The recent action of the party headed by the mendicants had added to the bitterness of feeling against them among the followers of Wiclif and the members of the liberal party, as one may call it, in general. Party hatred and exasperation alone could account for the tone adopted by the Wiclifites, more especially by Nicholas Hereford, the most interesting personage in the entire movement next to Wiclif himself, with whom he shares the glory of the English translation of the Bible. It was he who had formerly charged the mendicants with being the authors of the peasants' revolt, and who now declared the death of Archbishop Sudbury to be a righteous vengeance for his persecution of Wiclif. But the chancellor of the university himself, as well as the proctors of the year, was favorably disposed toward the new doctrines; and after appointing a divine named Repington, known to have recently become a convert to them, to preach the university sermon on Corpus Christi day, had openly congratulated him upon a discourse in which he had extolled the persecuted itinerant preachers as holy priests. The spirits of the Wiclifites rose accordingly, the archbishop's mandate remained for a time unpublished, and even after a stern reprimand administered by him in person to the chancellor in London, the latter ventured to silence an anti-Wiclifite lecturer at Oxford. In the end, however, the chief offenders-Hereford, Repington, and Aston-were summoned before the primate, and after a series of manoeuvres they were excommunicated as contumacious, and the books of Wiclif and Hereford were prohibited in the university. Immediately all the followers of Wiclif, with the sole exception of Hereford, submitted. Of him the story went that he hereupon journeyed to Rome, where the pope confirmed the condemnation of the articles upheld by him, but commuted the sentence of death under which he lay into one of imprisonment for life. A fortunate chance set him free in the year 1385, and two years later he is mentioned as the chief itinerant preacher among the Lollards. Clearly, whatever the value of his message, he was of the stuff of which martyr-apostles are made. Wiclif himself remained for the present untouched. It can not have been dependence on the favor of the great which encouraged him to hold his head erect. The Duke of Lancaster, when appealed to, had declined to interfere on behalf of the Oxford Wiclifites. He had warned Wiclif of the danger which he was running, and had then virtually withdrawn his countenance from the obstinate doctor. In truth, he had resolved to keep peace with the Church; the era of that Lancastrian policy was beginning which was so successfully carried on by John of Gaunt's son and grandson. But with or without the countenance of princes, Wiclif went on in the path which he had chosen. In all probability he had for some time withdrawn to Lutterworth, where, from his pulpit or his desk, he was giving forth no uncertain sound as to the doctrines which he held, and the institutions which he assailed. As one looks through those of Wiclif's writings which have been printed-often uncertain in date, but for the most part appearing to belong to this last period of his life-one seems to recognize a desire on his part to deliver his testimony concerning all the distinctive practices as well as the great doctrine of the Church of Rome with which he felt himself at issue. To the abuse of confession and to the use of sanctuary-a social necessity in Wiclif's times to the institution of celibacy and to the whole system of the canon law, his cavil or his reproof addressed itself; and the spirit of Puritan Protestantism seems to pervade his objections to the loud intoning of the services, to the ringing of the chimes, to the images in the churches, and to the pilgrimages which joined folk of all ranks and classes together like a flock of children making holiday. There is no positive proof that he ever again quitted his quiet parsonage. He is stated to have been summoned before a provincial synod presided over by Archbishop Courtenay at Oxford in November, 1382, but it is doubtful whether he ever made his appearance before it. At all events, no recantation was made by him there, nor is it proved that any such had ever been demanded. The English Confession on the Eucharist, which has come down to us in connection with this occasion, is not a recantation. When in the same month of November the Parliament met at Westminster, he addressed to it a Complaint (the genuineness of this memorial seems, at least in substance, indisputable), which is one of the most noteworthy documents in the history of his career, and reads almost as if it had been devised so as to impress upon men's minds the main subjects of Wiclif's endeavors as a reformer. It is a strange picture to imagine to one's self, that of the Oxford doctor in his country parsonage penning these manifestoes, the self-contained boldness of which utterly contradicts the assumption that he had at any time retracted or recanted. He had never stood so much alone; in Hereford his Jerome had been cut off from him; but other less combative but equally faithful friends held out by him to the end, in particular John Horn and John Purvey. Very little is known concerning his latest days. The story of his journey to Bohemia is of course a pure fable, and obviously one of no very early date. About a year before his death he was (as there is no longer reason to doubt) cited before Pope Urban, who from his refuge at Naples repeated the summons which Pope Gregory's death had rendered nugatory. The language of the curious paper called a "Letter to Pope Urban," which is a declaration by Wiclif of adherence to his impugned opinions, can not be held to decide the question whether there was an actual summons and a formal refusal. "If," he writes, "I could travel in my own person, I would with good-will go to the pope. But God has needed me to the contrary, and taught me to obey God more than man.' A tract by Wiclif "On Frivolous Citations," however, contains a passage which can hardly be interpreted otherwise than as a personal reference: "Thus saith one who has been cited before this Court who is lame and feeble, that a royal prohibition prevents him from going, because the King of Kings obliges and strongly wills him not to go." It should be remembered, then, in honor of Richard II., that he refused to give up his great subject to the tender mercies of the Curia. Already, as this passage implies, Wiclif felt that he had fallen into the hand of a Higher Power. truth, he had been a paralytic for two years before his death. On Innocents' Day (December 28), 1384-not, as his adversaries joyfully asserted, on the festival of St. Thomas à Becket (December 29), "against whom he had grievously offended by hindering men from going on pilgrimage to Canterbury"-he was smitten by a new stroke, while hearing mass in his church at Lutterworth. Three days afterward he died. His remains were left at peace, till, in consequence of the anathema pronouneed by the Council of Constance thirteen years previously, about the year 1427 zealous hands tore his bones from their resting-place, reduced them to ashes, and cast these into the river. Fuller's eloquent comparison of the spread of Wiclif's doctrine to the dispersion of his ashes is well known; and it is true that while at home the spirit of conservatism, fostered at once by bigotry and by policy, prevailed over his influence, his teaching was spread into foreign lands, whence it was to return to England above all through the medium of that academical life in which his activity had found its earliest sphere. The biography of Wiclif may be studied and his character criticised from many points of view besides that of his importance in the history of religious doctrine. I have here necessarily spoken of him as a man of action; and when he is regarded as such, his most salient feature seems to be resolution, coupled with a kind of hardness, in part, no doubt, the offspring of intellectual pride. "Since," he writes, "there are few wise men, and fools are without number, the assent of the greater part of mankind to an assertion only goes to show that is folly." Neither Wiclif's nature nor his training was that of a flatterer of the multitude; and to a manyheaded movement like the revolt of the villeins, he must in any case have remained a stranger. Yet it was to the people that the work of his life appealed. The University of Oxford was forced to cast out in his followers the most admired of her sons; and of his political friends and patrons the mightiest drew away from him. There remained the people, whom his wandering priests had stirred by their simple preaching, in whose hands he had not scrupled to place "God's law," to whose reasoning powers his own English writings confidently In addressed themselves. The appeal, we know was made too soon: neither the class which made the rebellion of 1381 nor the classes which overcame it were ready in his sense to liberate themselves. But it was Wiclif's singular fortune to die free, and, though persecution awaited the followers whom he left behind him, to achieve for himself what most assuredly his efforts helped in the end to accomplish for his nation. IT FARMER FINCH. T was as bleak and sad a day as one could well imagine. The time of year was early in December, and the daylight was already fading, though it was only a little past the middle of the afternoon. John Finch was driving toward his farm, which he had left early in the morning to go to town; but to judge from his face one might have been sure that his business had not been successful. He looked pinched and discouraged with something besides the cold, and he hardly noticed the faithful red horse as it carefully made its way over the frozen ruts of the familiar road. There had lately been a few days of mild weather, when the ground had had time to thaw, but with a sudden blast of cold this deep mud had become like iron, rough and ragged, and jarring the people and horses cruelly who tried to travel over it. The road lay through the bleak country side of the salt-marshes which stretched themselves away toward the sea, dotted here and there with hay-cocks, and crossed in wavering lines by the inlets and ditches, filled now with grayish ice, that was sinking and cracking as the tide ran out. The marsh-grass was wind-swept and beaten until it looked as soft and brown as fur; the wind had free course over it, and it looked like a deserted bit of the world; the battered and dingy flatbottomed boats were fastened securely in their tiny harbors, or pulled far ashore as if their usefulness was over, not only for that season but for all time. In some late autumn weather one feels as if summer were over with forever, and as if no resurrection could follow such unmistakable and hopeless death. Where the land was higher it looked rocky and rough, and behind the marshes there were some low hills looking as if they were solid stone to their cores, and sparingly overgrown with black and rigid cedars. These stood erect from the least to the greatest, a most unbending and heartless family, which meant to give neither shade in summer nor shelter in winter. No wind could overturn them, for their roots went down like wires into the ledges, and no drought could dry away the inmost channels of vigorous though scanty sap that ran soberly through their tough, unfruitful branches. In one place the hills formed an amphitheatre open on the side toward the sea, and here on this bleak day it seemed as if some dismal ceremony were going forward. As one caught sight of the solemn audience of black and gloomy cedars that seemed to have come together to stand on the curving hill-sides, one instinctively looked down at the level arena of marsh-land below, half fearing to see some awful sacrificial rite or silent combat. It might be an angry company of hamadryads who had taken the shape of cedar-trees on this day of revenge and terror. It was difficult to believe that one would ever see them again, and that the summer and winter days alike would find them looking down at the grave business which was invisible to the rest of the world. The little trees stood beside their elders in families, solemn and stern, and some miserable men may have heard the secret as they stumbled through the snow praying for shelter, lost and frozen on a winter night. If you lie down along the rough grass in the slender shadow of a cedar and look off to sea, in a summer afternoon, you only hear a whisper like "Hush! hush!" as the wind comes through the stiff branches. The boughs reach straight upward; you can not lie underneath and look through them at the sky; the tree all reaches away from the ground as if it had a horror of it, and shrank from even the breeze and the sunshine. On this December day, as the blasts of wind struck them, they gave one stiff, unwilling bend, and then stood erect again. The road wound along between the seameadows and the hills, and poor John Finch seemed to be the only traveller. He was lost in thought, and the horse still went plodding on. The worn buffalo-robe was dragging from one side of the wagon, and had slipped down off the driver's knees. He hardly knew that he held the reins. He was in no hurry to get home, cold as it was, for he had only bad news to tell. Polly Finch, his only daughter, was coming toward home from the opposite direction, and with her also things had gone wrong. She was a bright, good-natured girl of about twenty, but she looked old and care-worn that day. She was dressed in her best clothes, as if she had been away on some important affair, perhaps to a funeral, and she was shivering and wholly chilled in spite of the shawl which her mother had insisted upon her carrying. It had been a not uncomfortable morning for that time of year, and she had flouted the extra wrap at first, but now she hugged it close, and half buried her face in its folds. The sky was gray and heavy, except in the west, where it was a clear cold shade of yellow. All the leafless bushes and fluffy brown tops of the dead asters and golden-rods stood out in exquisitely delicate silhouettes against the sky on the high road-sides, while some tattered bits of blackberry vine held still a dull glow of color. As Polly passed a barberry bush that grew above her she was forced to stop, for, gray and winterish as it had been on her approach, when she looked at it from the other side it seemed to be glowing with rubies. The sun was shining out pleasantly now that it had sunk below the clouds, and in these late golden rays the barberry bush had taken on a great splendor. It gave Polly a start, and it cheered her not a little, this sudden transformation, and she even went back along the road a little way to see it again as she had at first in its look of misery. The berries that still clung to its thorny branches looked dry and spoiled, but a few steps forward again made them shine out, and take on a beauty that neither summer nor autumn had given them, and Polly gave her head a little shake. "There are two ways of looking at more things than barberry bushes," she said, aloud, and went off with brisker steps down the road. At home in the farm-house Mrs. Finch had been waiting for her husband and daughter to come, until she had grown tired and hungry and almost frightened. Perhaps the day had been longer and harder to her than to any one else. She had thought of so many cautions and suggestions that she might have given them both, and though the father's errand was a much more important one, still she had built much hope on the possibility of Polly's encounter with the school committee proving successful. Things had been growing very dark in Mr. Finch's business affairs, and they had all looked with great eagerness toward her securing a situation as teacher of one of the town schools. was at no great distance, so that Polly could easily board at home, and many things seemed to depend upon it, even if the bank business turned out better than was feared. Our heroine had in her childhood been much praised for her good scholarship, and stood at the head of the It district school, and it had been urged upon her father and mother by her teachers, and by other friends more or less wise, that she should have what they called an education. It had been a hard thing both for her father to find the money, and for her mother to get on without her help in the house-work, but they had both managed to get along, and Polly had acquitted herself nobly in the ranks of a neighboring academy, and for the last year had been a pupil in the Normal School. She had been very happy in her school life, and very popular both with scholars and teachers. She was friendly and social by nature, and it had been very pleasant to her to be among so many young people. The routine and petty ceremony of her years of study did not fret her, for she was too strong and goodnatured even to be worn upon or much tired with the unwholesome life she lived. It was easy enough for her to get her lessons, and so she went through with flying colors, and cried a little when the last day arrived; but she felt less regret than most of the girls who were turned out then upon the world, some of them claiming truthfully that they had finished their education, since they had not wit enough to learn anything more, either with schoolbooks in their hands or without them. It came to Polly's mind as she stood in a row with the rest of the girls, while the old minister who was chief of the trustees gave them their diplomas, and some very good advice besides: "I wonder why we all made up our minds to be teachers? I wonder if we are going to be good ones, and if I shouldn't have liked something else a great deal better?" Certainly she had met with a disappointment at the beginning of her own career, for she had seen that it was necessary for her to be within reach of home, and it seemed as if every school of the better class had been provided with a teacher. She had been so confident of her powers and mindful of her high standing at the Normal School that it seemed at first that a fine position ought to be hers for the asking. But one after another her plans had fallen to the ground, until this last one, which had just been decided against her also. It had never occurred to her at first as a possible thing that she should apply for the small town school in her own district; to tell the truth, it was a great downfall of pride to the family, but they had said to each other that it would be well for Polly to have the winter at home, and in spring she could suit herself exactly. But everybody had felt the impossibility of her remaining idle, and no wonder her heart sank as she went toward home, knowing that she must tell them that another had been chosen to fill the place. Mrs. Finch looked at the fire, and looked out of the window down the road, and took up the stocking she was knitting and tried to work at it; but every half-hour that went by doubled her uneasiness, and she looked out of the window altogether at last, until the fire was almost burned out, and the knitting lay untouched in her lap. She was a tall, fine-looking woman, with a worn, well-featured face, and thinnish hair that had once been light brown, but was much faded and not a little gray in these later years. It had been thought a pity that she married John Finch, who had not half so much force as she, and with all her wisdom and affection and economy every year had seemed to take away something from them, leaving few gifts and gains in exchange. At first her pride and ambition, which were reasonable enough, always clung to her husband's plans and purposes; but as she saw year after year that he staid exactly in the same place, making little headway either in farming or anything else, she began to live more and more in her daughter's life, and looked eagerly to see her win her way and gain an honorable place, first in her school life, and afterward as a teacher. She had never dreamed beforehand of the difficulties that had assailed Polly since she came home the head of her class in June. She had supposed that it would be an easy thing for her now to find a good situation in a high or private school, with a capital salary. She hated to think there was nothing for her but to hold sway over the few scholars in the little unpainted school-house half a mile down the road, even though the girl, who was the very delight of her heart, should be with her so much more than they had expected at first. She was a kind, simple-hearted, good woman, this elder Mary Finch, and she had borne her failing fortunes with perfect bravery; she had been the sunshine and inspiration of the somewhat melancholy house for many years. At last she saw her husband coming along the road, and even that far-away first glimpse of him told her that she He pulled up would hear no good news. the fallen buffalo-robe over his lap, and sat erect, and tried to look unconcerned as he drove into the yard, but it was some time before he came into the house. He unharnessed the horse with stiff and shaking hands, and gave him his supper, and turned the old wagon and backed it into its place before he came in. Polly had come home also by that time, and was sitting by the window, and did not turn to speak to him. His wife looked old, and her face was grayish, and the lines of it were hard and drawn in strange angles. "You had better sit right down by the fire, John," she told him, "and I'll get you and Polly a good hot supper right away. I think, like's not, you didn't get a mouthful of dinner." "I've no need to tell you I've got bad news," he said. "The bank's failed, and they won't pay more'n ten cents on a dollar, if they make out to do that. It's worse than we ever thought it could be. The cashier got speculating, and he's made 'way with about everything." It seemed to him as if he had known this for years, it was such an old, sad story already, and he almost wondered at the surprise and anger that his wife and Polly showed at once. It made him a little impatient that they would ask him so many eager questions. This was the worst piece of misfortune that had ever come to him. Although they had heard the day before that the bank would pass its dividend, and had been much concerned and troubled, and had listened incredulously to worse stories of the condition of the bank's finances, they had looked for nothing like this. There was little to be said, but everything to be thought and feared. They had put entire confidence in this bank's security, and the money which had belonged to John Finch's father had always been left there to draw a good yearly interest. The farm was not very productive, and they had depended upon this dividend for a large part of their ready money. Much of their other property had dwindled away. If ever there had been a prospect of making much off the farm, something had interfered. One year a piece of woodland had been cleared at considerable expense, and on the day before its unlucky owner was to begin to haul the great stacks of fire-wood down to the little wharf in the marshes, from whence |