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النشر الإلكتروني

St John in the Apocalypse, with the signs and the wonders which prophets foretold should come to pass in the last days. Christ, on a throne encircled by rainbow glory, is seated in the midst of the assembled multitude of earth and heaven, who wait the coming doom. Round about the throne are the four mystic beasts and the elders and the angels of God. And they that sleep in Jesus rise to life eternal; they, too, who died in sin, awake and rise at the archangel's trumpet- but weighed in the balance, they are given over to everlasting torment, where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched. Nothing in the whole range of art is more appal ling than this literal rendering, this visible and tangible transcribing, even on the mercy-door, of that doom which shall make the earth to shake -nay, not the earth only, but also heaven. The fires wherewith Dante wrote, thunders like to which Milton spake, even denunciations which came as outpourings from vessels of wrath, have fashioned these rough-hewn stones into desperate vigour. "He who denies before men, him will I also deny before my Father and the holy angels." Christian art also denies him in the presence of the Church and in the assembly of the saints.

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The sacred and the legendary art which, as we have seen, encircles the History of our Lord,' ought to be used by each one of us as the means of high mental culture. This art is not only art it is religion it is poetry. At this sacred fountain fed from the sky, the modern painter and sculptor may quench the thirst for that divine knowledge which shall give to his works a spirit not of earth. On the banks of this stream may the Christian pilgrim, torn by the thorns. that lie in the way, find rest, and gather for his wounds many a healing herb; on its margin, too, shall the poet linger weaving garlands, and murmuring melodious songs; and as the river rolls onward to the sea, the sage walks by the swelling

wave while it mingles in the broad waters of essential truth and unclouded beauty. Furthermore, let us all remember as we partake of the benefits, that Christian art is not only a gift to past ages,-it is equally a promise reserved for present and future times. Firm is our persuasion that the day will come, though the signs of its advent are as yet but dimly seen, when Christian art shall reach to a majesty and a beauty which hitherto the world has not witnessed. For art, indeed, as for each human soul, there are prophecies yet unfulfilled. No coming work of the human hand or intellect will perish for lack of knowledge; but even at this present time, art is blighted and withered from want of faith-not from want of faith in dogmas dead, but from want of trust in truths which, living, are to genius a well of life. There is then, we say, reason to hope that the day shall appear when art will cast off the outer crust, which is of the earth, earthy, and be bright as the light, and pure as a fire kindled on an altar of sacrifice. Whether or not there shall come an outward millennium such as some men have curiously defined, we care not to inquire; but that there shall come in the progress of the human race a period when the love of the true, the beautiful, and the good, will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea, is for all who in the mean time watch and work a steadfast and a consoling persuasion. This is the hope and the prophecy which for art, awaiting like all things a final fruition, remain as yet unfulfilled. And of this at least we may be sure, that whensoever, in the language of the prophet, wisdom shall like the light of the sun be sevenfold, even as the light of seven days, then will Christian art, purged from dross and cleared from the fogs of superstition, wax in strength and loveliness, and shine. with clearer light just as it approaches nearer to the fountain of light.

CORNELIUS O'DOWD UPON MEN AND WOMEN, AND OTHER THINGS

IN GENERAL.

PART X.

FROM TURIN TO ROME vid FLORENCE.

THERE was a little French vaudeville which, some years ago, used to amuse the audiences of the Palais-Royal, and send them home laughing as they went over its drolleries. It was called 'Le Voyage à Dieppe.' The chief incidents of the piece revolved round a longpromised trip to Dieppe, which a Parisian shopkeeper had bound himself to make, to show his family the sea. It had become the daydream of their lives, and no subject could be discussed amongst them without its reference to Dieppe being duly weighed and considered.

The happy day at last arrives, and they start. It was before the time of railroads. A malicious friend has, however, bribed the coachman, and instead of taking the road to Dieppe, he passes the whole night in driving round Paris, and ends by depositing the weary and exhausted travellers at a small suburb, where, from the window of a mean-looking little inn, a tolerably extensive pond can be descried, duckweeded and dreary, the distance being closed by a low-lying swamp. Whatever disappointments the others may feel, the honest Bourgeois himself will admit of none, and he throws aside his window and exclaims, "Ah, que c'est beau de voir le mer!" and bursts forth with an apostrophe to the ever-restless sea that would have done honour to a Greek chorus. He rushes out to the beach to inhale the invigorating breezes of the ocean, and comes back with an appetite for oysters, which he naturally imagines to be the appropriate effect of sea air.

His enthusiasm and his blunders, his ecstasy and his mistakes, make up a most laughable picture, and all the time the audience can never perfectly divest themselves of a certain sympathy for one who, if he had really seen the sea, would have hailed the sight with such a racy and honest enjoyment.

Now you will perhaps wonder what it was that could have reminded me of this little bygone piece, and, in this age of prolific farce-writing, could have carried me back to the glories of some fifteen years ago. I will tell you. 'Le Voyage à Dieppe' was brought forcibly to my mind by the new Franco-Italian Treaty. It is said to be among the prerogatives of kings to avail themselves of all the varied acquirements of their subjects; and here we have the great Emperor of France not disdaining to take a hint as to his policy from a vaudevilliste of the "Palais." The new treaty may be briefly summed up thus: Within two years the French army is to be withdrawn from Rome. The Pope is to be left to his own devices, but Victor Emmanuel is not to molest him. A secret article, it is alleged, says that, to give his Holiness a stronger assurance of his safety, the Italians are to transfer the capital to Florence, and in this way recognise the fact that they are not to continue their pretensions to Rome, nor perpetuate the popular impulse to seize on the Eternal City.

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selves and their wives and daughters these three years back. Here they are driven round and round all night, and landed at last at Florence, that wily cabman, Louis Napoleon, as he wipes his forehead, asking them if they're not satisfied with the way he drove them, and half hinting that a little token of their gratitude would not be illtimed or ill-thought of.

A few, it is true, grumble that this is not Dieppe, and protest that the swampy pond of stagnant water is not the sea; but the majority overbear them, and ask who can know the place better than the coachman? He has pronounced that this is the spot they ought to be in, and of course none can gainsay him. If it was not that the vaudevilliste was before the Emperor, I should call the policy a grand stroke of genius; and, after all, plagiarism only diminishes and does not destroy the merit. Nothing short of genius, perhaps, could have adapted a practical joke to a nation, and turned the laugh against twenty-two millions of people. To tell them coolly, "Book yourselves, ladies and gentlemen; the coach is just ready to start: any passengers for Rome?" and then, just as coolly, to draw up on the Arno, and say "Here you are! step out;" and while they are straining their eyes to see the Coliseum or St Peter's, he slyly says, "It's a nice place, and you'll like it when you're used to it."

Geography, happily, is no requirement of a patriot. I remember, some years ago, hearing a very impassioned and even eloquent man addressing a crowd of people on the subject of the Bourbon cruelties in Sicily. Gladstone was mild compared to his descriptions of prison enormities; and he described instruments of torture with a refinement of horror that Alexandre Dumas himself might have envied. In the very climax of his eloquence, however, he turned abruptly towards me, a perfect

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Some one may have told the anecdote-perhaps I myself-to the Emperor; for certainly he has been trading boldly on this want of Italian education.

If there was no small cleverness in thus dealing with the people, the Emperor has shown fully as much adroitness in his treatment of the Pope. "When at Rome," says the adage, "do as the Romans ;" and he has followed the precept to the letter. He knew that one of the most distinctive traits of the Church, in its dealings with the wicked, is a most sensitive regard for human frailty. The Church, in fact, accepts humanity for what it is, not what it might be, and gently condoles. with sinners over their shortcomings, blandly hinting that a little virtue now and then, taken as what doctors call "an alterative," rather benefits the constitution, and contributes to longevity. That there should, however, be no shock to the system - nothing revulsive in the treatment-the Church issues what it calls indulgences— short leases of loose living, renewable sometimes on lives for ever; and by means of these, people may experiment whether they can or cannot divest themselves of the especial wickednesses which have hitherto made their lives so agreeable.

In this spirit has the Emperor decreed two years shall elapse before he withdraws from Rome. For two entire years his Holiness has got a plenary of every abuse of what Lord Palmerston called "the worst Government of Europe." For two years may the people be crushed with taxation, sunk in barbarism, and degraded by superstition. For two years De Merode may nurse his Brigands and baptise his Jews; and for two years may the wily Antonelli rig the market and gam

ble on the Stock Exchange. To the Pope, two years more of unrestrained malversation and misrule may seem short. Sitting there on a seat where these have been the privileges ratified by centuries of use, he may be disposed to think that this proceeding is almost summary; but I doubt if the Romans take this view of the case; and I rather suspect, if the truth were known, that they would prefer the "Plenary" should be shorter, and his Holiness obliged to take to responsible habits a little earlier than the year 1866.

indicating that the time was not, perhaps, very distant when Italians and Austrians might discover with what benefits they could be friends

It has been long since evident that Italy could not go on as she has done. She must either go back or go forward; either go on to completion and real unity by annexing Rome and Venice, or be satisfied to see the kingdom broken up and resolved into its former elements, or something resembling them.

This necessity all public men in Italy have frankly and freely recognised. It was not merely that the machinery of Government was working with a degree of wear and friction that destroyed half its power, but that to keep up the steam they were driven to burn whatever they could lay hands on, no matter how valuable or costly.

Italy was maintaining in her armed peace a force so far above her means, that war itself would have been less burdensome. As Austria was playing exactly the same game, the ruinous policy was not alone displayed in heavy imposts and a grinding taxation, but in the stagnation of trade consequent on inimical feeling and bad relations, in frontiers all but closed, and customhouses very little short of fortresses.

A system so injurious to both, as much the enemy of civilisation as of national wealth, could not fail to attract the attention of men of enlightenment both in Austria and Italy; and it was remarked that in the two countries expressions had fallen from men of mark and station,

how naturally their geographical position disposed to relations of trade and commerce, and how evident it was that a strong alliance of the two States would be one of the very strongest possible guarantees of European peace. When an able English diplomatist once suggested such a policy as the true one for Italy, based of course on the assumption that Austria would cede Venice to Italy, there was scarcely a man in Piedmont could comprehend what he meant. Now the policy makes converts every day. Men see that the French protection is the severest slavery that can be endured by a people. Men learn at last that French assistance, even when lent for an idea," is the costliest compact that a nation can make. France has strengthened Italy, because she wants or may want her.

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Now an Austro-Italian league, had it been possible, would not have entailed any such demands.

The policy of France was, however, always to prevent this good understanding, and to this end she managed always to put Austria in "the wrong," a matter never very difficult with a country which, since the death of Metternich, has fallen into the hands of the very smallest capacities of Europe.

So effectually did France play this game, and so thoroughly did she know how to play it, that when, at the moment of the outbreak of the last war in Lombardy, Cavour was disposed to break the peace the first, the Emperor interfered and said, "No; Austria must be placed in the position of the disturber of European peace: leave it to me, and she shall be."

Now, I have only gone back on these events to remind you that France has always pursued the policy of sowing distrust between the two countries; nor is there any

"accommodation" in all Europe would so derange her plans and damage her interests as an honest and loyal good feeling between Austria and Italy. I will not affect to say that the matter is easy to bring about, or that it would not require, not alone great ability, but time; but I will say this, that it was the intention of Cavour himself to have attempted it; and had he lived and done so, I am equally certain he would not have failed.

Symptoms of such a possible change in Europe are, however, not wanting even now; and I repeat, men of note and ability are disposed to think that by this union there would be for Italy at least two great and palpable advantagesa freedom of dependence on France, and, what is at this moment allessential, a possibility of diminishing her war expenditure.

The Emperor of the French is, however, not to be "countermarched" now as he had been four years ago by Cavour; he is up and stirring. By the Franco-Italian treaty, jealousy and distrust between Austria and Italy are re-established. Every one is alarmed, and no one

secure.

By stipulating that Italy shall exchange Turin for Florence as a capital, he alarms all those who believed that, with whatever change might come, they should go to Rome; and now, by insisting on Florence, they see, or think they see, an abdication of this great claim.

By announcing a withdrawal of the French army from Rome, he menaces the Pope with anything that his subjects may have in store for him. By the condition that non-intervention is for the future to be maintained, he declares that he will not permit Austria to come in; and thus in one brief, very brief, document he proclaims that nothing in the Peninsula is to be settled nothing assumed as permanent. What he may, can, or shall do in the future, is open to him in

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any shape, and to any extent. may sustain the temporal power, or abolish it he may unite Italy, or subdivide it; and as for Austria, he may maintain her in Venetia, and talk of the sanctity of treaties, or he may, and most probably will, proclaim the "solidarité of peoples," whatever that may be, and make war against Venice. Meanwhile the Imperial policy has had a great success. It has made Victor Emmanuel unpopular in the city where he was once adored; it has rendered the government of Italy a matter of the most extreme difficulty; and it has made the Pope's rule all but impossible!

We might think that he must be a great intellect who could work all these mighty results, if we did not remember that a very small pinch of white arsenic would spoil the largest basin of turtle. For the present I do not believe he has any fixed intentions; he has simply upset the chess-table, and while they are picking up the pieces he'll decide on his game.

The whole of the Napoleon policy in Europe seems based on an imitation of that well-known member of the Turf, who left a false betting-book on his dressing-table, and thus led every one that trusted it to back the wrong horses. Nobody ever yet knew on what horse he stood to win. He may at this moment be hedging against Victor Emmanuel, or secretly deciding to "scratch" the Pope.

He is even capable of bringing out that dark horse Austria, and declaring her the favourite when all the matches are made.

That the Italians have any especial reason for rejoicing, I certainly do not see. Florence is no more Rome than fleas are lobsters.

When a poor countryman of mine -how invariably it is an Irishman has to be brought in when one would illustrate the law's oppression! was once bound over to keep the peace towards all her Ma

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