Le mal est que dans l'an s'entremêlent des jours De quelque nouveau saint charge toujours son pròné." Before the year 688, the slaves of our Saxon forefathers labored through the entire week. Sunday brought its rest to all others, but to the slave there was no remission from toil, till the Church secured for all classes, by legislative enactment, freedom from work on that day. It was likewise determined that if a master forced his slave to work on the Lord's day, the latter had the right to claim his liberty. "The Christian clergy indeed did all they could to mitigate its hardships; but when has Christianity itself been triumphant over the selfishness and the passions of the mass of men? In yet pagan times general kindliness of disposition, habits of domestic intercourse, perhaps the suggestions of self-interest, may have tended to raise the condition of the serf, even to the restoration of freedom; but it was the especial honor and glory of Christianity, that while it broke the spiritual bonds of sin, it ever actively labored to relieve the heavy burden of social servitude." " After the Conquest, the sale of slaves into foreign countries and into heathendom, was entirely prohibited, and the shocking abuses and heart-rendering cruelty consequent upon that trade were thus abolished.2 The African continent is strangely fitted by its physical condition, not only for an isolated existence, but also for becoming the great slave-market from which the cupidity of the modern world would replenish her traffic so long as a system of human bondage held footing on the civilized earth. Watered by few rivers and hemmed in by a pathless waste of deserts, it was impossible that commerce should penetrate into Central Africa ; and the insuperable barriers which impeded its civilization rendered it also a sure and lasting repository of the slave trade, while the excessive heat of its climate so enervates the dispirited inhabitants that they have furnished the servile population to the more powerful peoples of the world. At what date African slavery took its rise, cannot now be accurately determined, but it certainly began in a remote period of mediæval history, for Leo Africanus mentions that the King of Borneo exchanged slaves for horses with the merchants of Barbary. To a Dominican friar and confessor of Charles the Fifth the illustrious Dominic Soto of Tridentine name, "be 1 Kemble's Saxons in England, b. i. c. 8. longs the signal honor," says Sir James Mackintosh, "of being the first writer who condemned the African slave-trade." In a public lecture given at Salamanca, Soto said: "It is affirmed that the unhappy Ethiopians are, by fraud or force, carried away and sold as slaves. If this be true, neither those who have taken them, nor those who purchased them, nor those who hold them in bondage, can ever have a quiet conscience till they emancipate them, even if no compensation should be obtained." 1 Sir James thus comments on this passage: : "It is hard for any man of this present age to conceive the praise which is due to the excellent monks who courageously asserted the rights of those whom they never saw, against the prejudices of their order, the supposed interest of their religion, the ambition of their government, the avarice and pride of their countrymen, and the prevalent opinion of the times." 2 To the generations of the past, the Church, to adopt the exquisite imagery of the Evangelical prophet, was as an hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place; as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.3 It is foreign to our purpose to review the history of the part which she bore in the conflict with modern slavery. The scars and wounds of the battle-field are too fresh to require any words, even if we were disposed to enter upon the subject. Be it ours rather to allay in our humble measure the discontents which agitate our nation, and by moderate concessions conciliate the aggravated temper of the times, and preserve to our children the glorious heritage of our fathers endeared by noble associations of the past. Be it ours to meet the momentous issues which the new position of the African race in our day presents. Happy will it be for our land if, at this crisis of affairs, the voice of the Catholic Church, built on the Rock of Ages, be not drowned in the tumult of angry passions and of local prejudices. The Church of the past rises in this age with new-found energy, and girds herself for the great mission opening before her on this continent. If the colored population heed her teaching, they may enter in and possess the peace, security, and strength which she alone can bestow, and the Church of the future will be to them, what she has been to the weary and the heavy 1 De Just. et Jure, lib. iv. quæst. ii. art. 2. 2 Ethical Philosophy, vol. i. p. 52. 3 Isaiah xxxii. 2. -- laden in the past, the medium of all spiritual blessings, the haven in which all kindreds and peoples may rest till the final day break and the shadows flee away. ART. III.-WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. Walter Savage Landor: a Biography, by JOHN FORSTER. Boston: Fields, Osgood, & Co. THIS massive volume gives the life of one of the leaders in English literature in the present century. Landor's name is widely known; his writings are carefully read by the choicer portion of scholarly people; and the aim of this book seems not only to give such facts concerning his personal history as his friends would like to know, but to vindicate his claims to a larger share of attention. The book itself is open to criticism. Not the publisher's part, for that is better done (for its use) than any other book which we remember them to have put forth. The book lays open readily without having a broken back; the paper is neither too thick nor too thin; the type is that happy medium which always pleases the eye, and the binding is in good keeping with the modest elegance of the book. But Mr. Forster is not the most interesting writer. He has an unfortunate way of saying everything. Those who have read his Life of Oliver Goldsmith, will remember that notwithstanding they found the volume entertaining, it seemed as if they could never get through it. The writer had to tell everything about Goldsmith which could possibly be known. It was a service rendered to literature, no doubt; but we who live in these stirring times, have not leisure to go through seven hundred closely-printed pages to know what is most interesting in the life of Landor. It is a mistake to make biographies so fearfully long. Carlyle wanted to know from the life of Margaret Fuller what kind of stockings she wore, and we all want to know the characteristic details of eminent men; but these fine-spun and long-drawn-out memoirs are a nuisance that ought to be abated. If it does not cease, a rigid censorship of the press ought to be established which shall rightly determine their length. Here Mr. Forster takes us through these seven hundred pages to tell us what might have been compacted into a readable book of not more than three hundred. Page after page may be turned over which has no interest to an American, and hardly to an English reader. A brief statement of facts, with a few characteristic anecdotes, would be enough. We refer especially to the details concerning the Llanthony estate. Then the volume is swelled by a general analysis of Landor's poetry and prose, with copious extracts, all of which are good in themselves; but we doubt whether the display of his choice things in this way will send many more persons to his published works. A few selections and some criticism of his poetry and prose were necessary, but unless in a thorough and critical review, this chopping process seems to be attended with few results. Sir J. T. Coleridge, in his recent life of Keble, understands this light touching of an author's works better than any contemporary biographer with whom we are acquainted. He touches gently, and tells characteristic things, and interests the reader without this general dissection. Mr. Forster's work thus abounds in just those things which Landor always struck out of his own writings with an unsparing hand; which seems strange in a man who has had so much to do in a critical way with current literature. The spirit of the volume is kindly; it has a judicious frankness ; and, if anything, shows hardly enough of the brighter side of Landor's life; at the same time, one who knew anything of Landor, can see that his memoir would be a difficult book to write. We cannot but regret, as in the case of Southey's "Life and Letters," that the work did not fall into better hands. It is mentioned by Mr. Forster that Henry Taylor, the dramatist, was the man of all others to write Southey's life; and if some scholar like Mr. F. T. Palgrave had done the same service for Landor, we should have had a permanent addition to our biographical literature. Walter Savage Landor was born at Warwick, on the 30th of January, 1775. His father was a physician, and had considerable wealth. When about ten years old he was sent to Rugby, where he distanced all competitors in Latin verse. For its excellence he often procured a play-day for his companions. He mingled freely in the out-door sports of the place, as fishing, hunting, and riding. "Throwing his net one morning in a stream to which access on some previous occasion had been refused to him, the farmer who owned the land came down upon him suddenly; very angry words were exchanged, and Landor complying quite unexpectedly with a peremptory demand for his fishing apparatus, flung the net over the farmer's head with such faultless precision as completely to entangle in its meshes his enraged adversary, and reduce him to easy submission." What was most peculiar in his mastery of the Greek and Latin at Rugby, was a character and habit of mind resembling those of the ancient writers, which was not acquired from his teachers, but which Nature herself had given him; and this peculiar aptitude for Greek and Roman modes of thought and expression followed him through life, imparting a certain tone and character to all he wrote whether in prose or verse. The first two books which he owned as a boy were Baker's "Chronicle" and Drayton's "Polyalbion." His Rugby life came to an end before he was prepared for Oxford, for "his fierce defiance of all authority." For two years he now studied with a clergyman in Derbyshire, increasing his knowledge of the classics, and writing some English verses, in addition to one or two pieces which he had written at Rugby. When eighteen years old he entered as a commoner in Trinity College, Oxford, in 1793, where he remained about a year and a half. His pleasantest hours here were those passed “with Walter Birch in the Magdalin walk by the half-hidden Cherwell." In his studies he did but little; he was best known for his fierce, uncompromising opinions. Southey says he was notorious as a mad Jacobin. The cause of his leaving the University was the firing of his gun across the quadrangle into the window of a fellowstudent whom he hated for his Toryism. Thus when not yet twenty years old he had acquired not a little notoriety as one who wantonly had his own way whenever he pleased. Within five months after his rustication he published his first volume of poems in London. He was now at variance with his father, who promised him four hundred pounds a year if he would study law, and only one hundred and fifty if he did not. Then followed several years, during which he turned from one thing to another, not adopting any profession, but gradually gaining a mastery of English verse and turning his thoughts distinctly toward a literary life. In 1798, Landor published his first dramatic poem, "Gebir," in a thin, anonymous pamphlet. It attracted no attention till Southey gave it discriminating praise in the "Critical Review." This resulted in a friendship between Southey and Landor which lasted unbroken till Southey's death. "Gebir" never was widely read, but for such men as Shelley, Bishop Heber, Coleridge, and Words |