bénédiction. On est mieux où elle est avec Dieu qu'elle a servi si constamment, qu'au milieu de notre triste monde. Sa vie était surabondamment remplie, voilà pourquoi Dieu l'a pris." Then follows the attestation of her near relative, once her playmate, now, after relinquishing riches and a title, a priest and a Jesuit. "I have not the least doubt," he wrote, "but that she is now in heaven, interceding for us all. She was one of the purest and most holy women I have ever known, and she left the impress of her mind on the children who went before her." In fine, as it were, to close our little procession in a manner suitable, a bishop of England, who had known her for many years, concluded a letter with these words, "I will only add that I have offered the adorable sacrifice for the soul of her whom I am more disposed to believe is praying before the throne of God for us.'

"'Tis by comparison, an easy task

Earth to despise; but, to converse with Heaven-
This is not easy."

We have seen, however, how this latter and greatest object was achieved by one who laid claim to no proficiency of any kind, by one untutored in the schools, by one like a child to the last, by one in the midst of the world a simple unpretending woman, And are we to pass out now through the portal without being impressed with a sense of the value of such a lesson? Piety thus practised, is this a mere common-place theme? a subject on which words are wasted? a matter of tedious details which are of no direct personal practical importance to any one? "All nature," says a philosopher who would not be of that opinion, "obeys God. Each reign, each species, each individual of either remains within the bounds prescribed to it without confusion or arrogation of the part of others. No where is there a tendency to escape from its conditions. Star, ocean, flower, bird, all wish to be what they are, and proclaim their universal acquiescence. True, it is only by a fiction that one attributes a will to them; but the order and measure that they keep reveal the plan which governs them. And does not this plan give the idea of God? Does not the creation proclaiming a universal submission to his laws assert also that in the moral

order there is a similar route traced out for nations and individuals, the limits of which should not be transgressed? and man, to whom alone freedom is given, is he to interrupt this sublime concert by his revolts and his impatience?" Oh, no! let the voice of a woman from this tomb be listened to. Beneath these arches all of us may learn more than he may care to talk about. It has been a most majestic vision and charmingly harmonious.

CHAPTER V.

T is the remark of a witty and elegant French writer that you can draw nothing from poets unless you are very lavish in praise of their genius. Homer, he says, was perfectly aware of this fact, when he makes Ulysses say to one of them from whom he desired a song, Demodocus, "I esteem you without doubt far above all other mortals together; for it is the Muse herself who has taught you the Muse, daughter of Jove, or rather it is Apollo who has inspired you." "This compliment," adds our sly painter of contemporary portraits, "from the beginning is indispensable, ever since the time of Homer down to-down to all those of our age *." Nor is it only disciples of the Muse who are so exacting. Of how many philosophers and great guides of the reading public might one say with a poet of a better school, that

As vanity and fondness for applause,

And new and strifeless wishes would allow."

Where can you escape besides from being confronted with what he complains of,-namely, personal under the mask of national or universal vanity,-with

*Saint-Beuve, Portraits Contemp.

"A proud and most presumptuous confidence
In the transcendent wisdom of the age
And its discernment : not alone in rights,
And in the origin and bounds of power,
Social and temporal; but in laws divine,
Deduced by reason, or to faith reveal'd?"

I am much mistaken if we are not liable to meet instances even near the precincts where we stand, in some cool boasters contemptuously withdrawing, and inviting each other "to whisper o'er a couplet or two of most sage saws." It would be difficult, with much prospect of success, to speak before such proficients, or even perhaps before any of your practical men that are pushing their way in the world with the reputation of being eminently qualified in all respects, of listening to a voice that speaks wisdom from a woman's grave,-from the ashes of one too who was as simple as the maid whom Martial d'Auvergne speaks of in his vigils of Charles VII.—

"Cette pauvre bergère

Qui gårdait les brebis aux champs,
D'une douce et humble manière,

A l'âge de dix-huit ans."

Nevertheless, as Sir Walter Raleigh says in his famous ballad,

"Tell wit how much it wrangles

In tickle points of nicenesse ;
Tell wisdome, she entangles

Herselfe in over-wisenesse ;

Tell schooles, they want profoundnesse,
And stand too much on seeming.

If wit and schooles reply,

Give wit and schooles the lye."

Besides that, as Sir Thomas Brown says, "there are a bundle of curiosities not only in philosophy but in divinity, proposed and discussed by men of most supposed abilities, which indeed are not worthy our vacant hours, much less our serious studies," the truth is, that wisdom is ofttimes nearer when we stoop than when we soar; and it is a grave and profound writer who exclaims, not without viewing what we praise in the light of

conformity with the highest wisdom, "Oh, what a charming thing is the ignorance of children and of the humble!" Nothing in their countenance indicates "the cloudy coldness of knowledge," and what a great observer calls "its venomous character." No, certainly; it looks as if they could not even give you a scientific explanation of any thing when they want you to understand them. Perhaps, like Elia, guessing at the star Venus only by her brightness, or, like Madame de Sevigné, saying of the comet that she had just seen "sa queue est d'une belle longueur," and of poor Fouquet in the Bastille, having received the news of his sentence "par l'air," that is, by signals, they have nothing to offer but what the French call "explication de cuisinière;" but that involves pleasurable observation and personal experience which are not without their office even in the schools. They have their own way of saying what the Spaniards utter as a proverb, that it is wiser to stay at home than run over the world in search of better bread than wheaten. They don't seem eager to know historically and authentically things that do not much concern them; they have but a slight acquaintance with geography, and cannot form, perhaps, a conjecture of the position of countries in which they hold a correspondence with humble people whom they still befriend in a distant portion of the globe. Of history and chronology they possess some vague points, such as every one picks up; but they have most dim apprehensions of the four great monarchies,—and, like Elia still, there is nothing, perhaps, which they dread so much as the being left alone for a quarter of an hour with a sensible, well-informed man that does not know them. In short, they know nothing of science; but so much the better for them, says my Spanish author,-because nature with all her magnificence belongs to them. They cannot analyze the mysterious relations of the family; still, he cries, so much the better for them,-because the family has for them, and for them alone, treasures of tenderness and love. They do not scan God; to the last he has only exclamations; "So much the better for them," a thousand times he cries, for God reveals Himself to their heart *. Here, in the particular

*Donoso Cortes.

instance to which our attention is now directed, was no doubt a simple woman much too weak to oppose men's cunning. Yes; while she lived, often twitted for her want of what some were pleased to qualify as "useful knowledge," while others secretly applied to her, as she bore all with such calm cheerfulness, the lines,—

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"Thou art not daunted,

Nor canst if thou be set at nought;

And oft alone in nooks remote

We meet thee, like a pleasant thought
When such are wanted."

So far, then, when proceeding to speak of wisdom, some might at first think us singularly unfortunate in our selection of an example to illustrate the theme; yet was she wise, but for one choice. Wise, or I'll none," says Benedick, when summing up the qualities that must enter into the character of her who is to convert him. Let us proceed, then, to observe in what way she over whose paved grave we now tread responded to his ideal.

It is not to be questioned, that the wisdom to which she attained was greatly facilitated, to speak in a human way, by her possession of remarkable good sense. This natural gift will not fully explain it, as we shall observe presently; but no doubt it conduced to its acquisition, for it formed her to that state of mind in which Pascal makes Christianity consist, namely, en doutant où il faut, en assurant où il faut, en se soumettant où il faut." Her good sense was, in fact, synonymous with wisdom, though in regard to the latter she practised the precept,

If

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"Qui sapit, in tacito gaudeat ille sinu."

you would hear her, she had no pretensions but to know, as the Spaniards say, the number of her own fingers; but, in fine, before long you discovered that she was one of those " quorum usque ad extremum spiritum est provecta sapientia."

"The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill