The Catholic World Volume I Part 39

Dante, however, was n.o.ble and Christian enough to keep his eyes open even to the faults of his own party, and he spared not even the heads of the Ghibellines, as Frederic II. and other n.o.ble and popular persons, if they seemed to him deserving of blame. Nor must we imagine that Dante really thought all those were in h.e.l.l whom he places there, any more than he thought the real pains of h.e.l.l were such as he described them: only the vulgar could believe this. Those persons were only such as in his eyes were guilty of mortal sins; and the punishments inflicted were such as his fancy conceived to be adequate to the guilt. But we must bear in mind that his judgments must always be received with caution when there is question of facts, persons, and circ.u.mstances connected with the opposite party; and we have the right to examine and correct the criticisms of Dante by the light of history. Dante, for instance, goes so far as to put in h.e.l.l even Pope Celestine, who, after governing the Church for six months, tired of the tiara, went into solitude; because, in the opinion of the poet, Celestine renounced the pontificate through timidity and weakness, and made way {278} for the hated Boniface, VIII. The Church, on the contrary, puts Celestine among the saints on account of his extraordinary virtues.

But let us now turn from the dark side of the picture, and from the weakness of the great man, to take a view of the fortunes of the _Commedia_ in the course of six centuries. We have already in the beginning of this essay spoken of the great number of editions, translations, and commentaries on the great work, and in this respect no other work can compare with it except the Holy Scripture and the Following of Christ. But these proofs of admiration and study of the Divine Comedy are not equally divided among the centuries, and the recent and renowned writer of Dante's life, Count Caesar Balbo, justly remarks that, at those periods in which an earnest religious and truly patriotic feeling pervaded the fatherland of the poet and Christian Europe in general, those proofs are to be found in greater number than when the knowledge and study of supreme truth had grown less, love of religion and country had died or gone astray, and the minds of men sunk in the earthly and the sensible. Thus, in the fifteenth century, after the invention of the art of printing, nineteen or twenty editions of Dante appeared; in the sixteenth century, forty; in the seventeenth, only three; in the eighteenth, thirty-four; in the nineteenth, up to 1839, over seventy, and perhaps up to the present year one hundred. This is a striking proof of the increasing love of the spiritual in our century, in spite of the great influence of materialism.

But in this age of surprises and contradictions, a new glory of which he had never dreamt has been added to Dante's name. For some time in Italy that political party which aims at the subversion of the existing order of things, and the establishment of a single republic or monarchy, and which finds in the papacy or States of the Church the princ.i.p.al obstacle to the carrying out of its plans, has made use of commentaries on the Divine Comedy, among other means, to spread its principles among the people. Hence, two Italian refugees, Ugo Foscolo and Rosetti, during their sojourn in England, undertook the dreary task of explaining Dante's poem in a purely political point of view, and with learning and wit they have attempted to prove that the poet was opposed to the temporal power of the pope, and the head, or at least a member, of a secret society.

In Italy, however, and in Germany, especially by the great critic, Schlegel, this theory has been refuted. It falls to the ground by the simple consideration of the fact, that if the Divine Comedy was as clear in every point as where he speaks against the popes of his time and their earthly possessions, no commentary on the poem would be necessary. Yet, no sooner was war against Rome proclaimed at Paris and Turin, than recourse was had to Dante, and an attempt made to conjure up his spirit as a partisan in the fight. Rosetti already occupies a chair in the Sardinian capital, from which he expounds Dante in the interest of Italian unity, and in Germany the secret societies applaud his course; so that, if in 1865 there be in Italy a celebration of Dante's six hundredth birthday, as in Germany there is of Schiller, we may expect to find the politicians make use of it to further their ends.

So then we have lived to see the day when Dante, the Ghibelline and fanatical adherent of the German empire; who was opposed to the temporal power of the pope only because it stood in the way of a universal secular monarchy; who invoked the wrath of heaven on the German Albert because he delayed coming to subjugate Italy; and who wrote the famous letter to the Emperor Henry VII., inviting him to come and chastise his native city; when that Dante, I say, has become the herald and standard-bearer of a party which calls itself the old national Guelph party, whose {279} watch-word is "Death to the Germans and foreign rulers," and which, like the ancient Guelphs, is aided by French soldiers in its struggle against the German emperors.

In spite of his Ghibelline proclivities, Dante was filled with lively faith, and he had so great a veneration for the power of the keys entrusted by Christ to Peter and his successors that even in h.e.l.l he bowed with respect before one of those who had borne them, and even in his narration of the arrest and ill-treatment of Boniface VIII., whom he hated and placed in h.e.l.l, he breaks out into the following strains:

"Lo! the flower de luce Enters Alagna; in his Vicar Christ?

Himself a captive, and his mockery Acted again. Lo! to his holy lip The vinegar and gall once more applied; And he 'twixt living robbers doomed to bleed.

Lo! the new Pilate, of whose cruelty Such violence cannot fill the measure up, With no decree to sanction, pushes on Into the temple his yet eager sails.

O sovereign Master! when shall I rejoice To see the vengeance, which thy wrath, well pleased, In secret silence broods?"

(Purg. xx. 85-97. _Carey's translation_.)

So we have lived to see the day when the author of the above lines is represented as the herald of a party which has treated so shamefully the gentle successor of Boniface VIII., Pius IX., whose only fault was to have opened the prison doors to his enemies, and recalled them from exile with too great indulgence. They have made him drink the chalice of humiliation to the dregs, and, leagued with a French despot, they renew in the Vicar of Christ all the insults heaped of old on the Saviour by the Roman soldiers, when, putting on him the mantle of purple and the crown of thorns, they mocked him, saying, "Hail, King of the Jews!" Dante was no such Christ-killer.

And what folly is it not to imagine Dante, the haughty aristocrat, whose pride of birth shows itself everywhere in his poem, a partisan of a faction which, like that which governed Florence during the middle ages, is made up of the rabble and of levelers, haters of all n.o.bility.

In another age, when it was not the principle of public life to have no principle at all, such contradictions as those of which we write would have been incomprehensible; but in our own century, in which truth wages an unequal conflict with falsehood, not so much because men do not know how to separate truth from falsehood, as because men find truth less useful for their purposes than falsehood, the conduct of the so-called national party in Italy is easily explained. But if Dante were to rise up from the grave, how strongly he would rebuke those who are making such an unwarrantable use of his name! He would quote for them, perhaps, as he does in many parts of his great work, an apt text of the Holy Scriptures; and none, probably, would come sooner to his mind than the following:

"Why have the Gentiles raged, and the people devised vain things?

"The kings of the earth stood up, and the princes met together, against the Lord and against his Christ.

"Let us break their bonds asunder: and let us cast away their yoke from us.

"He that dwelleth in heaven shall laugh at them; and the Lord shall deride them. Then shall he speak to them in his anger, and trouble them in his rage."

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MISCELLANY.

SCIENCE.

_Important Geological Discovery_.--Sir Charles Lyell, in his address to the British a.s.sociation a few months ago, mentioned the discovery of a fossil animal much more ancient than any previously supposed to exist. Heretofore, as is well known, an immense series of rocks below the silurians have been termed _azoic_, as exhibiting no remains of animal life; but this term must now be dismissed.

It is well known that a staff of competent geologists, under the direction of Sir William E. Logan, have been engaged for some years in a geological survey of Canada. The oldest rocks in that country are granite, described as upper and lower Laurentian, their thickness being 40,000 feet, with bands of limestone intervening. In one of these bands in the lower series of rocks, which are the most ancient, there were discovered, in 1858, certain flattish rounded ma.s.ses, which seemed to be of organic origin. These were examined under the microscope by Dr. Dawson of Montreal, who, from their structure, declared them to be _foraminifera_, similar in character, but by no means in size, to the _foraminifera_ living at the present day in vast mult.i.tudes at the bottom of the sea; and to this newly-discovered and wonder-exciting creature he gave the significant name _Eozoon Canadense_, or the Dawn-animal of Canada.

The _foraminifer_ of the present day is a microscopic creature; the _eozoon_ was enormous in comparison, about twelve inches diameter, and from four to six inches in thickness, presenting the general form of a much flattened globe. Its growth was by the process technically known as gemmation, or the continued development of cells upon the surface; hence, these cells form successive layers of chambers, separated by exceedingly thin walls or laminae of calcareous matter. They are now all filled with solid matter, mineral silicates, serpentine, and others; but sections or slices cut from the ma.s.s, and examined, show the form of the cells still perfect, and what is more remarkable, the very minute tubes (tubuli) by which communication was maintained from one to the other throughout the entire animal. Mr. Sterry Hunt, the chemist employed on the Canadian survey, is of opinion that the silicates and solid matters were directly deposited in waters in the midst of which the _eozoon_ was still growing, or had only recently perished, and that these solid matters penetrated, enclosed, and preserved the structure of the animals precisely as carbonate of lime might have done. Here, then, we have an example of fossilization, accomplished by reactions going on at the earth's surface, not by slow metamorphism in deeply-buried sediments.

Papers on this subject and one by Sir W. Logan himself--have been read before the Geological Society, and will shortly be published; and at a recent meeting of the Royal Society, a highly, interesting communication in further elucidation of the matter was made by Dr.

Carpenter, who has devoted himself for some years to the study of _foraminifera_. He confirms Dr. Dawson's general conclusions, and identifies among living _foraminifera_ the species which has most affinity with this very ancient dawn-animal. He makes out the identification in an ingenious way, resting his proof on the peculiar structure of the cell-walls, and of the minute tubuli by which, as before observed, communication between the cells was maintained.

Henceforth, we shall have to regard the silurian fossils as modern.

Since this discovery was made public, it has been ascertained that there are fossil remains of the eozoon in the serpentine rocks of Great Britain. The importance of this of course depends on the age of serpentine, and that is a question which geologists have not yet settled; but some of them are of opinion that the British serpentines are of the same age as the Laurentian rocks in which the Canadian eozoon was found. Pending their decision of the question, keen explorers are on the search for other specimens.

_Curious and Delicate Experiments_.--Dr. Bence Jones recently communicated to the Royal Society of Great Britain the result of a series of experiments by {281} which he had attempted to ascertain the time required for certain crystallized substances to reach the textures of the body after being taken into the stomach. In other words, he proposed to solve these problems: If a dose of medicine be given, what becomes of it, and does it arrive quickly or slowly at the parts for which it is intended? It is obvious, that if these questions could be accurately determined, medical men would have a better knowledge than at present of the action and progress, so to speak, of medicine within the body. Substances, when taken into the stomach, pa.s.s into the blood, which may be supposed to distribute them to all parts of the body. If, in ordinary circ.u.mstances, no trace of a particular substance can be found in a body, but is found after doses of the substance have been administered, it is clear that the doses are the source from which that trace is derived.

Lithium is a substance sometimes given as medicine. Dr. Jones gave half a grain of chloride of lithium to a guinea-pig, on three successive days; and, by means of the spectrum a.n.a.lysis, he found lithium in every tissue of the animal's body, even in the cartilages, the cornea, and the crystalline lens of the eye. In another experiment, the lithium was found in the eye eight hours after the dose had been administered; and in another, four hours after. In another, the lithium was found after thirty-two minutes, in the cartilage of the hip, and in the outer part of the eye. These cases show that chemical substances do find their way very quickly into the tissues of the body; and a similar result appears from experiments on the human subject. A patient, dying of diseased heart, took fifteen grains of nitrate of lithia thirty-six hours before death, and a similar quant.i.ty six hours before death. Lithium was afterward found distinctly in the cartilage of one of the joints, and faintly in the eye and the blood. A like result was obtained with a patient who had taken ten grains of carbonate of lithia five and a half hours before death. And to this Dr. Bence Jones adds, that he expects to find lithium in the lens of the eye after operation for cataract.

_Giant Trees of California_.--Some time ago, much regret was expressed that the giant trees (_Wellingtonia_) of California had been recklessly cut down. Their fall was a loss to the world. But Sir William Hooker has received a letter in which Professor Brewer, of the California State Geological Survey, reports that "an interesting discovery has been made this year of the existence of the big trees in great abundance on the western flanks of the Sierra Nevada. They abound along a belt at 5,000-7,000 feet of alt.i.tude for a distance of more than twenty-five miles, sometimes in groves, at others scattered through the forest in great numbers. You can have no idea of the grandeur they impart to the scenery, where at times a hundred trees are in sight at once, over fifteen feet in diameter, their rich foliage contrasting so finely with their bright cinnamon-colored bark.

The largest I saw was 106 feet in circ.u.mference at four feet from the ground, and 276 feet high.

"There seems no danger of the speedy extinction of the species, as it is now known in quite a number of localities; and, contrary to the popular notion, there are immense numbers of younger trees of all sizes, from the seedling up to the largest. There has been much nonsense and error published regarding them."

_Photographing the Interior of the Great Pyramid_.--Our readers may remember that some time last winter a distinguished English savant, Professor Piazzi Smyth, went out to Egypt for the purpose of taking photographic views of the interior chambers of the great pyramid. The impossibility of lighting these vast halls had hitherto proved an insuperable bar to the undertaking; ordinary methods of illumination seemed, if we may so speak, to make no impression upon the thick darkness. But with the discovery of the wonderful powers of the magnesium wire light, this difficulty was removed. Professor Smyth writes as follows to the London Chemical News; his letter is dated East Tomb, Great Pyramid, February 2d:

"We are settled down at last to the measuring; the chief part of the time hitherto (about three weeks) having been occupied in concert with a party of laborers, furnished by the Egyptian government, in clearing away rubbish from important parts of the interior, {282} and in cleansing and preparing it for nice observation. The magnesium wire light is something astounding in its power of illuminating difficult places. With any number of wax candles which we have yet taken into either the king's chamber or the grand gallery, the impression left on the mind is merely seeing the candles and whatever is very close to them, so that you have small idea whether you are in a palace or a cottage; but burn a triple strand of magnesium wire, and in a moment you see the whole apartment and appreciate the grandeur of its size and the beauty of its proportions. This effect, so admirably complete, too, as it is, and perfect in its way, probably results from the extraordinary intensity of the light, apart from its useful photographic property; for side by side with the magnesium light the wax candle flame looked not much brighter than the red granite of the walls of the room. ... Whatever can be reached by hand is chipped, and hammered, and fractured to a frightful degree; and this maltreatment by modern men, combined with the natural wear and tear of some of the softer stones under so huge a pressure as they are exposed to, and for so long duration, has made the measuring of what is excessively tedious and difficult, and the concluding what _was_, in some cases, rather ambiguous."

ART.

_Domestic_.--The National Academy exhibition will probably be open before our readers receive these pages; and from those cognizant of the internal arrangements of the new building, and of the preparations making by our resident artists, we learn that the collection will exceed in the number, and probably in the merit of the pictures, any of its predecessors. The make-shift character and unsuitableness of the rooms in which the Academy has of late years held its annual exhibitions, have deterred many of its most prominent members from sending in contributions, which they were satisfied could not be seen to advantage; and this sin of omission was so evident in the last two or three exhibitions, that one of the leading objects of the Academy--the improvement of public taste by the display of the annual productions of our best artists--seemed in danger of being defeated.

The new galleries, it is said, can exhibit to advantage more than fifteen hundred pictures, and a capacity so ample, in conjunction with the prestige attending the opening of the new building, ought to cover the walls to their fullest extent. The public will not be surprised then to learn that an unusual number of artists have been, and are still, busily applying the final touches to their works, in antic.i.p.ation of "opening day" (to borrow a phrase from the milliners); and it is to be hoped that the Academy, having now "ample room and verge enough" to satisfy fastidious members, may soon become the fostering abode of art which its projectors intended to make it. A slight foretaste of what the exhibition is likely to contain was afforded at the recent reception of the Brooklyn Art a.s.sociation, where an elaborate and effective work by Grignoux, ent.i.tled "Among the Alps," and several by Leutze, Gifford, Huntington, Stone, White, Hart, Beard, and others, were on view. A number of pictures destined for the Academy were also exhibited at the monthly social gatherings of the Century and Athenaeum clubs of this city in the beginning of April. We propose to give an extended notice of the new building and its art collections in our next number.

The inaugural ceremonies of the New York a.s.sociation for "The Advancement of Science and Art" took place at the Cooper Inst.i.tute on the evening of March 31st. One of the objects of the a.s.sociation is the collection and preservation of works of art, and one of the fifteen sections into which it is divided is devoted to the fine arts.

Amid the multiplicity of special branches, which the a.s.sociation proposes to investigate and promote, from jurisprudence and the prevention of pauperism down to chronology, the fine arts must necessarily receive but a limited share of attention; but even this, if guided by taste and intelligence, is better than the indifference to aesthetic matters which is too often characteristic of a commercial metropolis; and the a.s.sociation will find plenty of well-wishers, and, we trust, some who will add substantial aid to their sympathy.

Among the attractions of the Central Park will be a hall of statuary, now in the course of preparation in the old {283} a.r.s.enal building near the Fifth Avenue, which is not yet open to public inspection. It will contain, what ought to prove a boon to all students of form, a collection of casts from Crawford's princ.i.p.al works. The Park Commissioners have, in this instance, shown an enlightened enterprise which might be imitated by wealthy private individuals. A few bronze statues of American statesmen, soldiers, or authors, placed on appropriate sites in the park, would add greatly to its attractions.

And if it should be thought desirable to ill.u.s.trate a national era, what one more worthy than the memorable epoch through which we are now pa.s.sing, the termination of which will be coeval with the completion of the park?

A new group by Rogers, ent.i.tled "The Home Guard--Midnight on the Border," attracts throngs of gazers before the windows of Williams and Stevens's art emporium in Broadway. The story is naturally and effectively told. A mother and her daughter, the only inmates, probably, of some lonely farm-house, have been aroused from their slumbers by marauding bushwhackers, and tremblingly prepare to repel the a.s.sailants, or sell their lives dearly. The elder of the two females, with her body slightly poised on one foot, stands in att.i.tude of rapt attention, while mechanically c.o.c.king a revolver, her sole weapon of defence. The daughter, less resolute in expression and action, cowers at her side. As a work of art, it is perhaps inferior to the "Wounded Scout" or "One Shot More," which exhibit the artist's highest efforts in characteristic expression and the management of details; but it presents a vivid idea of a scene we fear only too frequently enacted along the border, and will speak to aftertimes of the horrors of civil war. The steady improvement which Mr. Rogers has shown in his groups, ill.u.s.trating the episodes of our great struggle, can be readily seen by an inspection of his collected works, the earliest of which were scarcely better than clever caricatures; and it is not surprising to learn that there is a demand for them in Europe, whither the artist himself proposes going during the present season.

Foreign critics may now obtain a correct notion of the outward aspects of the partic.i.p.ators in the war, if they cannot appreciate its motives or character. Mr. Rogers is at present engaged upon a group ent.i.tled "The Bushwhacker," which he will finish before his departure.

According to one of the daily newspapers it "represents a wife in the act of drawing away from her husband--an old, grizzled, and care-worn fighter--his gun, and at the same time appealing to him to leave his perilous vocation. The Bushwhacker clasps in his arms his little child, who is toying with his s.h.a.ggy beard. If we may judge from the half-relenting expression of his countenance, we can safely conclude that the wife will not sue in vain, although he still resistingly grasps his musket with one hand. The pose and execution of the figures are carefully attended to, and the work is one of the most spirited and successful of Mr. Rogers' productions."

Among other American artists who intend to visit Europe the present season, are Ives, the sculptor, and Haseltine and Dix, painters of coast and marine scenery. The last named gentleman four years ago forsook his profession, in which he had begun to attain some skill, to accept a place on the military staff of his father, Major General Dix, and now, with renewed ardor, resumes his pencil. He will study princ.i.p.ally along the Mediterranean coasts.

A very miscellaneous collection of pictures, containing a vast deal of rubbish, and a few good specimens of foreign artists, was disposed of at auction by Messrs. Leeds & Miner, in the latter part of March, at tolerably fair prices. The following will serve as examples: "Snow Scene" by Gignoux, $900 (quite as much as it was worth); "Lady with Flowers," by Pla.s.san, $750; "A Reverie," by Chavet, $850; "Evening Prayer," by E. Frere, $1,000; "The Alchemyst," by Webb, $380. A curious essay of Col. Trumbull in the perilous regions of "high art,"

ent.i.tled "The Knighting of De Wilton," fetched the moderate sum of $150. As an example of the style of composition and treatment affected by the painters who ill.u.s.trated Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery, it was both amusing and instructive. Fortunately for his reputation, the painter of "Bunker Hill" and the "Sortie from Gibraltar" did not often recur to Walter Scott for subjects.

Quite recently there has been on exhibition at Goupil's gallery a remarkable picture by the French artist Jean Leon Gerome, ent.i.tled _L'Almee_, which {284} may be thus briefly described: Scene, a dilapidated Egyptian Khan or coffee shop; in the foreground and centre of the picture a Ghawazee, or dancing girl, performing a striking but immodest dance, which consists wholly of movements of the body from the hips, the legs remaining stationary; a group of fierce looking and fantastically bedizened Bashi-Bazouks, sitting cross-legged on a divan, spectators of the performance; and in the background some musicians and an attendant or two. It would be almost impossible to over-praise the marvellous finish of this work, the skilful blending of the colors, the subdued yet appropriate tone, or the dramatic force of the composition. If these qualities were all that are demanded in a work of art, we might stop here; but when the subject is repulsive, they prove a source of aggravation rather than of pleasure, and few, we think, will deny that the scene depicted by Gerome, though ill.u.s.trating a peculiar and perhaps important phase of Oriental life, is one of too gross a character to subserve the purposes of true art.

A vast deal of sentiment has been wasted upon the "moral significance"

of pictures of this type. The less said upon that score, the better.