The Actress in High Life Part 14

"We know the great heads of their offense--their perversion of gospel truth--their teaching for doctrine the commandments of men. There is no need to trace every error through all its dark and crooked windings. Truth is one: that G.o.d has allotted to his elect. Errors are manifold, and sown broadcast among the reprobate."

"Still it must matter much what degree and kind of error falls to our lot," Lady Mabel suggested.

"Perhaps so," Moodie answered, with doubting a.s.sent. "Yet if we are not in the one true path, it may matter little which wrong road we travel."

"Well, Moodie," said she, "however much you may narrow down your Christian faith, you shall not hedge in my Christian charity, and deprive me of all sympathy for the Pope in this his day of persecution."

"Whatever the holy father's errors may have been," said L'Isle, "we may now say of him, a prisoner in France, what was said of Clement the Seventh, when shut up in the Castle of St. Angelo, '_Papa non potest errare_.'"

"That is Latin, Moodie," said Lady Mabel, "and to enlighten your ignorance it may be rendered, 'The Pope cannot err.'"

"Why that is nothing but the doctrine of the Pope's infallibility,"

exclaimed Moodie, indignantly; "and saying it in Latin cannot make it true." And he dropped behind the party.

Gazing on the number of religious houses and habits around them, Lady Mabel said: "Monastic life must hold forth strong allurements. The monks seem to find it easy to recruit their ranks."

"Many motives combine to draw men into the church," L'Isle answered. "Devotion may be the chief; but, in this climate and country, the love of ease, and the want of hopeful prospects in secular life, exercise great influence. Moreover, one monk, like one soldier, serves as a decoy to another. Did you ever see a recruiting sergeant, in all his glory, among a party of rustics at a village alehouse? How skillfully he displays the bright side of a soldier's life, while hiding every dark spot. The church has many a recruiting sergeant, who can put the best of ours to shame. Many a recruit, too, like our young friar, is caught very young."

They had now turned into another street, and L'Isle, stopping the party, pointed out a large building opposite to them.

"What a curious mixture of styles it presents," said Mrs. Shortridge.

"What a barbarous mutilation of a work of art," exclaimed Lady Mabel.

"This is, or rather was," said L'Isle, "the temple of Diana, built before the Christian era, perhaps while Sertorius yet lorded it in the Peninsula, and made Evora his headquarters. The architect," continued he, looking at it with the eye of a connoisseur, "was doubtless a Greek. Time, and the mutilations and additions of the Moor, have not effaced all the beauty of this structure, planned by the genius and reared by the hands of men who lived nineteen centuries ago. The rubble work and plaster wall that fills the s.p.a.ce between those columns, so requisite in their proportions--the pinnacles which crown the structure in place of the entablature which has been destroyed, are the work of the Moors, who strove in vain to unite in harmony their own style of building with that of their Roman predecessors.

Enough remains to show the chaste, beautiful and permanent character of the edifices of that cla.s.sic age."

After gazing long with deep interest on this monument of the palmy days and wide-spread sway of the Roman, Lady Mabel said: "Let us see if there be not still left within the building some remains of a piece with so n.o.ble an exterior."

"Unhappily," answered L'Isle, "all is changed there. Moreover, though the sacrifices are continued, they are no longer conducted with the decorum of the heathen rites. The temple of the chaste G.o.ddess is now the public shambles of the city, defiled throughout by brutal butchers, with the blood and offals of the slaughtered herd."

"Is it possible!" Lady Mabel exclaimed. "Have these people sunk so low? Is so little taste, learning, and reverence for high art left among them, that they can find no better use for this rare memorial of the past."

"No people have proved themselves so dest.i.tute of taste, and of reverence for antiquity, as the Portuguese," replied L'Isle. "They seem to have found it a pleasure, or deemed it a duty, to erase the footprints of ancient art. Monuments of all kinds, beautiful and rare, and but lightly touched by the hand of time, have been ruthlessly destroyed here. To give you a single instance: A gentleman of the family of the Mascarenhas, who had traveled in Italy, and acquired a taste for the arts, collected from different parts about the town of Mertola, twelve ancient statues, with a view to place them on pedestals in his country-house. But he dying before completing his intention, these admirable productions of Roman art, the venerable representations of heroes and sages, were hurled into a lime kiln to make cement for the chapel of St. John. And such acts of Vandalism have been perpetrated throughout Portugal."

"The barbarians!" exclaimed Lady Mabel. "The ignorance they condemn themselves to, is scarce punishment enough for the offence."

"It is difficult to say how much they have destroyed," continued L'Isle. "But, beside the voice of history, proofs enough remain that Evora was, in the days of Sertorius, of Caesar, and in after-times, a favorite spot with the Romans. This temple before us, mutilated as it is, and the aqueduct, though repaired in modern times, are still Roman; and no ancient monument in Italy is in better preservation than the beautiful little castellum which crowns its termination. Even where Roman buildings have been destroyed we still see around us the stones with ancient and cla.s.sic inscriptions built into new walls. The plough, too, of the husbandman still at times turns up the coins of Sertorius, bearing a profile showing the wound he had received in his eye, while the reverse represents his favorite hind leaning against a tree."

"How completely do these things carry us back to ancient times, and make even Plutarch's novels seem verities of real life," said Lady Mabel. "These same Romans, whom we read of and wonder at, have indeed left behind them, wherever they came, foot-prints indelibly stamped on the face of the country."

"They did more," said L'Isle, "wherever civilization extends, they still set their marks upon the minds of men."

"How barbarous seem the Moorish buildings, which we still see here and at Elvas," said Lady Mabel, "compared with these monuments of a yet earlier day."

"The Moors had a style of their own," said L'Isle. "Indifferent to external decoration, they reserved all their ingenuity for the interior of their edifices. Stimulated by a sensuous religion and a luxurious climate, they there lavished whatever was calculated to delight the senses, and accord with a sedentary and voluptuous life.

They sought a shady privacy amidst sparkling fountains, artificial breezes, and sweet smelling plants; amidst brilliant colors and a profusion of ornaments, seen by a light sobered from the glare of a southern sun. Numberless were the luxurious palaces the Moors reared in Portugal and Spain. The Alhambra yet stands a model of their excellence in the arts; although many of its glories have departed, its walls have become desolate, and many of them fallen into ruin, though its gardens have been destroyed, and its fountains ceased to play. Charles V. commenced a palace within the enclosure of the Alhambra, in rivalry of what he found there. It stands but an arrogant intrusion, and is already in a state of dilapidation far beyond the work of the Arabs. In them the walls remain unaltered, except by injuries inflicted by the hand of man. The colors of the painting, in which there is no mixture of oil, preserve all their brightness--the beams and wood work of the ceilings show no signs of decay. The art of rendering timber and paints durable, and of making porcelain mosaics, arabesques, and other ornaments, began and ended in western Europe with the Spanish Arabs. But perhaps the most curious achievement attributed to them is, that spiders, flies, and other insects, shunned their apartments at all seasons."

"What!" exclaimed Lady Mabel, "had they attained that perfection in the art of building? Could they exercise those hordes of little demons, lay a spell upon them and turn them out of doors? Had you told me this yesterday I would have been less impressed by it. But, after last night's ordeal, I venerate the Moor. Almost I regret the expulsion of his cleanly superst.i.tion, since it has carried with it into exile so rare an art."

Mrs. Shortridge, too, seemed fully to appreciate the value of the lost art, and said, "these Moors must indeed have been a very comfortable people."

"And they crowned their comfort in this world," said L'Isle, "by inventing an equally comfortable system for the next."

"Is it not strange," said Lady Mabel, gazing on the building before them, "that the production of two races, each so skillful, should be so utterly incompatible. Cla.s.sic and Saracenic art, both beautiful, united make a monster."

"Not so strange," L'Isle answered, "as the simplicity of the Mohammedan faith, amidst all that is fantastic in arts and letters--a grotesque architecture, a wondrous alchemy, the extravagant in poetry and the supernatural in fiction; or the purity of cla.s.sic art, characterized by simplicity and proportion, yet drawing its inspiration from a wild and copious mythology, made up of the sportive creations of fancy."

"They were a wonderful people, these Romans, as even this obscure corner of Europe can witness," said Lady Mabel, her eyes dwelling on the beautiful colonade, and tracing out the exquisite symmetry of the shafts, and the rich foliage of the Corinthian capitals.

"Were these Romans Christians?" asked Moodie, who had hitherto looked on in silence.

"No," she answered, "they worshipped many false G.o.ds."

"Then they were just like all the Romans I have known," said he dryly, and turned his back on the temple.

"Come," said Mrs. Shortridge, "let us take Moodie's hint, and look for something else worth seeing."

As they continued their walk, L'Isle remarked, "In many a place in the peninsula we find a Roman aqueduct, a Moorish castle, and a Gothic cathedral standing close together, yet ages apart. How much of history is embraced in this? We have just been gazing upon the mouldering remains of two phases of civilization, which were at their height, one, while our forefathers were yet heathen and almost savage, the other, while they were but emerging from a rude barbarism. We should never forget that this peninsula was the high road which arts and letters traveled on their progress into Western Europe, and to our own land."

"We are much indebted to letters and the arts for the unanimity with which they came on to us; for certainly," said Lady Mabel, looking round her, "little of either appears to have loitered behind. Every object around us makes the impression of a country and a people who have seen better days; and you cannot help wondering and fearing where this downward path may end."

"The history of humanity is not always the story of progress," said L'Isle; "one nation may be like a young barbarian, his face turned toward civilization, gazing on it with dazzled but admiring eyes; another, a scowling, h.o.a.ry outlaw, turning his back on human culture and social order."

"Your young barbarian," said Lady Mabel, "makes the more pleasing picture of the two."

"Are there your h.o.a.ry outlaws?" exclaimed Mrs. Shortridge, as a party of beggars from the door of the Franciscan church hobbled toward them, and beset them for alms.

"Oh, no!" said Lady Mabel, "they are angels in disguise, tempting us to deeds of charity;" and with the devout air of a zealous daughter of the one true church, she distributed sundry small coin among them. "Come, Moodie," she exclaimed, "I know your pocket is never without a store of sixpences, those _canny_ little dogs, that often do the work of shillings. Seize the occasion of doing good works, of appropriating to yourself a meritorious charity; for charity covers a mult.i.tude of sins. Lay up some treasure in heaven without loss of time."

The beggars, on this hint, surrounded Moodie; but he, repudiating such perversion of Scripture doctrine, shook them off with little ceremony. And the beggars' instinct saw, in his hard, indignant face, no hope of alms.

"If you will give nothing, at least buy something," said Lady Mabel; "that fellow bawling at you _pelus almas_, is offering snuff for sale; and the love of snuff, at least, is common ground to Scot and Portuguese."

Thus urged, Moodie paid liberally for a package, and was putting it in his pocket, when Lady Mabel exclaimed, "You do not know, Moodie, what a charitable and Christian deed you have done. Every thing is done in Portugal _pelo amor de Deos e pelas almas_. That fellow is employed by the priests to sell snuff _pelas almas_, and all the profits of the trade go to release souls from purgatory."

"Purgatory!" exclaimed Moodie, "I will not be tricked into countenancing that popish abomination;" and he hurled the package back to the man, who gladly picked it up, and turned to seek a second purchaser.

As they walked on toward the church of the Franciscans, Mrs.

Shortridge said, "You need not fear a scarcity of objects of charity, Lady Mabel, for poverty seems rife in Evora."

"Yet, from the number of churches and monasteries, there must be much wealth," Lady Mabel answered. "Probably, most of the property is in their possession, and we may expect to see in their shrines and altars a gorgeous display of their riches."

"You will be disappointed in that," said L'Isle. "Evora has pa.s.sed too lately through the hands of the French, too systematic a people to do things by halves. Their emperor is more systematic still. On taking possession of Portugal, his first edict from Milan imposed a war-contribution on the country of one hundred million of francs, as a ransom for private property of every kind. This being somewhat more than all the money in the country, allowed a sufficiently wide margin for spoliation, without making private property a whit the safer for it; the imperial coffers absorbed this public contribution, leaving the French officers and soldiers to fill their pockets and make their fortunes as they could."

"But what was there left to fill their pockets with?" Lady Mabel asked.

"There must have been a plenty left," said Mrs. Shortridge. "One does not know the wealth of a country till you plunder it. Even some of our fellows, though they came as friends, still continue occasionally to pocket a useful thing. The officers cannot put a stop to it altogether, do what they may."