animal world could commune with one another.* They too were mythic beings, like, or at least parallel in condition with, the equally mythic-as to the early conception-human being; and their language, which was mutually intelligible throughout the animal world, was of course equally intelligible also to man.'

But comparative mythology demonstrates that these notions, as in the case of the Dog and the Cow and the Dove notions already noticed, are strangely older than even 'our earliest Gothic ancestors,' and the common inheritance of many and many a family and sub-family of the human race besides them. But conceive of the rock, the tree, the creature-especially the wise or mighty creatures whose wisdom or whose might serves to give point to an admonition or an exhortation in even the Inspired page -conceive of either or all of them as mysterious existences, with mysterious inner powers, and more mysterious inner guidance, and not without a mysterious power of making the inner to become exterior, of manifesting or expressing the latent thought or knowledge and what more natural, more necessary or inevitable, than that each of them should, in its own proper turn, or place, or connection, become an animal of omen? The cuckoo-who could tell where he had been, what he had seen, what his deep experience, his wide mysterious knowledge, must behe who was not here yesterday, but is at home among us to-day, as one risen from the dead, or as one that has left another state of being or external manifestation, unknown and mysterious, to take on the one again in which we know him best? Or the bee-in whom there must be, as the Latin poet thought, at least some spark of the intelligence of God,' all whose actions are so intrinsically wonderful, whose movements so unerring, so little liable to the aberrations of confusion or mistake; who foresees the invisible, and traces its path, as the eye traces the source of light-how should not both the one and the other, (to specify none besides now,) not only foreknow, but, if dealt with reverently and observingly, being the creatures they were, and in such a creation, foreshew to the men of the older and simpler generations, things they themselves knew not, but could not but think were known to, and could be imparted by, other beings wiser or more favourably circumstanced than themselves?

And in this, we believe, lies the explanation of a mighty proportion of that class of animal-omens we proposed to deal with in this paper.

J. C. ATKINSON.

*I append two references, from among the numbers to be met with everywhere, to the conception involved here.

'For at that time, as I have undirstonde,
Bestis and birdis coulden speke and sing.'

Chaucer-Nonne's Priest's Tale.

'Nay, fancy has attributed to animals a power of language in the Age of Gold—a power which under certain circumstances they are supposed to be still allowed to exercise.'-Farrar's Origin of Language.

NOTES OF A SHORT TOUR.

BY THE REV. W. BRIGHT.

THESE recollections of a month's tour abroad, between June 20 and July 18 of the present year, must be introduced by a confession which may not appear absolutely monstrous to all readers of The Monthly Packet-namely, that my main object, and that of one of my companions, was not so much to enjoy

'Some vague emotions of delight,
In gazing up an Alpine height,'

or to intensify the emotion by gazing from the summit, as to visit historic cities, and churches illustrious for their associations, or preeminent for their beauty. I wish I were not obliged to begin by recalling the tantalizing sight, from the railroad, of that famous Bruges, which in the fourteenth century was the commercial capital of Europe, and which tried its strength against Philip the Fair; and that other memorable city, of which Philip de Comines so naively says, 'that he cannot conceive why Heaven has preserved a city so useless and so mischievous as Ghent.' A few minutes at the stations was all the time that we could allow ourselves for attempting to form some faint idea of either of these two great towns. We were hurrying on to Brussels, with a view to reaching, by nightfall on that same Saturday, a city of far more venerable name. Brussels-Miss Brontë's 'Villette'-is so well known, that I need only record the admiration with which we gazed on the west front of Sainte Gudule, and on the splendid Hotel de Ville, with the statues of Egmont and Horn just opposite to it; and the disappointment, if one may so call it, of finding that the old palace where Charles V. went through the ceremony of his abdication, is now no more. About nine p.m. that night, we were crossing the Moselle by a great bridge, in the centre of which a colossal crucifix, dimly seen as the omnibus swept by it, seemed to witness for the ancient sanctities of Treves, and the imperishable majesty of the faith which had created them.

Treves, as is well known, is the oldest city of Germany. It was a great place in the time of Julius Cæsar: one need not ask for how long before him, although if one did, the proud inscription on the front of the Rothe Haus, (now a comfortable hotel, where we were soon established,) would answer confidently, that 'Treveris' was standing thirteen hundred years before the foundation of Rome. Legends apart, there was certainly a Roman colony here under Claudius, and the city became the seat of a Prætorian præfect, who maintained over the Gallic provinces the authority of the Imperial name. Emperors, beginning with Gallienus, kept their court in this 'second metropolis of the Empire,' which has

been so vividly described in a page or two of Mr. Kingsley's 'Hermits.' He records Constantine's barbarous exhibition, in its amphitheatre, of 'Frankish sports,' involving the death of ‘thousands of Frank prisoners;' he mentions the gentle and unfortunate Gratian, as one of the princes who made it his abode: he dwells on the discovery in a cottage outside the walls, by two young officers of the Imperial staff, of a book (as St. Augustine tells the anecdote) in which was written the life of Antony:' and he does full justice to the spirit which impelled them, after studying it, to give up their prospects in a society full of splendour and of rottenness, for the service of God in a monastic cell. But he does not mention that event in the history of Treves, which is of all others most interesting to a Catholic Christian, and which is historically connected with other facts that he relates. It was because Treves was, in a sense, an Imperial city, that the author of the Life of Antony and the greatest of all confessors of the Faith, was sent thither in his first exile, A.D. 336. One forgets, by comparison, every other name that Treves can boast of, even those of such visitors as SS. Martin and Ambrose, when one treads the ground that was then trodden by St. Athanasius. The austere and solemn majesty of the Romanesque cathedral seemed to harmonize exactly with associations so august. Part of its walls must have belonged to that original church of the Empress Helena, where Maximin, then bishop, may be supposed to have officiated in the presence of the great Alexandrian: nor need one doubt, as one passes under what Mr. Kingsley well describes as 'the awful arches' of the Porta Nigra, on the north side of the city, that Athanasius looked up at them in their fresh magnificence, and received from them a new impression of the farreaching might of Rome. The service in the Cathedral, on Sunday morning, June 21, was solemn and reverential, with but little of ceremonial splendour. To hear the Nicene Creed in that place, was 'to feel,' in Mr. Liddon's heart-stirring words, (Bampton Lectures for 1866, ed. 2, p. 438,) 'somewhat of that fresh glow of thankfulness which is due to God after a great deliverance, although wrought out in a distant age.' Very impressive and edifying, also, was the sight of so many men, with grave earnest German faces-men of all classes, soldiers, middle-aged citizens, youths in blue blouses-engaged, as obviously as the women who were among them, in a real act of devout worship. Later on in the day, after an energetic sermon by a canon, and some prayers in the vernacular, an old priest, having first exposed the Blessed Sacrament, went to a sort of faldstool in the midst of the congregation, and said in German the Litany of the Holy Name of Jesus. The grand church absolutely rang with the responses, 'Erlose uns, Jesu!' We visited, of course, the 'exquisite Liebfrauenkirche,' (Kingsley,) close to the Cathedral: a lovely First-pointed church, with twelve pillars for the images of the Apostles, and with a superb porch, in which, among other sculptures, one sees the contrasted figures of Judaism and Christianity, the former with bandaged eyes and falling crown. St.

Maximin's abbey, in some meadows towards the north, is now a barrack: the other great monastic houses of Treves are also secularized; but the memories of the ecclesiastical past are preserved by many religious paintings on walls and at street corners, and by such records as a Labarum, with A let into the wall near a suburban church, and a beautiful old cross in the market-place, commemorating a supposed appearance in the sky. We saw the Thermæ, but not the more distant Amphitheatre; and many diverse associations are strangely combined in the space which contains the old Cæsarean Basilica, now appropriated to Lutheran worship, and the Electoral Palace, now occupied by Prussian soldiery. Here, probably, was centred the interest and excitement of Charles the Bold's visit to Treves, when he hoped to receive a royal crown from Frederick III.: here an Archbishop Elector saved some wretched Jews from popular fury, on condition of their accepting Baptism: here another planned successful resistance to what his epitaph in the Cathedral calls the 'insane attacks' of the lawless Franz von Sickingen: and a third, Van Eltz, well known to the readers of Ranke's 'Popes,' meditated his schemes, not less successful, for the reorganization of Catholicism in his Electorate.

We quitted Treves with a regret which perhaps has made me, even now, linger too long over the remembrances of a too brief visit. The next halting place was Metz, a city of which the fame goes back as far as the days of Attila. As one looks over its fortifications, one sees that the old capital of the Austrasian kings, the scene of the terrible Brunehaut's struggle with her nobility, must always have been an important border town: but one is glad also to recall its more peaceful memories-the school that flourished there under Charles the Great, and the formation of the 'Canonical Institute' by St. Chrodegang. The Cathedral reminded us somewhat, as so many foreign churches do, of Westminster Abbey; but the Abbey has no such store of gorgeous glass. A frightful Grecian front at the west end expresses, as its inscription tells us, the gratitude of the Chapter, a hundred years ago, for the recovery of Louis XV., after what Carlyle alludes to as the 'fever scene at Metz:' and it was difficult to look at it without the thought that it had been better for him to have died while he retained his people's love, and while he had not yet become a by-word of moral degradation.

Many of your readers will know Strasburg. I shall say but little of the wondrous church, the outward aspect of which is so familiar, even to many who have never visited it. To my thinking, the lofty solemn choir and the gorgeous line of southern windows, (I say nothing of the clock, that specimen of grotesque ingenuity, which attracts a staring crowd every day at noon,) are, in their way, nearly as worthy of remembrance as the stupendous spire, (crowned, as is well known, in the days of revolutionary madness, with a monstrous cap of liberty.) But let those who visit the Cathedral pay some attention to the curious representations, in the windows, of certain Scriptural scenes, with additions apocryphal

and legendary; the two thieves being called Dismas and Jessmas, and St. Luke being named as Cleophas' companion. And then the sculptures at the west end-Louis XIV.'s statue placed next to the noble Kaiser Rodolph's, because his faithless seizure of Strasburg restored the cathedral to Catholic hands: Adam's coffin and skeleton represented at the feet of our Lord: and most note-worthy of all, the foolish virgins confronting the wise, and attended by a youth who seems to represent the pleasure of this world, while loathsome reptiles are sculptured on his back. Here is a 'sermon in stone,' as impressive as any which the Strasburghers of the fourteenth century could have heard from the lips of Tauler.

From Strasburg to Freiburg in the Breisgau, is in several ways a delightful transition. The old capital of Alsace-or, as Mr. E. Freeman would insist on saying, Elsass-is anything but attractive to all the senses; whereas Freiburg is one of the cleanest and brightest towns to be seen anywhere out of England. Its situation, in a rich valley on the borders of the Black Forest, is simply enchanting: and the Cathedral, with its delicate pierced spire of rich red stone, glowing, as we saw it for the first time, in the midsummer sunset, deserves to have been called 'lovely' by Dr. Neale, and endears itself to one, almost at a first visit, by a something for which sweetness appears to me the only intelligible expression. The Romanesque transepts contrast very happily with the richer portions of the edifice; the great porch has a superb profusion of sculptures; the interior has several altars, splendidly decorated in the old mediæval style, an exquisite archiepiscopal throne, with carving as fine as lace; a magnificent reredos, and a crucifixion, with four Latin verses, having for their purport, 'No Cross, no crown.' The services, as far as we heard them, were genuinely reverent. Too often are English Churchmen, travelling abroad, impressed, in foreign churches, with the idea of perfunctory irreverence; but the Mass which we heard at a side-altar in this cathedral, was celebrated with an awe and tenderness that left nothing, on that point, to be desired. We also heard the same priest say two Litanies in German, at seven p. m., a fair congregation responding heartily, Erbarme Dich unser,' 'Wir bitten Dich, erhöre, uns.' One of these Litanies was to our Lord, the other to the Holy Spirit. Parts of the Rosary were said afterwards. Everything in Freiburg points to a quiet, serious, long established Roman Catholicism. I had the great advantage of an introduction to the leading publisher of Freiburg, an earnest and well-read Catholic, from whom I received the kindest hospitality. Conversation turned on the unhappy prevalence of unbelief among the Protestants of Germany; and I was reminded of the conclusion of Mr. Liddon's great work, by the observation, 'Where there is faith in the Divinity of Jesus, there is common ground.' The Archbishopric of Freiburg is now vacant; and the Protestant government, I was told, will do its utmost to prevent the appointment of a successor in whom the Church would have confidence. Freiburg abounds, of course, in visible memorials of Christianity; over different street founVOL. 6.

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PART 35.