produce thought," as if thought in itself were any such inestimable production. She would not have been classed by them among the “persons who think.” "But theirs is a dangerous profession," says a great author; "and from the time of the Aristophanes thought-shop to the great German establishment or thought-manufactory, whose productions have, unhappily, taken in part the place of the older and more serviceable commodities of Nuremberg toys and Berlin wool, it has been often harmful enough to mankind *." She did not give up, for as a Christian she never undertook, what they call the difficult and painful duty of inquiring and thinking for herself; being rewarded, not by what they term authoritative anodynes, but by the peace announced for men of good will; for, in brief, she was resolved with the Church, let who would philosophize, to light her candle at the old lamp; and she left behind her to be associated and united for ever in the minds of those who knew her, the worship of the ancient and true faith, its rites. and ceremonies, as well as its spirit and its doctrine, with a devotion, if one may so speak, unalterable and undying to her own memory. The old Catholicism, with its old ways, that is what she respected, while esteeming at just their true value new ways of thinking in matters of religion. Her Catholicity, you might say, consisted in following our Lord and His blessed mother. She sat at the well of the Samaritan, mounted Calvary, rested on Tabor, or adored at the foot of the cross. Το her the same hours brought back the same thoughts, and labours, and cares. Her life was the same continued succession as witnessed in others belonging to the olden time, of prayer, reading, work, interrupted by the necessities of life, and the indispensable claims of her own position in society. What Fleury says of the early Christians was strictly true of her. "She regarded every thing as subordinate to religion. Her profession was to be a Christian purely and simply. Had there been occasion for such an interrogatory, her reply would have been, like theirs, 'I am a Christian †.' She knew, and every one intimate with her knew, that she wished for others quite as *Ruskin, Mod. Paint. v. 104. Moeurs des Chrétiens. much as for herself only one thing-the one thing necessary. Her race, short as it proved, was run "non quasi in incertum." She had no doubts in her own mind, no uncertainty, no misgivings, no discouragement. She had in her possession, and she felt that she had, the priceless pearl. She seemed to live in the atmosphere of the beatitudes of the Gospel. She strictly verified, in fine, the remark of a deep observer, that the Christian is the only person who can, without inconsistency, love life and desire death, which seems the solution of the problem of the sovereign good that Plato sought for. Her life, in its ordinary routine of social and domestic duties, was, through her pure intention, the service of the Redeemer-and she could love it; her death the union with Him for ever, and we at least may reasonably believe that she received from it her crown. You have as yet heard nothing of the mere woman, and yet we can hardly conclude this walk with more appropriate words than those of Proteus, "How will you dote on her with more advice, CHAPTER IV. N entering St. John's Chapel for our fourth visit, one feels, as one's thoughts take a direction less simple than when we first conceived the idea of recording them, that it is an occasion for defending what at the commencement one little thought of,-namely, the literary character of our enterprise, which might now seem exposed to that charge of monotony which one of the most brilliant and profound of modern French writers believes to have himself incurred, though in a work which has excited an immense, and indeed a European interest, which one may affirm without hesitation is destined to immortality. When one has to speak of the piety of a Christian in any age of the world, it is difficult to feel perfectly assured that one has succeeded in avoiding this inconvenience, for such a life must of course be in all cases pretty similar. It is still the same old principle, the same old motives, the same old struggle; always prayer and thoughtfulness, and generous actions to befriend others, and donations to the churches, and self-sacrifice, and amidst all great patience. In this instance, as Léon Aubineau observes in his Life of the Marchioness Le Bouteiller, "c'était la commune vie Chrétienne, simple, exacte, et heureuse." Nevertheless, as the former writer observes, all these graces, of which there must be made such frequent mention during the course of these visits, are at some epochs sufficiently rare in the common walks of the world, while certainly they appear less often than one might wish before the ordinary tribunal of biography. Moreover, while with regard to the essentials of piety a person so disposed must resemble in a general way every one else who is devout, there will be always certain characteristic marks, and delicate shades of feature, which belong peculiarly to an individual, so as to render each true portrait distinguishable from every other; for, as Sir Thomas Brown says, "there was never any thing so like another as in all points to concur; there will ever some reserved difference slip in to prevent the identity, without which two several things would not be alike, but the same, which is impossible." And sooth to say, though you appear inclined to doubt it, all nature is in part our birthright. Your Southern happening besides, perhaps, to have been not overgiven to the study of analogies, may wish naturally enough through his own national impressions to subject all souls and bodies to one unvarying type; but we of the North, as some one says, even without having made such studies, prefer that primitive element, which Christianity, at least in the North, substituted in the human individuality. We are all more or less familiar with pictures like those of Raphael or Fra Angelico of fair and holy women; but how shall my rude art be ever able to transmit an idea of the model as representing piety that has to be copied now? The pencil of Saint-Simon in a few gracious lines could have drawn her entire. As Elia says, "I must limp after in my poor borrowed manner as the fates have given me power." 66 Perhaps, then, it would be well to say in the beginning that the first foundation or ground tone, as it were, of this character, consisted in a kind of childlike disposition of innocence, which, as Fontenelle, speaking of the botanist Blondin, says, comprises already a part of what religion requires," and she, like him, "had the happiness to join to it the rest." It was a disposition which argued the nearest conformity to the image of God to which quoad nature our mortality can ever attain under the ordinary circumstances and conditions of common life, showing that the human soul is still a mirror, wherein, however broken, may be seen darkly the image of the mind of God. Indeed, as Sir Thomas Brown says, generally, "he that understands not thus much hath not his introduction or first lesson, and is yet to begin the alphabet of man." But a great contemporary remarks besides, "that it is only by studying the soul that men can discern even the meaning of the attributes ascribed to God, as when, for example, being told that God is love, we desire to know what is love. Out of one such heart you may learn that which revelation does not and cannot tell you; for all the sounds and words ever uttered, all the revelations of cloud or flame or crystal, are utterly powerless; they cannot tell you in the smallest point what love means, or what justice means-only the broken mirror can. The revelation proclaiming Him to be just cannot teach you what justice is. You have still to study the human heart and conscience to see what is the image of God. No other book than that to learn it in will you ever find; for without it there is nothing that can be understood, no frankincensed manuscript, nothing sacred, nothing hieroglyphic, nor cuneiform; papyrus and pyramid are alike silent on this matter; nothing in the clouds above, nor in the earth beneath. That flesh-bound volume is the only revelation for such a purpose, that is, that was, or that can be; and in that is the image of God painted. The not knowing which fact," he adds, "and the consequent caring for the universe only, and for man not at all, is the error of modern science *." * Ruskin, M. P. v. 202. Her piety then, which was a thing of thoughts and deeds rather than words, a thing of love and justice and hope, may be said to have consisted mainly in the keeping of this broken mirror as clean as since the fall it is possible to be kept; and in preserving it by supernatural means from the defilement which renders faint or illegible the original writing. It consisted also in a filial love for God, and for all that immediately related to Him,-a sort of angelic reverence, and affection, and wonder, and admiration for the heavenly, as well as for what is generous and heroic amongst men. "It was the innocence of a child, And an entire simplicity of mind, A thing most sacred in the eye of heaven." "There was nothing," as Elia would say, "to stagger you, nothing to make you mistrust, no suspicion of alloy, no dross or dreg of the worldly or ambitious spirit." As we read of some one else, "what above all moved her was to think of the adorable perfections of God." With all her transports as a mother, it was still her primal joy to speak of the divine perfections, and to hear of them. The tone of her conversation with intimate friends, in respect to such topics, had a striking resemblance to that of Saint-Louis, and was calculated, on rare occasions, to elicit pretty much the same kind of saucy replies as those of the young Sire de Joinville, which she used always to meet with a similar sweetness and tender expostulation. But every day she seemed to have said to herself, like the holy king, "Ad te levavi animam meam," which words, as Joinville relates, being those with which the mass commenced on the day of his coronation, he used them frequently as expressive of his own condition ; and one may truly apply to her the words of his biographer, "eut en Dieu moult grant fiance dès son enfance, et jusques à la mort." Like him too she used to invoke the prayers of certain saints in an especial manner, for all which devotion, one may truly add, was she protected by God, quant à son âme. With all her thoroughly human and affectionate, instinctive, though at the same time strictly logical, deductions from the doctrine of * Vie de Demlle. Pignior, &c. |