the only practicable ones, and that the laws of God are merely a form of poetical language, passed all that I had ever before heard or read of mortal infidelity. So far as in it lay, this century has caused every one of its great men whose hearts were kindest, and whose spirits most perceptive of the work of God, to die without hope,-Scott, Keats, Byron, Shelley, Turner! Great England has not yet read often enough that old story of the Samaritan's mercy. He whom he saved was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho-to the accursed city (so the old Church used to understand it). He should not have left Jerusalem; it was his own fault that he went into the desert and fell among the thieves, and was left for dead. Every one of those English children, in their day, took the desert by-path, as he did, and fell among fiends-took to making bread out of stones at their bidding, and then died, torn and famished; careful England, in her pure dress, passing by on the other side*." Now hear the voice from these vocal stones. Look at the sweet noble image that seems to hover over and look down upon them. They who would be happy, therefore, are directed to listen to the harmonies that sound within the Chapel of St. John; for what can facilitate the acquisition of faith more than the remembrance of such a life? "O mon ami," says an accomplished French writer, “quel argument contre l'incrédule que la vie du vrai Chrétien!" "I invite you," writes Madame Swetchine, "to hold to that foi du charbonnier, to which I have returned after all my religious oscillations. I read much, and the more I read the more I wish to return to those first elements which are so simple that childhood learns them. I confine myself to them, only hoping that the vessel which receives them may be purified. In this neighbourhood," she adds, "are many schismatics, and yesterday, having asked a poor peasant woman if she belonged to them, 'No, little mother,' she said; 'I walk on the old road and take what God gives me.' When one is born in the bosom of Christianity, is not that the dictate of supreme reason? and ought not the wisest and best to follow the teaching of my poor woman?" If you will hear men most conversant with the world, so it is with many others in regard to their late,

* Ruskin, Mod. Painters, v. 253.

but ultimate convictions. "At the present day," says Droz, who had fathomed for himself all the depths of philosophy, "souls are fatigued with the vacancy which they feel. Fathers of families, sensible men, young people the most distinugished by their intellectual faculties-all have a thirst for religion *." As many, at least, as are in the position of those who have had such a model before their eyes as we are contemplating, and who are inspired by such a memory as haunts this cloister, will desire to profit by the lesson. "For indeed, look you," as an English philosopher said, in allusion to some friend whom he had recently lost, "were it but for the remembrance of her alone, and of her lot here below,

One fading moment's mirth,

With twenty watchful, weary, fearful nights,'

the disbelief of a future state would sadden the earth around me, and blight the very grass in the field." "Yes, truly," as the Duc Mathieu de Montmorency said to a friend, “you may easily conceive that their thoughts now pass beyond this world, which must for every one so quickly finish." We represent here the problem of living in one world with the instincts of another; and the question to solve, adds Madame Swetchine, is this: How can the creature of eternity find the road to its royal dwelling? This sweet tomb, that in its circuit doth contain the perfect student of the eternal years, emits an audible voice to guide us thither; for she whose whole life appears like a beacon over a tempestuous sea, has shown by her example how one can arrive at this great and all-important solution, since every thing else, be it what it may, is secondary, or rather to speak more truly, nothing. Be it ours, therefore, in allusion to her, to say with the poet,

"The monarch may forget his crown,
That on his head an hour hath been;
The bridegroom may forget his bride
Was made his wedded wife yestreen;
The mother may forget her child,
That smiles so sweetly on her knee;
But I'll remember thee, my Jane,
And all that thou hast done for me."

* Pensées sur le Christianisme.

CHAPTER III.

NOTHER" sermon in these vocal stones, is
that which teaches Catholicity.
"To every

thing," as a great thinker observes, "God has attached a form. If the Catholic form had not existed, Christianity would have become only a system of morality, like that of the Porch. It would have had no duration as a religion, but simply it would have taken its place as a system of ethics." It is with religion, as Loyson says it is with true poesy, "the vague ought to be its soul, but not its body." In the contemplation of the infinite in which the former consists, we are necessarily lost and overwhelmed; and whatever relates to it must, to some extent, be included under the term of what is undetermined; but in regard to the forms, through which it has pleased Omniscience to hold communion with us, which constitute what may be termed the body of religion, there must be nothing vague; indeed these it was a main object of revelation to determine for us. "The Bible, in regard to them," as a great author remarks, without observing this inference, "being a book as much for shallow and simple persons as for the profound, this main and leading idea is found on its surface, written in plainest possible Greek, Hebrew, or English, needing no penetration nor amplification, needing nothing but what we all might give, attention *." In regard then to this outward and, as it were, incarnate form of religion, obviously precision and definite shapes, amounting to a tangible and living reality, are requisite. Accordingly there was no uncertainty or distrust with regard to them in the mind of this true Catholic. As M. de Pontchâteau said of Madame de Longueville, "she loved greatly the Church and the poor." What could be more exactly determined? For, with regard to the former, merely in consequence of her simple docility as a believer and a disciple of our Lord, there was no danger of her

* Ruskin.

E

being mystified like that poor Poinsinet, who wanting to learn the English language was taught the Bas-Breton; and, besides, she had never been subjected to such influences. "There are many, without going far back into historical events—many like Josephus, who seek to accommodate their religion to the ideas and manners of those who think to subdue it—who try to assimilate it to national ways of thinking of recent growth, substituting for ancient doctrines ideas and objects familiar to the new civilization, being themselves neither of the past nor of the present, and all whose finesse and capacity terminate in an untruth *." There are many who, in consequence, find their road beset with difficulties; while others, by wanting her singleness of eye, find themselves distracted and unable to pursue it with the calm of a solid conviction. All such persons would do well to meditate over this tomb; for never did there exist a mind more Catholic in a genuine and healthy state, or an example more calculated to inspire Catholicity in others. It was not that she had an imagination which, taking pleasure in the beautiful forms and æsthetic consequences of the genius of Christianity, controlled her judgment and determined her acquiescence. It was not that she had the imagination Catholie, independently of the foundation of faith, like those who admire the pomps of worship, the solemnity of fêtes, the harmony of chants, and the order of ceremonies,-because though all these things moved and affected her, the foundation was still simple piety, but she had what Saint-Beuve calls the Christian sensibility, the morality of the Gospel affected her most. Certainly not insensible to the charm of those other associations, still they did not influence her. A religion of poetry, or of archæology, or of whims and fancies, and "matters which are not stuff of the conscience," though under a devotional form, as being merely such, she could not endure. What she regarded as paramount, was a solid devotion in which entered nothing of her own humour. She did not "give any unproportioned thought his act;" she did not carry her particular fancies into her religion, as so many do, following the habit of some who study philosophy: she simply received and was thankful.

* Philarete Chasles, Etudes sur les premiers temps du Christianisme.

"The natural man," says Madame Swetchine, "is not exactly impious, but he is essentially an idolater. He worships whatever suits his own taste or his own predilection. He wants every thing to bend to his indomitable will. He deifies what he likes, and wishes to be himself the end and terminus of all that he loves." No contrast, therefore, can be conceived greater than that which Jane Mary presented to this type. Moreover, she never seemed to think that her approval or acceptance of Catholicism had any thing to do with the question of its merits; whereas how many are there who resemble La Harpe replying to a young man, who showed him a certain tragedy: "The subject is not fitting; if it had been a proper one, Voltaire and I would have chosen it long ago." Just in this way do they say secretly to themselves, when pressed with the truths of Catholicity, "Neither such and such men, nor myself have followed this way. We should have adopted it if it had been the right one." There is no use in arguing further.

She saw

But to return to what concerns the imagination. things then, I repeat it, from the point of view of practical Christianity; and the custom of using religion for a poetical and sentimental end, seemed to her as a danger, or as a weakening of a thing august and severe. Her Catholicity

was simply belief, acquiescence, fidelity; she had that high moral education, which consists in having on all occasions a side taken, un parti pris. She had that profound consciousness of belonging to the household of faith, which often expresses itself in a kind of harmless irony, as when some one, in alluding to a hostile banner, cries, "But it was a strong composure a fool could disunite;" she was, therefore, immoveable and heroic. A wonderful quickness, too, in combination with an infantine innocence, belonged to her in detecting sophisms against the doctrines of faith. It was impossible to deceive her with regard to truth of this order. In worldly matters you could cheat her any day; but in religion, in regard to which she was all humility and deference, there was no imposing on her judgment, which she felt was backed by the whole Catholic Church. There you met with the exact logician and the clear-sighted judge, who could detect the fallacy as soon as uttered. In an instant she used to point out where the error lay, and expose it in warm but