stay even the heavy arm of justice, and the still heavier arm of lawless cruelty. When St. Eloi built his church on the Dunes, he raised a sanctuary, round which his new converts gladly gathered; he taught them, moreover, to make the best of this world, and instructed them in many useful things, the art of cutting precious stones, and of working in gold and silver. He had agricultural theories, and some practical knowledge as a corrective; hence it can be proved that there were substantial reasons for the love and reverence which made the good St. Eloi the. titular saint of Dunkerque, en

Let us turn to history, and see how the place and people fared during the twelve centuries of his guardianship.

Hardly were the people settled in their new faith, when the Normans came down upon the coast, pillaging the bourgs and desolating the country, The Liturgy of the day included this prayer, "From the fury of the Normans, deliver us, good Lord."

In the tenth century the churches were destroyed and the monasteries reduced to ashes, but the recollection of St. Eloi's teachings kept the faithful together; they made chapels underground, and worshipped there to avoid the Northern pagans. At length the Marquis of Flanders built a wall round the church and the town which had grown up near it. And from this time the history of the place became identified with the church; all the notable events, civil, religious, or military, were in one way or another associated with the shrine of St. Eloi The flags for twenty-seven ships destined for the Crusades were blessed at this altar, and their crews made up of the sturdy fishermen of the porteirauteed

It would have been well for Christendom if there had always been a common enemy, but national antipathies began to arise. Accord ing to Froissart, Spencer, Bishop of Norwich, conducted an attack upon Dunkerque in the. time of Richard the Third. He is reported to have said "that there could not be better pleasure and profit than taking the rich town of Dunkerque." But the Flemish hated the French worse than the English, for an old proverb says, "If all the Flemish were dead, their bones would gather together against the French." The Church, associated itself with | every popular movement, and whether it was St. Bernard preaching the Crusade, or whether it was a gathering of townsfolk against some neighbouring bourg, the consecrated banner was lifted on high, and crowds rushed together singing the "Kyrie eleison," which even now forms the refrain of every Flemish song. The line is:

Christ ons gemade-Kyrie eleison.

(Christ have pity on us.)

At Dunkerque and the neighbourhood it is still the custom at the funeral of a young girl place, singing the following words, partly in to accompany her remains to their last restingFlemish, partly in Latin and Hebrew:

Thus

singing, her young companions walk with measured steps through the streets, holding the blue and white pall emblematic of the Virgin. For a brief space the whirl of busy traffic is stopped, and with uncovered heads the passers-by listen to the ringing strain, which has all that wild sad charm of medieval music, the mingling of bitterness with triumph, the wail of sorrow lost in infinite sweetness, that something vague, nameless and penetrating, which once heard comes back to us again and again, as the echo from another world than ours.

for

In 1440 the Dunkerquois built St. Eloi a new church. Since the time when the good saint was with them in the flesh, the fishermen had agreed to keep a net which should be called the "holy net the produce of this was always devoted to repairing the church; hence it came about, that notwithstanding the devastations of those terrible English, and the rapine and wrong of nearer neighbours, the shrine of St. Eloi always maintained its material importance.

75

"Les Dunkerquois avaient eu tant de maîtres, qu'ils croyaient appartenir à tout le monde," says one of their historians. And if we call

up in review before us the personages who have knelt in succession before the high altar of St. Eloi's shrine, it will form a most curious panorama of change and mutation.

In the time of the Austrian possession, Philip le beau came to Dunkerque to receive the ambassadors of Henry the Seventh of England; and later, the church doors open to welcome the gorgeous pageant which attends Charles the Fifth ; the streets are planted with trees, under whose shadow pass the vast assemblage of German and Flemish lords, of public functionaries, cannoneers, archers, crossbowmen, priests, monks, and nuns, bearing the relics of each convent.

But evil days followed. In 1558 Count Egmont comes to the rescue of the Dunkerquois, who had fallen into the hands of the

French soldiery, "who," says the chronicler, 66 regarded neither the prayers of the people nor the sanctity of the holy places." Even St. Eloi's shrine was pillaged, the church furniture destroyed, and the bells carried off. However, peace was restored to Dunkerque by the issue of the battle of Gravelines. In 1588 the imposing ceremony of blessing the flags for a portion of the "Invincible Armada" took place at St. Eloi's shrine; for the faithful it was a grand spectacle, but this time the saint's blessing availed but little. Some material help was given by Dunkerque in the shape of two pilots, who conducted the shattered remnants of the Armada back to Spain.

The fleeting years pass on, and none but St. Eloi and the dear God who loveth' I

here is one.

וי

"

a

1

All things both great and small-Belt hath taken note of the tears that have been shed and the vows that were breathed day by day before that altar; like the leaves of the forest are the generations of men ! Only when some misfortune befalls a people does the great scene painter History give us a picture, and Early in the seventeenth century the church doors are flung wide open to admit a penitential procession; this is no gay pageant, no welcome to king or kaiser; they come wailing and weeping, in sad and solemn guise invoking St. Eloi to stay that terrible scourge, the pest, which is desolating their town. But time passes, the children who followed on the skirts of this wailing crowd are grown old and feeble, and are hurrying to the church tower; they look down to see how fares it with their sons, who are fighting the Battle of the Dunes. Marshal Turenne, reinforced by Cromwell's men under Lockhart, was opposed to 25,000 Spaniards. A looker-on exclaims, "the French fight like angels, the English like demons." The result of the battle is told in the following characteristic note which Turenne writes to his wife on the evening of that memorable day

:

Our Cromwell, too, had a terse style of writing, not unworthy of imitation in these days. When it transpired that the French wanted to keep Dunkerque for themselves, he informed the French ambassador that if the town was not given up an hour after it was taken, they should see Lockhart himself, with an English army, at the gates of Paris. The Grand Monarque bowed with infinite grace, quite in the old court manner, and gave up the town. Dunkerque is a solitary instance of a place belonging to three different powers in one day

Spanish in the morning, French at noon, and English at night.

It does not appear that Cromwell and St. Eloi ever hit it off well together, though there was much civil talking between their followers of liberty of conscience. A group of surly Puritans stood by the altar while the representative Dunkerquois swore to be faithful to his Serene Highness Oliver, Lord Protector of the Republic of England, and his successors, etc. We shall see further on that the Dunkerquois had great powers of swearing and praising God for new masters. The restoration of the Stuarts was duly celebrated by a "Te Deum" at Dunkerque, and still greater rejoicings took place two years later, when Charles the Second basely sold the place for French gold.

1

These were palmy days for saintship and township. Louis the Fourteenth completed the fortifications, and thrice within a few years he knelt in great state before St. Eloi's altar, Jean Bart, sometime captain of this nest of pirates, but now Admiral of the Fleet, is by his side; a Viking of the old stamp was this said Jean Bart, a picture of whose statue. I only wish I could transfer into these pages. He and James the Second reviewed together, on Dunkerque quay the fleet, which was intended to reconquer the exile's throne. "But says the historian, "the tempests always seem at the command of the English." A worthier member of kingcraft is the next of the notables seen at Dunkerque, Peter, the Great goes to hear mass at the church, but he gets this matter quickly over, for his thoughts are far away with the ships and the fortifications, this

"

During the next fifty years or so, the royal marriages and christenings of the House of Bourbon were duly celebrated. There were special rejoicings at the birth of the Dauphin, son of Louis the Sixteenth, but the shouts of “Vive le Roi" had hardly died away when other, sounds arose, and the walls of the church were placarded with complaints against the public functionaries, violent invectives about the state of the national finances, and much general discontent not understood at the time, but now known as the precursor of an earthquake.

The air becomes more and more dense, and what is it now we see? A.vast crowd congregated before the altar, the national, guard, the municipality, the clergy, the sans-culottes, together taking an oath by Dieu, Patrie, Fraternité," to do something the world has never done before. There is much excitement; it is the 29th of September, 1791, a "Te Deum" is being sung in honour of the constitution authorised by Louis the Sixteenth. Mark well this "Te Deum," listen to the

strains of holy music, remember the perfume of the incense, look your last upon the sacred emblems; many there be will die of famine, of the sword, of natural decay, and some will grow from infancy to man's estate, ere God's name shall again be praised or his aid invoked. This was the last religious ceremony performed before St. Eloi's shrine for many a long year. Political convictions in France are spasmodic. Almost on the very morrow the church is deserted, the priests not daring to officiate; moderatism denounced, royalty prescribed, the "declaration of the rights of man "nailed upon the altar. There are to be no more kings, no more saints, Eloi must pack off and be gone, his lease is out, his guardianship over. The old name he gave to the place is "an offence to reason, Dunkerque no longer, but Dune libre say the patriots. The Iconoclasts proceeded to break the images of the saints and to destroy all the registers. The carved wood of the altar was burnt, the sacerdotal vest ments were sold to the lenders of costumes for the carnival, rare works of art, pictures of their kings and saints, were rent, burnt, and scattered to the winds. A meeting was con vened in the church to abolish then and for ever the religion of their forefathers; the past was to be annihilated. They danced the Carmagnole before the altar, and the wild shrieks of the maddened populace made the roof ring again. It was ordered by the authorities that the church of St. Eloi should be made a coru market. It was dedicated to the Goddess of Reason, and the busts of Voltaire and Marat adorned the altar; the orators of the clubs spoke from the pulpit. The Bénitiers no longer supplied holy water for the sign of the cross; they were replaced by a lion's month' called the Bouche de fer, into which were dropped denunciations against aristocrats and • SKIZ 9 Lod > 1102 others. "Thus for ten long years the good saint's shrine was desecrated. But in 1801, when the First Consul concluded a concordat with the Pope, St. Eloi was re-established in alli honour and reverence, and is still looked upon as the spiritual father of the place.

1

J

Of pain? Perchance, their words were sooth;'

My love was all too great

For worldly pleasures and delights,

For worldly pomp and state!

It is not courage that I lack,
Regret I feel, not fear!

Until to-night-my last on earth !
Life never seemed so dear 1

Methinks I should not care so much,

If nought I had to leave

But mothers, dying happily,"
Still for their offspring, grieve;
...And mine, above whose infant head,
Suspended, hangs a crown';

Oh! would to God, with mine, she might
Her little life lay down! v

تاين

་་ ་་

It smiled on me! Oh! who would think, w To see me lying here,lia That courtly men had knelt to men A monarch held me dear! O'er English land, an English Queen, My star had shone so fair; Tis the desertion, not the death, ol That is so hard to bear $12990; laita9,09% £ -Iiss OK!'sin-stain'a world, which God made good!

Oh! world, which looked so bright! D

Ob happy hours I have known,jei 2 zanz07ut
Which took such rapid flight hd
troop of gallant friends,

Oh !

from me fell 19

(! it

b A MOORISH MARTYR,

I

PAYING a visit lately to my friend Madame B, just returned from her Algerian home, I listlessly, during a pause in our conversation, turned over a number of photographs lying upon a table near which we'sat. These photographs chiefly represented dark-visaged, darkbearded, white-garmented Arabs, posed in various picturesque attitudes, warlike or re

poseful, as the case might be. I glanced over these portraits of the sons of the desert, I confess, with a careless indifference, perceiving them with the physical, but, so to speak, perceiving them not with the mental, eye.

Gradually, however, I became sensible that I was attracted to one especial photograph, a small one of the carte-de-visite size, and that my imagination was busied in speculation regarding it. This photograph represented a sculptured bust, the countenance bearing the unmistakable Moorish type. Even through the somewhat imperfect medium which I held in my hand, I could recognise that the modelling of the bust was remarkably delicate, that every minute curve and line, the very texture of the hair and skin, were rendered with preRaphaelite truthfulness of delineation, whilst the breadth of outline irresistibly reminded me of the masterpieces of antique sculpture. Who was the sculptor who had wrought this

work? And who had been the Moor whom the great skill of this sculptor had embodied before me? The longer I gazed upon the photograph, the deeper did my interest become. "Who was this man?" I continued mentally to ask. What did he achieve or suffer, so to distinguish himself above his fellow Moors as to have caused a great sculptor to seek to immortalise his features? It was evident that through the attraction of no special physical beauty had the artist's eye sought him out, and the artist's hand delineated his features. It must therefore have been through the sculptor's recognition of some great beauty of mind or soul possessed by this man that he had chosen him as his model; and in very truth it seemed to me, that the spirit of some such interior beauty impressed by the artist upon his work now spoke audibly, strangely touching my imagination. I continued my contemplation of the photograph

and my mental questioning. How plaintive was the expression in the falling lines of the firmly-set, full Moorish lips, in those raised eyes, yet with closed lids! Had he been blind? I seemed to read a searching look beneath those closed eyelids. How was it? Did I perhaps behold the countenance of some Moorish Homer, of some Arab Milton? Was it the unalterable yearng, yet resignation, of some mighty geni imprisoned in its blind tabernacle of clay .nat lent such deep pathos to the work of art before me, illumining the strange, physically, almost uncouth countenance before me with a dignity awe-inspiring?

Upon the bust's square pedestal I perceived delineated in relief the representation of a Moorish Fort, beneath which stood the dates, 1569-1853.

"What is the history of this singular work of art?" asked I abruptly of Madame

B. "There is a strange pathos in its expression, a something which troubles my imagination. To what blind Arab hero or poet did these features belong? And who was the sculptor ?"

"And you fancy that you see something remarkable in that photograph?" observed my friend with a smile. "Most people wonder why I possess such a thing, and call it hideous, frightful, and so on. But you recognise an indescribable pathos in those features; think that they have been wrought by the hand of some great sculptor? You have indeed seen truly, and thought truly. That face was the face of a Christian martyr, and the hand that sculptured it was the hand of the great sculptor, Nature-nay, if you can accept it, the hand of the Special Providence of God."

"You are laughing at my fancies," said I, looking up, surprised by my friend's words;