on the brink of the lamentable vale-the dread abyss, that joins a thundrous sound of plaints innumerable. Dark, and deep, and thick with clouds o'erspread, their eyes might in vain have sought to explore its bottom, but would have discerned nought. What bitterness is expressed in that exclamation—

"There are words of deeper sorrow

Than the wail above the dead!"

What approximation to despair in that avowal of hope being subject to contingency, when it is said

"Circumstance, that unspiritual god

And miscreator, makes and helps along
Our coming evils with a crutch-like rod,

Whose touch turns hope to dust, the dust we all have trod.” *

What a contrast to the bright visions which cheer the way of those on earth who afterwards are blessed, when the poet says

-"Standing thus by thee

Other days come back on me

With recollected music, though the tone

Is changed and solemn, like the cloudy groan

Of dying thunder on the distant wind."

Such is the revelation which the modern poet and modern philosopher continually makes of the state of his own heart; and is it for such men to shrink from consulting the history of the ages of faith through fear of its inspiring them with melancholy? Alas! what deeper gloom can come upon this poor soul than that which already encompasses it?

"Dost thou not hear how pitiful his moan,

Nor mark the death which, in the torrent flood,
Swoln mightier than a sea, him struggling holds." ↑

Thus do these tender and elevated souls move along, thirsty, wandering, like those shades deprived of sepulture, and condemned to an eternal restlessness. They can find no place of repose or refreshment in the sterile desert of the world; they sigh, without ceasing, for some, I know not what, mysterious power, which they call liberty or progress, humanity or reason, a kind of liberating divinity, who they think must eventually prevail, and it is with this vain hope that they seek to console themselves.

The Catholic poet, in ages of faith, trained to communion with the holy, assiduous at the early sacrifice, and accustomed to walk unnoticed amidst the evening crowd of faithful which surrounds the divine altars to receive a benediction, hoped hereafter, in a future world, to consort for ever with the saintly

:

spirits he had seen on earth, and to join the choir which keeps eternal festival in heaven the genius of his song was that of one who is happy-who has no morbid peculiarities of thought or temper. The modern poet, nursed only amidst the wild and lonely scenes of nature, and familiar rather with the howl of winds, and the fall of mountain torrents, than with the hymn of saintly fervor, whose soul hath only known the sublime but sad delight of gazing on pathless glen and mountain high

"Listing where from the cliffs the torrents thrown,
Mingle their echo with the eagle's cry;"

though, having often felt how that sad loneliness loaded his heart, and how that barren desert tired his eye, when he would have wished to trace something that showed of life, though low and mean, yet, for the future, has no brighter hope, while gazing upon the ocean flood, but that it will be a pleasant thing to die

"To be resolved into the elemental wave,

Or take his portion with the winds that rave."

Such was the spirit of the chorus of Eschylus

"Oh ! that I could as smoke arise

That rolls its black wreaths thro' the air,
Mix with the clouds, that o'er their skies
Show their bright forms, and disappear;
Or, like the dust, be tost

By ev'ry sportive wind, till all be lost."*

And such is the spirit of the king of modern poets, in that most inhuman aspiration :

"I can see

Nothing to loathe in nature, save to be

A link reluctant in a fleshy chain,

Class'd among creatures, when the soul can flee,
And with the sky, the peak, the heaving plain,

Of ocean or the stars mingle, and not in vain.”t

The testimony of Palinurus, indeed, who had experience of this kind of dissolution, might have sufficed to show them how delusive were such anticipations.

The genius of melancholy must not be confounded with the melancholy of genius; but to the latter it is only the ages of faith that can lay claim. The former, the burden of Babylon, has been the lot of humanity in every period of the world's

* Supplices.

+ Childe Harold, III.

Eneid. VI. 362.

history, from the time when sin with vanity had filled the works of men. To this fact, there is express testimony in all ages; although, without doubt, many of these mourners from the effect of anticipations, having a certain infinite evil in life, might, like Niobe, have been imagined turned to stone on account of eternal silence in affliction-voiceless because so profound, of whom the Book of God affirmeth that he had stricken them but they had not sorrowed, that is, had not confessed their sorrow, yet had he brought down their heart through heaviness; for to walk sorrowful all the day long is the state of sin.

William Schlegel observes, that the conduct of the greatest portion of mankind who live confined within the monotonous circle of little insignificant occupations, can only be accounted for by the necessity which they feel for endeavoring to escape from that secret discontent which presses them down, as soon as the passions of their youth which made their life run like a rapid torrent, have become weak and motionless. Therefore these means of distraction are employed, which are all designed to put in motion their slumbering faculties, by offering to them light difficulties. O Christ! how deep and bitter is the mourning of these men when they say with Montaigne, I have seen the verdure, and the flowers, and the fruit of life, and now I behold the withering, the sear and yellow leaf: or, with Philolaches in the old play, "my heart bleeds when I consider what I am and what I was; that formerly no youth excelled more in gymnastic art, in throwing the quoit, the spear, and the ball, in the course, in the field, and that now I am nothing."* This mourning sounds like the lugubrious cry of the birds of night, not the sighs of the dove which represent the blessed mourning, and than which nothing is more calculated to inspire peace, recollection, and internal joy. The world's children professedly indeed pursue a life of pleasure and festivity, but if we can credit one who knew them well, their "mirth has less of play than bitterness."

"For many a stoic eye and aspect stern,

Mark hearts where grief hath nought to learn,
And many a withering thought lies hid, not lost,
In smiles that least befit who wear them most."

The

Truly when there is a penetrating eye this reflection will be often suggested. laugh of pleasure's children may remind one of that inhuman saying of the heathen Demænetus, "may all that wish me evil laugh so!"

Such mourning was a thing impossible to mix with blessedness Nay, with spirits under its influence, as Shakespeare says in Hamlet, the devil is very potent, making use of those phantoms and images of memory, which, according to Aristotle,‡ melancholy persons are most apt to discern, in order to abuse and damn them. These are they who do violence to themselves and to their own blessings, wasting their talents in reckless lavishment and sorrowing there, where they should dwell in joy ;§ wearing their days in wilful woe, and despising the

*Plautus Mostellaria, 1, 2. + Byron. † Περὶ αἰσθησέως. § Dante Hell, XI.

grace of their Creator, sitting like the Harpies in the Hell of Dante, and wailing o'er the drear mystic wood; whose melancholy springs from no other source, as ancient writers well have shown, but the passions which they have not learned in their youth to master.* This is the mourning which mixes with the inextinguishable laughter of the suitors of Penelope, of whom Homer says, that while revelling with great triumph on the eve of their destruction, though shouts of merriment resounded through the hall, yet at intervals their eyes were filled with tears and their minds with sorrow :

ὄσσε δ' ἄρα σφέων

δακρυόφιν πίμπλαντο γόον δ' ωΐετο θυμός.

Theocly menus regards this as an omen, and predicts their destruction. Thus all mourning, all poetic melancholy, is not the presage of a blessed end.

Beati qui lugent. But not those who mourn with the world, or who weep through vanity at feigned misery. St. Augustin knocked his breast for having wept on reading the death of Dido in Virgil, who slew herself on being abandoned by her lover Æneas; because he knew well that such tears were without any emotion of charity, and consequently that they were not in any degree agreeable to God, who demands from us only tears of love, in confirmation of which judgment the world itself can be adduced in evidence, for its poets affirm that the wretched are malevolent and envious.

far, indeed, then is such mourning from the blessing promised. It is the sorrow which dwells forever upon the cursed strand that every man must pass who fears not God. Let us move onward, for faith has no entrance here.

* Christine de Pisan, Livre des fais et bonnes meurs du sage Roy Charles V. chap. x. Plautus Bapteivei, III. 4.

CHAPTER II.

OW we are arrived at the point where our inquiries must return to the domain of history in order to ascertain what was the character of mourning during the ages of faith, and how far the woe of the human heart was affected by the supernatural condition of man's life in relation to the knowledge conveyed in the mysteries of religion. In the first place then a retrospect of Christian history will prove, that the mourning commended from the mountain was understood to be something very different from the spirit which we have been observing-the mourning of animal men, the mourning of Babylon, without charity and without peace. Sooth, to hear the admonitions of those whose writings influence mankind during the ages of faith, and to mark their countenances as described so graphically in ancient books, one might at first suppose that the blessing had not been pronounced in their estimation upon the state of mourners; but upon that of those who always rejoiced, and who, like the followers of old Pythagoras, considered sadness a vice and a disgrace to be hidden from the eyes of men, for if it ever came upon a Pythagorean, he was to withdraw himself from all observation, and set about removing it by using the remedies prescribed by his discipline, remedies which indeed could hardly have been efficacious, but the recourse to which proves the just abhorrence in which melancholy was held. What was the character of mourning during the ages of faith? Truly one may feel at a loss how to answer this question; for the first impressions consequent upon a study of their history, as far as it is comprised in the thoughts, and doctrines, and manners of men, would lead us to conclude, that the race of mourners had disappeared; and that within the promised land, nothing was ever found but smiles and joy. Where shall we look for mourners? We may conceive at once that the task is difficult; for how can there be melancholy where the Catholic religion sways, which ever invigorates men with hope that leads to blissful end? How great is that hope, and how it doth flourish in them, even its adversaries admit ; for the only question with them, they say, is to account for the exemption of Catholics from despair and trouble of mind!* Hope excludes sadness, and the church militant hath in every age armed all her sons with hope. Let us however, investigate more narrowly.

Burton, who wrote a professed treatise upon melancholy, would direct us to

*Burton Anat. of Mel. III. 4.