gentleman, "serving God thus after the old Catholic manner,” as the poor English martyrs in the time of Elizabeth used to say, whatever deep piercing words he might choose to let fall. Nor, indeed, ought any one to wonder at such a desire being manifested. For after all the delusive wanderings now of minds misguided, it is in the quiet observation of beauty, harmony, truth, and justice, that men can find the food for which they instinctively crave; and therefore, at times they may very naturally like to hide themselves in some forgotten spot like this, where they would escape from hearing these eternal contests, these revived errors, this empty babbling, or even, as the poet says, these thrones raised and battered down; these mournful liberties given and taken away; this black torrent of laws, passions, and ideas, which spread over manners their invading flood; these tribunes opposing as soon as reunited; this flux and reflux of wave against wave; this war, more and more implacable, of parties with power, and of power with parties; and all these rumours, these shocks, these cries which overpower every voice that would recall the ancient Catholic civilization, and adore its peace. A dialogue resembling in part that traveller's question, as above related, and its answer might often, perhaps, be still heard in some parts, though we cannot hope that such an opportunity will be always within our reach. In former times, houses and lands of that character were less uncommon; but it seems very doubtful whether it will be possible much longer to find them anywhere. The light within those walls was then like that of an oil-dried lamp, whose life does fade away-now it is out; yes, while writing this very page, that time-bewasted light is burnt and done: the angel of death has visited them, and their good lord has departed to his rest. He left the world, which he never loved, at the fall of the leaf last autumn; it was late in the evening when he expired; and certainly if ever the imagination could be excused for ascribing sympathy with men to walls, I think it would be on such an occasion as the interval between that departure and the next morning, when those vast apartments found themselves at last deserted by him who had passed within them nearly eighty years, of which the last forty were in religious solitude. Be that as it may, he died as he had lived, serenely, simply, without any parade of great words, as if there was anything new to him in the emotions of that hour, but kissing the sign of his Redeemer's wounds, as he lay on that same fair ancient bed on which his father died, but sanctified by the sacraments of the holy Church, but rich in that treasure, long amassing, which followed him to the other world, the faith of his heart, and the prayers of the poor. To those who ever heard of him, he leaves an example, perhaps, too, for what is the world without such images of living worth?—the sentiment of being connected with this life by a shorter or a weaker chain. Reader, in whatever direction we look, the ruins of noble ages are disappearing fast. Each year some fragment falls. Under such an impression, it is therefore natural to wish that there might be an attempt to contrive some means of possessing a source of interest, if not as great, at least analogous and less quickly perishable, by forming a book that might correspond with the mind and conversation of that representative of other times a book in which, as in such a house, the noise of the present change-loving generation would be excluded; so that, however we might be disposed to admire or to disapprove of what now agitates the crowd, there would be here an absolute silence, if not a total ignorance, concerning it: a place in which we might find, as it were, chambers all strewed with rolls and records derived from ancient times; some in long parchment, and wormeaten, and full of canker-holes; others in clasped locks, breathing the peaceful thoughts of the illustrious men in days of yore: antique pictures, such as those I mean, that seem actually to place the dead again upon their feet, grand imposing figures like those portraits by Titian and Don Diego Velasquez de Silva; then stores of almost endless variety, accumulating from many ages-all things in disorder, perhaps, covered with dust and cobwebs, not the least trace of the art or desire of producing effect—“ Nostracisms and barbarisms," as the author of the Rule of Hermits says, the reader will find in his work,* nevertheless, along with things foregone and mildewed heaps, much that is valuable, interesting, instructive, deeply affecting perhaps, capable of reviving long-banished and impressive thoughts, or of awakening curiosity to inquire respecting things that had been never learned. I may err; but methinks many would desire a book to which they could turn thus, as they would visit one of these old retired and half-forgotten mansions in the country, where no modern changes or frivolities have had influence or access; full of ancestral traditions, ancestral faith, ancestral manners,―nova ibi verba, quia vetusta, as Sidonius Apollinaris says. Where are antique portraits, old manuscripts, and fragments, piles of ancient things innumerable, showing a thousand moral paintings, which yield matter for reflection more pregnantly than words. The book, of course, would please not the million, it would be caviare to the general, who would recoil from it as they would turn away quite horror-struck on only peeping up the long solemn avenue that * Regula Solitariorum, i. ap. Luc. Holstein. Codex Reg. + iv. 3. led to the old mansion from the farthest gate; but there would be some whose judgments in such matters agree with mine, and with the young, who, on the contrary, moved partly, perhaps, by that sense inherent in our nature which prevented the Greeks from ever placing in their temples a representation of contemporary events, would regard the plan of such a book as excellent, as they would feel the prospect of such a visit inspiring and delightful. The idea of a composition of this kind had grown familiar to the stranger who writes these pages. But circumstances at length permitted him to act upon it, at the same time suggesting the precise plan and matter which he has adopted in composing the present work, which may be called sylva sermonis antiqui, like that of which Suetonius speaks. He loved woods. "Often he, as fayes are wont, in privie place, Did spend his dayes and loved in forests wyld to space." Under the vast shade of branches, who, in fact, can be insensible to the charm of that silence, of those fretted vaults, of those umbrageous aisles, whether lighted by the cheerful beams of morning, or at the hour so sad and solemn, familiar to the reader of our old romance, as that when dog and wolf are undistinguishable? It is pleasant to be near such scenery, though only by remembrance, to fancy one's self again beneath the archings of the grove, "Clad in cathedral gloom from age to age, Lighten'd with living splendours; and the flowers On the elevated range which prematurely hides the setting sun from a city of France, whose ancient is better than its recent fame, and yet in which many of this age have followed gentle studies in their youth, there is a gloomy forest bearing the venerated name of the great saint, whose huge abbey towers still form one of its chief ornaments. With students of that land, which in days of yore the Bretons styled the country of forests, he often took an evening walk outside the gates, to gaze from a distance on that tranquil scene; but during the summer months coming to reside at the very skirts of the wood, the stranger became familiar with many of its secrets. In the house where he was lodged, there was a small upper room, of which the window received the light of the setting sun, and displayed in full beauty the vast undulating tract of the forest as far as the eye could reach. An old map of all its alleys, suspended there time out of mind, was the only decoration of that little delicious chamber, and on that map he used often to trace his walks, unravelling the intricate mazes through which he had wandered during the day. A certain Palmer-like guest one night, as he remained with him alone, observed that it would be well to draw out a map of the intellectual forest through which men travel from youth to age, noting each turn of the various tracks that predecessors, as if with human feet, have worn, and showing how wonderfully nature has provided avenues and attractive openings to guide all pilgrims safely to their end. There was, besides, here a local peculiarity, which seemed to add a peculiar force to the suggestion; for, far in the level forest's central gloom was one bright spot where stood a convent, girt by a smooth sunny lawn, towards which innumerable paths conducted from all sides the least practised wanderer. Once a monastery of Augustine Friars, a holy sisterhood now possessed it; the lady abbess, an aged woman of noble blood, and of more noble mind, whose prayers were sought for by former emperors and more recent queens, had for her chaplain a real man of God, and now it is to be believed with Him, enjoying the peace he ever loved. Truly the house he lived in was a type of the serene interior world in which he spent his days; and may this passing tribute to his memory be received with indulgence, as part of the debt of friendship that is now sanctified by death. This ancient forest, this vast intricate labyrinth of boughs, through which were found so many paths proceeding from all sides, and yet all centring thus in a religious house, seemed to the stranger to present a lively image of that mysterious existence which the mortal race is leading upon earth; for so in the centre of the vast wilderness through which our spirits wander, the Catholic Church stands alone, with all ways concentrating and meeting in it; along all of which signals and crosses have been set up to show how every path leads to it, even when men desire most to stray the farthest. The image, indeed, has been often used. In that most ancient monastic monument which is entitled Regula Magistri, the life of man is thus symbolically painted: "from the stock of Eve and Adam generated we descend," it says, "upon the way of this life, and taking the temporal yoke of a foreign existence, we perambulate the road of this world in ignorance and uncertainty. Suddenly, on the right hand, towards the east, we behold an unexpected fountain of living water, and to us hastening a voice comes crying, Qui sititis, venite ad aquam." "* What is life? asks the disciple, in an old chronicle, which seems to be a work of our Alcuin, who to the question of Pepin, What is man? replied, "a passing traveller." Life, answers the monk interrogated, is a forest, a wilderness, through which the man has to travel from youth to age. "Ut quondam Cretâ fertur Labyrinthus in altâ Thus far, then, the comparison is familiar, having been used by celebrated authors; as by Don Juan de Mena, the Spanish Ennius, in his poem El Laberintho; by Strengelius in the work through which he compares the dangers of the world, under diabolic seduction, to the frauds of the Egyptian Labyrinth; by brother Jerome Lauret of Catalonia, the monk of Mont Serrat, in his book entitled Sylva Allegoriarum; by Antonio de Escobar and Mendoza, and by many others; but if we take advantage of the peculiar feature presented by this tract of the land of forests, where all ways converge in a centre representing that point towards which, as we shall prove, the human spirit tends, which the Greeks, as if endued with true knowledge, called réλos, the last end, referable itself to nothing else, but to which all other things are to be referred, we shall find that it is in an especial manner one of those figures which St. Isidore says are of the greatest utility, by enabling men to explain things much more easily than by any other mode of discourse; that it induces a train of thoughts which may lead us far more delightfully over ground abundantly fruitful in the riches of solid learning; for it will not be useless or difficult to show how, through this tangled forest of life, darksome and intricate as it may at first appear, there are innumerable roads which all conduct men to the citadel of truth, if they would only follow the directions afforded them on each side, reading the signals set up, as it were, by the hand of God, to direct the pilgrim wandering safe through every way, and then, that, having such signals, it is not pardonable to go astray in this journey which may render us worthy of the eternal home. It shall be our object, then, in the following books, to show, not only, as the historian says, "that all those things for which men plough, build, or toil, obey virtue," but that all words and scenes,-whatsoever may be spoken or beheld, the tastes, passions, prejudices, interests, that sway each being, all sources of ideas, even to the weak touch that moves the finest nerve, and in one human brain causes the faintest thought, shall at some time or other wait upon her purposes in the highest religious * En. v. 588. + Labyrinthi ab Ægyptiis structi fraudes cum mundi a diabolo seducti periculis collatæ, D. Isidori De Summo Bono, lib. iii. 14. |