The Catholic World Volume Ii Part 92

"The consultation was protracted, and the ultimate decision was to act in concert with France, and to demand the a.s.sistance of his very christian majesty: the house of Austria being no longer in a condition to co-operate."

The Duke of York at once abjured with great secresy; but did Charles II. also abjure? Our opinion is that the two brothers separated from the Anglican Church at the same time; and that on the same day, at the foot of the same altar, in the hands of the same priest, they made the same profession of faith. Only one remained unchangeable in his fidelity. The other, sincere but feeble, made an honest effort to give his country liberty of conscience, was defeated at every point by the united ma.s.s of the {607} English factions, and finally fell back upon dissimulations and hypocrisies. It was Fr. Stuart who presided at this abjuration--a fact which the following considerations prove.

On the 5th of Jan., 1685, Fr. Huddleston, an English Benedictine, and a chaplain to the queen, summoned, says Lingard, in the absence of a foreign ecclesiastic in London, administered at evening the last sacraments to the king without demanding from him that act which should have preceded all others--abjuration. Charles throughout the rest of the night had full consciousness, and it would be perfectly absurd to suppose that neither Fr. Huddleston, a priest for twenty-five or thirty years, nor any of the queen's almoners, nor the Duke of York, as well as the other Catholics present, nor the sick man himself, should have thought, for five hours, of satisfying this most necessary of all conditions for admitting one among the children of the true Church.

Clearly, then, Charles had made his abjuration before his last illness. Studying the sequence of his reign, we remark that the year 1669 closes the period of calm which the brother of James II. enjoyed.

Immediately after the French alliance exasperated the nation; and the rage and fury of Anglicanism were excited by the known conversion of the Duke and the d.u.c.h.ess of York, by that of Sir Thomas Clifford, by the second marriage of the Duke with the princess of Modena, by all that movement of Catholic activity the signs of which multiplied around the palace of the Stuarts. Presently persecution began anew, and Charles, incapable of holding head against the storm, yielded in everything; he signed the decrees of proscription, he permitted the flow of innocent blood. What priest, in such a conjuncture, would have consented to receive his abjuration? But in Jan., 1669, the presence of Henrietta of Bourbon, the pious joy of all that royal family, the hope which might reasonably be founded on the probable influence of Fr. James Stuart, united in urging forward so desirable a consummation. Charles, whose good faith we cannot justly suspect without satisfactory proof,--Charles persuaded himself that, a.s.sisted by the French monarch, and supported by his brother the duke, there was no domestic coalition which could defeat him, and he brought over the rest to his opinion by that seductive eloquence which, with him, was almost irresistible. The priest doubtless had many fears; but the priest, when there was the appearance of security, inclined toward indulgence, and on the present occasion so many reiterated a.s.surances, so many moving supplications, so many marvellous advantages in perspective, finally disarmed him. Nothing in the duke's account prejudices this conclusion. His delicate sense of family honor, the reproach which would have attached to Charles and ultimately to all the Stuarts if the act were known, the reticence necessary to maintain regarding the king's eldest son--each and all explain the silence of that prince. Beside the offer to take the sword in hand, and to run the chances of a long and perilous civil war, would indicate less a future step than a step in the past. In our opinion, therefore, the council of Jan. 25 followed the abjuration of Charles rather than preceded it.

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From The Argosy.

THE INFIORATA OF GENZANO.

If you are ever in Rome at Corpus Christi (a thing not likely to happen, by the way, as it must fall in the months when northerners shun the Campagna) do not let anything induce you to miss the Infiorata of Genzano--the gem of village festivals. We were fortunate enough to witness it last year, the first time it has been celebrated since the troubles of 1848.

All Rome turned out to a.s.sist at it. Many days before every available vehicle and beast had been bespoken, and _yet_ there was a demand.

Our mount, "Master Pietro," of half Italian, half English race, as his name symbolizes, came to fetch us punctually at the unearthly hour of seven--to get his work done ere the noontide heat. He had carried us through many lovely scenes before, and his hardy qualities adapted him well for the three days' excursion we intended to make of it, through a land where hay is scarce and oats almost unattainable. But we knew he had one idiosyncracy, of kicking violently at the approach of any mule--a frequent customer in the neighborhood of Rome--and as the crowded state of the road on that day would render it particularly unsuited for such pranks, we elected to travel along the solitary Appian Way. It was a brilliant morning of early June. A light trot soon brought us to the grand old Arch of Drusus. We could not help stopping to admire the play of light and shade on its time-worn stones, and through the fairy tracery with which nature loves to deck art. It could not have appeared more worthy of admiration the first day that--oldest of triumphal arches--its n.o.ble proportions were completed, and the imperial father saw immortalized in it the triumphs of his son. The "stern round tower of other days" demanded another pause. Often as we had pa.s.sed it before, the romance with which "the Childe's" speculations have invested it make it ever an object of fresh interest. If it be the object of "huge tombs" to set all posterity wondering about their tenants, the tomb of Caecilia Metella certainly has fulfilled its mission. Who pa.s.ses the ma.s.sive structure and does not long to know something about the lady to whom, nearly two thousand years ago, this lasting memorial was raised? The ground-plan is a square of seventy feet, and the walls are twenty-five feet thick.

In the small interior s.p.a.ce thus formed, Caecilia's ashes reposed in a white marble sarcophagus. The inscription is of the simplest description--"Caeciliae Q. Cretici F. Metaelle Cra.s.si;" in the neighborhood even her name is untold, and the tower is only called the "Capo di Bove," from the ornaments of the frieze.

We pushed on vigorously for a mile or two, and then came patches of the old Roman pavement, to stop Master Pietro's cantering, and give leisure to be again examining the tombs on either hand; little temples erected to house ashes--their own ruins now the subject of fostering care--and to set one wondering how mortal horses ever pranced, or ran, or drew weights over those stony blocks. "Let us hope" they were not left for an uncovered pavement, but that they served for the foundation of a coating of tufa, or something equally grateful to weary hoofs.

The lizards, bewildered with our clatter, shot madly across our path, and "the merry brown hares came leaping" from their retreat, defying {609} with their swiftness the vain attempts of our brave little lupino to run them to ground. We were thankful they all escaped with their lives, so blithe and gay among the tombs. Some ten miles of this, and then a mile through a newly-mown field, the fragrant hay most tantalizing to our probably breakfastless steeds. Some of our party knew a cut through Duke Torlonia's ground which was to save us a mile or two, but in antic.i.p.ation of the festive crowd an iron chain had been made to bar the pa.s.sage. It was an easy leap for Master Pietro, however, and for one or two of his companions; the others had to go round. The rise is steep, and, though in places rocky, generally good. We pa.s.s, on our rights the ancient town of Bovillae, and then on our left comes the lovely lake of Albano, and Castel Grandolfo with the Popes' modest summer palace. Another trot brings us to the "Galeria di Sopra," a delicious, gently ascending path, soft as Rotten Row, under the flickering shade of ma.s.sive ilexes. It is just the place for a canter, and Master Pietro evidently thinks so as he sniffs the morning air. To our regret it comes to an end at last, and we wait behind the sheltering gateway of the Chigi palace while some of our party go in and secure beds at l'Ariccia. We have allowed little short of three hours to the seventeen miles, but still we are nearly the first to arrive, so we get the best rooms the _Locanda_ can afford, and are well satisfied with them and with our collation of pastry and wine. Our own hunger satisfied, we determine to leave Master Pietro and his brethren to their oats (if they can get any), and we walk on to Genzano. Three n.o.ble bits of viaduct save us the terrible up and down hill through which our predecessors of a few years ago had to toil.

During the few minutes we were in the hotel, "all the world" has arrived, and we are soon in the midst of a vast train of people, all following the same object, all talking earnestly, and of course very loud. A gun sounds. There is a rush. We are just too late for the start of the first race. It is _a' fantini_. Gaily dressed but clownish jockeys bestride the contending chargers, without stirrups or saddles, guiding them only by a red woollen rope. The next is _a vuoto_. The rough but ready steeds career riderless along the way lined out for them by the living hedge of spectators; and it is hard to say whether they are first brought to a stand by the roar which--suppressed by the very intensity of excitement during the race--bursts into a deafening peal as they near the goal, or by the black curtain suspended across their path, which forms the legitimate "_ripresa dei barberi_." The horse who has won the contest by his own _unridden_ impetuosity is decked with flowers and streamers, and marched through the admiring crowds, giving a knowing and majestic nod to the plumes which form his crest. A file of soldiers escorts him, and the band agitates his triumphant "progress;" he has borne all his other honors meekly, but this one chafes him. As soon as he is marched off, the crowd, breaking up as Roman crowds do into couples, soon manoeuvres itself into picturesque groups round the various stalls of the village fair. How they enjoy themselves! How gladsome and light of heart they seem!--and on what mild conditions. Does it not do one good to see their easy contentment? What strange wares form the attractions of dark, glancing eyes and generous purses! Staple commodity of the fairs of all the Roman _paesi_ is the unfailing pork, boned and rolled, and stuffed with rosemary: we did wrong not to taste it, for the eager thousands find it "very good." The Genzano wine--and the Cesarini and Jacobini cellars are open to-day--affords a more congenial temptation. It is a luscious wine, with more body and more delicate flavor than the generality of Roman wines, but lacks the sparkle of the surpa.s.sing Orvieto.

The gay scene is full of attractive interest, but, finding a couple of hours to spare, we trot back to l'Ariccia to {610} dine. Others have adopted the same course, and the _Locanda_ is all astir. What to have is always a difficult question for the most _un_fastidious anywhere in the Papal States out of Rome. A provoking waiter, who thinks he can speak French, and on all occasions comes out with his one broken sentence, "_Aspetti oon petti momenti_," finds us impracticable, and sends us the _chef de cuisine_. The _chef_, with a profusion of _issimos_, a.s.sures us there is no _cuisine_ in the world like his, and rings the changes on the well-known names we abominate. _Minestra_ we refuse, it is always water bewitched; the _lesso_ is sure to be tasteless and stringy; the _pasta_, the Roman rendering of maccaroni, underdone and indigestible; the _arrosto_, hard and tough--we will none of them. Well, a _fritto?_ If the oil is good, we have nothing to say against that; we allow you excel there. If something else we must have, we will take you on your own ground; bring us an _agro-dolce_, that is a culinary curiosity with which, after the palate has been once annealed to its compound of wine, vinegar, bacon, b.u.t.ter, parsley, spices, sugar, oil, chocolate, and wild boar or porcupine, you may be always glad to renew acquaintance. The wind-up of _pasticcieria_ and _frutte_ we say nothing about; we know it is useless to argue against the inevitable.

While this repast is preparing, we are driven to occupy ourselves with a study of the room and the guests. The former presents a strange mixture of primitiveness and pretension: the build is clumsy, the window-shutters cover only the gla.s.s panes, the fittings are rude, the floor is bare. But the walls have been painted in (millions-of-miles-off) imitation of Raphael's much-sinned-against Loggie! And over the mantelpiece hangs a landscape, into which a piece of looking-gla.s.s is inserted to represent a lake. The princ.i.p.al piece of furniture is a large gla.s.s cupboard, in which is stowed away--we know not for what grand occasion, for it is not even brought into use to-day--a set of common English willow-pattern earthenware! We cannot but smile to see our humble friend in such grand plight; and we moralize to ourselves on the subjectivity of the human mind, to which its changed estimation testifies. The angularity of the fall of the table-cloth "accuses" a table composed of a literal "board," supported on tressels; and though there are a few chairs, the majority of the guests have to be content with backless benches. At one end of our board an English artist, not unknown to fame, and his party are going through the regular routine of an Italian hotel dinner with praiseworthy patience. At another board sits a large family of natives, and we forget all note of time as we watch with astonished eyes the ma.s.ses of _pasta_ they contrive to stow away, half-cooked as it is sure to be. The sight is not new to us, but every time we see it it has the same attraction, derived from the reminiscence of a delicious early surprise such as the performance of Punch and Judy always exercises on any number of Londoners. A vacant s.p.a.ce near them is soon filled by another native, a young exquisite, who appears quite oppressed by the mild heat we northerners had been enjoying. Throwing himself at full length on the bench, he commences a violent fanning with his handkerchief; but after a minute or two his hand requires a cooler instrument, and he changes it for his hat, which in turn is exchanged for his dinner-napkin, and, finally, he completes the operation with his plate! At last the one-sentence-of-French waiter directs his steps toward our party, but, to the indignation of every individual of it, he bears the _minestra_ we forbade him to name. This has been our universal experience. The Italian mind cannot take in the idea of the possibility of dining without broth; it is useless to countermand it, it is sure to be sent to table. We explode, nevertheless, and desire the dishes we ordered to be brought without further delay. "_Aspetti oon petti momenti_," says Nicol; {611} and better than, his word this time, it is really only _un pet.i.t moment_ before we are duly served.

Dinner despatched, we have still time to stroll over the neighborhood before we are wanted at Genzano. A walk of less than a mile, starting over the magnificent new viaduct, takes us to the straggling _paese_ (we cannot bring ourselves to call it a town) of Albano. A good-natured old fellow, always recognizable by the extreme whiteness of his stockings, hails us as we pa.s.s, in memory of old acquaintance, and is sure we must want donkeys; we cannot refuse him, and hoping Master Pietro won't see us out of his stable window, we suffer the sure-footed but ign.o.ble subst.i.tutes to take us down the difficult descent which the viaduct was built to spare us--so wayward is woman!

But the viaduct itself has created a reason for making the descent, as the sight of its n.o.ble proportions amply repays the journey.

It was completed during the reign of the present Pope, from the designs of a local engineer--one of the Jacobini family. It is formed of "arches on arches" in three ranges, six on the lowest tier, twelve in the next, and eighteen in the highest; they are each forty-nine feet wide between the piers, and sixty feet in height; the whole length of roadway, including the approaches, is nearly a quarter of a mile, and the height to top of parapet just two hundred feet. It is built of ma.s.sive blocks of peperino, cut to fit each other without mortar, and the appearance is solid and grand, worthy of the models of ancient masonry by which it is surrounded. There is no attempt at ornament. The entire cost was 140,000 scudi (33,000), [Footnote 93]

and the halfpenny toll has already gone far toward repaying it.

[Footnote 93: We drove, the other day, under the viaduct of the Brighton Railway for the sake of comparing it with our memory of l^Ariccia, and were disappointed to find it a slender brick affair, for which the meaningless display of stone at the top had not prepared us. It consists of thirty-seven arches, sixty feet high, and is a little over a quarter of a mile in length. We were informed its cost was 58,000.]

Close under it lies the old ruined tomb commonly called of the Horatii and Curiatii but now determined to be that of Aruns, son of Porsenna.

It has all the appearance of being of Etruscan work, and the remains are very peculiar. It is a square structure, forty-six feet every way and twenty feet high; at the four corners are the remains of four small cones, one being nearly perfect; in the centre is a cylinder, twenty-three feet across, made to contain the urn.

Our donkeys carried us bravely up the rugged hill, and then we found, to our regret, we must leave the Chigi palace, Duke Sforza's infant schools, and other objects of interest for another visit; we had only time to get back to Genzano. A great deal of business had been done at the fair, and many hearts won by the fair. The booth-keepers, having sold off their stock, had shut up shop and gone away, and the merry couples were circulating freely. The rosemaried pork and Genzano wine had given them strength and vigor and gaiety--let it not be understood that we see any trace of excess; all is mirth and good humor and picturesqueness. At last six o'clock strikes, and, like an army marshalled by the word of command, the spontaneous and unanimous will of the thousands of sightseers brings them in serried procession up the broad street, where the Infiorata lies sparkling and rendering up its varied and gorgeous reflections to the sun's rays which bathe it.

Beautiful and delicate tribute of a poetical people! The occasion is the festival of the Blessed Sacrament; and as it is carried among them in solemn procession the custom of all Catholic countries is to strew flowers along the way; but here the idea has taken a development of a surpa.s.sing order, if not unique--as if no care could be too great: not only are the most brilliant flowers planted months before, and collected from distant contributors, but when the day arrives all these are made to form the most exquisite {612} mosaics. What is a Gobelins carpet to this weft of nature's own materials! A cord is drawn up both sides of the road to keep the flowered centre clear, and no one thinks of infringing the slight barrier. The rising ground is most favorable for displaying in two lines, ascending and descending, the endless variety of elaborate devices of tesselation. Costly marbles of different hues fitly pave the basilica; the glazed _axulejos_ cooled the Moslem's feet at the same time that they pleased his eye; the velvet-pile tapestries of British looms carpet the bleak floors of our northern homes; and the stiff geometrical tiles, angular and uncomfortable as everything Gothic is, suit very well to our Gothic churches. Each and all have their fitness; and what is the Infiorata? It is the tribute of a simple and poor, but imaginative and loving, people "preparing to meet their G.o.d."

"O earth, grow flowers beneath his feet, And thou, O sun, s.h.i.+ne bright this day!

He comes, he comes,--O heaven on earth!

Our Jesus comes upon his way,"

sings one of their hymns for the occasion. And, poor tillers of the earth, the only offering they _can_ make is of the flowers which "her children are." We looked on with an artist's and humanitarian's enjoyment. And delicious enjoyment it was! It was the fresh enjoyment of our childhood over again to trace the rich mosaic designs spread before us; and we pity him who does not know the enjoyment of the sensation of color. There were the arms of the Stato Pontificio, and of the _paese_, and of the Cesarini and Jacobini, with all their bearings and all their tinctures and then, as it were, the arms of the blessed sacrament--the symbols under which it is figured. The herald must find a new nomenclature; already he has a separate one for commonalty, n.o.bility, and royalty, but now, for a "greater than Solomon," he must devise another. To his "sol, topaz, or," he must add the marigold; and to his "luna, pearl, argent," the lily. Then came arabesques in perplexing mazes of tracery; every line true, and every harmony or contrast of tint faultless. By a refinement least of all to be expected, in the centre of some of the compartments a tiny fountain had been introduced, "flinging delicious coolness round the air, and verdure o'er the ground." Nothing that poets have fabled of fairyland or paradise ever exceeded it in imaginative luxuriance.

"O what a wilderness of flowers!

It seemed as though from all the bowers And fairest fields of all the year The mingled spoils were scattered here.

The pathway like a garden breathes With the rich buds that o'er it lie, As if a shower of fairy wreaths Had fallen upon it from the sky."

A crowd of Romans is not surrounded by a savory atmosphere. We are never in one without finding that the thing Cleopatra exceedingly feared had fallen upon us--

"In their thick breath.

Rank of gross diet, shall we be enclouded.

And forced to drink their vapor."

Their baths are things of the past; their picturesque costume looks as if it were never renewed during a whole life; their houses are dingy, and bare, and comfortless; yet we have before us the proof that they possess a delicacy of both feeling and taste which it would be impossible to find surpa.s.sed anywhere.

Meantime the procession from the church approaches, and a hush succeeds the merry din which has stunned us so long; the last pertinacious "_Ecco! zigari!_" and "_Acqua fresca_!" is sung out. And in their harsh nasal intonation the appropriated hymns are begun by the priests and taken up by the whole population, very much after the fas.h.i.+on of a horse running away; without any regard for time and very little for tune, but with a heartiness and earnestness which we try to persuade ourselves ought to compensate for the "skinning" of our ears.

The untidy choristers precede and follow in due numbers, and the quaint confraternities, in various dresses, bearing unwieldy, misshapen {613} banners, waddle and hobble behind. Slovenly men with unwashed hands carry great yellow tapers, and a ragged urchin runs by the side of each catching the droppings into a piece of stiff paper.

The whole thing is disenchanting and disedifying; but we see so plainly the impression that they think they are doing their best reflected from so many hundred beaming countenances, that we end by exhausting our squeamishness, and learn to look on the Genzanese modes of devotion from their own standing-point. By the time it has taken to effect this, however, the procession has regained the church, where we find it impossible to penetrate, and so we turn to take a last look at the Infiorata. Alas! it has all vanished, as completely as if it had been the emanation of fairyland it appeared to be. As soon as the procession had pa.s.sed the people broke in, eager to possess themselves of the flowers as a sort of relic. From what we saw of the process of undoing, it appeared that the mosaics were not composed of whole flowers, except in some instances where their form adapted them to form special designs, but the generality were made with shred petals, by which means ma.s.ses of color were obtained in the most manageable quant.i.ties. There was, in most cases, a board or oil-cloth for a foundation, with the patterns marked out in chalk; but the blending of colors seemed to have been left to the individual taste of the workers.

We get back to our narrow rooms at l'Ariccia in time to escape the firing of the _mortaletti_ and _botti_ (small guns and crackers) without which an Italian _festa_ is seldom considered complete.

Nicol is much disappointed that we will not again trust to the resources of his cuisine, and exclaims "_Aspetti con petti momenti_,"

as he goes in quest of our bed-lamps. While we wait, we hear our Italian fellow-diners angrily complaining that mine host had taken advantage of the throng of visitors to cheat them of their due proportion of _pasta!_ The quant.i.ty sent up for four was only the due mess of one, _selon_ them. What a spectacle we should have had if it had been dealt out to them according to their own measure!

From Chamber's Journal.

BROADCAST THY SEED.

Broadcast thy seed!

Although some portion may be found To fall on uncongenial ground, Where sand, or shard, or stone may stay Its coming into light of day; Or when it comes, some pestilent air May make it droop or wither there-- Be not discouraged; some will find Congenial soil and gentle wind, Refres.h.i.+ng dew and ripening shower, To bring it into beauteous flower, From flower to fruit, to glad thine eyes, And fill thy soul with sweet surprise.

Do good, and G.o.d will bless thy deed-- Broadcast thy seed!

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From The Month.

CONSTANCE SHERWOOD:

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.