University of Virginia Library

8. CHAPTER VIII.
FOOT-PRINTS OF ANGELS.

It was Sunday morning; and the church bells
were all ringing together. From all the neighbouring
villages, came the solemn, joyful sounds,
floating through the sunny air, mellow and faint
and low,—all mingling into one harmonious
chime, like the sound of some distant organ in
heaven. Anon they ceased; and the woods, and
the clouds, and the whole village, and the very air
itself seemed to pray, so silent was it everywhere.

Two venerable old men,—high priests and
patriarchs were they in the land,—went up the
pulpit stairs, as Moses and Aaron went up Mount
Hor, in the sight of all the congregation,—for
the pulpit stairs were in front, and very high.

Paul Flemming will never forget the sermon he
heard that day,—no, not even if he should live
to be as old as he who preached it. The text
was, “I know that my Redeemer liveth.” It was
meant to console the pious, poor widow, who sat
right below him at the foot of the pulpit stairs, all
in black, and her heart breaking. He said nothing
of the terrors of death, nor of the gloom of the
narrow house, but, looking beyond these things, as
mere circumstances to which the imagination mainly
gives importance, he told his hearers of the innocence
of childhood upon earth, and the holiness
of childhood in heaven, and how the beautiful
Lord Jesus was once a little child, and now in
heaven the spirits of little children walked with
him, and gathered flowers in the fields of Paradise.
Good old man! In behalf of humanity, I
thank thee for these benignant words! And, still
more than I, the bereaved mother thanked thee,
and from that hour, though she wept in secret for
her child, yet

After the sermon, Paul Flemming walked forth
alone into the churchyard. There was no one
there, save a little boy, who was fishing with a pin
hook in a grave half full of water. But a few
moments afterward, through the arched gateway
under the belfry, came a funeral procession. At
its head walked a priest in white surplice, chanting.
Peasants, old and young, followed him, with
burning tapers in their hands. A young girl carried
in her arms a dead child, wrapped in its little
winding sheet. The grave was close under the
wall, by the church door. A vase of holy water
stood beside it. The sexton took the child from
the girl's arms, and put it into a coffin; and, as he
placed it in the grave, the girl held over it a cross,
wreathed with roses, and the priest and peasants
sang a funeral hymn. When this was over, the
priest sprinkled the grave and the crowd with holy
water; and then they all went into the church,
each one stopping as he passed the grave to
throw a handful of earth into it, and sprinkle it
with holy water.

A few moments afterwards, the voice of the
priest was heard saying mass in the church, and
Flemming saw the toothless old sexton treading
the fresh earth into the grave of the little child,
with his clouted shoes. He approached him,
and asked the age of the deceased. The sexton
leaned a moment on his spade, and shrugging his
shoulders replied;

“Only an hour or two. It was born in the
night, and died this morning early?”

“A brief existence,” said Flemming. “The child
seems to have been born only to be buried, and
have its name recorded on a wooden tombstone.”

The sexton went on with his work, and made
no reply. Flemming still lingered among the
graves, gazing with wonder at the strange devices,
by which man has rendered death horrible
and the grave loathsome.

In the Temple of Juno at Elis, Sleep and his
twin-brother Death were represented as children
reposing in the arms of Night. On various funeral
monuments of the ancients the Genius of Death is

sculptured as a beautiful youth, leaning on an inverted
torch, in the attitude of repose, his wings
folded and his feet crossed. In such peaceful and
attractive forms, did the imagination of ancient
poets and sculptors represent death. And these
were men in whose souls the religion of Nature
was like the light of stars, beautiful, but faint and
cold! Strange, that in later days, this angel of
God, which leads us with a gentle hand, into the
“Land of the great departed, into the silent Land,”
should have been transformed into a monstrous
and terrific thing! Such is the spectral rider on
the white horse;—such the ghastly skeleton with
scythe and hour-glass;—the Reaper, whose name
is Death!

One of the most popular themes of poetry
and painting in the Middle Ages, and continuing
down even into modern times, was the Dance of
Death. In almost all languages is it written,—
the apparition of the grim spectre, putting a sudden
stop to all business, and leading men away
into the “remarkable retirement” of the grave. It

is written in an ancient Spanish Poem, and painted
on a wooden bridge in Switzerland. The designs
of Holbein are well known. The most
striking among them is that, where, from a group
of children sitting round a cottage hearth, Death has
taken one by the hand, and is leading it out of the
door. Quietly and unresisting goes the little
child, and in its countenance no grief, but wonder
only; while the other children are weeping and
stretching forth their hands in vain towards their
departing brother. A beautiful design it is, in all
save the skeleton. An angel had been better,
with folded wings, and torch inverted!

And now the sun was growing high and warm.
A little chapel, whose door stood open, seemed to invite
Flemming to enter and enjoy the grateful coolness.
He went in. There was no one there. The
walls were covered with paintings and sculpture of
the rudest kind, and with a few funeral tablets.
There was nothing there to move the heart to devotion;
but in that hour the heart of Flemming
was weak,—weak as a child's. He bowed his

stubborn knees, and wept. And oh! how many
disappointed hopes, how many bitter recollections,
how much of wounded pride, and unrequited love,
were in those tears, through which he read on a
marble tablet in the chapel wall opposite, this
singular inscription;

“Look not mournfully into the Past. It comes
not back again. Wisely improve the Present. It
is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy Future,
without fear, and with a manly heart.”

It seemed to him, as if the unknown tenant of
that grave had opened his lips of dust, and spoken
to him the words of consolation, which his soul
needed, and which no friend had yet spoken. In
a moment the anguish of his thoughts was still.
The stone was rolled away from the door of his
heart; death was no longer there, but an angel
clothed in white. He stood up, and his eyes were
no more bleared with tears; and, looking into
the bright, morning heaven, he said;

“I will be strong!”

Men sometimes go down into tombs, with painful

longings to behold once more the faces of their
departed friends; and as they gaze upon them,
lying there so peacefully with the semblance, that
they wore on earth, the sweet breath of heaven
touches them, and the features crumble and fall
together, and are but dust. So did his soul then
descend for the last time into the great tomb of
the Past, with painful longings to behold once
more the dear faces of those he had loved; and
the sweet breath of heaven touched them, and
they would not stay, but crumbled away and perished
as he gazed. They, too, were dust. And
thus, far-sounding, he heard the great gate of the
Past shut behind him as the Divine Poet did the
gate of Paradise, when the angel pointed him the
way up the Holy Mountain; and to him likewise
was it forbidden to look back.

In the life of every man, there are sudden
transitions of feeling, which seem almost miraculous.
At once, as if some magician had touched
the heavens and the earth, the dark clouds melt
into the air, the wind falls, and serenity succeeds

the storm. The causes which produce these sudden
changes may have been long at work within us,
but the changes themselves are instantaneous, and
apparently without sufficient cause. It was so with
Flemming; and from that hour forth he resolved,
that he would no longer veer with every shifting
wind of circumstance; no longer be a child's plaything
in the hands of Fate, which we ourselves do
make or mar. He resolved henceforward not to
lean on others; but to walk self-confident and self-possessed;
no longer to waste his years in vain
regrets, nor wait the fulfilment of boundless hopes
and indiscreet desires; but to live in the Present
wisely, alike forgetful of the Past, and careless of
what the mysterious Future might bring. And
from that moment he was calm, and strong; he
was reconciled with himself! His thoughts turned
to his distant home beyond the sea. An indescribable,
sweet feeling rose within him.

“Thither will I turn my wandering footsteps,”
said he; “and be a man among men, and no
longer a dreamer among shadows. Henceforth be

mine a life of action and reality! I will work in
my own sphere, nor wish it other than it is. This
alone is health and happiness. This alone is
Life;

Why have I not made these sage reflections, this
wise resolve, sooner? Can such a simple result
spring only from the long and intricate process
of experience? Alas! it is not till Time, with
reckless hand, has torn out half the leaves from the
Book of Human Life, to light the fires of passion
with, from day to day, that Man begins to see,
that the leaves which remain are few in number,
and to remember, faintly at first, and then more
clearly, that, upon the earlier pages of that book,
was written a story of happy innocence, which he
would fain read over again. Then come listless
irresolution, and the inevitable inaction of despair;
or else the firm resolve to record upon the leaves
that still remain, a more noble history, than the
child's story, with which the book began.”