CONTENTS OF THE APPENDIX. CHAPTER II.-THE ROAD OF CHILDREN CHAPTER III.-THE ROAD OF YOUTH CHAPTER IV.-THE ROAD OF THE FAMILY Compitum. BOOK I. CHAPTER I. + Ad amicos idem quod ad omnes scribere. HAT antique roofs are those rising above yon solemn wood, which the setting sun gilds with its rays? asked a horseman, turning to his companion as they rode on an autumnal evening through a northern county of England. Is it a place inhabited, he continued, or only some ruin tenantless? That is the old hall about which you heard so much, replied the other, when we were resting in the last town. Do you not remember how they talked of it sitting over the fire, saying that it reminded them of a certain old manor-house that they had seen near the town of Bergara, in the province of Guipuzcoa, which they said was remarkable as a specimen of the ancient Spanish architecture? I said nothing then; but I know somewhat of its history. It is the ancestral mansion, still right firm and strong, though somewhat declined and timeworn, of a very ancient family that has ever remained' constant to the Catholic Church. There, within the limits of yon lime and stone, you find the long oak gallery, between which and your chamber you would lock carefully the door, and draw the bolts too; at least, if you felt as I did, after being recommended so to do by mine host, for the reason that its tenant for the night was far from the known. There you find oo, the windy turret, the grim study, where all the pictures represent men who suffered either exile for their faith, or death-the hiding-place for priests, the dusty spear, all, in short, that you may have read of in other books. The present owner, left as a sample of manners that are daily perishing, lives solitary amidst all those memorials, having for his own room an immense austere chamber, where, if it were not B for its old tapestry waving with the wind that penetrates through door and windows, everything recalls the poverty and nakedness of St. Francis. When I first saw him, he was kneeling in his own chapel. A Benedictine monk who served it lived in an upper apartment, which a holy Jesuit before him had inhabited during thirty years. This lord of the manor is only known to the neighbourhood by his goodness to the tenants, and by his charities to the poor. "His arms long hung up, and warlike spoyle, From all this world's incumbrance he does himself assoyle." We must be changed into rain, some say, if we would penetrate into his towers, so careful is he not to dull his palm with entertainment of new-hatched acquaintances. "His walk the woods, his sport some foreign book, His resting-place the bank that curbs the brook." It is said that he is a man whose talk is of ancient times and ancient men, indicating what the Church calls the contempt rerum transeuntium; that, as Sidonius Apollinaris says of his friend, "Illi bibliotheca fidei catholicæ perfamiliaris est ;*" that it is his maxim to reject as bad money all which is not stamped with the character of the tradition of the holy fathers, and that having been educated on the continent before the Revolution, and in a monastery, his memory can supply a rich feast of treasured observations, while the manners as well as the thoughts and doctrines of former times, are still to be found beneath his roof. Would you hear old histories of the persecutions of Catholics in England related as if from a domestic local tradition, embracing names, dates, circumstances, all with the exactness and freshness of one who had seen and heard the confessors and martyrs? there is the man pacing to and fro the shady walk in the midst of those groves, who can satisfy you. Would you avoid hearing the newfangled eulogies of old heresies urged as if to efface all vestiges of the impressions which the long tragedy of the Anglican schism wrought upon the faithful Catholics who saw its rise and progress? under that roof you are safe. No "foolish babbling of the ministers" would there reach you. And yet there would you find one, who though deeply versed in sacred erudition, brings it to bear on the passing events of the day with a simplicity of intention, a precision, and an absence of pedantry, that can result alone from the love and benignity of a heart in which charity has perfected nature. Just in the least as in the greatest things, and uncompromising in regard to his own obligations, there is one who still is * Lib. vii. epist. 9. always provided with an excuse for others, and an argument for admitting extenuations in their favour; one towards himself strict and severe, towards all the world besides, tolerant, patient, forgiving; suspicious, or rather ignorant and unconscious of his own merits, full of childlike admiration for whatever he can interpret as estimable in others. One of those, I believe, as far as regards the world and its society, of whom the sacred text predicteth, saying, "Sedebit solitarius, et tacebit; quia levabit se supra se.' Probably too, a living instance of what Savonarola says, "in proportion as men cultivate the graces of contemplation, they choose a mode of life more and more simple, being content with fewer and fewer things, daily becoming more simple and retired, averse to living with the multitude, and earnest in seeking the flowery pastures of eternal life.”* These convictions and surmises need not be mistrusted, comrade, upon the score that friendship often makes the judgment swerve from exact truth; for though I have paced with him that walk along the moat, and heard many of his beautiful sayings, it is clear that in his eyes I am but a stranger, of a light age, come too late across his path to be much regarded, an intruder on his secrecy, perhaps; who knows? at all events, one to be forgotten as soon as the sound of his horse's hoofs is lost in the avenue. But why gaze so wistfully towards the grove? Surely you cannot be one of the inquisitive persons that desire to visit him, who, like a hermit, leads therein his days? Of what interest could it be to you, O comrade, brought up as men are now brought up, ὦ τραφεὶς, ὅθενπέρ εἰσιν ἄνδρες, οἵπερ εἰσί,† το hear the observations of such a solitary recluse, living in desolation there, unseen, unvisited, when you observe the fame and constant success of those with whom you may be said to live—those senators, those leaders of public opinion whose brilliant harangues you read every morning, while the conversations of the evening supply the comment of so many eloquent and enthusiastic admirers? The other continued to look thoughtfully at the old hall: again and again did he look back as the horses carried them beyond the spot. More than once even, as if not satisfied with that intent observation, he looked at it, inverted with head bent downwards, like a boy who thinks a landscape that is so viewed more beautiful -by such silent and insatiate gaze, indicating clearly enough that he for one would gladly abdicate some of his supposed privileges, escape awhile from all the glory of this age, and penetrate into that sequestered dwelling to hear from an aged * Hier. Savon. Exposit. Orat. Dominicæ. + Equit. 333. |