the middle ages at their close, with their indelicate buffoonery, nor the sixteenth century with its sarcasm; but you could trace in it the joys of paradise before the fall, the ecstasy of angels, the mirth of heaven.

"She was a woman of a steady mind,

Tender and deep in her excess of love;

Not speaking much, pleased rather with the joy
Of her own thoughts. By some especial care
Her temper had been framed as if to make
A being, who, by adding love to peace,
Might live on earth a life of happiness."

For she possessed

"Health, quiet, meekness, ardour, hope secure,
And industry of body and of mind;

And elegant enjoyments, that are pure

As nature is,-too pure to be refined."

Catholic duties, Catholic hopes, almost of necessity in a character like hers, produced a constant sunshine. She might have reminded one of what Mme. de Sévigné says to her friend M. d'Orves: "Ah! que vous êtes gai! que vous êtes gaillard! que vous vous portez bien dans ce Boulay!" "What a punishment is it," some one says, "to have to amuse a man who is no longer amuseable!" "See that poor Anacrise," says Mlle. de Scudéry, "there are so few things which satisfy her, so few persons who please her, such a small number of pleasures which suit her inclination, that it is hardly possible for things to be so well adjusted as to enable her to pass a single happy day in a whole year, so delicate is her imagination, so exquisite and peculiar her taste, and her humour so difficult to content." While as for Julie d'Angennes, "she does not know what ennui means. She takes from all places in which she happens to be what is agreeable without being troubled by what is not, and she carries with her wherever she goes a spirit of accommodation which makes her content with any place*." So also was it here. The Catholicity of her mind taught Jane Mary to

* Le Grand Cyrus.

love life as a passing thing; to love it as a medium of utility; to love it with its labours, its fatigues (and she knew what these things were), its numberless pains; to love it with courage, as one ready and resolved to accomplish all its duties. As for this dreaming, doubting, mourning gentleman, who has not time to amuse any one, much less to make any one fall in love with him—who is dogmatic in his doubts and sceptical in regard to all ordinary duties, besides that she was extraordinary at a repartee, as we have just said, she used to maintain that the way not to succumb to such humours is not to love them; not to take pleasure in chimerical miseries, in childish chagrins at the cloud which passes, at the wind which blows, at the owl which cries, at the dog howling before the gate of the manor. She treated with legitimate irony all these little · maladies of diseased minds; and in general, as a palliative against all these vapours of self-love, she recommended the labours of real life, with faith, and hope, and charity.

I deny not, that in her last years, confronted with calamity in its bitterest form, you could detect a pensive element even in her gaiety. As we read of Mme. de Courton, she had at times a certain I know not what, witty and melancholy smile, which moved people much; but still there was the bright example of a mind ever cheerful and at rest, such as so moved the poet when he cried,—

"I praise thee, Lady! and thy due
Is praise-heroic praise, and true!
With admiration I behold

Thy gladness, unsubdued and bold :
Thy looks, thy gestures, all present
The picture of a life well spent."

The bell of the Angelus tolls,-let us kneel, as she would have asked us with a look to do, and depart.

CHAPTER XII.

T is beautiful," says one of our contemporaries whom a noble friend has lately cited as having had a deep insight into the secrets of holiness and charity, "to find human weakness in strong minds. The antique heroism is of marble or bronze; but Christianity has placed the souls of heroes in hearts of flesh, in which it destroys none of the endearing frailties of nature, but finds in them, on the contrary, its strength. We were not made for being hard." In this sense, then, at least, we are permitted, as Mme. de Sévigné wished, "to love our weaknesses, and to love them far more than the sentiments of Seneca and Epictetus +."

The Marquis de Saluces wrote a description-and its mere announcement strikes one, by the way, as rather long-of "the twelve virtues that a nobleman ought to have in his heart." In these visits to a tomb we have been seeking no ideal picture of humanity in any form. Strict fidelity to an original portrait has been our rule, and a lesson of instruction in regard to life and manners, spontaneously, necessarily arising from having beheld it, our final object. Let the subject of our consideration for this day be the heart of Jane Mary. Strictly speaking, indeed, as Mascaron says in his funeral eulogium on Turenne, "it is only in his heart that each man is found whole and entire, and such as he really is. In every other part he can be either divided or disguised, misrepresented or deceived;" and St. Augustin was so convinced of this fact, that he says it is only in his heart that man is truly what he is: "Cor meum ubi ego sum quicumque sum ;" and David, after inviting an examination of himself, stops at his heart, as at the only subject to which this whole inquiry should be directed, saying, "Proba me, Deus, et scito cor meum."

* Ozanam ap. Montalem., Les Moines d'Occident.
+ Lett. 77.

It is a charming subject, then, which is proposed for our consideration here; since we shall have to speak of the affectionate disposition which characterized this life of faith in one whose soul now seems as yet but a little way above our heads, as if staying for ours to keep her company-for she hoped ever. Let me for preamble call attention to a passage from Lacordaire, begging you, however, to remark at the same time, that neither now nor on any occasion do we begin our visit by unfurling a richly emblazoned standard, robbed, as it were, from some eminent treasury to which we have had access, and then resolving to colour and accommodate the facts that are to be brought forward, whatever they may be, to suit it; but that as a natural way of introducing the subject, we indulge at first each time in certain reflections which arise of themselves from that anticipation of the character we are about to paint, which is unavoidably produced by a previous acquaintance with the mass of evidence that exists to direct us, and to establish the correctness of our copy.

"Jesus Christ, then, has loved souls," says this eloquent author, taking no doubt very elevated ground, and drawing conclusions that will seem exaggerated to many in our age, "He has loved souls, and He has transmitted to us this love, which is the foundation even of Christianity. No true Christian, no Christian living, can be without a particle of this love, which circulates in our veins as the blood of Christ. As soon as we love, whether it be in youth or in mature years, as a father or as a husband, as a son or as a friend, we wish to save the soul that we love; that is, we wish to impart to it, at the price of our own life, truth in faith, virtue in grace, peace in redemption; in fine, God,-God known, God loved, God served. This is that love of the soul which surmounts all other loves; and which, so far from destroying them, exalts them and transforms them, so as to make of them, however natural in themselves, something divine *." You have the passage; and there spoke Jane Mary. There our loved one's grave did utter forth a voice!

It was said that this view would be thought exaggerated;

*St. M. Madeleine.

and yet there are some at present, who, without being Christians, might be appealed to in order to justify it. What a sense also of the dignity of this theme is evinced by men who are not even identified with the cause of Christianity! Here the form of expression will of course be different. We shall perhaps be invited to take as it were the romantic point of view; but the extorted concessions coming from men who all the while pretend, and even propose to themselves to take pagan views of virtue, will be sufficiently remarkable. M. de Senancour, for instance, cannot be suspected of partiality in regard to her banner; and yet, borrowing much unconsciously from what he did not sufficiently appreciate, he says, "Love (and what was her heart but the seat of love?) ought to govern the earth, which is wearied by ambition. Love is that peaceable and fruitful fire, that warmth of the heaven which animates and renews, causes to bud and flourish, gives colour, grace, hope, and life. All other sentiments are lost in this sentiment; all thoughts lead back to it; all hope reposes in it; all is sorrow, vacancy, bereavement, if love departs; if it approaches, all is joy, hope, felicity. A distant voice, a sound in the air, the movement of branches overhead, the murmur of waters, all announce and express it. The grace of nature is in the motion of an arm; the harmony of the world is in the expression of a look I will not condemn him who has never loved, but only him who cannot love. Circumstances determine our affections, but expansive sentiments are natural to the man whose moral organization is what it ought to be. He who is incapable of loving is necessarily incapable of a magnanimous sentiment, of a sublime affection. He may be honest, good, industrious, prudent; he may have gentle qualities, and even virtues by reflection, but he is not man; he has neither his soul nor genius. I might wish to know him; he may have my confidence and even my esteem, but he will not be my friend." We may be permitted, I hope, to add, that the gravest doctors of the Church, all devoted as they were sometimes to philosophic abstractions, cannot be alleged as giving any sanction to the opinions or habits of expression that have become of late so familiar to us, which seem at least indirectly to disparage the value of the natural affections, if not to dispense with them