The Truce of God | Page 5

or
on the field of battle. We see a woman and an old man, Mathilda of
Tuscany and Pope St. Gregory VII, slowly but surely building on the
foundations of a half-molded civilization the ramparts of the City of
God. "The Truce of God" is true to the requirements of the historical
romance. It summons before us a forgotten past, and makes it live. We
forget in the vitality and artistic grouping of the picture, in the nobility
of the author's purpose and the lasting moral effect of the story, the
occasional stiffness of the style. It is the style of the refined scholar,
perhaps also of the bookman and the too conscious critic. Occasionally
it lacks spontaneity, directness and naturalness. It might unbend more
and forget ceremony. But it is picturesque, forcible, clear, and bears us
along with its swing and dramatic movement.
American Catholics must not forget the excellent work done by George
Henry Miles for the cause of Catholic literature, the more so as his
name is not infrequently omitted from many popular histories of
American literature. Yet the author of "The Truce of God" had
mastered the story teller's and the dramatist's art. "If there was ever a
born _littérateur_," writes Eugene L. Didier, in The Catholic World for
May, 1881, "that man was George Henry Miles. His taste was pure,
exquisite and refined, his imagination was rich, vivid, and almost
oriental in its warmth." Moreover, he consecrated his life and his
talents to the cause of Catholic education, identifying himself for many
years with Mount St. Mary's College, Emmitsburg, Maryland, with
whose annals so much of the early history of the Catholic Church in the
United States, is closely linked.
The author of "The Truce of God" was born in Baltimore, July 31, 1824;
he died at Emmitsburg, July 23, 1872. In his twelfth year the lad
entered Mount St. Mary's College. Here he became a Catholic and had
afterwards the happiness of seeing his family follow him into the
Church. The studies at the "Mountain" in those days were still under
the magic and salutary spell of the venerable founder, Bishop Dubois,

and his followers. They were old fashioned, but they were solid, with
the classics of Greece and Rome, mathematics, philosophy and religion
as their foundation. They were eminently calculated to mold thinkers,
scholars and cultured Catholic gentlemen. They left a deep impression
on the young Marylander. After his graduation at the end of the
scholastic year, 1843, the law for a short while lured him away, to its
digests, its quiddits and quillets, abstracts and briefs. But it was putting
Pegasus in pound. Miles at a lawyer's task was as much out of place as
Edgar Allan Poe was when mounting guard as a cadet at West Point, or
Charles Lamb with a quill behind his ear balancing his ledger in India
House. The Mountain and the Muses lured him back to Emmitsburg,
where a short distance from the college gate, in the quiet retreat of
Thornbrook, he settled to his books and a professor's tasks at the Mount.
Close by were the lovely haunts of La Salette, Hillside, Loretto,
Tanglewood, Andorra, Mt. Carmel, every little cottage and garden,
eloquent, it has been said, of the faith and piety of the builders of the
Mount, who breathed the spirit that thus baptized them ("The Story of
the Mountain. Mount St. Mary's College and Seminary, Emmitsburg,
Maryland." By the Rev. E. McSweeny. Vol. II, p. 102). For its historic
associations, its panorama of hills, wooded slopes and fields, the spot
could scarcely be matched within the wide amphitheater of the hills of
Maryland.
To Emmitsburg, to his "boys", the young professor of English literature
gave his enthusiasm, his idealism, his love of all that was fair in art and
the world of books. His enthusiasm inspired them with a love of artistic
excellence, which, neither in his own work, nor in that of his pupils
would tolerate anything commonplace. Before coming to Thornbrook,
he had written "The Truce of God," first published as a serial in the
_United States Catholic Magazine_, established by John Murphy of
Baltimore, and which under the editorship of Bishop Martin John
Spalding and the Rev. Charles I. White achieved a national reputation.
Two other tales, "Loretto," and the "Governess," had also been
published and were extremely popular. Like "The Truce of God," they
were of the purest moral tone, elegant in diction, the work of a
thorough literary craftsman. In 1850, the American actor, Edwin
Forrest, offered a prize of $1,000.00 for the best drama written by an
American. Miles easily carried off the reward with his play

"Mohammed." Rich with all the colors of the East, glowing with the
warmth and poetry of Arabian romance and story, "Mohammed" was