Ireland feel its consequences to this day. It added a new secular ascendency to the secta- rian one. 266 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE The poverty to which religious education was thus condemned, besides its more serious consequences, had others with a touch of the ludicrous about them ; but, as some one remarked, *^ no one who laughs with con- sideration would laugh at such a jest." I confess I was pained by the very humble labours to which Newman seemed so willingly to subject himself. It appeared strange that he should carve for thirty hungry youths, or sit listening for hours in succession to the eloquent visitors who came to recommend a new organist and would accept no refusal from him. Such work should have fallen on subordinates ; but their salaries it was impossible to pro- vide. The patience with which he bore such trials was marvellous, but he encountered others severer still. I cannot think that he received from Ireland aids propor- tioned to what ought to have been his. The poor, who had no direct interest in the University, paid for it in large annual contributions, but the middle and higher classes were proportionately less liberal ; and there were, perhaps, jealousies besides, to which it is now needless to advert. In Ireland, however, Newman found many private friends who honoured him aright and were greatly valued by him. Among these were Dr. Moriart)^, long the head of All Hallows College, and later Bishop of Kerry ; Dr. Russell, Principal of Maynooth, the learned, the accom- plished, and the kind ; Dr. O'Reilly, S. J. ; the late Judge O'Hagan, and others. He worked on, cheered by the grateful sympathy of men like these, including that great Irish scholar, Eugene O'Curry, to whom he had given the Irish professorship, and whose lectures — a most valu- able store-house of Irish archaeology — he attended. CARDINAL NEWMAN 26/ He was cheered by the great interests of rehgion which he beheved to be at stake, and by the aid which Irish genius and Irish aspirations, if true to their noblest mis- sion, must largely, as he also believed, have ministered to them. In that hope he gave Ireland three of his noblest volumes and seven of the best years of his life. Newman was one of those who could work and wait. I remember his saying to me once, when things were looking dark : ''We must not be impatient. Time is necessary for all things. If we fail at present to create a Catholic Uni- versity there remains another great benefit which we may confer on Ireland. We can in that case fall back upon a second college in the Dublin University, one on as dignified a scale as Trinity College, and in all respects its equal; one doing for Catholics what Trinity College does for Protestants. Such a college would tide over the bad time, and eventually develop into a Catholic University.** Many years have passed since he spoke, but neither a Catholic University nor a Catholic college, founded at once on the two principles of ''religious education'* and of educational equality, has yet been provided. A Newman was given to Ireland, one longing to make of her what she was named in early Christian times, namely, *' the School of the West/* and apparently she knew nearly as little what to do with the gift as England had known. The opportunity was lost. A foundation stone was laid. On that occasion I wrote an ode, not worthy of its theme, but one aspiration of which may yet be fulfilled. It was that the statue of Newman might one day stand in the chief court of an Irish Catholic University. / 268 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE When I had been but a few days in Newman's house I fell ill of scarlatina, and the first of my lectures had to be read aloud by another person. I wished to be taken out of the house, lest the infection should spread, but for some time that course was interdicted ; and every day, in spite of countless other engagements, Newman found time to sit by my bedside occasionally, and delight me by his conversation. When advancing towards conva- lescence I went to Bray for sea air, and he drove out to see me. I remember urging him to make an expedi- tion with me, when I was well enough, amid the beautiful scenery of Wicklow, and his answering v/ith a smile that life was full of work more important than the enjoyment of mountains and lakes — a remark which Wordsworth would have thought highly irreverent. I remember also saying to myself. The ecclesiastical imagination and the mountain-worshipping imagination are two very different things : Wordsworth's famous '' Tintern Abbey " describes the river Wye, its vvoods and waters, its fields and farms, as they could only have been described by one whose eye saw things visible and things invisible both. The one thing which it did not see was the great monastic ruin, for of it that poem says not one word ; and now here is this great theologian, who, when within a few miles of Glendalough Lake, will not visit it, though St. Kevin consecrated it by flinging the beautiful Kathleen from the cliffs into its sullen weaves. I had to pass many a day at Bray, for my scarlatina was followed by other maladies, and so exhausted my strength that my poor attempts at exercise often ended by my having to lie down at full length on the road. A CARDINAL NEWMAN 269 little later I went to Wicklow, and thence to Klllarney, in hopes that the mountain air might restore me. That hope was long unfulfilled. I used to look at Mangerton and say, '' Is it possible that I ever climbed a mountain? '* But I am degenerating into *' inferior matter." At Kil- larney I met my honoured friend Dr. Moriarty, with whom I had first made acquaintance when he was the head of that admirable missionary college, All Hallows, which the Irish Church owes to a priest of lowly degree and of no high ability, but rich in charity and faith — a man to whom far lands have owed many of their best pastors. The Bishop was making a visitation of his diocese, and offered me a place in his carriage. I gladly accepted it; and rejoiced the more when I found that our road passed through some of the most beautiful scenery in Europe, that combination of mountain and seacoast which has ever to me appeared to surpass in spirit-stirring beauty every other kind of scenery. As we drove along by cliff and bay our discourse was chiefly of Newman. One night we slept at Derrynane, O'ConnelFs home. He v/ould have hked Newman better than Newman would have liked him. It v/as one of Fortune's strangest freaks that brought two of Oxford's most eminent sons to Dublin — Dr. Whately, Protestant Archbishop there, and Newman. For seven years they dwelt nearly opposite to each other, at the northern and southern sides of St. Stephen's Green ; but, I beheve, never met once. Newman considered that it was not for him to pay the first visit ; and the Arch- bishop perhaps thought that a renewed intimacy with his old friend might excite polemical jealousies in Dublin. I 270 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE was present, however, at a meeting, the first since their Oxford days, between Newman and Gladstone. It was at the hospitable board of my dear friend Sir John Simeon. They sat next each other after the ladies had left the dining-room, but their conversation was confined to the topics of the day. Newman, however, at a later time, when in London, was the guest occasionally of Dean Church and of Lord Blachford. Newman and Sir Henry Taylor had also a singular sympathy for each other, though they had never met, and though there was so much antagonistic in their opinions and dissimilar in their characters and pursuits. If they had met early they would probably have been friends. They had in common a fearless sincerity and a serene strength ; but one of them had found his training in the schools and the other in the world and in official duties. Another man of letters for whom Newman had a great love was Walter Scott. He delighted not only in the '^VVaverley Novels," but, like Mr. Ruskin, in Scott's chivalrous poetry. His own great poem, ''The Dream of Gerontius,'* Sir Henry Taylor used to say, resembled Dante more than any poetry written since the great Tuscan's time. Sir Henry could not have failed to ad- mire also some of his short poems, such as his beauti- ful *' Lead Thou me on," so strangely called a hymn, and another poem not less admirable, though little known, respecting that painless knowledge of earthly things pos- sessed by the happy departed. The last stanza of it expresses the theological teaching that it is neither with merely human feelings, nor with eyes turned towards the earth, that the souls of the blest regard the shapes of CARDINAL NEWMAN 2/1 this lower earth. On the contrary, their eyes are fast- ened on the Beatific Vision; and it is in the mirror of the Divine knowledge that they contemplate so much of earthly things as is needed, in that region where charity is perfected, for the exercise of intercessory prayer. The mode in which they possess a serene knowledge of earthly things is thus illustrated in connection with a well-known passage in the Apocalypse. " A sea before The throne is spread. Its still, pure glass Pictures all earth-scenes as they pass ; We, on its shore, Share, in the bosom of our rest, God's knowledge, and are blest." **The Dream of Gerontius," as Newman informed me, owed its preservation to an accident. He had written it on a sudden impulse, put it aside, and forgotten it. The editor of a magazine wrote to him asking for a contribu- tion. He looked into all his '* pigeon-holes,'' and found nothing theological; but, in answering his correspondent, he added that he had come upon some verses which, if, as editor, he cared to have, were at his command. The wise editor did care, and they were published at once. I well remember the delight with which many of them were read aloud by the Bishop of Gibraltar, Dr. Charles Harris, who was then on a visit with us, and the ardour with which we all shared his enjoyment. Newman's tale of ''Callista" is a book singularly dif- ferent from his *' Loss and Gain," one being a vivid picture of a certain section of modern English life and the other a not less vivid picture of life in the days of the old 272 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE Roman Empire. The last was written, as he informed me, chiefly with a pencil in railway carriages, during a Continental tour. No one who has read that work can doubt that it was no less within the power of its author to have become a master of prose fiction than to have become a great poet or a first-class parliamentary orator. Such versatility would to most men have proved a serious peril, and we have probably lost much of the best poetry we might otherwise have inherited from Scott, Coleridge, Southey, and Landor, owing to the circumstance that they had equal gifts for other things as for poetic tasks ; but Newman was saved from such snares by his fidelity to a single and supreme vocation. He was eminently fitted, as I believe, to be a great historian, and a history of the early Church by him, as his '' Historical Essays '* prove, even if it had descended only to the time of Charlemagne, must have proved among the most valuable of historical works from the absorbing interest of the theme and the many years which Newman had given to the study of early Christian times. His other avocations prevented us from having such a book from his hand. In the meantime, we possess in the work of a great friend as well as ardent admirer of Newman (I allude to Mr. Allies' work, ''The Formation of Christendom'') a treatise on the philosophy of early ecclesiastical history, at once so profound and so eloquent that it may largely console us for the loss of one work more by Newman. At one time the Pope had given Newman a commission to make a ncAv English translation of the Holy Scriptures from the Vulgate. He told me that he had heartily de- sired to undertake the task, but that unexpected difficul- CARDINAL NEWMAN 2/3 ties, connected in part with vested interests, had pre- sented themselves, in addition to those inherent in such a work; and thus another frustration was added to the many which beset his hfe — frustrations of which I never heard him complain. Certainly self-pity was no weakness of his. If he had translated the New Testament and the Psalms alone into English such as his would have been, it would have imparted to countless readers ^^ the freedom of no mean city," opening out worthily to them those treasure- houses of manly and spiritual devotion — the Breviary and other office-books of the Church. After Newman had ceased to be connected with the CathoHc University of Ireland — which I trust may yet reward his labours, even if it does not wholly fulfil his ideal — I saw him chiefly through my annual visits on my way to the Cumberland Mountains and to Wordsworth's grave. I never stood beside that grave without a renewed wish that those two great men — surely England's greatest men of thought in her latter day — had known each other. In many of their opinions they would have differed ; but the intensely English character of both, and the profound affection cherished for his country by each, would have been a bond between them. There often exists between very different men a latent resemblance — sometimes even a physical resemblance — which long escapes observation. I was interested by hearing that after Wordsworth's death, several friends, permitted to take a last look at one whom they had long loved and honoured, as he lay on his bed of death, were deeply impressed by the resemblance which his face then iS 274 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERB bore to that of Dante — as preserved in the best portraits "" — a resemblance which they had never noted before. One of my most interesting visits to Newman was paid when I was on my way to Rome, early in 1870, the year of the General Council. Of course we spoke of the defini- tion of the Papal Infallibility then regarded as probable. I well remember the vehemence with which he exclaimed, *^ People are talking about the definition of the Papal Infal- libility as if there were and could be but one such defini- tion. Twenty definitions of the doctrine might be made, and of these several might be perfectly correct, and several others might be exaggerated and incorrect.'* Every one acquainted with Newman's teaching was aware that he fully believed the doctrine — nay, that he had expressed that conviction in nearly every volume published by him subsequently to his conversion. Consequently, when a letter of his, written to a private friend in Rome and pub- lished without his knowledge, had been misunderstood, and had consequently produced a considerable though transient excitement, all such persons knew at once that what that letter contested was not the doctrine of the Papal Infallibility, but the expediency of defining it at that particular moment. When, some months later, the definition was made, it proved to be a most moderate one, and therefore much disappointed the so-called '^ Ultra- montanes." Several years later, Newman, in his ^' Letter to the Duke of Norfolk," replying to Mr. Gladstone's '' Vati- can Pamphlets," distinctly stated that the definition made by the Council, so far from being an extreme one, was a strictly moderate one. It therefore belonged to that class of definitions which, six months before it was put forth, CARDINAL NEWMAN 2/5 Newman had spoken of to me as being perfectly correct As he has been much misrepresented on this subject, I deem it a duty to him to record that conversation. To men who were acquainted with Newman only through his books it was rather as a mind than as a man that he presented himself; but the converse was the case with those who enjoyed his intimacy. To them his great attraction lay in what belonged to his personal being — the strange force of which often made itself felt almost at once, so entirely free was he from conventionality. Amid the society of those with whom he was not in sympathy it is true that the shyness of his nature bred a sort of isolation ; but, notwithstanding, with that reserve there was mixed a frankness. You might be left with a restricted knowledge, but not with an erroneous impression. W. S. Landor makes some one say that the thoughts of a true man should stand as naked as the statues of the God of Light; but he might have added a converse asser- tion, namely, that a man's most sacred feelings should be often shrouded in a dimness like that of the same god's Delphic laurel grove. There was much in Newman which could only be made known to those deeply in sympathy with him, and the disclosure of which to others might easily have led them into error. What men felt most in him was his extreme, though not self-engrossed, personality. It was a very human person- ality, one that imposed upon him a large share of human sensibilities, and, perhaps by necessary consequence, of sorrows, cares, and anxieties. He had also, it is true, a strong sense of humour ; but in all serious matters serious- ness was exigent, and nothing came to him lightly, 2/6 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE although he had, notwithstanding, a strength that raised him up under its weight. Silence and stillness but kin- dled more the interior fires, and a narrow limit increased their force. His nature, one — " Built on a surging, subterranean fire, That stirred and lifted him to high attempts," i was far more likely to be stimulated than kept down hy pressure of any sort. He had vehement impulses, and moods which in his ** Apologia '' he calls ^' fierce ; " and these were stung into activity in him, as in Edmund Burke, by the sight of oppression or injustice. But his temper was also one that abounded in sympathy. He was full of veneration. It was thus that, as he tells us,. the lightest word of his bishop in his Anglican days was a conclusive challenge to his obedience ; and that when some one pointed out Mr. Keble to him for the first time,, he looked on that good and gracious man with awe, and " when Mr. Keble took his hand he seemed sinking into the ground.'' He tells us also that the '* Christian Year '^ had largely helped to teach him two great truths, to which he had always clung closely, and that he had ever consid- ered and kept the day on which Mr. Keble preached the Assize sermon in the University pulpit as the start of the religious movement of 1833. In others also he greatly valued veneration, and thought that, even when astray, it was still a thing entitled to sympathy. He told me that Mr. Keble possessed that quality in an extreme and even unfortunate degree; that, it had always been directed especially to his father ; and 1 Philip van Artevelde. CARDINAL NEWMAN 277 that the thought that in becoming a Roman Catholic he would place a gulf of separation between him and his father, must have rendered it difficult for him seriously even to ask himself the question whether such a step had become a duty. With Dr. Pusey — 'Mear Pusey " he almost always called him — the obstacle to conversion was, he thought, of another sort. He re- marked to me that with many great gifts, intellectual as well as spiritual. Dr. Pusey had this peculiarity, '' he never knew when he burned," the allusion being to a sport among children, when they have hidden something away and encourage the blindfolded searcher by exclaim- ing as he gropes his way nearer and nearer to it, ^* Warm," '* Hot," '' You burn." Dr. Pusey, he said, might see a doctrine with clear insight, yet take no cognisance of another proximate to it — indeed, presupposed by it. '' For years," he said, '' many thought Pusey on the brink of Rome. He was never near it." Thus, strange as it seems, the two old friends co-operated even in separa- tion; they stood at two ends of the same bridge, and the one at the Anglican end of it passed the wayfarer on towards the Roman end, though he always strove to hold him back when half-way across. The intense personality of Newman is curiously illus- trated by a remark made by Mr. Woolner, the sculptor, when he contemplated the plaster cast which he had made of Newman's bust as placed at last in his studio when finished. He turned to a friend and said, '' Those marble busts around us represent some of the most eminent men of our time, and I used to look on them with pride. Something seems the matter with them now. 2/8 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE When I turn from Newman's head to theirs they look like vegetables!' What he was struck by was the intense personahty of Newman's face — a still intensity. Newman's humility was not more marked in his rela- tions with Mr. Keble than in his relations with Dr. Pusey. In the early years of the '' High Church " movement, to which he contributed more than all its other supporters put together, he had no desire to be its head, and was ever pushing Dr. Pusey into that position. And yet with his humility he united a strong belief in his own powers and a conviction that God had imparted to him a high and special mission. That conviction must have been a great support to him during all the numerous trials of his long life. One of the severest of those trials came upon him towards its close. During his last two years the state of his eyes rendered it impossible for him to say Mass. Few of his many afflictions pained him so deeply. Nothing more characterised Newman than his uncon- scious refinement. It would have been impossible for him to tolerate coarse society, or coarse books, or man- ners seriously deficient in self-respect and respect for others. There was also in him a tenderness marked by a smile of magical sweetness, but a sweetness that had in it nothing of softness. On the contrary, there was a decided severity in his face, that severity which enables a man alike to exact from others, and himself to render, whatever painful service or sacrifice justice may claim. With his early conviction that he had a mission, there had come to him the thought that deliverance is wrought not by the many, but by the few. In his '' Apologia '' he says, CARDINx\L NEWMAN 2/9 '' I repeated to myself the words which have ever been dear to me from my school-days : Exoriare aliqids. Now too Southey's beautiful poem of Thalaba, for which I had an imniense likmg, came forcibly to my mind." The saying, '* Out of the strong came forth sweetness/' was realised in Newman more than in any one else whom I have known. In other matters also apparent opposites were in him blended. Thus, while his intellect was pre-eminently a logical one, and while it seemed to him impossible or immoral to discard the authority of logic, when plainly exercised within her legitimate domain, yet no one felt more deeply that both the heart and the moral sense possess their own sacred tribunals in matters of reason- ing as well as of sentiment. It was this consciousness which protected him from the narrowing tendencies to which the logical passion or habit, when acting by itself, so often leads. Many a vigorous mind includes but a single section of a mind like his. The logical faculty was in his case most fortunately supplemented by an expan- sive imagination, which grasped thoughts immeasurably beyond the range of the viere logician. The largeness of his intellect thus, as well as his reverence and humility, protected him from the scepticism imputed to him by men, who in his place, would have become not sceptics only, but unbehevers. It was that wide imagination which made him grasp the hidden but substantial anal- ogies between the chief schools of religious thought in the nineteenth century and the corresponding schools in the fifth, analogies which had never revealed them- selves to minds perhaps as logical as his own, yet which 28o RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE he could never repel, however much they distressed him. In Newman, again, above both the logical and the imaginative faculty, there ever hung the spiritual mind, a firmament full of light, though clouds might at times oversweep it. These were the characteristics of Newman which made him write the memorable sentence, *'No number of difficulties need produce a single doubt" — he meant doubt in a mind capable of real convictions. His mind swung through a wide arc, and thoughts appar- ently antagonistic often were to him supplemental each to the other. Thus he tells us in his '' Apologia " that the existence in the world even of such sin and suffering as sometimes seem to make it incapable of reflecting its Maker's countenance implies, for the true Theist, nothing disparaging to true Theism. What it teaches Jiim, is that the world cannot have remained what the Creator made it ; that some dreadful catastrophe must have overtaken it and wrecked its chief of creatures, Man — namely, the Fall; that to keep due proportion, a second mystery, and one not less wonderful than that of a crea- tion, must be true no less, namely, an Incarnation, a Redemption, a Deliverance ; in other words, that not only Theism is true, but that Christianity, the practical Theism, is its supplemental Truth. Another most remarkable union in Newman of qualities commonly opposed to each other, was that of a daunt- less courage with profound thoughtfulness. The men of thought and study are often timid men, and, when not timid, are indolent and averse to action, a thing which takes them out of that region in which they can trust CARDINAL NEWMAN 28 1 themselves, and into a region in which their battle is a left-handed one. Men of this order may not on that account be consciously false to their convictions; but they wish to serve Truth, a jealous divinity, in their own way, not hers ; and they swerve away from it on specious pretexts, when approaching near to that point from which the conclusion must needs be plain, and where there must remain no other alternative except that of avowed faith- lessness, or — serious inconvenience. In Newman there existed the rare union of the contemplative mind and the heroic soul. Otherwise, he might have pointed out its way to another generation; but he would not have Med forth the pilgrimage.' It would be a mistake to suppose that Newman's imagi- nation, rehgious as it was, could spare no space for earthly interests. Had its energies been thus restricted it would have dealt less vigorously with heavenly subjects. Many of his writings show how keenly he had studied human character, and the degree in which it affects that great drama of Providence called by us *^ history," in which whole nations have their entrances and their exits, like actors, on the stage of life. Nothing except his zeal for the highest spiritual truths could exceed the sympathy felt by him with all that concerns the '^ Humanities " ; and I well remember the look of stern disapproval with which he spoke to me of the Abbe Gaume's theory of education, one that must have excluded the Greek and Latin classics from the schools of Christian youth, or left them but a small place therein. Another able and excellent man, Dr. Ward, would, I think, in that matter have sympathised with the Abbe's opinions more than with Newman's. I 282 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE recollect that once, when I had remarked in a letter to him on the lamentable loss which the world must have sustained if all the works of ^schylus, and the other Greek dramatists had perished, as most of them have, Dr. Ward replied that in the surviving works of those men, he could really find almost nothing of a character to be called *' ascetic," and that therefore he could not see what loss would have followed if the whole of them had disappeared. Newman could heartily admire also, in spite of its limitations, the heroism of the early world. His admiration for the greatest of early heroes, Alexander the Great, was ardently expressed in a letter to me on my sending him my drama bearing that name. It de- manded, '^Who was there but he whose object it was to carry on civilisation and the arts of peace, while he was a conqueror? Compare him to Attila or Tamerlane. Julius Caesar, compared with him, was but a party man and a great general." I have thus recorded some of the traits that struck me as most remarkable in Newman's character. His career bore a singular resemblance to that character. Till his forty-fifth year it was a disturbed one. If, as he informs us in his *' Apologia," his submission to the Ro- man Catholic Church imparted to his soul a profound and lasting peace, while as regards things spiritual, far from chilling or contracting, it greatly stimulated his genius and energies, it is not less true that the antece- dent process of conversion was to him an unusually painful one. That conversion meant a separation from all whom he most loved and honoured, and also, but only apparently, a desertion of what was then regarded CARDINAL NEWMAN 283 by many as the battlefield of great principles, and in its place, at least, an external fellowship with many to whom he had long felt a strong antipathy on the ground of their philosophic ''liberalism," or of the parts they took in political '* agitation." Newman was an intense loy- alist, and he had long deemed it a duty of loyalty for him, as a Churchman, to see matters theological as long as that was possible from an Anglican point of view. Eventually he had to choose between thinking indepen- dently or discarding those great main principles which for so many years had been consolidating themselves both within his intellect and his heart, but which, as he had reluctantly discovered, could not be realised in England's Established Church, and were realised, as they had ever been, in the Roman Catholic Church, notwith- standing the sins or shortcomings of individuals. Some persons have expressed surprise that a mind like Newman's should have been so slow in making that discovery. They forget the difference 'twixt now and then. They should remember that the wild cry of "The Mass is idolatry!" had rung for several centuries over the land, and that its echoes, though dying away in the distance, had sounded in the ears of Newman's generation. When passionate polemical errors have lived their time, and died, so far as the intellect is concerned, their angry ghosts continue yet for a season to haunt the imagination. We should also remember that when, in the sixteenth century, the very idea of the Church seemed to have been suddenly sponged out of the North- ern mind (otherwise the reforms then doubtless much needed must have been sought in a General Council, not 284 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE imposed by local authorities), and when, in the nine- teenth century, that idea had been partially restored, the last part of it to reappear was that of the Church's visible unity. That was natural. The new reformers thought it sufficient to resist Erastian tyranny, and to revive the general teaching of Christian antiquity. In the latter endeavour they had a great success; in the former, none at all. The Civil Power asserted itself more and more, not from any despotic disposition, but to defend national *' comprehension " at any cost of or- thodoxy. The success and the failure were both of them necessary to open the eyes of the new reformers; and the eyes of the most thoughtful opened earliest. Many of those who remained behind were not less sin- cere and earnest than those who faced the wilderness. Few Catholics can doubt the good faith of those noble- minded men, Pusey and Keble ; they were less clear- sighted than Newman and Manning, Faber and Ward. Had it been otherwise, a movement would have been early stopped which, after half a century, is still advanc- ing in conquering progress. As regards the fast and the slow in religious changes, it is easier to measure purely intellectual movements than those of a mixed sort, intellectual and spiritual both; for in the latter there is a question of Divine grace as well as of reason, and '' the wind bloweth as it listeth.'' Fev/ can say whether a religious conversion has been a rapid or a slow one, and Newman pointedly remarks, in his '*Loss and Gain,'' that it may err in either way. Even in scientific enquiries, the philosopher's pace is far from being a uniform one. We are rightly warned not CARDINAL NEWMAN 28 r* to leap to conclusions; yet the highest scientific con- clusions are commonly reached by discoverers who sig- nally differ in pace, one from another. Men of science do not grudge their labours in making reiterated experi- ments; but yet they admit that, though a very great discovery is commonly approached slowly, it is reached by a bound, the discoverer knows not how. In science that bound is commonly a lightning flash of that su- preme genius which is an inspiration in itself. In relig- ious enquiry it is often an act of that highest and perhaps latest-won faith which crowns at once the humility and the insight of faith (that is, its spiritual discernment) by that heroic courage of faith which qualifies the believer to become the future martyr. In both cases, to those who do not accept the conclusion reached, the final act naturally appears an impulse dictated by an illusion; and in both cases also a double charge is often brought against it — that of precipitation, and that of tardiness. Newman's Anglicanism w^as killed by his own work on '' Development." That book was wTitten, I believe, within a year — a very remarkable circumstance; but it was the result of many years' meditations rapidly brought to a point. Then the winds of controversy ceased : the waves fell: and there was a great calm. That spiritual calm remained with Newman, though of course he had his dif- ferences with friends on minor matters — till his ninety years were accomplished, and England was left to lament the departure of him who had once been one of the most distrusted and disliked of her sons, but who had gradually become one of the most venerated. To that veneration he had preserved his claim inviolate. 286 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE He had ever retained a faith, firm and fixed, that the Christian religion came fi*om God, that it was God's chief gift to man and the one hope of the world. He had at last reached a profound conviction that the Catholic faith and Church constituted jointly the authentic and perma- nent form of that Christian religion, notwithstanding that in their field the tares had from the first been found with the wheat, and must ever be found. He beheved that before his England, and before the world there remained greater perils, and also greater possible glories, than at any preceding time ; that only through a pure and a com- plete Christianity, in its integrity and in its unity, those perils could be surmounted, and that glorious inheritance attained. These convictions had long deepened in his mind. The event has already largely proved his sagacity. If, through much of England, and also (though from very diff"erent causes) through much of the civilised world besides, one out of the two great main-streams of opinion rolls on in ever widening flood f wards the rapids of unbe- lief, it is largely owing to the genius, the courage, and the faithfulness of Newman that there rolls also a counter-tide in the direction of a larger, because humbler knowledge, a firmer faith, and a deeper peace. And yet all this might have been lost ! A single step astray, even in youth, might have transformed his charac- ter and career into one its opposite, changing imagination into unreality, intellectual subtlety into scepticism, spirit- ual ardours into polemical fierceness, heroic courage into a fatal presumption. It was only in their just subordina- tion, the lower to the higher, that all the various elements which had met in that strong nature, and which required CARDINAL NEWMAN 287 a discipline proportionately strong, could have been sus- tained in equipoise, and taught to correspond with that high Providence which shaped his way. LINES SUGGESTED BY A VOLUME OF CARDINAL NEWMAN'S POETRY. Hid in each cord there winds one central strand; Hid in each breast a panting heart doth lie ; Hid in the lines that map the Infant's hand There lurks, some say, a life-long destiny; Through the dropt leaf, 'gainst wintry sunset, scanned Shines that fine web whose firm geometry Sustained the nascent frame and each new dye Fed by spring dews, by autumn breezes fanned. Stamped on this Book what note we ? One decree Writ by God's finger on a destined Soul, That made each thought an act, and, leaving free The spirit, shaped the life into a whole : What was that great behest? that mastering vow? England, God's work completed, answer thou ! CHAPTER XIV REMINISCENCES OF CARDINAL MANNING T\ yTY first meeting with Cardinal Manning was at a din- -^^ -^ ner party at the house of the late Earl of Dunraven in 1849. He was ushered into the dining-room some time after we had sat down, and I had a good opportunity of observing a man of whom I had heard so much. I well remember saying to myself, ^' I see a word written on the forehead of that man, and that word is SacerdosT Later on I wrote of him thus to a friend : "- He is the most venerable, refined, gentle-natured, aspiring, and spiritually ardent man whom I know. He was delighted with Henry Taylor's poem in memoiy of your husband (Edward Ernest Villiers) . ^ Did you know him ? ' I asked, when he spoke to me of that exquisite elegy. ^Know him?' was the answer; * we were companions at Merton College, Oxford.' One evening at Lavington we read to each other alternately passages out of Dante's ^ Paradiso,' and agreed that there was more theology within the laurelled head of that grand old bard than in the heads of half the bishops now living." Not long afterwards I passed several days with Manning at his Rectory house at Lavington, of which parish he was then rector. Each day we dined at the palace of the Bishop of Oxford, which was very near the parsonage. One of those days we ascended through the woods to the summit of the Downs, and walked along them, enjoying REMINISCENCES OF CARDINAL MANNING 289 the magnificent prospect which they command. That night we walked till a very late hour up and down before the hall-door of the parsonage. Our conversation was chiefly on theology, but not a little on poetry also. For that he had plainly a great admiration, provided that the verse was of a severe order, both intellectual and spiritual ; but neither he nor Newman ranked Wordsworth as highly as I did. Again he recurred to Dante, and after quoting a remarkable passage, exclaimed vehemently : '' There is no poetry like Dante's : it is St. Thomas Aquinas put into verse ! Those two were the greatest of human minds ! '' — a saying recorded by me in a sonnet more than forty years later. Sir Henry Taylor's poetry had a great inter- est for him, as well as for Cardinal Newman, and for the same reason — namely, its union of compact strength with classic grace and refinement, and its freedom both from the sensational and the eff'eminate. Neither he nor New- man liked poetry that did not include a strong element of the severe as well as of the thoughtful. By degrees the chief characteristics which belonged to Manning impressed me with more and more of definite- ness. One of these was his extreme intellectual self-pos- session, a quality in which he w^as a signal contrast to Carlyle, who seemed to me unable to '' do his thinking *' until he had worked himself up into an intellectual passion, as the lion is said to prepare himself for action of another .sort by first lashing himself into a rage. Manning had also the moral counterpart of this intellectual habit in a self-control which was so marked that no one looking upon him could well imagine his being carried away by any sudden impulse. This singular dehberateness and 19 290 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERB ' serenity were sometimes charged upon^ him as coldnesfc There are, however, many different sorts of ardour. Arch- bishop Whately used to speak of his great friend, Dr. Arnold, as one with a heart so warm that his friendships were to him what the closest ties of blood are to others ; while mere acquaintance were often to him what friends are to ordinary men. It seemed to me as if a great cause, rather than any individual man, was that which drew out the strongest ardours of Manning's nature. He might easily have preferred the interests of a great friend to his own ; but he would certainly have preferred that of a great cause to that of either self or friend. His human affections concentrated themselves on a few, while to the many beyond these he gave respect rather than admiration and a helpful and benevolent regard rather than ardent sympathies. The intensity of his nature, however, could not be doubted by any one who had seen him in church and at prayer. His stillness was one that seemed as if it could not have been shaken if the church had caught fire. Some human affections had also, it is said, acquired with him a character not less intense and indelible; but of these I had not been a witness, and never heard him speak. One of them was directed to his father. Every evening at Lavington he used to walk up to say his vespers in a little church where there were then few or no wor- shippers, wearing a cloak much the worse for the wear. It had been his father's. His chief friend, I think, was Robert Wilberforce. He preserved other relics, perhaps more precious, as I learned when travelling with him to Rome. We stopped at Avignon ; and a few minutes after our diligence entered REMINISCENCES OF CARDINAL MANNING 29 1 the courtyard of our hotel, a small black bag belonging to him was missed. It had been stolen, and all inquiries, whether instituted by the police or the clergy, failed to recover it. He declared that whoever had it in his pos- session might keep what else it contained, which included ;^ioo in money, if only he restored the letters in it. At the first moment after the discovery of his loss the expres- sion of grief in his face and voice was such as I have seldom witnessed. He spoke little; and when I was beginning to speak, he laid his hand on my arm, and rsaid, '' Say nothing ! I can just endure it when I keep perfectly silent." The loss probably was that of his most precious memorials ; but it did not even at the time make him negligent of the *^ casual stranger." After he had given his directions we entered the dining room and he sat down apart. Not long afterwards he observed that at a small table not distant there sat a maid-servant, alone and neglected. The future Cardinal rose and did for her all that her master and mistress had forgotten to do. He brought a waiter to her, became her interpreter, and took care from time to time that nothing should be wanting to her dinner. When all efforts to recover the lost treasure had failed he went to Rome by sea, and I went to Florence. We met again at Rome. He met my inquiries with a brief reply : '* No ; the loss was probably necessary — necessary to sever all bonds to earth." He once said to me that he feared he had often had to lament great coldness, or apparent coldness, in his bearing to others. Here certainly no such coldness was apparent. The degree in which Manning had long lived in and for spiritual things threw probably a character of remote- 292 ' RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERB ness for him not only over all temporal things, but also over all human ties except the closest. He had been regarded as an Evangelical in his early clerical days, the rehgion then of most devout men ; and when the revived ** High Church " doctrine had blended that teaching with a larger one, he became a High Churchman of the most spiritual order. A large proportion of his works in his Catholic days illustrated the gifts of the Spirit, especially the book to which I believe he attached the most import- ance, namely, '' The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost." I remember his remarking to me that Archbishop Leigh- ton, to whose character and writings he was much attached, had in his youth had some intercourse with the Jesuits, and that their spiritual works had always to a certain degree retained an influence over him. It was thus with himself also. It was his speciality that with the ardent ecclesiastical principles of his mature years there was joined an unmistakable spirituality far higher than that of his early teaching, though quite consistent with it. The sincerity, and the reality — a different thing — of his ecclesiastical opinions, are amply illustrated in several volumes of his early sermons, the republication of which could not but help, as they did when they first appeared, to advance the cause of Church Principles. These last were, ere long, to be severely tested. Not a few occur- rences took place, and several ecclesiastical judgments were pronounced which were more or less opposed to these principles ; but, though he lamented them, they did not abate his profound attachment to the Church of Eng- land — long, indeed, his strongest passion, as it was mine also. At last came the Gorham Judgment, which left the REMINISCENCES OF CARDINAL MANNING 293: doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration an open question in: the Anglican fold. A solemn address was almost imme- diately issued. It was signed by Manning and fourteen other prominent High Churchmen, cleric and lay, and affirmed that that Judgment, unless cancelled, must fix a gulf between the Church of England and the primitive Church, and deprive her of all teaching authority. The Judgment was not cancelled, and Manning surrendered his Ecclesiastical preferment, though not immediately. Daily his secession was expected, but it did not come for two years. And nothing can be more erroneous than the imputation that he acted on that occasion under the influ- ence of temper, or precipitately. I remember his saying to me, during one of my visits to Lavington, — '* Leaving one's Church we ought to regard as the most awful of all things next to death and judgment'*; adding, after a pause, *' yet we have all to die, and all to be judged.'* He waited till no hope remained of the Gorham Judgment being reversed. My own opinions as to the immense seriousness of the crisis had been quite as advanced as Manning's from the time when the Gorham judgment was passed, and it had become plain that it was not to be cancelled. Many troubled pamphlets came out from time to time, written by High Churchmen '' perplexed in the extreme," and propounding theories according to which the condition of things, bad as it was acknowledged to be, was yet one that -might be borne with under protest. These theories we TDOth regarded as ''jury-mast theories," under which we -were invited to sail while the ship was dragging the mast recently blown over. I remember Manning meeting them 294 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE with a dry remark, " If a man traffics long with such sophisms, he will fall at last into a confirmed habit of babbhng and talking nonsense/' Old prepossessions and consequent misgivings were, however, strong with me, for I had long thought it a duty of loyalty to read Church his- tory through Anglican spectacles. I remember Manning s quiet answer to a remark of mine. ** Our position is not pleasant,'* I said. ** The waves rise ; our vessel leaks, and assumes, besides, a good deal the look of a merchant ves- sel. Near us rides a ship, vast, majestic, and secure. But then there remains an ugly doubt, when we think of the charges brought against her in our youth — namely, may not that stately ship have come from an infected port and have the plague on board?" His face shrivelled up into an expression of humorous vexation as he replied, *' Or, at least, bugs ! *' Cardinal Manning has often been accused of being ambi- tious. It seems to me that, as regards that fault, and as regards a very different one, superstition, there are two Ways of escaping the snare — namely, that of being above it, and that of being below it. Many, no doubt, are pre- served from all temptation to ambition by a noble humility and spirituality, and by the absence of self-love ; while others are preserved from it by indolence or frivolity, or the absence of all high aspiration. A man conscious of great powers will generally wish to have a sphere in which he can exercise them for the benefit of mankind, even if he be unusually free from those lower motives which change it into a vulgar ambition. Nay, without any such alloy, or ambition of an unworthy kind, strong faculties may, by a natural instinct, crave a field for their exercise> REMINISCENCES OF CARDINAL MANNING 295 as bodily energies do without reproach. Manning would never, I am sure, have desired a position which he knew .might be occupied by another with more benefit to man- kind ; neither would he have been slow to suspect that he might, himself be unequal to its duties. His enemies do not attribute, failure to him when tested. That his promo- tion to the archbishopric of Westminster was neither sought nor desired seems to be indicated by the enclosed letter : St. Mary of the Angels, May 26, 1865. My dearest Aubrey, — I write under great pressure. A few- words rather than none. You were one of the first I thought of when this thing came on me, and I wish I could see you. It all seems so much like an illusion. I only trust no personal faults pf mine may hinder the work you truly describe. The way this act of the Holy Father has been received here is as far beyood piy thoughts as the act itself. The consecration is here on June 6. Next day I hope to start for Rome for the pall, without which I can do nothing. Always yours very affectionately, H. E. Manning. As little is gratified ambition indicated in the following letter, written when its writer was created Cardinal: Rome, March 26, 1875. I wish you were here with me. You say truly that this is a time of very mixed feeling. If I can better serve the Church, so be it ! For myself, it is a restraint upon the liberty I have hitherto enjoyed. Moreover, any one who in the world's eyes rises high is thought to seek it, and love it ; and that hinders his work for souls. God knows whether that has been so with me. And I will wait for the last day. 2g6 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE St. Andrew^s and St. Gregory's are the same. It is a great pleasure to me. 1 always was drawn to that church, and Bede's * History of the Anglo-Saxons' gave me always a great love of St. Gregory, besides all that I had for him as Pontifif and Doctor. One thing I feel, as I said. It is like being told off to fight the persecution which from Berlin will spread wide. And for this I have a good will. Affectionately yours, Henry E., Cardinal Manning. There was the less reason to attribute Cardinal Man- ning's rise to ambition, in the bad sense of that word, because he manifestly possessed that union of qualities which almost inevitably leads to eminence unless a man is resolved not to accept it. He was, at the same time, a man of great energy and of great circumspection. The practical qualities of a man of business were in him blended with the contemplative faculties necessary for the theologian. He had ardent convictions ; but when events had finally taken a course opposed to them, he was not prevented by temper from accepting the inevit- able and making the best of it. This was a thing the more easy for him because he did not attribute bad mo- tives to opponents ; he not only admitted, but constantly remembered how often men with equal sincerity and equal capacity see things from the most opposite points of view. He had a profound conviction that the temporal authority of the Pope, however small the territory within which it was to be exercised, is necessary — that is, in the long run necessary — for his independence, and that his independence is an essential part of Christian civ- REMINISCENCES OF CARDINAL MANNING 297 ilisation and the well-being alike of all nations, whether Catholic or Protestant. This opinion had on various occasions been strongly expressed on political and phil- osophical grounds by the most eminent Liberal statesmen, English and French, such as Palmerston, Brougham, and Thiers, as well as by the leading Italian patriots of an earlier day, who believed that the dignity of Italy, as well as her security, required that the Pope should retain Rome as its sovereign, and thus not be subjected to, or supposed to be subjected to, any Civil Power. Cardinal Manning was, of course, of that opinion. The following extracts from two letters, the last written about eighteen years later than the first, show how deeply he felt on the subject; and at the same time how far he was from thinking that a remedy was to be sought for what he deemed a great folly and a great wrong, through any forcible interference with the rights or the claims, real or so-called, of the Italian people : September 21, 1870. The Italians have forced their way into Rome; and as I believe that there is a God that judgeth the earth, so sure I am that their doom will not tarry. Bat (naming an influ- ential ItaHan) has poisoned honest, simple, kindly minds, till they hate the Vicar of Christ, and all that is noble, as false and base, and love what is base and false, as if it were just and good. May God avert the judgment we deserve. Your affect. H. E. M. Again he wrote: April 19, 1888. My dear Aubrey, — By all means publish your sonnets on E.ome (''St. Peter's Chains") by themselves, and soon. I am watching with anxiety what is passing in Italy, being fully con- 298 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE vinced that Rome can only return to the Pope /^^ the will of the Italian people^ and that armed intervention or diplomatic pres- sure will only revive and harden the opposition of the Italian people. If it were restored by either of these interventions ab extra, it could stand by support af? extra over again, from which may Heaven preserve us. I am glad you like the ^^Religio Viatoris '' ; the chain of reasoning cannot be broken. The premises may be disputed ; but the logic is, I believe, safe. I am reading some of Matthew Arnold's poems with great delight. What I read years ago I did not much take to; but '^Thyrsis" and some of the " Paganism'* is of a very high order. Always yours affectionately, Henry E., C. Archbishop. Looking back on the career of an old friend at his departure, after the question as to how far that career w^as a noble one, there comes another — namely, how far it w^as a happy one. Cardinal Manning's was, as far as I can judge, a singularly happy one, not in the sense of having had manifold enjoyments, or of having escaped severe afflictions, but in a higher sense of the word happiness. His life had not, I think, brought him many joys from many sources ; yet it had conferred on him much joy from a few, but these the highest. His hap- piness was almost wholly of a spiritual order, either directly or indirectly. He had a sleepless faith, and one that so penetrated all his faculties that it brought the whole of his life into a unity. Some would have said that his nature was not as wide as it was high. It was not wide in the sense of being, like that of a great dra- matist, in strong sympathy with many things of a very contrasted character, some high and some low; but it REMINISCENCES OF CARDINAL MANNING 299 was wide in the sense of seeing the same clear hght reflected from many remote objects; and for him it was not true that only ** the low sun makes the colour." He had, like Cardinal Newman, a keen sense of the humorous, though the general character of his mind was a severe seriousness. He had a great love of music, though in church he could only tolerate ascetic music. The other arts gave him a deep delight also ; but only in those austerer forms of them in which their highest as well as their earliest specimens had bravely challenged the human heart, and but slightly the mere senses; and when, in early Christian days, the canvas of Cimabue and Giotto seemed to have caught the sacred shadows flung from the ensanguined walls and vaulted roofs of the catacombs, and to have glorified them. When we visited together the Italian galleries, he passed by, as if he did not see them, the pictures of the later schools, round which the larger groups collected, and gazed long upon a Fra Angehco with a gaze that reminded me of Leigh Hunt's fine remark, *'A great picture is a window. Through it, we look beyond it — far down long vistas of thought.*' His friends scolded him for this exclusiveness. They did not know that we see many things only through blind- ness to many things. The love of literature was in Manning as strong as the love of art, while to many it seemed to restrict itself within as narrow limits. Here, too, he was narrow in one sense, but wide in another. His intellect was a sternly consistent one, and therefore whatever was op- posed, not in form only, but in spirit also, to his strongest convictions, or to his deepest sympathies, found in him "^ 00 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE no acceptance. The lesser merits seemed to him only to wage war on the greater. On the other hand, in what he admired he found more to admire than ordinary admirers find in their wider range. In the case of pagan writers he could make large allowance for the mode in which the subjects they treated must have presented themselves from the pagan point of view. He did not believe that religion required that every book should be didactic ; but, on the other hand, he could not forgive those who, in Christian ages and Christian lands, wrote in a strain such as the nobler writers of pagan days would have regarded as a sin not only against decorum but against letters. Among our later poets, I think that the two whom he admired most were Alfred Tennyson and Henry Taylor. Of my father's '' Mary Tudor '* he wrote thus, several years after its publication : — ^' It is work of a mind, high, large, and good : — conception and continuity and intellectual purpose throughout. As to beauty, it is less the beauty of the eye and ear, though there is much of that also, than of the ideal and the spiritual world. And in this its beauty is very great. This is the result of one hasty reading, but I shall not only read it again, but I feel that I have one more book that I can read again and again, as I can the * Life of St. Thomas of Canterbury.' " Perhaps my feeling may be tinged by sympathy and the * Idola Ecclesiastica.' But Gladstone's is not : and we agree in considering * Mary Tudor ' the finest drama since Shakespeare's time. It is to me one more evidence of the injustice or the incapacity of readers and critics, that it should be unknown.'* No one can read Manning's numerous volumes, espe- cially those of his later years, without perceiving from the REMINISCENCES OF CARDINAL MANNING 301 style alone — which, as an Anglican bishop, Dr. Charles Harris, once remarked to me, had '' edges as keen as the edge of a knife*' — that style must have been with him a careful study. To that study I only heard him allude once, and then in terms very characteristic. ^* In my youth, and when beginning to write, I took great pains, with my style. I am ashamed of this. It was unworthy.'^ Walter Savage Landor would not have approved that opinion. He took greater pains himself, and might have replied, ^' Your humility tramples on the pride of Plato with a greater pride '' ; or he might have answered : '* You are wrong; Bacon, when he published his great work, prefixed to it the words, ^* These were the thoughts of Francis Bacon, of which that posterity should become possessed he deemed to be their advantage.'' High thoughts are a trust for the benefit of others, whose attention, in the absence of a befitting garb for them, they do not adequately challenge. Landor was proud, not only of his style, but of the pains which he took with it. That care, he said, should be only in part concealed ; light touches of the chisel should remain on the marble. Newman also wrote with extraordinary care, but his care was only to be plain. I do not think that beautiful scenery contributed much to the enjoyment either of Manning or Newman; and both of them, I feel sure, would have agreed with Sir Henry Taylor in preferring the wide plains and rich valleys of Italy, bordered by majestic mountains with graceful outlines — mountains that knew how to keep their distance — to the Alpine peaks and precipices. I took him once to Monk Coniston, the exquisite abode 302 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE of Mr. and Mrs. Garth Marshall, and one of the loveliest regions in England's lake country, but he seemed to me to look on its mountains, and those about Windermere, as he looked on their poet, Wordsworth — that is, with respect, entire approval, and a reasonably warm regard, rather than with enthusiasm. The scenes he most en- joyed were those in which he could most effectually labour for his fellowmen, and especially for their moral interests. In such labours he was indefatigable; nay, they seemed rather to sustain his strength than exhaust it. He had a wonderful gift for administration, system- atising all his duties, never being in a hurry, finding out the aptitudes of those about him, and using them to the best advantage. When he had toiled all day, to preach in the evening was a rest to him; it meant simply thinking aloud, often an easier thing than thinking in silence. He was as much a spiritual utilitarian as if he had been a Jesuit. When a gentleman of great munificence once promised to build a cathedral for him at the cost of ;i^300,ooo I can imagine his replying carelessly, ** AH right '* ; but he raised, after arduous and unceasing efforts, ;^20,ooo to provide Catholic schools, in place of secular schools, for the Catholic children of his diocese. Manning was not an enthusiastic man, and it was not from imaginative excitements that his religious happiness was drawn. Neither did it come to him chiefly because submission to authentic authority had led him out of the ''strife of tongues,'* for he was neither an indolent nor a nervous man. Soon after he became a Catholic, I heard that one of his old Anglican friends had written REMINISCENCES OF CARDINAL MANNING 303 to him, asking what he had found in Catholicism more than he had previously possessed, and that he had an- swered, *' Rest and security,*' or some words to the same effect. That answer was sharply commented upon. I wrote to him, asking whether he had used those words. His reply was, that his words were ** Certainty and Re- ality/' In another letter he said, '* I had expected to find in the Church the inexpugnable citadel of Faith; but I have found in it no less the home of Love.'* So it remained. Religion was the root of that peace which belonged to more than the last forty years of a life that had escaped neither its trials nor its frustrations. Among the latest of Cardinal Manning's letters to me is one which refers to one of the last of his public acts, that one in which he consented, probably against his will, to take a part as an arbitrator at the time of the great London strikes: You must have thought me strangely careless in not thank- ing you for your affectionate and interesting letter. It came to me in the midst of the strikes. Since then I have been again and again trying to avert new contentions. And now as to the strike : I can only say that I never thought of it till I found myself in it; and I believe that our Lord used me as He did Balaam's ass. I have been so long working with working men that it is no difficulty to me ; and somehow I am known to the English working men as well as to any. They listened to me readily from the first. Give my kind regards to your brother Stephen, and my thanks for his excellent version of Horace — a hard task well done. Christmas, 1889. It was not all who made the same friendly estimate of Cardinal Manning as was made by his brother archdea- 304 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE con in their Anglican diocese, Julius Hare, at a clerical meeting held soon after Manning's submission to Rome : ^'Alas! we shall hear that divine eloquence no more at our meetings/' Not long after that submission, I remem- ber hearing three successive reports about him circulated among parties who had a quick ear for whatever illus- trated what was called *'the deterioration of converts/' The first was that he had been seen walking in the Corso at Rome with a hunting-whip in his hand, and in a shooting-jacket opprobrious with large horn buttons ; the second Avas that he had taken an Italian farm; and the third was that he had already manifested such a spirit of insubordination that the Pope had been obliged to send him to prison. In his later life, rumour, which had come in as a lion, went out as a lamb, and limited itself to assertions that his unusually ''Liberal" opinions in politics had only been assumed as the best way of playing a Catholic game in England. This assumption was a mistake. His political opinions were more " Lib- eral" than mine had ever been, for I had ever clung to those convictions which I had learned in my youth from Edmund Burke ; but, such as they were, he had expressed them no less in his Anglican than in his Catholic days, opposed in that respect to Newman and Pusey. He might perhaps have echoed an expression attributed to Lacordaire on his death-bed, '' I die a penitent Catholic and an impenitent Liberal." All prejudices against him, as against Cardinal Newman, had died away many years before his death. Manning had, I believe, no resent- ments. Certainly he never confounded the man with the doctrine and, therefore, while uncompromising as REMINISCENCES OF CARDINAL MANNING 30J regards the doctrine, he was never uncharitable to the individual. No one was more zealously a believer in what is sometimes called '^invincible ignorance," but ought to be called 'involuntary ignorance'' of certain great truths; but he might have also remarked that in our spiritual as in our material heritage, poverty need be no more a sin than wealth is, provided that it is *' honestly come by." Such a comment upon the poet's ''honest doubt" would seem to mean no more than that God alone knows the heart. I remember Manning's saying to me, "We must always remember that no man is lost whom Infinite Power, Infinite Wisdom and Infi- nite Love can save." He had sympathy with those to whom he appeared very severe. Thus, writing in 1890 of the "Salvation Army," he said, "If General Booth can gather under human influence and guidance those whom all other agencies for good have not yet reached, who shall forbid him?" He was for friendly co-operation where that was practicable, and once he remarked, '* It was the Quakers who had originated the Anti-slavery Society." The charge against him that he Vv^'as a cold-hearted man certainly was not sanctioned by his known love for children, and his exclamation on one occasion, " A child's needless tear is a blood-blot on this earth." The most remarkable characteristic of Cardinal ]\Ian- ning's intellect appeared to me to be its pellucid clearness, a clearness by most men attained through eftort, but his naturally and inevitably. It v/as apparently the result of an intensely keen logical facult}^ but one not exercised in the common syllogistic form, but after a more trans- 20 306 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE cendental fashion. It is this unconscious form of logic which enables a man to arrange as if by intuition, the whole subject matter of his thought as if from a height, and thus to form a right judgment upon it. Another characteristic of his intellect was its unusual combination of this scientific faculty with imagination. Cardinal Man- ning had two great favourites among thinkers. Without instituting any comparison between him and them as regards the comparative degree in which he and they possessed those two faculties, v/hich, at all events, he possessed in common with each, the following sonnet expresses that which eminently characterised his intellect also: CARDINAL MANNIXG. Lavington and Rome. I learned his greatness first at Lavington. The moon had early sought her bed of brine, But we discoursed till now each starry sign Had sunk. Our theme was one, and one alone, " Two Minds supreme," he said, ^' our earth has known; One sang in science, one served God in song, Aquinas, Dante." Slowly in me grew strong A thought : " These two great minds in him are one. Lord, what shall this man do ? " Later, at Rome, Beside the dust of Peter and of Paul Eight hundred mitred sires of Christendom In council sat. I marked him 'mid them all. I thought of that long night in years gone by, And cried, " At last my question meets reply." CHAPTER XV MY SUBMISSION TO THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH THIS event took place in November, 185 1. In 1885 I recorded that act and its motives in a letter to one of my earliest and nearest friends. It may have an interest for some. I subjoin most of it. It is quite true that you could not know either the full grounds or the chief grounds on which, after a youth mainly devoted to theological study, and only in a lesser degree to literature, philosophy, and poetry, I arrived at a final decision on the most important crisis of my life, and acted on that decision. Few of my early friends materially altered their relations with me on my becom- ing a Catholic; but several of them attributed that act to supposed causes, to which they were doubtless indulgent, but with which it had absolutely no connection whatso- ever. On this matter they made few enquiries, if any; and I always abstain from introducing the personal into discussions on subjects of such importance. Some, I know, attributed my change to excitement, impressive- ness, imaginative sympathies, or a preference of logical subtleties to common-sense views of things, and others to a great power of deceiving myself by ingenuities after the will had once received a bias. It may please you to know that, whether my final choice was wise or the con- trary, none of those things to which it was attributed by 308 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERB such persons had anything to do with it, whereas things of a wholly dissimilar nature had a great deal. Some of the qualities I have named may have been in my char- acter; but persons of the age I had then reached, thirty- seven, have generally learned to be on their guard, on great occasions, against their most mischievous charac- teristics, and many would have said that my submission to the Catholic Church was out of my character, and stood by itself and apart from all the previous portion of my life. This may be so. I had an exaggerated love of everything that looked like personal freedom, and never relished binding myself to any final position. If I had acted like an ingenious self-deceiver, it would have been easier for me than for most persons, I believe, to have adopted one of the many ''views'' under which most of the "High Churchmen'' reconciled themselves to their position. The "perverts" considered that those views were sophistries, though com- monly prompted by amiable, and seldom by interested mo- tives, and that they were absolutely opposed to "simple" views, respecting the great religious crisis. All such views had been condemned beforehand by a document published in all the newspapers, which was signed by fifteen of the most eminent of the Anglican leaders, and affirmed that the Gorham decision on baptism was a repudiation of an article in the Nicene Creed, that it disowned the early Church, and that it left the Church of England without any "teaching authority." I had myself arrived at the same conclusion long before, that is, on the hypothesis that the "judgment" would be what it turned out to be. About one-half of those who signed MY SUBMISSION TO THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 309 that document remained where they were, and the rest became Roman Catholics. So did I, but not at once, or very soon. As regards my friends' theory about my imaginative sympathies having led me astray, I may remark that they had been repelled, not attracted by what I thought an excess of ceremonial in the churches and elsewhere when in Italy during past years. It seemed to me too sensuous ; thus I often preferred outline to shaded engravings, and both to pictures except where the colouring was unusually refined. What was expressed with any touch of exag- geration had always been to me far less impressive than what was skilfully suggested only. A service rich in detail was often much less to me than a brief descrip- tion of it. As regards the precipitation with which I was cred- ited, let me place a fact beside the theory. Soon after the Gorham case had been decided, I was one of a party of High Churchmen who met at a breakfast in the house of Dr. Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford. After he and some of his guests had gone upstairs, we discussed the question what was to be done by those who agreed that the Church of England had formally repudiated High Church Principles, unless she distinctly repudiated that judicial tribunal which had set them at naught — a tribunal to which, whether she approved of it or not, she long remained subject. Some affirmed that as " Church Principles *' had always admitted that the Roman Catholic Church, whatever its defects might be, was a true part of Christ's Church, we had no choice save that of accepting her authority if the Anglican body had 310 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE ceased to be a part of it. Others said that we should now, on the contrary, learn to distrust "Church Prin- ciples,*' since we had accepted them first in the full belief that they did not lead to Rome. I was asked my opinion. I answered that it seemed to me equally true that " Church Principles " could no longer be reconciled with the new position of the English community, and also that many of us had probably accepted them more easily than we should otherwise have done in the full belief that that body sincerely held them, and that they did not lead to Rome. Their position, I thought, rendered any precipi- tate course wrong. The duty of persons so placed was, as it seemed to me, to renew a study of " Church prin- ciples *' themselves, giving a considerable time to it, but renouncing avowedly at the same time, as a temptation, what had, till the late Judgment, seemed a duty of loyalty — namely, all '* Anglican'* prepossessions. It would be our duty as openly to discard those principles if they could not stand the test of that renewed study; and, in case they did stand it, then to renounce, at any cost to our- selves, a body which had either practically repudiated them or had never really held them. Robert Isaak Wilberforce (the Bishop's elder brother), whose learning had earned for him the name of the "walking dictionary of the Church of England,*' after a pause, replied to this effect, "That would be the wise and honest course." I gave two years to that renewed study before I took the final step. Some of my friends feared that I was at that time in a state of excitement and agitation. That was a mistake. I was much absorbed in it; but it had long been my MY SUBMISSION TO THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 3 II custom to meditate in a somewhat frigid and merely intellectual way on matters which should probably have been otherwise regarded because they also involved moral and spiritual issues, not less than intellectual. I was profoundly interested in this after-study — for I saw the greatness of the problem — but not the least agitated or distressed. I had early stated openly that on the issue of my study depended my discarding '' Church Principles/' or realising them in the Roman Catholic Church, which had never ceased to hold them, and with them the full body of Christian Truth. To tell thus much to my friends seemed a duty of frankness to them, and it also left me more entirely free. The conclusion at which I eventually arrived was this: that '' Church Principles '' were an essential part of Chris- tianity itself and not an ornamental adjunct of it; and that they were external, not as our clothes are, but as the skin is external to the rest of our body. The Apostles' Creed has affirmed three supreme doctrines which included all others — namely, the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Church. What God had joined it was not for man to separate. God's Church was created when God's revela- tion was given. When it was still in the future it was distinctly announced in his parables — the chief subject of his preaching, and in them called generally His "Kingdom." She is the temple of the Holy Spirit Who descended upon her at the Feast of Pentecost. That Pentecost was no transient gift. It is as permanent on earth as the Incarnation of the Divine Son is in Heaven. It is the witness of that Divine Son, and to His whole Revelation; and that witness which alone can be borne to 312 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE the successive generations so long as a Church, organic cally and visibly as well as spiritually one, affirms the one Truth through the one Spirit. This is what makes schism- a grave offence; apart from this the charge would be un- meaning. It was owing, as I saw, to the Church which maintained Unity that even the separated religious bodies hold the large portion of Revealed Truth which several of them retain, as it is from our planet itself, which is the great magnet, that all the lesser magnets on the earth derive their magnetic power. Such were the convictions which I had reached. This is not the place for m.e to state in detail the reasons which led me to them. Many of them I have set forth in published essays.^ I am not now dealing with theo- logical argument, but with a religious chapter in my own life. For argument this is not the place. When in earlier times friends of mine had become Roman Catholics, I never felt myself competent to criticise them. I could not feel myself alienated from them, because I soon found out that to them the change had been, not that they had relinquished any part of their Christianity, but that their belief included much more than before, and was held by them with much more of reality and certainty, to use the language of Cardinal Manning. My own attachment to- the "Anglican Church,'' as we called it, had been from^ boyhood that ardent thing which Wordsworth tells us that his love for his country had ever been. If from levity or waywardness, not serious misgiving, any one spoke against it, I was much displeased. I had long thought it a duty ^ Religious Problems of the Nineteenth Century (St. Anselm's Society ,, •6 Agar Street, Charing Cross, London). MY SUBMISSION TO THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 313 to see things largely through her eyes; and certainly the religious body to which a man owes his earliest Christian hope has strong claims upon him, though not the strongest. At the time of the Gorham judgment, for the Courts to have stood by the teaching of early times and creeds must have driven a large proportion of the Evangelical clergy out of the national establishment. I remembered Cardi- nal Newman's celebrated saying — namely, ''A separated and national Church must be national first, and after that as orthodox as it can afford to be.'' To me it was plain that the *^ Anglican Church" had been tested and found wanting, and that true loyalty could now be exercised alone toward that Church universal, into which alone, and not into any local Church, the Christian is baptised. While the Gorham controversy was raging, an eminent statesman read me a sentence in a pamphlet published a few days later. It affirmed that not to repudiate, as a body, a heterodox judgment pronounced by an authority which the Church of England as a body had long since recognised as supreme, was to accept that judgment; and it ended, I think, with words like these, '' She has now to choose between the portion of the bride and the mess of potage.'' Most of the High Churchmen remained with her. I sided with the minority and left her. Which class changed their position, and which changed their principles.^ It was those who refused to do the latter whom the world stigmatised as weaklings. It was those who affirmed, and acted on that affirmation, that loyalty was due, both to the State in civil things, and also to the Church, one and universal, in spiritual things, whom the world pronounced disloyal. 314 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE Some of my friends fancied that in my " conversion to Rome'* I had been a victim to polemics, for which they supposed me to have a passion. I had nothing of the sort. I had an immense reverence for theology which (apart from its divine claims) unites whatever is deepest in philosophy, most exalted in poetry, and most fruitful and instructive in history. Polemics, on the contrary, I had always looked upon as a painful and ungracious warfare, from which theology cannot separate itself as long as the Church remains in its present militant con- dition. The temper is not a good temper, and many who have fought a good fight in it have been the worse for it. What affected me most during my two years of renewed study respecting " Church Principles '* was not found mainly in controversial works. It was found first in the Holy Scriptures. Daily I felt more and more how mar- vellous was the blindness of the many to the large degree in which the teaching of our Divine Lord, especially in His parables, related to His Church, in them commonly named "His Kingdom.'' His teaching had evidently been to a great extent a preparatory teaching concerning that Church which was to spring into existence on His Ascension into Heaven, and on the descent of the Holy Spirit — that Church which He had commanded to teach the nations. Not less striking was the degree in which the unity of that teaching was connected with the unity of that Church, and the degree in which both these unities were connected with that one Apostle who was to "strengthen his brethren'' by being an abiding principle of organic unity. The aid I received from uninspired writers came to me MY SUBMISSION TO THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 315 also, not from writers of the polemical but the philo- sophical school, and chiefly from Coleridge, Bacon, and St. Thomas Aquinas. For the first of these I had learned from Sir William Hamilton a great reverence, and I saw no reason to discard it (any more than to change my political opinions and throw over Edmund Burke), though of course allowance was to be made for Coleridge's inherited position. Coleridge had said some hard things of Rome, but his admissions in her favour were much more remarkable. He had asserted that nearly all her doctrines affirmed great Ideas, but had condensed those Ideas into idols. That seemed to me his rhetorical way of saying that Catholicism was a religion, and not a mere philosophy. Coleridge's "Philosophy of Pure Reason'* had long before shown me that the so-called philosophical charges against the Church were but cavils proceeding from what Coleridge calls "the Understanding,'' or the inferior "faculty judging according to sense " ; that many of these charges would militate against the chief mys- teries of Revelation; and that, though the philosophy of Locke might make much of them, St. Augustine and Plato would have passed them by with the remark that the question really lay deeper down. Next as to Bacon. I studied attentively all that Bacon has left to us on the subject of religion, as indeed I had done before. It seemed most precious and most disap- pointing. It has golden sentences as grand and imag- inative as anything in Plato. It is not only great in intelligence, but his heart too was "in the right place" to a degree not universal among philosophers. But there is an omission in his writings on the subject more wonderful 3l6 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE than all that they include. The great master of modern philosophy, often ignored, in questions relating to re- ligion, by those who, in science, '*take his name in vain,'* had a wholly special vocation and ambition. As the father of modern philosophy, his highest ambition had been, not to gather in the great harvest of thought, but to show the mode in which the soil was to be cultivated, so as in future to yield its true increase; and he had taken to himself, not physical science only, but *' all knowl> edge ''as his portion, affirming that spiritual knowledge — the knowledge of God — was far the highest form of knowledge. He was the great teacher of Method. What was his method in the physical sciences.'^ We all know it was Induction. Next, v/hat was his method in religion.'^ He put forv/ard none. He shirked the sub- ject. Yet that surely was the great question for the age of the Reformation. A Method had been in full operation on this subject for fifteen centuries and more, and a thoroughly scientific Method. The method was not Induc- tion but Deduction. The deducer of truth from truth was that Church which St. Paul affirmed to be the pillar and the ground of Truth, and to the founders of which our Divine Lord promised that the Holy Spirit would both recall all things to their minds, and also lead them on into all truth, upon one condition namely, that they should always continue to be 07ie, even as the Father and the Son are one. ^ The great philosopher had no answer respect- ing *' Method'' in Theology which did not condemn the ^ I have treated this great question in an essay entitled the ** Philosophy of the Rule of Faith " — " Essays Literary and Ethical " (Macmillan and Co.)» and elsewhere in other essays. MY SUBMISSION TO THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 317 Reformation. He said things complimentary to the clergy in the reign of Her Most Gracious Majesty. He indulged in persiflage: — " He dallied with his golden chain, And, smiling, put the question by." My third teacher at that great crisis of my life was St Thomas Aquinas, whom I studied in a compendium of his " Summa Theologiae " a work written centuries before a polemical war between Protestantism and Catholicism was heard of. It became daily clearer to me that the objections brought against Catholic teaching were founded on misconceptions caused because portions of it had been considered apart from other portions supplemental to them, just as, in Holy Scripture, text and context are supplemental to each other. A single illustration of this Avill suffice. It is sometimes alleged that the peace promised to man through the Catholic Rule of Faith pre- cludes the ennobling trials connected with "free enquiry,*' nay, are inconsistent with a state of probation. But this notion could hardly have occurred to one who knew that, according to other parts of Catholic teaching, full peace is a condition reserved for the Church triumphant, and rests upon the beatific vision ; that Purgatory helps those imper- fectly sanctified on earth ina way apart from both action and probation; while on the other hand, it is the very special- ity of the Church militant on earth that it must be ever- more the place of trial, action, labour, and probation; and that all the more in proportion as Christians ascend in sanctity. The Christian will always have his trials; but these are not like the pagan's trials. God has given him 3l8 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE aids which the pagan lacked, and the chief of those is revealed truth. Divine truth has been revealed in an intelligible, not an unintelligible, manner. We have been taken out of a spiritual chaos and placed in the midst of a spiritual civilisation, that of the Civitas Dei. Its citizens have severe trials, but not the trials of the nomadic tribes. Our feet have been planted on the rock. Does it follow that we are to lie down upon that rock and go to sleep .^ That is the condition which St. Thomas counts *^ sloth,'' and sloth he includes among the mortal sins. If each of the Christian generations, like the first, has received the Truth gratis, it has, like the first, to pay for it by living the truth as well as believ- ing it. The truth has been accorded to Christians when in the normal condition of Christians, with the full cer- tainty of faith; their attitude towards it is not that of discovery (as their attitude is to science), but that of fidelity. Another thing which I learned from St. Thomas Aquinas was that the Church's '^Rule of Faith'' could not have been a mere despot's claim, even if she had not been needed as a teacher, because her power to teach is included in her other and still higher attributes. The Church is the dispenser of sacraments, and the truth is a great sacrament. If errors as well as abuses have grown up locally, it is the Church alone, and the Church in its unity which can correct those errors without committing her children first to petty local tyrannies, and then to mere opinions substituted for faith, certain and real. St. Thomas led me on and up into regions of thought far above the ''polemical." He taught me that the real MY SUBMISSION TO THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 319 question at issue was not that of a single doctrine, how- ever sacred. It was this. Is Faith Certainty? If so, it can move mountains. Is it but opinion? If so, even when a true opinion, it cannot add a cubit to a man's stature. It was not for mere opinions that the martyrs died. Returning after a period of independent thought (an independence not challenged by me but forced on me), and after the study of long-honoured and not recent authorities, the arguments used by many of our more eminent writers during this season of distress, acquired for me a character not theirs before, especially the argu- ments of High Churchmen, which tempted me often to say, ''Their poverty and not their will consents/' They seemed plainly rhetorical, and often contradictory. Strong statements by vv^hich I had once been caught, now appeared but bravitra phrases, not what was needed — namely, exact thoughts. One old friend, a man of great learning and great rectitude, met my arguments by a statement that he had long since come to the opinion that ''scientific theology was an impossible thing.'' But a great man, Alexander Knox, who by many years had anti- cipated the Oxford High Church movement, had written that the time was approaching when the test of sound religion would be reached through a sound philosophy, as contrasted (so I understood him) with political considera- tions, the exigencies of an Establishment, or the traditions of merely local or national bodies, not those of a uni- versal and Apostolic character. His great friend and cor- respondent, Dr. Jebb, Bishop of Limerick, had said that the reason why Providence allowed the Roman Catholic 320 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE Church to stand so long was because, with all her faults, she was the only religious body in the West in which the doctrine of the Holy Trinity was always secure; which seemed to remind one of another statement respecting a body, the earthly head of which was to strengthen his brethren, and against which the gates of hell should never prevail. My honoured friend, F. D. Maurice, had been, like myself, a student of Coleridge, and had in a valuable work, entitled the ** Kingdom of Christ,'' asserted the claims of the Church upon grounds especially connected with Coleridge's philosophy. On this occasion, however, it seemed to me that his aversion to what he called "system'' had given him a declamatory mode of speaking, of writing, and of thinking; and that his defence of the then condition of the An2:lican Church amounted to little more than the statement that she still retained the power of witnessing to certain great ideas, including that of baptismal regeneration. Such a state- ment, I thought, might have sufficed for a philosophy, but not for a faith or a Church. Mr. Sewell admitted the seriousness of the heterodox Judgment; but could only suggest, when we discussed it, that "the bishops must go to the Queen about it." Another among the chief Anglican leaders, the excellent John Keble, replied to the arguments of a friend that, however the Church of England might err elsewhere, the truth would be found in his parish; and Dr. Pusey had replied, "We do not know what is the answer to these statements, but we know that there must be one." That seemed to me an insufficient answer when the question referred, not to a mystery affirmed by the Church universal, but simply MY SUBMISSION TO THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 32 1 to the present position of a single and isolated commun- ity to which no Divine promise had been given, and by which infallibility had never been claimed, but, on the con- trary, more than disowned. That separate Church stood now in a new relation to antiquity and to a primary doc- trine of the Nicene Creed. A new light had been thus thrown on the movement of the sixteenth century, and the real question had now become this — namely, whether a local Church ought not, at that time, to have referred the matters then in dispute to a General Council, not to have separated from the bulk of Christendom and the centre of unity from which she had derived her faith. I had lay advisers as well as clerical. I may as well mention that Carlyle was one of those who gave me the most curious form of warning : '' I have ridden over here to tell you not to do that thing. You were born free. Do not go into that hole.'' I answered: ''But you used always to tell me that the Roman Catholic Church was the only Christian body that was consistent, and could defend her position." He replied: ''And so I say still. But the Church of England is much better notwithstand- ing, because her face is titrned in the right direction, " I answered : " Carlyle, I will tell you in a word what I am about. I have lived a Christian hitherto, and I intend to die one." 21 CHAPTER XVI POLITICAL CHANGES WITNESSED BETWEEN 1848 AND 1895. DURING the later years of a long life I spent less of my time in foreign travel than when young. On the other hand, I occupied myself more with those great political events which have crammed a century of change into a few years. The present chapter records such of those events as I witnessed with deepest interest, and to which I recur most often in recollection — not without apprehension, but also not without hope. After a long period of comparative security, the year 1848 visited Europe with a series of convulsions such as had not visited the world for a long period. The crowns of ancient monarchies toppled over in rapid succession. Austria, Prussia, the smaller States of Germany and of Italy shared the shock, and the political reforms of Pope Pius the IXth were thus deprived of all chance of suc- cess. It seemed as if the new revolution was a universal one, if not one as sanguinary as the great French Revo- lution. Every day the journals were filled with "wars and rumours of wars *' ; now a dynasty had fallen ; now a republic had been proclaimed ; now an unpopular states- man had fled and barely saved his life. Among these last, two of the most eminent, men of very different characters and opinions, took refuge at first in London, Prince Metternich and Guizot. In a short time they met POLITICAL CHANGES 325 in one of the great social centres of London; and crowds pressed around to hear them as they discussed the situa- tion. The Austrian statesman relieved his wounded feelings by energetic statements that none of the recent misadventures had been to him the slightest surprise. *' Years ago, when so-and-so had occurred, my remark on the news was this ; two years later I prophesied as fol- lows.'' The catalogue of his predictions was a long one, and every one of them had been fulfilled to the letter. Griiizbt's reply was a brief one: "Enfin, mon prince, the only thing which you did not foresee was that you and I would be discussing these matters together in a London salon in the year 1848.'* I called on M. Guizot the day after; and when we had spoken on other interesting matters he made enquiries about Ireland, and I was very much pleased to find that some of his opinions on that sub- ject' coincided with what had long been my ov/n, especially' a great measure for State-aided colonisation from Ireland, — S measure on which I had written an article in the " Edinburgh Review." Had such a measure been enacted in time the Repeal agitation might never have arisen ; and the great famine would not have fallen on a population dependent almost wholly on agriculture and the potato. During that crisis the fate and fortunes of England were matters of interest to the whole world, and to none more than to the philosophic mind of Guizot. Would England alone resist the contagion of revolution, or was her greatness at last to be blown over.? Of course there was a considerable commotion among the manifold ele- ments of English society. Among the storm-spirits of the time the stormiest was a certain Irishman, Mni* 324 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE Feargus O'Connor. It is true that he was generally regarded as mad; but that did not diminish his influence over the masses. That influence helped to procure innu- merable signatures to a memorial demanding innumerable absurdities. It was carried in state to the official resi- dence of the Home Secretary — then, I think, Lord Mel- bourne — who refused to receive it, or even to allow it to remain in his hall. The repulse, however, only stimu- lated the would-be revolutionists to a fiercer zeal. They had heard of ancient dynasties which had recently fallen like a palace of cards because a mob had marched upon a parliament house. They resolved to try the experiment on a scale hitherto unattempted. They knew possibly that during the French Reign of Terror, the terrorising party in Paris constituted a party of 35,000 only, and the terrorised of 500,000. Perhaps they had heard that in the France of that day a needful and very large measure of reform had already been effected, and that the only reason why it was not completed, with the full consent of all the great powers both of State and of the Church, was because reform was hated by that party which was bent on revolution — and a revolution which should sepa- rate for ever the France of the future from the Christian France of the past, in deference to an infidel philosophy and a sensual literature. They gave notice that on a certain day a body of 200,000 men, carrying a banner, would march through London from that part at the south of the Thames. But on this occasion the party of order, a vast majority, did not leave the game in the hands of the minority. They too had an organisation. They had a great man, and they POLITICAL CHANGES 325 had the "saving common-sense'' of a great tradition. The whole upper class, whether Conservative or Liberal, stood together, and beside them stood the whole remainder of the propertied class; the shopkeepers firmly resolved to protect the shop windows of that city through which old Blucher rode soon after the battle of Waterloo, and which he laughingly pronounced to be "the finest city in the world for a loot/' The Government had supplied them all with batons, not firearms, and the Duke of Wellington had drawn up to London about six thousand troops beyond the usual garrison, and placed them in the spots where they would present the least of a threatening •appearance, and yet be most able to act if necessary. But the strength of the defence consisted in the absolute unity of action between the higher class and the humbler. Every twenty or thirty of the baton-wielding shopkeepers had at their head some person of note. Before the day of the projected revolution there was a close and genial intercourse between the leaders and the led ; and the next •day the then Earl of Arundel and Surrey, later Earl Marshal of England, gave a dinner to all those who had heen committed to his charge, as doubtless did many others. The army of the revolution marched to the bridges, and on them found a large body of police (backed by a large army of citizens), who quietly forbade them further progress. After a terrible protest and a brief consultation, the invading army executed a brilliant ■strategical movement towards the rear; and M. Guizot, when informed of the event, exclaimed, ''Le monde croule, et I'Angleterre ne croule pas." The sons of England had cause to be proud of their 326 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE country that day. If then, or soon afterwards, the ** Church Question '* and the '* Land Question '' had been settled, England and Ireland might haye.soon been brought into cordial relations. The golden opportunity was lost. An ecclesiastical storm suddenly arose, wholly in consequence of a misconception. A large addition to the number of Roman Catholics had taken place in Eng- land, not from conversion, but from recent Irish immi- gration into England. At last it became natural and expedient to substitute for the system of "Vicars Apostolic,*' which had placed all ecclesiastical authority in the hands of the Pope, the usual form of Church gov- ernment — namely, that of local bishops. In Ireland the Roman Catholic bishops had the same titles as the Protestant. In England, in order to avoid giving offence, the new Roman Catholic bishops had been given new territorial titles so as not to clash with those used by the Anglican. Unfortunately English statesmen of that day imagined that a civil claim in England had been put forward when an ecclesiastical right, valid alone in the Court of Con- science, had been asserted ; and when they were assured that in the newly created English Catholic dioceses the authority of the new bishops only existed, and only claimed to exist, in foro conscicntice, and not hi foro externo, they erroneously assumed that the distinction meant the same thing as the distinction between claims de jure and claims de facto. Beside this. Cardinal Wise- man, when announcing the new hierarchy, had used a metaphor about a star and its orbit, which was regarded as highly offensive. Nearly twenty years later, when a i ia7 £B POLITICAL CHANGES 327 new hierarchy was created in Scotland, no notice was taken of the '' aggression. " In England the chief ultimate effect of the uproar was that it served as a great advertise- ment of the Catholic Church. In Ireland its conse- quences were of a very serious character. It cancelled in a few months most of what had been effected, since the tardy concession of Catholic Emancipation, in the way of drawing the two countries nearer to each other. It was denounced as a revival of the Penal Laws by the most clear-sighted of the English statesmen who opposed the measure, and it was of course regarded as such by the Irish Catholics, both lay and clerical. Where England saw her way clearly she walked in it justly. A few years before, she had emancipated her slaves in the colonies, and paid ;£20,ooo,ooo to their owners, whose position and whose acts, bad as they were, had from first to last possessed the sanction of English law. England had shared the blame, and she decreed that she would bear the penalty. It was by doing this that she struck a blow against slavery from which it can never recover. Her self-sacrifice proved to the world that she was in earnest. If she had simply confiscated the property of those in whose crime and in whose gains she had long had a part, the nations could from such a vicarious penitence have only inferred that she had changed her policy. It was a sadly different thing in 185 1. Statesmen were dealing with a purely theological question of which they knew as little as the clergy commonly knew of political economy. The whole nation was in confusion. The bishops summoned synods or issued pastorals. ,328 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE Meetings were held everywhere. Our ancient univer* sities despatched their representatives to the sovereign; and yet all this was a misapprehension. The new hier- archy was not intended to be a grand demonstration. It was a business matter, like that restoration of its hierarchy to Holland nearly at the same time. Much less was it intended to inflict either humiliation or injury on a nation whose statesmen had often asked and received political aid from the Holy See in dealing with its Roman Catholic subjects. The new bishops tranquilly stated that their mission was exclusively spiritual, and continued to discharge their functions. No prosecution followed. Among the statesmen who opposed the Ecclesiastical Titles Act were several of England's ablest, including Sir James Graham, the ''Younger Peelites " (who were assured that they would never be returned to Parliament again), and Mr. Gladstone. Mr. Gladstone, who closed his magnificent speech by a solemn statement that, whatever unpopularity he might thus draw down upon his head he would continue to follow that bright star of justice which shone before him, whithersoever it might lead him — a saying which Roman Catholics did not forget even when his Vatican Pamphlets appeared, and which they are bound ever to remember. An aged statesman, famed for his moderation, who expressed his opposition to the Ecclesiastical Titles Act in the strongest terms, was Lord Aberdeen. As well as I remember, his Vv^ords were these. I heard them from the Gallery of the House of Lords: "For centuries Catholics were persecuted and tormented by penal laws. POLITICAL CHANGES 329 They failed. This measure is a renewal of that persecu- tion; and it will fail again/' I remember well the stern severity of his demeanour as he spoke. His language was severely censured by several persons, who, notwith- standing, agreed with his opinions. I heard that censure thus itself censured : " You must have patience with Lord Aberdeen. Though a man of great and acknowledged ability, he has no command of language; none at least like that which more highly educated statesmen boast. When he sees a plain truth, therefore, he has no alter- native except that of stating it plainly, or holding his tongue." The Ecclesiastical Titles Act was never once enforced, and a great commotion in Ireland was thus avoided. Ireland resented it the more, as she had nothing to say to the "papal aggression,'* though she was to pay the penalty. Every parish priest in Ireland had long used his territorial title prohibited by that measure, which was defended on the ground that it was intended to " give robustness '' to laws long dormant. Among such laws Avere those that prohibited those Religious Orders to which Ireland's "higher education" owed its existence. Several excellent pamphlets on the Ecclesiastical Titles Act were written by Catholics, while the agitation respecting it was still going on, one of them by my brother. Sir Stephen de Vere. My belief is that if Lord John Russell had seen those pamphlets in time, the cloud of illusion would have been cleared from his eyes, and that measure would never have been heard of. When it had passed, a great blow was unwittingly inflicted (for Lord John was an entire and sincere Liberal) on the 330 RECOLLECTIONS GF AUBREY DE VERE English Liberal party, which had previously made consid- erable progress in Ireland. Catholic and Protestant Bishops met no more at the Lord Lieutenant's table. Between the castle and the city of Dublin a great gulf had been dug. Men remarked then that between the English Catholics and Cavaliers there had once been much sympathy, and that the Anti-Catholic legislation had originally come chiefly from the Whig party. The decline of that party in Ireland began then; so did the influence of Lord John Russell in both countries. He had struck at Rome, and the blow fell on his own politi- cal following. He probably did not know that the New Hierarchy was not a coup and had never been a secret. On the contrary, the intention to create it had been stated by Cardinal Wiseman to two eminent English statesmen, who gave him no intimation that it could cause any offence. On the day when the repeal of the Act was sanctioned by the House of Lords, as part of Mr. Gladstone's policy for Disestablishment in Ireland, Earl Russell told me that he did not intend to be present on the occasion. The Ecclesiastical Titles Act, which it took nearly a session to pass, was repealed in an hour or two. But I must not forget, in politics, some of the more interesting or amusing of those with whom I associated in those old days. One of them was Leigh Hunt. In my boyhood his poetry had given me much enjoyment, and increased that which I had derived from other poetry. The Greeks had, as he felicitously remarked, " invented the poetry of gladness,'* and by that portion of it his own had been suggested in part. He had a vivid appreciation ^■'' ■ POLITICAL CHANGES 33 1 of Nature as seen from the classical point of view, and his sonnets possess a singular sense of proportion, the finest of them being one, entitled ''A Thought on the Nile,'' written, I think, in competition with two composed on the same day by Shelley and Keats. To these friends he continued to the end devotedly attached ; and his conversation was to me always delight- ful when it turned upon them. • He affirmed that if Shelley had lived, he would have been known chiefly as a dramatic poet, notwithstanding the predominance of qualities anything but dramatic in all his poetry written before the ''Cenci,'' one of the few modern dramas which can be pronounced dramatic. When the poetry of Shelley and Keats was generally regarded with unmixed dis- like or contempt, Leigh Hunt asserted its greatness with the full courage of his opinions. Byron he much dis- liked ; and had probably been often mortified by his caprices. For Coleridge's poetry he had a high admira- tion, especially as regards its transcendent metrical merits. I knew also Mr. Procter, better known as Barry Cornwall, whose poetry was once very popular. His daughter's — Adelaide Procter's — poetry had given great pleasure to Montalembert, who requested me to give her his warm thanks for it. Barry Cornwall's wife I met first at a breakfast given by my early friend, Eliot Warburton (whose tragic death was a grief to so many), and thought her one of the most amusing persons in London society. Her wit had sometimes a sharp edge, though sharp only in mirth, not in malice. I remember her telling me once of a brilliant passage -of -arms between herself and a certain clergyman of great ability and well-deserved popularity. 332 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERB He was well known as a popular preacher, and his ser- mons happened to be often preached before the class of people whose names are to be found in the "Blue Book" of fashionable life. One day he was severe upon the frailties and follies of that class, and especially against detraction, which surprised some of his old friends, who thought that he was not wholly free from something of the sort himself. Among these was Mrs. Procter, who de- scribed matters thus. "I felt so guilty! I was sure everyone would say he was preaching against me! I felt myself getting redder and redder. Besides, no retort was possible, for you cannot interrupt the preacher. When the sermon was over, I had to pass close to him, as he stood in his surplice surrounded by so many clever people. As I passed I shook hands with him in a very frightened but also very sympathetic way, and said, ' Oh, Mr. , did not you and I catch it to-day? ' *' Another most amusing friend of mine w^as Edward Fitzgerald, an Irishman, the speciality of whose humour it was that the more comical were his words the more solemn his face always became. I remember an illustra- tion of this. After a large evening party, when nearly all the guests had departed, the rest remained to smoke. In that party was a man celebrated for his passion for titles. On this occasion he exceeded himself. All his talk was of the rich and great. " Yesterday, when I was riding with my friend, the Duke of .*' "On Tuesday last the Marquis of remarked to me. *' It went on for a long time; the party listened, some amused, some bored. Edward Fitzgerald was the first to rise. He lighted a candle, passed out of the room, stood still with the lock POLITICAL CHANGES 333 of the door in his hand, and looked back. He could change his countenance into anything he pleased. It had then exchanged in a moment its usual merry look for one of profound, nay hopeless, dejection. Slowly and sadly he spoke: "I once knew a lord, too, but he is dead!" Slowly, sadly life withdrew, closing the door amid a roar of laughter. To return to things serious. In 1868 a measure was introduced by Mr. Gladstone for the creation of religious equality in Ireland. To such a change I had, long before I was a Roman Catholic, looked forward as the beginning of a new and better era for Ireland, and had written much on the subject. I had looked forward to a measure marked by justice, not by retaliation, one which should remove from Ireland a great opprobrium, and from her poor a grievous loss, while inflicting on the Protestants of Ire- land no needless humiliation or needless pecuniary injury. Nothing could be more unjust than the then existing Church settlement of Ireland; but for the creation of that settlement, the Protestants of our day were not respon- sible. When of old the two Hebrew mothers contended for the child, the true mother preferred that the child should be bestowed upon her rival rather than be cut in two. In this case, to have divided would have been to save, not to destroy. The ancient Church property of Ireland, so long devoted to God and His poor, and so long alienated from their proper functions, should have been restored to Ireland by being equitably divided between the Catholic and the Protestant sons of Ireland for the spiritual weal of both those bodies. This would have been a just course; to alienate the Church property from 334 RECOLLECTIONS X)F AUBREY DE VERE all religious purposes could but be a malicious one and a treacherous one no less; for, while despoiling those who had migrated to Ireland on England's pledge that they were to find there a religious provision for themselves and their descendants, it would impart no religious benefit whatever to the long-despoiled Catholic majority, the vested interests of the existing Protestant clergy and lesser officials alone being respected. I advocated those convictions in every way open to me, especially in my intercourse with influential Irish Cath- olics, clerical and la}^, and with English statesmen. I advocated them also in four successive pamphlets. The first of these, consisting chiefly of extracts from speeches or writings of eminent English or foreign Protestants, was published in 1863, and republished with a preface in 1867. In that year I published also a pamphlet entitled "The Church Settlement of Ireland."^ It treated the subject chiefly in connection with the evil effects politi- cal and social generated by secularisation — a course which, far from retrieving the injustice of centuries,- rendered such a retrieval at any future time an im- possibility. The second of those pamphlets was entitled "Ireland's Church property, and the right use of it'*; and another, by my friend, Doctor Moriarty, Bishop of Kerry, urged the same course. A strong and most natural jealousy against State pensions for the Catholic clergy had long existed, and Edmund Burke had warned Ireland never to accept them. I had no desire to slight such an instinct or 1 *'The Church Establishment in Ireland illustrated by Protestant Authorities." Longman, 1867. U/ Ha POLITICAL CHANGES^ i-:._,_ 335 to contest such an authority. My pamphlet asserted that there were other objects wholly distinct from State pensions to which the Catholic share of " Ireland's Church property should be devoted, such as aid in proportion to local contributions to the building of churches, reform- atories, presbyteries, ecclesiastical seminaries, religious schools, orphanages and other charitable asylums, as well as to the purchase of glebes " (p. 33). That pamphlet maintains that the preservation of Church property for strictly religious purposes was an imperative duty, on the ground alike of religion and of the rights of the poor. Only thus could the poor be benefited by it. This pam- phlet affirmed that if Church property were applied to secular purposes, however beneficent, those purposes would be but such as must otherwise have been provided for from other sources, the only gainers being those who had thus evaded the burthens which must have fallen upon them. "The State esurient hungers for Church spoil. Prodigality and the consequent pressure of impending ruin have been in general the statesman's incentives to Church spoliation; but it has so happened that the State has seldom been the richer for its prey. "It was a noble thought, and worthy Catholic times, when a nation devoted a property to God. God kept that property for the nation. Great hearts could trust great hearts, and each generation knew that the next would ratify the gift, and partake the merit. The policy was tender: it provided a spring for every thirsty life and willed that the ministrations of grace should surround us like Nature's light and air. It was mag- nanimous; it gave much that it might receive much; and it could pardon somewhat. It was profound ; it provided for the 336 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE clergy a support in one sense fixed, in another sense fluctuating^ and thereby it bound up both their sympathies and their interests, with those of the people. It was impartial — it neither placed the clergy in dependence on the Government, nor assumed that the normal relation between the Church and State must be one of hate and war.*' I quoted largely from what Coleridge says in his noble book ^'Church and State,** on that sacred reserve or "nationalty" which the higher races never allowed tO" be wholly merged in individual properties. **This principle,'* he says, '^was common to all primi- tive races, that in taking possession of a new country, and in the division of the land into heritable estates among the individual warriors or heads of families, a reserve should be made for the nation itself.** Lord Grey and Lord Russell wrote very wise pam- phlets at this great crisis, and earnestly recommended that Ireland's Church property should be equitably divided between the Catholics and the Protestants. It was well understood that Mr. Gladstone was of the same opinion. Meaner aspirations went the other way ; and it was not to be. The fate of Ireland has long been decided as regards Church property. That of England hangs still in the balance. If that, too, should be secularised, I wish here to record my conviction that there also a deep injury will be inflicted on religion and on the poor; and that many other great evils will follow in its train — a just retribu- tion. In the case of Ireland at that time, a compromise was made. The ultimate destiny of the Irish Church property was remanded to the deliberations of a future POLITICAL CHANGES 337 Parliament. It was one of those cases in which to delib- erate is to be lost. A time came when the Church ques- tion was called ''old history^* and the ''Land Question*' claimed its day. Somebody remembered that near at hand lay the troublesome remnant of the Irish Church property. The future was sacrificed to a momentary need ; and most of that remnant was tossed into the Irish bog holes. The loss was not exclusively one of a spiritual character. To it was largely owing the war against prop- erty in Ireland during the last fifteen years. The Irish ^demanded why, if no reverence was due to sacred prop- erty which had lasted for a thousand years, is any due to ..secular property. Under similar circumstances the same question will be asked in England. The Radical section of the Liberal party would permit no precedent to be created in Ireland for the preservation of England's Church property. The weakest party won the day. The Irish " Land Question " became imperious. Many wild things had been said on the subject in past times — not, if I remember right, by Mr. O'Connell, who, when some one at a great Dublin meeting proposed that no more rent should be paid until " Repeal'' had been con- ceded, rose and moved the immediate expulsion of the orator. Among those who advocated large reform on this subject was Mr. Sharman Crawford, and later Mr. Napier, Lord Chancellor of Ireland. But their recom- mendations included no communistic principle. Un- happily their counsels v/ere not adopted by Parliament. -Mr. Gladstone's Act of 1870 was a large and bold one, and in many respects helpful. For the best thing which iad been done as yet on the Irish land question was the 22 338 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE clause added to that measure by that upright and patriotic, man and true orator, Mr. Bright, in order to promote a large addition of peasant proprietors to the existing landed proprietors. The celebrated "clause" was not, it should be remembered, intended to be a levelling- down, but a levelling-up process. The new proprietary of State-aided farmers would have been one not in place of the previous proprietors, but an addition to them, and the tenants thus elevated would have been those whose large contribution to the purchase-money of their farms, would have proved their industry and thrift, and thus, incited others to the practice of those virtues. They would indeed have won their lands in a manner not wholly unlike that in which lands were won in early days; for fighting was the industry of old times, and the industry of modern times is often exercised in the field of fierce competition, a veritable battlefield. Yet in Mr. Gladstone's Act of 1870 there were two- faults, one of commission and one of omission, which much dissatisfied men habitually acquainted with Ireland. The first of these enacted that in certain cases where what was called a capricious eviction had taken place (a rhetorical term wholly incapable of definition) the land- lord should be legally as well as morally bound to com- pensate the outgoing tenant by giving him a sum equiva- lent to a certain number of years' rent. The ministers responsible for that enactment, vehemently and repeatedly affirmed, in defence of it, that it should be regarded as an act of charity alone, and in no sense one of right, and that it recognised on the part of the tenant neither a clan- right derived from ancient usage, nor any claim whatever POLITICAL CHANGES 339 on the ground of justice. It conferred, they said, on the tenant no claim to any share in the property itself. Wiser men, however, affirmed that at a later time that clause would be appealed to as a proof that the landlord and the tenant were recognised co-proprietors in a single property. And so it turned out. In 1881 the Prime Minister brought forward a wholly new land measure. He had to account for the difference between the two. He said that the Irish tenants had mistaken the meaning of the earlier measure, but that, as the mistake had been made, their view of its provisions must be adopted in the new measure. The Irish proprietors were thus to be subjected to legislation based upon the skilful or fortunate mistake of the tenants; and one of the chief political problems was to be assumed without debate, owing to an accident, but one foretold ten years before. Possibly another accident may have elicited the second principle of the measure of 1881 — namely, the abolition of "Free Contract '' (the land principle and not less the commercial principle in England), and elicited also the third prin- ciple, then first extemporised — namely, the abolition of the "vested rights '' of proprietors, when opposed to rights unknown before to English legislation. The second fault of the 1870 Land Act, that of omis- sion, militated against the tenant, not the landlord. A Court of Equity should have been created to which the tenant might appeal, if he considered that, by a perversion of law, he had, through an unjust addition to his rent,, been deprived of what ought to have been his gain from improvements made by him on his lands, improvements in which the landlord possessed also a great ultimate 340 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE i 7;i( interest. Such acts on a landlord's part might be rare exceptions, but the law should provide for the exception as well, not less than provide and maintain the sound and salutary rule; and it does so as regards the great rule of parental control, and also in several cases of propert}^ Parental Control continues to be the Law of Households, or else domestic life must have perished long since; but exceptional cases of parental cruelty are punished, and oppressed children are protected. It should have been thus as regards property. The fun- damental principles of ** Free Contract*' and "Individual Proprietorship '' should have been maintained as sacred ; while to these were added provisions for the restraining of exceptional abuses, which, even if not directly opposed to law, were plainly perversions of law. The earlier stages of a revolution are always a period of deep historic interest. I may consequently write of what I have witnessed with a little more of detail than I should otherwise have written with on a subject so painful. Wise men were not by any means contented with Ireland's condition in 1881. A great work was still needed there. There again a great work was spoilt, and a great opportunity w^as lost. A considerable change was needed. The land laws in Ireland were substantially the same as in England, but they worked differently, because while in England there existed two industries, agriculture and manufactures, in Ireland the great mass of the people were dependent almost exclusively on agriculture. Competition for farms was therefore in that country painfully severe; while, on the other hand, to POLITICAL CHANGES 34I abolish competition was plainly a remedy worse than the disease. It was no less than to substitute arbitrary arrangements determined by practically irresponsible authorities for free trade in Ireland's only important industry. It was also to make the primary laws of Eng- land and Ireland antagonistic in character thenceforth (as they had already been made in matters ecclesiastical), and that at a time when the cry waxed daily louder that those laws should be assimilated — unless, indeed, it had already been determined that the example set in Ireland, both as regards the Church property and her secular property, should be followed a little later in England. The Irish difficulty had long been patent; what had till then remained unheard-of was the proposed remedy for it. The only rapid remedy, as I must repeat, must have in- cluded a very large and State-aided system of emigration, bringing the population of Ireland into proportion to her capital; or else a similar aid to the development of her industrial resources; but each of these would have been a costly proceeding. In 1 88 1 the Irish land question was dealt with once more, but in a spirit very different from that of the former attempt. The Prime Minister did not justify his new measure by any charges brought against the Irish pro- prietors. On the contrary, he began his speech by the most distinct affirmation, on the authority of several recent Parliamentary commissions, that they had *'been on their trial, and that they had been honourably acquitted.'' He bade them be of good cheer, as justice would be done, and very few of them would be affected by the measure. No doubt this was his sincere opinion. 342 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE What changed it ? Not the counter- judgments of the sub- commissioners, for they did not exist until the Land Act of 1 88 1 created them. These gentlemen were a body of men extemporised to meet a need. They were often mere novices in matters connected with land, acting under a formidable pressure and responsible to no tribunal save the court which had appointed them. With all these difficulties in their way the sub-commissioners were sent to solve a problem as hard as finding the longi- tude or squaring the circle, that is, to ascertain the true value of a farm irrespectively of its actual market value, then nicknamed ''rack rent." No principle was ex- plained to them; no rule of action had been prescribed to them. I should be sorry to impute aught of inten- tional wrong to them for not accomplishing impossibili- ties. But I know not why their judgments should have been preferred to those which had been successively delivered by successive parliamentary commissions, con- sisting of experienced men with a limitless power of sum- moning witnesses acting in quiet times, and with no personal interest in the matter. This has never been explained. It soon became a battle between the Land Court and the "Land League," and before very long the Prime Minister with entire justice denounced the ''Land League" party as one advancing "through rapine to revo- lution." Before the Land Act of 1881 had been intro- duced, I noted down and showed to a few political friends a brief list of such changes in Ireland's land laws as seemed to meet the real needs of Ireland at that time. Of course they did not include such heroic measures (at the cost of others) as the abolition of freedom of contract, POLITICAL CHANGES 343 :and the creation of ^^dual/* or rather of plural proprietor- ship. My list included the enlargement of Mn Bright's clause, and the establishment of a permanent and reliable ''Court of Appear* for the protection of any tenant who deemed that the law had been strained so as to deprive him of what justly was his. When Mr. W. H. Smith 'was the Tory leader of the House of Commons, he was Tinderstood to contemplate a large measure of land pur- chase, but one in which the vested rights of proprietors would be guarded as those of the Protestant-Irish clergy, and even of the West Indian proprietors, had been. Another provision in my list was that in some cases landlords should cease to possess some of the extraordi- nary aids in the collecting of rent, leaving them, of course, all the ordinary aids for the recovery of debts. The Land Legislation of 1881, as well as later legisla- tion, included, I think, further provisions for the creation of a peasant proprietary. Unfortunately, however, they were rendered nugatory by being united with a "land tenure measure,'' which proposed changes so enormous, and implied principles so far-reaching and so revolutionary that those who did the thinking of the Irish farmers at that time would not allow them to think of anything besides. Later those Parnellite leaders themselves may have come to the conclusion that the two great historical parties of England, which had recently, to the astonish- ment of many, joined in passing the Land Act of 1881, had degenerated into two great factions, themselves no longer governed by principles, but by party jealousies and a common faith in the opportune, and that one of them, if not both, would ultimately prove further com- 344 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE pressible. The late Lord Lytton told me that, as he was; informed, many members of the House of Lords had been, much impressed by assurances which they had received from certain large proprietors in Ulster, that the tenant- right there voluntarily permitted by them had done them no harm. It seems not to have occurred to those coun- sellors that tenant-right exceptional and by favour was one thing, and that tenant-right rendered universal by law led to consequences of a very different sort. All over Ireland many proprietors had often permitted a con- ditional tenant-right; but from such compliance the "schoolmen of the State'' were not then able to deduce consequences fatal to property. The Parnellite agitators and their attorneys (for the agitators, the attorneys, and the mob were often united like three strands of a rope) advised their clients not to discard their "plan of campaign" enterprises (the return they had made for the new valuation) for land purchase enterprises till their farms were to be had at a mere: nominal price, lest the new landlord, the State, might prove more formidable than the old landlord. Their clients took their advice, and will continue to do so as long as they cherish their present hope. We are bound to remember how long those peasants remained a simple, kindly, and affectionate race as well as one faithful ta< their engagements. Many things and many men have combined to demoralise them. Tenant-right avows now that it means the right of the tenant to the landlord's, property, and that in the absence of Repeal of the Union, the Repeal of the Act of Settlement may suffice. When- that is completed the rest will follow. Whether the POLITICAL CHANGES 345 present Jacobin enterprise will succeed depends upon the wisdom or unwisdom of the present compared with the preceding parliaments during most of the last fifteen years. Dual proprietorship seems to have been ''found out/' The necessity for freedom of contract will prob- ably be found out later — but perhaps too late. But it is not easy to predict. The condition of things in Ireland was rendered far more deplorable by the cir- cumstance that a period almost of Revolution was selected as the fittest for the introduction there of such a measure as "Household Suffrage/' Even for England a very advanced Liberal, Mr. Gregg, in a pamphlet named ^* Rocks Ahead," had given a salutary warning. That measure, he said, '' places the whole property of England at the disposal of the non-propertied class.'' I remember that when the bill for household suffrage was introduced into the House of Lords, Lord Derby made an unpre- cedented confession. He said, ''I must confess that the measure is a leap in the dark." It was said that he had adopted it solely owing to his deference for Mr. Disraeli's judgment. When it was passed, and that without the safeguards originally included in it, my then eldest brother. Sir Vera de Vere, puzzled us all by a riddle. "How did Lord Derby feel just after he had taken his leap in the dark.?" The propounder of the riddle had himself to furnish the answer to it: "He felt himself a little dtj^sv,'' The household suffrage, it was said, doubled the English parliamentary constituency, but tripled that of Ireland. I wrote a pamphlet in opposition to that measure. It was termed " Ireland and Propor- tionate Representation," and contained the following 34^ RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERB sentence, "Let all true Liberals remember that there exist gifts which are thefts also/* an obvious deduction from the scriptural assertion, "Their right hand is full of gifts and lies." Such, I conceive, v^ere the gifts bestowed on that occa- sion upon Ireland. To enfranchise, well-nigh in a mass, ignorant cottiers, many of whom could not write their own names, and their servant-boys, is practically to disfran- chise the educated and responsible. The anti-revolu- tionary party were entitled, from their numbers alone, and apart from all reference to the political claims of property, to fully one-third of Ireland's parliamentary representa- tives. They possess about half that number only, or one-sixth of it. "Proportionate Representation'' would eventually redress this wrong, and bring within bounds tyranny in its most fatal form ; that is to say, the tyranny of a majority which, uniting an unlimited legal with a boundless physical power, constitutes an illimitable power mitigated by no moral or prudential restraint; and yet is also a power practically wielded by a handful of agitators far more restricted than ever yet constituted either any aristocracy or any oligarchy. I have been asked what gain could result from " Propor- tionate Representation " in Ireland if it still left the propertied and educated classes in a minority of merely one-third. The gain to England would be this, that a parliamentary majority created by Ireland, though seated not in Dublin, but in Westminster, would not soon again be able to govern in all essential matters the whole of England and Scotland. That power, had it lasted dur- ing but one Parliament more, might at will have either POLITICAL CHANGES 347 dissolved the British empire or rendered its continu- ance impossible by rendering it utterly unworthy to con- tinue. The gain to Ireland would be that, in that country, hope would still breathe the vital air; that the sense of wrong would no longer be the excuse for lethargy; that all endeavour to withstand folly and rapine would no longer be paralysed by the sense that all struggle meant but an ignominy the more; that the wisest and best would not be forced to withdraw from public life; that at least irreparable mischief would not have been effected before men now calamitously desorientes could again recognise the points of the compass, and see whither they are tending; that time would be given to England to profit by at least recent experience, and for another land, which has both sinned and been sinned against, to return to her better mind. To a certain class of English politicians the last sen- tence in this pamphlet was addressed; I trust it may not have been to a large one. "When, some years ago, then somewhat late, you disbanded your English garrison in Ireland, you were not called upon to have subsequently and successively snatched from your kith and kin, who, during so many centuries had sustained there the standard of England, their good name, their lands, their social status, and their political existence.*' The line taken by the Roman Catholic clergy during the agitation of the last few years has been by no means as one-sided as has been commonly assumed. Those among them who attended public meetings attracted large attention, whereas those who stayed away from them remained unknown, and the readers of newspapers had no 348 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERB means of knowing at which side was the majority. Those readers little guessed how much was shown of quiet forti- tude on the part of those priests who refused to join in the agitation, and who patiently bore up, not alone against a trying unpopularity, but sometimes against very decided boycotting also. Cardinal Cullen had strongly censured illegal courses of all sorts, and also all anti-property movements, as well as Home Rule agitation. On that subject his opinions were of the strongest character. His expressions were these : " France was once as Catholic as Ireland, but the Revolution undermined her faith. Should an Irish parliament, whose strength, I believe, will come from revolutionary sources, pass laws that are subversive of justice, morality, or religion, it will be the duty of the bishops to speak out to warn their flocks, and to condemn such acts. Such a Parliament w411 at once pass laws to weaken and destroy the Church's action, and to restrain the bishops in the performance of their undoubted duty. With this conviction in my mind, I, for one, can never advocate this revolutionary movement^ as I believe it to be, for Home Rule." If Cardinal Cullen had lived a little longer the whole aspect of affairs would have been very different in Ireland. His successor. Cardinal McCabe, died also pre- maturely, it is said, of a broken heart, occasioned by the crimes committed during what has been called the Irish " Reign of Terror,'' to which Mr. Burke and Lord Frederick Cavendish fell victims. The great Dominican preacher, "Father Tom Burke,'' perhaps the man most venerated in Ireland, then dying of an excruciating malady, con- tinned as lonsr as he could stand to denounce those crimes. POLITICAL CHANGES 349 though warned that if he persisted in doing so he would be shot in his pulpit. Dr. Moriarty, Bishop of Kerry, and many besides, both among the clergy and laity, spoke out fearlessly. In this matter there were two sides, one of which has been too commonly ignored. Thus the present Bishop of Limerick rebuked the false casuistry, wholly opposed to the teaching of Catholic theology, and that of the present Pope, by which a plea was set up in defiance of the plainest engagements respecting property. The Catholic clergy have ever been, and now are, Ireland's chief protection against the "Secret Societies,*' as in the days of the great Bishop Doyle. One of the chief leaders of the attempted revolt of 1845 assured me, long after that date, that it was their influence which alone prevented the people from joining it in large masses. During those eventful years, the true character of -which will be better understood in history than it has yet been, I wrote many essays in our chief periodicals, such as the " Edinburgh " and the '' National" reviews, reassert- ing as far as I was able, and often in his own words, the principles of Edmund Burke, which are now so commonly forgotten, but which effectually rebuked the progress of French Jacobinism in England at the time of the French Revolution. May they rebuke it in his own land ! I also published many letters in the newspapers likely to meet the eyes of my fellow-countrymen when passing more and more under the disastrous dominion of the Parnellite body, whose leaders before long vindicated the habitual and undisguised repudiation of the law of the land, by placing in contrast with it ''the unwritten 3 so RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE law." Alas, how little do our poor people understand the deplorable effects which such courses produce upon their country, its honour, and its faith. I recalled to the recollections of those led astray the solemn admonition issued at as early a period as June 24, 1880, by the Catholic archbishops and bishops of Ireland. ^' We declare it our duty also to warn our devoted flocks against allowing themselves to be driven by their sufferings or persecutions to the employment of unjust or illegal remedies; and to exhort them to be on their guard against such principles and projects as are contrary to the teachings of Religion and Justice." ^ My freedom of speech drew down on me bitter animad- versions. I replied to them thus: "There is an Ireland larger and better than that of the Tenant- League ; and she will yet hold fast the sacred depositions of Irish traditions, the Ireland of pure homes, not of clamorous meetings ; the Ireland of Catholic principles, not of casuistry misapplied ; the Ireland that suffered during centuries for the faith; the Ireland that did not confound licence with liberty, that rever- enced law, and therefore made no man judge in his own cause. That Ireland survives. She is my Ireland and I have a right to remain faithful to what I have loved long, and to resist those who would set up a Pretender as her rival. Others may, if they please, set up a new Ireland, and sue her praise. I deem it is a patriot's duty not to flatter his country, and not to withhold unpopular counsel when it is needful. If Ireland seeks even worthy ends by unworthy means, she will miss them, or win them at a heavy cost." 1 Hodges and Figgis, Dublin, 1SS5; and ''Essays Literary and Ethical,"' Macmillan, 1SS9. POLITICAL CHANGES 35 I The gentlemen of Ireland have within the last few years received hard usage at the hands of many among their fellow-Irishmen, who, during a long period pre- viously, had felt, for I will not say professed, a strong attachment to them. They have received also during the same years of trial, from many of their English friends in both Houses of Parliament, a treatment differ- ent from that which they had expected. What proportion of that property which they received from their ancestors and had hoped to bequeath to their descendants will remain with them we know not. It is only certain that their duties will remain. Their first duty as Christians will be to allow no vindictive or selfish instinct to de- termine their course. Their highest duty to Ireland will be to remain among their poor, no matter how wronged or defamed, there or elsewhere, so long as they can con- tinue to benefit them, even with means so often reduced to one -half or less, and to resist the progress of that Jacobinism from which Ireland has suffered so much. Their duty to both countries will be to cement their union and make it become at last, if possible, a union alike of hearts and of interests. CHAPTER XVII SOME OF MY POEMS TT is generally supposed that, among a poet's Recollec- ^ tions, some remain with him long in connection with the special object and aim with which a few of his poems were composed. Several such Recollections are here pre- served in connection with poems intended to illustrate religious philosophy or early Irish history. I. Inisfail. In the year 1861 I published a chronicle poem entitled ^'Inisfail," illustrating Irish annals during about six centuries, from the Norman Conquest of Ireland to the repeal of the Penal Laws. When the poem appeared, Ireland was in a condition of great depression. Irish history had always possessed a deep interest for me. My father, while thoroughly an Imperialist in his politics, had written a touching poem entitled "The Lamentation of Ireland," and used to tell us in our young days pathetic stories taken often from the "Pacata Hibernia/' a book written by the secretary of Sir George Carew, Queen Elizabeth's President of Munster. Later, what struck me was that, while the details of Irish history were obviously so full of significance, the history itself was nowhere to be found except in fragments. It appeared to lack all unity. Again and again it seemed as if Eng- SOME OF MY POEMS 353 land must have lost her hold upon Ireland, but she did not; as if the Irish chiefs and Norman lords, "more Irish than the Irish," must have at last combined against her, but they did not; as if France or Spain must have found their advantage in fighting England on Irish soil, but their aid did her far more mischief than good. It was after the lapse of many years that the meaning of Irish history flashed upon me. It possessed unity, al- though not a political one. Religion was Ireland's unity. That had not been a series of frustrations. A great destiny had been working itself out, not from the time of Strongbow, but from that of St. Patrick. The Norman time and the time of the Penal Laws had both of them been but episodes. When a few of that great Norman race which had conquered England, and much of Europe besides, subjected about half her Irish princes, probably without the knowledge of the Irish, to an Eng- lish suzerain; when, at a later period, those Irish vassal princes had quarrels with their English suzerain, as Eng- lish kings in their character of Norman dukes often had v/ith their suzerain, the King of France ; when those Irish vassal princes and their Gaelic clans had been nicknamed rebels; and when, in their turn, the Norman Palatines had been lawlessly deprived of those palatine rights acknowl- edged for centuries; and when Norman nobles were de- prived of their lands because they would not surrender their Faith — these things doubtless were frustrations. But these things constituted but an inferior part of Irish his- tory. When St. Patrick preached and the people believed, and again when the believing nation sent out its mission- aries to far lands and planted the Faith of Christ, here were 23 354 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE no frustrations. Alone among the northern nations Ire- land was faithful. But had her earlier calamities noth- ing to do with that later fidelity ? Much every way. When a new Faith was backed by penal laws, by whom were those penal laws to be obeyed ? Not by Norman barons, whose law had ever been their own will. Not by Gaelic serfs, from whom their native law had been taken, and to whom the English had been denied. One of the lessons taught to us by Irish history is this: that to the different nations different vocations are assigned by Providence; to one, an imperial vocation, to another, a commercial one; to Greece an artistic one, to Ireland, as to Israel, a spiritual one. I often call to mind a sermon preached in Limerick by Father Faber of the Oratory, who had been passing some days at Tervoe, one in which he dw^elt much on the past of Ireland, and much on her future. ^'Do not imagine," he said, "that Ireland will ever be a nation with a splendid political or a prosperous commercial career, like those of Genoa or Venice of old. It is no material obstacle, no historical accident, that stands in her way. It is a holier greatness, a more exalted destiny, that for- bid a lower one. Ireland's vocation is, as it has ever been, an Apostolic one. She may be true to it, or she may be false to it; but if she forgets it or discards it, she will meet with success in no other for ever. As at the time of her only real greatness — her missionary great- ness — the heathen are her inheritance : let her remember that first, and then all that she needs beside will be 'added unto her!'" I remember the looks, some of amusement, and some of displeasure, which were exchanged SOME OF MY POEMS 355 by many persons in that church as he spoke; but I remember also that when the preacher was taking his departure, many of the humbler class rushed forward and kissed the hem of his garment. They at least made no mistake as to his meaning, though they had never heard him say, '' Those who travel in Ireland have one great joy. They cannot but see that the great majority of the poor are living in the grace of God." No other poem of mine was written more intensely, I may say more painfully, from my heart than ''Inisfail.'* Some of its English readers were displeased at Irish history being thus interpreted, though one of them, I remember, exclaimed on reading it, '^ Either this is the true meaning of Irish history or else it never had a mean- ing. '' If those who were displeased imagined that the book was one likely to excite Irish political passions, they must have been very simple. The book was addressed not to the many, but to the thoughtful and the few, and at least as much to English statesmen as to Irish patriots. II. The Legends of St. Patrick. The conversion of Ireland had been effected without a drop of martyr blood by that great-hearted apostolic man whose soul, like St. Paul's, was ever filled with a passion- ate love for God and man. It was effected with little -aid resembling that which England had received from several English kings. St Patrick addressed himself more to the people than to the chiefs, and their conversion was like an inspira- tion. It resulted largely from the character of the 356 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE people. When confronted by greatness and by truth they could see both and they could love both. In several of their national characteristics there was doubtless an oppugnancy to the Faith, but there was more often a sym- pathy with it. The race was barbaric, but not savage. It had the barbaric virtues as well as vices. It had no corrupt civilisation. Nature remained, and Nature, though often fiercely opposed to Grace, has also great analogies to it, and is its needful supplement. I wished in my poems to illustrate the different modes in which Christianity presented itself to different countries. I selected England and Ireland. They are signally unlike. The Irish, as a race, are the more impulsive, more sanguine, more imaginative, tenderer in love, and fiercer in hate. The English are stronger, more reliable, and juster. The Irish are more sympa- thetic; the English more benevolent. The Irish are more elastic; the English robuster. The Irish regard the family most ; the English the State. The philosophic poet tells us that '^we live by admiration, hope, and love; these are eminently among the virtues of children; and we are told by a higher authority that it is as little chil- dren that we enter into His kingdom. It is in their childhood that the nations have commonly received the "glad tidings" and understood them. Some have re- marked that we little know how much man is learning in the first few years, nay, in the first few months of his life. Something like this may be said of nations. Their legends are fragments of their earliest knowledge. Only a few of them remain ; but these are such among them as carried most significance with them. SOME OF MY POEMS 357 The children of Fochlut Wood commemorate that "cry of the children" by night which dragged St. Patrick back from a free land to Ireland, where he had long lived as Milcho's slave. In that awful wood the misery of pagan Ireland had reached its utmost height ; but even there one hope remained. Men said that some ''Unknown God" had lost his children there, and that he would return to them there; that he would find them and take them home with him. This legend illustrates the pathetic character of early Irish Christianity. The stranger — St. Patrick — visits them and confirms that hope, and those who hear him believe. The proof that they believe is that they at once discard their chief national sin, that of vindictiveness. They launch their ships, cross the straits to the north, and bring the ''good tidings " to their immemorial enemies, — a glorious example to their descendants. St. Patrick at Cashel was selected in part to illustrate the passionate loyalty of the early Irish to princes loyal to their people no less. " St. Patrick and King Eochaid " was an attempt to draw the character of a Gaelic chief. It was copied in part from that of one whom I knew well, and who might, I believe, be called the last Irish chief. Eochaid is brave yet cautious, generous yet exacting; subtle, but simple also; full of penetration, yet absolutely unreasonable; sagacious, blinded at times by a little self- love; ardent in belief, but much more proud of his shrewd- ness; and inflexibly obstinate when contradicted. He becomes a Christian, but out of a whim refuses to be baptised, and dies as he has lived. The greatest by far of the Irish legends is " The Striv- 358 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE ing of St. Patrick on Mount Cruecham." The apostle's great work is completed ; but in the hour of victory a fear falls upon him. He knows that Ireland has great trials before her. Will she prove equal to them ? Mount Crue- cham rose on Ireland's western coast, the chief fortress of all those evil Spirits that had so long held her in subjection. It was believed that from its summit, a corresponding force must be accorded to Prayer. The saint advances to the battle with those spirits and to pray one great prayer — namely, that Ireland may remain faithful to Christ's truth so long as the world lasts. He advances on through the forest that girds the base of the mountain, and the first being whom he meets there is St. Victor, his guar- dian angel, who had accompanied him wherever he went, and strengthened him for each successive enterprise. On this occasion alone the angel warns him that the boon he demands is one too great to be granted, and -com- mands him to depart from the Mountain of Prayer. For the first time the saint disobeys him. He continues his ascent. The demons flock around him from all parts of Erin. Three times the battle is renewed. At last the prayer is granted, and the demons flee for ever from the land. The angel then informs St. Patrick that his own apparent opposition was but to kindle in the saint to a greater height the spirit of faith and of prayer. III. Alexander the GrEx\t and Saint Thomas OF Canterbury. These two dramas were written with a kindred aim. ''Alexander the Great'' was published in 1874. Though primarily a drama, it was meant also to be a philosophic SOME OF MY POEMS 359 poem. A few remarks may make the meaning plainer in both capacities. As a drama it was intended to delineate the one great Greek who devoted himself mainly to action, not thought. As a poem, it was intended to illustrate one of the chief of those historic periods on which have rested the destinies of the world. Four such epochs existed recog- nised antecedent to the Christian era. Four great king- doms (we should call them empires) were seen in vision by the Hebrew prophets. Of these the Babylonian was the first and the worst, representing little more than wealth and material greatness. Rome was the fourth, the kingdom of war and of law, with which was blended a pale reflex of Greek philosophy and letters. Rome was the great road-making empire, thus pointing to a uni- versal dominion realised later, but in a spiritual, not political, form. To it succeeded that spiritual kingdom foretold by the prophets as the ''Mountain of the Lord's House,'* destined to be ''exalted to the summit of the mountains/' Between the first and the last of those kingdom.s — namely, the Babylonian and the Roman, there intervened the Persian and the Greek, the latter founded by Alexander the Great. It soon became plain to me that, whether the work was regarded as a philosophical poem or as a drama, its interest must become identified with the destiny of Alexander, and above all with his character, and with the changes gradually made in that strong character by subsequent events carefully delineated. The chief char- acteristic of Alexander was pride; but, as he was a pagan, pride did not prevent that character from being cast in an 360 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE heroic mould. On the contrary, pride had a large place in pagan heroism, though a small place in Christian, such as that of Charlemagne or of Godfrey of Bulloign, as delineated by Tasso in the only Christian epic, both of those warriors having been strong in the grace of humility. The events crowded into Alexander's brief career belonged to a twofold order, an outward one, vis- ible to all, and an inward one neither discerned by those around him nor suspected by himself. The rapid train of his successes were externally successes only; but internally what they meant was the development of his characteristic chief fault and the consequent accomplish- ment of his destiny. They but deepened the black spot in his being. His successes rendered his final success im- possible. This is indicated by a remarkable event dating from the time when, standing in the Temple of Jerusalem, Alexander rejected a command which yet he knew to be Divine. He had got upon the wrong road, and advanced along it the more swiftly because it was the downward way. Alexander's visit to Jerusalem is recorded by Josephus, and it is one of the most memorable things in his career. The scene in this drama may be easily over- looked, for it is short. When that visit took place it is to be remembered that Alexander's true mission in the East had already been fully accomplished: for the Persian empire had become his. The Jewish high priest tells him plainly that God has granted to him that Persian empire, but expressly forbidden him to seek that of the world : " He who claims that must be the Prince of Peace. Thy portion lies in bounds. Limit and Term Govern the world." SOME OF MY POEMS 361 Alexander replies that he will deliberate; the high priest departs. Hephestion, the good angel of Alexander's life, was "then far away'' — a man whose mere instincts had a wisdom about them that all the intelligence of Ptolemy, "our 'wisest," lacked. Ptolemy was near and at hand. PVom that early moment all Alexander's successes were but so many snares. He confided to Ptolemy that just before the Persian war had begun, he had for once felt Fear: that at that hour a vision had fallen upon him in which the high priest, the same with whom he had just conversed, encouraged him to persevere because God would be his protector and his guide. Immediately after his disobedience two great events took place — namely, first, the consent of Alexander to the sentence of death against Parmenio. This was Alexan- der's one great offence against justice. The second was his march to the remote East — a barren victory, as he discovers when dying at Babylon. " I have a secret; one for thee alone 'T was not the mists from that morass disastrous Nor death of Him that died ; nor adverse Gods ; Nor the Fates themselves ; 't was something mightier yet And secreter in the great night that slew me." Many passages were introduced into this drama to indi- cate that while Alexander's fortunes were apparently always mounting, his character was in decline. Before his pride had fully culminated he denounced that legend so dishonourable to his mother — namely, that Jupiter was his father. Later he adopts it. Early he commanded that 362 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE his tomb should be made in '^Macedonian Pella/' When dying he ordains that it should be " Mid sands Egyptian, by the Ammonian grove, In my great Father's fane." The assumption of divine honours extorted by him from all the Grecian States shortly before his death con- trasts sadly with his reverence, when, standing beside the tomb of Achilles, his great ancestor, he renounced for himself, and dedicated to him all his own expected triumphs. Towards the end of his work he speaks of it as that of one more than mortal, and one who feels himself to be " Less a person than a Power, Some fateful wheel, that, rolling round in darkness, Knows this — its work; but not that work's far scope." Later he speculates on the possibility of men passing by heroic merit into gods. That the purer greatness of Alexander's earlier day had returned to him in part at death may be inferred on historical grounds when we call to mind his memorable answer to the question demanded of him at that moment — namely. Who should wear his crown .^ ^^The worthiest head." To suggest that his great solitary friendship had survived ambition, and lasted to the end, he is here made to murmur also in death words not then spoken for the first time: " Patroclus died. Achilles followed soon." He had first spoken those words at the proud beginning of his career, when he and Hephestion stood side by side before the tombs of Patroclus and Achilles at Troy. SOME OF MY POEMS t^Q^ IV. St. Thomas of Canterbury. "St. Thomas of Canterbury ^' was intended to be in some respects a work analogous to Alexander the Great," and in others to be a contrast to it. Each was to be at once a philosophical poem, and also a drama, the interest of which should rest mainly on the gradual evolution of a character; but the two characters were selected with the desire of illustrating two opposite forms of greatness, "Alexander's'' being a pagan greatness, and Becket's a Christian. The two poems were also designed to illus- trate two utterly dissimilar states of human society, ''St. Thomas of Canterbury's" being that of the middle ages. At that period a great conflict was raging in the Western world, that between the regale and the pon- tificale. On both sides there were exaggerated de- mands ; but, in the long run, during most of those ages the Church succeeded, not in all that some popes had claimed, but at least in the maintenance of her liber- ties, the destruction of which must have not only griev- ously dimmed the great Christian civilisation, but have also reduced Western society to the abject condition of an Oriental Caliphate. Nor would the evil have ended there. The far future too would have been strangled before its birth. The debased condition of the New Europe would have proved a barren soil wholly incapable of germinating modern civilisation. After the destruc- tion of all spiritual, and consequently of all moral free- dom, the restoration of the best arts, letters, and political ideas of the ancient world would have been as impossible n 64 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE as the growth of corn upon rock. A secular tyranny would at the time have affected to patronise these arts, but it could not have inspired them. The chief dangers to the freedom of religion in the middle ages came from the inordinate wealth heaped upon the clergy by a munificence which later provoked the cupidity of the baronage. A worse evil remained. If there were despotic kings there were also priests without a true vocation. Such there must ever be where excessive ecclesiastical wealth bribes parents to push their sons into holy orders. A few remarks may be necessary here to render intel- ligible an age often calumniated but also often over- admired. Among the clergy at the time of Becket there existed many of very different characters. One of the nobler was represented by John of Salisbury, devout, accomplished, with a culture not confined to religious studies, a man of the world as well as a man of God, but not a worldly man. John of Oxford is the type of the diplomatic ecclesiastic not then uncommon, to whom the playing of an ambitious game was not only the busi- ness of his life, but an amusement so absorbing that he might have devoted himself to it even if it had promised no reward; a hard man with a heart made harder from the sanctities he daily profaned. Henry of Blois, King Stephen's brother, was the Prince Bishop, upright, mag- nanimous, fearless, not scrupulous but faithful to his primary duties, though neither a saint nor affecting sanc- tity. Gilbert Foliot, originally not without strong lean- ings towards ascetic virtue, but turned by an exaggerated reputation for it into a self-deceiver as well as a hypo- SOME OF MY POEMS 365 crite. Herbert of Bosham, a saint and mystic both; simple as a child, pure, benign, humble, with faith unflawed, and with that '' single eye '' of the Gospel which enables a man to see, almost without an effort, what genius alone could never detect, and also to see in all things the symbols of the things invisible. Such a char- acter is often called a visionary, and often turns out to be more practical than its censors. In Becket my design was to illustrate the greatest of that lion-race, those earlier Archbishops of Canterbury, who fought for the freedom of God's Church — *' Ut Ecclesia Anglicana libera sit," as Magna Charta expresses it. He was not a man of the highest ability, but he had in the highest degree the great virtue of fidelity. Reluc- tantly he had become a man in charge ; and he had vowed that, while that charge was his, his master should not suffer wrong. He had begun life as a brave and honour- able man of the world while free from its vices, though too regardful of its applause. This unsought elevation forced him on and up through the strenuous airs of pain- ful duties to a spiritual height made daily greater by the machinations of unscrupulous foes, and the desertion of false friends. In the grades of merit he had proceeded ''Hero" before long, and the next degree was that of ''Saint." It came to him through suffering. Herbert of Bosham had long watched his friend's prog- ress in sanctity with an experienced insight, and rejoiced less in his occasional triumphs than in those desolations which deepened his patience and humility. The deser- tion of false friends was the least of these trials. The severest was that one at Montmirail, for there he was 366 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE abandoned even by the good French king, and by the papal legates themselves. Becket's victory there was solely that of endurance. Herbert thus describes it : '* In patient sadness With neck a little bent, and forward head, Six hours he stood before that storm of tongues • ••••••a* I saw that God had sent his soul that hour A soul's supremest trial — Dereliction : The fountains of the mighty deep of woe Were broken up ; the joy of Faith was dead : Yet Faith itself lived on : 'mid storm and darkness He clung to God as limpet to the rock. He V greater tlia?i he was^ Once again, only once, thiit terrible dereliction falls on him, as he treads the shore near Boulogne just before his return to England; but it is dissipated by the near approach of personal danger, with which dereliction has no connection, that trial being only in the spirit, not in the body. Becket had at last reached to the Saint's degree. He was then fit for death, martyrdom, and martyrdom's legacy. Alexander and Becket were opposites. Alexander was born in the purple, was endued with a genius the greatest ever accorded to a prince, and had for his preceptor the chief philosopher of his age, Aristotle. St. Thomas of Canterbury was a man of humble birth, no extraordinary ability and no unusual culture. Alexander had brooded from his boyhood over a single design, that of founding an empire extending over the whole earth, and replete with all the wisdom of Greece. St. Thomas had no ambition save that of discharging some ordinary duty, SOME OF MY POEMS 367 but discharging it with entire honesty. Alexander advanced from triumph to triumph; and his intellect was ever expanding; but his moral being was ever degenerating. St. Thomas was ever passing after his first exaltation from humiliation to humiliation; but spiritually he was ever growing higher and higher. Alexander died and his empire died with him. St. Thomas died also, and his death preserved from bonds, first in England, and as a consequence, throughout the world, the kingdom whereof its founder had promised that '^the gates of Hell should not prevail against it.'* The warfare of the emperors and the anti-popes against His Church had begun and was in rapid progress. If the conspiracy had proved then triumphant in England it nmst have advanced rapidly over the rest of the world, ^^Like chaos o'er creation, uncreating." V. The Legends of the Saxon Saints. Upon these legends, as I read or wrote, there seemed ever to rest the shadow of Odin, that heroic prince, the chief action of whose life is set forth in the first Legend of the Saints, entitled *'Odin the Man," and again in the last, after his prophecy had been fulfilled, and pagan Rome had undergone the penance he had invoked upon her head centuries before. In "The Saxon Saints'' my aim was to present to the reader a picture both of the early British and Anglo- Saxon England during the seventh century. Of course I followed the footsteps of the venerable Bede. That cen- tury gave to England's chief race her Christianity, on which has ever since rested her liberty, civilisation, and 368 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE greatness. The poem was meant to illustrate the chief types, pagan and Christian, of society, from the cowherd to the minstrel, the warrior, the king, and the prophet, and among them the graver figures of the Roman missionaries and the Saxon saints. These Saxon saints were very different from the Irish. So were the races; the English differed much from the Irish. There was less of the wild and strange about them, but more dignity; less of the child but more of the man; less of the missionary but more of the Christian subject and citizen. The unity which belongs to a drama or to an epic is of course neither to be found or to be sought in a collection of legends ; but a certain degree of unity must sometimes be found where those legends are not the creations of fancy, but rest upon authentic history. The chief religious legends of Anglo-Saxon history stand in close connection with a far earlier pagan legend — perhaps of all such the most memorable. I refer to the wonderful legend which even the sceptical Gibbon speaks of as not improbably true — that of Odin. He was a prince whose kingdom lay near Ararat, and who, finding it impossible further to resist the advance of the Roman arms under Pompey, resolved that if he could not preserve their country for his people, he would at least preserve his people from servitude. He led them forth into the great German forest. He had been a traveller in youth through that vast tract, and he had also sojourned at Rome. He told his people when leading them forth that Rome was already so corrupted and enervated that within a few cen- turies more it could make no defence, and that within the same period their descendants would be so hardened and SOME OF MY POEMS 369 Strengthened by the terrible climate of the North that they could then with certainty accomplish their destiny, force their way to the sunny South, execute the divine vengeance on Rome, and break up for ever its immeasur- able empire. That pagan legend reappears again and again in the "Legends of Saxon Saints/' The mandate of that patriotic king, the high instrument of Providence, had been in a great part obeyed by his race, yet after a time it had degenerated, not indeed like Rome, by corruption of morals, but by cruelty and a per- petual thirst for battle. Their heaven itself was to be, they thought, not eternal peace, but eternal war. Their household morals retained that purity ascribed to the Germans by Tacitus; but their religion had insensibly changed. Before their migration they had, as many believe, held much in common with other Eastern races and with early Eastern religious traditions of a highly Theistic character. In part these had remained to them,, and later had facilitated their conversion to Christianity; but in part they had disappeared. The descendants of Odin's subjects had committed a great crime against Odin. They had made him a god. He had been a mighty warrior; and their life thenceforth was war. Into about the centre of my poem I introduced a legend entitled "King Sigibert and Heida the Prophetess,'' recalling Odin's high design, but implying its partial frustration. The purer spirits among the worshippers of the Scandi- navian Gods were beginning to grow dissatisfied with them, and were beginning to listen to the Christian monks of St. Columba from lona. An ancient Scandi- 24 370 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE navian book had been discovered, making a confession never made by any other religion, namely that all the gods then vi^orshipped were one day to perish, and one great God of sanctity and peace was to take their place for ever. So said " The Voluspa '' or primeval prophecy. The final legend, entitled ''The Banquet Hall of Wessex,'' or '"The King who could see," decides for ever between the true representatives of Odin, and those who only dishonoured the great king whom they professed to adore. Kenwalk, King of Wessex, was a pagan, but refused to persecute the Christians. Wessex is con- quered by the sovereign of Mercia, but after a time it is delivered from this yoke, and Kenwalk is restored. A great banquet is held to which throng all the Scandinavian nobles, priests, and bards intent on the destruction of the Christian faith, and those who hold it. When the fury of the pagan host is at its height, and the destruction of the Christians seems imminent, Birirnus, the bishop from Rome, rises and at once quells the tumult. "Odin,'' he affirms, disowns them. " True Man was He : ye changed him to false God; That Odin, when the destined hour had pealed, Beckoned to Alaric, marched by Alaric's side." Alaric had fulfilled the prophecy of Odin when he led his people forth into the German forest. Alaric had inflicted the Divine vengeance on Rome. Alaric was the great chief of the barbaric race which worshipped Odin. But this high triumph had not been conceded to Alaric until he had become a Christian; so speaks the Bishop Birirnus. King Kenwalk then rises from his throne, declares that during his exile he had often delib- SOME OF MY POEMS 371 erated as to whether he should or should not become a Christian, and that what he had that day seen had made him resolve to do so without delay. The next day, at the king's baptism, Birirnus prophesies of King Alfred, and announces that Wessex, one of the smallest kingdoms of the Heptarchy, will, under his rule, become its head, and eventually bequeath the noblest of empires to the race of Odin, itself delivered over to Christ. VI. The Foray of Queen Meave. In 1880 I passed much pleasant time among the col- lections of the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin. Those collections included several manuscript translations into English prose of remarkable poems belonging to Ireland's Heroic Age. Several of these translations, among others "The Tripartite Life of St. Patrick,'' had been trans- lated by Mr. W. Hennessy, one of the best recent Irish scholars; another had been translated by Prof. Eugene O'Curry, and published; and I had the advantage also of reading Professor O'Looney's manuscript translation of what is regarded as the greatest of the early Irish epics, or, as some would say, its finest fragment. To me it seemed the "fragment of a lost world," as Landor said of Homer's poems; and I resolved to try at least whether the substance of that Irish epic, " The Foray of Queen Meave," believed to have been orally transmitted from a period antecedent to the Christian era, might not be preserved to the English and Irish reader in poetic form. The greatness of early Irish poetry, and of the age that produced it is brought home to us by its immense superi- n2 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE ority to Ireland's medieval poetry, called "Ossianic," because it relates chiefly to Ossian. These later poems combine truth to nature with vigour and pathos, but they do not possess the breadth or the force of the epic fragments belonging to a far earlier date. They have not the same inventive imagination or passion, nor are the characters as sharply delineated. The poetry of that first age, though very unequal, was great because the age was great. The '' Heroic Age *' of Ireland anticipated by some five or six centuries the "Saintly Age.'' To the first century belonged Cachul- 1am, by far the noblest of the Irish warriors ; and Fordia, his sworn friend, though a Firbolg, not a Gael. To it belonged Conell Carnach. To it belonged one of their wisest kings, Conor Mac Nessa, and a far nobler one, Fergus Mac Roy, so royal-hearted, though so indifferent to power, that he abandoned his throne on discovering that his subjects preferred his step-son. To him was attributed the great Irish epic, "The Tain," commemo- rating the war in which he had taken so large a part. Deirdre, the chief female representative of that heroic age, had in her also many traits of noblest Irish character still found in our own. The poetry that illustrates a " Heroic Age " is quickly recognised. It is both great-hearted and light-hearted. It abounds in wild mirth, sure that such mirth will meet with sympathy, and that no critic will complain because close to the comic he finds passages that challenge "pity or terror." The poet of that age sets forth what he sees, and he sees that which is, because he comes to the great drama of human life without preoccupations. Nature SOME OF MY POEMS 373 bears with strange mixtures, and the poet bears with them also. The early chronicler thus supplies the later dramatist with material, for he noted facts as they occurred, and without the gloss of theory, political or ethical. The facts he meets walk naked and are not ashamed. The modern historian seldom inspires the dramatist, because what he records has, in his hands, taken a shape not its own. Nature disowns them thus transformed, and true Art will not live on Nature's leav- ings. Those old Irish poems bore for me plainly the stamp of reality. The poet was a witness, and did not set himself up as a judge. He did not look down upon them from a height, real or imaginary, but encountered them face to face as he moved along the paths and by- paths of men. There is often in those old Irish legends a sense of honour, even in the midst of the most lawless enter- prises. For example, the Firbolg race had complained that the Gaelic hosts had landed on Erin's coasts by night. Their complaint was submitted by the Gaels to their chief bard, Amergin. He commanded his fellow-countrymen to re-embark and sail over the sea ^' nine waves,'' return to the land by day, and keep it if they could. They obeyed him. The military laws which ruled the standing army of Ireland under Fionn are marked by the high reverence for woman, for the Druid, for the bards. As I read each prose translation of ancient Irish song, there rose before me a vision of a "Heroic Age," such as has long ceased to exist. The men then living had strong nerves as well as strong hearts. Deirdr^, "The Child of Destiny/' when she sang the dirge of the three 374 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE far-famed Brothers, wailed for them only, not for herself, though when that dirge was over she fell dead at their feet. I read on and felt less and less disposed to contest the assertion of Prof. Eugene O'Curry that "The Tain '* is to Irish history what "The Argonautic Expedition '' and " The Seven against Thebes '' were to that of Greece. Behind those Irish warriors there stood a background in harmony with them — structures not like those which glorified the age of Pericles and Phidias, but one resem- bling the tomb of Agamemnon and the huge ruins at Mycene. The Irish structures that rose before me as I read were the huge fortifications on Aran Isle, Dun Angus, and Dun Connor, works of the Firbolg race, whose Cyclopean walls still outbrave the Atlantic waves with their long courses of uncemented stone. Another such background is presented in the marvellous sepulchral remains on the banks of the Boyne, the monuments of a race earlier still than the Firbolg, namely, that of the Tuatha De Danann — such monuments as New Grange, Knowth, and Dowth, — and the earlier monuments of Ireland's third race, the Gael, such as the huge fort close to Emania now Armagh, or the lonely cairn on one of the summits of Howth, the grave of Oscar's wife, so familiar to the readers of Sir Samuel Ferguson's bravely pathetic poem, "Aideen's Grave." THE END. ARNOLD'S BRITISH CLASSICS FOR SCHOOLS. General Editor— J. CHURTON COLLINS, M.A. This series has been undertaken with the same objects as the series of plays in Arnold's School Shakespeare^ and the Introductions and Notes have been regulated by the same general principles. It is designed for the use of those who are encouraged to study the great poets liberally, rathe**, that is to say, from a literary and historical point of view, than from the grammatical and philological side. At the same time it will, we hope, be found to contain all the information required from junior students in an ordinary examination in English literature. Paradise Lost, Books I. & II. By J. Sabgeaunt, M.A., Assistant-Master at Westminster School. Cloth, Is. ^d. Paradise Lost, Books III. & IV. By J. Sakgeaunt, M.A. Is. 3d. Marmion. By G. Townsend Warner, M.A., Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, and Assistant-Master at Harrow School. Cloth, Is. 6d. Childe Harold. By the Eev. E. C. Everard Owen, M.A., Assistant-Master at Harrow School. Cloth, 2s. Od. The Lady of the Lake. By J. Marshall, M.A., Eector of the Royal High School, Edinburgh. Cloth, Is. 6d. The Lay of the Last Minstrel. By G. Townsend Warner, M.A. Is. 3d. 4^rarmrt vyLo uhH ^anird jvarticuLirSof^ lirice as Soon as ^ 4iyixJ(can U sUruC wr Salt . 374 RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE far-famed Brothers, wailed for them only, not for herself, though when that dirge was over she fell dead at their feet. I read on and felt less and less disposed to contest the assertion of Prof. Eugene O'Curry that "The Tain '* is to Irish history what "The Argonautic Expedition *' and " The Seven against Thebes '' were to that of Greece. Behind those Irish warriors there stood a background in harmony with them — structures not like those which glorified the age of Pericles and Phidias, but one resem- bling the tomb of Agamemnon and the huge ruins at Mycene. The Irish structures that rose before me as I read were the huge fortifications on Aran Isle, Dun Angus, and Dun Connor, works of the Firbolg race, whose Cyclopean walls still outbrave the Atlantic waves with their long courses of uncemented stone. Another such background is presented in the marvellous sepulchral 1 ARNOLD'S BRITISH CLASSICS FOR SCHOOLS. General Editor— J. CHURTON COLLINS, M.A. This series has been undertaken with the same objects as the series of plays in Arnold's School Shakespearey and the Introductions and Notes have been regulated by the same general principles. It is designed for the use of those who are encouraged to study the great poets liberally, rathe**, that is to say, from a literary and historical point of view, than from the grammatical and philological side. At the same time it will, we hope, be found to contain all the information required from junior students in an ordinary examination in English literature. Paradise Lost, Books I. & II. By J. Saegeaunt, M.A., Assistant-Master at Westminster School. Cloth, Is. 3d. Paradise Lost, Books III. & IV. By J. Sargeaunt, M.A. Is. 3d. Marmion. By G. Townsend Warner, M.A., Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, and Assistant-Master at Harrow School. Cloth, Is. 6d. Childe Harold. By the Eev. E. C. Everard Owen, M.A., Assistant-Master at Harrow School. Cloth, 2s. Od. The Lady of the Lake. By J. Marshall, M.A., Eector of the Royal High School, Edinburgh. Cloth, Is. 6d. The Lay of the Last Minstrel. By G. Townsend Wabner, M.A. Is. 3d. Maeaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome. By L. E. F. Du PONTET, B.A., Assistant-Master at Winchester College. 1p. 6d. SOME OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. Paradise Lost, III. & IV. Journal of Education.—" The introduction is a singularly able one, and the notes are models of brevity and condensation." Educational Times.—" Unlike many notes to school editions, they really do explain the text, and, though admirably terse, are always clear.'' Marmion. Educational News.—" This is a valuable and worthy addition to the series." The Lady of the Lake. ..... ^ . „ Scotsman.—" It is an excellent school edition of this text, and meets all the ordinary needs of an ' English ' class." London : EDWARD ARNOLD, 37 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND. May, 1897, MR. EDWARD ARNOLD'S Recent publications. London: 37 BEDFORD STREET. New York : 70 FIFTH AVENUE. -♦4- WILD NORWAY : With Chapters on the Swedish Highlands, Jutland, and Spitzbergen. By ABEL CHAPMAN, Author of ' Wild Spain,' etc. With seventeen full-page Illustrations and numerous smaller ones by the Author and Charles Whymper. Demy 8vo., i6s. It is hoped that this book may become a standard work on Norwegian sport. It is the result of many years' personal experience of all kinds of sport — Stalking, Fishing, Shooting, and Elk-hunting. The author is well known as a naturalist, and his interesting remarks on the habits of birds and animals are those of a close and careful observer. Contents: Chap. I. Fjeld and Fjord — Chaps. II. and III. Reindeer-Stalking — Chaps. IV. and V. Salmon Fishing — Chap. VI. Memories of Monsters — Chap. VII. Salmon in Surendal — Chap. VIII. Summer Rambles — Chap. IX. More Salmoa Rivers — Chaps. X. and XI. Trouting — Chap. XII. Autumn in Norway — Chap. XIII. HuntingCamps in Hardanger — Chaps. XIV. and XV. Elk-Hunting— Chaps. XVI. and XVII. Highlands of the Swedish Divide— Chap. XVIII. Wild Life in Forest and Fjeld — Chap. XIX. Impressions of Denmark — Chap. XX. Lagoons and Marshes of Jutland— Chap. XXI. The North Sea— Chap. XXII. Spitzbergen. MEMORIES OF THE MONTHS. Leaves from a Field Naturalist's Note=book. By Sir HERBERT MAXWELL, Bart., M.P., Author of ' Dumfries and Galloway,' etc. Crown Svo., with four Photogravure Illustrations, 6s. Various topics of country life are discoursed upon, and separated under the months in which they assume most prominence. Thus in January the author deals with-- Bird Migration— Power of Birds to endure Cold — A Lake Sanctuary — Canadian Pond-Weeds— The Scaup Duck — The Great Crested Grebe— Spring Salmon— Winter Flowers— West Coast Meteorology— The Bottle-Tit— Feathered Police— Revival of Primitive Flora. And the other months are treated in a similar fashion. OLD ENGLISH GLASSES. An Account of Glass Drinking-vessels in England from Early Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century, with notices of Continental Glasses during the same period. By ALBERT HARTSHORNE, Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. With nearly 70 full-page Lithographic Plates and over 400 smaller Illustra- tions. Super royal 410., ^£3 3s. net. This magnificent and unique work is dedicated by special permission to Her Majesty the Queen. A full prospectus can be had on apphcation. Mr. Edward Arnold's THE CHANCES OF DEATH, AND OTHER STUDIES IN EVOLUTION. By KARL PEARSON, F.R.S., Author of * The Ethic of Free Thought/ eic. In two vols., demy 8vo., with Illustrations, 25s. net. Contents of Vol. I. — The Chances of Death — The Scientific Aspect of Monte Carlo Roulette — Reproductive Selection — Socialism and Natural Selection — Politics and Science — Reaction — Woman and Labour — Variation in Man and Woman. Contents of Vol. II. — Woman as Witch — Ashiepattle ; or, Hans seeks his Luck — Kindred Group Marriage — The German Passion Play — Index. THROUGH UNKNOWN AFRICAN COUNTRIES. The First Expedition from Somaliland to Lake Rudolf and Lamu. A Narrative of Scientific Exploration and Sporting Adventures. By A. DONALDSON SMITH, M.D., F.R.G.S. With nearly thirty full-page Plates and numerous smaller Illustrations by A. D. McCoRMiCK, Charles Whymper, etc., and detailed Maps of the countries traversed. Super royal 8vo., One Guinea net. ' Will be of the greatest interest to sportsman, traveller, and man of science.' — Pall Mall Gazette. 'Tells in clear, succinct, and well-chosen language the tale of a very adventurous journey.' — Standard. 'A most important as well as original contribution to the literature of African discovery and the natural history, ethnology, and international problems of the Black Continent. Lovers of sport wull find in it much to captivate them. Perhaps the majority of readers will care most for the information he gives them on the native tribes and their characteristics, and the relations between Abyssinia and the countries on her borders.' — Daily News. ' Since the publication of Stanley's " Across the Dark Continent," there has been no work of African travel equal, in scientific importance and thrilling interest, to Dr. Donaldson Smith's book. As a book of exciting sport, apart from its geographical and ethnological usefulness, it deserves to stand alongside the best experiences of the toughest Anglo-Indian shikaris.' — Daily Teleg7'aj>h. SOLDIERING AND SURVEYING IN BRITISH EAST AFRICA, 1891-1894. An Account of the Survey for the Uganda Railway, and the various Campaigns in the British Protectorate during the last few years. By Major J. R. MACDONALD, R.E. Illustrated from Sketches and Photographs by the Author and numerous Plans and a Map. Demy 8vo., i6s. ' No country in the world has had greater need of an impartial historian than Uganda, and, strange to say, though the bitter feelings engendered by the struggles of ihe past ten years have not had time to cool, one has been found among the actors in these stormy scenes, Major Macdonald. . . . No one who reads this exciting book of adventure can regret that we are spending ;i^3, 000,000 on the railway. Major Macdonald writes with considerable literary and historical skill, and his sketches and maps are all excellent.' — Pall Mall Gazette. ' Really interesting reading. Major Macdonald's book is full of fighting, and abounds with exciting incidents of other kinds.' — Times. ' An interesting record of a memorable expedition.' — Glasgo%v Herald. A SUNSHINE TRIP. Glimpses of the Orient. By MARGARET BOTTOME, President of the 'King's Daughters.' Sma'I crown 8vo. With Photogravure Portrait of the Author. Cloth, 4s. 6d. Recent Ptcblications, NEW VOLUME OF ' THE SPORTSMAN'S LIBRARY: THE SPORTSMAN IN IRELAND. By COSMOPOLITE. With six Coloured Plates and numerous full-page and other Illustrations by P. Chenevix Trench. Edited by Sir Herbert Maxwell, Bart., M.P., and forming the third volume of ' The Sportsman's Library.' Large 8vo., handsomely bound, 1 5s. A limited large-paper edition, £2 2s. net. Note. — Previous uoluines of The Sportsman s Library' are L— THE LIFE OF A FOX. By Thomas Smith. IL— COLONEL THORNTON'S SPORTING TOUR IN THE NORTH. ON VELDT AND FARM : In Cape Colony, Bechuanaland, Natal, and the Transvaal. By FRANCES McNAB. With Map. Second Edition. Crown 8vo., 300 pages, 3s. 6d. Contents. — Markets — Land Purchase — Trekking — Political History — Viticulture — Fruit-growing — Johannebburg — Farming in the Transvaal — Irrigation — Locusts — Ostriches, Sheep, and Goats — Wheat — Forestry — Native Affairs — Natal — Tea, Sugar, and Coffee. ' Well worth the study of those interested in the agricultural and general development of South Africa.' — Saturday Revieiu. ' A delightlul book, and we can confidently recommend it as far more worth a reading than many a work of infinitely greater pretensions. The whole work is full of interest, and is, moreover, written in a style that compels the attention of the reader.'— Globe. FISH TAILS AND SOME TRUE ONES. By BRADNOCK HALL, Author of ' Rough Mischance.' With an original Etching by the Author, and twelve full-page Illustrations by T. H. McLachlan. Crown 8vo., 6s. The scene of most of these ' Fish-Tails ' (or Tales !) is laid in Norway, but of some in England and Scotland. They relate the author's experiences, making due allowance for the elasticity of a fisherman's fancy. NEW STORY BY THE AUTHOR OF ' DIANA TEMPEST' A DEVOTEE : An Episode in the Life of a Butterfly. By MARY CHOLMONDELEY, Author of 'Diana Tempest/ 'The Danvers Jewels/ etc. Crown 8vo., 3s. 6d. ' The many readers and admirers of that fine novel " Diana Tempest " will welcome a new book by Miss Cholmondeley with interest and high expectation and it is pleasant to be able to inform them hat thev will not be disappointed. A most ordinal and truthful sketch. The chief strength of the clever En-li>h novelist is in agreeable moralizing and reflection, and Miss Cholniondeley s nioralizings are mott admirable, informeci by close observation of lite and touched with a hne point of irony. - IVestjniftster Gazette. 4 Mr. Edward Arnold's Recent Ptcblications. THE TREATMENT OF NATURE IN DANTE'S 'DIVINA COMMEDIA/ By L. OSCAR KUHNS, Professor in Wesleyan University, Middleton, U.S.A. Crown 8vo., cloth, 5s. THE GOSPEL THE POWER OF GOD, AND OTHER SERMONS. By CHARLES D. BELL, D.D., Honorary Canon of Carlisle. Crown 8vo., cloth, 3s. 6d. THE BEGGARS OF PARIS. Translated from the French of M. LOUIS PAULIAN. By Lady HERSCHELL. Crown 8vo., paper boards, 192 pages, is. ' Not only contains a great many amusing and instructive anecdotes, but formulates a definite scheme for the entire suppression of begging as a trade. Lady Herscheirs ex- cellent translation should be read by all who are interested in the vexed question of charity- giving, and even to those who read but for amusement it will prove vastly interesting.'— Times. ' One of the most interesting books which have appeared during recent years on the subject of mendicancy.' — Natio?ial Obsef've?-. 'Lady Herschell's translation is worthy of M. Pauhan's interesting manner.'— /^a// Mall Gazette, WASTED RECORDS OF DISEASE. By CHARLES E. PAGET, Lecturer on Public Health in Owens College, Medical Officer of Health for Salford, etc. Crown 8vo., 2s. 6d. EARLY ENGLISH FURNITURE. An account of the famous Enghsh Cabinet-makers — Adams, Sheraton, Chippendale, etc. With two hundred fine Illustrations of their work. By Mrs. WARREN CLOUSTON. Demy 4to. Probable price, One Guinea net. A GENERAL LIST OF • ^t. Ebwarb Htnolb 6 Ipublications. TRAVEL, SPORT, AND EXPLORATION. Balfoup— TWELVE HUNDRED MILES IN A WAGGON. A Nar- rative of a Journey in Cape Colony, the Transvaal, and the Chartered Company's Territories. By Alice Blanche Balfour. With nearly forty original Illustrations from Sketches by the Author, and a Map. Second edition. Demy 8vo., cloth, i6s. Beynon— WITH KELLY TO CHITRAL. By Lieutenant W. G. L. Beynon, D.S.O., 3rd Goorkha Rifles, Staff Officer to Colonel Kelly with the Relief Force. With Maps, Plans, and Illustrations. Second edition. Demy 8vo., 7s. 6d. Bull— THE CRUISE OF THE ANTARCTIC, To the South Polar Regions. By H. J. Bull, a member of the Expedition. Demy 8vo. , 153. Chapman— WILD NORWAY. {Seepage t.) Colvile— THE LAND OF THE NILE SPRINGS. By Col. Sir Henry COLVILE, K.C. M.G., C. B. , recently British Commissioner in Uganda. Demy 8vo. , i6s. Custanee— RIDING RECOLLECTIONS AND TURF STORIES. By Henry Custance. One vol., crown 8vo., cloth, 2s. 6d. Freshneld— EXPLORATION OF THE CAUCASUS. By Douglas W. Freshfield, lately President of the Alpine Club and Honorary Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society. Illustrated by 3 Panoramas, 74 full-page Photogravures, about 140 Illustrations in the text, and 4 Original Maps. In 2 vols., large 4to., 600 pp., £2 3s. net. Gordon— PERSIA REVISITED, with Remarks on H.I.M. Mozuffer- ed-Din Shah, and the Present Situation in Persia (1896). By General Sir T. E. Gordon, K.C.I. E., C.B., C.S.I. Demy 8vo., los. 6d. Hall— FISH TAILS. {Seepage 2.) Hole— A LITTLE TOUR IN AMERICA. By the Very Rev. S. Reynolds Hole, Dean of Rochester, Author of 'The Memories of Dean Hole,' 'A Book about Roses,' etc. With numerous Illustrations. Demy 8vo., i6s. Hole— A LITTLE TOUR IN IRELAND. By An Oxonian (the Very Rev. S. R. Hole). With nearly forty Illustrations by John Leech, including the famous steel Frontispiece of the ' Claddagh.' One vol., large crown 8vo., 6s. Macdonald— SOLDIERING AND SURVEYING. {Seepage 2.) 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Smith— THE LIFE OF A FOX, AND THE DIARY OF A HUNTS- MAN. By Thomas Smith, Master of the Hambledon and Pytchley Hounds. With the original Illustrations by the Author, and Six Coloured Plates by G. H. Jalland. Large 8vo., handsomely bound, 15s. Also a hmited Large-paper Edition, with Plates on Japanese vellum, £2 2s. net. (See ' Sportsman's Library.') Smith— THROUGH UNKNOWN AFRICAN COUNTRIES. {See page I.) Stone— IN AND BEYOND THE HIMALAYAS : A Record of Sport and Travel. By S. J. Stone, late Deputy Inspector-General of the Punjab Police. With 16 full-page Illustrations by Charles Whymper. Demy 8vo. , i6s. Thornton— THORNTON'S SPORTING TOUR IN THE NORTH. By Col. T. Thornton, of Thornville Royal. With the Original Illustrations by Garrard, Coloured Plates by G. Lodge, and other Illustrations. Large 8vo., handsomely bound, 15s. Also a limited Large-paper edition, £^2. 2s. net. [See ' Sportsman's Library. ') AMERICAN SPORT AND TRAVEL. 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Translated from the Italian, with notes and additions, by Thomas Davidson, M.A. Crown 8vo., cloth, 6s. Mr. Edward Arnold's List. ^^Hl^^^^^J^^ PLANT-LORE AND GARDEN-CRAFT OF ^UAKESPEARE By the Rev. Canon Ellacombe, author of ' In a Gloucestershire J _^*4 *' j' A » *'*'.■ J /*> • -f V ^ ^ ^ .* ^ J ^^Er ** ^ ^ y 1 > -• > ^ ■ ^^'*.^•^•^>^.^ ->'>'j^/.'^^ jT *\rA s' jT^- ^-^ y y ^' y y ^ ^^JJJ^aj*^ > y ^ 4 d ^ ^ ^ «>>yyy^yy y^*^yy/ y ^ ^ « «> *• > ^^«>^»yy<'y y^-'vy--«v-.rfy>/'y^-/yy ^^ y> ^ ^ ^ ^ •' rf > y ^ .• iT ** ■_• -y ^ ^< y • V > > ^ »' -^ ^.^ ^ ^ , -•■<• y W*-y y - ^-y y « ^ ^ ^ -s - ->?*? ->_*.♦ ^->.^.^,^^^..^/^s,^,^,V.