Oh, how many bleeding hearts in the poor human family! O God! O God! how bitter is love when it is hopeless!when it thinks of the absent ;-when it remembers the arm pressed fondly round the neck;-when its poor imagination presents before it the smile that kindled it to rapture, the hair with which its fingers played ;-when it sees no return of such hours possible-when it is torn away from the object, and that for ever! But, oh! how sweet is love, when, with a dulcet agony it dies into the love of Love, and in that Love hopes to regain all things ;-when it loses itself in God, who loves each and all, as He died for each and all upon the cross-the holy cross, which will save all, bless all, crown all who from the anguish of this vale of tears fly to it, and embrace the wood, on which, for all our sakes, Love itself was nailed! Take away this last, supreme hope; and, oh! how miserable is man! What, then, is love-love frustrated? "O'tis a cruel thing! alas, how changed am I !" exclaims its victim, "changed even in regard to what is sensual," "every sense Of mine was once made perfect in these woods. Amid the thrush's song!" Then, with another poet, he proceeds to utter these complaints, 66 My genial spirits fail, And what can these avail To lift the smothering weight from off my breast? Though I should gaze for ever On that green light that lingers in the west: I may not hope from outward forms to win The passion and the life, whose fountains are within ?” Let but Catholic piety revive, and the strain will change, for words like those of Aurelio in the Antiquary, "since I have tasted the sweetness of my freedom, thou dost not know what quickness and agility is infused into me; I feel not that weight was wont to clog me where'er I went; I am all fire and spirit, as if I had been stript of my mortality." At the very first steps upon this path, one feels an invigorating air; and so another poet says, "While cloy'd to find the scenes of life the same, It is not a palliative that this great specific furnishes, such as letters yielded to Cicero, when he said, "sic litteris utor, in quibus consumo omne tempus, non ut ab his medicinam perpetuam, sed ut exiguam doloris oblivionem petam." It is truly a perfect, and no doubt an eternal remedy. 66 Catholicism, by piety, immerses man's existence in a golden clime, and there breathes ambrosia; it secures the right exercise of that noble faculty whereby he is able to live in the past and in the future, in the distant and, in what seems to others, the unreal. It removes that discontent which St. Ephrem describes, saying, that "in the monastery the demon sets before the imagination the desert, though there is sufficient solitude in the monastery, and in the desert the happiness of those who are in the monastery *." Flying to the desert, the discontented man," he says, “is no sooner there than, lamenting his monastery, he cries, alas! how well I was while with the brethren. Who hath seduced me? or what demon compelled me to see this horrible desert? where are many wild beasts, evil and terrible. What if I fall into the hands of barbarians, or of robbers, or of demons? which infest such deserts. How can I live here alone, who am accustomed to life in community +?" So it is with men intended for the common life in the world. They are made miserable even by the love of beauty. It is absent; but they have its figure before them, and every grace and rarity about it are, by the pencil of their memory, "In living colours painted on their heart." Catholic virtue, with all its exquisite sensibility, ever inspired by the hope of an ultimate and eternal union, is, in time, contented every where; its joys are not at the mercy of a wandering imagination of a passing shadow, as in those walks of the distracted, where the old poet truly says, a word often suffices to cause us dismay and exultation." 66 πολλά τοι σμικροὶ λόγοι ἔσφηλαν ἤδη καὶ κατώρθωσαν βροτούς Ι. Without that spirit, that hope, that presentiment, men will, * Adhortationes. + Paræneses ad Monach. Soph. Electra, 415. more or less, be self-tormentors; and modern literature and experience can abundantly attest it; for what numbers resemble, in regard to intellectual suffering, Swift, who, with all his jesting and merriment, did not know what it was to have a mind at ease, or free from the burden and torment of dark devouring passions, till, in his own words, "the cruel indignation that tore continually at his heart was laid at rest in the grave." But let us briefly observe in how many points the sweetness that results from the supernatural virtue can be traced by men who are as far from it, perhaps, as any can be. “What more laborious in this life," says the rule of solitaries, "than to burn with earthly desires? Or what more secure than to seek nothing of the vanity of this world? They who love this world are disturbed by its cares, but they who depart from it, begin already to taste that rest of future peace which they expect hereafter *." "What is sweeter or more pleasant to a man," says Peter of Blois, "than to despise the world, and to regard himself as above the world, and on the same secure elevation of his conscience to have the world under his feet? to see nothing in it which he desires or fears, nothing which he can lose, and in that incorruptible, uncontaminated inheritance, directing his eyes to heaven, to trample upon fallacious riches, pernicious honours, and damnable delights †." These are indeed sayings of the perfect relating to an experience of which common men may know little; but it is no less certain that every one, however exposed to the circumstances of an active and ordinary life, who seeks to approach towards happiness, must endeavour, more or less, to realize them in himself. True,"delicata est divina consolatio," as Robert d'Arbriselle says, "et non datur admittentibus alienam." But where is the misery of wanting what not alone the true and eternal, but even the shadowy and temporal happiness excludes? "With the love of God," says the rule of St. Columban, “ we have need of but few things, or rather but of one-pauca namque sunt necessaria vera, sine quibus non transigitur, aut etiam uno, quasi cibo juxta literam, puritate autem sensus indigemus per gratiam Dei, ut intelligamus spiritualiter, quæ sunt illa pauca caritatis Martha a Domino suggerantur §." quæ There are moments when poets of the world feel all this, and lament the passing away of such lofty inspirations. So one of them exclaims,— * Regula Solitariorum ap. Luc. Holst. Cod. Reg. ii. + Pet. Blesens. de Charitate Dei. Opus Quadripart. lib. ii. § Regula S. Columbani 4. "The visions all are fled, the car is fled Into the light of heaven, and in their stead What a happiness it is, when thrown in the midst of men, and of affairs, to have a specific for the sorrow of the imagination, which is so apt, as we already observed, to brood over the position in which one is placed, over the pleasures that are absent, over the scenes that one has no hope of ever again beholding! The Count de Maistre, writing to a certain countess, asks how she finds herself in the little town of Memel. "What a Berlin!" he continues, “I conceive that it must sadly wound your imagination. Hélas! il y a bien peu de choses dans l'univers qui soient encore à leur place." The Catholic virtue renders men content, let their place be where it may; and what is that result but a practical and incomparable benefit? "Those that scorn their nest," says the popular voice, "oft flie with a sick wing." Catholicity imparts cheerfulness as well as contentment. The Count de Maistre speaks of his endeavouring every evening, at St. Petersburg, in a banishment that involved his not having ever seen even one of his own children, to recover a little of that native gaiety which he has been able to preserve. "Je souffle," he says, sur ce feu comme une vieille femme souffle pour rallumer sa lampe sur le tison de la veille t." Catholicity, productive of supernatural and heroic virtue, enables men thus to be humanely, youthfully cheerful to the last. 66 66 Again, as we before remarked, to be catholically humble implies no want of truest pleasure. "Nam sicut superbi honoribus," says St. Gregory, “sic plerumque humiles sua despectione gratulantur." Joannes Major, speaking of one holy man, says, that he feared to lose the security of his poverty as much as greedy rich men dread to lose their perishable riches." Their dross but weighs them down, while his sublimed spirits dance in the air. We observed on a former road how the heart of youth at least naturally loves the habits of life which are excluded by pride and the affectation of a superior social position; and in this respect there are many who enjoy their minority to the last. "Pride, like an eagle, builds among the stars, *Lettres, &c. i. 13. +Ibid. Mag. Spec. 309. Humility is, therefore, found by experience to constitute a source of positive enjoyment. So also, unlike the generation of Romans whom Tacitus describes as "mæsti et rumorum avidi *,” to be indifferent to the news of the world, as Catholicism recommends, involves no unreasonable sacrifice for men who are not called on to conduct its affairs, since even the heathen poet, who sought to glorify the happiest life, expressly advises men to be so, saying, "Quid bellicosus Cantaber, et Scythes Divisus objecto, remittas Quærere +." Remark that class of the population which seems most cheerful and desirous of passing life joyfully, like the daughters of Oldrent, "that cannot live but by laughing, and that aloud, and nobody sad within hearing." What do any of these persons care for the news of the day? They are utterly indifferent to all the elaborate articles provided for the melancholy speculations of each hour, which cause such prolongation of countenance in the numerous tribe of self-tormentors who make journalism a profitable trade. The mere instinct of enjoyment, therefore, in this respect, brings men to the same point to which the high supernatural and heroic life conducts the virtuous. 66 re According to St. Ambrose, again, it is sweeter to be Catholically temperate, than to make use of the dispensations which are granted to relax discipline. "Dulcior est enim," he says, ligiosa castigatio quam blanda remissio." And the reason of this may be discovered if we remark, with Leibnitz, that the chagrin and pain which accompany a victory over the passions, turn, in some men, to pleasure, by the great contentment which they find in the living sentiment of the force of their mind, and of Divine grace. The ascetics and true mystics," he adds, "can speak of this from experience, and even a human philosopher can say something on it." That the specific act of forgiveness, too, is agreeable, no one who has ever practised it can doubt, 66 "Revenge, at first though sweet Bitter ere long, back on itself recoils." "Well might our Lord say, Quoniam onus meum leve est ;' * Hist. i. 4. + Od. ii. 8. Théodicée, iii. |