The Catholic World Volume I Part 83

Hector's a.s.sault on the s.h.i.+ps in the fifteenth book is thus spiritedly rendered:

"Fiercely he raged, as terrible as Mars With brandished spear; or as a raging fire 'Mid the dense thickets on the mountain side.

The foam was on his lips; bright flashed his eyes Beneath his awful brows, and terribly Above his temples waved amid the fray The helm of Hector; Jove himself from heaven His guardian hand extending, him alone With glory crowning 'mid the host of men, But short his term of glory; for the day Was fast approaching, when, with Pallas' aid The might of Peleus' son should work his doom.

Oft he essayed to break the ranks, where'er The densest throng and n.o.blest arms he saw; But strenuous though his efforts, all were vain; They, ma.s.sed in close array, his charge withstood; Firm as a craggy rock, upstanding high Close by the h.o.a.ry sea, which meets unmoved The boist'rous currents of the whistling winds, And the big waves that bellow round its So stood unmoved the Greeks, and undismayed.

At length, all blazing in his arms, he sprang Upon the ma.s.s; so plunging down as when On some tall vessel, from beneath the clouds A giant billow, _tempest-nursed_, descends: The deck is drenched in foam; the stormy wind Howls in the shrouds; th' affrighted seamen quail In fear, but little way from death removed; [Footnote 113]

So quailed the spirit in every Grecian breast."

[Footnote 113: We are particularly struck with the excellence of Lord Derby's translation of this magnificent image when we contrast it with Mr., Munford's:

"As on a s.h.i.+p a wat'ry mountain falls, Driven from the clouds by all the furious winds; With foam the deck is covered, pitiless The deafening tempest roars among the shrouds; The sailors, whirled along by raging waves.

Tremble, confused and faint; immediate death Appears before them."

Yet, no less an authority than the late President Felton, of Harvard, p.r.o.nounced Munford's the best of all English metrical versions of the Iliad.]

In book sixth Hector is accosted by his mother on his return from the battle-field. She offers him wine, wherewith to pour a libation to Jove and then to refresh himself. Lord Darby's translation of his answer is very neat and very close to the original:

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"No, not for me, mine honored mother, pour The luscious wine, lest thou unnerve my limbs And make me all my wonted prowess lose.

The ruddy wine I dare not pour to Jove With hands unwashed; nor to the cloud-girt son Of Saturn may the voice of prayer ascend From one with blood bespattered and defiled."

We close our extracts with a few lines from book third. Priam, sitting with "the sage chiefs and councillors of Troy" at the Scaean gate watching the hostile armies, thus addresses Helen:

"'Come here, my child, and sitting by my side, From whence thou canst discern thy former lord, His kindred and his friends (not thee I blame, But to the G.o.ds I owe this woful war), Tell me the name of yonder mighty chief Among the Greeks a warrior brave and strong: Others in height surpa.s.s him; but my eyes A form so n.o.ble never yet beheld, Nor so august; he moves, a king indeed.'

To whom in answer, Helen, heav'nly fair: 'With rev'rence, dearest father, and with shame I look on thee: oh, would that I had died That day when hither with thy son I came, And left my husband, friends, and darling child, And all the loved companions of my youth: That I died not, with grief I pine away.

But to thy question; I will tell thee true; Yon chief is Agamemnon, Atreus' son, Wide-reigning, mighty monarch, ruler good, And valiant warrior; in my husband's name, Lost as I am, I called him brother once.'"

LIFE OF MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO.

By William Forsyth, M.A., Q.C., author of "Hortensius," "Napoleon at St. Helena and Sir Hudson Lowe," "History of Trial by Jury," etc., and late fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Two volumes, 8vo., pp. 364 and 341. New York: Charles Scribner & Co.

Mr. Forsyth has a very correct notion of the business of a biographer.

His object has been not only to tell Cicero's history but to describe his private life--to make us acquainted with minute details of his domestic habits, and to represent him as far as possible in the same manner as he would a man of the present generation. "The more we accustom ourselves," he says, "to regard the ancients as persons of like pa.s.sions as ourselves, and familiarize ourselves with the idea of them as fathers, husbands, friends, and _gentlemen_, the better we shall understand them." He has therefore carefully gathered up from the letters and other writings of the Roman orator those little bits of personal allusion, domestic history, and unconsidered trifles which indicate, more clearly sometimes than important actions, the bent of one's mind or the inmost character of one's heart; and he has arranged them with great skill, and a good eye for effect. He shows but slight literary polish; his style is not elegant, nor always clear, nor even dignified; but he has a logical way of putting things, a happy knack of arrangement, and a habit of keeping to the point and throwing aside superfluous matter, for which we dare say he is indebted to his training as a pleader in the courts. As a lawyer, too, he is specially qualified to give the history of the causes in which Cicero's orations were delivered; and this he does better than we have ever seen it done before, explaining the narrative by copious ill.u.s.trations from modern jurisprudence. But if in some respects he writes like a lawyer, in another very important point his practice as an advocate seems not to have affected him. He is thoroughly impartial. He sums up Cicero's character more like a judge than a queen's counsel. He admires him but not blindly; holding the safe middle path between the excessive veneration shown by Middleton and Niebuhr and the unreasonable animosity of Drumann and Mommsen. He admits that Cicero was weak, timid, and irresolute; but these defects were counter-balanced by the display, at critical periods of his life, of the very opposite qualities. In the contest with Catiline and the final struggle with Antony he was as firm and brave as a man need be. One princ.i.p.al cause of his irresolution was an anxiety to do what was right. If he knew that he had acted wrongly, he instantly felt all the agony of remorse.

His standard of morality was as high as it was perhaps possible to elevate it by the mere light of nature. The chief fault of his moral character was a want of sincerity. In a different sense of the words from that expressed by St. Paul, he wished to become all things to all men, if by any means he might win some. His private correspondence and {574} his public speeches were often in direct contradiction with each other as to the opinions he expressed of his contemporaries. His foible was vanity. He was never tired of speaking of himself. As a philosopher he had no pretensions to originality, but he was the first to make known to his countrymen the philosophy of Greece, which until he appeared may be said to have spoken to the Romans in an unknown tongue. He adhered to no particular sect, but affected chiefly the school of the new academy. He was a firm believer in a providence and a future state. As an orator his faults are coa.r.s.eness in invective, exaggeration in matter, and prolixity in style. "Many of his sentences are intolerably long, and he dwells upon a topic with an exhaustive fulness which leaves nothing to the imagination. The pure gold of his eloquence is beaten out too thin, and what is gained in surface is lost in solidity and depth."

The position of Cicero with respect to the political parties into which the republic was divided in his time is not so well described as his personal character. While Mr. Forsyth displays industry and good judgment in collecting and arranging the little traits which go to make up a life-like portrait, he lacks the comprehensive and philosophical view with which Merivale has recently surveyed the same period of history. Forsyth writes as one who, having mingled with the busy crowd in the forum, should come away and tell us what he had seen and heard, and describe the men with whom he had talked. Merivale surveys the scene from a distance; and though his perception of individual objects is less distinct than Forsyth's, his view is broader and takes in better the relative situations and proportions of the various features spread out before him. Both are excellent in their kind: the historian is the more instructive, the biographer the more entertaining.

BEATRICE.

By Julia Kavanagh, author of "Nathalie," "Adele," "Queen Mab," etc., etc. Three volumes in one. 12mo., pp. 520. New York: D. Appleton & Company.

The readers of "Adele" and "Nathalie" will hardly be prepared for what awaits them in the novel now upon our table. Miss Kavanagh has won a high reputation by her delicate pictures of quiet home life, and thorough a.n.a.lyses of female character. But lately the prevailing thirst for sensational stories appears to have enticed her away from the old path, and led her to attempt a style of novel which will no doubt please the majority of readers better than her earlier efforts, though as a work of art it is inferior to them. It is by no means however a merely sensation story. The heroine is painted with all Miss Kavanagh's accustomed clearness and skill; although the uninterrupted series of plots and counterplots, the dramatic terseness of the dialogue, and the effectiveness of the situations, tempt one to forget sometimes, in the absorbing interest of the narrative, the higher merit of vivid and truthful drawing of character. That of Beatrice is charmingly conceived, and admirably worked out, recalling those delightful heroines who first gave Miss Kavanagh a hold upon the popular heart. Beatrice is a spirited, proud, natural, warm-hearted girl, born in poverty and fallen heiress unexpectedly to great wealth.

Her guardian and step-father, Mr. Gervoise, subjects her to innumerable wrongs in order that he may get possession of the property. Poison even and a mad-house are hinted at. The book is princ.i.p.ally a narrative of battle between the defenceless girl and this villain. Our readers who may wish to know how the struggle ends are referred to the book itself; they will have no reason to regret the time they may spend in reading it.

GRACE MORTON; OR, THE INHERITANCE.

A Catholic Tale. By M.L.M. 12mo., pp. 324.

THE CONFESSORS OF CONNAUGHT; OR, THE TENANTS OF A LORD BISHOP.

A Tale of our Times. By M. L. M., author of Grace Morton, etc. 12mo., pp.319. Philadelphia: Peter F. Cunningham. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Company.

These are both religious stories. The first is inscribed to the Catholic youth of America, and the scene is laid in Pennsylvania. The second is founded upon the evictions in 1860, in the parish of Partry, Ireland, of a number of tenants of the Protestant bishop of Tuam, who had refused to send their children to proselytizing schools. The well-known missionary, Father Lavelle, is a {575} prominent figure in the book, slightly disguised under the name of Father Dillon.

A GENERAL HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH: FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA UNTIL THE PRESENT TIME.

By M. l'Abbe J.E. Darras. First American from the last French edition.

With an Introduction and Notes, by the Most Rev. M.J. Spalding, D.D., Archbishop of Baltimore. Numbers 6, 7, and 8. 8vo. pp. (each) 48. New York: P. O'Shea.

We are pleased to learn that two valuable appendices are to be added to the American translation of this important work; one by an eminent Jesuit on the history of the Church in Ireland, the other by the Rev.

C.I. White, D.D., on the history of the Church in America. The English version of the book ought thus to be far superior to the original French. The numbers appear with great promptness, and present the same neat and tasteful appearance which we took occasion to praise in noticing some of the earlier parts.

LIFE OF THE CURe D'ARS.

From the French of the Abbe Alfred Monnin. 12mo., pp. 355. Baltimore: Kelly & Piet.

It is only six years since Jean Baptist Marie Vianney, better known as the Cure of Ars, closed his mortal life in that little village near Lyons which will probably be henceforth for ever a.s.sociated with his name. "A common consent," says Dr. Manning, in a preface to the book before us, "seems to have numbered him, even while living, among the servants of G.o.d; and an expectation prevails that the day is not far off when the Church will raise him to veneration upon her altars." He was the son of a farmer of Dardilly, near Lyons, and appears to have inherited virtue from both his parents. G.o.d gave him neither graces of person nor gifts of intellect. His face was pale and thin, his stature low, his gait awkward, his manner shy and timid, his whole air common and unattractive. His education was so defective that his teachers hesitated to recommend him for ordination. But the want of human learning seems to have been supplied by supernatural illumination.

When he went to Ars, virtue was little known there. To say that he speedily wrought an entire reformation is but a faint expression of the extraordinary effect of his ministry. Drunkenness and quarreling were soon unknown. At the sound of the midday _Angelus_ the laborers would stop in their work to recite the _Ave Maria_ with uncovered head. Men and women used to repair to the church after their work was done, and often came again to pray at two or three o'clock in the morning. The cure himself, it may be said, never left the church except to discharge some function of his ministry, to take one scanty meal a day, of bread or potatoes, and to sleep two or three hours. In the seventh year of his ministry he founded an asylum for orphan or dest.i.tute girls which he called "The Providence." It is believed that he was miraculously a.s.sisted in providing food and clothing for these poor children. Once the stock of flour was exhausted, except enough to make two loaves. "Put your leaven into the little flour you have,"

said the cure to the baker, "and to-morrow go on with your baking as usual." "The next day," says this person, "I know not how it happened, but as I kneaded, the dough seemed to rise and rise under my fingers; I could not put in the water quick enough; the more I put in, the more it swelled and thickened, so that I was able to make, with a handful of flour, ten large loaves of from twenty to twenty-two pounds each, as much, in fact, as could have been made with a whole sack of flour."

It was in consequence partly of circ.u.mstances of this nature connected with the Providence, and partly of the reputation of M. Vianney as a spiritual director, that a stream of pilgrims set in toward Ars that has continued to flow ever since. Before the close of his life, as many as eighty thousand persons are said to have visited him in a single year, by a single route. Most of them came to confess; many to be cured of deformities or disease; others to ask advice in special difficulties. The number of cures effected at his hands was prodigious. His labors in the confessional were almost beyond belief; for thirty years he spent in this severest of all the duties of a parish priest sixteen or eighteen hours a day. Penitents were content to await their turn in the church all night, all the next day--even two {576} days. Devout persons were so eager to get relics of him during his life, that whenever he laid aside his hat or his surplice the garment was immediately appropriated. So after a time he never put on a hat, and never took off his surplice.

It seemed at last that his humility could no longer endure the veneration that was paid him. He resolved to retire to a quiet place, and spend the rest of his life in prayer. He attempted to escape secretly by night; but one of his a.s.sistant priests discovered his purpose, and contrived to delay him, until the alarm was sounded through the village. The inhabitants were roused at the first stroke.

The clangor of the bell was soon mingled with confused cries of "M. le cure!" The women crowded the market-place and prayed aloud in the church; the men armed themselves with whatever came first to hand; guns, forks, sticks, and axes. M. Vianney made his way with difficulty to the street door, but the villagers would not let him open it. "He went from one door to another," says his old servant, "without getting angry; but I think he was weeping." At last he reached the street, and stood still for a moment, considering how to escape. His a.s.sistant made a last effort to persuade him to remain. The populace fell at his feet, and cried, with heart-rending sobs, "Father, let us finish our confession; do not go without hearing us!" And thus saying, they carried rather than led him to the church. He knelt before the altar and wept for a long time. Then he went quietly into his confessional as if nothing had happened.

We would gladly quote the whole of the beautiful scene of which we have attempted to give an outline; but our s.p.a.ce forbids. We must pa.s.s over also the graphic description of the abbe's death and funeral, as well as the narrative of the extraordinary sufferings which made his life one long purgatory. Let our readers get the book, and they will find it as interesting as a romance.

THE LIFE OF JOHN MARY DECALOGNE, STUDENT IN THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS.

Translated from the French. 18mo., pp. 162. Baltimore: Kelly & Piet.

This edifying narrative of the short and almost angelic career of a school-boy who died in the odor of sanct.i.ty, in his seventeenth year, was a great favorite with our fathers and grandfathers, but we believe has long been out of print. Its re-publication is a praiseworthy adventure, which we hope will have the success it deserves. The book is especially recommended to lads preparing for their first communion.

_The New Path_, for June (New York: James Miller, publisher), is devoted wholly to the fortieth annual exhibition of the National Academy of Design. Our spicy little contemporary has no mercy on the artists.

_Trubner's American and Oriental Literary Record_, the first number of which was published in London last March, is "a monthly register of the most important works published in North and South America, in India, China, and the British Colonies; with occasional notes on German, Dutch, Danish, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian books." We believe it is the first systematic attempt to bring the young literature of America and the East before the public of Europe. We commend it to the attention of our book-writing and publis.h.i.+ng friends.

The American News Company issue a little pamphlet on _The Russo-Greek Church, by a former resident of Russia_. Its aim is to expose the absurdity of the attempts at union between the Russian and Protestant Episcopal Churches.

BOOKS RECEIVED.