It was
difficult
to
take one's eyes off him.
take one's eyes off him.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v10 - Emp to Fro
Curiosity was now sufficiently gratified, and
-
## p. 5633 (#207) ###########################################
FREDERICK WILLIAM FARRAR
5633
it had become clearer than ever that though they might regard
Paul the prisoner as an amiable enthusiast or an inspired fanatic,
he was in no sense a legal criminal. The king, by rising from
his seat, gave the signal for breaking up the meeting; Berenice
and Festus and their respective retinues rose up at the same
time, and as the distinguished assembly dispersed, they were heard
remarking on all sides that Paul was undeserving of death, or
even of imprisonment. He had made, in fact, a deeply favor-
able impression. Agrippa's decision was given entirely for his
acquittal. "This person," he said to Festus, "might have been
permanently set at liberty if he had not appealed to Cæsar. "
Agrippa was far too little of a Pharisee and far too much of a
man of the world not to see that mere freedom of thought could
not be, and ought not to be, suppressed by external violence.
The proceedings of that day probably saved St. Paul's life full
two years afterwards. Festus, since his own opinion on grounds
of Roman justice was so entirely confirmed from the Jewish
point of view by the Protector of the Temple, could hardly fail
to send to Nero an elogium which freely exonerated the prisoner
from every legal charge; and even if Jewish intrigues were put
in play against him, Nero could not condemn to death a man
whom Felix, and Lysias, and Festus, and Agrippa, and even the
Jewish Sanhedrim, in the only trial of the case which they had
held, had united in pronouncing innocent of any capital crime.
ROMAN CIVILIZATION UNDER NERO
From The Early Days of Christianity'
I
NEED but make a passing allusion to its enormous wealth; its
unbounded self-indulgence; its coarse and tasteless luxury; its
greedy avarice; its sense of insecurity and terror; its apathy,
debauchery, and cruelty; its hopeless fatalism; its unspeakable
sadness and weariness; its strange extravagances alike of infidelity.
and of superstition.
At the lowest extreme of the social scale were millions of
slaves, without family, without religion, without possessions, who
had no recognized rights, and towards whom none had any rec-
ognized duties, passing normally from a childhood of degradation
to a manhood of hardship and an old age of unpitied neglect.
X-353
## p. 5634 (#208) ###########################################
5634
FREDERICK WILLIAM FARRAR
Only a little above the slaves stood the lower classes, who formed
the vast majority of the free-born inhabitants of the Roman
Empire. They were for the most part beggars and idlers, famil-
iar with the grossest indignities of an unscrupulous dependence.
Despising a life of honest industry, they asked only for bread
and the games of the circus, and were ready to support any
government, even the most despotic, if it would supply these
needs. They spent their mornings in lounging about the Forum
or in dancing attendance at the levées of patrons, for a share in
whose largesses they daily struggled. They spent their afternoons
and evenings in gossiping at the public baths, in listlessly enjoy-
ing the polluted plays of the theatre, or looking with fierce
thrills of delighted horror at the bloody sports of the arena. At
night they crept up to their miserable garrets in the sixth and
seventh stories of the huge insula, - the lodging-houses of
Rome, into which, as into the low lodging-houses of the poorer
quarters of London, there drifted all that was most wretched and
most vile. Their life, as it is described for us by their contem-
poraries, was largely made up of squalor, misery, and vice.
Immeasurably removed from these needy and greedy freemen,
and living chiefly amid crowds of corrupted and obsequious
slaves, stood the constantly diminishing throng of the wealthy
and the noble. Every age in its decline has exhibited the spec-
tacle of selfish luxury side by side with abject poverty; of —
-
"Wealth, a monster gorged
'Mid starving populations:"
but nowhere and at no period were these contrasts so startling
as they were in imperial Rome. There a whole population
might be trembling lest they should be starved by the delay of
an Alexandrian corn-ship, while the upper classes were squan-
dering a fortune at a single banquet, drinking out of myrrhine
and jeweled vases worth hundreds of pounds, and feasting on
the brains of peacocks and the tongues of nightingales. As a
consequence, disease was rife, men were short-lived, and even
women became liable to gout. Over a large part of Italy, most
of the free-born population had to content themselves even in
winter with a tunic, and the luxury of the toga was reserved
only, by way of honor, to the corpse. Yet at this very time the
dress of Roman ladies displayed an unheard-of splendor. The
elder Pliny tells us that he himself saw Lollia Paulina dressed for
## p. 5635 (#209) ###########################################
FREDERICK WILLIAM FARRAR
5635
a betrothal feast in a robe entirely covered with pearls and emer-
alds, which had cost forty million sesterces, and which was known
to be less costly than some of her other dresses. Gluttony,
caprice, extravagance, ostentation, impurity, rioted in the heart of
a society which knew of no other means by which to break the
monotony of its weariness, or alleviate the anguish of its despair.
"On that hard pagan world disgust
And secret loathing fell;
Deep weariness and sated lust
Made human life a hell.
In his cool hall, with haggard eyes,
The Roman noble lay;
He drove abroad in furious guise
Along the Appian Way;
He made a feast, drank fierce and fast,
And crowned his hair with flowers -
No easier nor no quicker passed
The impracticable hours. "
At the summit of the whole decaying system - necessary, yet
detested; elevated indefinitely above the very highest, yet living.
in dread of the very lowest; oppressing a population which he
terrified, and terrified by the population which he oppressed-
was an emperor, raised to the divinest pinnacle of autocracy,
yet conscious that his life hung upon a thread; an emperor
who in the terrible phrase of Gibbon was at once a priest, an
atheist, and a god.
The general condition of society was such as might have been
expected from the existence of these elements. The Romans had
entered on a stage of fatal degeneracy from the first day of
their close intercourse with Greece. Greece learnt from Rome
her cold-blooded cruelty; Rome learnt from Greece her voluptuous
corruption. Family life among the Romans had once been a
sacred thing, and for 520 years divorce had been unknown among
them. Under the empire, marriage had come to be regarded
with disfavor and disdain. Women, as Seneca says, married in
order to be divorced, and were divorced in order to marry; and
noble Roman matrons counted the years not by the Consuls, but
by their discarded or discarding husbands.
To have a family was regarded as a misfortune, because the
childless were courted with extraordinary assiduity by crowds of
## p. 5636 (#210) ###########################################
5636
FREDERICK WILLIAM FARRAR
fortune-hunters.
When there were children in a family, their edu-
cation was left to be begun under the tutelage of those slaves
who were otherwise the most decrepit and useless, and was car-
ried on, with results too fatally obvious, by supple, accomplished,
and abandoned Greeklings. But indeed, no system of education.
could have eradicated the influence of the domestic circle. No
care could have prevented the sons and daughters of a wealthy
family from catching the contagion of the vices of which they
saw in their parents a constant and unblushing example.
tion.
Literature and art were infected with the prevalent degrada-
Poetry sank in great measure into exaggerated satire,
hollow declamation, or frivolous epigrams. Art was partly cor-
rupted by the fondness for glare, expensiveness, and size, and
partly sank into miserable triviality, or immoral prettinesses, such
as those which decorated the walls of Pompeii in the first cen-
tury and the Parc aux Cerfs in the eighteenth. Greek statues of
the days of Phidias were ruthlessly decapitated, that their heads
might be replaced by the scowling or imbecile features of a
Caius or a Claudius. Nero, professing to be a connoisseur, thought
that he improved the Alexander of Lysimachus by gilding it
from head to foot. Eloquence, deprived of every legitimate aim
and used almost solely for purposes of insincere display, was
tempted to supply the lack of genuine fire by sonorous euphony
and theatrical affectation. A training in rhetoric was now under-
stood to be a training in the art of emphasis and verbiage,
which was rarely used for any loftier purpose than to make
sycophancy plausible, or to embellish sophistry with speciousness.
The drama, even in Horace's days, had degenerated into a
vehicle for the exhibition of scenic splendor or ingenious ma-
chinery. Dignity, wit, pathos, were no longer expected on the
stage, for the dramatist was eclipsed by the swordsman or the
rope-dancer. The actors who absorbed the greatest part of popu-
lar favor were pantomimists, whose insolent prosperity was gen-
erally in direct proportion to the infamy of their character. And
while the shamelessness of the theatre corrupted the purity of
all classes from the earliest age, the hearts of the multitude
were made hard as the nether millstone with brutal insensibility,
by the fury of the circus, the atrocities of the amphitheatre, and
the cruel orgies of the games. Augustus, in the document
annexed to his will, mentioned that he had exhibited 8,000 glad-
iators, and 3,510 wild beasts. The old warlike spirit of the
## p. 5637 (#211) ###########################################
FREDERICK WILLIAM FARRAR
5637
Romans was dead, among the gilded youth of families in which
distinction of any kind was certain to bring down upon its most
prominent members the murderous suspicion of irresponsible des-
pots. The spirit which had once led the Domitii and the Fabii
"to drink delight of battle with their peers" on the plains of
Gaul and in the forests of Germany, was now satiated by gazing
on criminals fighting for dear life with bears and tigers, or upon
bands of gladiators who hacked each other to pieces on the
encrimsoned sand. The languid enervation of the delicate and
dissolute aristocrat could only be amused by magnificence and
stimulated by grossness or by blood. Thus the gracious illusions
by which true art has ever aimed at purging the passions of
terror and pity, were extinguished by the realism of tragedies.
ignobly horrible and comedies intolerably base. Two phrases
sum up the characteristics of Roman civilization in the days of
the empire-heartless cruelty, and unfathomable corruption.
CHRIST AND PILATE
From The Life of Christ'
A
SON of God! The notion was far less strange and repulsive
to a heathen than to a Jew; and this word, unheard before,
startled Pilate with the third omen which made him trem-
ble at the crime into which he was being dragged by guilt and
fear. Once more, leaving the yelling multitude without, he takes
Jesus with him into the quiet judgment hall, and-"jam pro sud
conscientia Christianus," as Tertullian so finely observes — asks
him in awe-struck accents, "Whence art thou? " Alas! it was too
late to answer now. Pilate was too deeply committed to his gross
cruelty and injustice; for him Jesus had spoken enough already;
for the wild beasts who raged without, he had no more to say.
He did not answer. Then, almost angrily, Pilate broke out with
the exclamation, "Dost thou not speak to me? Dost thou not
know that I have power to set thee free, and have power to
crucify thee? » Power-how so? Was justice nothing, then?
truth nothing? innocence nothing? conscience nothing? In the
reality of things Pilate had no such power; even in the arbi-
trary sense of the tyrant it was an idle boast, for at this very
moment he was letting "I dare not" wait upon "I would. " And
Jesus pitied the hopeless bewilderment of this man, whom guilt
## p. 5638 (#212) ###########################################
5638
FREDERICK WILLIAM FARRAR
had changed from a ruler into a slave. Not taunting, not con-
futing him,—nay, even extenuating rather than aggravating his
sin,- Jesus gently answered, "Thou hast no power against me
whatever, had it not been given thee from above; therefore he
that betrayed me to thee hath the greater sin. " Thou art indeed
committing a great crime; but Judas, Annas, Caiaphas, these
priests and Jews, are more to blame than thou. Thus, with in-
finite dignity, and yet with infinite tenderness, did Jesus judge
his judge. In the very depths of his inmost soul Pilate felt the
truth of the words,- silently acknowledged the superiority of his
bound and lacerated victim. All that remained in him of human
and of noble-
"Felt how awful Goodness is, and Virtue
In her shape how lovely; felt and mourned
His fall. "
All of his soul that was not eaten away by pride and cruelty
thrilled back an unwonted echo to these few calm words of the
Son of God. Jesus had condemned his sin, and so far from
being offended, the judgment only deepened his awe of this
mysterious Being, whose utter impotence seemed grander and
more awful than the loftiest power. From that time Pilate was
even yet more anxious to save him. With all his conscience in
a tumult, for the third and last time he mounted his tribunal
and made one more desperate effort. He led Jesus forth, and
looking at him, as he stood silent and in agony, but calm, on
that shining Gabbatha, above the brutal agitations of the multi-
tude, he said to those frantic rioters, as with a flash of genuine
conviction, "BEHOLD YOUR KING! " But to the Jews it sounded
like shameful scorn to call that beaten, insulted sufferer their
King. A darker stream mingled with the passions of the raging,
swaying crowd. Among the shouts of "Crucify! " ominous threat-
enings began for the first time to be mingled. It was now nine
o'clock, and for nearly three hours had they been raging and
waiting there. The name of Cæsar began to be heard in wrath-
ful murmurs. "Shall I crucify your King? " he had asked, vent-
ing the rage and soreness of his heart in taunts on them. "We
have no king but Cæsar," answered the Sadducees and priests,
flinging to the winds every national impulse and every Messianic
hope. "If thou let this man go," shouted the mob again and
again, "thou art not Cæsar's friend. Every one who tries to
## p. 5639 (#213) ###########################################
FREDERICK WILLIAM FARRAR
5639
make himself a king speaketh against Cæsar. " And at that dark
terrible name of Cæsar, Pilate trembled. It was a name to con-
jure with. It mastered him. He thought of that terrible imple-
ment of tyranny, the accusation of lasa majestas, into which all
other charges merged, which had made confiscation and torture
so common, and had caused blood to flow like water in the
streets of Rome. He thought of Tiberius the aged gloomy
Emperor, then hiding at Capreæ his ulcerous features, his poison-
ous suspicions, his sick infamies, his desperate revenge. At this
very time he had been maddened into a yet more sanguinary
and misanthropic ferocity by the detected falsity and treason of
his only friend and minister, Sejanus, and it was to Sejanus
himself that Pilate is said to have owed his position. There
might be secret delators in that very mob. Panic-stricken, the
unjust judge, in obedience to his own terrors, consciously betrayed
the innocent victim to the anguish of death. He who had so
often prostituted justice was now unable to achieve the one act
of justice which he desired. He who had so often murdered pity
was now forbidden to taste the sweetness of a pity for which
he longed. He who had so often abused authority was now ren-
dered impotent to exercise it, for once, on the side of right.
Truly for him sin had become its own Erinnys, and his pleasant
vices had been converted into the instrument of his punishment!
Did the solemn and noble words of the Law of the Twelve
Tables - "Vanæ voces populi non sunt audiendæ, quando aut
noxium crimine absolvi, aut innocentem condemnari desiderant "
come across his memory with accents of reproach as he deliv-
ered Bar-Abbas and condemned Jesus? It may have been so.
At any rate, his conscience did not leave him at ease. At this,
or some early period of the trial, he went through the solemn
farce of trying to absolve his conscience from the guilt. He
sent for water; he washed his hands before the multitude! he
said, "I am innocent of the blood of this just person; see ye to
it. " Did he think thus to wash away his guilt? He could wash
his hands; could he wash his heart? Might he not far more
truly have said with the murderous king in the splendid tragedy:
"Can all old Ocean's waters wash this blood
Clean from my hand? Nay, rather would this hand
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green, one red! "
## p. 5640 (#214) ###########################################
5640
FREDERICK WILLIAM FARRAR
It may be that as he thus murdered his conscience, such a
thought flashed for one moment across his miserable mind, in
the words of his native poet -
-
"Ah, nimium faciles qui tristia crimina cædis
Flumineâ tolli posse putatis aqua! " OVID, Fast. ii. 45.
But if so, the thought was instantly drowned in a yell, the most
awful, the most hideous, the most memorable that history re-
cords: "His blood be on us and on our children. " Then Pilate
The fatal "Ibis ad crucem" was uttered with
He delivered him unto them, that he might
finally gave way.
reluctant wrath.
be crucified.
## p. 5640 (#215) ###########################################
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## p. 5641 (#219) ###########################################
5641
FÉNELON
(1651-1715)
BY THOMAS J. SHAHAN
RANÇOIS DE SALINAC DE LA MOTHE FÉNELON was born in 1651
at the Château Fénelon, in Périgord, France. He received
his early education within the domestic circle, where his
delicate and sensitive temperament was trained with great care by
his father, and where he acquired the elements of the profound clas-
sical knowledge that distinguished him in later life. After some years
of study at the University of Cahors and in the Jesuit College of
Plessis, he entered the Seminary of Saint-Sulpice at Paris, by the
advice of his uncle, the Marquis de Fénelon, a gentleman of high
social and political rank at the court of the Grand Monarque.
Fénelon was ordained a priest at Saint-Sulpice, and joined the ad-
mirable body of ecclesiastics who have given fame to that centre of
religious life. On his death-bed he wrote to Louis XIV. that he had
known in his lifetime nothing more venerable or more apostolic than
Saint-Sulpice. It was here that he fell under the spiritual influence
of the Abbé Tronson, whose guidance had much to do with the future
career of Fénelon. Parochial work at Saint-Sulpice, the guidance of
a convent of Protestant female converts, a mission to the Huguenots
of Poitou after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, occupied the
attention of the young priest in the early years of his career. He
desired to come to Canada, to evangelize the Indians; but his friends
opposed the plan, which was carried out by his brother, the Abbé
Fénelon, who died a Sulpicean at Montreal in 1697. At this time he
wrote his Traité de l'Education des Jeunes Filles' (1687) and his
'Traité du Ministère des Pasteurs' (1688), admirable manuals of a
pedagogical and pastoral nature. In 1689 he was made preceptor of
the young Duke of Burgundy, the grandson of the King. Here he
accomplished a marvel in the transformation of the passionate and
stubborn son of the Dauphin into a youth of courteous manners and
great self-control. It was a triumph of art and tact against brute
nature and irresponsible strength. But Fénelon, a born teacher, was
equal to the task and won moreover the undying affection of the
young duke. For him he wrote his 'Fables' (36), and his 'Dialogues
des Morts' (91), in which he inculcated by alternate lessons of a
pleasing or a grave character the virtues and principles that befitted
## p. 5642 (#220) ###########################################
5642
FÉNELON
a ruler of men. He wrote also a 'Life of Charlemagne,' model of
a Christian king; but it seems never to have been printed. While his
position as the duke's preceptor seemed to assure to Fénelon a most
honorable career, it was precisely what caused the greatest of his
misfortunes, the loss of the King's confidence. Fénelon had written
for the instruction of the duke a work entitled 'Les Aventures de
Telémaque, Fils d'Ulysse,' a kind of postscriptum to the Odyssey.
It was in reality a manual in which all the wisdom of classic an-
tiquity was gathered by a master hand and explained in almost per-
fect style, to one destined to govern the greatest kingdom of Europe.
But it was surreptitiously printed, and the King's courtiers pointed
out in it many apparent satires on the King's principles and conduct,
notably in the delineation of Idumæus. Thenceforth Fénelon fell
under the ban of the jealous King. He had been already made in
1693 a member of the Academy, and in 1695 Archbishop of Cambrai.
In the mean time had broken out the famous controversy on
Quietism, apropos of the doctrine and life of a female mystic,
Madame de Guyon. A grave discussion had arisen concerning the
orthodoxy of her views on the pure and unselfish love of God, in
which Bossuet and Fénelon were adversaries; with the immediate
result that the latter accepted, with some reserves, the outcome of
the famous Conferences of Issy. Not long after Fénelon wrote, to
justify himself, 'L'Explication des Maximes des Saints sur la Vie In-
térieure,' to which in the same year (1697) Bossuet replied by the
'Instructions sur les États d'Oraison. ' Meanwhile the affair was
brought before the Holy See, which was solicited on one side by the
powerful King and the nephew and the agent of Bossuet, and on the
other by the good Abbé Chauterac, with whom Fénelon kept up a
most admirable exchange of letters. Rome hesitated long, diminished
the number of assailable propositions, and finally in March 1699
condemned some of those laid before her as ་ dangerous," not as
heretical, which was the vote that the King and Bossuet anxiously
looked for. In April of the same year followed the humble submis-
sion of Fénelon. Weinand agrees with the Pope, who is reported to
have said that in the whole affair Bossuet sinned by lack of human,
and Fénelon by excess of Divine love.
From the outbreak of the discussion on Quietism, Fénelon had
been obliged to withdraw from the court to his diocese of Cambrai,
which he administered with rare zeal and success. The largely Flem-
ish population, and the fact that it was partly the scene of the War
of the Spanish Succession, made the territory no easy one to care for;
but he proved himself a good shepherd indeed, a wise adviser of
the Crown in his numerous letters and memoirs, a preacher of the
highest rank, and a rhetorician second to few in his 'Dialogues
## p. 5643 (#221) ###########################################
FÉNELON
5643
sur l'Éloquence en Général et sur Celle de La Chaise en Particulier
(Paris, 1708). The last years of his life were occupied with a contin-
uous warfare against the open and the secret friends of Jansenism,
which was making its greatest struggle for political recognition when
Fénelon died, January 7th, 1715, beloved and regretted by all, the
foremost gentleman of France, and the greatest ecclesiastical soul
since Saint Bernard.
Saint-Simon thus describes Fénelon's appearance (Mémoires') : —
"He was a tall, thin man, well made, pale, with a large nose, eyes whence
fire and talent streamed like a torrent, and a physiognomy the like of which
I have never seen in any other man, and which once seen one could never
forget. It combined everything, and the greatest contradictions produced no
want of harmony. It united seriousness and gayety, gravity and courtesy,—
the prevailing characteristic, as in everything about him, being refinement,
intellect, gracefulness, modesty, and above all, noblesse.
It was difficult to
take one's eyes off him. All his portraits are speaking, and yet none of them
have caught the exquisite harmony which struck one in the original, or the
exceeding delicacy of every feature. His manner altogether corresponded to
his appearance; his perfect ease was infectious to others, and his conversa-
tion was stamped with the grace and good taste which are acquired only by
habitual intercourse with the best society and the great world. "
His political views were moral and Christian in color, and for that
age highly democratic, marking a return to the best period of the
Middle Ages.
"This ideal," says Principal Tulloch in the Encyclopædia Britannica,
"was that of a limited monarchy, surrounded by national institutions, each
having its due place and function in the body politic, and representing in due
degree public opinion. A written constitution, one sovereign law for all,
universal education provided by the State, the reciprocal independence of the
temporal and spiritual powers, detestation of war, free industry in agriculture
and trade, a people growing in intelligence and self-dependence around the
throne and under the guidance of the Church,- such were the broad princi-
ples which he sought to instill into his pupil, and so to make him, in his own
language, a philosophic king, a new St. Louis. '»
His own king, Louis XIV. , looked on all this as brilliant but
chimerical.
Fénelon ranks forever as one of the most elegant writers in the
French language. The sweetness of his character, his tender and
loving mysticism, his unction and simplicity, his crystal-clear thought,
and affectionate direct eloquence, mark him as unequaled in his own
line as a director of souls and a teacher of men. His philosophy of
life is kindly and practical, but directed to a higher end of man than
the pleasures of earth afford, and his instruction is always decked
out with all the intellectual graces that can allure men to look be-
yond and above the present and the transitory.
## p. 5644 (#222) ###########################################
5644
FÉNELON
"The most effective charm of his works," wrote D'Alembert, "is the senti-
ment of calm and peace that he instils into his reader; he is like a friend
who draws near to you and whose soul runs over into your own. He soothes,
he allays, if only for a moment, your sorrows and your trials, and one for-
gives humanity for so many men who make us hate it, in favor of Fénelon,
who makes us love it. "
The best edition of his works is that of Paris, 1852 (10 vols. ), con-
taining biographical material, documents, and the best life of Féne-
lon, that printed in 1808 by Cardinal de Bausset.
The reader may
also consult with profit Michelet's 'Louis XIV. et le Duc de Bour-
gogne'; Sainte-Beuve, 'Causeries du Lundi'; Emmanuel de Broglie,
(Fénelon ambrai'; an article by Principal Tulloch in the 'Ency-
clopædia Britannica'; that by Weinand in Welzer and Welte's 'Kir-
chenlexikon'; and the pertinent paragraphs in histories of French
literature and in French biographical encyclopædias, like the 'Nouveau
Dictionnaire de Biographie Générale. ' A good biography is also
found in H. Sidney Lear's 'Christian Biographies' (1877). The latter
has also translated into English the 'Lettres Spirituelles' of Fénelon.
Thomas J. Shahar.
TO ONE IN PERPLEXITY
From the Spiritual Letters
YOU
ou doubt, and you cannot bear up under doubt. I am not
surprised; doubt is torture; but do not argue, and you will
cease to doubt. The shadows of a simple faith are very
different from doubt; its troubles bring their own consolation
and fruits. After they have reduced a man they restore him,
and leave him in full peace. Doubt is the trouble of a soul left
to itself, which wants to see what God hides from it, and out of
self-love seeks impossible securities. What have you sacrificed to
God, save your own judgment and self-interest? Would you lose
sight of that which has been your aim from your very first step,
namely, to abandon yourself to God? Would you make shipwreck
when just in port, recall your gift, and require God to subject
himself to your rules, whereas he requires, and you have prom-
ised, to walk Abraham-like in the deepest darkness of faith?
And what merit would there be in your course, if you had
## p. 5645 (#223) ###########################################
FÉNELON
5645
miracles and revelations to make sure of your path? Miracles
and revelations would soon lose their force, and you would fall
back into your doubts. You are giving way to temptation. Do
not hearken to yourself; your real convictions, if you will follow
them simply, will put to flight all these phantoms.
Translation of H. Sidney Lear.
DANGERS OF A QUESTIONING MIND
From the Spiritual Letters ›
HⓇ
E WHO would fain satisfy himself perpetually that he is
guided by reason, not by temper or passion, will only lose
his time without ever coming to a satisfactory result; for
he can never be certain that temper or passion in specious dis-
guise are not moving him to do what he fancies himself doing
from pure reason. It is God's will to keep us in this obscurity
even as to the natural order of things. How much more must
we be content to forego evidence and uncertainty, when it is a
question of the most delicate workings of grace, in the deep
darkness of faith and supernatural things! This restless, obsti-
nate search after an unattainable certainty is very evidently the
work of nature, not of grace; you cannot be too much on your
guard against it. It is a subtle inquiry which will take a hun-
dred shapes. This craving for geometrical certainty is rooted in
you by all your natural inclinations, by lifelong and interesting
studies, by habits become second nature, and by a plausible
desire to watch and guard against illusion. But an evangelic
vigilance should never go so far as to disturb the heart's peace,
or to demand evidence as to the secret operations of grace which
it pleases God to keep hidden beneath a veil. To speak frankly
and unreservedly, you perfectly know that you ought to dread
your excessive tendency to reason, even about all the common
matters of every-day life. You ought to dread it much more
when it meddles with those workings which are above reason,
and which God conceals. One thing is quite certain; namely,
that the more faithful you are in mortifying your intellectual
tastes, your inquisitive philosophic research, your undue wisdom,
forced speculations, and efforts to convince other men, the more
you will mortify your real natural frailties, and therein promote
the life of grace in you.
Translation of H. Sidney Lear.
## p. 5646 (#224) ###########################################
5646
FÉNELON
THE GODDESS CALYPSO
From Telemachus>
TEL
ELEMACHUS followed the goddess as she moved away, sur-
rounded by a bevy of young nymphs, taller by a head than
any of her handmaidens, and like some great oak of the
forest that spreads its leafy branches above its neighbors. He
admired the splendor of her beauty, the rich purple of her long
and trailing draperies, her tresses gathered at the neck in a
loose but graceful knot, and her sparkling eyes, whose vivacity
was tempered by a certain sweetness. Mentor, with modestly
downcast eyes, followed Telemachus. On arriving at the grotto
of Calypso, Telemachus was surprised to see that despite an air
of rustic simplicity, it was provided with all that could charm
the eye. There was there neither gold nor silver, neither marble
nor columns, neither paintings nor statues. The grotto itself was
cut out of the living rock, and its vaulted roof was ornamented
with pebbles and sea-shells. Along the walls a young vine had
trailed its supple branches, and clothed the grotto with the green-
est of tapestries. Gentle zephyrs fanned a delicious fragrance
into this favored spot, and cooled the rays of the sun, while from
many fountains the sweet waters stole softly away over beds of
amarynths and violets, and gathered here and there into crystal
pools. Countless flowers sprang from the fresh earth on all
sides, and enameled the green turf with the loveliest of colors.
Here the eye rested upon a forest of umbrageous trees, among
whose leafy branches hung golden apples, and whose blooms,
renewed with every season, shed around the most delicious of
perfumes. This forest seemed almost to hide the rich meadows,
and to cast over them a deep night that no rays of the sun
could penetrate, but through which could be heard the songs of
birds, and the noise of a waterfall that dashed in foamy masses
from the summit of a rock and hastened away across the plain.
Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by Rev. Thomas
J. Shahan.
## p. 5647 (#225) ###########################################
FÉNELON
5647
THE WEAKNESS OF KINGS
From Telemachus'
ENTOR Idumæus:-"How comes it, since you know so
Mthoroughly these wicked men, that you still keep them
near your person? I do not marvel to see them follow you;
that is in their own best interest; nor yet that you give them
asylum in your new State. But why put trust in them after so
much cruel experience? " "You are ignorant," replied Idumæus,
"how useless is all experience to princes who live in idleness and
luxury a life of irreflection; they are dissatisfied with all about
them, yet they lack the courage to correct what they disapprove.
The habits of so many years held me as with chains of iron to
these men, who in turn haunted me without ceasing. Since
my arrival they have betrayed me into all the excessive expendi-
ture that you behold; they have exhausted the growing State,
and have drawn upon me the war that without your aid would
have overwhelmed me. At Salentum I would have soon fallen a
prey to the same misfortunes that worked my ruin in Crete.
But you have now opened my eyes, and have filled me with the
courage needed to throw off these shackles. I know not how it
is, but since we are here I feel myself another man. ”
Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by Rev. Thomas
J. Shahan.
THE INTERNAL DISSENSIONS OF CHRISTIANS
From 'A Sermon for St. Bernard's Day'
O
SOUL that burnest with the fire of Jesus, come with haste
and learn in Bernard's exposition of the canticles the con-
solations, the trials, and the martyrdom of those spouses
whom a jealous God would purify! How is it that to mankind in
the decline of time and in an epoch of crowding visitations, a man
appears who would have been the glory and the joy of the early
ages? It is because, like her spouse, the Church is clothed with
an imperishable beauty, and despite her age, is still the ever-
fruitful. Did not the world need a renewal of light in a time of
confusion and sin? Alas! those iniquitous days are not yet
gone, my brethren; what do we behold about us even now?
## p. 5648 (#226) ###########################################
5648
FÉNELON
That which we would gladly never behold,- vanity of vanities,
and still more vanity, with toil and affliction of spirit beneath
the sun! When I look on so much evil I rejoice with the dead,
and I pity the estate of the living. What can be in store for
us? In the North, proud and fantastic sects, the fruit of another
age, trifle with the Scriptures, and justify thereby every strange
vision of their hearts. It is not enough, however, that they
should lift their mouths against God and blaspheme the Church,
but the very children of the Church must rend the entrails of
their mother, and cover her with opprobrium. It seems a mir-
acle of grace that some Christians are saved in this deluge of cor-
ruption, and that not all are made frantic by ambition. The
multitude adores deities of flesh and blood; from them it hopes
to obtain a so-called fortune. The hearts of men are enchained
by the demon of avarice, which St. Paul calls an idolatry. It is
true indeed, with St. Chrysostom, that they no longer adore gods
of gold and silver,- they adore the gold and silver themselves,
and in them set all their hope; very far from selling all things,
like the primitive Christians, they never cease from buying;
nay, they acquire by ceaseless rapacity, by endless artifice,
and by the forceful use of authority. Look upon those Christians
who rend one another, who lacerate one another, who sharpen
their poison-dripping tongues, and fit weapons to their hands
that they may imbue them in the blood of their brethren! Be-
hold how they are lost to all sense of shame, sunk in their own
vile pleasures, brutalized by their monstrous passions! From
them God has withdrawn himself, and in his anger he has
given them over to the desires of their own hearts. They be-
lieve that they see and hear all things, yet in reality they see
and hear nothing. They walk as men who tremblingly feel their
way along the edge of an abyss. They are like tottering men
overpowered by drunkenness, and they will die ignorant of who
they are and whence they came.
Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature, by Rev. Thomas
J. Shahan.
## p. 5649 (#227) ###########################################
5649
SUSAN EDMONSTONE FERRIER
(1782-1854)
F THE sprightly Edinburgh novelist Susan Edmonstone Fer-
rier, it is often said, more affectionately than accurately,
that she was a novelist who did for Scotland in her fiction
what her contemporaries Jane Austen and Maria Edgeworth accom-
plished in their novels of English and Irish social life and character.
It should not be disputed, however, that Miss Ferrier merits a supe-
rior place in the circle of British novelists of the first half of the nine-
teenth century. She wrote only three novels,-Marriage' (1818),
'The Inheritance' (1824), and 'Destiny' (1831). They are all of the
old-fashioned length and minuteness of treatment: but they have the
quality of sincerity in every page; and in their ambitious titles and
elaborate detail they show that each work was broadly conceived and
was meant to illustrate some abstract central thought. Like Miss
Burney when giving 'Evelina' to the world, Miss Ferrier's first story
was published anonymously; but going further than Miss Burney in
her preference for being unrecognized as an author, it was not until
a very few years before Miss Ferrier's death that she allowed her
name to appear on the title-page of any of her tales. Professional
writing was distasteful to her; and it was only at the entreaty of a
friend that she made public her literary gift. Marriage' had been
shown only to intimate friends during eight years before she allowed
it to be published. But the success of her stories from the first was
complete. They were attributed to authors of high distinction,-
Professor John Wilson supposing that the first two at least were by
Scott, until it was admitted that a woman had written them.
Miss Ferrier was born in 1782, the youngest of ten children of
James Ferrier, a factor and friend of the fifth Duke of Argyll, and
for a time associated in a city office with Scott. Susan was an
amiable, quiet, and quick-witted girl, who received a careful educa-
tion. She had much natural vivacity, and in social life the same
shrewd humor and tendency toward satire that appears in her books.
A French quality suggesting La Bruyère (a special favorite with her)
was a note in her conversation as in her pages. But her intellect-
uality was matched with delightful tact, a warm heart, and delicacy
of feeling. She early had access to much of the distinguished society
of the Scotch capital, which included such literary men as Scott, Jef-
frey, Sir James Mackintosh, Professor Wilson, Joanna Baillie, Sydney
X-354
## p. 5650 (#228) ###########################################
5650
SUSAN EDMONSTONE FERRIER
Smith, and Macaulay. She also saw a good deal of merely fash-
ionable and wealthy social circles, English and Scotch, at home and
in London; making large use of their types in particular in her
fictions. Scott took a special interest in her, and she was one of his
last visitors at Abbotsford. To him she dedicated her last and per-
haps best tale, 'Destiny. ' Miss Ferrier's life grew more and more
retired as she advanced in years, and a failing eyesight which pres-
ently became nearly complete blindness secluded her from all except
an intimate group of friends. She died in Edinburgh in 1854.
Aside from her qualities as a literary woman, Miss Ferrier was an
amiable, unaffected lady, of high principle and simple and domestic
tastes. It is unfortunate that her correspondence, covering the letters
of many years, was almost entirely destroyed at her own request.
Miss Ferrier's novels are classed among "Scotch novels"; and as
to many passages, they deal with Scotch types. But they are not in
close touch with the Scotch novel as we understand it through Scott
and Galt. They offer no remarkable descriptions of Scotch scenery;
they have but moderate local color; they are almost entirely lacking
in romance; and there is none of the picturesqueness suggesting the
stage, which belongs to her contemporaries. She wrote very consid-
erably from the English point of view, describing Scottish family life.
of the period largely under modish South-British influences. Most
of her personages are rich English gentility, or pretentious Scotch.
persons of quality. She has relatively little to do with distinctive
Highland nobility or peasantry; and indeed where the authoress con-
cerns herself humorously with Scotch human nature and life she is
satirical. Relatively few of her characters speak in dialect,—even
among the middle-class types, where we can suppose that there
would have been propriety in Scotch words and phrases. There is
seldom opportunity for pathos, though in certain episodes she shows
due feeling. She strongly emphasizes religion and the "practice of
piety," in contrast to an irreligious and fashionable use of one's time,
-so much so that she makes in one of her prefaces an almost apolo-
getic reference to this element. As a novelist of plot, Miss Ferrier
is little more interesting than Miss Austen. But even in her stiffly
didactic analyses we find great clearness of thought as to human
nature, and a nice expression of it. Her readers will not be apt to
confuse with any other novelist's delineations such little portraits
as the pompous Lord Rossville, the impertinent Miss Pratt, the kindly
and devoted Mrs. Macaulay, the coarse and vulgar Rev. Mr. M'Dow,
the gossiping good-natured Mr. Ribley and the dictatorial wife of
his bosom, the two Misses Douglas, Jacky and Nicky, Mrs. Pullens,
strong in domestic economy, or bluff Uncle Adam. There is real
force in the longer studies, such as Glenroy, Lady Juliana Douglas,
## p. 5651 (#229) ###########################################
SUSAN EDMONSTONE FERRIER
5651
or the frivolous Lady Florinda Waldegrave and her even more friv-
olous mother, who in some sense anticipates Dickens's Mrs. Skewton.
Of her heroes and heroines it may be remarked that they are sensi-
ble and attractive young people, of the sort that even the modern
young man or young woman would be glad to marry, though one
would not be apt to fall into a frenzy of romantic fire and despair
for their sakes. Perhaps the most striking trait in her books is her
sharp vignettes of personages, the study sometimes only a half-page
long, in which she hits out a whole character. She has left behind
her in her three books a unique gallery of much variety and of em-
phatic truth.
-
A HIGHLAND BETTER HALF
From The Inheritance>
IN
THE Course of her domiciliary visits, Gertrude found herself
at the door of the cottage she had visited the memorable
morning after her arrival at Rossville; and somewhat curious
to know the state of affairs there, she was about to enter when
at that moment Uncle Adam was descried approaching. They
waited till he came up, and then invited him to join in the
visit; which after a little humming and hawing he agreed to do.
The door was hard-and-fast shut, but upon knocking it was
banged open by our ci-devant friend the dame of the stoups,
who immediately recognized and most cordially welcomed her
former visitor.
"Eh! my leddy, is this you? I ax your pardon, my leddy,
but I really didna ken weel wha you was the first time you was
here; just come foret, my leddy; jest stap in ower, sir; dinna be
feared, my leddy; just gang in bye," etc. , etc. , etc. ; and care-
fully closing the door against the breath of heaven, she ush-
ered her guests into the dark precincts of her foul-aired, smoky
cabin. A press-bed, with a bit of blue checked stuff hang-
ing down, denoted that the poor sufferer had now exchanged
his seat by the fire for his bed, and the chair which he had for、
merly occupied stood with its back to the fire, covered with
clothes apparently drying.
"How does your husband do? " inquired Lady Rossville.
"Oo,' deed, my leddy, he's just quite silly-wise," responded
the dame in a whining, melancholy key; "he just lies there
snottering awa'," pointing to the bed.
## p. 5652 (#230) ###########################################
5652
SUSAN EDMONSTONE FERRIER
"Is he confined to bed? " asked Mr. Lyndsay.
"No-no, sir, he's no confined ony ways, he gets up whiles;
but 'deed it's no aye convenient for me to ha'e him up; for as
I tell him, what can he do when he is up? for he's no fit to put
his hand to onything; and he's mair oot o' the way there than
he wad be ony place else. "
"More out of the way of regaining health, certainly," said
Mr. Lyndsay.
"Health, sir! " interrupted the hostess; "'deed he'll ne'er ha'e
health as lang as he lives; he's just been draggle-dragglen on,
these twunty month by Marti'mas; I'm sure I've had a weary
time o't wi' him, and noo I canna get a hand's turn maist done
for him, the hoose an' awthing's just gawin' to destruction; and
I'm sure I really think shame o' mysel'," surveying two large
dirty arms from top to toe; "an' there's the weans, puir things,
gawin' in perfect rags, for I ne'er can get a steek put in either
to their duds or my ain. "
Here the voice of the sick man was heard in a faint accent,
calling the gudewife.
"That's just the way he gangs on, my leddy; he just lies
there and yelps, yelps, yelps even on for me. What is't noo? "
in her loudest, sharpest key, as she banged up to the bed. "A
drink? I wonder ye ha'e nae mair sense, man, than to ask for
a drink the noo, when her leddyship's here, an' Maister Lyndsay
an' aw, speerin' for you. "
Mr. Lyndsay here took up a jug of water which was standing
on the top of a chest by the bedside, and held it to the sick
man's lips; but the reproof was thrown away, or rather miscon-
strued by his soothing helpmate.
"Oh, sir, I think shame o' your takin' sae muckle trouble,
for he's just like a bairn; he's aye wantin' something or anither,
and he's just lost aw discretion thegither. I wonder you dinna
think shame o' yoursel'," to her husband, "when you see the
fashery you mak'. "
Mr. Lyndsay, meanwhile, having felt the invalid's pulse, be-
gan to put a few queries to him touching his complaint.
"Have you much thirst? " asked he.
"Oh, sir, he wad drink the very ocean an let him. ”
<< Pray let him speak for himself," said Lyndsay, again putting
the question to the patient, who seemed so unused to the privi
lege that he was evidently at a loss how to make use of it.
## p. 5653 (#231) ###########################################
SUSAN EDMONSTONE FERRIER
5653
"Have you any pain in your head? "
"'Deed, sir, I dinna think he has muckle pain in his heed,
though he compleens o't whiles; but as I often tell him, I wiss
he had my back. I'm sure I've a pain whiles atween my shou-
thers, sir" rolling a huge, fat, strong-looking back as she spoke.
"I shall attend to your pains some other time, if you will be
so good as keep them quiet for the present," said Lyndsay; then
once more turning to the sick man, he asked whether he had
pain or weakness in his limbs that prevented him from rising.
"I'm sure I dinna ken what it is," again interposed the incor-
rigible matron.
-
## p. 5633 (#207) ###########################################
FREDERICK WILLIAM FARRAR
5633
it had become clearer than ever that though they might regard
Paul the prisoner as an amiable enthusiast or an inspired fanatic,
he was in no sense a legal criminal. The king, by rising from
his seat, gave the signal for breaking up the meeting; Berenice
and Festus and their respective retinues rose up at the same
time, and as the distinguished assembly dispersed, they were heard
remarking on all sides that Paul was undeserving of death, or
even of imprisonment. He had made, in fact, a deeply favor-
able impression. Agrippa's decision was given entirely for his
acquittal. "This person," he said to Festus, "might have been
permanently set at liberty if he had not appealed to Cæsar. "
Agrippa was far too little of a Pharisee and far too much of a
man of the world not to see that mere freedom of thought could
not be, and ought not to be, suppressed by external violence.
The proceedings of that day probably saved St. Paul's life full
two years afterwards. Festus, since his own opinion on grounds
of Roman justice was so entirely confirmed from the Jewish
point of view by the Protector of the Temple, could hardly fail
to send to Nero an elogium which freely exonerated the prisoner
from every legal charge; and even if Jewish intrigues were put
in play against him, Nero could not condemn to death a man
whom Felix, and Lysias, and Festus, and Agrippa, and even the
Jewish Sanhedrim, in the only trial of the case which they had
held, had united in pronouncing innocent of any capital crime.
ROMAN CIVILIZATION UNDER NERO
From The Early Days of Christianity'
I
NEED but make a passing allusion to its enormous wealth; its
unbounded self-indulgence; its coarse and tasteless luxury; its
greedy avarice; its sense of insecurity and terror; its apathy,
debauchery, and cruelty; its hopeless fatalism; its unspeakable
sadness and weariness; its strange extravagances alike of infidelity.
and of superstition.
At the lowest extreme of the social scale were millions of
slaves, without family, without religion, without possessions, who
had no recognized rights, and towards whom none had any rec-
ognized duties, passing normally from a childhood of degradation
to a manhood of hardship and an old age of unpitied neglect.
X-353
## p. 5634 (#208) ###########################################
5634
FREDERICK WILLIAM FARRAR
Only a little above the slaves stood the lower classes, who formed
the vast majority of the free-born inhabitants of the Roman
Empire. They were for the most part beggars and idlers, famil-
iar with the grossest indignities of an unscrupulous dependence.
Despising a life of honest industry, they asked only for bread
and the games of the circus, and were ready to support any
government, even the most despotic, if it would supply these
needs. They spent their mornings in lounging about the Forum
or in dancing attendance at the levées of patrons, for a share in
whose largesses they daily struggled. They spent their afternoons
and evenings in gossiping at the public baths, in listlessly enjoy-
ing the polluted plays of the theatre, or looking with fierce
thrills of delighted horror at the bloody sports of the arena. At
night they crept up to their miserable garrets in the sixth and
seventh stories of the huge insula, - the lodging-houses of
Rome, into which, as into the low lodging-houses of the poorer
quarters of London, there drifted all that was most wretched and
most vile. Their life, as it is described for us by their contem-
poraries, was largely made up of squalor, misery, and vice.
Immeasurably removed from these needy and greedy freemen,
and living chiefly amid crowds of corrupted and obsequious
slaves, stood the constantly diminishing throng of the wealthy
and the noble. Every age in its decline has exhibited the spec-
tacle of selfish luxury side by side with abject poverty; of —
-
"Wealth, a monster gorged
'Mid starving populations:"
but nowhere and at no period were these contrasts so startling
as they were in imperial Rome. There a whole population
might be trembling lest they should be starved by the delay of
an Alexandrian corn-ship, while the upper classes were squan-
dering a fortune at a single banquet, drinking out of myrrhine
and jeweled vases worth hundreds of pounds, and feasting on
the brains of peacocks and the tongues of nightingales. As a
consequence, disease was rife, men were short-lived, and even
women became liable to gout. Over a large part of Italy, most
of the free-born population had to content themselves even in
winter with a tunic, and the luxury of the toga was reserved
only, by way of honor, to the corpse. Yet at this very time the
dress of Roman ladies displayed an unheard-of splendor. The
elder Pliny tells us that he himself saw Lollia Paulina dressed for
## p. 5635 (#209) ###########################################
FREDERICK WILLIAM FARRAR
5635
a betrothal feast in a robe entirely covered with pearls and emer-
alds, which had cost forty million sesterces, and which was known
to be less costly than some of her other dresses. Gluttony,
caprice, extravagance, ostentation, impurity, rioted in the heart of
a society which knew of no other means by which to break the
monotony of its weariness, or alleviate the anguish of its despair.
"On that hard pagan world disgust
And secret loathing fell;
Deep weariness and sated lust
Made human life a hell.
In his cool hall, with haggard eyes,
The Roman noble lay;
He drove abroad in furious guise
Along the Appian Way;
He made a feast, drank fierce and fast,
And crowned his hair with flowers -
No easier nor no quicker passed
The impracticable hours. "
At the summit of the whole decaying system - necessary, yet
detested; elevated indefinitely above the very highest, yet living.
in dread of the very lowest; oppressing a population which he
terrified, and terrified by the population which he oppressed-
was an emperor, raised to the divinest pinnacle of autocracy,
yet conscious that his life hung upon a thread; an emperor
who in the terrible phrase of Gibbon was at once a priest, an
atheist, and a god.
The general condition of society was such as might have been
expected from the existence of these elements. The Romans had
entered on a stage of fatal degeneracy from the first day of
their close intercourse with Greece. Greece learnt from Rome
her cold-blooded cruelty; Rome learnt from Greece her voluptuous
corruption. Family life among the Romans had once been a
sacred thing, and for 520 years divorce had been unknown among
them. Under the empire, marriage had come to be regarded
with disfavor and disdain. Women, as Seneca says, married in
order to be divorced, and were divorced in order to marry; and
noble Roman matrons counted the years not by the Consuls, but
by their discarded or discarding husbands.
To have a family was regarded as a misfortune, because the
childless were courted with extraordinary assiduity by crowds of
## p. 5636 (#210) ###########################################
5636
FREDERICK WILLIAM FARRAR
fortune-hunters.
When there were children in a family, their edu-
cation was left to be begun under the tutelage of those slaves
who were otherwise the most decrepit and useless, and was car-
ried on, with results too fatally obvious, by supple, accomplished,
and abandoned Greeklings. But indeed, no system of education.
could have eradicated the influence of the domestic circle. No
care could have prevented the sons and daughters of a wealthy
family from catching the contagion of the vices of which they
saw in their parents a constant and unblushing example.
tion.
Literature and art were infected with the prevalent degrada-
Poetry sank in great measure into exaggerated satire,
hollow declamation, or frivolous epigrams. Art was partly cor-
rupted by the fondness for glare, expensiveness, and size, and
partly sank into miserable triviality, or immoral prettinesses, such
as those which decorated the walls of Pompeii in the first cen-
tury and the Parc aux Cerfs in the eighteenth. Greek statues of
the days of Phidias were ruthlessly decapitated, that their heads
might be replaced by the scowling or imbecile features of a
Caius or a Claudius. Nero, professing to be a connoisseur, thought
that he improved the Alexander of Lysimachus by gilding it
from head to foot. Eloquence, deprived of every legitimate aim
and used almost solely for purposes of insincere display, was
tempted to supply the lack of genuine fire by sonorous euphony
and theatrical affectation. A training in rhetoric was now under-
stood to be a training in the art of emphasis and verbiage,
which was rarely used for any loftier purpose than to make
sycophancy plausible, or to embellish sophistry with speciousness.
The drama, even in Horace's days, had degenerated into a
vehicle for the exhibition of scenic splendor or ingenious ma-
chinery. Dignity, wit, pathos, were no longer expected on the
stage, for the dramatist was eclipsed by the swordsman or the
rope-dancer. The actors who absorbed the greatest part of popu-
lar favor were pantomimists, whose insolent prosperity was gen-
erally in direct proportion to the infamy of their character. And
while the shamelessness of the theatre corrupted the purity of
all classes from the earliest age, the hearts of the multitude
were made hard as the nether millstone with brutal insensibility,
by the fury of the circus, the atrocities of the amphitheatre, and
the cruel orgies of the games. Augustus, in the document
annexed to his will, mentioned that he had exhibited 8,000 glad-
iators, and 3,510 wild beasts. The old warlike spirit of the
## p. 5637 (#211) ###########################################
FREDERICK WILLIAM FARRAR
5637
Romans was dead, among the gilded youth of families in which
distinction of any kind was certain to bring down upon its most
prominent members the murderous suspicion of irresponsible des-
pots. The spirit which had once led the Domitii and the Fabii
"to drink delight of battle with their peers" on the plains of
Gaul and in the forests of Germany, was now satiated by gazing
on criminals fighting for dear life with bears and tigers, or upon
bands of gladiators who hacked each other to pieces on the
encrimsoned sand. The languid enervation of the delicate and
dissolute aristocrat could only be amused by magnificence and
stimulated by grossness or by blood. Thus the gracious illusions
by which true art has ever aimed at purging the passions of
terror and pity, were extinguished by the realism of tragedies.
ignobly horrible and comedies intolerably base. Two phrases
sum up the characteristics of Roman civilization in the days of
the empire-heartless cruelty, and unfathomable corruption.
CHRIST AND PILATE
From The Life of Christ'
A
SON of God! The notion was far less strange and repulsive
to a heathen than to a Jew; and this word, unheard before,
startled Pilate with the third omen which made him trem-
ble at the crime into which he was being dragged by guilt and
fear. Once more, leaving the yelling multitude without, he takes
Jesus with him into the quiet judgment hall, and-"jam pro sud
conscientia Christianus," as Tertullian so finely observes — asks
him in awe-struck accents, "Whence art thou? " Alas! it was too
late to answer now. Pilate was too deeply committed to his gross
cruelty and injustice; for him Jesus had spoken enough already;
for the wild beasts who raged without, he had no more to say.
He did not answer. Then, almost angrily, Pilate broke out with
the exclamation, "Dost thou not speak to me? Dost thou not
know that I have power to set thee free, and have power to
crucify thee? » Power-how so? Was justice nothing, then?
truth nothing? innocence nothing? conscience nothing? In the
reality of things Pilate had no such power; even in the arbi-
trary sense of the tyrant it was an idle boast, for at this very
moment he was letting "I dare not" wait upon "I would. " And
Jesus pitied the hopeless bewilderment of this man, whom guilt
## p. 5638 (#212) ###########################################
5638
FREDERICK WILLIAM FARRAR
had changed from a ruler into a slave. Not taunting, not con-
futing him,—nay, even extenuating rather than aggravating his
sin,- Jesus gently answered, "Thou hast no power against me
whatever, had it not been given thee from above; therefore he
that betrayed me to thee hath the greater sin. " Thou art indeed
committing a great crime; but Judas, Annas, Caiaphas, these
priests and Jews, are more to blame than thou. Thus, with in-
finite dignity, and yet with infinite tenderness, did Jesus judge
his judge. In the very depths of his inmost soul Pilate felt the
truth of the words,- silently acknowledged the superiority of his
bound and lacerated victim. All that remained in him of human
and of noble-
"Felt how awful Goodness is, and Virtue
In her shape how lovely; felt and mourned
His fall. "
All of his soul that was not eaten away by pride and cruelty
thrilled back an unwonted echo to these few calm words of the
Son of God. Jesus had condemned his sin, and so far from
being offended, the judgment only deepened his awe of this
mysterious Being, whose utter impotence seemed grander and
more awful than the loftiest power. From that time Pilate was
even yet more anxious to save him. With all his conscience in
a tumult, for the third and last time he mounted his tribunal
and made one more desperate effort. He led Jesus forth, and
looking at him, as he stood silent and in agony, but calm, on
that shining Gabbatha, above the brutal agitations of the multi-
tude, he said to those frantic rioters, as with a flash of genuine
conviction, "BEHOLD YOUR KING! " But to the Jews it sounded
like shameful scorn to call that beaten, insulted sufferer their
King. A darker stream mingled with the passions of the raging,
swaying crowd. Among the shouts of "Crucify! " ominous threat-
enings began for the first time to be mingled. It was now nine
o'clock, and for nearly three hours had they been raging and
waiting there. The name of Cæsar began to be heard in wrath-
ful murmurs. "Shall I crucify your King? " he had asked, vent-
ing the rage and soreness of his heart in taunts on them. "We
have no king but Cæsar," answered the Sadducees and priests,
flinging to the winds every national impulse and every Messianic
hope. "If thou let this man go," shouted the mob again and
again, "thou art not Cæsar's friend. Every one who tries to
## p. 5639 (#213) ###########################################
FREDERICK WILLIAM FARRAR
5639
make himself a king speaketh against Cæsar. " And at that dark
terrible name of Cæsar, Pilate trembled. It was a name to con-
jure with. It mastered him. He thought of that terrible imple-
ment of tyranny, the accusation of lasa majestas, into which all
other charges merged, which had made confiscation and torture
so common, and had caused blood to flow like water in the
streets of Rome. He thought of Tiberius the aged gloomy
Emperor, then hiding at Capreæ his ulcerous features, his poison-
ous suspicions, his sick infamies, his desperate revenge. At this
very time he had been maddened into a yet more sanguinary
and misanthropic ferocity by the detected falsity and treason of
his only friend and minister, Sejanus, and it was to Sejanus
himself that Pilate is said to have owed his position. There
might be secret delators in that very mob. Panic-stricken, the
unjust judge, in obedience to his own terrors, consciously betrayed
the innocent victim to the anguish of death. He who had so
often prostituted justice was now unable to achieve the one act
of justice which he desired. He who had so often murdered pity
was now forbidden to taste the sweetness of a pity for which
he longed. He who had so often abused authority was now ren-
dered impotent to exercise it, for once, on the side of right.
Truly for him sin had become its own Erinnys, and his pleasant
vices had been converted into the instrument of his punishment!
Did the solemn and noble words of the Law of the Twelve
Tables - "Vanæ voces populi non sunt audiendæ, quando aut
noxium crimine absolvi, aut innocentem condemnari desiderant "
come across his memory with accents of reproach as he deliv-
ered Bar-Abbas and condemned Jesus? It may have been so.
At any rate, his conscience did not leave him at ease. At this,
or some early period of the trial, he went through the solemn
farce of trying to absolve his conscience from the guilt. He
sent for water; he washed his hands before the multitude! he
said, "I am innocent of the blood of this just person; see ye to
it. " Did he think thus to wash away his guilt? He could wash
his hands; could he wash his heart? Might he not far more
truly have said with the murderous king in the splendid tragedy:
"Can all old Ocean's waters wash this blood
Clean from my hand? Nay, rather would this hand
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green, one red! "
## p. 5640 (#214) ###########################################
5640
FREDERICK WILLIAM FARRAR
It may be that as he thus murdered his conscience, such a
thought flashed for one moment across his miserable mind, in
the words of his native poet -
-
"Ah, nimium faciles qui tristia crimina cædis
Flumineâ tolli posse putatis aqua! " OVID, Fast. ii. 45.
But if so, the thought was instantly drowned in a yell, the most
awful, the most hideous, the most memorable that history re-
cords: "His blood be on us and on our children. " Then Pilate
The fatal "Ibis ad crucem" was uttered with
He delivered him unto them, that he might
finally gave way.
reluctant wrath.
be crucified.
## p. 5640 (#215) ###########################################
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## p. 5641 (#219) ###########################################
5641
FÉNELON
(1651-1715)
BY THOMAS J. SHAHAN
RANÇOIS DE SALINAC DE LA MOTHE FÉNELON was born in 1651
at the Château Fénelon, in Périgord, France. He received
his early education within the domestic circle, where his
delicate and sensitive temperament was trained with great care by
his father, and where he acquired the elements of the profound clas-
sical knowledge that distinguished him in later life. After some years
of study at the University of Cahors and in the Jesuit College of
Plessis, he entered the Seminary of Saint-Sulpice at Paris, by the
advice of his uncle, the Marquis de Fénelon, a gentleman of high
social and political rank at the court of the Grand Monarque.
Fénelon was ordained a priest at Saint-Sulpice, and joined the ad-
mirable body of ecclesiastics who have given fame to that centre of
religious life. On his death-bed he wrote to Louis XIV. that he had
known in his lifetime nothing more venerable or more apostolic than
Saint-Sulpice. It was here that he fell under the spiritual influence
of the Abbé Tronson, whose guidance had much to do with the future
career of Fénelon. Parochial work at Saint-Sulpice, the guidance of
a convent of Protestant female converts, a mission to the Huguenots
of Poitou after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, occupied the
attention of the young priest in the early years of his career. He
desired to come to Canada, to evangelize the Indians; but his friends
opposed the plan, which was carried out by his brother, the Abbé
Fénelon, who died a Sulpicean at Montreal in 1697. At this time he
wrote his Traité de l'Education des Jeunes Filles' (1687) and his
'Traité du Ministère des Pasteurs' (1688), admirable manuals of a
pedagogical and pastoral nature. In 1689 he was made preceptor of
the young Duke of Burgundy, the grandson of the King. Here he
accomplished a marvel in the transformation of the passionate and
stubborn son of the Dauphin into a youth of courteous manners and
great self-control. It was a triumph of art and tact against brute
nature and irresponsible strength. But Fénelon, a born teacher, was
equal to the task and won moreover the undying affection of the
young duke. For him he wrote his 'Fables' (36), and his 'Dialogues
des Morts' (91), in which he inculcated by alternate lessons of a
pleasing or a grave character the virtues and principles that befitted
## p. 5642 (#220) ###########################################
5642
FÉNELON
a ruler of men. He wrote also a 'Life of Charlemagne,' model of
a Christian king; but it seems never to have been printed. While his
position as the duke's preceptor seemed to assure to Fénelon a most
honorable career, it was precisely what caused the greatest of his
misfortunes, the loss of the King's confidence. Fénelon had written
for the instruction of the duke a work entitled 'Les Aventures de
Telémaque, Fils d'Ulysse,' a kind of postscriptum to the Odyssey.
It was in reality a manual in which all the wisdom of classic an-
tiquity was gathered by a master hand and explained in almost per-
fect style, to one destined to govern the greatest kingdom of Europe.
But it was surreptitiously printed, and the King's courtiers pointed
out in it many apparent satires on the King's principles and conduct,
notably in the delineation of Idumæus. Thenceforth Fénelon fell
under the ban of the jealous King. He had been already made in
1693 a member of the Academy, and in 1695 Archbishop of Cambrai.
In the mean time had broken out the famous controversy on
Quietism, apropos of the doctrine and life of a female mystic,
Madame de Guyon. A grave discussion had arisen concerning the
orthodoxy of her views on the pure and unselfish love of God, in
which Bossuet and Fénelon were adversaries; with the immediate
result that the latter accepted, with some reserves, the outcome of
the famous Conferences of Issy. Not long after Fénelon wrote, to
justify himself, 'L'Explication des Maximes des Saints sur la Vie In-
térieure,' to which in the same year (1697) Bossuet replied by the
'Instructions sur les États d'Oraison. ' Meanwhile the affair was
brought before the Holy See, which was solicited on one side by the
powerful King and the nephew and the agent of Bossuet, and on the
other by the good Abbé Chauterac, with whom Fénelon kept up a
most admirable exchange of letters. Rome hesitated long, diminished
the number of assailable propositions, and finally in March 1699
condemned some of those laid before her as ་ dangerous," not as
heretical, which was the vote that the King and Bossuet anxiously
looked for. In April of the same year followed the humble submis-
sion of Fénelon. Weinand agrees with the Pope, who is reported to
have said that in the whole affair Bossuet sinned by lack of human,
and Fénelon by excess of Divine love.
From the outbreak of the discussion on Quietism, Fénelon had
been obliged to withdraw from the court to his diocese of Cambrai,
which he administered with rare zeal and success. The largely Flem-
ish population, and the fact that it was partly the scene of the War
of the Spanish Succession, made the territory no easy one to care for;
but he proved himself a good shepherd indeed, a wise adviser of
the Crown in his numerous letters and memoirs, a preacher of the
highest rank, and a rhetorician second to few in his 'Dialogues
## p. 5643 (#221) ###########################################
FÉNELON
5643
sur l'Éloquence en Général et sur Celle de La Chaise en Particulier
(Paris, 1708). The last years of his life were occupied with a contin-
uous warfare against the open and the secret friends of Jansenism,
which was making its greatest struggle for political recognition when
Fénelon died, January 7th, 1715, beloved and regretted by all, the
foremost gentleman of France, and the greatest ecclesiastical soul
since Saint Bernard.
Saint-Simon thus describes Fénelon's appearance (Mémoires') : —
"He was a tall, thin man, well made, pale, with a large nose, eyes whence
fire and talent streamed like a torrent, and a physiognomy the like of which
I have never seen in any other man, and which once seen one could never
forget. It combined everything, and the greatest contradictions produced no
want of harmony. It united seriousness and gayety, gravity and courtesy,—
the prevailing characteristic, as in everything about him, being refinement,
intellect, gracefulness, modesty, and above all, noblesse.
It was difficult to
take one's eyes off him. All his portraits are speaking, and yet none of them
have caught the exquisite harmony which struck one in the original, or the
exceeding delicacy of every feature. His manner altogether corresponded to
his appearance; his perfect ease was infectious to others, and his conversa-
tion was stamped with the grace and good taste which are acquired only by
habitual intercourse with the best society and the great world. "
His political views were moral and Christian in color, and for that
age highly democratic, marking a return to the best period of the
Middle Ages.
"This ideal," says Principal Tulloch in the Encyclopædia Britannica,
"was that of a limited monarchy, surrounded by national institutions, each
having its due place and function in the body politic, and representing in due
degree public opinion. A written constitution, one sovereign law for all,
universal education provided by the State, the reciprocal independence of the
temporal and spiritual powers, detestation of war, free industry in agriculture
and trade, a people growing in intelligence and self-dependence around the
throne and under the guidance of the Church,- such were the broad princi-
ples which he sought to instill into his pupil, and so to make him, in his own
language, a philosophic king, a new St. Louis. '»
His own king, Louis XIV. , looked on all this as brilliant but
chimerical.
Fénelon ranks forever as one of the most elegant writers in the
French language. The sweetness of his character, his tender and
loving mysticism, his unction and simplicity, his crystal-clear thought,
and affectionate direct eloquence, mark him as unequaled in his own
line as a director of souls and a teacher of men. His philosophy of
life is kindly and practical, but directed to a higher end of man than
the pleasures of earth afford, and his instruction is always decked
out with all the intellectual graces that can allure men to look be-
yond and above the present and the transitory.
## p. 5644 (#222) ###########################################
5644
FÉNELON
"The most effective charm of his works," wrote D'Alembert, "is the senti-
ment of calm and peace that he instils into his reader; he is like a friend
who draws near to you and whose soul runs over into your own. He soothes,
he allays, if only for a moment, your sorrows and your trials, and one for-
gives humanity for so many men who make us hate it, in favor of Fénelon,
who makes us love it. "
The best edition of his works is that of Paris, 1852 (10 vols. ), con-
taining biographical material, documents, and the best life of Féne-
lon, that printed in 1808 by Cardinal de Bausset.
The reader may
also consult with profit Michelet's 'Louis XIV. et le Duc de Bour-
gogne'; Sainte-Beuve, 'Causeries du Lundi'; Emmanuel de Broglie,
(Fénelon ambrai'; an article by Principal Tulloch in the 'Ency-
clopædia Britannica'; that by Weinand in Welzer and Welte's 'Kir-
chenlexikon'; and the pertinent paragraphs in histories of French
literature and in French biographical encyclopædias, like the 'Nouveau
Dictionnaire de Biographie Générale. ' A good biography is also
found in H. Sidney Lear's 'Christian Biographies' (1877). The latter
has also translated into English the 'Lettres Spirituelles' of Fénelon.
Thomas J. Shahar.
TO ONE IN PERPLEXITY
From the Spiritual Letters
YOU
ou doubt, and you cannot bear up under doubt. I am not
surprised; doubt is torture; but do not argue, and you will
cease to doubt. The shadows of a simple faith are very
different from doubt; its troubles bring their own consolation
and fruits. After they have reduced a man they restore him,
and leave him in full peace. Doubt is the trouble of a soul left
to itself, which wants to see what God hides from it, and out of
self-love seeks impossible securities. What have you sacrificed to
God, save your own judgment and self-interest? Would you lose
sight of that which has been your aim from your very first step,
namely, to abandon yourself to God? Would you make shipwreck
when just in port, recall your gift, and require God to subject
himself to your rules, whereas he requires, and you have prom-
ised, to walk Abraham-like in the deepest darkness of faith?
And what merit would there be in your course, if you had
## p. 5645 (#223) ###########################################
FÉNELON
5645
miracles and revelations to make sure of your path? Miracles
and revelations would soon lose their force, and you would fall
back into your doubts. You are giving way to temptation. Do
not hearken to yourself; your real convictions, if you will follow
them simply, will put to flight all these phantoms.
Translation of H. Sidney Lear.
DANGERS OF A QUESTIONING MIND
From the Spiritual Letters ›
HⓇ
E WHO would fain satisfy himself perpetually that he is
guided by reason, not by temper or passion, will only lose
his time without ever coming to a satisfactory result; for
he can never be certain that temper or passion in specious dis-
guise are not moving him to do what he fancies himself doing
from pure reason. It is God's will to keep us in this obscurity
even as to the natural order of things. How much more must
we be content to forego evidence and uncertainty, when it is a
question of the most delicate workings of grace, in the deep
darkness of faith and supernatural things! This restless, obsti-
nate search after an unattainable certainty is very evidently the
work of nature, not of grace; you cannot be too much on your
guard against it. It is a subtle inquiry which will take a hun-
dred shapes. This craving for geometrical certainty is rooted in
you by all your natural inclinations, by lifelong and interesting
studies, by habits become second nature, and by a plausible
desire to watch and guard against illusion. But an evangelic
vigilance should never go so far as to disturb the heart's peace,
or to demand evidence as to the secret operations of grace which
it pleases God to keep hidden beneath a veil. To speak frankly
and unreservedly, you perfectly know that you ought to dread
your excessive tendency to reason, even about all the common
matters of every-day life. You ought to dread it much more
when it meddles with those workings which are above reason,
and which God conceals. One thing is quite certain; namely,
that the more faithful you are in mortifying your intellectual
tastes, your inquisitive philosophic research, your undue wisdom,
forced speculations, and efforts to convince other men, the more
you will mortify your real natural frailties, and therein promote
the life of grace in you.
Translation of H. Sidney Lear.
## p. 5646 (#224) ###########################################
5646
FÉNELON
THE GODDESS CALYPSO
From Telemachus>
TEL
ELEMACHUS followed the goddess as she moved away, sur-
rounded by a bevy of young nymphs, taller by a head than
any of her handmaidens, and like some great oak of the
forest that spreads its leafy branches above its neighbors. He
admired the splendor of her beauty, the rich purple of her long
and trailing draperies, her tresses gathered at the neck in a
loose but graceful knot, and her sparkling eyes, whose vivacity
was tempered by a certain sweetness. Mentor, with modestly
downcast eyes, followed Telemachus. On arriving at the grotto
of Calypso, Telemachus was surprised to see that despite an air
of rustic simplicity, it was provided with all that could charm
the eye. There was there neither gold nor silver, neither marble
nor columns, neither paintings nor statues. The grotto itself was
cut out of the living rock, and its vaulted roof was ornamented
with pebbles and sea-shells. Along the walls a young vine had
trailed its supple branches, and clothed the grotto with the green-
est of tapestries. Gentle zephyrs fanned a delicious fragrance
into this favored spot, and cooled the rays of the sun, while from
many fountains the sweet waters stole softly away over beds of
amarynths and violets, and gathered here and there into crystal
pools. Countless flowers sprang from the fresh earth on all
sides, and enameled the green turf with the loveliest of colors.
Here the eye rested upon a forest of umbrageous trees, among
whose leafy branches hung golden apples, and whose blooms,
renewed with every season, shed around the most delicious of
perfumes. This forest seemed almost to hide the rich meadows,
and to cast over them a deep night that no rays of the sun
could penetrate, but through which could be heard the songs of
birds, and the noise of a waterfall that dashed in foamy masses
from the summit of a rock and hastened away across the plain.
Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by Rev. Thomas
J. Shahan.
## p. 5647 (#225) ###########################################
FÉNELON
5647
THE WEAKNESS OF KINGS
From Telemachus'
ENTOR Idumæus:-"How comes it, since you know so
Mthoroughly these wicked men, that you still keep them
near your person? I do not marvel to see them follow you;
that is in their own best interest; nor yet that you give them
asylum in your new State. But why put trust in them after so
much cruel experience? " "You are ignorant," replied Idumæus,
"how useless is all experience to princes who live in idleness and
luxury a life of irreflection; they are dissatisfied with all about
them, yet they lack the courage to correct what they disapprove.
The habits of so many years held me as with chains of iron to
these men, who in turn haunted me without ceasing. Since
my arrival they have betrayed me into all the excessive expendi-
ture that you behold; they have exhausted the growing State,
and have drawn upon me the war that without your aid would
have overwhelmed me. At Salentum I would have soon fallen a
prey to the same misfortunes that worked my ruin in Crete.
But you have now opened my eyes, and have filled me with the
courage needed to throw off these shackles. I know not how it
is, but since we are here I feel myself another man. ”
Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by Rev. Thomas
J. Shahan.
THE INTERNAL DISSENSIONS OF CHRISTIANS
From 'A Sermon for St. Bernard's Day'
O
SOUL that burnest with the fire of Jesus, come with haste
and learn in Bernard's exposition of the canticles the con-
solations, the trials, and the martyrdom of those spouses
whom a jealous God would purify! How is it that to mankind in
the decline of time and in an epoch of crowding visitations, a man
appears who would have been the glory and the joy of the early
ages? It is because, like her spouse, the Church is clothed with
an imperishable beauty, and despite her age, is still the ever-
fruitful. Did not the world need a renewal of light in a time of
confusion and sin? Alas! those iniquitous days are not yet
gone, my brethren; what do we behold about us even now?
## p. 5648 (#226) ###########################################
5648
FÉNELON
That which we would gladly never behold,- vanity of vanities,
and still more vanity, with toil and affliction of spirit beneath
the sun! When I look on so much evil I rejoice with the dead,
and I pity the estate of the living. What can be in store for
us? In the North, proud and fantastic sects, the fruit of another
age, trifle with the Scriptures, and justify thereby every strange
vision of their hearts. It is not enough, however, that they
should lift their mouths against God and blaspheme the Church,
but the very children of the Church must rend the entrails of
their mother, and cover her with opprobrium. It seems a mir-
acle of grace that some Christians are saved in this deluge of cor-
ruption, and that not all are made frantic by ambition. The
multitude adores deities of flesh and blood; from them it hopes
to obtain a so-called fortune. The hearts of men are enchained
by the demon of avarice, which St. Paul calls an idolatry. It is
true indeed, with St. Chrysostom, that they no longer adore gods
of gold and silver,- they adore the gold and silver themselves,
and in them set all their hope; very far from selling all things,
like the primitive Christians, they never cease from buying;
nay, they acquire by ceaseless rapacity, by endless artifice,
and by the forceful use of authority. Look upon those Christians
who rend one another, who lacerate one another, who sharpen
their poison-dripping tongues, and fit weapons to their hands
that they may imbue them in the blood of their brethren! Be-
hold how they are lost to all sense of shame, sunk in their own
vile pleasures, brutalized by their monstrous passions! From
them God has withdrawn himself, and in his anger he has
given them over to the desires of their own hearts. They be-
lieve that they see and hear all things, yet in reality they see
and hear nothing. They walk as men who tremblingly feel their
way along the edge of an abyss. They are like tottering men
overpowered by drunkenness, and they will die ignorant of who
they are and whence they came.
Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature, by Rev. Thomas
J. Shahan.
## p. 5649 (#227) ###########################################
5649
SUSAN EDMONSTONE FERRIER
(1782-1854)
F THE sprightly Edinburgh novelist Susan Edmonstone Fer-
rier, it is often said, more affectionately than accurately,
that she was a novelist who did for Scotland in her fiction
what her contemporaries Jane Austen and Maria Edgeworth accom-
plished in their novels of English and Irish social life and character.
It should not be disputed, however, that Miss Ferrier merits a supe-
rior place in the circle of British novelists of the first half of the nine-
teenth century. She wrote only three novels,-Marriage' (1818),
'The Inheritance' (1824), and 'Destiny' (1831). They are all of the
old-fashioned length and minuteness of treatment: but they have the
quality of sincerity in every page; and in their ambitious titles and
elaborate detail they show that each work was broadly conceived and
was meant to illustrate some abstract central thought. Like Miss
Burney when giving 'Evelina' to the world, Miss Ferrier's first story
was published anonymously; but going further than Miss Burney in
her preference for being unrecognized as an author, it was not until
a very few years before Miss Ferrier's death that she allowed her
name to appear on the title-page of any of her tales. Professional
writing was distasteful to her; and it was only at the entreaty of a
friend that she made public her literary gift. Marriage' had been
shown only to intimate friends during eight years before she allowed
it to be published. But the success of her stories from the first was
complete. They were attributed to authors of high distinction,-
Professor John Wilson supposing that the first two at least were by
Scott, until it was admitted that a woman had written them.
Miss Ferrier was born in 1782, the youngest of ten children of
James Ferrier, a factor and friend of the fifth Duke of Argyll, and
for a time associated in a city office with Scott. Susan was an
amiable, quiet, and quick-witted girl, who received a careful educa-
tion. She had much natural vivacity, and in social life the same
shrewd humor and tendency toward satire that appears in her books.
A French quality suggesting La Bruyère (a special favorite with her)
was a note in her conversation as in her pages. But her intellect-
uality was matched with delightful tact, a warm heart, and delicacy
of feeling. She early had access to much of the distinguished society
of the Scotch capital, which included such literary men as Scott, Jef-
frey, Sir James Mackintosh, Professor Wilson, Joanna Baillie, Sydney
X-354
## p. 5650 (#228) ###########################################
5650
SUSAN EDMONSTONE FERRIER
Smith, and Macaulay. She also saw a good deal of merely fash-
ionable and wealthy social circles, English and Scotch, at home and
in London; making large use of their types in particular in her
fictions. Scott took a special interest in her, and she was one of his
last visitors at Abbotsford. To him she dedicated her last and per-
haps best tale, 'Destiny. ' Miss Ferrier's life grew more and more
retired as she advanced in years, and a failing eyesight which pres-
ently became nearly complete blindness secluded her from all except
an intimate group of friends. She died in Edinburgh in 1854.
Aside from her qualities as a literary woman, Miss Ferrier was an
amiable, unaffected lady, of high principle and simple and domestic
tastes. It is unfortunate that her correspondence, covering the letters
of many years, was almost entirely destroyed at her own request.
Miss Ferrier's novels are classed among "Scotch novels"; and as
to many passages, they deal with Scotch types. But they are not in
close touch with the Scotch novel as we understand it through Scott
and Galt. They offer no remarkable descriptions of Scotch scenery;
they have but moderate local color; they are almost entirely lacking
in romance; and there is none of the picturesqueness suggesting the
stage, which belongs to her contemporaries. She wrote very consid-
erably from the English point of view, describing Scottish family life.
of the period largely under modish South-British influences. Most
of her personages are rich English gentility, or pretentious Scotch.
persons of quality. She has relatively little to do with distinctive
Highland nobility or peasantry; and indeed where the authoress con-
cerns herself humorously with Scotch human nature and life she is
satirical. Relatively few of her characters speak in dialect,—even
among the middle-class types, where we can suppose that there
would have been propriety in Scotch words and phrases. There is
seldom opportunity for pathos, though in certain episodes she shows
due feeling. She strongly emphasizes religion and the "practice of
piety," in contrast to an irreligious and fashionable use of one's time,
-so much so that she makes in one of her prefaces an almost apolo-
getic reference to this element. As a novelist of plot, Miss Ferrier
is little more interesting than Miss Austen. But even in her stiffly
didactic analyses we find great clearness of thought as to human
nature, and a nice expression of it. Her readers will not be apt to
confuse with any other novelist's delineations such little portraits
as the pompous Lord Rossville, the impertinent Miss Pratt, the kindly
and devoted Mrs. Macaulay, the coarse and vulgar Rev. Mr. M'Dow,
the gossiping good-natured Mr. Ribley and the dictatorial wife of
his bosom, the two Misses Douglas, Jacky and Nicky, Mrs. Pullens,
strong in domestic economy, or bluff Uncle Adam. There is real
force in the longer studies, such as Glenroy, Lady Juliana Douglas,
## p. 5651 (#229) ###########################################
SUSAN EDMONSTONE FERRIER
5651
or the frivolous Lady Florinda Waldegrave and her even more friv-
olous mother, who in some sense anticipates Dickens's Mrs. Skewton.
Of her heroes and heroines it may be remarked that they are sensi-
ble and attractive young people, of the sort that even the modern
young man or young woman would be glad to marry, though one
would not be apt to fall into a frenzy of romantic fire and despair
for their sakes. Perhaps the most striking trait in her books is her
sharp vignettes of personages, the study sometimes only a half-page
long, in which she hits out a whole character. She has left behind
her in her three books a unique gallery of much variety and of em-
phatic truth.
-
A HIGHLAND BETTER HALF
From The Inheritance>
IN
THE Course of her domiciliary visits, Gertrude found herself
at the door of the cottage she had visited the memorable
morning after her arrival at Rossville; and somewhat curious
to know the state of affairs there, she was about to enter when
at that moment Uncle Adam was descried approaching. They
waited till he came up, and then invited him to join in the
visit; which after a little humming and hawing he agreed to do.
The door was hard-and-fast shut, but upon knocking it was
banged open by our ci-devant friend the dame of the stoups,
who immediately recognized and most cordially welcomed her
former visitor.
"Eh! my leddy, is this you? I ax your pardon, my leddy,
but I really didna ken weel wha you was the first time you was
here; just come foret, my leddy; jest stap in ower, sir; dinna be
feared, my leddy; just gang in bye," etc. , etc. , etc. ; and care-
fully closing the door against the breath of heaven, she ush-
ered her guests into the dark precincts of her foul-aired, smoky
cabin. A press-bed, with a bit of blue checked stuff hang-
ing down, denoted that the poor sufferer had now exchanged
his seat by the fire for his bed, and the chair which he had for、
merly occupied stood with its back to the fire, covered with
clothes apparently drying.
"How does your husband do? " inquired Lady Rossville.
"Oo,' deed, my leddy, he's just quite silly-wise," responded
the dame in a whining, melancholy key; "he just lies there
snottering awa'," pointing to the bed.
## p. 5652 (#230) ###########################################
5652
SUSAN EDMONSTONE FERRIER
"Is he confined to bed? " asked Mr. Lyndsay.
"No-no, sir, he's no confined ony ways, he gets up whiles;
but 'deed it's no aye convenient for me to ha'e him up; for as
I tell him, what can he do when he is up? for he's no fit to put
his hand to onything; and he's mair oot o' the way there than
he wad be ony place else. "
"More out of the way of regaining health, certainly," said
Mr. Lyndsay.
"Health, sir! " interrupted the hostess; "'deed he'll ne'er ha'e
health as lang as he lives; he's just been draggle-dragglen on,
these twunty month by Marti'mas; I'm sure I've had a weary
time o't wi' him, and noo I canna get a hand's turn maist done
for him, the hoose an' awthing's just gawin' to destruction; and
I'm sure I really think shame o' mysel'," surveying two large
dirty arms from top to toe; "an' there's the weans, puir things,
gawin' in perfect rags, for I ne'er can get a steek put in either
to their duds or my ain. "
Here the voice of the sick man was heard in a faint accent,
calling the gudewife.
"That's just the way he gangs on, my leddy; he just lies
there and yelps, yelps, yelps even on for me. What is't noo? "
in her loudest, sharpest key, as she banged up to the bed. "A
drink? I wonder ye ha'e nae mair sense, man, than to ask for
a drink the noo, when her leddyship's here, an' Maister Lyndsay
an' aw, speerin' for you. "
Mr. Lyndsay here took up a jug of water which was standing
on the top of a chest by the bedside, and held it to the sick
man's lips; but the reproof was thrown away, or rather miscon-
strued by his soothing helpmate.
"Oh, sir, I think shame o' your takin' sae muckle trouble,
for he's just like a bairn; he's aye wantin' something or anither,
and he's just lost aw discretion thegither. I wonder you dinna
think shame o' yoursel'," to her husband, "when you see the
fashery you mak'. "
Mr. Lyndsay, meanwhile, having felt the invalid's pulse, be-
gan to put a few queries to him touching his complaint.
"Have you much thirst? " asked he.
"Oh, sir, he wad drink the very ocean an let him. ”
<< Pray let him speak for himself," said Lyndsay, again putting
the question to the patient, who seemed so unused to the privi
lege that he was evidently at a loss how to make use of it.
## p. 5653 (#231) ###########################################
SUSAN EDMONSTONE FERRIER
5653
"Have you any pain in your head? "
"'Deed, sir, I dinna think he has muckle pain in his heed,
though he compleens o't whiles; but as I often tell him, I wiss
he had my back. I'm sure I've a pain whiles atween my shou-
thers, sir" rolling a huge, fat, strong-looking back as she spoke.
"I shall attend to your pains some other time, if you will be
so good as keep them quiet for the present," said Lyndsay; then
once more turning to the sick man, he asked whether he had
pain or weakness in his limbs that prevented him from rising.
"I'm sure I dinna ken what it is," again interposed the incor-
rigible matron.
