line-the straight line *." But it was, that from a living and practical possession of this treasure, she would have been ready at any moment to die rather than relinquish it. To love and suffer seemed to be her maxim. She was ever ready for the heroism of devotedness and of immolation, with the resolution of Abraham and the heart of David. This is not coining phrases with a view to honour her memory. It is simply stating facts. Of course in this respect she presented only one instance, one of the millions of examples that exist in every age, attesting a conviction equally profound, and a fidelity as constant. But still, examples of this kind, simple, spontaneous, and vital, when met with in the ordinary walks of the world, impress one always with a sense of a supernatural and divine novelty, Jules Janin stumbles upon them in his poetic perambulations through modern literature. The parents of Madame Desbordes Valmore for instance, he tells us, being reduced to extreme poverty, were invited by their great uncle, exiled in Holland at the revocation of the edict of Nantes, to accept the reversion of his immense property, on condition of adopting the reformed religion. The destitute family held a council; there were many tears shed; but they came to a unanimous decision to refuse the inheritance; and so fearing, as he adds, to sell their souls, emigrated to America †. In the instance with which we are concerned, there would not have been even a deliberation, still less, for all her humanity, tears.

All this may seem very common-place matter to such readers as only fly like butterflies from one light flower of our railway literature to another, finding perhaps not much sustenance in any; but I would ask men of thought and experience whether it is possible to conceive an instruction more important than what is involved in it? For in fine you can see how the world proceeds around us. Not to speak of the contrast between the faith of this noble woman and the unmanly disposition of those poor diseased minds, which, with all their acuteness existing in a weak and imperfect organization, can never decide or take a resolute part in any thing, unless in a perverse and pretentious attempt to undermine the religious belief of others—not to

* Fontenelle, tome v. 516.

+ Variétés Littéraires.

speak of the deistic publications verging upon atheism, which have been sent forth from time to time by men who were still eating the bread of the Anglican establishment-one cannot but perceive how inclined the world is at the present day to set aside and ignore the supernatural, that is, the real, and to look on all the wonders that are involved in it with the eyes of animals incapable of a thought beyond what the senses suggest. Yet how clearly is this state of mind generating contempt for such an example as is now before us, the result of mere slavish habit, both utterly baseless and unworthy of regard; for, say what they like, common sense, though they want it in this instance, proclaims loudly that their own existence is a most supernatural fact, even according to their notions of what is natural. Let us offer a trifling fancy of our own to explain my meaning. The moon is, to speak their language, a natural object; and without any great effort of imagination you can for a moment suppose yourself living on it. You know we can suppose any thing. A brother of Escobar supposes "infinite ants on infinite hillocks;" and you need not tell me that it has no atmosphere. For an instant you can fancy yourself as able to breathe without air and living on it, and that is all we demand. Suppose, then, that when so situated it were made known to you that there was such a scene as human life presents, being acted on the luminous globe revolving in space, which the world would seem to you to be; that there were churches on it, and that prayers, and processions, and mass, and vespers, were being celebrated night and day in honour of the Creator of the universe, while there were many Bolingbrokes and Voltaires going about to scoff, and denying that there was any such Being, or affirming that if there were He heeded them not, how supernatural would it all appear to you then! How you would escape from the low grovelling impression produced by habit making you fancy that the natural side of things, as you call it, was the only one philosophically true! How readily would you admit what faith now demands of you; namely, that the fact of human life on this earth being supernatural, it must also have a supernatural object and corresponding end! One grows weary of hearing solid proofs; let this fanciful one then serve its turn.

Meanwhile, the fact, look you, is that the present generations

are disposed practically to deny all that is supernatural. We are concerned here therefore with an example that is curious, if it were only in consideration of the contrast which it presents to what is witnessed on all sides of us. Socrates of old used only to put questions; but the Christian, who is seen in this portrait, adheres to unquestionable truths, as Sarasin said to Balzac, "truths conveyed in maxims for the defence of which it is glorious to die. The latter does not amuse herself with refuting Gorgias and Prodicus, or reducing to the absurd Polus and Hippias; her object is to inspire love and veneration for divine things." What things are now deemed divine and what beyond ourselves is now the object of affection or reverence? Even when we find doubt and opinion, "which," asks a French author, "of the two dominates in men? which is uppermost if you let down your plummet? Is it the solid foundation or the undulating? You think it is the undulating; but is there not a solid bottom farther on? You think it is the solid; but is there not a shifting failing bottom still more evanescent? There is the knot of the problem. Who can explain the secret of others? Can one," he adds, rhetorically alone I hope, "be sure of one's own? Frequently, if I dare say it, there is no true real bottom or foundation within us-there are only surfaces multiplied ad infinitum*." Yet, if you have ever thought at all, you must come to the conclusion of the French author, who says, that "without a philosophy and a poetry, both of which require faith to have any true foundation, an individual and a nation can have only weariness and despair." 'Long indeed will man strive to satisfy the inward querist with the phrase, laws of nature. But though the individual may rest content with the seemly metaphor, the race cannot +." And then, too, looking to the effects on noblest and purest minds, how ugly sound such explanations which are only another term for doubts from the mouth of a woman or a child! Accordingly sheer disgust and the force of truth extort from many, and from very opposite characters too, strange complaints and avowals respecting the present condition of society. Formerly," says Saint-Beuve, even dissipated people be

* Saint-Beuve of M. de Rémusat.

† Coleridge, The Friend.

lieved. Whatever might be the storms at the surface, in the depths was faith-there was a return to it; and great minds soared aloft. But to-day, even when the appearance is of faith, honourably and philosophically avowable, below is doubt; and even great minds have no return, they do not believe that they need have one, and they dissipate themselves." Nay, we are told by grave authors on the side of order, that even "the beauty of old age, which is to have confidence in truth and virtue, is not, at present, without a certain mixture of a general irony and a slight scepticism *."

But perhaps you do not like pulpitry; and all this seems to smack of it. Well, then, take courage, for this is rather the echo of your polished Academies judging from their own chairs, from which they would have us believe that there is no appeal. For observe how even the guardians of literature trace with regret the progress of infidelity in authors whom they admire. Hear, for example, Saint-Beuve speaking of a contemporary. “The invasion of scepticism in the heart of this poet from the time of his first hymns produces," saith he, “a slow impression of fear, and makes one attach to the results of human experience a painful morality. Vainly does this poet cry repeatedly, Lord, Lord! as if to be reassured in darkness, and fortified against himself. Vainly does he speak of the immortal soul and the eternity of God. Neither his prayer for all men, so sublime, nor his alms so Christian can conceal the bitter reality-the poet no longer believes. God eternal-humanity astray and suffering-nothing between the two. The luminous ladder of which the son of the Patriarch once dreamed, and which the Christ-Mediator has realized by his cross, exists no more for this poet. I know not what funereal blast has thrown him back. He has only to wander over the earth, to interrogate all the winds, all the stars, to lean over the precipices, to seek the secret of the creation from the murmuring of rivers, or of blighted forests. . . . . It is no longer to believe in Redemption to speak like him. It is to behold the universe and humanity as before the Coming, as before Job; as in those days before the

*Paul Janet, La Famille.

sun, or that the Spirit moved upon the waters. That, if you will have it so, may be fine, and grand, and poetical—but it is sad—that causes the mind to return, as he himself says,

avec un cri terrible,

Ebloui, haletant, stupide, épouvanté !'

There is then in this book of our great poet," he continues, "a progress in art, a progress in lyric genius, a progress in profound emotions; but as to a progress in religious faith, in philosophic altitude, in moral results-shall I say it? there is nothing of the kind. That is a memorable example of the dissolving energy of the age, and of its triumph at last over individual convictions. One thought them indestructible; one suffered them to fall asleep as sufficiently secure, and some fine morning one wakes up and searches for them in one's soul in vain. They have sunk down like a volcanic island under the ocean. So this poet," who certainly by a singular good fortune retains a will, as his indefatigable life can prove," either through practical indifference, or consciousness of human weakness in these matters, can no longer make use of this will to the study or defence of certain religious solutions-he lets his soul be borne away, and receives as a benefit for the Muse all storms, and all shades of darkness in fearful combination."

For such intelligences, for such Tritons of the minnows as I would make bold to call them, what is the portrait of a Jane Mary? We can feel sure beforehand that even such an example will be lost upon those who, as St. Augustine says, "quærunt non ut fidem sed ut infidelitatem inveniant." The poet Loyson said to a French philosopher travelling in Germany,

66

Tu cours les grandes routes

Cherchant la vérité pour rapporter des doutes ;"

for "there are a set of heads," as Sir Thomas Brown says, "that can credit the relations of mariners, yet question the testimonies of St. Paul." And it is droll enough that they will not learn to doubt with uncertainty, and that incredulity should be dogmatic; while the fact is, as Coleridge observes, that as materialism has been generally taught it is utterly unintelli