HENRY IV. KING OF FRANCE. in the conflict, and he publicly announced his intention of professing the Catholic faith. A On the 25th of July, 1793, the king, in all the pomp of royalty, and surrounded by all the gorgeous paraphernalia of the hierarchy of Rome, entered the venerable church of St. Dennis. countless multitude surrounded and thronged the building. The Archbishop of Bourges, with a numerous retinue of Catholic ecclesiastics, were assembled to receive the illustrious convert. "Who are you?” inquired the bishop, as the monarch with his attendants entered the cathedral. "I am the king," was the reply. “What is your request?" rejoined the archbishop. “To be received," rejoined the king, "into the pale of the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Religion." "Do you truly desire this ?" asked the bishop. "I truly do," the king replied. Then, kneeling down, he uttered the following oath: "I protest and swear, in the presence of Almighty God, to live and die in the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Religion; to protect and defend it against all its enemies, at the hazard of my blood and life, renouncing all heresies contrary to it." Upon the announcement of this change, almost immediately every sword was sheathed, and Catholics and Protestants alike acquiesced in the coronation of Henry IV.; which event took place with great pomp, on the 27th of February, 1594. Navarre became thus attached to the French monarchy, from which it has never since been dissevered. Thus the house of Valois passed away, and the house of Bourbon commenced its reign. But a short time after this, the famous edict of Nantes was promulgated, granting ample liberty of conscience, the privilege of worshiping God in accordance with their own forms, and perfect freedom from civil disabilities. The Protestants were content, the Catholics were content, and France was in repose. And now Henry commenced a career of magnanimous devotion to the interests of France, which has rendered his name one of the most illustrious in the annals of kings. He recovered from those frailties into which he had been plunged by the strong temptations of his youth, and consecrating all the energies of his strong mind and generous heart to the welfare of his empire, elevated France to a rank of power and glory which she had never attained before. In attestation of his glowing love for the country over which he reigned so regally, his memorable prayer upon the eve of a battle has often been 211 quoted. "Oh Lord, if this day thou meanest to trouble me for my sins, I bow my head to the stroke of thy justice; spare not the guilty; but Lord, by thy holy mercy, have pity on this poor realm, and strike not the flock for the faults of the shepherd." There are few who have not heard his famous remark, that "if God granted him the ordinary term of human life, he hoped to see France in such a condition that every peasant in it should be able to have a fowl in pot upon Sundays." Henry remained upon the throne, almost idolized by his subjects, and admired by all Europe, for about twelve years. He obtained a divorce from his shameless wife, and contracted a second marriage with Mary de Medicis. Arrangements were made, on a most magnificent scale, for the coronation of the new queen. On the 13th of May, 1610, the gorgeous procession left the Louvre for the pageant which attracted the eyes of all Europe; and Henry was then upon the pinnacle of earthly grandeur and power. The next day he entered his carriage, to visit his prime minister, Sully, who was sick. As he rode through the streets, his way was obstructed by a hay-cart, and the passage became clogged. The crowd, ever ebbing and flowing through the streets of Paris, pressed by the royal carriage. The king was seated in the back part of the coach, and as the day was unusually fine, the curtains were drawn, and Henry reclined in his seat, serenely looking upon the scene around him. The attendants guarding the royal coach were a little scattered in the endeavors to remove the obstruction, when a man with haggard cheeks and disheveled hair, enveloped in a cloak, stepped from the crowd, and suddenly rising upon. the spoke of the wheel, he plunged a dagger into the bosom of the king. "I am wounded," cried the king. The assassin repeated the blow, when the knife pierced the heart of the monarch, and instantaneous death ensued. Many of the remarks of the king have been transmitted to posterity, as illustrative of his character. Some one, remarking upon the early period at which his hair turned gray, the king observed, "It was the wind of adversity continually blowing in my face which changed it." To a person asking him to pardon his nephew, who had committed an assassination, he replied, “I am sorry that I cannot grant your request; it becomes you well to act the uncle, and it becomes me well to act the king. I excuse your petition; do you excuse my refusal." The name of Henri Quatre is never pronounced in France but with profound respect. Few have ever more worthily occupied a throne. THE FUNERAL AT SEA. A SKETCH FROM MEMORY. Of all the sights calculated to stir up solemn emotion which I have yet seen-and in the last ten years I have seen not a few sublime ones, moral or physical—I scarcely hesitate to say that the most remarkable is a funeral at sea. Now and then one lights upon such an announcement in the newspaper obituaries, “On such a date, Soand-So, at sea;" and it breaks the routine. There is something thrilling about it; one does not need to ask where he was buried. At intervals, too, you realize the thing more forcibly amongst the mural tablets of a family, in a green cemetery, where death seems to have hit a sharper stroke than usual, sweeping away one individual far out into the circle of the homeless waters. The Resurrection and Life appear visibly forth-shadowed in the ever-springing grass and herbs. But there is a tomb which can neither be consecrated nor adorned with prettiness; and there the wide, wide agony of bereavement has room to go forth, weltering and reveling amongst more unmanageable images, till the soul itself is almost overwhelmed, and rises again and again, dripping with the coldness of despair, in its attempt only to find the dead. From various causes, indeed, deaths at sea, requiring ocean sepulture, irrespective of common disaster, seem to have become, in latter times, more unfrequent. For my own part, I have only witnessed the incident on one occasion, but I never wish to see it again. It was a ship of con siderable size, deeply laden, with a crew of about thirty, and a few passengers. She was homeward bound, and on the verge of the tropical latitudes, passing once more into the longer twilights and brisker skies of the north-western Atlantic, whose mighty ridges, driven by a strong breeze from the east, were substituted for the lazy, sullen, blue undulations of the line, where the fullwaisted middle of the globe appears to be distended into solemn repose under the full flood of vertical light, and you only cross it by convulsive gulps of air, as in an exhausted receiver. All on board were well and hearty; the breeze, as usual, gave new spirits to both passengers and crew. In the evening our quarter-deck was a lively scene of walking, gossiping, looking out at the sea, and up at the clouds, watching for a sail on the horizon, or noticing the birds and the flyingfish, whose habits were brought into play around the vessel. Leaving the good ship to do her best-and she did it with a flying fore-foot hissing above the white spray, every stitch of canvas drawing-each one addressed himself to making the most out of general circumstances. The very essence of quiet comfort transpired in the sight of a couple of idle gentlemen smoking beside the lee-bulwarks, their heads together, outside, talking after dinner, while every now and then some huge wave from under the counter rose with its luminous bells and sparkles up beneath their very eyes. The ladies had their seats and their work below the roundhouse roof; the captain, the mate, and myself, leant on the green capstancover, and "yarned" away at leisure, with scarce any interruption from the trim aloft; while far forward could be seen the feet and trowsers of the men through the opening under the matted foot of the foresail, as it lifted gently up and down. They sat enjoying the mere privilege of dog-watch rest as much as any one; or a pair of older seamen paced the forecastle in converse, glancing over the side at intervals, with full satisfaction as to what the old craft was making. The breeze, however, gradually freshened to a gale; her upper spars began to look more naked and white against the lowering foreground, into which the scud drove like an upper region of troubled ocean; till below, also, the canvas was gathered up along the spread of the yards; there was no shelter from the angry eye of the gale, drawing a head, except her shortened topsails in the middle, strained and blown out with wind, and slanted to meet it. The moonlight, at night, was diffused all over the sky upon a complete veil of clouds, and soaked through it with that faint, cream colored, uncertain tone, which merely served to show the form of the sea, rising up into it in enormous ridges, and the motion of the ship rolling uneasily to windward before she descended a dark hollow. She could no longer lie her course, and was at length cast round till the wind came on her quarter, when, with a reef shaken out and main-course again let down, she careened to the opposite side, and went plunging away to the westward. The gale still increased, and I had, for some time before going below to dinner, watched the deep bend of the main tack, with its two huge blocks slacked off, so as to rise high near the starboard fore-shrouds, which was strain THE FUNERAL AT SEA. ing the canvas, struggling hard to be let go, and making the ship go more heavily through, while its groaning could be distinguished beneath the sound of the gale. As I went down the companion I heard the mate's voice call out, "Clew up and furl the mainsail !" The man at the helm, I found afterward, let her come up in the wind a little too much, as the hands let go the tack and began to clew it up. There was a tremendous clap; the two large blocks came smash again and again upon the rigging; a white sea broke over the weather bulwarks with a blow like that of a hundred fore-hammers, washed aft, and came weltering round the cuddy skylight, part of it actually leaping down the stair after me from =step to step. The dishes in the cabin, though too well secured to slip, emptied a good deal of their contents into the passengers' laps; ladies and gentlemen fell upon each other, and the captain swore at the helmsman, as the ship rolled easily away upon the next wave. A more serious accident, however, had occurred on deck; one of the watch had been struck about the ear by the clew-blocks of the mainsail in their furious recoil, and he was carried below to his hammock, dreadfully injured. There was a ship's surgeon, who immediately attended to him; but he never spoke again, except to ask at first for water, and died next morning watch. The poor fellow was buried the afternoon following his death, as there is a general prejudice against keeping a dead body. The weather was still wild and threatening, the ship drove heavily to leeward on the large, leaden-colored masses of water, with main-staysail, and close-reefed topsails, and spanker set. I noticed that the men did not talk of their late comrade, but seemed uneasy till the solemn load should be withdrawn; and although I believe none of them would have been afraid of the elements face to face, yet, in that mood, every pitch of the vessel was probably regarded by them as supernaturally stiff and unbuoyant: the clouds gathering to westward late in the day, wore an aspect more ominous than clouds of themselves could put on. The body was brought up from the half-deck, rigidly sewed into the hammock, which never more should swing below to the motion of the breeze; a couple of large shot at the feet inside; it was laid on a wooden grating across the spars, which were fastened to the lee-bulwarks of the gangway. I observed that some more familiar messmate had attached to the canvas envelop. ment a front-label from the seaman's hat, with the name of the vessel in bright letters; and also a rudely-painted scrap of tarpaulin, bearing the name of the deceased, "Robert Wilkes, aged 47." 213 It was a token of rough care which, under the circumstances, appeared affecting. The passengers stood in a group beneath the quarter-deck, every one doing the best to attend, in spite of the unfavorable weather; while the crew were gathered in a half-circle, beyond the captain and officers, to hear him read the service. The gale had somewhat lulled at the time, and it was clearer to the east; but to westward, in the obscure approach of sunset, a host of mighty clouds were rolled up from the dark-blue horizon, till their rounded and many-figured summits, standing out in relief against an empty space of sky, were tinted with a lurid and brassy glow. The unbroken wave-tops on that side caught a gleam of light as they rose, that brought out in more vivid contrast the huge shadows of their liquid blackness on the other, wrinkled and freckled with foam, while the spray showered now and then into the hollows, and a gray gull or two, with expanded wings, was seen dipping aslant in the atmosphere beyond. The leaves of the prayer-book fluttered as the captain tried to keep his place, and all waited at intervals for a weather-roll that would allow him to resume. At another time the mainyard would have been respectfully backed till the moment of burial, but this could not be conveniently done on the present occasion. The chief parts only of the burial service were read; and, indeed, to omit these, in their solemn appropriateness, because of a mere gale of wind, would have been felt unworthy of brave seamen or good shipmates; nevertheless, all were glad when the captain reached the close. At that minute the ship sank in a trough, the voice of the blast seemed to be stilled on deck, though whistling loudly through the upper spars and rigging. A thrill of awful emotion passed into one's spirit, as the sad and impressive ceremony went on. As the words broke from the captain's lips, "We commit his body to the deep," the ship rose high upon a vast wave, the voice of the captain blew away to leeward, but he made a sign with his hand to the men: the end of the grating flew up, and shooting from her uplifted side, feet foremost, the body, wrapped within its hammock, plunged far down into the long, yeasty sweep of the element below. The pale waters closed bubbling over, and it seemed as if at that instant a mighty hand threw upon it into the abyss, like the symbolic shower of earth, a green surge from the abundance of ocean, with a weltering plash far different from the rattle on a coffin-lid; next moment it had swelled noiselessly up above our mainyard, and with heads uncovered did we listen in the hollow to the remainder of the service. The captain closed the book. "Keep her 214 THE FUNERAL AT SEA. away, my lad!" he shouted through his hand to the man at the wheel. "A bit of a pull on the weather mainbrace, men!" said he, again; and in a short time the, wind was found to have changed a point or two, so that one reef was shaken out of the topsails, and the ship, driven more swiftly, rose and fell less upon the seas, whose direction coincided more with hers. At night, in the first watch, I was on deck for more than an hour before going to bed; the moon was out again, and it was somewhat of a "white gale" from the south-east; that is, one with a clear sky to windward, often some of the most violent, and generally from a north-easterly quarter. A long, low bank of cloud lay to the west, brightened by moonlight, but appearing to look solemnly over the heaving outline of waters, like the heads of strange mourners, pale-faced, with dark-hooded garments, leaning over a sepulchral boundary. The seamen now seemed to talk together of their lost messmate, or else to be disinclined for usual conversation. All "poor Bob's" good points now came out; he was the best hand at a "Turk's-head knot" in the ship, or a weather-earing, or a song of a Saturday night, they said. There was even speculation about his future prospects in another world, which most of the sailors seemed to think secured by his good qualities, while some thought it best to leave it to the superior Powers. One curious-looking old fellow gave it as his opinion, corroborated by general nautical tradition, that the souls of seamen buried at sea, continued to watch over their living comrades in the shape of stormy petrels, or Mother Carey's chickens; and Bob's lot, he stoutly upheld, would be the same as others. 64 Well, mate," said the fine-looking, elderly sailor, in reply to this heathen notion, "to my thinking, that's all a yarn for the marines. Why, don't ye mind the song of Tom Bowling, that Bob used to sing hisself of a Saturday night, with the grog-can in his fist?" And it was at once striking and affecting to notice the tone of half-restrained emotion with which the old sailor repeated the words of Dibdin, "What though his body 's under hatches, Against this authoritative quotation there was no standing; all appeared satisfied, with the exception of the grim old propounder of a theory once a good deal prevalent amongst tars of the old school; and, as with one consent, the whole subject was dropped. I had a short talk afterward with the sailor who had alluded to the song of Tom Bowling; he was the chum of the dead man, and it was he who had affixed his name to the remains. He said that the poor fellow had always had a great dread of being buried at sea, having twice or thrice been nearly drowned during his many voy. ages. "Many's the hammock, sir," said he, “I've seen launched over the side; but I think I never felt so much at seeing a corp hove o'board, out of its nat'ral ailment like, as I did with regard to a young girl that we buried out o' the homewardbound India fleet once. 'Twas nigh five-an'twenty year gone, of a dead calm; we were thirty and more large craft, under convoy of a frigate and line-o'-battle ship. The girl was with her father, and a young gentleman as was to have married her, I reckon; but she looked so pale and delicate-like, as shewed she never would get the better of the East India sun. The calms lasted in the Horse Latitudes longer nor I remember to ha' seen afore or since; there was a want o' water aboard 'most every ship, and fever afloat. Twas terrible hot, too, and I dare say if we'd had but a good breeze in time, 't would ha' kept her up till we hove in sight of land, at the least; and then they'd have carried her ashore. Hows'ever, one hot, stifling sort of an afternoon, she died; and the next one all the ships' boats was got out, with the union-jack hoisted astarn in the gig where she was, and half-mast high in the Indiaman's rigging. We pulled out on the smooth, blue water, to a stretch clear of the ships, for five or six o' them had got stuck together, starn and broadside, with but a hundred fadom or two betwixt the nearest; and the rest looked all round on the sea-line, heading to every point o' the compass. The friends of the girl was in the gig, and the chaplain read the sarvice; you could hear it, you would say, for a mile round every way. The sun was setting along the sulky blue water, all of long, lazy lines, and the light came as red as blood behind the black hulls, and upon the yards, and through the sails, a'most. In the midst of the sarvice we lowered the coffin slowly down; it had nothing on it but some white ribbons, and a name painted, but the wood was only stained oak color. We watched it go down, and down, till it looked green; then some white bells came up, the father gave a groan, but the young man stood up straight and grim, with the sun falling on his bare brow; the chaplain read on to the end, then the Indiaman fired three guns, and we out oars and pulled back. "Tis like a seaman, sir, to go down in the deep till all hands be called aloft, but to my mind it don't suit them as is reared ashore, more 'specially when they're young and fair, an' their friends would like to see the grass over their grave!" ONWARD! onward! ever onward! ONWARD! Pressing till the goal be won, Such the work we have to do; Darkness comes, when no man worketh; Lo, the shadows steal apace O'er the landscape! Up, my brothers! God has form'd and placed us here. Onward! onward! ever onward, Pressing with a joyful hope, And a faith as firm and steadfast And a love that hath no bound, That will surely lead to conquest, Conquest, without blood-stain'd laurels, Onward! onward! ever onward Flow the rivers, sweep the tides; All is change, and all is motion, Nothing steadfast here abides. It was never meant for slumber, This great moving world of oursNever meant for lying dormant, All man's high and holy powers. Listen to the greatest Teacher Ever motal ears have heardTo the VOICE that to all ages Speaketh aye the living WORDWhat, in the dread hour of judgment, Will the inquisition be?— "Where's the loan, and where the talent, Wherewith God hath trusted thee?" Onward! onward! ever onward! List the song the angels sing— " Work ye out your own salvation, Labor for God's glorying!" Tarry not amid the darkness, Seek no rest upon the way; Climb the hill, and stem the torrent, Helping all whom help you may. Honor to the sturdy smiters Honor to the stout of heart; Not in warfare with his fellowsThis is not the Christian's partBut against the powers of evil, Ignorance, and wretchedness, They should ever fight, and struggle, As they, toiling, onward press! "MY MIND TO ME A KINGDOM IS." |