banquet was served on long tables. The restoration occupied six years. Rep irs have been made, and much of the mansion has been rebuilt. The three original roomshall, throne, and council room above remain; but the latter was stripped of some of its decorations by the then proprietor, who removed them to his country-place in Buckinghamshire. The hall now consists again of its rightful one story, lighted by lofty and elegant windows, and a beautiful oriel window, reaching from the floor to the roof. This oriel, forming an ornamental recess in the side of the hall, is one of the best architectural features of the building. It is vaulted with stone, beautifully groined, the ribs springing from small pillars attached to the angles, knots of foliage and bosses occurring at the points of intersection. Among these is the Crosby crest, the ram trippant. This and the other windows have been, for the most part, filled with stained glass, decorated with the armorial bearings of the several city companies, of personages famous in the history of old Crosby Place, and of those who contributed to its restoration. The frescos on the walls of the passages consist of the portraits of similar historical characters. In the north wall is a fireplace, singular, if not unique, in a hall of this age. One of the most srtiking features of the building is the oak-ribbed, elegantly rounded roof to the throne-room. We will now quit the old palace through the west door, opening into Bishopsgate Street, casting a backward glance at its picturesque façade, composed in the style of the timber-houses of the fifteenth century, and Nixon's statue of Sir John Crosbye, founder.

BOUGHT AND SOLD.

BUYING and selling - ancient and legitimate process though it be can never, perhaps, be reduced to conditions of perfect equity. Pity 'tis, 'tis true; but the truth remains intact. The leopard of commerce must change his spots, and the Ethiopian of trade his skin, before we can be certain of a sure pennyworth for a safe penny. After all, existence is to nineteen-twentieths of us a struggle to keep alive; and it is the instinct of self-preservation that turns every market into a wordy battle-field, every bargain into a bloodless duel. To buy cheap and to sell dear constitutes, no doubt, the golden rule of economists; but each clause of the doublebarrelled precept clashes inevitably with the wishes and interests of those with whom we deal. Most people, as a matter of argument, concede that a thing is worth what it will fetch; and so it is; but to discover that unknown quantity is the practical problem.

The world, in its onward rush, has got beyond Autolycus. That poor old rogue, trudging along the dusty road, with pack and ell-wand, is hopelessly distanced by the panting dragon of steam. Even the rustic maid is not to be tempted out of her hard-earned shillings, nowadays, by the glib tongue and glittering gewgaws of the peddler. Phillis has too often been an excursionist not to know the metropolitan price of tawdry ribbons and mock jewelry. Chloe's penny-journal keeps her well informed as to the value of gown-pieces. As the hawker vainly spreads his lure in sight of these incredulous customers, he regrets the sweet simplicity of an earlier generation, and feels himself an anachronism. This is, after all, rather hard on Shakspeare's packman. The poor knave hal, after all, some serviceable qualities. A little more education would have made him invaluable as the pushing traveller of some enterprising firm, resolute to take by storm the pockets of the public. Yet a trifling addition of intellectual polish, and Autolycus Smoothly, Esquire, secretary to the Universal Trust Finance Company, would be worth his weight in gold at cooking the accounts, and restoring confidence to growling shareholders. But mere coarse downright lying, unbacked by print and paper, and not bolstered up by columns of statistics, and imposing lists of directors, is no longer the powerful engine that it once

was.

The seller's vantage-ground is, of course, his perfect knowledge of the value of the goods he deals in, and of the lowest margin of possible profit. The buyer, unless an ex

pert, is conveniently ignorant on these points. Few men, not being themselves tailors, can order a coat with any certain knowledge of the quantity of cloth which goes to the making of it, the value of the materials, or the workmen's hire. Even the sharpest-eyed materfamilias is felt by the butcher to be helpless in his hands, as Mr. Silverside discourses of foot-and-mouth disease, and the necessary dearness of prime joints. This groping in the dark on the part of a customer often brings wit it a sense of injury that may be wholly unfounded. Perhaps no one ever yet bought a horse from a dealer without an uneasy suspicion of having been somehow imposed upon. And yet this sentiment, in a minor degree, is every day a vexation and a familiar demon to thousands of prudent housekeepers.

The strong part of the customer's position is his liberty of action. He has what in old sea-fights used to be called the weather-gauge, and can bear down to close quarters, or keep clear of an adversary at pleasure. Pursuing the simile, a buyer can simply give a wide berth to any establishment too dear or too bad for him, and carry his cash and his custom elsewhere. If paterfamilias grumbles too seriously over the weekly bills, the partner of his joys may at last grow tired of pompous old Silverside's elaborate explanations as to the costly character of his meat, and may order in cheaper beef and mutton from the shop round the corner. Competition is the natural corrective of high charges; and it is equally natural that it should be a hateful thing and sore stumbling-block to those who are in haste to grow rich. In the good old days of legal monopolies, the case lay nicely in a nutshell. Whoever had need, in the words of the royal proclamation, of this or that, had to betake himself to a licensed dealer; and the licensed dealers divided the profits pretty amicably between them.

Re

Authoritative restrictions on the freedom of sale having passed away to the limbo of racks and thumb-screws, it would at first sight seem as if the clashing and jostling of individual interests would impart a healthy movement to the life-blood of trade. It does so; but not without occasional signs of congestion. A partial and qualified monopoly is very apt to spring into an unwholesome existence. Those who have commodities no matter of what sort to sell, have a much keener and more vital interest in keeping up the prices of their wares than any isolated consumer can have in beating them down. We buy once from a tradesman who supplies hundreds besides ourselves. The passing twinge which an apparent overcharge causes to the individual buyer cannot easily become a motive to sustained exertion whereas the seller's balance-sheet depends upon the toll taken, so to speak, from the pockets of all comers. dress, from the customer's point of view, is hard to be obtained. Those who do not suffer under a plethora of spare time and spare cash can seldom afford to lay in stores at wholesale prices; and the simple remedy of exchanging one purveyor for another is not always efficacious. In quiet neighborhoods and outlying districts, at any rate, a dead level of average prices is soon tacitly agreed to. There is a class-opinion among grocers and fishmongers, as elsewhere; and to undersell one's compeers of the scoop and steelyard is to be unpopular. Now and then some false brother of ample means and combative character startles a district by painting his name over half a dozen shopfronts, and attracts custom by his miraculous cheapness. But the benevolent innovator is only a monopolist in disguise, and will prove no whit easier to deal with than are his groaning rivals, when once the frigate of his rising fortunes shall have swamped every little cock-boat in his own line of business.

That co-operative stores should have succeeded so well, or that their victory should have elicited such outcries from shrieking middlemen, from whose tills they diverted a very Pactolus, is not surprising. The real wonder is that they should ever have sprung into being, armed at all points, veritable commercial Minervas, ready for action. But they have only been organized where a number of long-headed workmen, like the Rochdale Pioneers, or of educated men, with common interests and a habit of association, like the members of the Civil Service, have been found to club

their brains and their purses for the remunerative enterprise. It is Utopian to suppose the principle can become one of universal application. The groans of the British grocer by no means prelude his being improved off the surface of society. Ordinary buyers have no cohesion, no bond of union, such as prevails among intelligent fellow-workers. A crowd cannot be expected to emulate the steady march and dexterous evolutions of a disciplined army; and there are a hundred influences at work to limit the extension of joint-stock store-keeping. Are there not ignorant customers, credulous customers, customers too deep already in the books of the tradesman, like so many flies in treacle, to struggle out and be free; lazy customers, who prefer a shop that is near, though it be dear; customers who resent the lack of obsequious attention, who dislike parting with ready money, and are furious that they cannot have their purchases sent home for them in the old way? Here are consolations, at any rate, for the hereditary providers of the public.

Free trade is, of course, for the general good; but then it is equally true that monopoly is the royal road to safe and selfish money-making. The temptation to suppress competition is to some minds all but irresistible. If native competition is allowed, then, at any rate, the foreigner can be shut out. Failing prohibitive laws and heavy duties, other resources remain, of which the simplest is to buy up all the available stock of some commodity, and to raise its price. This is the oldest and plainest of the legitimate means of what is technically known as rigging the market. Thus it was that Joseph, vizier of the Pharaoh of Egypt, bought for bread in the day of dearth the lands and liberties of a nation. Thus did Roman proconsuls drain the wealth from subject-provinces. Louis XV. was accused of doing what his farmers-general and speculative capitalists undoubtedly did, and of using the public money to fill his granaries with corn, which his command of cash and information enabled him to buy cheap and sell dear. It is not now possible, except in Persia or the Barbary States, for prince or satrap or mighty merchant to get into his own hands the great staple of the national food. But much of the unpopularity of the Jews in Eastern and Central Europe is founded on the minor operations of this nature which their keen foresight and ready money enable them to carry out. Forage and horses are the great objects of these "forestallings and regratings," as our English parliament, which passed so many acts against forestallers and regraters, chiefly Christian, used to style them. So sure as rumors of war are afloat, and the sensitive barometer of the funds oscillating in feverish suspense, mounts for the cavalry of the rival nations are in high demand. But Isaac and Samuel and Benjamin, like eagles of commerce as they are, have scented the carrion of profit afar off; and, while the Circumlocution Offices were reporting and deliberating, they had swept up every purchasable horse fit to carry a trooper or to draw a tumbril, every haystack easy to buy, every attainable sack of oats, nay, if the hoards of the kindred money-changers are but enough, every ox or hog disposable in Hungary or Luxembourg.

of a

To buy up nutmegs, to become master of all the cinnamon, or to be the proud possessor of all the saltpetre in the world, is for a rich man to become richer. He is but caliph for a day, after all, and makes but a mild use of his ephemeral sovereignty. One wide-spread tax, of small individual incidence, he levies, and then makes haste to rid himself of an empire, to win which he has emptied his exchequer and strained his credit. There are other ways of securing a heavy purse, not seldom at the expense conscience that, in the hour of death or sickness, is heavy too. It is more profitable to deal with the poor than with the well-to-do, as others than the railway companies, whose mainstay is the pence and shillings of that third-class passenger for whom they do so little, have discovered. Ignorance, grinding need, and the pressure of circumstances force the poor to pay, proportionately, more for rent and sustenance than the rich do; and what applies to the denizens of London courts and alleys is equally cogent as refers to the untaught millions of distant countries.

Casuists have quarrelled over the lawfulness of such dealings with savages as have in all ages been common. It has been hotly disputed whether it be right to exchange a string of glass beads for a handful of gold-dust, to weigh red cloth against pearls, to buy an estate for a gross of bright buttons, to barter Birmingham cutlery for rubies, and Manchester cottons for ostrich-feathers or costly furs. Perhaps the apologists of the early discoverers had, in their rough way, logically the best of the argument. It was no part of an explorer's duty to explain to the wild men with whom he chaffered what was the exact cost-price of the two-pennyworth of shining trumpery for which they eagerly gave their choicest valuables. If iron seemed to the wandering natives of the Society Islands a precious metal, more tempting than were the yellow stones of El Dorado to the Spaniard, it was excusable in forecastle Jack, or in Mr. Thrift, the ship's purser, to make the best bargain possible for the nails and tools that commanded such a sale. It might even be hinted that a blanket was worth more to some poor Indian than the beaver-skins or scales of coarse gold which he offered in return for it; and that, if an unsophisticated islander liked hawks' bells and cut-glass better than coral and spice, and tortoise-shell and ambergris, it was a pity to balk his inclination. Yet the ugly fact remained, that it was precisely because the savage knew no better that the bargains struck with him were so gainful to the earliest of his European visitors.

Out of Africa, there either remain no savages who have much to sell, or the relics of the aboriginal races have grown shy and wary, and insist on hard dollars in lieu of the old system of barter. But African trade goes on still in the old style. The ivory-merchants of the eastern portion of the continent pay their way in cloth and gunpowder and hardware. Brass wire supplies them with small change; and with this they unite a brisk traffic in beads, both pink and green, in hand-mirrors, needles, and brass buttons, and the small cowries of the sea-shore, which are to the negro what kreutzers are to the Bavarian. There is in Africa one other circulating medium, - slaves; and the traders in ivory not infrequently do a little business in that variety of commerce also. The profits of even fair trading are very great in a country where the cheapest goods of Europe are thought an equivalent for massive elephant's tusks, for ostrich-feathers, gold-dust, and such skins of wild beasts as the timid natives can contrive to bring in. Whole tribes will busy themselves to dig pitfalls, to prepare snares and poisoned arrows, to provide the hundredweights of ivory, the rhinoceros-hides and leopard-furs, for which the Arab merchants will pay in Lancashire long-cloths, in Birmingham toys, and in such gunpowder as is in England thought good enough for scaring crows, and in Africa for shooting men. But if Abou Ghosh of Egypt, and Hajji Mehmet of Muscat, realize one, two, or three thousand per cent on their absolute bargains, there is a debit as well as a credit side to the ledgers of these not over-scrupulous believers. Their conTheir men tingent expenses are enormous. and no sane trader would push his way into the interior without the protection of an armed party of his fellow-countrymen- must be highly paid. His goods must generally be carried on the backs of hired negro porters; and these have an awkward trick of deserting him in the bush: while the provisions for the whole camp, during the slow African travel and the many enforced halts, swell the estimates considerably. All is not gold that glitters, even to Abou and Mehmet in their equatorial bivouacs.

The other side of Africa, the dreaded west coast, was long a favorite region with speculative ship-owners of Bristol and Liverpool. Guinea has a wealthy sound; and the Gold Coast, the Ivory Coast, and the Slave Coast, as we see their names marked in old maps, had each their votaries. No very great quantity of the sparkling yello v grains, washed by negroes from the sands of the mountain-streams, ever came to Europe; and palm-oil, and ground-nuts, and the black monkey-skins of which muffs are made, yield a larger value of exports than either gold or ivory. The western tribes are too distracted by chronic war for inland commerce to thrive; and it is far, very far, from the muddy outlets of

the Brass and Bonny rivers to the green stretches of rolling forests where the elephant herds range in numbers not yet seriously thinned. But, although the black dwellers by the sea are more keenly alive to the value of coin than were their great-grandfathers, some money is still made, in a quiet way, along the coast. Condemned muskets, damaged powder, scarlet cloth, looking-glasses, knives, beads, buttons, still rule high. Rum is in eager demand. Gaudy kerchiefs, glaring shawls, prints of violent color and design, are yet in request at the courts of sable kings. Formerly a gun would buy a man; and that sentient chattel, being shipped, and landed at Cuba, brought in from three to six hundred dollars as an average. There are yellow old brokers and supercargoes living in rickety little stores near the tidal mud of those fever-haunted rivers, on whose banks so many brave seamen lie buried, who sigh over what they call the good old days of permitted slave-dealing, when a gun could do this. And what a gun it was! Made probably at the total cost of from eighteen to twenty-four shillings, expressly for the African trade, and not unlikely to burst before it had fired a score of shots.

It is not only for negro use that articles are, like the famous razors which the London street-hawker disposed of to the credulous countryman, made to sell. A woollen-draper must be pretty well assured that much of the cloth which he vends, and in the fabric of which new wool is sparingly mixed with the tortured fragments of old garments, is certainly not made to wear. Shoddy is a term of elastic meaning; and its principle is by no means confined to the ingenious manufacturers who labor assiduously to transmute old into new. The houses which sanguine builders, in their own phrase, run up, with their green timber, frail roofs, tremulous floors, and walls of portentous thinness, were built to sell, to let, to mortgage, but not exactly to live in. But plate-glass windows, brightlypainted doors, and an innocent-looking front of spotless stucco, suffice to blind a hurried and easily-led generation to the imperfections of Lumbago Terrace. Whatever may be thought of the wisdom of our ancestors, they did, at least, contrive to get a house built so that it should last; whereas whole squares and crescents of the whited sepulchres of our own time must before many years become as Tadmors in the brick-and-mortar wilderness.

Sometimes what was originally good has passed away, and but the outer husk remains, - the shell without the oyster, or, rather, with a pseudo-mollusk lurking within the treacherous bivalve. There is no mistake about the merits of Maltby's bitter beer, when we can get it. The other far-famed firm, Hopper & Co., whose vats and tall chimneys are at Beerborough-on-Brent, even as those of Maltby are, send forth a pale ale of excellent virtues. Unhappily, the world-renowned trademarks of these well-known brewers do not always protect their thirsty patrons from imbibing what is not nice, and may not be wholesome. The concocters of the amber liquor have done what they could: there are their genuine labels on the outside of that glass impostor, the bottle. We see, and are pacified by seeing, the famous yellow crescent of one house, the celebrated red star that is the cognizance with the other. There is even a legend or inscription, giving us the name and address of the privileged wight who reverently drew the pure ale from the cask, and consigned it to the bottle. But, alas! it too often happens that the frothing liquid within was never at Beerborough at all, and has no right to claim cousinship with the clear waters of the Brent. The bottle has been sold and resold, emptied and refilled, who knows how often? It may be months since some one sipped the real Beerborough nectar that it once imprisoned; for see, the label, through much handling, is ragged and dim; and the drink that mantles in our glass is but the blood of a very inferior John Barley

own to a thriving state of affairs is pushed to exaggeration in those continental towns where the most manifestly pros perous tradesmen do not scruple to assure the travelling Briton that the few odd sous or groschen which he feebly tries to knock off the price of what he buys represent the seller's whole benefit by the transaction. And yet it is to the large shop, with its long range of huge windows, and its sumptuous trophies of goods, that even humble and needy purchasers feel themselves drawn as by a magnet. It has been well remarked, that, if an intending buyer sallied forth to make the modest acquisition of a single egg, he or she would pass the stall where one egg lay in the vender's moss-lined basket, timidly murmuring, as it were, " Come, cook me," and would go on to yonder booth, where there are eggs in chests, eggs in hampers, eggs ranged like grapeshot on napkin-covered boards, the stock in trade of a Croesus among egg-merchants. And yet the customer would still want but one egg from all this abundance.

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Old-established shops, well situated and well known, have a certain advantage over newer and more brilliant rivals, of which their owners are still better aware than are those who deal there. It will be as well if the old-established shop supplies wares of reasonably good quality, though even that is not compulsory. An establishment which was once noted for real merits may go on undeservingly for a long time before it has quite tired out the patience of the public. Much depends, no doubt, on the character and the deportment of the old-established shopkeeper himself. He should sell dear: that is his sheet-anchor; for the connection between what is cheap and what is nasty is so deeply rooted in some minds, that they are prone to draw the illogical inference that what is expensive must be good of its kind. The Old-Established himself should be worthy of his emporium. An imposing presence, a grand air, are not given to all; but much may be done by cultivating a certain confident pomposity. A slow, weighty, self-assertive habit of speech, a disdainful manner, go a long way with some clients, and especially with materfamilias and her daughters. It is no bad plan to speak and look as if, on the whole, the Old-Established would decidedly prefer to get rid of his customer; and it often abashes the meek, and makes them feel as if it were a sort of favor to be allowed to pay somewhat more than the upstart ten doors off would charge for the same goods.

One uncomfortable effect of the rise and fall of prices remains to be mentioned. Each time that an article in general demand is bruskly raised or lowered as to its cost is apt to produce a singular, and often permanent, inferiority in its quality. The silk-worm disease increased the cost of silk, and the cotton famine that of cotton, fairly enough; but silken fabrics unmixed with a large proportion of baser materials, and cotton of the ancient solidity, yearly grow rarer; while the prices show no inclination to decline. Tea was never so cheap as now; but it is all but impossible to buy at any cost the dainty, well-tasted leaf of which our grandmothers made the infusion. Wine has been cheapened till it seems within reach of the poorest; but the gen erous grape-juice is supplemented by foreign matters of every kind, from potato-spirit to essence of fruit; and bottles grow smaller by degrees and more beautifully diminu tive with every decade, until, as we grow puzzled between reputed pints and slender flasks of somewhat larger dimensions, very thick at the bottom and very slim of neck, we read with wonder that our forefathers of a hundred years since could buy a genuine bottle of por'- vine for a shilling, of claret for eighteen-pence, and that each bottle held a fair and honest quart.

A PILGRIMAGE TO PORT-ROYAL.

IT was past the middle of May. After a month in Touraine, I was hurrying home, having just five days to give to Paris.

That was a settled point; but it was Saturday afternoon when we left Chartres: and the idea of a Sunday in Versailles was simply intolerable.

Why not stop at la Verrière and see Port-Royal? So we did stop, and walked across the ugly downs through Mesnil St. Denis, where there is a wretched church, and a village-green, and a horse-pond railed around, just like those at Hackney or Hammersmith. What a different soil from the Touraine sand, so astonishing in its fertility to those who look on sand as "hungry and barren. Here it is stiff clay, with ruts which in this drought are as hard as iron, and in which in the good old time you can fancy monseigneur's coach sticking fast after a week's rain until halt a village was whipped up to help it along. No hedges, — a wide, melancholy plain, bounded by the forest, and crossed by avenues of apple-trees. The crops are much weedier than in Touraine; and the wheat here has, I fear, failed more entirely than the alternate frosts and thaws made it fail there. Altogether, the country and the people look gloomy of the latter there are two types, the stunted, and the big, coarse, raw-boned, both equally distinct from the well-fed, sturdy Touraine folks. Suddenly we came to the steep edge of a dell, too long and narrow to be called a combe; sides and bottom are full of dwarf wood, with undergrowth of cowslip and big spurge and starwort and broom and heather and wild strawberry. The hawthorn is still in bloom; birch and willow mix their tender green with the gold of the young oaks; thrushes are singing goodnight; and the cuckoo is calling from the opposite bank, which, with its gravel and fuller's earth cropping out here and there, shows that the clay is superposed on what we in Wessex call "brash." The whole place is not at all unlike Vallis, between Frome and Mells; only the stream is not half so pretty. But we have not made five steps down the wood-path when there is a roar which silences thrushes and cuckoo, and puts up a brood of partridges close to our feet another and a third, and then silence again. le mont Valerien qui parle;" and the monster goes on speaking at intervals all through our walk.

"C'est

We soon get down to the stream, and follow it over a carpet of blue-bells through a poplar-grove. Almost every tree is loaded with mistletoe, which, I found, they encourage in Touraine because, boiled with bran, they think it makes good food for pigs. "What a profanation!" said I; but the farmer who told me why it was grown evidently thought there was kissing enough without its being specially encouraged to the waste of useful fodder.

At last we come to the farm-buildings, the "Grange where Pascal, the Arnaulds, Tillemont, &c., lived when Port-Royal was at the height of its fame. These are so close to the convent itself that it almost seemed as if the Jansenists had determined to repeat the old Scotic experiment of monastery and nunnery side by side, "to help meditation." The whole place is gloomy and meanly built, nearly all of "cob." We open a gate, and walk unchal lenged across the garden (once the old chapel and burying-ground) to the château. A tall old gentleman meets us. We have come for hospitality; what can he do? His house is full yet he will not hear of our walking on to La Chevreuse in the dark. Il s'adresse à madame; and the result is, that in ten minutes we are sitting down to a very good supper: soup, cutlets, delightful pommes frites, an omelet of course goat's-milk cheese, and wine which they have sent for to the mill.

Our shake-downs are laid in a long, lofty room, containing an old brass clock with a bit of yellow parchment nailed to the case, on which I read, "Cette horloge a été mise en place le 24 févr. 1670, dans la chambre de la communauté de nostre monastère des champs, par les soins de Monsieur Arnauld d'Andilli, nostre père, nostre bienfaiteur." And in the corner is written, "Cette authentique est de la main de la mère Angélique de St. Jean, fille de Mr. d'Andilli, pourlors prieur de Port-Royal sous la mère Dufargès d'Angenneau."

That is the only relic in the house; but it was enough to keep me awake with the effort to remember what I had read on the subject, from the "Paley " of years ago, and his strictures on the miracles at the tomb of the Abbé Paris, to Mrs. Schimmelpenninck's genial history of the sisterhood.

That Baptist-chapel-looking building at the end of the garden is the Port-Royal" Museum," in which the owner has placed portraits of all the celebrities, Tillemont, Nicole,

the Arnaulds, the Mère Angélique, &c., — and a good many autograph letters, as well as a set of queer old pictures showing different scenes of convent life, the nuns in chapter, "faisant conference dans la solitude," or working as they sit in their open-air amphitheatre. Other pictures represent the persecution, D'Argenson insolently bursting in, and reading the king's order for turning the nuns out; and the last act of all, the Jesuits, with bell, book, and candle, desecrating the burial-ground, and having the bodies dug up, and carried away.

-

There are also plans and pictures of the grounds, both in their wilderness state, in which it is no wonder they were unhealthy, and also after they had been partly drained and improved by the hard work of the literary men at La Grange. Even now that the ponds have been turned into wheat and clover fields, the valley was the only place in France where, during this visit, I saw a regular English white mist following the course of the stream. It looks very pretty, however, in the picture, with swans sailing on the ponds, and nuns in white, with red cross and black hood, walking about among the trees. Their gardens were quite famous: they used regularly to send some of the produce to the great people in Paris; and Mazarin said he always knew the flavor of the fruit bénit, as he called it. A most interesting picture is that which shows a chapter of sisters giving away clothes; for we are told in the biography of Mere Angélique, that the nuns, at her suggestion, often used to strip themselves of necessary apparel in order that the many claimants might not go away empty. No embroidery, or any convent-rubbish of that kind, went on at Port-Royal. The nuns divided their time between doctoring (in their study of which they had anticipated our lady M.D.'s) and making dresses, patch-work garments, when their funds would not buy stuff enough, for the thousands who had lost every thing during the cruel wars of the Fronde. More than once the church-plate, even to the silver lamps and candlesticks, was sold: nay, even the linen altar-cloths were taken to bind up wounds, or to make underclothing. Mère Angélique, in fact, acted like Mr. Müller, of the Bristol Orphanage, went on giving, giving, in strong faith that, though she might be reduced to her last half-crown, a supply would come from somewhere just at the last moment. This self-denying spirit she managed to inspire into all about her. One of the carters, Innocent Fai, always used to eat dog-biscuit, in order that he might give his rations to the He sold half his little patch of land, and spent poor. the money ransoming prisoners, a great work in that day, when the soldiers on both sides were scarcely more careful whom they seized than the Prussians were when molested by francs-tireurs. Fai kept the rest of his land in corn, which (after work-hours) he used to thresh; his friend, the convent-miller, ground it for him; his sister baked it; and then it was all given to the poor, along with clothes, in buying which he spent all his wages. Finding he got talked about, Fai begged a friend to give the things away in his own name; and when this could not be managed, he told the sisters, and insisted on their adding the whole to their common stock of doles. He was so often found reading the Bible in the stable, pretending, if any one came in, to be rummaging among the litter, that the nuns gave him a little room with lock and key; and there he shut himself up, and copied out texts to learn by heart while he was at work. Poor fellow! he used to carry out literally the precept about the "two coats;" and one hard winter, having given his shoes and stockings to a sickly woman, he caught cold, and died. Strange to say, just one fortnight " (remarks Mère Angélique in her necrology)" after he had been laughed at by a worldly gentleman for his folly in thus stripping himself, he died without a penny in his pocket, but attended by six of the first physicians in France, and nursed, not by hirelings, but by the recluses of PortRoyal, men whose education was in courts, whose names on earth were among the princes of the land, and in heaven among the saints." On which little history there are several

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things to remark: the language reminds us, for instance, of the intensely aristocratic nature of most religious movments in France. This is specially true of the Huguenot movement, and partly accounts for its failure: it never spread its roots widely among the masses. Another

thought suggested by Fai's death is, what the world has lost by this sort of moral conscription, which picks out the purest and most selt-sacrificing spirits, and leaves society to be perpetuated by the morally and spiritually maimed and stunted. Moreover, I think a great deal of that selfishness which so imbitters the French war of classes is due to the idea that "the sisters will do it all," - "we may leave that to the good fathers." Thousands of well-to-do Frenchmen, whether friends of order or not, would answer the appeal "Monsieur, il faut vivre," in the very words, "Je n'en vois pas la necessité," attributed to the great sceptic. And one cause of this is because some sisterhood or brotherhood has always stood in the gap, relieving individual responsibility with funds, perhaps contributed by some great lady who is working hard à faire son salut a hundred leagues off.

But we are in Port-Royal Museum, amid the portraits and the autographs. Here is the founder of the original convent, Mathilde de Garlande, wife of Matthew, Lord of Marly, a cadet of the Montmorencies. When he was going on a crusade he left his wife some money to spend in pious works. She, by the advice of Eudes de Sully, Bishop of Paris, bought, in 1204, the fief of Porrois (whence the name Port-Royal), and built the abbey, employing the same architect who had just been at work on Amiens Cathedral. From the pictures, it would seem that her church was a beautiful specimen of First Pointed style. The rule was Cistercian; but the nuns did not keep to it. They became, if not immoral, at any rate idle and self-seeking. At the end of the sixteenth century most of the French nunneries were merely select line-boarding-houses for ladies of the upper classes. To be made abbess was as good as a first-rate marriage; and (as in France, from long before Cæsar's day, there has always been the dowry difficulty) the post of abbess (almost always in the gift of the Crown, — a privilege more valued than all the Gallican liberties besides) was very much coveted. Influential families got quite little girls set over wealthy convents. Marie-Angélique Arnauld, afterwards Mère Angélique, was barely eight when she put on the nun's dress; at nine she made her profession before the general of Citeaux; at eleven she was named abbess. It reminds us of the Scotch story, anent the good old days of patronage, of the meejor greetin' in his cradle for want of the nurse who was busy "smacking" the retractory colonel. Marie-Angélique, during whose minority the nuns flattered themselves they should have a fine time of it, soon shows vigor of mind finding her chief girlish amusement in reading Plutarch." At seventeen she is converted by the sermon of a Capuchin who is leaving France in order to abjure Romanism. She naturally has an illness: after which she comes out strengthened for the work of reforming nuns, who wore starched muslins and gloves and masks, and had masquerades in carnival time, and who dressed their hair elaborately, instead of covering it, and confessors whose least objectionable pursuit was hunting in the nunWhat a determined character she was is nery woods. shown in her behavior on the celebrated jour du guichet, when, almost at the cost of her life, she kept the great gates locked against her father and family, and refused to see them except in the little parlor or reception-room, as if they had been anybody else's friends. Having gained her point, she met her father's reproaches, and her brother's taunts, by fainting at their feet. The struggle was too much for her; but her evident sense of duty so impressed all her relations that they were won over; and we know what some of them became when Port-Royal grew to be a school as well as a nunnery. She could not at this time have been more than eighteen; but when quite a child she had given an earnest of future firmness. One day Grandpapa Marion told her and her sister Agnes (then not five years old) that they should both be nuns. "Since it is your wish, grandpapa, I give my consent; but only on one condition, that I shall be an abbess," said Marie. Agnes

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said nothing; but she came in by and by, looking so sad and grave that M. Marion questioned her: "I can't be an abbess," she replied; "for mamma says abbesses have to give an account of their nuns' souls; and I'm sure I shall have enough to do to take care of my own.” But I," said Marie," will be an abbess, and nothing else; and I'll take good care, you may be sure, grandpapa, to keep my nuns in order." I don't think you could guess Mère Angélique's character from her face, or from her handwriting. It is a sweet face, with not a trace of sternness in it: the writing is plain, upright, the very opposite of the modern lady's hand."

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Close to Mère Angélique and her sister is the Abbé Paris, about whom Paley says so much, and Quesnel, and St. Cyran who, as we shall see, had so much to do with shaping the particular creed of Port-Royal. I did not see a picture of Jansen, to whom the sect, Calvinist in doctrine, Methodist in practice, owes its name.

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It was time that a protest should be made against the corruptions of Jesuitism. We may imagine the horror with which men like Loyola and Xavier, and Loyola's pet convert, Francis Coster, would have read Father le Moine's Easy Devotion," which shows that "simply to live is far harder than to live piously, now that penance is easier than vice." No wonder Pascal, or Louis de Montalte as he chose to call himself, was moved to that indignation of which the unsympathizing Voltaire says, "It equals Molière in wit, and Bossuet in sublimity." "If you buy an Escober,' he says, "be sure to get either the Brussels edition of 1651, or the Lyons one, with a lamb on the back, with seven seals as a vignette;” and then he quotes such rules as “ A woman may gamble, and for this may secretly take her husband's money," and "to the profitable hearing of mass non obest alia prava intentio ut a piciendi libidinosè fœminas”. "going to church does you good, even though you only go to cast sheep's eyes at the girls." Here is a nice bit of casuistry from Lessius: "Quamvis mulier illicitè acquirat, ut per adulterium, ticitè tamen retinet acquisita, nisi ab eo accipisset qui alienare non potest, ut a rel gioso aut filio familias." That is, Mrs. Newington Davy may keep all she can get from Davy, Moon, and Co., provided they are not meddiing with entailed property; but if Father Spoonbill gives her any thing she must refund; for the father can't spend a farthing on his menus paisirs: what he has is not his but the brotherhood's. This from Father Banny is strangely put, and must, one would think, have scandalized French laymen as much as it would astonish English lawyers: “A daughter does not wrong her father when she gives herself to a man in marriage or otherwise; for her chastity is her own property just as her bouy is, to which she may do any thing, except cut off a limb, or commit suicide." People had submitted long enough to this sort of thing when Jansen, long known as one of the first theologians of Louvain, published his "Mars Gallicus," drawing a contrast between the French and Spanish clergy, much to the disadvantage of the former. He thereby still more offended Richelieu, already enraged with a sect which dared to say that the love of God, and not reward and punishment, the motive set forth in an early work by his Eminence, could alone prompt men to live a really Christian life. Richelieu was then meditating a patriarchate for France, of which himself should be patriarch. To have the real state of the French Church laid open at such a time was most damaging. This accounts for the vindictiv. malice of the man, who was quite right in saying of himself that, when he determined on a thing he went right at it: "Je renverse ioul, je fauche out, et ensui e je couvre tout de ma soutune rouge.” Between

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Richelieu and the Jesuits the reformers had a bad time of it; and Jansen, dying not two years after his appointment to the see of Ypres, could do nothing to help them. His executors, indeed, hastened the outburst of the storm which had long been threatening. Jansen's last work, his great Commentary on A gustine," which he had barely completed when the plague ca ried him off, was, by his special direc tions, to have been submitted to the pope before being published. He left a letter written with his dying hand to Urban VIII., giving up the manuscript wholly into his Holiness's

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