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attendants may be seen, preceded by their cross and banner, bearing the holy wafer to the various houses. As they march along, they make the streets resound with the psalm they sing. Everybody lifts his hat as they pass, and many among the lower classes kneel upon the pavement. Frequently the procession is followed by a rout of men, women, and children, who join in the chanting and responses, pausing with the priest before the door of the sick person, and accompanying it as it moves from house to house.

At Christmas, all the Roman world which has a _baiocco_ in its pocket eats _torone_ and _pan giallo._ The shops of the pastry-cooks and confectioners are filled with them, mountains of them incumber the counters, and for days before Christmas crowds of purchasers throng to buy them. _Torone_ is a sort of hard candy, made of honey and almonds, and crusted over with crystallized sugar; or in other words, it is a _nuga_ with a sweet frieze coat;–but _nuga_ is a trifle to it for consistency. _Pan giallo_ is perhaps so called _quasi lucus,_ it being neither bread nor yellow. I know no way of giving a clearer notion of it than by saying that its father is almond-candy and its mother a plum-pudding. It partakes of the qualities of both its parents. From its mother it inherits plums and citron, while its father bestows upon it almonds and consistency. In hardness of character it is half-way between the two,–having neither the maternal tenderness on the one hand, nor the paternal stoniness on the other. One does not break one’s teeth on it as over the _torone,_ which is only to be cajoled into masticability by prolonged suction, and often not then; but the teeth sink into it as the wagoner’s wheels into clayey mire, and every now and then receive a shock, as from sunken rocks, from the raisin-stones, indurated almonds, pistachio-nuts, and pine-seeds, which startle the ignorant and innocent eater with frightful doubts. I carried away one tooth this year over my first piece; but it was a tooth which had been considerably indebted to California, and I have forgiven the _pan giallo._ My friend the Conte Cignale, who partook at the same time of _torone,_ having incautiously put a large lump into his mouth, found himself compromised thereby to such an extent as to be at once reduced to silence and retirement behind his pocket-handkerchief. An unfortunate jest, however, reduced him to extremities, and, after a vehement struggle for politeness, he was forced to open the window and give his _torone_ to the pavement–and the little boys, perhaps. _Chi sa?_ But, despite these dangers and difficulties, all the world at Rome eats _pan giallo_ and _torone_ at Christmas,–and a Christmas without them would be an egg without salt. They are at once a penance and a pleasure. Not content with the _pan giallo,_ the Romans also import the _pan forte di Siena,_ which is a blood cousin of the former, and suffers almost nothing from time and age.

On Christmas and New Year’s day all the servants of your friends present themselves at your door to wish you a _”buona festa,”_ or a _”buon capo d’anno.”_ This generous expression of good feeling is, however, expected to be responded to by a more substantial expression on your part, in the shape of four or five pauls, so that one peculiarly feels the value of a large visiting-list of acquaintances at this season. To such an extent is this practice carried, that in the houses of the cardinals and princes places are sought by servants merely for the vails of the _festas,_ no other wages being demanded. Especially is this the case with the higher dignitaries of the Church, whose _maestro di casa_, in hiring domestics, takes pains to point out to them the advantages of their situation in this respect. Lest the servants should not be aware of all these advantages, the times when such requisitions may be gracefully made and the sums which may be levied are carefully indicated,–not by the cardinal in person, of course, but by his underlings; and many of the fellows who carry the umbrella and cling to the back of the cardinal’s coach, covered with shabby gold-lace and carpet-collars, and looking like great beetles, are really paid by everybody rather than the _padrone_ they serve. But this is not confined to the _Eminenze,_ many of whom are, I dare say, wholly ignorant that such practices exist. The servants of the embassies and all the noble houses also make the circuit of the principal names on the visiting-list, at stated occasions, with good wishes for the family. If one rebel, little care will be taken that letters, cards, and messages arrive promptly at their destination in the palaces of their _padroni;_ so it is a universal habit to thank them for their politeness, and to request them to do you the favor to accept a piece of silver in order to purchase a bottle of wine and drink your health. I never knew one of them refuse; probably they would not consider it polite to do so. It is curious to observe the care with which at the embassies a new name is registered by the servants, who scream it from anteroom to _salon,_ and how considerately a deputation waits on you at Christmas and New Year’s, or, indeed, whenever you are about to leave Rome to take your _villeggiatura,_ for the purpose of conveying to you the good wishes of the season or of invoking for you a _”buon viaggio.”_ One young Roman, a teacher of languages, told me that it cost him annually some twenty _scudi_ or more, to convey to the servants of his pupils and others his deep sense of the honor they did him in inquiring for his health at stated times. But this is a rare case, and owing, probably, to his peculiar position. A physician in Rome, whom I had occasion to call in for a slight illness, took an opportunity on his first visit to put a very considerable _buona mano_ into the hands of my servant, in order to secure future calls. I cannot, however, say that this is customary; on the contrary, it is the only case I know, though I have had other Roman physicians; and this man was in his habits and practice peculiarly un-Roman. I do not believe it, therefore, to be a Roman trait. On the other hand, I must say, for my servant’s credit, that he told me the fact with a shrug, and added, that he could not, after all, recommend the gentleman as a _medico,_ though I was _padrone,_ of course, to do as I liked.

On Christmas Eve, a _Presepio_ is exhibited in several of the churches. The most splendid is that of the Ara Celi, where the miraculous Bambino is kept. It lasts from Christmas to Twelfth Night, during which period crowds of people flock to see it; and it well repays a visit. The simple meaning of the term _Presepio_ is a manger, but it is also used in the Church to signify a representation of the birth of Christ. In the Ara Celi the whole of one of the side-chapels is devoted to this exhibition. In the foreground is a grotto, in which is seated the Virgin Mary, with Joseph at her side and the miraculous Bambino in her lap. Immediately behind are an ass and an ox. On one side kneel the shepherds and kings in adoration; and above, God the Father is seen surrounded by clouds of cherubs and angels playing on instruments, as in the early pictures of Raphael. In the background is a scenic representation of a pastoral landscape, on which all the skill of the scene-painter is expended. Shepherds guard their flocks far away, reposing under palm-trees or standing on green slopes which glow in the sunshine. The distances and perspective are admirable. In the middle ground is a crystal fountain of glass, near which sheep, preternaturally white, and made of real wool and cotton-wool, are feeding, tended by figures of shepherds carved in wood. Still nearer come women bearing great baskets of real oranges and other fruits on their heads. All the nearer figures are full-sized, carved in wood, painted, and dressed in appropriate robes. The miraculous Bambino is a painted doll swaddled in a white dress, which is crusted over with magnificent diamonds, emeralds, and rubies. The Virgin also wears in her ears superb diamond pendants. Joseph has none; but he is not a person peculiarly respected in the Church. As far as the Virgin and Child are concerned, they are so richly dressed that the presents of the kings and wise men seem rather supererogatory,–like carrying coals to Newcastle,–unless, indeed, Joseph come in for a share, as it is to be hoped he does. The general effect of this scenic show is admirable, and crowds flock to it and press about it all day long. Mothers and fathers are lifting their little children as high as they can, and until their arms are ready to break; little maids are pushing, whispering, and staring in great delight; _contadini_ are gaping at it with a mute wonderment of admiration and devotion; and Englishmen are discussing loudly the value of the jewels, and wanting to know, by Jove, whether those in the crown can be real.

While this is taking place on one side of the church, on the other is a very different and quite as singular an exhibition. Around one of the antique columns of this basilica–which once beheld the splendors and crimes of the Caesars’ palace–a staging is erected, from which little maidens are reciting, with every kind of pretty gesticulation, sermons, dialogues, and speechifications, in explanation of the _Presepio_ opposite. Sometimes two of them are engaged in alternate question and answer about the mysteries of the Incarnation and the Redemption. Sometimes the recitation is a piteous description of the agony of the Saviour and the sufferings of the Madonna,–the greatest stress being, however, always laid upon the latter. All these little speeches have been written for them by their priest or some religious friend, been committed to memory, and practised with the appropriate gestures over and over again at home. Their little piping voices are sometimes guilty of such comic breaks and changes, that the crowd about them rustles into a murmurous laughter. Sometimes also one of the very little preachers has a _dispitto_, pouts, shakes her shoulders, and refuses to go on with her part;–another, however, always stands ready on the platform to supply the vacancy, until friends have coaxed, reasoned, or threatened the little pouter into obedience. These children are often very beautiful and graceful, and their comical little gestures and intonations, their clasping of hands and rolling up of eyes, have a very amusing and interesting effect. The last time I was there, I was sorry to see that the French costume had begun to make its appearance. Instead of the handsome Roman head, with its dark, shining, braided hair, which is so elegant when uncovered, I saw on two of the children the deforming bonnet, which could have been invented only to conceal a defect, and which is never endurable, unless it be perfectly fresh, delicate, and costly. Nothing is so vulgar as a shabby bonnet. Yet the Romans, despite their dislike of the French, are beginning to wear it. Ten years ago it did not exist here among the common people. I know not why it is that the three ugliest pieces of costume ever invented, the dress-coat, the trousers, and the bonnet, all of which we owe to the French, have been accepted all over Europe, to the exclusion of every national costume. Certainly it is not because they are either useful, elegant, or commodious.[B]

[Footnote B: That cultivated gentleman, John Evelyn, two centuries ago wrote some amusing words on this subject. After quoting the witty saying of Malvezzi,–“I vestimenti negli animali sono molto securi segni della loro natura, negli nomini del lor cervello,”–he goes on to say, “Be it excusable in the French to alter and impose the mode on others, ’tis no less a weakness and a shame in the rest of the world, who have no dependence on them, to admit them, at least to that degree of levity as to turn into all their shapes without discrimination; so as when the freak takes our Monsieurs to appear like so many farces or Jack Puddings on the stage, all the world should alter shape and play the pantomimes with them. Methinks a French tailor, with an ell in his hand, looks like the enchantress Circe over the companions of Ulysses, and changes them into as many forms…. Something I would indulge to youth; something to age and humor. But what have we to do with these foreign butterflies? In God’s name, let the change be our own, not borrowed of others; for why should I dance after a Monsieur’s flageolet, that have a set of English viols for my concert? We need no French inventions for the stage or for the back.”–From a pamphlet entitled _Tyrannus, or the Mode_.

“Si le costume bourgeois,” says George Sand, in _Le Peche de M. Antoine_, “de notre epoque est le plus triste, le plus incommode et le plus disgracieux, que la mode ait jamais invente, c’est surtout au milieu des champs que tous ses inconvenients et toutes ses laideurs revoltent…. Au milieu de ce cadre austere et grandiose, qui transporte l’imagination au temps de la poesie primitive, apparaisse cette mouche parasite, le _monsieur_ aux habits noirs, au menton rase, aux mains gantees, aux jambes maladroites, et ce roi de la societe n’est plus qu’un accident ridicule, une tache importune dans le tableau. Votre costume genant et disparate inspire alors la pitie plus que les haillons du pauvre, on sent que vous etes deplace au grand air, et que votre livree vous ecrase.”]

If one visit the Ara Celi during the afternoon of one of these _festas_, the scene is very striking. The flight of one hundred and twenty-four steps, which once led to the temple of Venus and Rome, is then thronged by merchants of Madonna wares, who spread them out over the steps and hang them against the walls and balustrades. Here are to be seen all sorts of curious little colored prints of the Madonna and Child of the most ordinary quality, little bags, pewter medals, and crosses stamped with the same figures and to be worn on the neck,–all offered at once for the sum of one _baiocco_. Here also are framed pictures of the Saints, of the Nativity, and, in a word, of all sorts of religious subjects appertaining to the season. Little wax dolls, clad in cotton-wool to represent the Saviour, and sheep made of the same materials, are also sold by the basketful. Children and _contadine_ are busy buying them, and there is a deafening roar all up and down the steps of “_Mezzo baiocco, bello colorito, mezzo baiocco, la Santissima Concezione Incoronata,”–“Diario Romano, Lunario Romano Nuovo,”–“Ritratto colorito, medaglia e quadruccio, un baiocco tutti, un baiocco tutti,”–“Bambinelli di cera, un baiocco_.”[C] None of the prices are higher than one _baiocco_, except to strangers,–and generally several articles are held up together, enumerated, and proffered with a loud voice for this sum. Meanwhile men, women, children, priests, beggars, soldiers, and _villani_ are crowding up and down, and we crowd with them.

[Footnote C: “A half-_baiocco_, beautifully colored,–a half-_baiocco_, the Holy Conception Crowned.” “Roman Diary,–New Roman Almanac.” “Colored portrait, medal, and little picture, one _baiocco_, all.” “Little children in wax, one _baiocco_.”]

At last, ascending, we reach the door which faces towards the west. We lift the great leathern curtain and push into the church. A faint perfume of incense salutes the nostrils. The golden sunset bursts in as the curtain sways forward, illuminates the mosaic floor, catches on the rich golden ceiling, and flashes here and there over the crowd on some brilliant costume or shaven head. All sorts of people are thronging there,–some kneeling before the shrine of the Madonna, which gleams with its hundreds of silver votive hearts, legs, and arms,–some listening to the preaching,–some crowding round the chapel of the _Presepio_,–old women, haggard and wrinkled, come tottering along with their _scaldini_ of coals, drop down on their knees to pray, and, as you pass, interpolate in their prayers a parenthesis of begging. The church is not architecturally handsome; but it is eminently picturesque, with its relics of centuries, its mosaic pulpits and floor, its frescoes of Pinturicchio and Pesaro, its antique columns, its rich golden ceiling, its Gothic mausoleum to the Savelli, and its medieval tombs. A dim, dingy look is over all,–but it is the dimness of faded splendor; and one cannot stand there, knowing the history of the church, its exceeding antiquity, and the changes it has undergone since it was a Roman temple, without a peculiar sense of interest and pleasure.

It was here that Romulus, in the gray dawning of Rome, built the temple of Jupiter Feretrius. Here the _spolia opima_ were deposited. Here the triumphal processions of the Emperors and generals ended. Here the victors paused before making their vows, until the message came from the Mamertine Prisons below to announce that their noblest prisoner and victim, while the clang of their triumph and his defeat rose ringing in his ears as the procession ascended the steps, had expiated with death the crime of being the enemy of Rome. Over these very steps,–nineteen centuries ago, the first great Caesar climbed on his knees after his first triumph. At their base, Rienzi, “last of the Roman tribunes,” fell. And, if the tradition of the Church is to be trusted, it was on the site of the present high altar that Augustus erected the “_Ara primogenito Dei_” to commemorate the Delphic prophecy of the coming of our Saviour. Standing on a spot so thronged with memories, the dullest imagination takes fire. The forms and scenes of the past rise from their graves and pass before us, and the actual and visionary are mingled together in strange poetic confusion. Truly, as Walpole says, “memory sees more than our eyes in this country.”

And this is one great charm of Rome,–that it animates the dead figures of its history. On the spot where they lived and acted, the Caesars change from the manikins of books to living men; and Virgil, Horace, and Cicero grow to be realities, as we walk down the Sacred Way and over the very pavement they may once have trod. The conversations “De Claris Oratoribus” and the “Tusculan Questions” seem like the talk of the last generation, as we wander on the heights of Tusculum, or over the grounds of that charming villa on the banks of the Liris, which the great Roman orator so graphically describes in his treatise “De Legibus.” The landscape of Horace has not changed. Still in the winter you may see the dazzling peak of the “_gelidus Algidus_” and “_ut alta stet nive candidum Soracte_”; and wandering at Tivoli in the summer, his description,

“Domus Albuneae resonantis,
Et praeceps Anio, et Tiburni lucus, et uda Mobililius pomaria rivis,”

is as true and fresh as if his words were of yesterday. Could one better his compliment to any Roman Lalage of to-day than to call her “_dulce ridentem_”? In all its losses, Rome has not lost the sweet smile of its people. Would you like to know the modern rules for agriculture in Rome, read the “Georgics”; there is so little to alter, that it is not worth mentioning. So, too, at Rome, the Emperors become as familiar as the Popes. Who does not know the curly-headed Marcus Aurelius, with his lifted brow and projecting eyes, from the full, round beauty of his youth to the more haggard look of his latest years? Are there any modern portraits more familiar than the pensive, wedge-like head of Augustus, with his sharp-cut lips and nose,–or the dull phiz of Hadrian, with his hair combed down over his low forehead,–or the vain, perking face of Lucius Verus, with his thin nose, low brow, and profusion of curls,–or the brutal bull head of Caracalla,–or the bestial, bloated features of Vitellius?

These men, who were but lay-figures to us at school, mere pegs of names to hang historic robes upon, thus interpreted by the living history of their portraits, the incidental illustrations of the places where they lived and moved and died, and the buildings and monuments they erected, become like the men of yesterday. Art has made them our contemporaries. They are as near to us as Pius VII. and Napoleon. I never drive out of the old Nomentan Gate without remembering the ghastly flight of Nero,–his recognition there by an old centurion,–his damp, drear hiding-place underground, where, shuddering and quoting Greek, he waited for his executioners,–and his subsequent terrible and cowardly death, as narrated by Tacitus and Suetonius; and it seems nearer to me, more vivid, and more actual, than the death of Rossi in the court of the Cancelleria. I never drive by the Caesars’ palaces, without recalling the ghastly jest of Tiberius, when he sent for some fifteen of the Senators at dead of night and commanded their presence; and when they, trembling with fear, and expecting nothing less than that their heads were all to fall, had been kept waiting for an hour, the door opened, and he, nearly naked, appeared with a fiddle in his hand, and, after fiddling and dancing to his quaking audience for an hour, dismissed them to their homes uninjured. The air seems to keep a sort of spiritual scent or trail of these old deeds, and to make them more real here than elsewhere. The old horrors of the Amphitheatre can be made real to any person of imaginative mind in the Colosseum. He has but to lend himself to the contagion of the place, and he will see the circle of ten thousand eager eyes thirsting for his blood, fill up the ruined benches and arched tiers as of yore, and hear the savage murmur of human voices, worse than the dull roar of the beasts below. The past still lives in these old walls. It is in vain to say that the ghosts of history do not haunt their ancient habitations. Places, as well as persons, have lives and influences; and the horror of murder will not away from a spot. Haunted by its crimes, oppressed and debilitated by the fierce excesses of its Empire, Rome, silent, grave, and meditative, sighs over its past, wrapped in the penitent robes of the Church.

Besides, here one feels that the modern Romans are only the children of their ancient fathers, with the same characteristics,–softened, indeed, and worn down by time, just as the sharp traits of the old marbles have worn away; but still the same people,–proud, passionate, lazy, jealous, vindictive, easy, patient, and able. The Popes are but Church pictures of the Emperors,–a different robe, but the same nature beneath;–Alexander the VI. was but a second Tiberius–Pius the VII., a modern Augustus. When I speak of the Roman people, I do not mean the class of hangers-on upon the foreigners, but the Trasteverini and the inhabitants of the provinces and mountains. No one can go through the Trastevere when the people are roused, without feeling that they are the same as those who listened to Marcus Antonius and Brutus, when the bier of Caesar was brought into the streets,–and as those who fought with the Colonna and stabbed Rienzi at the foot of the Capitol steps. The Ciceruacchio of ’48 was but an ancient Tribune of the People, in the primitive sense of that title. I like, too, to parallel the anecdote of Caius Marius, when, after his ruin, he concealed himself in the marshes, and astonished his captors, who expected to find him weak of heart, by the magnificent self-assertion of “I am Caius Marius,” with the story which is told of Stefano Colonna. After this great captain met with his sad reverses, and, deprived of all his possessions, fled from Rome, an attendant asked him,–“What fortress have you now?” He placed his hand on his heart and answered,–“_Eccola!_” The same blood evidently ran in the veins of both these men; and well might Petrarca call Colonna “a phoenix risen from the ashes of the ancient Romans.”

But, somehow or other, I have wandered strangely from my subject. _Scusi_,–but what has all this to do with the Bambino?

The Santissimo Bambino is a very round-faced and expressionless doll, carved, as the legend goes, from a tree on the Mount of Olives, by a Franciscan pilgrim, and painted by Saint Luke while the pilgrim slept. It is difficult to say which was the worse artist of the two, the sculptor or the painter. But Saint Luke’s pictures generally do not give us a high idea of his skill as a painter. The legend is a charming anachronism, unless, indeed, Saint Luke was only a spiritual presence;–but, as the whole incident was miraculous, the greater the anachronism, the greater the miracle. The Bambino, however he came into existence, is invested, according to the assertions of priests and the belief of the common people, with wonderful powers in curing the sick; and his practice is as lucrative as any physician’s in Rome. His aid is in constant requisition in severe cases, and certain it is that a cure not unfrequently follows upon his visit; but as the regular physicians always cease their attendance upon his entrance, and blood-letting and calomel are consequently intermitted, perhaps the cure is not so miraculous as it might at first seem. He is borne by the priests in state to his patients; and during the Triumvirate of ’49, the Pope’s carriage was given to him and his attendants. I was assured by the priest who exhibited him to me at the church, that, on one occasion, having been stolen by some irreverent hand from his ordinary abiding-place in one of the side-chapels, he returned alone, by himself, at night, to console his guardians and to resume his functions. Great honors are paid to him. He wears jewels which a Colonna might envy, and not a square inch of his body is without a splendid gem. On festal occasions, like Christmas, he wears a coronet as brilliant as the triple crown of the Pope, and, lying in the Madonna’s arms in the representation of the Nativity, he is adored by the people until Epiphany. Then, after the performance of Mass, a procession of priests, accompanied by a band of music, makes the tour of the church and proceeds to the chapel of the _Presepio_, where the bishop, with great solemnity, removes him from his Mother’s arms. At this moment, the music bursts forth into a triumphant march, a jubilant strain over the birth of Christ, and he is borne through the doors of the church to the great steps. There the bishop elevates the Holy Bambino before the crowds who throng the steps, and they fall upon their knees. This is thrice repeated, and the wonderful image is then conveyed to its original chapel, and the ceremony is over.

The Eve of Epiphany, or Twelfth-Night, is to the children of Rome what Christmas Eve is to us. It is then that the _Bifana_ comes with her presents. This personage is neither merry nor male, like Santa Claus, nor beautiful and childlike, like Christ-kindchen,–but is described as a very tall, dark woman, ugly, and rather terrible, “_d’ una fisionomia piuttosto imponente_” who comes down the chimney, on the Eve of Epiphany, armed with a long _canna_ and shaking a bell, to put playthings into the stockings of the good children, and bags of ashes into those of the bad. It is a night of fearful joy for all the little ones. When they hear her bell ring, they shake in their sheets; for the Bifana is used as a threat to the wilful, and their hope is tempered by a wholesome apprehension. It is supposed to be a distorted image of the visit of the kings and wise men with their presents at the Nativity, as Santa Claus may be of the shepherds, and the Christ-kindchen of Christ himself. However this may be, it is curious to observe the different characters this superstition assumes among different nations and under different influences.

The great festival of the Bifana (a corruption, undoubtedly, of _Epifania_) takes place on the Eve of Twelfth-Night, in the Piazza di San Eustachio,–and a curious spectacle it is. The Piazza itself, (which is situated in the centre of the city, just beyond the Pantheon,) and all the adjacent streets, are lined with booths covered with every kind of plaything for children. Most of these are of Roman make, very rudely fashioned, and very cheap; but for those who have longer purses, there are not wanting heaps of German and French toys. These booths are gayly illuminated with rows of candles and the three-wicked brass _lucerne_ of Rome; and, at intervals, painted posts are set into the pavement, crowned with pans of grease, with a wisp of tow for wick, which blaze and flare about. Besides these, numbers of torches carried about by hand lend a wavering and picturesque light to the scene. By eight o’clock in the evening, crowds begin to fill the Piazza and the adjacent streets. Long before one arrives, the squeak of penny-trumpets is heard at intervals; but in the Piazza itself the mirth is wild and furious, and the din that salutes one’s ears on entering is almost deafening. The object of every one is to make as much noise as possible, and every kind of instrument for this purpose is sold at the booths. There are drums beating, _tamburelli_ thumping and jingling, pipes squeaking, watchmen’s-rattles clacking, penny-trumpets and tin horns shrilling, and the sharpest whistles shrieking everywhere. Besides this, there are the din of voices, screams of laughter, and the confused burr and buzz of a great crowd. On all sides you are saluted by the strangest noises. Instead of being spoken to, you are whistled at. Companies of people are marching together in platoons, or piercing through the crowd in long files, and dancing and blowing like mad on their instruments. It is a perfect witches’ Sabbath. Here, huge dolls dressed as Polichinello or Pantaloon are borne about for sale,–or over the heads of the crowd great black-faced jumping-jacks, lifted on a stick, twitch themselves in fantastic fits,–or, what is more Roman than all, men carry about long poles strung with rings of hundreds of _giambelli_, (a light cake, called jumble in English,) which they scream for sale at a _mezzo baiocco_ each. There is no alternative but to get a drum, whistle, or trumpet, and join in the racket,–and to fill one’s pockets with toys for the children and absurd presents for one’s older friends. The moment you are once in for it, and making as much noise as you can, you begin to relish the jest. The toys are very odd,–particularly the Roman whistles;–some of these are made of pewter, with a little wheel that whirls as you blow; others are of terra-cotta, very rudely modelled into every shape of bird, beast, and human deformity, each with a whistle in its head, breast, or tail, which it is no joke to hear, when blown close to your ears by a stout pair of lungs. The scene is very picturesque. Above, the dark vault of night, with its far stars, the blazing and flaring of lights below, and the great, dark walls of the Sapienza and Church looking grimly down upon the mirth. Everywhere in the crowd are the glistening helmets of soldiers, who are mixing in the sport, and the _chapeaux_ of white-strapped _gendarmes_, standing at intervals to keep the peace. At about half-past eleven o’clock the theatres are emptied, and the upper classes flock to the Piazza. I have never been there later than half-past twelve, but the riotous fun still continued at that hour; and, for a week afterwards, the squeak of whistles may be heard at intervals in the streets.

At the two periods of Christmas and Easter, the young Roman girls take their first communion. The former, however, is generally preferred, as it is a season of rejoicing in the Church, and the ceremonies are not so sad as at Easter. In entering upon this religious phase of their life, it is their custom to retire to a convent, and pass a week in prayer and reciting the offices of the Church. During this period, no friend, not even their parents, are allowed to visit them, and information as to their health and condition is very reluctantly and sparingly given at the door. In case of illness, the physician of the convent is called; and even then neither parent is allowed to see them, except, perhaps, in very severe cases. Of course, during their stay in the convent, every exertion is made by the sisters to render a monastic life agreeable, and to stimulate the religious sensibilities of the young communicant. The pleasures of society and the world are decried, and the charms of peace, devotion, and spiritual exercises eulogized, until the excited imagination of the communicant leaves her no rest, before she has returned to the convent and taken the veil as a nun. The happiness of families is thus sometimes destroyed; and I knew one very united and pleasant Roman family which in this way was sadly broken up. Two of three sisters were so worked upon at their first communion, that the prayers of family and friends proved unavailing to retain them in their home. The more they were urged to remain, the more they desired to go, and the parents, brothers, and remaining sister were forced to yield a most reluctant consent. They retired into the convent and became nuns. It was almost as if they had died. From that time forward, the home was no longer a home. I saw them when they took the veil, and a sadder spectacle was not easily to be seen. The girls were happy, but the parents and family wretched, and the parting was very tearful and sad. They do not seem since to have regretted the step they then took; but regret would be unavailing–and even if they felt it, they could scarcely show it. The occupation of the sisters in the monastery they have joined is prayers, the offices of the Church, and, I believe, a little instruction of poor children. But gossip among themselves, of the pettiest kind, must make up for the want of wider worldly interests. In such limited relations, little jealousies engender great hypocrisies; a restricted horizon enlarges small objects. The repressed heart and introverted mind, deprived of their natural scope, consume themselves in self-consciousness, and duties easily degenerate into routine. We are not all in all to ourselves; the world has claims upon us, which it is cowardice to shrink from, and folly to deny. Self-forgetfulness is a great virtue, and selfishness a great vice. After all, the best religious service is worthy occupation. Large interests keep the heart sound; and the best of prayers is the doing of a good act with a pure purpose.

“He prayeth best who loveth best
All things, both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.”

ABDEL-HASSAN.

The compensations of calamity are made apparent after long intervals of time.
The sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all fact. –EMERSON.

Abdel-Hassan o’er the Desert journeyed with his caravan,– Many a richly laden camel, many a faithful serving-man.

And before the haughty master bowed alike the man and beast; For the power of Abdel-Hassan was the wonder of the East.

It was now the twelfth day’s journey, but its closing did not bring Abdel-Hassan and his servants to the long-expected spring.

From the ancient line of travel they had wandered far away, And at evening, faint and weary, on a waste of Desert lay.

Fainting men and famished camels stretched them round the master’s tent; For the water-skins were empty, and the dates were nearly spent.

All the night, as Abdel-Hassan on the Desert lay apart, Nothing broke the lifeless silence but the throbbing of his heart;

All the night he heard it beating, while his sleepless, anxious eyes Watched the shining constellations wheeling onward through the skies.

When the glowing orbs, receding, paled before the coming day, Abdel-Hassan called his servants and devoutly knelt to pray.

Then his words were few and solemn to the leader of his train:– “Thirty men and eighty camels, Haroun, in thy care remain.

“Keep the beasts and guard the treasure till the needed aid I bring. God is great! His name is mighty!–I, alone, will seek the spring.”

Mounted on his strongest camel, Abdel-Hassan rode away, While his faithful followers watched him passing, in the blaze of day,

Like a speck upon the Desert, like a moving human hand, Where the fiery skies were sweeping down to meet the burning sand.

Passed he then their far horizon, and beyond it rode alone;– They alone, with Arab patience, lay within its flaming zone.

Day by day the servants waited, but the master never came,– Day by day, in feebler accents, called on Allah’s holy name.

One by one they killed the camels, loathing still the proffered food, But in weakness or in frenzy slaked their burning thirst in blood.

On unheeded heaps of treasure rested each unconscious head; While, with pious care, the dying struggled to entomb the dead.

So they perished. Gaunt with famine, still did Haroun’s trusty hand For his latest dead companion scoop sepulture in the sand.

Then he died; and pious Nature, where he lay so gaunt and grim, Moved by her divine compassion, did the same kind thing for him.

Earth upon her burning bosom held him in his final rest, While the hot winds of the Desert piled the sand above his breast.–

Onward in his fiery travel Abdel-Hassan held his way, Yielding to the camel’s instinct, halting not, by night or day,

‘Till the faithful beast, exhausted in her fearful journey, fell, With her eye upon the palm-trees rising o’er the lonely well:

With a faint, convulsive struggle, and a feeble moan, she died, While her still surviving master lay unconscious by her side.

So he lay until the evening, when a passing caravan From the dead incumbering camel brought to life the dying man.

Slowly murmured Abdel-Hassan, as they bathed his fainting head, “All is lost, for all have perished!–they are numbered with the dead!

“I, who had such power and treasure but a single moon ago, Now my life and poor subsistence to a stranger’s bounty owe.

“God is great! His name is mighty! He is victor in the strife! Stripped of pride and power and substance, He hath left me faith and life.”–

Sixty years had Abdel-Hassan, since the stranger’s friendly hand Saved him from the burning Desert, lived and prospered in the land;

And his life of peaceful labor, in its pure and simple ways, For his loss fourfold returned him, and a mighty length of days.

Sixty years of faith and patience gave him wisdom’s mural crown; Sons and daughters brought him honor with his riches and renown.

Men beheld his reverend aspect, and revered his blameless name; And in peace he dwelt with strangers, in the fulness of his fame.

But the heart of Abdel-Hassan yearned, as yearns the heart of man, Still to die among his kindred, ending life where it began.

So he summoned all his household, and he gave the brief command,– “Go and gather all our substance;–we depart from out the land.”

Then they journeyed to the Desert with a great and numerous train, To his old nomadic instinct trusting life and wealth again.

It was now the sixth day’s journey, when they met the moving sand, On the great wind of the Desert, driving o’er that arid land;

And the air was red and fervid with the Simoom’s fiery breath;– None could see his nearest fellow in the stifling blast of death.

Blinded men from prostrate camels piled the stores to windward round, And within the barrier herded, on the hot, unstable ground.

Two whole days the great wind lasted, when the living of the train From the hot drifts dug the camels and resumed their way again.

But the lines of care grew deeper on the master’s swarthy cheek, While around the weakest fainted and the strongest waxed weak;

And the water-skins were empty, and a silent murmur ran From the faint, bewildered servants through the straggling caravan:–

“Let the land we left be blessed!–that to which we go, accurst!– From our pleasant wells of water came we here to die of thirst?”

But the master stilled the murmur with his steadfast, quiet eye:– “God is great,” he said, devoutly,–“when _He_ wills it, we shall die.”

As he spake, he swept the Desert with his vision clear and calm, And along the far horizon saw the green crest of the palm.

Man and beast, with weak steps quickened, hasted to the lonely well, And around it, faint and panting, in a grateful tumult fell.

Many days they stayed and rested, and amidst his fervent prayer Abdel-Hassan pondered deeply that strange bond which held him there.

Then there came an aged stranger, journeying with his caravan; And when each had each saluted, Abdel-Hassan thus began:–

“Knowest thou this well of water? lies it on the travelled ways?” And he answered,–“From the highway thou art distant many days.

“Where thou seest this well of water, where these thorns and palm-trees stand,
Once the Desert swept unbroken in a waste of burning sand;

“There was neither life nor herbage, not a drop of water lay, All along the arid valley where thou seest this well to-day.

“Sixty years have wrought their changes since a man of wealth and pride,
With his servants and his camels, here, amidst his riches, died.

“As we journeyed o’er the Desert, dead beneath the blazing sky, Here I saw them, beasts and masters, in a common burial lie;

“Thirty men and eighty camels did the shrouding sand infold; And we gathered up their treasure, spices, precious stones, and gold;

“Then we heaped the sand above them, and, beneath the burning sun, With a friendly care we finished what the winds had well begun.

“Still I hold that master’s treasure, and his record, and his name; Long I waited for his kindred, but no kindred ever came.

“Time, who beareth all things onward, hither bore our steps again, When around this spot were scattered whitened bones of beasts and men;

“And from out the heaving hillocks of the mingled sand and mould Lo! the little palms were springing, which to-day are great and old.

“From the shrubs we held the camels; for I felt that life of man, Breaking to new forms of being, through that tender herbage ran.

“In the graves of men and camels long the dates unheeded lay, Till their germs of life commanded larger life from that decay;

“And the falling dews, arrested, nourished every tender shoot, While beneath, the hidden moisture gathered to each wandering root.

“So they grew; and I have watched them, as we journeyed, year by year; And we digged this well beneath them, where thou seest it, fresh and clear.

“Thus from waste and loss and sorrow still are joy and beauty born, Like the fruitage of these palm-trees and the blossom of the thorn;

“Life from death, and good from evil!–from that buried caravan Springs the life to save the living, many a weak, despairing man.”

As he ended, Abdel-Hassan, quivering through his aged frame, Asked, in accents slow and broken, “Knowest thou that master’s name?”

“He was known as Abdel-Hassan, famed for wealth and power and pride; But the proud have often fallen, and, as he, the great have died!”

Then, upon the ground before them, prostrate Abdel-Hassan fell, With his aged hands extended, trembling, to the lonely well,–

And the sacred soil beneath him cast upon his hoary head,– Named the servants and the camels,–summoned Haroun from the dead,–

Clutched the unconscious palms around him, as if they were living men,– And before him, in their order, rose his buried train again.

Moved by pity, spake the stranger, bending o’er him in his grief:– “What affects the man of sorrow? Speak,–for speaking is relief.”

Then he answered, rising slowly to that aged stranger’s knee,– “Thou beholdest Abdel-Hassan! They were mine, and I am he!”

Wondering, stood they all around him, and a reverent silence kept, While, amidst them, Abdel-Hassan lifted up his voice and wept.

Joy and grief, and faith and triumph, mingled in his flowing tears; Refluent on his patient spirit rolled the tide of sixty years.

As the past and present blended, lo! his larger vision saw, In his own life’s compensation, Nature’s universal law.

“God is good, O reverend stranger! He hath taught me of His ways, By this great and crowning lesson, in the evening of my days.

“Keep the treasure,–I have plenty,–and am richer that I see Life ascend, through change and evil, to that perfect life to be,–

“In each woe a blessing folded, from all loss a greater gain, Joy and hope from fear and sorrow, rest and peace from toil and pain.

“God is great! His name is mighty! He is victor in the strife! For He bringeth Good from Evil, and from Death commandeth Life!”

ABOUT SPIRES.

When the children of Shem said one to another at Babel,–“Go to, let us build us a city and a tower whose top shall reach unto heaven,” they typified a remarkable trait of the human mind,–a desire for a tangible and material exponent of itself in its most heroic moods. In the earlier ages of the world, when humanity, as it were, was becoming conscious of itself and its godlike energies, it seems as if this desire could find no nobler expression than in towers. The same spirit of enterprise which in our own day stretches forth inquiring hands into unexplored realms of physical and intellectual being, and acknowledges in the spoils of such search its noblest and proudest attainments, in more primeval times appears to have been content with the actual and visible invasion of high building into that sky which to them was the great type of the unknown and mysterious.

The birth of these structures was not of the practical necessities of life, but of that fond desire of the soul which has ever haunted mankind with intimations of immortality. Towers thus became the boldest imaginable symbols of energy and power. And when, in the course of time, they became exigencies of society, and familiarized by the idea of usefulness, even then they could not but be recognized as expressions of the more heroic elements of human nature.

Founded in superabundant massiveness, and built in prodigality of strength, the tower seems to defy the elements and to outlive tradition. Old age restores it to more than its primeval significance; and when humbler erections have passed away and crumbled in ruins, it appears once more to rise above the customary uses of men, and to become a companion for tempests and clouds. Dismantled, deserted, and bearing,

“Inscribed upon its visionary sides, This history of many a winter’s storm,
And obscure record of the path of fire,”

Nature lays claim to it, and with moss and ivy and eld, with weeds and flowers, she takes it to her bosom.

“Dying insensibly away
From human thoughts and purposes,”

we at length associate it with no achievements of man, and its masonry becomes venerable to us, as shaped by mysterious beings,–Ghouls or Titans,–no fellow-workers of ours.

Let us for a while forget the tedious realisms around us, and eat of the dreamy Lotos. Let us look eastward over the wide waters, and behold, along the horizon, the “dim rich cities” printing themselves against the morning. Let us listen to their mellow chimes that come faintly to us, and bless those deep-toned utterances so full of the tenderness of ancient days and the melody of gray traditions. Let us bless them; for, like lyres of Amphion, at their sound arose the bell-bearing tower, which made cities beautiful and their people happy. O St. Chrysostom! there were other golden mouths than thine that preached by the Bosphorus, and their pulpits were the airy chambers of the first Christian towers. Where the muezzin every hour from the lofty minaret now calls the faithful Mahometan to prayer, were first heard those matin and vesper chimes which since then throughout Catholic Europe have accompanied the rising and the setting of the sun. Thus the Christian tower immediately becomes associated with the tenderest and most poetical ideas of monastic and pastoral religion. It seemed emulous from the beginning to be the first to catch the beams of morning, and, like the statue of Memnon, to respond to the golden touch by sounds of music. Then the fervid heart of Italy took fire, and from her bosom uprose over all her cities the beautiful campanile. Still and solemn it stood on the plains of Lombardy, like a sentinel on the outskirts of our faith, whispering to the vast of space that all was well. Over the lagunes of Venice the weary toil of two centuries piled up the tower of St. Mark. Ravenna, with barbaric pride, built her round-cinctured towers to the glory of the Exarchate. Rome followed with her square campaniles, whose arcaded chambers looked down on a hundred cloisters. Then there were La Ghirlandina at Modena, Il Torazzo at Cremona, Torre della Mangia at Siena, the Garisenda at Bologna, the Leaning Tower at Pisa. Everywhere they sought the skies with emulous heights, and ere long they arose in such number as to give a distinctive aspect to the Christian city, and to warn the traveller from afar that he approached walls within which religion was a pride and a power. Who has not admired the Giotto Campanile, called “the Beautiful,” at Florence? And who has not wondered at the splendor of her citizens, whose command was, “to construct an edifice whose magnificence should be beyond the conception even of the _cognoscenti_, and whose height and quality of workmanship should surpass all that has been built in any style, in Greece or Rome, even at the most florid period of their power!”

But the spiritualization and glory of the tower are yet wanting. There is a very human expression about it, as it stands in the midst of those glimmering lands, with its haughty summit commanding far-distant plains,–

“Far as the wild swan wings, to where the sky Dips down to sea and sands,”–

a very human expression of scornful pride and imperious dominion. We shall see how it outgrew its mere humanities and became an expression of immortal aspirations, a symbol of our relationship with ethereal existences.

These Italian campaniles had either flat summits, or were crowned with a low, unimportant roof. But as they approached the North of Lombardy, and found their way into Germany, France, and Britain, these roofs, through the necessities of climate, became steeper and sharper. Many of the little gray mountain-chapels in the South of Switzerland still lift up these pointed towers amid the hamlets of the valley, having gathered in the hardy flocks at eventide for seven or eight centuries. The same early modifications may yet be seen on the banks of the Rhine, where the conical, stork-haunted caps of the round towers are so picturesquely associated with that legendary scenery. Those dear, time-worn, rugged, red-tiled roofs, with their peaks coming in just where they are needed,–what could the artist do without them? Then the same necessities made the early French and Norman builders push up into the air those gaunt, quaint old camelbacks, with spindles or pinnacles astride. You cannot but love them for their strangeness and the surprise they make against the quiet sky. In Britain, too, you might have beheld this tendency, where the lordly curfew quenched the lights in castle and cot from beneath a very extinguisher of a roof. Now, as, in the natural growth of the human mind, the heart became more and more impregnated with the beauty of holiness, and the prayers of men ascended with somewhat of purer aspiration to heaven, so did they build their tower-roofs higher and higher into the air, till at length the spire was born. In one of those quaint antique towers of Normandy, Coutances, it was first fully developed; and it is curious to see how in this instance its roof-origin was still remembered: for it has tall, gabled garret-windows rising from its base, connected by rude cross-bars to the slope of the spire; and it has a kind of scaly mail, Ruskin says, which is nothing more than the copying in stone of the common wooden shingles of the house-roof. Now the proud Italian architects, disdainful though they were of the arts of the rude Northern builders, could not but admit the expressiveness of the pointed roof; so they placed a form of it on some of their campaniles, as on those of Venice and Cremona, in both these instances making it a third of the whole height. But the spire, though an effective, was as yet an unambitious structure,–scarcely more than an exaltation or an apotheosis of the roof. For a long time it continued to be merely a supplementary addition in wood to the solid masonry of the tower, and in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries was often added to substructures of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth.

Surely it is very dull in us, out of our present enlightenment, to continue to distinguish the mediaeval times as the _Dark_ Ages, as if they were glimmering and ghostly, and men groped about in them blindly, living in a sort of dusky romance of feudality. Did you ever study De la Roche’s incarnation of Mediaeval Art in his Hemicycle,–that long saintly robe with its still and serious folds, that fair dreamy face, those upturned eyes, “the homes of silent prayer,” the contemplative repose? It is truly an exquisite idealization; yet there is something wanting. I believe the piety of those days was rather a passion than a sentiment. Their “beauty of holiness” was rather an active emotional impulse than a passive spiritualization, and was incomplete without a material expression, a tangible demonstration of itself. Like the fabled Narcissus, it yearned for its own image. Hence the joy and luxury of the ecclesiastical buildings of that period. They were the very blossoming of the tree of knowledge. This was, indeed, an unenlightened, perhaps a superstitious principle of worship; but it was enthusiastic, self-sacrificing, and chivalrous. It, indeed, sent the stylite to his pillar, the hermit to the wilderness, the ascetic to the scourge and hair-cloth shirt; but it also led the warrior to the Holy Land, the beggar to the castle-hearth, and the workman to the building of the House of God. It is no wonder that a religion born thus in childlike fervor, and seeking expression in outward signs, built upward. It is no wonder that out of the prosaic elements of the roof it made the spiritual essence of the spire. If we look through the whole range of architectural forms in classic or mediaeval times, we shall find no one so indicative of any human emotion as this simple outline is of the highest of all emotions,–prayer. It is a significant fact, that the sentiment of aspiration is nowhere hinted at in Classic Art, and we look in vain for it in all pagan architectures. This is not surprising. The worshippers who built in those schools demonstrated there all the noblest ideas they were capable of,–intellectual beauty, dignity, power, truth, chastity, courage, and all the other virtues cherished in their theologies; but their personal relations with any higher sphere of existence, vague and undefined as they were, called for no expression in their temples, and obtained none.

The pyramidal form has ever possessed peculiar fascinations for men, and, from its simplicity, grandeur, and power, has been used in all ages with innumerable modifications in those structures whose object was to impress and overawe,–as in the pyramids of Egypt, the temples of India and Mexico, and in all the earliest funereal monuments. It involved a rude symbolism, which recommended itself to the barbarous childhood of nations. But it was not until the pyramid was sharpened and spiritualized into the spire that it gained its completest triumph over the secret emotions of men. The Egyptians made the nearest approach to it in the obelisk. That mysterious people felt very keenly the suggestiveness of the pyramidal form, and refined the language of its sentiment into some very beautiful expressions. Yet between the mausoleums of Gizeh and the hieroglyphic shafts of Luxor and Karnac there existed a modification, the intensity of whose meaning they were not prepared to understand. Neither their civilization nor their religion required such an exponent; so they exhausted themselves with their mountainous bulks of stone and their pictured monoliths.

We know not how the first view of a Christian spire would affect the mind of an alien; but so far as our own experiences are concerned, though perhaps familiar only with the lowliest and most unpretending of its kind, we are conscious that it deeply impressed even the “unsunned temper” of our childhood. The wisest among us may not be able to define precisely these impressions, or trace to their source the admiration and satisfaction it occasions, yet all are ready to acknowledge its beautiful fitness to adorn and glorify the Christian temple. But to the thoughtful mind how suggestive it is of pleasant imagery! It is “the silent finger” that points to heaven; it is an upward aspiration of the soul; a prayer from the depths of a troubled heart; a _suspirium de profundis;_ a hymn of thanksgiving; a pure life, throwing of the worldly and approaching the ethereal; a finite mind searching, till lost in the vastness of the unknown and unapproachable; a beautiful attempt; a voice of praise sent up from the earth, till, like the soaring lark, it “becomes a sightless song.” Indeed, our unbidden thoughts, that wild-ivy of the mind, are trained upward by the spire, till it is hung round with the tenderest associations and recollections of all that is sweet and softening in our natures. Thus, when the painter has represented on his canvas some wild phase of scenery, where the gadding vine, the tangled underwood, the troubled brook, the black, frowning rock, the untamed savage growth of the forest,

“Old plash of rains and refuse patched with moss,”

impress us with awe, and a sad, homeless feeling, as if we were lost children, how eloquent is that last touch of his pencil that shows us a simple spire peeping over the tree-tops! How it comforts us! How it brings us home again, and bestows an air

“Of sweet civility on rustic wilds”!

But even if we were not inclined to be sentimental on the subject, even if base utilities had crowded out from our hearts the blessed capacity of shedding rosy light on things about us, the coldest esteem could not but ripen into affection, when we reflected that the spire never adorned the shrine of a pagan god, never glorified the mosque of a false prophet, never, in purity, arose from any unconsecrated ground; but when, at last, the Church of Christ felt the “beauty of holiness,” then it developed out of that beauty and pointed the way to God. It exhaled from the growing perfection of the Church, as fragrance from an opening flower. It is, therefore, peculiarly holy. It is a monitor of especial grace. “It marshals us the way that we are going,” like the visionary dagger of Macbeth; but the knell that sounds beneath it summons only to heaven.

Practically, it is utterly useless; and this is its honor and its unspeakable dignity. We cannot even climb it, as we could a tower; for it is nearly as unapproachable as the Oracle of God, save to the innocent birds, who love to flock and wheel about it in the sunshine, and build their nests in its “coignes of vantage,” or, in the night-time, to the troops of stars which touch it in their journey through the skies. It is as beautifully idle as the lilies of the field; and yet its expressiveness touches us so nearly, the propriety of its sentiment is so striking, that, when the great test question of this living age is applied to it, and we are asked, What is its use? what is it good for? the heart is shocked at the impiety of the question, and the feelings revolt, as against an insult. Upon the arches of Canterbury Minster is carved,

NON * NOBIS * DOMINE * NON * NOBIS * SED * NOMINI * TVO * DA * GLORIAM *

Nothing can be simpler than the composition of the pure spire. The aesthetics of its development and growth are characteristically natural and apparent. They are like the history of a flower from bud to bloom under a warm sun. Let us become botanists of Art for a while, and analyze those flowers of worship, as they opened “in that first garden of their simpleness.”

Considering the growth of the spire from the tower-roof, it might naturally be supposed that the earliest forms would be square or round, in plan. But no sooner had the roof passed into this new sphere of existence, than the fine intelligence of the builders perceived that it needed refinement. They saw that in a square spire there was so coarse a distinction between the tapering mass of light and the tapering mass of shadow, that the delicacy and lightness necessary to express the sentiment they desired to convey did not exist in the new feature;–in a round spire, on the other hand, they found that this distinction of light and shade was too little marked; it was vapid and effeminate, and quite without that delicious crispiness of effect which they at once obtained by cutting off the corners of the square spire, and reducing it to an octagon. With very rare exceptions, as in the southwest spire of Chartres Cathedral, this form was always used. Now it will be seen that a difficulty arises in the beginning, how to unite the octagon of the spire with the square of the tower. There are four triangular spaces at the summit of the tower left uncovered by the superstructure; and how best to treat these, simple as the task may seem, constitutes what may be called the touchstone of architectural genius in spire-building. There are several general ways of effecting this, each of them subject to such modifications, in individual instances, as to give them an ever-varying character.

Perhaps the earliest method was simply to occupy those triangular spaces with pyramidal masses of masonry, sloping back against the adjacent faces of the tower,–an expedient which Nature herself might have suggested in the first snow-storm. Then they boldly cut the Gordian knot by shaving off the corners of the tower at the top, thus creating there an octagonal platform, to which the spire would exactly correspond. Still oftener they chamfered the spire upwards from the corners of the tower: in other words, they placed, as it were, a square spire on their tower, occupying the whole of its summit, and then obtained the necessary octangularity by shaving off the angles of the spire from the apex to a certain point near the base, where the cutting was continued obliquely to the corners of the tower. The latest method was to build pinnacles on the triangular territory. In such cases the spire usually stood wholly within the outer boundaries, and parapets assisted to conceal the first springing of the spire.

The first of these methods is usually considered the most perfect and beautiful, on account of its simplicity and candor. This is called the broach; and it is the only form thus far spoken of wherein the tapering surfaces rise directly from the tower-cornice, without mutilating the tower or violating the pure outlines of the spire. The heavenward aspiration, as it were, ascends without effort from the solidity of the tower. It seems to typify a certain fitness and adaptability to heavenly things even in the gross and earthly nature of man. One cannot fail to admire its unaffected dignity, its harmonious balance, its graceful proportions.

It would be impossible within the limits of this article to give any idea of the wonderful diversity of treatment these simple generic forms received at the hands of the early builders. The changes of combination, proportion, and ornamentation were endless. For the mediaeval spirit was eminently earnest in its labor, and would not be content with copying an old shape merely because it was a good shape. It would not be satisfied with the cold repetition of a written litany of architectural forms; but its ardent piety, its thoughtful zeal, the _life_ of its love, demanded an ever-varying expression in these visible prayers. Emerson himself might find nought to censure there, in the way of undue conformities and consistencies. Its language was written with the infinite alphabet of Nature.

We are speaking now especially of England; and we, her children, may well be proud that these divine enthusiasms of antiquity, which we thought so quaint, so rare, so far away from us, nowhere else found fairer demonstrations. The English spires bear especial witness to the zeal and aspiration of their builders. They belted them with bands of ornament, cut at first in imitation of tiles, and afterwards beautifully panelled with foliations. Moulded ribs began to run up the angles of the spires, and, when they met at the summit, would exultingly curl themselves together in the most precious cruciforms. Quaint spire-lights began to appear. Sometimes curious dormers would project from alternate sides; and the very ribs, as if, in this spring-time of Art, they felt, quickening along their lengths, the mysterious movements of a new life, sprouted out here and there with knots of leafage, timidly at first, and then with all the wealth and profusion of the harvest. The same impulse wreathed the crowning cross with a thousand midsummer fancies, till the circle of Eternity, or the triangle of Trinity, which often mingled with its arms, scarcely knew itself. The pinnacles, too, blossomed into crockets and bud-like finials, and began to gather more thickly about the roots of the spire, and from them often leaped flying-buttresses against it. During this time the spire itself was growing more and more acute, its lines becoming more and more eloquent. After the fourteenth century, the tower began to be crowned with intricate panelled tracery of parapets and battlements, from behind which the spire, an entirely separate structure, shot up into the sky. In this, the period of the perpendicular style, pinnacles, purfled to the last degree, crowded about the base of the spire, reminding one of the admiring throng gathered about the base of some old picture of the Ascension. But there is another English form which perhaps conveys this sentiment even more impressively: We refer to that whose prototype exists in the steeple of the Church of St. Nicholas at Newcastle-upon-Tyne. This, however, has four turrets, one on each angle, from which, with great lightness, leap towards each other four grand flying-buttresses, which join hands over an empty void and hold in the air a lantern and spirolet of great elegance. This is a very bold piece of construction. It has been imitated at St. Giles’s, Edinburgh, at Linlithgow, in the college tower of Aberdeen, and it is especially made known to the world by Sir Christopher Wren’s famous use of it in the steeple of St. Dunstan’s-in-the-East, London.

The most famous spires of England and Normandy are St. Peter’s at Caen, a very early specimen, St. Michael’s at Coventry, Louth, that of the parochial church of Boston in Lincolnshire, that of Chichester Cathedral, the three that rise from the famous Lichfield Cathedral, and finally and especially the magnificent spire over the cross of Salisbury. In the judgment of most English connoisseurs, this is the finest in the world. It was probably erected during the reign of Edward III., a very florid period for architecture. It is the highest in England, its summit rising four hundred and four feet from the pavement of the church beneath. It is one of the earliest erected in stone, and is remarkable for skilful construction, the masonry in no part being more than seven inches thick. This spire is belted with three broad bands of panelled tracery, and there are eight pinnacles at its base, two on each corner of the tower. The ribs are fretted throughout the whole height with elegant crockets, thus imparting to the sky-line an appearance similar to the gusty spray on the borders of a rain-cloud. An admirer has said of it, “It seems as though it had drawn down the very angels to work over its grand and feeling simplicity the gems and embroidery of Paradise itself!” England once boasted the loftiest spire in the world, that of old St. Paul’s, London, whose summit, five hundred and twenty feet from the ground, seemed to sail among the highest clouds; but the great fire of 1666 destroyed it, and Sir Christopher’s stately metropolitan dome now rises in its place.

One could believe in the “merrie” days of Old England, were her abundant spires their only evidence. The ardent zeal that kindled so many thousand answering beacons throughout the length and breadth of the land is the best proof of that concord of souls which is true happiness. We know that the decision of the Council of Clermont about the Crusades was believed to have been instantly known through Christendom, and that the great cry, _God willeth it!_ which shook the council-roof, was echoed from hill to hill, and at once struck awe and astonishment to the hearts of remotest lands. So in the birthplaces of our Pilgrim fathers, over these cherished spots,

“Where the kneeling hamlets drained
The chalice of the grapes of God,”

arose the “star y-pointing” spire, like a voice of adoration; and then another would be raised in unison in some neighboring village, where they could see and communicate with each other in their silent language; and yet another close by among the hills; and presently, in full view from its summit, twenty more, perhaps,–till the good tidings were known through the whole country, and from hamlet to hamlet, over the streams and tree-tops, was thus echoed the great _Te Deum_ of the land. For it was said among the people, in that antique spirit of worship, as Milton exhorted the birds in his Hymn of Thanksgiving,–

“Join voices, all ye living souls! ye _spires_, That singing up to heaven’s gate ascend, Bear on your wings and in your notes His praise!”

It is a beautiful proof of the spirit of sacrifice which actuated the Masonic builder of the Middle Ages, that his fairest and most precious works were not confined to the great metropolitan churches and cathedrals, where they could be seen of men, but were frequently found in quiet and secluded villages, nestled among pastoral solitudes, far away from the gaze and admiration of the world. Though the spire of Salisbury was, perhaps, an epic in Masonic poetry, yet in humble hamlets of England, beyond her most distant hills, and amid many an unnamed “sunny spot of greenery,” were idyls sung no less exquisite than this. Many a village-spire, of conception no less beautiful, arose above the tree-tops among the most untrodden ways. All day long its shadow lingers in the quiet churchyard, and points among the humble graves, as if, over this dial of human life, it loved to preach silent homilies on “the passing away,” even to the simplest poor. It must be inexpressibly touching to meet with these beautiful forms in the lonely wilderness, where the ivy alone, as it throws its loving arms around them, appears to recognize their grace and all their tender significance. It is like the chance discovery of a good deed done in the darkness, or like a pure life spent in the sweet and serious retirement of a little hamlet, pointing the way to heaven for its scanty flock of cottagers.

It was the custom in those days, during the celebration of Mass, at the moment when the Host was raised, to ring a peculiar bell in the tower, in order that those not gathered beneath the consecrated roof might be made aware far and wide of the awful ceremony, and be reminded to offer up their devotion in unison. And we remember what Izaak Walton said of quaint George Herbert,–how “some of the meaner sort of his parish did so love and reverence Mr. Herbert, that they would let their plough rest when his saints’-bell rung to prayer, that they might also offer their devotion to God with him, and would then return back contented to their plough.” Now it seems to us that the spire is a perpetual elevation of the Host, a never-ending lifting-up of the Symbol of Redemption, a consecrating presence to field and cottage, hillside and highway, ever ready to bless the accidental glance of wayfarer or laborer, and to make in the desert of his daily life a momentary oasis of sweet and hallowed thought. Its peaceful influence extends over the whole landscape and pierces to its remotest corners.

“A gentler life spreads round the holy spires; Where’er they rise, the sylvan waste retires, And aery harvests crown the fertile lea.”

It may be thought that St. Peter’s cock, which so often answers the sunbeams from the spindly spire, and kindles and glitters there like a star, is rather empty of emblematic significance and soul-language. But what saith old Bishop Durandus?–“The cock at the summit of the church is a type of the preacher. For the cock, ever watchful, even in the depth of night, giveth notice how the hours pass, waketh the sleepers, predicteth the approach of day,–but first exciteth himself to crow by striking his sides with his wings. There is a mystery conveyed in each of these particulars: the night is the world; the sleepers are the children of this world, who are asleep in their sins; the cock is the preacher who preacheth boldly, and exciteth the sleepers to cast away the works of darkness, exclaiming, Woe to them that sleep! Awake, thou that sleepest! and then foretell the approach of day, when they speak of the Day of Judgment and the glory that shall be revealed, and, like prudent messengers, before they teach others, arouse themselves from the sleep of sin by mortifying their bodies; and as the weather-cock faces the wind, they turn themselves boldly to meet the rebellious by threats and arguments.”

But it was on the Continent, especially in France, the Low Countries, and Germany, that the Gothic flower opened in fullest perfection; and it is here that we find the loftiest and most luxurious spire-forms. They were always the last part of the church completed, the finishing-touch, the last that was needed to perfection. The progress of the building of a cathedral thus embodied a beautiful symbolism. In most cases, the choir, or east end, the holiest part of the church, was the first erected, in order to sanctify and protect the high altar; and then, as the treasures of the church flowed in, after the expiration of years or centuries, the builders, tutored by a legendary science, and harmonized by a wonderful feeling of brotherhood, in the same spirit, perfected the designs of their predecessors, by leading out westward the long naves and attendant aisles, completing northward and southward the transepts, adding a chapel here and a porch there, glorifying the western front with the touches of divine genius; and when at last every niche was occupied with its statue of angel, saint, or pious benefactor, and the holy choir, with its apsis, had been re-adorned with the accumulated art of centuries, and glowed with the iris-light from painted windows,–when the mural monuments of bishops, warriors, and kings had thickened beneath the consecrated roof, and the whole structure had been hallowed by the prayers and chantings of generations,–then, at last, over the ancient tower arose the lofty spire; as if an angelic messenger had spread his wings at its base and mounted upward to heaven, shouting out the glad tidings of the completion of the House of God, and, as he arose, the voice grew fainter and fainter, till at length it melted into the sky!

The finest spires of Europe were erected as late as the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, upon towers prepared for their reception, usually, in much earlier times. This confidence of the old builders in the final completion of their structures is remarkable. They drew without stint on the piety of after ages,–a resource which has not unfrequently proved too feeble to realize their generous expectations. There are few cities in Europe which do not bear sad marks of this misplaced confidence. This is especially witnessed in the unfinished steeples. And, indeed, when we find that not only one, but two, three, four, or even five spires were sometimes required to flame upward from the same building, as in Caen Cathedral, we do not wonder that the kindling spark is often wanting. It would seem as if another fire must come down from heaven, as of old it did upon the first offering of Moses and Aaron, to inflame these censers, rich in frankincense and naphtha.

Now let us see what were the distinguishing attributes of the Continental spires. We know not why it was, but in the gray old towns of Belgium and the Low Countries there existed such exuberance of imagination, such an unbounded luxuriousness of conception, as created more images of Gothic quaintness and intricacy than elsewhere can be seen. If any architecture ever expressed the average of human thought, that of these towns is especially eloquent in its indications that their inhabitants were very happy and contented. Look at a print of any old Belgian town or street, and you will at once see our meaning. What a joyous upspringing of pinnacles and pointed roofs and spires! of no more earthly use, indeed, than so much pleasant laughter. There is no tower without its spire, no turret or gable without its pinnacle, no oriel without its pointed roof, no dormer without some such playful leaping up into the air. Every salient point attacks the sky with its long iron spindle, wrought with strange device and bearing a hospitable cup where the bird makes his nest; and every spindle sings and shrieks with a shifting vane,–so that the wind never sweeps idly over a Belgian town. This innocent and happy people did not frown through the ages from grim battlements, and awe posterity with stern and massive walls. But they loved old childlike associations and fireside tales. They loved to build curious fountains in commemoration of pleasant legends. They loved, too, the huge, delicious-toned bells of their minster-towers, and the sweet changes of melodious, never-ceasing chimes. They carved their Lares and Penates on their house-fronts very curiously, with sun-dials and hatchments, sacred texts and legends of hospitality. The narrow streets of Ghent, Louvain, Liege, Mechlin, Antwerp, Ypres, Bruges are thus full of household memories and saintly traditions. So it is not strange that a people whose daily hours were counted out with the music of belfries were fond of fretting their towers with workmanship so precious and delicate that it has been called “the petrifaction of music.”

But before we proceed to tell in how florid a manner the Low Countries interpreted the simpler forms of spires, we shall describe generically in what manner not only they, but all the other European kingdoms, were indebted to the old Rhineland towns for some of these forms. When the bell-tower, in about the seventh or eighth century, began to be used in Germany, it at once received certain very important modifications on the earlier Italian campanile. The upper terminations of these latter were horizontal, on account of their flat roofs. Now in more northern climates, where the snow falls, these flat roofs would be unsafe and inconvenient. So we find that the first church-towers that arose in such Rhenish places as Oberwesel, Gelnhausen, Bacharach, Coblentz, Cologne, Bingen, “sweet Bingen on the Rhine,” no longer ended in these horizontal lines, but arose in pointed shapes. Indeed, the Germans, who were great rivals of the Italians in those days, not only in matters pertaining to architecture, but to literature also, in the same independent spirit which induced them alone, of all civilized peoples, to retain through all time the cramped, angular letters of monkish transcribers, in preference to the fair and square Roman forms, took particular pride in avoiding horizontal lines entirely at the tops of their towers, as they did at the tops of their letters. Wherever they so occur, they are insignificant,–rather ornamental than constructive. Not so with the English; they kept the square tops to their towers, and contented themselves with the pointed superstructure. Let us see how Teutonic stubbornness arranged the matter. Each separate face of their towers, whether these towers were square or octangular, ended above in a gable; and from these gables, in various ways, arose the octangular pointed roof or spire. This circumstance, more than any other, tended to give a peculiar character to German Gothic. The simplest type of the gabled spire was magnificently used in the spire of St. Peter’s at Hamburg. This was the finest in North Germany; it was four hundred and sixteen feet high, and, if still standing, would be the third in height in the world. But it was destroyed by the great fire of 1842. Many a traveller can bear witness to the sweet melody of the chimes that used to sound beneath it every half-hour.

In later times, between the Germans and the French, was invented the _lantern_,–a feature so often and so superbly used, not only on the Continent, but more lately in England, that we must needs glance at it. This consisted in a tall, perpendicular, octangular structure, placed upon the tower, quite light and open, and pierced with long windows. Here they used to swing the bells, and the place was called the lantern or _louvre_; thence the octangular spire arose easily and naturally. Now, notwithstanding this device, those troublesome triangular spaces still remained unoccupied at the top of the square tower. The manner in which this difficulty was remedied was exceedingly ingenious and beautiful. It was by building on them very delicate pinnacles or turrets, peopled, perhaps, as at Freiburg, with a silent and serene concourse of saints in rich niches, or inclosing, as at Strasburg, spiral open-work stairs. These structures accompanied the tall lantern through its whole height; thus rendering the entire group a memory, as it were, of the square tower below, while, at the same time, it beautifully foreshadowed the octangular character of the sky-seeking spire above,–a significant symbolism.

Now, when the Belgians and their neighbors received the spire thus from the fatherland, they at once began to express in it the joy of their worship by all the embroidery and tender imagery and grotesque conceits it was capable of receiving. They varied as many changes on it as they did on their bells. They concealed the first springing of their spires behind clustering pinnacles, flying-buttresses, canopied niches with gigantic statues, galleries with battlements and parapets pierced and mantled in lacework of flamboyant tracery, pointed gables alive with crockets and finials, and long, quaint dormers,–all with a bewildering intricacy of enrichment. And they inherited from the Germans a love for the gargoyle, which haunted the springing of the spire at the corners with visions of very hideous _diablerie_. It may well be believed that these florid builders did not suffer the spire to arise serious and serene from the midst of this delicious tangle of architecture. They tricked it out with all the frostwork of Gothic genius. Not only did they use in its decoration spire-lights, crockets, ribs and cinctures, bands of gablets, and masses of reticulated relief, but, with wonderful skill, they pierced each face from base to apex in foliated patterns of great richness, so that the whole spire became a web of delicate open-work, through which the light was sprinkled in beautiful shapes, varying with every movement of the beholder. Their plainer spires of wood they were fond of covering with glazed tiles of various tints arranged in quaint taste. And they would vary the outline by making it curve inward, giving a fine sweep thus from the base to an apex of great slenderness. Sometimes they would give it, with exaggerated refinement, the _entasis_ of the Greek column. There are instances of this last treatment both in France and England.

But it was not only in exuberance of enrichment and quaintness of form that these enthusiastic workmen uttered their inspirations. They built their spires to a most amazing height. Indeed, the loftiest steeples in the world arose in level tracts of country, where they could be seen at immense distances, as not only in Belgium and thereabout, but on the flat margins of the upper and lower Rhine, as at Strasburg and Cologne. In these countries, and about the North of France, there was a generous rivalry as to which city should lift up highest the cross of God. But as soon as the sacred passion for spire-building was corrupted by this new element of human emulation, some strange things happened. The people of Beauvais, for instance, desiring to beat the people of Amiens, set to work, we are told, to build a tower on their cathedral as high as they possibly could. The same thing had been done once before on the plains of Shinar. One foresees the result, of course; “it fell, for it was founded upon the sand, and great was the fall thereof.” And so with the good people of Louvain. They built three spires to their cathedral, of which the central one reached the unparalleled height of five hundred and thirty-three feet, according to Hope, and the side-towers four hundred and thirty feet. This tremendous group, however, fell, or, threatening destruction, was taken down, in 1604. We remember what the Wanderer said so finely in the “Excursion”:–

“We must needs confess
That ’tis a thing impossible to frame Conceptions equal to the soul’s desire; And the most difficult of tasks _to keep_ Heights which the soul is competent to gain.”

But we find that ecclesiastical edifices were not the only ones which were adorned with this high building; for town-halls were not infrequently distinguished by immensely lofty spires, as at Brussels. It is curious to see, however, how easily the less exalted impulses which erected them may be discovered. They do not _soar_, they _climb_ up panting into the sky, like the famous passage up through Chaos, in Milton, “with difficulty and labor hard.” They have not the light, airy gliding upward of the religious spire, whose feeling George Herbert had in his mind, when he sang of prayer:–

“Of what an easy, quick accesse,
My blessed Lord, art thou! how suddenly May our requests thine eare invade!”

Not so; but it is all human rivalry, a succession of diminishing towers, steps piled one above another, where the mind every now and then may stop to breathe, and then fight its way onward again;–not an Ascension, like that from Bethany; rather the toil of a very human, though very laudable ambition.

Unfinished spires were in Europe very common legacies from generation to generation. Descendants were called upon to embody the great conceptions of their forefathers. But the ancestral spirit too often failed in the land, the wing of aspiration was broken, the crane rotted in its place, the great conceptions were forgotten, or lived only as vague and dreamy inheritances; and the half-completed spires stood like Sphinxes, and none knew their riddles! They are very melancholy memorials. Like the broken columns over the graves of the departed, fallen short of their natural uses, they seem only the funeral monuments of a race that is dead. The empty air is stilled over them in expectation, and the imagination makes vain pictures, and fills out their crescent of splendid purposes. They have been called “broken promises to God.” Too often, perhaps, they were rather monuments of the feebleness of those who would scale heaven with anything but adoration upon their lips. There were Ulm, indeed, and Cologne, and Mechlin, as artistic intentions, eminently grand and beautiful; and in the early part of the sixteenth century Belgium was famous for designs of open-work spires, which, if erected, would have surpassed in height and richness all hitherto existing. But it is worthy of note that at this period the purity of the Church had become so sullied with priestcraft and the plenitude of Papal power, that it no longer possessed within its violated bosom those sacred impulses of piety which whilom sent up the simple spire, like a pure messenger, to whisper the aspirations of men to the stars. “Gay religions, full of pomp and gold,” could neither feel nor utter the grave tenderness of the early inspirations. And so, when the German monk affixed his ninety-five theses to the door of Wittenberg Church, the spire had ceased to be an utterance of prayerful aspiration. It had lost its peculiar significance as an involuntary expression of worship, and had become liable to all the accidents and contingencies that attend the efforts of a merely human ambition. The whole story is an architectural version of the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican who went down to the temple to pray.

Of the finished spires, the loftiest in the world are, first, that of Strasburg Minster, 474 feet; second, that of St. Stephens at Vienna, 469 feet; third, that of Notre Dame at Antwerp, 466 feet; then that of Salisbury, 404 feet; Freiburg in the Breisgau, 380-1/2 feet; and then follow the distinguished heights of Landshut, Utrecht, Rouen, Chartres, Brugrels, Soissons, and others. The highest spire in our own country is that of Trinity Church, New York, 284 feet. We do not “sweep the cobwebs from the sky” so effectually as when men built according to the scale of spiritual exaltation rather than that of practical feet and inches,–after the stature of the soul, rather than that of the man.

The architects of the revival of classic architecture, with the learned language of the five orders, with pediments and attics, consoles and urns, labored to express the childlike sentiment of the spire. But even the great Sir Christopher Wren, with his sixty steeple-towers, and all his followers to this day, have not succeeded in a translation so unnatural. Spirituality and the artless grace of inspiration are wanting to the spires of the Renaissance, and so they struggle up painfully into the sky. And it is very rare to find those who have gone back even to Gothic models building a spire which touches our affections, or claims affinity with any of our nobler emotions; so sensitive is this unique structure to the approach of any element foreign to the early conditions of its existence.

As for the great Strasburg example, that _Jungfrau_ of all spires, German traditions have very properly babbled many strange stories about the erection of it. These constitute an episode so characteristic in the history of spire-building, that this essay would be incomplete, were they not briefly told here.

In the legendary days of yore, nothing was more common than to meet that personage known as the Devil walking up and down the earth, in innocent guise, but ripe for all sorts of mischief, especially where the people were building up mighty monuments to the glory of the good God. Very naturally, the sacred spire was a special object of his aversion; and, for some reason or other, that of Strasburg was honored with peculiar marks of his hatred. Two ancient churches, which stood on the site of the present minster, had been successively destroyed by fire; and although, in the one case, this had been kindled by the torch of an invading army, and in the other by a thunderbolt, yet the infernal agency, in both cases, nobody ever thought of doubting. So it was the effort of Bishop Werner to combat these evil influences; and he accordingly inflamed the pride and indignation of the people to such a degree, that throughout the land all concerted to defeat the wicked designs of the Adversary. In two centuries and a half the whole cathedral was completed, save the tower, the corner-stone of which was forthwith laid with great pomp by Bishop Conrad of Lichtenberg, on the 25th of May, 1277. Doubtless the Arch-Fiend laid many cunning schemes to entrap the illustrious architect, Erwin of Steinbach; but, unlike his brother in the craft at Cologne, he came out unscathed; so we must believe that throughout the whole work he was actuated by the most unselfish spirit of devotion, infernal machinations to the contrary notwithstanding. Now it must be confessed that the Enemy had a hard time of it, since we read that the good Bishop Conrad fought against him with all the powers of the Church, and granted absolution for all sins, past, present, and future, for forty thousand years, to whatever person should contribute to the building of the spire by money, material, or labor. Owing to the scarcity of parchment, these grants of absolution were made out on asses’ skins; and it will be seen, that, in the great struggle, these instruments retained in a very eminent degree that quality of stubborn resistance which had cost them in their original state many a beating from the driver’s staff. The greatest enthusiasm was kindled among rich and poor; year after year, thousands of pilgrims flocked hither from all Germany to offer their aid, without reward or recompense, to the building of the tower; and out of the farthest boundaries, even from Austria, came wagons loaded with building-materials, the gratuitous offerings of the pious. Rich legacies were left to the work, and many a cloister devoted a fourth part of its yearly revenues to the same object So much for asses’ skins!

Meanwhile the Devil was not idle. In the night-winds he and his legions would shriek and yell and rattle among the scaffolding and cranes in vain. In the latter part of the thirteenth century, he shook the structure with a frightful earthquake, which terrified all Alsatia, and, although whole streets were thrown down in Strasburg, yet the foundations of the _Wunderbau_, as the Germans love to call it, were not loosened, and no stone was moved from its place. A few years afterward, in 1289, he once more made use of his favorite element, and laid in ashes the market-place of Strasburg all around the minster. More fortunate than its great compeers, St. Paul’s of London, and St. Peter’s of Hamburg, it miraculously experienced but trifling damage.

Well, the great Erwin died at last, when he had built the tower as high as the roof-ridge of the nave. His son succeeded him, finished the tower to the platform, when he, too, was gathered to his fathers in 1339. John Hueltz followed as master; and finally his nephew, Hueltz II., in 1439, finished the grand pyramid, fixed the colossal cross in its place, and crowned the whole with a gigantic statue of the Virgin. Thus, from the laying of the foundation-stone till all was completed, were one hundred and sixty years; yet throughout this time the work was never discontinued, and five successive generations labored upon its walls.

But the wrath of the Arch-Enemy, as may well be believed, waxed greater as this prodigious structure gradually developed itself in all its lordliness and strength, and was not at all appeased at its triumphant completion. Ever since then he has visited its stately height with especial marks of his malice. The most furious tempests have raged about it, and more than sixty times has it been struck by lightning, and five times have earthquakes shaken its foundations. But in vain. “The Golden Legend” tells us how Lucifer and the Powers of the Air stormed about the spire, and how he cried,–

“Hasten! hasten!
O ye spirits!
From its station drag the ponderous Cross of iron that to mock us
Is uplifted high in air!”

and how the voices replied,–

“Oh, we cannot!
For around it
All the Saints and Guardian Angels Throng in legions to protect it;
They defeat us everywhere!”

At one point, however, the evil spirits were successful; the colossal statue of the Virgin, which crowned the dizzy summit, and was familiar with the secrets of the upper air, and which, like its dread Enemy,

“above the rest,
In shape and gesture proudly eminent, Stood like a tower,”–

after having for fifty years borne the insults of these airy powers, till it had lost all its original brightness, and its face

“Deep scars of thunder had intrenched,”–

was taken down, and the present cross put in its place. And there it stands to this day, high up in the silence of midair, where the voices of the city below are rendered small and thin by the distance,–four hundred and seventy-four feet above the heads of the populace, who, in their littleness, crawl about and traffic at its base. This amazing summit, “moulded in colossal calm,” in its unapproachable grandeur, seems to forget the city from which it rises, and to hold communion only with that vast circle of “crowded farms and lessening towers” which it surveys. It is a worthy companionship; on the one hand, the great Vosgian chain, the closed gates of France,–on the other, afar off, the hills of the Black Forest, and, more near, Father Rhine, winding his silver thread among the villages and vineyards of Germany.

There is (or was) an enormous key suspended just beneath the cross of Strasburg Cathedral, its use, and why it was placed there, having passed away from the memory of man. If it were not to open the gates of heaven for those who built this ladder of light and those who worship in its shadow, it remains a riddle and a blank. Let us accept the interpretation, and, made mild-eyed by the lens of tender memories, we shall behold in every spire a means of grace and a hope of glory.

THE PROFESSOR’S STORY.

PRELIMINARY CORRESPONDENCE.

THE PUBLISHERS TO THE AUTHOR.

_Queerangle Building, Nov. ’59._

Dr. SR,–

Will you contract to do us a tale or a novel, at the rate of say 10 pp. per month, with some popular subject, such as philanthropy, or the Broad Church movement, or fashionable weddings, or the John Brown invasion, brought in so as to make a taking thing of it? When finished, to come to a 12mo of 350 pp. more or less. A good article of novel is always salable about Christmas time, and we can do it up by Dec. 1, 1860. Our Mr. Goader has been round among the hands that do the light jobbing,–finds several ready to undertake the contract, at say 75c. @ 3.00 per page;–but want the job done in first-rate style, and think you could furnish us a good article. Our firm has great facilities for working a novel, tale, or any kind of fancy stuff. What w’d be y’r terms in cash payment, 1st of every month?

P.S. Would any additional compensation induce you to allow each number to be illustrated by a colored engraving?

Yr obt serv’ts.

THE AUTHOR TO THE PUBLISHERS.

GENTLEMEN,–

In reply to your polite request, I have to say, that under no circumstances can I entertain your proposition to write a _fictitious_ narrative. I could, however, relate some very interesting events which have come to my knowledge, and which, if told in a connected form, might undoubtedly be taken by the public for a work of fiction. I think my narrative, with some collateral matter I should introduce, would take up a reasonable space in about a dozen numbers of the Oceanic Miscellany. I cannot listen to your proposal about the engraving. If you accept my offer to write out, in the form of a story, the incidents of real life to which I have referred, we will arrange the terms at a private interview. I consider the first day of a month as unobjectionable as any other in the same month, as a time for receiving payment of any sum that may be due me under the proposed contract.

Yours truly.

CONFIDENTIAL EDITOR OF THE OCEANIC MISCELLANY TO THE AUTHOR.

MY DEAR PROF.,–

We have had lots of bob-tail stories,–docked short in from one to three months. Can’t you give us a switch-tail one, that will hang on so as to touch next December? Something imaginary, based on your recollections,–the incidents of the War of 1812, for instance;–but, at any rate, a regular “to be continued” “_piece de resistance_”

Yours ever.

THE AUTHOR TO THE CONFIDENTIAL EDITOR.

MY DEAR ED.,–

I really wouldn’t undertake to tell an “imaginary” story, or to write a romance, or anything of the kind. I might be willing to relate some curious matters that have come to my knowledge, arranging them in a collective form, so that they would probably pass with most readers for fictitious, and perhaps excite very much the same kind of interest they would if genuine fictions. I don’t remember much about the “last war”; but I suppose both of us may recollect the illumination when peace was declared in 1815.

Ever yours.

THE PUBLISHERS TO THE AUTHOR.

(Inclosing a check, in advance, for the first number.)

THE AUTHOR TO THE READER.

Finding myself in possession of certain facts which possess interest sufficient to warrant their publication, I am led to ask myself whether I shall put them in the form of a narrative. There are, evidently, two sides to this question. In the first place, I have a number of friends who write me letters, and tell me openly to my face, that they want me to go on writing. It doesn’t make much difference to them, they say, what I write about,–only they want me to keep going. They have got used to seeing me, in one shape or another,–and I am a kind of habit with them, like a nap after dinner. They tell me not to be frightened about it,–to begin as dull as I like, and that I shall warm up, by-and-by, as old _Dutchman_ used to, who could hardly put one leg before the other when he started, but, after a while, got so limbered and straightened out by his work, that he dropped down into the forties, and, I think they say, into the thirties. _L’appetit vient en mangeant_, one of them said who talks French,–which, you know, means, that eating makes one hungry. I remember, when I sat down to that last book of mine, which you may perhaps have read, although I had the facts of the story, of course, all in my head, it seemed to me that I should never have the patience to tell them all; and yet, before I was through, I got so full of the scenes and characters I was talking about, that I had to bolt my door and lay in an extra bandanna, before I could trust myself to put my recollections and thoughts on paper. You don’t expect a locomotive is going to start off with a train of thirty or forty thousand passengers, without straining a little,–do you? That isn’t the way; but this is. _Puff!_ The wheels begin to turn, but very slowly. Papas hold up their little Johnnys to the car-windows to be kissed. _Puff—-Puff!_ People shake hands from the platform to the cars, walking along by their side. _Puff–puff–puff!_ Now, then, Ma’am! pass out that tumbler pretty spry, out of which you have been swallowing that eternal “drink o’ wotter,” to which the human female of a certain social grade is so odiously addicted. _Puff, puff, puff, puff!_ Too late, old gentleman I unless you can do a mile in a good deal less than three minutes, carrying weight, in the shape of a valise in one hand and a carpet-bag in the other. That’s the way with anything that’s got any freight to carry. It’s slow when it sets out;–but steam is steam,–and what’s bred in the boiler will show in the driving-wheel, sooner or later.

If I had to _make up_ a story, now, it would be a very different matter. I could never conceive how some of those romancers go to work, in cold blood, to draw, out of what they call their imagination, a parcel of impossible events and absurd characters. That is not my trouble; for I have come into relation with a series of persons and events which will save me the pains of drawing on my invention, in case I shall see fit to follow the counsel of my too partial friends. I am only afraid I should not disguise the circumstances enough, if I were to arrange these facts in the narrative form. Some of them are of such a nature, that they cannot be supposed to have happened more than once in the experience of a generation; and I feel that the greatest caution and delicacy are necessary in the manner of their presentation, not to offend the living or wrong the memory of the dead.

It is very easy for you, the Reader, to sit down and run over the pages of a monthly narrative as a boy “skips” a stone,–and the flatter and thinner your capacity, the more skips, perhaps, you will make. But I tell you, for a man who has live people to deal with, and hearts that are beating even while he handles them,–a man who can go into families and pull up by the roots all the mysteries of their dead generations and their living sons’ and daughters’ secret history,–_responsible_ for what he says, here and elsewhere,–open to a libel suit, if he isn’t pretty careful in his personalities, or to a visit from a brother or other relative, wishing to know, Sir, and so forth,–or to a paragraph in the leading journal of that whispering-gallery of a nation’s gossip, Little Millionville, to the effect that–We understand the personages alluded to in the tale now publishing in the Oceanic Miscellany are the Reverend Dr. S—h and his accomplished lady, the distinguished financier, Mr. B—n,–and so through the whole list of characters;–I say, for a man who _writes_ the pages you skim over, it is a mighty different piece of business. Why, if I _do_ tell all I know about some things that have come to my cognizance, I shall make you open your eyes and spread your pupils, as if you had been to the Eye Infirmary, and the doctors there had anointed your lids with the extract of belladonna. Mark what I tell you! I have happened to become intimately acquainted with circumstances of a very extraordinary nature,–not, perhaps, without precedent, but such as very few have been called upon to witness. Suppose that I should see fit to tell these in connection with the story of which they form a part? I may render myself obnoxious to persons whom it is not safe to offend,–persons that won’t come out in the public prints, perhaps, but will poke incendiary letters under your doors,–that won’t step up to you in broad daylight, and lug a Colt out of their pocket, or draw a bowie-knife from their back, where they had carried it under their coat, but who will dog you about to do you a mischief unseen,–who will carry air-guns in the shape of canes, and hang round the place where you get your provisions, and practise with long-range rifles out in the lonely fields,–rifles that crack no louder than a parlor-pistol, but spit a bit of lead out of their mouths half a mile and more, so that you wait as you do for the sound of the man’s axe who is chopping on the other side of the river, to see the fellow you have “saved” clap his hand to his breast and stagger over. It makes me nervous to think of such things. I don’t want to be suspicious of every queer taste in my coffee, and to shiver if I see a little powdered white sugar on the upper crust of my pastry. I don’t want, every time I hear a door bang, to think it is a ragged slug from an unseen gun-barrel.

If Dick V—- was _not_ killed on the Pampas, as they have always said he was, I should never sleep easy after telling my story. For such a fellow as he was would certainly see through all the disguises I could cover up a real-life story with, and then—-. He has learned the use of the lasso too well for me to want to trust my neck anywhere within a rod of him, if there were light enough for him to see, and nothing between us, and nobody near.

And besides, there were a good many opinions handled by some of these people I should have to talk about. Now, of course, a magazine like the Oceanic is no place for opinions. Look out for your Mormon subscribers, if you question the propriety of Solomon’s domestic arrangements! And if you say one word that touches the Sandemanians, be sure their whole press will be down on you; for, as Sandemanianism is the undoubted and absolutely true religion, it follows, of course, that it is as sore as a scalded finger, and must be handled like a broken bone.

Add to this that I have always had the greatest objection to writing anything which those who were not acquainted with the facts might call a _romance_ or a _tale._ We think very ill of a man who offers us as a truth some single statement which we find he knew to be false. Now what can we think of a man who tells three volumes, or even one, full of just such lies? Of course the _prima-facie_ aspect of the case is, that he is guilty of the most monstrous impertinence; and, in point of fact, I confess the greatest disgust towards any person of whom I hear the assertion that he has _written a story,_ unless I hear something more than that. He is bound to show extenuating or justifying circumstances, as much as the man who writes what he calls “poems.” For, as the world is full of real histories, and every day in every great city begins and ends a score or half a dozen score of tragic dramas, it is a huge piece of assumption to undertake to make one out of one’s own head. A man takes refuge under your porch in a rain-storm, and you offer him the use of your shower-bath!

Also, I cannot help remembering, that, on the whole, I have been more intensely bored with works of fiction,–beginning with “Gil Blas,” and ending with–on the whole, I won’t even mention it,–than I ever was by the Latin Grammar or Rollin’s History. Naturally, therefore, I should not wish to threaten my friends with the punishment I have endured from others. But then, as I said before, if I write down the circumstances that have come to my knowledge, with some account of persons, opinions, and conversations, no one can accuse me of writing a _novel,_–a thing which I never meant to do, under any circumstances.

—-After having carefully weighed my friends’ arguments and my own objections, I have come to the conclusion to do pretty much as I like about it. Now the truth is, I have grown to be rather fonder of you, the Reader, than I have ever been willing to confess. You are such a good, kind creature,–it takes so little to please you,–you laugh and cry so very obligingly at just the right time,–you send me such charming notes, such dear little copies of verses,–nay, (shall I venture to say it?) such prodigal tokens of kindness, some of you, that I—-in short, I love you very much, and cannot make up my mind to part with you. Rather than do this, as I could not and would not write a romance, I have made up my mind to tell you something of some persons and events of which I have known enough,–of some of them, I might say, too much. Of course, you must trust wholly to my discretion and sense of propriety, in dealing with living personages, recent events, and subjects still in dispute. Trusting that none of my friends will pay any attention to any idle rumors tending to fix the personages or localities of which I shall speak, and reminding my readers that the narrative will constitute only a part of what I have to say, inasmuch as there will be no small amount of reflections introduced, and perhaps of conversations reported, I begin this connected statement of facts with an essay on a social phenomenon not hitherto distinctly recognized.

CHAPTER I.

THE BRAHMIN CASTE OF NEW ENGLAND

There is nothing in New England corresponding at all to the feudal aristocracies of the Old World. Whether it be owing to the stock from which we were derived, or to the practical working of our institutions, or to the abrogation of the technical “law of honor,” which draws a sharp line between the personally responsible class of “gentlemen” and the unnamed multitude of those who are not expected to risk their lives for an abstraction,–whatever be the cause, we have no such aristocracy here as that which grew up out of the military systems of the Middle Ages.

What our people mean by “aristocracy” is merely the richer part of the community, that live in the tallest houses, drive real carriages, (not “kerridges,”) kid-glove their hands, and French-bonnet their ladies’ heads, give parties where the persons who call them by the above title are not invited, and have a provokingly easy way of dressing, walking, talking, and nodding to people, as if they felt entirely at home, and would not be embarrassed in the least, if they met the Governor, or even the President of the United States, face to face. Some of these great folks are really well-bred, some of them are only purse-proud and assuming,–but they form a class, and are named as above in the common speech.

It is in the nature of large fortunes to diminish rapidly, when subdivided and distributed. A million is the unit of wealth, now and here in America. It splits into four handsome properties; each of these into four good inheritances; these, again, into scanty competences for four ancient maidens,–with whom it is best the family should die out, unless it can begin again as its grandfather did. Now a million is a kind of golden cheese, which represents in a compendious form the summer’s growth of a fat meadow of craft or commerce; and as this kind of meadow rarely bears more than one crop, it is pretty certain that sons and grandsons will not get another golden cheese out of it, whether they milk the same cows or turn in new ones. In other words, the millionocracy, considered in a large way, is not at all an affair of persons and families, but a perpetual fact of money with a variable human element, which a philosopher might leave out of consideration without falling into serious error. Of course, this trivial and fugitive fact of personal wealth does not create a permanent class, unless some special means are taken to arrest the process of disintegration in the third generation. This is so rarely done, at least successfully, that one need not live a very long life to see most of the rich families he knew in childhood more or less reduced, and the millions shifted into the hands of the country-boys who were sweeping stores and carrying parcels when the now decayed gentry were driving their chariots, eating their venison over silver chafing-dishes, drinking Madeira chilled in embossed coolers, wearing their hair in powder, and casing their legs in white-topped boots with silken tassels.

There is, however, in New England, an aristocracy, if you choose to call it so, which has a far greater character of permanence. It has grown to be a _caste_,–not in any odious sense,–but, by the repetition of the same influences, generation after generation, it has acquired a distinct organization and physiognomy, which not to recognize is mere stupidity, and not to be willing to describe would show a distrust of the good-nature and intelligence of our readers, who like to have us see all we can and tell all we see.

If you will look carefully at any class of students in one of our colleges, you will have no difficulty in selecting specimens of two different aspects of youthful manhood. Of course I shall choose extreme cases to illustrate the contrast between them. In the first, the figure is perhaps robust, but often otherwise,–inelegant, partly from careless attitudes, partly from ill-dressing,–the face is uncouth in feature, or at least common,–the mouth coarse and unformed,–the eye unsympathetic, even if bright,–the movements of the face clumsy, like those of the limbs,–the voice unmusical,–and the enunciation as if the words were coarse castings, instead of fine carvings. The youth of the other aspect is commonly slender,–his face is smooth, and apt to be pallid,–his features are regular and of a certain delicacy,–his eye is bright and quick,–his lips play over the thought he utters as a pianist’s fingers dance over their music,–and his whole air, though it may be timid, and even awkward, has nothing clownish. If you are a teacher, you know what to expect from each of these young men. With equal willingness, the first will be slow at learning; the second will take to his books as a pointer or a setter to his field-work.

The first youth is the common country-boy, whose race has been bred to bodily labor. Nature has adapted the family organization to the kind of life it has lived. The hands and feet by constant use have got more than their share of development,–the organs of thought and expression less than their share. The finer instincts are latent and must be developed. A youth of this kind is raw material in its first stage of elaboration. You must not expect too much of any such. Many of them have force of will and character, and become distinguished in practical life; but very few of them ever become great scholars. A scholar is almost always the son of scholars or scholarly persons.

That is exactly what the other young man is. He comes of the _Brahmin caste of New England_. This is the harmless, inoffensive, untitled aristocracy to which I have referred, and which I am sure you will at once acknowledge. There are races of scholars among us, in which aptitude for learning, and all these marks of it I have spoken of, are congenital and hereditary. Their names are always on some college catalogue or other. They break out every generation or two in some learned labor which calls them up after they seem to have died out. At last some newer name takes their place, it may be,–but you inquire a little and you find it is the blood of the Edwardses or the Chauncys or the Ellerys or some of the old historic scholars, disguised under the altered name of a female descendant.

I suppose there is not an experienced instructor anywhere in our Northern States who will not recognize at once the truth of this general distinction. But the reader who has never been a teacher will very probably object, that some of our most illustrious public men have come direct from the homespun-clad class of the people,–and he may, perhaps, even find a noted scholar or two whose parents were masters of the