Part 90 (2/2)
A few days after the archbishop of Paris and his vicars had set the example of renouncing their clerical character, a rector from a village on the banks of the Rhone, followed by some of his paris.h.i.+oners, with an offering of gold and silver saints and chalices, rich vestments, &c.
presented himself at the bar of the convention. The rector, a thin venerable-looking man, with gray hairs, was ordered to speak.
”I come (said he) from the village of ----, where the only good building standing is a very fine church: my paris.h.i.+oners beg you will take it, to make an hospital for the sick and wounded of both parties, they being both equally our countrymen. The gold and silver, part of which we have brought to you, they entreat you will devote to the service of the state, and that you will cast the bells into cannon, to drive away its foreign invaders.
For myself, I came with great pleasure to resign my letters of ordination, of induction, and every deed and t.i.tle by which I have been const.i.tuted a member of your ecclesiastical polity. Here are the papers; you may burn them, if you please, in the same fire with genealogical trees and patents of n.o.bility. I desire, likewise, that you will discontinue my salary; I am still able to support myself by the labour of my hands, and I beg you to believe, that I never felt sincerer joy than I now do in making this renunciation. I have longed to see this day! I see it, and am glad.”
When the old man had thus far spoken, the applauses were immoderate. The rector did not seem greatly elated with these tokens of approbation: he retired back a few steps, and thus resumed his discourse:--
”Before you applaud my sentiments, it is fit you should understand them; perhaps they may not entirely coincide with your own. I rejoice in this day, not because I wish to see religion degraded, but because I wish to see it exalted and purified. By dissolving its alliance with the state, you have given it dignity and independence. You have done it a piece of service; a service which its well-wishers would perhaps never have had courage to render it, but which is the only thing wanted to make it appear in its genuine beauty and l.u.s.tre. n.o.body will now say of me, when I am performing the offices of religion, 'It is a trade; he is paid for telling the people such and such things; he is hired to keep up a useless piece of mummery.' They cannot say this, and therefore I feel myself raised in my own esteem, and shall speak to them with a confidence and a frankness, which before this I never durst venture to a.s.sume. We resign without reluctance our gold and silver images, and embroidered vestments, because we never have found that looking upon gold and silver made the heart more pure, or the affections more heavenly; we can also spare our churches, for the heart that wishes to lift itself up to G.o.d, will never be at a loss for a place to do it in: but we cannot spare religion, because, to tell you the truth, we never had so much occasion for it. I understand that you accuse us priests of having told the people a great many falsehoods. I suspect this may have been the case, but till this day we have never been allowed to inquire whether the things which we taught them were true or not. I cannot but hope, however, that the errors we have fallen into have not been very material, since the village has in general been sober and good; the peasants honest, docile, and laborious; the husbands love their wives, and the wives their husbands; they are fortunately not too rich to be compa.s.sionate, and they have constantly relieved the sick and fugitives of all parties, whenever it has lain in their way. I think, therefore, what I have taught them cannot be so much amiss.
”You want to extirpate priests: but will you hinder the ignorant from applying for instruction, the unhappy for comfort and hope, the unlearned from looking up to the learned? If you do not, you will have priests, by whatever name you may order them to be called; but it is certainly not necessary they should wear a particular dress, or be appointed by state letters of ordination. My letters of ordination are my zeal, charity, and my ardent love for the children of the village: if I were more learned, I would add knowledge; but, alas! we all know very little: to a man every error is pardonable, but want of humanity. We have a public walk, with a spreading elm-tree at one end of it, and a circle of green around it, with a convenient bench. Here I shall draw together the children that are playing round me: I shall point to the vines laden with fruit, to the orchard, to the herds of cattle lowing round us, to the distant hills stretching one behind another; and they will ask me, how came all these things? I shall tell them all I know; what I have heard from the wise men who have lived before me; they will be penetrated with love and adoration!
They will kneel; I shall kneel with them; they will not be at my feet, but all of us at the feet of that good Being, whom we shall wors.h.i.+p together, and thus they will receive within their tender minds a religion.
”The old men will come sometimes, from having deposited under the green sod one of their companions, and place themselves by my side: they will look wistfully at the turf, and anxiously inquire,--Is he gone for ever?
Shall we soon be like him? Will no morning break over the tomb? When the wicked cease from troubling, will the good cease from doing good? We will talk of these things: I will comfort them; I will tell them of the goodness of G.o.d; I will speak to them of a life to come; I will bid them hope for a state of retribution.
”You have changed our holidays; you have an undoubted right, as our civil governors, so to do: it is very immaterial whether they are kept once in seven days, or once in ten; some, however, you will leave us, and when they occur, I shall tell those who choose to hear me, of the beauty and utility of virtue, and of the dignity of right conduct. There is a book out of which I have sometimes taught my people; it says we are to love those who do us hurt, and to pour oil and wine into the wounds of the stranger. In this book we read of Christ Jesus: some wors.h.i.+p him as a G.o.d; others, as I am told, say it is wrong to do so; some teach that he existed before the beginning of ages; others, that he was born of Joseph and Mary.
I cannot tell whether these controversies will ever be decided: but, in the mean time, I think we cannot do otherwise than well in imitating him--for I learn that he loved the poor, and went about doing good.”
Addenda to VESUVIUS.--See page 441.
A grand eruption of Vesuvius took place on Sunday night, Feb. 24, 1822. It continued for several days. The following is an extract from a private letter, dated Naples, March 8, 1822.--
”Towards the evening of Tuesday, February the 26th, as appearances promised a good night's work, we set off from Naples to view the operations nearer; the road to Resina was covered with people going and returning, as if a fair had been in the vicinity. When we reached the spot where strangers are on common occasions surrounded by guides, and a.s.ses, and mules, to conduct them up to the mountain, we found that no animals were to be procured, and it was with difficulty we could get a stupid old man for a _cicerone_, who rendered us no other service than carrying a torch. The ascent was thronged with people, some pus.h.i.+ng on eagerly to the object of their curiosities, and others returning, and discussing what they had seen. Far below San Salvator we saw the stream of fire rolling along a wide hollow, and approaching the path by which we were going up: it was then, however, at a considerable distance, and its course was very slow. On reaching the hermitage, we refreshed ourselves as well as the crowd there a.s.sembled would permit; we then continued our journey, and approached the lava, which was chiefly formed by the eruption of January, 1821. We found it about thirty feet wide; it was not liquid lava, but consisted of ashes, ignited stones, and old ma.s.ses of volcanic ejections, swept away by the present eruption, and heated again. These lumps, rolling over each other, produced a strange clinking noise. Some of them were of a very great size; and the whole stream, though descending a steep cone, moved but slowly.
”Beyond this princ.i.p.al stream, midway up the cone, was an opening, whence very large stones and other burning matters were continually thrust out.
This mouth fed a scattered stream, beyond which was another narrow stream, proceeding like the princ.i.p.al one from the crater. They both united with the main body in the deep hollow below, and rolled on towards the road which leads from Resina up to the hermitage. The mult.i.tude of the spectators standing by the sides of the burning river being seized with astonishment, we, with a great many of the more adventurous, determined to ascend the cone; we therefore pa.s.sed a little to the left of the great stream, and began to scramble to the deep loose cinders and ashes which cover this part of the mountain, and render it at all times a most fatiguing climb. A little path or track formerly existed, in which the guides laid ma.s.ses of lava to facilitate the mounting, but it was just in that line that the present eruption descended, and we were in consequence obliged to go up over the sand and cinders, in which we frequently stuck up to our knees, and, at every three steps, lost one on an average. After a most fatiguing toil of an hour and a half, we found ourselves, with a few others, on the edge of the grand crater: hence the _coup d'oeil_ was terrifically sublime; the flames rushed out of the mouth, and threw themselves in the air in a broad body to the elevation of at least a hundred feet, whilst many of the fiery stones flew up twice that height.
Sometimes the flames fell back into the mouth of the crater, and then burst out again, as though impelled by a fresh impulse, like the blast of a bellows. In their descent, some of the stones and lumps of cinder returned into the mouth, but the greater part fell outside of the flames, like the jets of a fountain.
”While we were standing on the exposed side of the crater, very intent in observation, all of a sudden the volcano gave a tremendous roar. It was like the crash of a long line of artillery, and was instantly succeeded by such a discharge of stones as we had never before seen. At the same moment, the wind, which was very high, gave an irregular gust, which directed a great part of the stones towards the place where we were posted. Hence our situation was for a minute or two very perilous; but there was no shelter near, and we stood still, looking at the descending shower which fell around us. We, however, happily sustained no other injury than a short alarm, and having some ashes dashed in our faces by stones which fell near us. Two or three gentlemen who were ascending the cone after us, were not quite so fortunate, for many of the stones falling outside of the ridge, rolled down the side with great velocity, loosening and carrying with them lumps of cold lava, &c. some of which struck those persons on the legs with great violence, and nearly precipitated one of them headlong to the foot of the cone.
”After this, we thought we had seen enough, and turned to go down. The descent is as easy as the ascent is difficult; the cinders and ashes sliding away beneath the feet, nothing further is necessary than to step out, the quicker the better, to keep one's equilibrium, and to avoid the fixed or large stones and pieces of lava. We were not more than ten minutes in reaching the point whence it had taken us an hour and a half to mount. In coming down, we were struck with the strange appearance of the torches of companies ascending and descending; they formed a pale wavering line from Resina to the hermitage; and thence to the cone, they were scattered about in thick and fantastic groups. On reaching the hermitage, we found it so crowded, that we could not enter. The large flat around was covered like a crowded fair, by people of all nations, and of all ranks, from the beautiful and accomplished countess of Fiquelmont, wife of the Austrian amba.s.sador, to the Austrian sergeant and his wife, who had come to see the blazing mountain. Numbers of people had come from towns and villages below, with bread and wine, and fruit and aqua-vitae, all of which articles seemed in very great demand. The motley scene was illuminated by the bright silvery moon, and the red towering flames at the summit of the volcano. We took some slight refreshments, and repaired homewards in the midst of as merry groups as ever returned from scenes of festivity and joy.
”When we got lower down, we found that the lava had approached very near to the road, and had already seized upon a fine vineyard, which was blazing very brilliantly. After our retreat, we learned that the lava traversed the road. On Wednesday, the 27th, the eruption was in a great measure tranquillized; still, however, crowds of people continued going up the mountain; and an Austrian officer, who had come from Caspua to see it, was unfortunately killed on the ridge of the cone, by a large stone striking him on the head. On Thursday scarcely any thing but smoke issued from the crater, and it has continued from that time in the same peaceful state.”
ANAGRAMS.
In ”The Book of Curiosities,” even that mechanical, yet curiously fortuitous species of wit, called the _Anagram_, must not escape notice.
It can scarcely be necessary to premise, that anagram, or metagram, is the dissolution of a word into its letters, as its elements; and then, by a new connection of them, making some perfect sense, applicable to the person or thing named. As there are some modern ones of this sort, exhibiting astonis.h.i.+ng coincidences, we shall here subjoin a selection of the best:--
LO I DRESS, _Soldiers_.--'TIS YE GOVERN, _Sovereignty_.--SPARE HIM NOT, _Misanthrope_.--GREAT HELPS, _Telegraphs_.--NO MORE STARS, _Astronomers_.--NO CHARM, _Monarch_.--MARCH ON, _Monarch_.--COMICAL TRADE, _Democratical_.--BEST IN PRAYER, _Presbyterian_.--A JUST MASTER, _James Stuart_.--TO LOVE RUIN, _Revolution_.--OH POISON PITT, _Th'
Opposition_.--HONOR EST A NILO, _Horatio Nelson_.--A BEAR UPON 'T, _Buonaparte_.
The unhappy Sir Edmundburie G.o.dfry, having dared, as a magistrate, to take some legal depositions against the Papists, was, by three of those fellow-subjects, Green, Berry, and Hill, waylaid, and shockingly murdered, in 1678, upon which was then written,
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