To these words the child answered, "What! do you take heaven for yourselves, and leave me carth? this is not an equal division." And accordingly, somes day after, he also followed his brothers and entered into the monastery. This is one of the many instances to which I alluded in the beginning, as furnishing an insight into the character of an entire generation of men ; for the occurrence of a scene like this assuredly indicates a very remarkable state of society.

But to return to history. "In the days of Hugues Capet, king of France," says an ancient chronicle, "Aderal was born at Troyes, of noble parents, who were both devout; he was a child of a sweet disposition, so that he no sooner ceased to be an infant than he conducted himself like a little saint. He studied not under masters who teach only worldly civilities, but under pious priests and clerks of the church of St. Peter, at Troyes. He remained with these good men, who, seeing in him so many indexes of a holy life, had great care of him, and loved him for his docility and promptitude to correspond with the grace of God. He was soon made an acolythe in the church of Troyes, in the discharge of which office he gave content and edification to every one. On the holy day of Easter, and during its octave in the church of Troyes, it is the custom for the two acolythes, who carry the lighted tapers before the celebrating bishop, to be presented with these tapers after the office, to do with them what they like. The holy youth on this occasion, receiving the gift of the tapers along with his companion, after the pious rites of the day, sold them, and with the money gave alms to the poor, and procured for himself a small reliquary to contain some bones of saints to wear on his person. Such was the piety of this innocent soul, offering its first fruits, and all that it possessed, to God."* It was not alone the young men who were regularly received into houses of religion and churches, that were employed to serve at the divine altars. The faithful were one family, and little son was trained sufficiently to exercise, upon occasion, this angelic ministry, to which he might be invited even where he was himself a stranger, and to offer to God in the morning that silver voice, the pure and limpid echo of his youthful soul. His sweet and gracious image was in the mind of other children of the town, who, as the poet says, would pray that they might be good, though little like him whom they saw each morning in the temple. Benignity and grace they seemed to learn even from the movements that the holy ritual prescribed, as in beholding acolythes, who in choirs make their artless bow, and then give each other the kiss of peace. In the beautiful poem of Friedolin, by Schiller, the page is represented stopping on his way to enter a church, where he finds a priest going to the altar, and there being no acolythe arrived, he instantly offers himself and serves the mass. This was the first employment of each day for numbers of young men living in towns in every rank of society from the highest to the lowest. The amia

* Desguerrois, Hist. du Diocèse de Troyes, p. 247.

every

ble and learned Rollin, rector of the University of Paris, was the son of a cutler, and already exercising his father's trade as his apprentice, when a good Benedictine monk of the Blancsmauteaux, whose mass he was in habits of serving, observed his happy dispositions, and obtained a subscription which enabled him to commence his studies in the college of Duplessis. What St. Bonaventura has written on the duty and happiness of those young men who serve at mass, in which holy function they are associated in the occupation of angels, in which they represent the assembled faithful, in which they have the honor of waiting upon the minister of Jesus Christ, and the inestimable advantage of having an especial part in his memento, will convey an idea of the sanctification and joy which were reserved for the innocent zeal of youth.*

Here it may be well to make a short digression, for the purpose of observing how these customs and rules of discipline respecting the young, ordained in the society of Christians, recommend themselves to the natural reason and piety of men ; the judgment and dictates of which, emanating from that implicit faith in Divine Providence which St. Thomas ascribes to many of the Gentiles,† ought not to be disdained or rejected merely because we must be at the trouble of disengaging them from the detestable errors and corruptions of Paganism, which had misapplied and perverted them. This is a distinction, the justice of which no one who has had any moderate degree of instruction will contest, and therefore I pass at once to establish the truth of our proposition.

The Athenian, in Plato, lays it down as a maxim, that no one has received a sufficient education, who is a xópɛvTor; and that whoever has been initiated, as it were, in the choir, in music, and in gracious movements of the body, is sufficiently educated; which may be taken to show the necessity of educating the external senses, or rather of the soul being imbued with that Divine harmony which will even impel the body, by prescribed movements, to exercise its external homage. Scipio Africanus, who vanquished Hannibal, and all the power of Carthage, and who was so devout that he never began any public or private affair of consequence, without first consulting heaven and imploring its assistance, had, from his early youth, according to the report of St. Augustin, been educated in the temples. If, for a moment, we turn our eyes from the dark side of the ancient philosophy, and consider only the testimonies which it bore to truth, we may be permitted to contemplate with a certain pleasure the following passage in the tragedy of Ion, where Euripides has represented, in a most gracious form, the ideal of youth devoted to the service of heaven. The innocent boy comes forth from the temple, and says, "Now shines upon the earth the bright chariot drawn. by the four horses of the sun; the stars fly from this fire of heaven into the sacred night; and the insurmountable cliffs of Parnassus being lighted up, receive the lustre for mortals. The smoke of the dry myrrh now flies to the roof of

*St. Bonavent. de Reformat. Hominis exterior. Cap. x.

+ II. 2 q. 2. Art. 7.

Apollo: but as for me, I go to discharge the labors which I have undergone continually from a child, with branches of laurel to sweep the sacred pavement of Apollo's temple, and with my arrows to drive away the little birds which might injure it. Beautiful is the labor, O Apollo, to serve in thy house, in reverence of the prophetic seat: glorious the task to minister with my hands to gods, to the immortals and not to mortal men. Never shall I be weary in performing such well-reported labors; for Apollo is to me a father, and I will praise him, who nurtures me. O Pæon, Pæon, mayest thou be happy, happy son of Latona. But I cease this labor of the laurel branches, and now from golden vessels I scatter the pure wave which gushes from Castalian spring. O that I may never cease thus ministering to Apollo, or ceasing, may it be for a happy end. Ah! see, now the winged tribe are leaving the cliffs of Parnassus. Dare not to approach this cornice, or these golden roofs. I will overtake thee with my arrows, O thou herald of Jupiter, thou that excellest in thy talons the strength of birds. Here comes the swan, too, rowing towards the temple. Will you not, then, move elsewhere that purple foot of thine? The lyre of Apollo which accompanies thy song will

not be able to save thee from my arrows. Turn thy wings, then, and seek the pools of Delos. If thou disobeyest me, thou wilt ensanguine thy melodious chants. See, see, what new bird is this which comes near? Is it about to deposit sticks and straw as a nest for its young ones under the sheltering cornice? The flight of my arrows shall keep you at a distance. Will you not be persuaded? Go and rear your children on the banks of the Alpheus, or in the Isthmian grove, that the temple and precincts of Apollo may not be injured. I fear to kill you, you who are the messenger of gods to men, but I labor in the service which I owe to Apollo, and I will not cease ministering to those that feed me."* In this brilliant picture, we see, that even under the deplorable error of Pagan superstition, human reason was able to recognize the beauty of devoting the youthful heart to what is divine, and of employing little inoffensive hands to minister in the service of heaven. In the passage following, we may observe, how it could inculcate the happiness resulting from such a condition. When Xuthus claims his son Ion from the priests, and desires him to leave the temple of Apollo, in which he had spent his first youth as the servant of the god, after encouraging him with the prospect of the wealth and honors which await him in the magnificent Athens, observing what passes in the mind of the youth, he breaks off suddenly, and says, "Are you silent? Why do you turn your eyes upon the ground and seem absorbed in care, as if sadness were to succeed your late joy?" And Ion replies, by saying, that things when near do not appear in the same form as when seen from afar; that he foresees many difficulties, dangers, and certain evils, which will arise to him at Athens; and then he continues, "But you will answer, perhaps, and urge that riches can compensate for all this; but I do not love to

* Ion, 103. 155-180.

hear those empty speakers who can hold their happiness in their hands, and have no labor. May there be to me only a moderate supply of what is necessary to preserve me from suffering the pains of want. But, O my father, as to the good things which I enjoy, in this temple, hear me speak. In the first place, I have that dearest blessing, leisure from being importuned by men, and at the same time a moderate degree of society. No evil person ever drives me from the way involving me in the intolerable calamity of having to yield to the base: but I spend my days in prayer to the gods, or in ministering joyfully to those of mortals who rejoice. And some arrive, and some depart, and it is sweet to be new to those that are themselves new; and besides this, what should be the object of all men's prayers, the law of this place and nature both conspire to present me in innocence to the Deity. Considering, these things, O my father, I esteem it better for me to be here than to remove thither. Suffer me, therefore, to enjoy my condition, for it is not more grateful to rejoice in great things than to possess those that are moderate with sweetness."* His conclusion resembles that of Joas with Racine,

This temple is my country; I know no other.

But to return to the ages of faith, those really golden ages which combined every thing that the imagination of man could conceive of beauty with all that is pure, and holy, and Christian. The discipline and institutions for the young, with respect to studies and learning, will be a subject for our consideration in a future place. It only remains, for the present, to notice the circumstance often presented in ages of faith, so affecting to all who are not perfectly rooted in the love of eternal things, because in their view the misconceptions of sense necessarily represent it invested with a certain melancholy,—of the complete detachment of the youthful heart from creatures, not from vile disdain, but through the love and foretaste of higher good. The annals of the middle age can furnish many such instances, combined too with wild and romantic imagery, in which the youth, whom but for a short date the world possesses, has already emancipated himself from the attractions of this earthly life, and thereby become fully convinced of its nothingness, so that "he prevails on himself to engage in its concerns only on account of the connection between those concerns and the one permanent eternal principle which religion lays open to him." And in this placid resignation of the young, this mild angelic constancy which allows grief and pain, amidst the hard labors and sufferings of their lonely way, to wear only the garb of tenderness, this inherent love which has not time to put forth more than blossoms, there is a certain poetic tone of sadness and of joy, a certain plaintive sweetness of ideal humanity which is gazed upon with an intense interest by such persons as are capable of discovering those more exquisite tones which, both in the natural and intellect

* Ion, 590

ual world, are always the most unobtrusive and subdued. This is one of the many tender mysteries to be found in the writings connected with ages of faith.

"How often," exclaims the unknown writer of the Manual ascribed to St. Augustin, "how often, when a youth, have I said without thinking that it was also the sentiment of a Christian soul: How this world is burdensome to me! What I behold makes me sorrowful; the conversation which I hear on all sides on such mere vanities as the good things of this life, inspire me with a profound disgust. O sweet felicity to behold the saints, to be with the saints, to be one's self a saint, to enjoy the presence of God, to possess God for all eternity!" "Behold a boy," says St. Jerome, "instructed in all the honest arts of the world, having riches and dignity, who despising all that he possessed, hath gone to inhabit, as a paradise, an island in the midst of a dangerous sea, whose rough cliffs and naked rocks, and solitude are sufficient to inspire terror! There, alone, nay not alone, for Christ is his companion, he beholds the glory of God, which the Apostles themselves beheld not, excepting in the desert. He sees no towered cities; his limbs are clothed in hideous sackcloth: around the island rages continually an insane sea, which reechoes through the caverns of the hollow shore; no blade of grass grows there, no shrubs cast any shade; steep rocks enclose it as a prison. He, secure, intrepid, and armed with the Apostle, hears God while he reads of things divine, speaks with God while he prays to him, and perhaps, like St. John, beholds somewhat while remaining on the island."

In the middle ages there is repeated allusion to saintly youths, pure and innocent in life and every virtuous lore, who wander in poverty, or tend a flock upon the wild mountains, till by accident they are discovered by some holy man, who finds them possessing souls that are like temples in which divine and ineffable mysteries are celebrated. Will you hearken to an old chronicler, who does as one that weeps and tells his tale? Arnulph was a child of God, a native of Lotharingia, and of a most innocent and holy life; as yet a youth, faithfully serving God in fear and justice, growing more and more to perfection, like the palm which increases daily, like the lily which sends forth a sweet odor, he grew up a plant destined for the celestial courts. But as by the Divine grace he disposed himself to shine as a light in the house of God, to give light to all that entered it, he applied himself to the studies which were necessary. Already he began to cast beams which were lighted by divine love, when hearing what the Apostle says, that as long as we are in the body we are travelling from God, that we walk by faith and not by sight, and that we have not here a remaining city, but that we seek one to come he understood this life to be a journey, not his country; a prison of captivity, and not a hall of freedom; a state of banishment, and not the kingdom of supernal habitation. So the good youth undertook a journey beyond the Moselle, into Celtic Gaul, for the sake of praying and of frequenting the suffrages of the saints there. What business he discharged in that country, what commerce he had with them, what pious tears and holy sighs accompanied his prayers, it is not