It was night, and the old year was passing away. The angels had sung their anniversary strains of gladness, and had announced anew the coming of the Prince of Peace, only a week ago, yet there was a solemn silence now in their serried ranks, as they pressed around a group of their representatives.

I can hardly tell you where this was, or whether it was “in the body or out of the body” that I fancied I saw the glorious vision; I only know that it seemed as if infinite space were around them, and an amphitheatre of angelic faces, like living stones, were making a barrier between them and space, as the rainbow does between clouds.

There were many of those whom I have called representatives, and each bore some strange emblem, which I understood to be the badge of the nation over which he was set. Around each stood a host similarly distinguished, the guardian angels of each individual soul composing the nation. There was an awful stillness on this the last night of the year, as the conclave of angels sat brooding over the events of the immediate past. A few, more prominent among their brethren, presently stood forward, while a figure of marvellous beauty, but calm austerity of aspect, presented a book to them, which it supported as a deacon against its head. The book was closely written on one side, while the opposite page was blank.

An angel, crowned with an iron crown, and robed in a wonderful garment of deep azure,198 curiously wrought in gold with stars and signs of lore and art, such as only one land in Europe can boast of being able to interpret, taking a pen in his hand, spoke to the assembled multitude.

“Brethren,” he said, in a deep, musical voice whose tones indicated both gravity and conscious strength, “before I write my brief record of the year we have now added to our experience, let me speak to you, as fellow-watchers over our God's earthly treasures. My trust has been a bitter and a heavy one, yet withal a glorious vindication of faith and truth. We have risen among nations like a comet that for a moment eclipses the steadier and more lasting glory of the older planets, but in our course there were obstacles which have now become almost the monument of martyrs. Unmindful of the lion-hearted men to whom Wilfrid, and Boniface, and Lioba preached, and of whom the strongest bulwark of intellectual faith was built by their later and more national saints, our new rulers have sought to renew the persecutions of the XVIth century, and the absolutism of a State Church. But our God, the ‘dear God’199 of our people, knew how to raise up defenders for himself in the fearless pastors of his flock; knew how to inspire them with a bravery that scorned imprisonment and laughed at death, that made them raise their voices against presumptuous and intrusive authority on the one hand, and barefaced heresy on the other. We have triumphed in persecution; we have re-echoed the non possumus [pg 534] of our earthly father and Pontiff; we have shown to our God the will of martyrs after having displayed before our sovereign the deeds of patriots. He thought to weld a mighty nation into one empire; he has riven it in twain in his unblest attempt, and has called up against his puny military power the anger of that God who, on the shores of the Red Sea, did punish Pharaoh and his host. ‘Who is like to thee, among the strong, O Lord? Who is like to thee, glorious in holiness, terrible and worthy of praise, doing wonders?’ ”200

Those that wore robes like that of the mighty angel who had spoken took up his last triumphant words, and chanted them forth in two alternate choirs, and the voice that came from this host of choristers seemed like the voice of the sea thundering amid caves and rocks. It surged up and died away in long reverberating echoes, a hymn of strength and defiance, a prophecy of a magnificent and almost endless future.

Then the angel who had spoken wrote a few words in the book, and, turning, presented the pen to one who stood close beside him, tall, stately, and calm, in white raiment, with the historical fleur-de-lis broidered thickly over his robe. On his brows shone the same emblem, wrought in gold and pearls, while in his left hand he held a flame-colored standard, the oriflamme of the Crusades.

“My brethren,” he began, “this year has been a silent one compared with its last two predecessors; but none the less a year of sacrifice, of heroic expiation, of patient humility of spirit. We have lived amid perils as deep as religious persecutions; amid the perils of a civilization that is unchristian, and of refinements worse than heathen. The worship of the false gods has come back, and we are surrounded with a corruption as terrible as that of imperial Rome or effeminate Byzantium. Our name is no longer supreme, our escutcheon no longer unstained, our sword is broken in the hands of others, our missions are unprotected, and our influence no longer paramount among barbarians and plunderers, and still our corruption flourishes as unblushingly and undauntedly as ever, and our rivals, nay, our very captors, come to learn it at our feet. This is now our shameful supremacy; but, in the midst of these Capuan revels, is there still a hope for the nation? Yes, my brethren, the same hope that our glorious iron-crowned compeer has told us was his hope—the church, the faith, the truth. If our rulers, like those of our whilom foes, forget the Christian heroes whom we call our forefathers, the men who at the field of Tolbiac vowed our nation to the God of armies, and in a thousand fields in Palestine, Syria, and Egypt redeemed that holy vow, we do not and cannot forget it. Sons and daughters of the Crusaders, heirs and heiresses of the Kings of Jerusalem and the Knights of Rhodes and Malta, many of our nation are now in the holier army, the holier knighthood of religion; their habit is their coat of mail, their swift prayers and their swifter sacrifices are their battle-axes, their spears, their maces; in every land they are fighting the battle of their own, in every breach defending the honor of their fallen country. All eyes are still upon their acts; their land, like a magnet, compels the glance of Europe and the world. The saviours who are working hiddenly at the regeneration of ‘the eldest daughter of the church’ are of no party, own no secret master, work for no wages, and seek no reward; they [pg 535] are soldiers of the cross, children of God, who, in the hospitals, the prisons, the galleys, the schools, the Chinese stations, the Canadian missions, the cloistered monasteries, under the names of Sisters of Charity, Order of Preachers, Missions EtrangÈres, Christian Brothers, Benedictines of Solesmes, Jesuits, and Sulpiciens, work for God, in God, with God. ‘Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you.’ ”201

The choir of white-robed angels that clustered round the one who had ceased speaking took up the grave refrain, and chanted it as their brethren had done before, and the song swelled majestically as it seemed to reach the uttermost bounds of the living barrier of angel faces round the central groups. Ere yet it had subsided, the last of the heavenly speakers wrote his record in the book, and gave the pen into the hand of a third angel who stood in grave expectancy by his side.

This one was tall and stalwart-looking, a warrior-angel, one would involuntarily be sure to think, yet his long trailing robe of crimson was woven not with dragons or golden leopards, but with miniature cathedrals, abbeys, and priories. The heaviness of this golden embroidery seemed to drag the garment into yet more statuesque folds, as the mighty wearer drew himself slowly up and took the pen, letting go, as he did so, his hold upon a silver shield bearing a blood-red cross. His fair waving locks were uncrowned, and he bent his head towards the two who had spoken before.

“My brethren,” he began, and his voice sounded clear and clarionlike, “you have each of you sought in the continuation of the traditions of the past a pledge of the regeneration and safety of the future. I, too, looked to the early past for the golden age I would fain see revived among us, but, unlike you, it is neither persecution nor bloodshed that I have to record. Our nation is not eclipsed in power or in influence; and although our rulers are hardly worthy of their chivalric forerunners, yet there are yet among them some who are heirs to their fathers' greatness of soul, though not to the integrity of their faith. Still, our race has kept more unblemished than others that reverence for authority without which no faith is sure, no empire stable. Our life flows more calmly on in our island-home than does the troubled stream of our brethren's days beyond the sea. Still, amid benefits without number, amid the march of science and the progress of art, things that in exchange for the ancient gift of faith our second fatherland every day gives us in return, we have one fruitful source of dread and danger—the sordid love of gain which makes our people restless during life, and leaves them hopeless in death. To strive against this demon of the air—for we seem to breathe his spirit in the very atmosphere—is the constant endeavor of my being. To knit art to God as it was joined to him in the olden days, to put honor before wealth, and conscience before success, to raise principle triumphant over interest, is my daily, necessary, but most wearisome task. Many voices erstwhile charmed our nation—that of the warrior, the bard, the monk; the voice of glory, the voice of learning, the voice of holy love. Now one cry alone harshly calls our children together—the cry of gain. Our country has forgotten its ancient fanes of learning, its island monasteries, its townlike abbeys, its [pg 536] glorious cathedrals, colleges, libraries, and halls, it has forgotten its tournaments of science, its chants, its liturgies, even its earthly pageants, and has run after the abject golden calf of these latter days. Not the poor alone, but the noble and great have with less excuse come down into the new arena, and lowered themselves to the level of money-seekers, till the chivalry of our race has become a forgotten dream, a talisman that has lost its charm, a thing as out of date as a crowded abbey with its holy pomps of daily service would be among the darkened, busy streets of a modern gold-coining city. And yet in many a nook, in many an obscure street of a little town, in many a shady, peaceful country home, are rising the fair progeny of our statelier fanes of old, and beneath groined roofs and before carved altars rise prayers as beautiful and as divers as the trefoils and roses on capital and pillar. In prayer, whether petrified into fair churches standing for ever, or moulded into golden altar-plate rich with chasing and with gems, or flying straight to God's feet in ardent, winged words of love, we place our last hope, the hope of the only true conversion our land can ever know; for ‘there is a success in evil things to a man without discipline, and there is a finding that turneth to loss.’ ”202

Here a countless host of angels, as gravely radiant, yet with the same solemn shade of sadness in their aspect, as the last speaker, took up his parting words, and chanted them slowly. I thought they caught unconsciously the ring of the holy words chanted so often through the ages of faith, in that land of cathedrals and cloisters. Indeed, the angel choir and their stately leader seemed none other than monastic champions turned into bright heavenly spirits, so akin is everything in that isle to the claustral ideal from which sprang its life—civil, collegiate, ecclesiastical, feudal, and social.

As the chanted dirge grew less and less distinct, another angel advanced to take the pen his predecessor had just laid in the folds of the book, after having written his year's record within. This one had stood so far in the background as to have escaped my awed notice until now. He wore a long, loosely-falling robe of black, and bowed his head as if in grief; his hands were clasped, and a golden and a silver key were held between his fingers; in his step there was no elasticity, and in his eye no gladness. All those who followed him seemed equally sorrowful, but soon I heard why it was, and no longer marvelled at it.

“Brethren,” he said, in mournful tones, “brethren of all climes, who once envied me my proud position of warden over the land which holds the father of all Christians, envy me no longer the sad honors I must yet bear. When I look at my nation, I can see nothing through my tears. Once I saw treasures of art and beauty; I can take pride in them no longer. I saw fair landscapes, the envy of the world, the garden of Europe, the beautiful God's-acre of a past of heroic deeds, buried in honorable oblivion as the seedlings of a more glorious crop of Christian heroism—I can take pleasure in these no more. I saw a people mild, inoffensive, believing, loving; now I see them corrupted, deluded, led away, and turned into furies. I saw churches gorgeous with the many gifts of fervent piety and grateful wealth; I see ruins now, sacrilegiously used for godless purposes, in derision and contempt of their lofty [pg 537] dedication. I saw one city, the jewel of the universe, the city of sanctuary and refuge, where faith reigned, and grief was comforted, and weakness was made strength; a ‘city of the soul,’ where God held court mid thousands of earthly angels, and where he found again the mingled worship of the mysterious Hebrew temple and of the holy, silent house of Nazareth. But now, brethren, rude men have scattered our treasures, profaned our churches, seized our cloisters, driven away learning and charity to put lewdness and brutality in their place, and have renewed, with far more blasphemous intention, the horrors of the barbaric invasions. I see the father of the faithful with the crown of martyrdom surmounting his tiara, waiting, like the Ecce Homo eighteen hundred years ago, the final verdict of an infuriate mob, while other nations, Pilate-like, wash their hands of the sacred, helpless charge it were their first duty to defend. My brethren, weep with me, weep for me, and yet rejoice; ‘for the Lord will not cast off for ever.’203 ‘And in that day the deaf shall hear the words of the book, and out of darkness and obscurity the eyes of the blind shall see.’ ”204

Many were the eager voices that took up the words of hope and sang them with a fervor which only guardian spirits can know. As the strain swelled and spread, then fell into a gentle murmur, as if the singers were loth to leave off the prayer of faith and hope, the angel had written his short record for the passing year, and looked around to welcome his next successor. There was a pause, and among the angelic conclave a swaying to and fro denoted that some suppressed feeling was at work. Those who had spoken stood apart in a conspicuous group, conferring among themselves; but I looked with awe and interest at those who had hitherto been silent.

The old year's span was very short now. On earth the snow was falling, preparing a fitting shroud for the departing guest, and a fitting cradle for the coming stranger; there were revellers in many houses, heedless sleepers in more, and watchers in only a few; there were monastic choirs filing into silent churches for the coming office of matins; and there were also miserable outcasts, some voluntary slaves of the world, others unwilling watchers, poverty-stricken, hunger-smitten, desperately tempted creatures who might murmur at and even curse their fate, yet would not begin the year by breaking God's commandments; there were many sinners doing penance, many happy death-beds, many freed souls rushing on the wings of long-repressed desire towards the goal that weary years of purgatory had hardly hidden from their longing gaze; and well might the angelic host thrill with holy delight as all these sights and sounds struck upon their consciousness. The good surely outweighed the bad!

Just then an angel stepped from among the hitherto silent throng—an angel with a face full of suffering, sweetness, and patience, yet withal a look of something deeper and stronger than mere patience; and his black robe was sown with silver stars, while a star glittered also on his forehead. In quick accents, full of strength, he addressed his companions, holding the pen in his hand.

“Brethren!” he said, “the march of events, as the world calls it, has passed over and by our nation, but in God's eyes we are not so soon forgotten. The civilizer of Eastern [pg 538] Europe, the bulwark of Christianity against the Moslem faith, we have nevertheless suffered by the hands of Christian princess and been annihilated in the name of civilization. A martyr-nation, a victim to false diplomacy, we stand in Europe with the chains still about our feet, while empires change hands and dynasties come and go; exiled and dispersed like the Hebrews of old, we are known, like them, by our indomitable faith and ever hopeful patriotism. Within this year, a gigantic empire has manacled us more cruelly, gagged us more closely, than before, but we are steadfast yet, for ‘blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ ”205

The words were caught up and re-echoed by the angel throng around their star-crowned leader, while he wrote the brief record of another year's bitter wrongs still so heroically and silently borne. He passed the pen to another clothed in purple, who looked at him with angelic sympathy before he spoke. His voice was still and low, but clear as a silver bell.

“My brethren,” he said, “my task is hard and dreary; a mist of prejudice hangs over those vast steppes which form my dominions; a false civilization educates our nobles to a pitch of unnatural and seeming polish in which all truth is killed, and all natural kindness crushed; like the apples of the Dead Sea, our country is fair to the eye of the world, but ashes to the taste of God. We have all to hope, it is true, but much to fear; and, while the desolate semblance of the true faith spreads its outward and deceptive gorgeousness before the barren and fettered nation, the souls of our brethren perish of thirst, as it were, within sight of the Fountain of Life. Brethren, pray for my unhappy charge, and thou, O God! enlighten my people! ‘How incomprehensible are thy judgments, and how unsearchable thy ways!’ ”206

The purple-robed choir around him took up the angel's last words, and slowly chanted them, as if in awe and expectation, while their leader wrote a few brief words in the book.

Another came forward, gathering his golden robe together, the hem of which was broidered with figures of ships and charts, somewhat faded now, but this was redeemed by the effulgent brightness of the scroll he held on his outstretched hand a scroll bearing the divine motto, Ad majorem Dei gloriam. Looking swiftly around, he began thus:

“My brethren, my provinces are narrowed and my nation lessened since her ships explored the ocean, her fleet sent forth armadas, and her leaders conquered new continents, but the spirit of the missionary and the martyr has not followed that of the less successful and less lasting investigator. Chivalry still lives in the land of the Cid, and fires the hearts in whose veins flows the blood of the Crusaders of Granada. Saints took up the warrior's shield, and won their spurs in distant, dangerous services, till the names of Xavier, Loyola, Gaudia, and Teresa became the household words of a whole universe. Unbelief has poisoned our present position, and for our sins we have suffered dire misfortune and perennial disturbance. Still, our people are unchanged; faithfully the sons of the Visigoth martyrs keep the trust of their fathers, and, secure amid their mountain fastnesses, within the last year have raised the standard [pg 539] of the cross wreathed with the golden lilies of a national and well-beloved dynasty. We have had triumphs of the soul and heroic deeds of patriotic daring mingled together in the annals of our peasant soldiers; the spirit of another VendÉe has spoken to our nation; and God has rejoiced to find at last a human bulwark against human unbelief. ‘Judge me, O God, and distinguish my cause from the nation that is not holy; deliver me from the unjust and deceitful man.’ ”207

And while the angel wrote his record in the book, his followers echoed his last words in tones of mingled triumph and supplication, chanting them, as all the others had done before them, in two alternate choirs. And now there was again a pause, while the first groups of angels who had spoken drew closer to the book, and gazed at the last records written in it. One more representative came forward, an angel robed in softest green, and bearing a harp in his hand. Turning to the west, he spoke in a voice full of deep emotion: “My brethren, I look towards the sea, and gaze at the land of the setting sun. I see my people spreading over the earth, so that I have more children in far-away lands than on my own soil. I see them, the pioneer nation of whom Brendan was the first leader, planting the cross and the shamrock in unfailing union, wherever they go. Long ages of suffering have not reft them of the gift of faith, the treasure of art, or the strength of enterprise; their arm hath upreared every throne and stayed every altar; their women make a Nazareth of every home and a tabernacle of every hovel; their race links two worlds, that of the past and that of the future, that of culture and civilization, to that of enterprise and freedom. I look with pride on the ocean darkened by the barks of my people, and forget, as I look, to sigh over the ruined fanes and dismantled castles of old. Children of impulse, they carry their home in their hearts, and make another Erin round every cross they plant. Sea kings, but Christians, they take from the Norsemen their daring, and from their own isle its poetry, and, blending the two, bear the highest gifts of the Old World to be the heirlooms of the New. To my nation may it well and fittingly be said, ‘They went out from thee on foot, and were led by the enemies: but the Lord will bring them to thee exalted with honor as children of the kingdom.’ ”208

These prophetic words were caught up by the numerous followers of the green-robed angel, and rang now in grand and now in softened cadence through the boundless field of space that encircled the heavenly throng. As the tones died away, the angel wrote his record in the book, and the bells of earth sounded faintly in the still air.

The old year was passing away, and the angels in silence gathered round the book. As the last stroke of midnight was heard, the bearer of it turned the leaf, presenting a surface fair and smooth as the petal of a lily, and the whole company of blessed spirits intoned the Veni Creator.

I heard as it were in a dream, and saw forms of light and beauty disperse like the fleecy clouds of morning, till the singing died away in faraway corners of our old, prosaic, yet blessed earth. The songs of heaven were carried into the uttermost recesses where earthly misery was keenest and earthly revelry loudest [pg 540] on that fateful night; and, as its echoes passed over them, the misery grew strangely bearable, the revelry was unaccountably hushed. Everywhere the new-born year came in with a blessing and a promise, reverently gathering its predecessor's lessons even while mourning its inevitable shortcomings; and so once more, according to the patience of God, his ministers went forth to clear for every man a new field where, past errors being forgotten, he might renew his struggle in the battle of life, and retrieve himself in the eyes of infinite purity and infinite justice.

Such was the beautiful death of the old year 1872.