gave way and yielded. It is one of the strangest acts of homage ever done to an unquestionable strength-"Le prince de la parole sacrée dût donc se taire." He gave up that right over which he had rejoiced in the fervent days of his youth as "something inalienable, divine, eternally free"-the right of speaking of God. He made neither resistance nor public protest. The shadow of the new Empire fell over him in sudden chill and silence, and the words died upon his fervid lips. He who had spoken so freely, laboured so hard, spent himself so liberally for the service of his Church and country, was in himself, as he expresses it, "a kind of liberty"-a personified freedom; and, as with other freedoms, the day was over for him. He saw by intuition that resistance was useless. The silent despot overawed, as by a species of fascination, the eloquent priest, who, in his heart, was a little disdainful" of all kinds of powers. This new kind of power, personal, self-concentrated, standing alone in an inexorable mute mystery over the destinies of France, silenced the preacher as if by force of instinct. His voice died out of the country, which had fallen into a sudden paralysis, half of fear, half of admiration, before this basilisk Emperor. The spell was upon Lacordaire as upon France. never opened his lips again in public after that one series of provincial lectures, which were themselves broken off and left imperfect, because one of them contained "some outbursts of truth, of grief, and of boldness, which were no longer in season. He had to renounce public speaking definitively," says M. de Montalembert, with significant reserve; and here, according with the beginning of the imperial power, ended his public life.

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He withdrew after this to Soraye, an ancient abbey, first of the Benedictines, then of the Dominicans, to which order he himself belonged, and where there now flourished a

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large public school. He devoted himself to the regeneration and perfection of this institution, to the teaching of youth, which had always been the supreme vocation of his life." Here he consoled the sadness and disappointment of his heart, wounded as it was by the sudden overthrow of all the work of his life, and by the sad and rapid change of affairs which had taken place in France, among the children whom he loved. But though he made no public complaint, and manfully devoted himself to the favourite occupation which Providence had still left to him, the lamentable downfall of all his hopes I went to the heart of the liberal monk. His country, his age, "which scarcely knew how to obey," had become all at once eager "not only to accept but to implore a master." His Church and religious party, "clergy and Catholics, who had so long applauded the masculine independence of his eloquence, had fallen all at once a prey to a delusion without excuse, and to a prostration without example in all the history of the Church. Names which had been honoured to appear beside his own in the memorable manifestoes by which Christian liberty had invoked the sole shelter of public freedom, appeared all at once affixed to harangues and mandiments which borrowed the forms of Byzantine adulation to salute the mad dream of an orthodox absolutism.” "Till the last day of his life," adds M. de Montalembert, "the grief and indignation with which the sight of this great moral catastrophe inspired him was not weakened. But his affliction, his magnanimous wrath, breathed forth in his letters. This treasure remains to us, thank God! it will be preserved for posterity; and when the time shall come when all may be said, it will appear as the most brilliant and most necessary of protests against those who have SO miserably divided, disarmed, and discredited Catholicism in France."

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We have no space to quote, as the biographer does, those melancholy and indignant letters. Whilst thus breathing forth to his friends the disappointment which consumed his soul, Lacordaire lived on in his southern seminary, far from the busy world which had deceived him, a life of usefulness and silence. It was a "retreat laborious and animated" in which he now found himself; and, with a true Christian philosophy, the great orator bent all his faculties to his work. One of the consolations of my present life,' he writes, with touching sadness, "is to live only with God and children: the latter have their faults, but they have still betrayed nothing and dishonoured nothing." He made Soraye "the most flourishing and popular scholastic establishment in the south;" he formed a tender paternal friendship with many young souls, over whom he had immense influence. With the same eloquence which he had displayed in Notre Dame he preached to his pupils in their provincial chapel. In short, he accepted his position like a true man; and, hiding his mortification, his profound disappointment, his injured heart in his own breast, devoted himself to the important but obscure position in which he was to end his life. Here another great event happened to him in his seclusion. It was from Soraye he came, in his Dominican frock, to receive from the French Academy "the noblest recompense which can, in our days, crown a glorious and independent life." He sat one day only in that illustrious assembly, where he appeared, as he himself said, as the symbol of freedom accepted and fortified by religion." This last honour was the last public event which occurred in his life. He went back laureated for his dying, and ended his life in Soraye, after a painful illness-so far as we are able to make out, for M. de Montalembert is indistinct in the matter of dates-in the winter of 1861.

"It is the first time that my body has resisted my will," he said, with a half-playful melancholy, in the midst of his sufferings; and died exclaiming, "My God, open to me, open to me!" with a sublime simplicity. God opened to him, and his agitations were over. Whether on the other side of that wonderful gateway he might discover that his monkish frock was less worth fighting for than it appeared, who can inquire? He lived a life full of worthy labour and service, and doubtless found his reward.

Our space does not permit us to follow M. de Montalembert, in his quotations from the letters and sermons of his friend, though there are in these letters many snatches of brilliant and tender eloquence on which we are much tempted to linger. It is not, however, in his productions that Lacordaire is most remarkable; it is in his character and career. "The principal thing is to have a life," he himself said, when deprecating the overproduction of modern literature; and no man has more exemplified the saying. He had a life, this man of conflict and strife, of self-denial and silence, of independence and duty a life too human to make any formal anatomical consistency overvisible in its flesh-and-blood details -broadly contradictory, yet always in a harmony with itself more true than consistency. With his heart full of the agitations and the hopes of his time, he lived in his cloister in the practice of self-mortifications and punishments as severe as those with which any antique son of Dominic had subdued the flesh.

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When all the events of this generous life shall be known, the orator will disappear before the monk," says his sympathetic and admiring biographer, "and the prestige of that eloquence which has moved, enlightened, and converted so many souls, will seem a less marvel than the formidable austerity of his life, the severity with which he chastised his flesh, and his passionate love for Jesus Christ." This is the side

of his character and existence least comprehensible to the English spectator. How he, so unimpassioned, so temperate, so sensible-he who had only loved glory, and nothing else, before he loved God -should have needed "excessive macerations" to subdue that flesh which, so far as appears, was far from exercising any despotic sway over the spirit, is a curious question, and one which perhaps never can be answered to the satisfaction of our practical understandings; but the interest, the individuality, and sincere nobleness of his life seem unquestionable. From his little convent he passes to the bar and public tribunal, where even the unwilling crowd applauds; to the pulpit, where admiring multitudes surround him; yet returns to his Visitandines and his almonry, obedient and silent, when the hour of his triumph is over. From the height of popular fame and success, driven by that noble intuition in his heart that he is not sufficiently using the talent God has given him, he withdraws to take up the monk's frock, most despised of habits, not to hide a mortified life or wounded heart, as a sentimental bystander might suppose, but for the sake of the labour and use of which he believes it still capable. Deeply contradictory as such a proceeding is of all our convictions and theories, it is far from our thoughts to blame Lacordaire for this singular vestment in which he enwrapped all his later life. It may be that to the eyes of this languid and over-refining age, the forcible type and symbol which antedate all arguments is, after all, the thing most wanted; and that the apparition of the monk, selfdenuded of all possessions, even of his own will, for the glory of God and the service of his neighbour, may startle the confused intelli

gence into a belief of that work and its importance, which no philosophy could give. Such at least seems to have been the conviction of Lacordaire. Like his great contemporary Irving, the French preacher felt the inefficacy of common means for the work on which his heart was set. To both the world came open-mouthed, wondering and admiring; but neither in the London modern church, nor under the noble arches of Notre Dame, was the report of the prophet believed as he felt in his heart it ought to be. This uneasiness in the passionate heart of our great countryman gave rise, by some subtle magnetic influence, to a wild dream of miraculous aid and voices from heaven; and in the self-controlled and unimpassioned soul of the French priest it wrought an issue almost as strange

the restoration, to some extent, of monasticism in his country, and the dedication of his own life to that disused and discredited vocation. No two men could be more unlike, but here both met in a strange concord and agreement. Something had to be done beyond the ordinary routine of evangelism to seize upon the dull ear and sluggish heart of the time. Supernaturalism, or monasticism, or any other martyrdom-what matter, so it did but startle that slumbering generation to some thought of its evil ways? Let us build the sepulchres of those prophets whom our fathers, by their apathy and indifference, drove into such a noble desperation. We too, doubtless, will do our share of the same work. Yet it is a kind of penitence of humanity for its ever-recurring mistakes and misconceptions, which prompts one generation to decorate the tombs into which the sins of a former generation have urged and driven the not perfect yet noble dead.

In a small house furnished in the tawdry - brilliant style, in a small street adjoining Lowndes Square, there dwelt, between the years 1828 and 1859, a small woman, who, though very old, persisted in believing herself to be young, and dressed and spoke and acted as if she were the observed of all observers. She was not handsome; she never could have been, for there were defects both in face and form at variance with beauty; but she was bright, or rather brisk, in the expression of her countenance, and her air was jaunty, though neither graceful nor elegant. The career of this little woman had been a remarkably busy, and, on the whole, a successful one. She was a voluminous writer, and had made a good deal of money out of her publishers. By a process which is perhaps better understood on the other side of St George's Channel than here, she succeeded in making her way into what is called "society," and she never loosened her hold, having once made it fast, upon man or woman, whom, for any reason of rank, worth, or talent, she considered it worth while to cultivate. It is curious to observe likewise the skill with which she makes it appear that the balance of advantage in the matter of acquaintance was always on the side of her friends, especially when they happened to be gentlemen; for she laboured under the happy delusion of believing that she was not only the cleverest, but the most beautiful woman of the age, and that no man, young or old, married or single, ever approached except to fall in love with her.

Time, however, overtook her, as he overtakes other people, and beat her in the race. Latterly she went out little in search of society, either because invitations came sparsely

in, or that the fatigue was too great for her, or that she grudged the fly-hire. But she had weekly receptions in her own little drawingroom, and moved heaven and earth, and a variety of penny-post men, to get them attended. A few old Whigs, including the Marquess of Lansdowne and good-natured Lord Carlisle, when he happened to be in town, looked in occasionally at her soirées. Now and then a Tory man of genius-Sir E. B. Lytton, for example-would make his appearance; and it has even been whispered, though we doubt the truth of the story, that a learned divine, sometimes two, might occasionally be seen in the throng. But the bulk of her guests consisted of fashionables of a second or third order, with a few small celebrities, literary, musical, and artistic. The little woman was very great on these occasions. She dispensed her weak tea and weaker conversation with equal fluency; she flattered and received flattery to any conceivable amount. Every man his own trumpeter, and every woman too, was with her an article of religious belief; and she did what religious professors are suspected of not always doing-she carried her faith into practice. A judicious application of rouge to the cheeks, the frocks and furbelows of a girl, a mincing gait, and a perpetual smile, set her forth to the best advantage. At eighty-three years of age she was still a butterfly; and if she could not flit, she floundered from flower to flower.

One day it became known, through a paragraph in the Morning Post,' that Lady Morgan was dead. London was not thrown into a state of consternation by the announcement, neither did any of its leading habitués array themselves in mourning on the con

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trary, we are afraid that, having read the brief sketch which accompanied the notification, and commented upon it, most people forgot within five minutes or less that such a person as Lady Morgan had ever existed. But this was a consummation which, though common enough where others were concerned, her ladyship had made up her mind should not occur in her case. Having engrossed, as she believed, a large share of public attention while living, she determined that she should not cease to be talked about when dead. Accordingly, she conceived the bril liant idea of immortalising herself in a posthmuous work, and occupied herself, early and late, in preparing the materials. She availed herself of the assistance of kindhearted Miss Jewsbury in this work, and appointed by will that Mr Hepworth Dixon should be the guardian of her literary reputation. We never heard whether in her lifetime she made Mr Dixon aware of the honour which was intended for him we think it probable that she did not; because Mr Dixon is reputed to be a man of sense; and it strikes us that, knowing his woman, he would have got out of the scrape had the chance of doing so been afforded him. But it is one thing to object to a proposed arrangement before it is completed, and quite another to refuse carrying into effect the last wish of a relative or dear friend. The struggle was doubtless severe; but sentiment prevailed with Mr Dixon over the remonstrances of good taste and good feeling. He took home the box which contained the precious documents; and now, at an interval of three years from the old lady's death, the results are before us.

But Mr Dixon, though a pious executor, is not the less a wise man. He seems to have read her ladyship's papers through, and arrived at a just appreciation of their merits. They would not bear handling in any shape; they must come before the public exactly as

they came before him, or he at least could have nothing to say to them. Here is his preface :

"Lady Morgan bequeathed her papers and journals to me, with a view to their publication. The collection was large, as she had preserved nearly every line written to her from the letters of princes and statesmen, the compliments of poets, of exiles, and heroes, down to the petitions of weavers, chimney-sweeps, and servant-girls-even the invitations sent her to dinner, and the address cards left at her door. Many of these trifles of the day have no value now; a hundred years hence, if kept together, they may serve to illustrate with singular brightness and detail the domestic life of a woman of society in the reign of Victoria. My duty in the matter of their publication was clear enough. Lady Morgan had not only proposed to write her own memoirs, but had made a considerable progress in her task. A good part of a volume had been prepared under her own eyes for the press. Much of the correspondence to be used had been marked, and the copious diaries, in which she had noted the events of her life and the course of her thoughts, supplied nearly all the additions which could be desired. Under these circum

stances, it appeared to me that Lady Morgan could be judiciously left to tell her own story in her own way."

If Mr Dixon had followed any other course, he would have done great injustice both to himself and to Lady Morgan. Her ladyship's story, as told by herself, is indeed a literary curiosity: had it been told by him, or by anybody else, we doubt whether it would have found a dozen readers. It is probable, for example, that Mr Dixon would have endeavoured to settle the dates of events as they occurred. Possibly, too, he might have narrated these events exactly as they befell: we are pretty sure that he would have done his best to draw a faithful portraiture of his heroine-coloured, perhaps, with the tints which biographers are apt to shed over the objects of their laudation, but not absolutely blazing. Lady Morgan knew a great deal better than this. She starts with the frank avowal, "that she never means to be trammelled by attending to dates. . . . What has a wo