Italian peasant girl, was written by one who, after many strange wanderings, found “Home” at last in that Church which is the mistress and inspirer of art.  Like Payne, Miles captured the fancy of his countrymen with one song, “Said the Rose,” which at one time was the most popular song in the United States.  It has not the depth and the melting tenderness of “Home, Sweet Home,” but its quaint fancy and melodious verse struck a responsive chord.  In his “Inkerman,” a stirring ballad, which every American boy of a former age knew by heart, there was an echo of the “Lays of Ancient Rome,” of the “Lays” of Scott and Aytoun, while in the more ambitious “Christine” (1866), there was the accent of the genuine poet, something that recalled the “Christabel” of Coleridge.  Miles had projected a series of studies on the characters and plays of Shakespeare.  Judging from two remaining fragments, “Hamlet” and “Macbeth,” the latter a mere outline, we regret that the writer was not able to finish the task.  To beauty of language his study of “Hamlet” adds keen analytical powers and original views.  ("An American Catholic Poet,” The Catholic World.  Vol.  XXXIII, p. 145 ff.)

In the quiet churchyard on the slope of his beloved Mountain, in a simple grave, over which the green hills of Maryland keep guard, not far from the class-rooms and the chapel he loved, rest the mortal remains of the author of “The Truce of God.”  It is not necessary to describe him.  Those who read this simple but romantic and stirring tale of the eleventh century which he wrote three-quarters of a century ago, cannot fail to catch the main features of the man.  They will conclude that in George Henry Miles, religion and art, the purest ideals of the Catholic faith and the highest standards of culture and letters, are blended in rare proportion.

John C. Reville, S.J.,
Editor-in-chief.

THE TRUCE OF GOD

CHAPTER I

 Of ancient deeds so long forgot;
 Of feuds whose memory was not;
 Of forests now laid waste and bare;
 Of towers which harbor now the hare;
 Of manners long since changed and gone;
 Of chiefs who under their gray stone
 So long had slept, that fickle fame
 Hath blotted from her rolls their name.

 Scott.

Reader! if your mind, harassed with the cares of a utilitarian age, require an hour of recreation; if a legend of a far different and far distant day have aught that can claim your sympathy or awaken your attention; if the “Dark Ages” be to you Ages of Faith, or even lit with the gray morning-light of civilization, come wander back with me beyond the experimental revolution of the sixteenth century, to the time when the Gothic temples of the living God were new.