Born: C. J. Agricola,
Roman commander, 40, Frejus, in Provence; Madame
D'Arblay (nee Frances Burney), English novelist, 1752,
Lyme Regis; Dr. Thomas Young, natural philosopher,
1773, Melverton, Somersetshire; Rev. Dr. Thomas
Arnold, 1795, Cowes, Isle of Wight.
Died: Charles Francis
Panard, French dramatist, 1765; Simon Andrew Tissot,
eminent Swiss physician, 1797, Lausanne; Richard
Lovell Edgeworth, writer on education, 1817,
Edgeworthstown, Ireland.
Feast Day: St. Anthony
of Padua, confessor, 1231; St. Damhnade of Ireland,
virgin.
ST. ANTHONY OF PADUA
Few of the medieval saints
adopted into the Romish calendar have attained to such
lasting celebrity as St. Anthony, or Antonio, of
Padua. All over Italy his memory is held in the
highest veneration; but at Padua in particular, where
his festival is enthusiastically kept, he is spoken of
as Il Santo, or the saint, as if no other was of any
importance. Besides larger memoirs of St. Anthony,
there are current in the north of Italy small
chap-books or tracts describing his character and his
miracles. From one of these, purchased within the
present year from a stall in Padua, we offer the
following as a specimen of the existing folk-lore of
Venetian Lombardy. St. Anthony was born at Lisbon on
the 15th of August 1195. At twenty-five years of age
he entered a convent of Franciscans, and as a
preaching friar most zealous in checking heresy, he
gained great fame in Italy, which became the scene of
his labours. In this great work the power of miracle
came to his aid. On one occasion, at Rimini, there was
a person who held heretical opinions, and in order to
convince him of his error, Anthony caused the fishes
in the water to lift up their heads and listen to his
discourse.
This miracle, which of course
converted the heretic, is represented in a variety of
cheap prints, to be seen on almost every stall in
Italy, and is the subject of a wood-cut in the
chap-book from which we quote, here faithfully
represented. On another occasion, to reclaim a
heretic, he caused the man's mule, after three days'
abstinence from food, to kneel down and venerate the
host, instead of rushing to a bundle of hay that was
set before it. This miracle was equally efficacious.
Then we are told of St. Anthony causing a new-born
babe to speak, and tell who was its father; also, of a
wonderful miracle he wrought in saving the life of a
poor woman's child. The woman had gone to hear St.
Anthony preach, leaving her child alone in the house,
and during her absence it fell into a pot on the fire;
but, strangely enough, instead of finding it scalded
to death, the mother found it standing up whole in the
boiling cauldron. What with zealous labours and
fastings, St. Anthony cut short his days, and died in
the odour of sanctity on the 13th of June 1231. Padua,
now claiming him as patron saint and protector, set
about erecting a grand temple to his memory. This
large and handsome church was completed in 1307. It is
a gigantic building, in the pointed Lombardo-Venetian
style, with several towers and minarets of an Eastern
character. The chief object of attraction in the
interior is the chapel specially devoted to Il Santo.
It
consists of the northern transept, gorgeously
decorated with sculptures, bronzes, and gilding. The
altar is of white marble, inlaid, resting on the tomb
of St. Anthony, which is a sarcophagus of verd
antique. Around it, in candelabra and in suspended
lamps, lights burn night and day; and at nearly all
hours a host of devotees may be seen kneeling in front
of the shrine, or standing behind with hands devoutly
and imploringly touching the sarcophagus, as if trying
to draw succour and consolation from the marble of the
tomb. The visitor to this splendid shrine is not less
struck with the more than usual quantity of votive
offerings suspended on the walls and end of the altar.
These consist mainly of small framed sketches in oil
or water colours, representing some circumstance that
calls for particular thankfulness.
St. Anthony of Padua, as
appears from these pictures, is a saint ever ready to
rescue persons from destructive accidents, such as the
over-turning of wagons or carriages, the falling from
windows or roofs of houses, the upsetting of boats,
and such like; on any of these occurrences a person
has only to call vehemently and with faith on St.
Anthony in order to be rescued. The hundreds of small
pictures we speak of represent these appalling scenes,
with a figure of' St. Anthony in the sky interposing
to save life and limb. On each are inscribed the
letters P. G. R., with the date of the accident;�the
letters being an abbreviation of the words Per Grazzia
Ricevuto�for grace or favour received. On visiting the
shrine, we remarked that many are quite recent; one of
them depicting an accident by a railway train. The
other chief object of interest in the church is a
chapel behind the high altar appropriated as a
reliquary. Here, within a splendidly deco-rated
cupboard, as it might be called, are treasured up
certain relics of the now long deceased saint. The
principal relic is the tongue of Il Santo, which. is
contained within an elegant case of silver gilt, as
here represented. This with other relics is exhibited
once a year, at the great festival on the 13th of
June, when Padua holds its grandest holiday.
It is to be remarked that the
article entitled 'St.
Anthony and the Pigs,' inserted under January
17, ought properly to have been placed here, as the
patronship of animals belongs truly to St. Anthony of
Padua, most probably in consequence of his sermon to
the fishes.
AGRICOLA
The admirable, honest, and
impartial biography of Cn�us Julius Agricola, written
by the Roman historian Tacitus, who married his
daughter, paints him in all the grave, but attractive
colours of a noble Roman; assigning to him a valour
and virtue, joined to a prudence and skill, which
would not have failed to do honour to the best times
of the Republic.
But Agricola is chiefly
interesting to us from his connexion with our own
country. His first service was in Britain, under
Suetonius Paulinus, the Roman general who finally
subdued the rebellious Iceni, under Boadicea, their
queen, when 80,000 men are said to have fallen.
Agricola afterwards, under the wise reign of Vespasian,
was made governor of Britain. He succeeded in
destroying the strongholds of North Wales and the Isle
of Anglesea, which had resisted all previous efforts,
and finally reduced the province to peace; after which
he skewed himself at once an enlightened and
consummate general, by seeking to civilize the people,
by encouraging education, by erecting buildings, by
making roads, and by availing himself of all those
means which benefit a barbarous country, while they
effectually subdue it. When he had in this way
established the tranquillity of the province, he
proceeded to extend it. Crossing the Tweed, he
steadily advanced northwards, the enemy retreating
before him. He built a line of forts from the Firth of
Forth to the Clyde, and sent the fleet to explore the
unknown coast, and to act in concert with his land
forces, till at length, having hemmed in the natives
on every side, he gained the decisive battle of the Mons Grampius, in which
Galgacus so bravely resisted
him; after this he retired into the original province,
and was recalled by Domitian out of
jealousy.
Agricola died soon after his
return to Rome, in the year 93, in his fifty-fourth
year; the circumstances of his death were somewhat
peculiar, and Tacitus throws out a hint that he might
have been poisoned.
FANATICISM ANALYZED
BY
ARNOLD
Arnold regarded fanaticism as
a form of selfishness. 'There is an ascending scale,'
said he, 'from the grossest personal selfishness, such
as that of C
�
sar
or Napoleon, to party
selfishness,
such as that of Sylla, or fanatical selfishness, that
is the idolatry of an idea or principle, such as that
of Robespierre or Dominic, and
some of the
Covenanters. In all of these, excepting perhaps the
first, we feel a sympathy more or less, because there
is something of personal self-devotion and sincerity;
but fanaticism is idolatry, and it has the moral evil
of idolatry in it; that is, a fanatic worships
something which is the creature of his own devices,
and thus even his self-devotion in support of it is
only an apparent self-sacrifice, for it is in fact
making the parts of his nature or his mind which he
least values offer sacrifice to that which he most
values.'
On another occasion he said:
'The life and character of Robespierre has to me a
most important lesson; it shows the frightful
consequences of making everything give way to a favourite notion. The man was
a just man, and humane
naturally, but he would narrow everything to meet his
own views, and nothing could check him at last. It is
a most solemn warning to us, of what fanaticism may
lead to in God's world.'
It is a pity that Arnold did
not take us on from personal to what may be called
class or institutional fanaticism, for it is a
principle which may affect any number of men. We
should have been glad to see from his pen an analysis
of that spirit under which a collective body of men
will grasp, deny justice, act falsely and cruelly, all
for the good of the institution which they represent,
while quite incapable of any such procedure on their
own several accounts. Here, too, acting for an idea,
there is an apparent exemption from selfishness; but
an Arnold could have shown how something personal is,
after all, generally involved in such kinds of
procedure; the more dangerous, indeed, as well as
troublesome, that it can put on so plausible a
disguise. There are even such things as fanaticisms
upon a national scale, though these are necessarily of
rarer occurrence; and then do we see a whole people
propelled on to prodigious exterminating wars, in
which they madly ruin, and are ruined, while other
nations look on in horror and dismay. In these cases,
civilization and religion afford no check or
alleviation of the calamity: the one only gives
greater means of destruction; the other, as usual,
blesses all banners alike. The sacred name of
patriotism serves equally in attack and defence, being
only a mask to the selfish feelings actually
concerned. All such things are, in fact,
IDOLATRIES�the worship of something which is 'the
creature of our own devices,' to the entire slighting
and putting aside of those principles of justice and
kindness towards others which God has established as
the only true guides of human conduct.