nor are given in marriage, those distinctions | taught, the visible presence of her Redeemer will for ever disappear, the character of Ange- was daily manifested-all spoke to her of a lique is less perplexing than to the advocates high destiny, a fearful responsibility, and of of the opposite theory. Her understanding, objects for which all sublunary ties might well her spirit, and her resolves, were all essen- be severed, and a sacrifice wisely made of tially masculine. She was endued with the every selfish feeling. Nor need a Protestant various faculties by which man either extorts fear to acknowledge, that on a heart thus conor wins dominion over his fellow-men;-secrated to the service of her Maker, rested with address, courage, fortitude, self-reliance, and an unfaltering gaze fixed on objects at once too vast to be measured and remote to be discerned but by the all-searching eye of faith. Among the Israelites of old, she would have assumed the office of judge; or would have given out oracles in the forests of ancient Germany.

Born in the reign, and educated near the court, of a Bourbon, the lighter and more gentle elements of her nature found exercise even under the paralyzing influences of an ascetic life; for Angelique was gay and light of heart, and St. Benedict himself might have forgiven or applauded the playful sallies of his votary. In scaling the heights of devotion, she could call to her own aid, and that of others, all the resources of the most plaintive or impassioned music. To flowers, and to the glad face of nature, she gave back their own smiles with a true woman's sympathy. With such literature as might be cultivated within the walls of her convent, she was intimately conversant; and would have eclipsed Madame de Sevigne's epistolary fame, had it been permitted to her to escape from theological into popular topics. Concentrated within a domestic circle, and bestowed on a husband or a child, the affections, which she poured out on every human being who claimed her pity, would have burned with a flame as pure and as intense as was ever hymned in poetry or dreamed of in romance. A traveller on the highways of the world, she must have incurred every peril except that of treading an obscure and inglorious path. Immured by superstition in a cloister, she opened the way at once to sublunary fame and to an immortal recompense; and has left an example as dangerous as it may be seductive to feebler minds, who, in a desperate imitation of such a model, should hazard a similar self-devotion.

the holy influence, familiar to all who meekly adore the great source of wisdom, and reverently acquiesce in his will. As a science, religion consists in the knowledge of the relations between God and man; as a principle, in the exercise of the corresponding affections; as a rule of duty, in the performance of the actions which those affections prescribe. The principle may thrive in healthful life and energy, though the science be ill understood and the rule imperfectly apprehended. For, after all, the great command is Love; and He from whom that command proceeded, is himself Love; and amidst all the absurdities (for such they were) of her monastic life, Angelique was still conscious of the presence of a Father, and found the guidance of a friend.

When at the age of eleven years, Angelique became the abbess of Port-Royal, few things were less thought of by the French ladies of the Cistertian order than the rule of their austere founder. During the wars of the League, religion, by becoming a watchword, had almost ceased to be a reality; civil war, the apology for every crime, had debased the national character; and the profligacy of manners which the last generation expiated by their sufferings, may be distinctly paid back to the age of which Davila has written the political, and Bassompierre the social history. Society will still exert a powerful influence even over those by whom it has been abandoned. When Gabrielle d'Etrees reigned at the Louvre, beads were told and masses sung in neighbouring cloisters, by vestals who, in heathen Rome, would have been consigned to a living sepulchre. In a monastery, the spiritual thermometer ranges from the boiling to the freezing point with but few intermediate pauses. From the ecstasies of devotion there is but one step to disgust, and thence to sensuality, for most of those who dare to forego the aids to piety and virtue which divine wisdom has provided in the duties and the affections of domestic life.

While this downward progress was advanc

Angelique, indeed, might be fitted for a nunnery; for such was the strength, and such the sacred harmony of her spirit, that while still a sojourner on earth, she seemed already a denizen of heaven. When a child, she un-ing at Port-Royal, it happened that a Capuchin derstood as a child; enjoying the sports, the friar sought and obtained permission to preach rambles, and the social delights which the there. Of the man himself, the chroniclers of habits of Port-Royal had not then forbidden. the house have left a scandalous report; but With advancing years came deeper and more they gratefully acknowledge the efficacy of his melancholy thoughts. She felt, indeed, (how sermon. Angelique listened, and was conconld she but feel?) the yearnings of a young verted. Such, at least, is her own statement; heart for a world where love and homage and unstirred be all the theological questions awaited her. But those mysteries of our being, connected with it. How deep was the impresof which the most frivolous are not altogether sion on her mind, may be gathered from her unconscious, pressed with unwonted weight own words;-"Often," she exclaims, “did I on her. A spouse of Christ; a spiritual wish to fly a hundred leagues from the spot, mother of those who sustained the same awful and never more to see my father, mother, or character-her orisons, her matins, and her kindred, dearly as I love them. My desire was vesper chants, accompanied by unearthly to live apart from every one but God, unknown music and by forms of solemn significance; to any human being, concealed and humble, the Gothic pile beneath which she sat en- with no witness but himself, with no desire throned; and the altar where, as she was but to please him." Her dignity as abbess

she now regarded as a burden. Even her himself then hazarded an encounter with the projected reforms had lost their interest. To live where her holy aspirations would be thwarted, and where examples of holiness would not be found, was to soar to a more arduous, and therefore a more attractive sphere of self-denial.

and the now crowded monastery was soon converted into one great hospital. But for a timely transfer of the whole establishment to a hotel purchased for them by the mother of Angelique in the Faubourg St. Jaques at Paris, their remaining history might all have been compressed into a chapter on the influence of malaria.

duke of Orleans, to pave the way for his union with the niece of the cardinal. To his longcherished scheme of erecting the kingdom of France into a patriarchate in his own favour, there could arise no more probable or more dangerous opponent. To these imaginary or anticipated wrongs, was added another, which seems to have excited still more implacable The restoration of the community to health resentment. An aspirant after every form of was not, however, the most momentous conse- glory, Richelieu had convinced himself, and quence of the change. It introduced the abbess required others to believe, that his literary and to the society, and the influence of Hauranne theological were on a level with his political de Verger, the abbot of St. Cyran, one of the powers. He was the author of a catechism most memorable names in the ecclesiastical where might be read the dogma, that contriannals of that age. When Richelieu was yet tion alone, uncombined in the heart of the a simple bishop, he distinguished among the penitent with any emotion of love towards the crowd of his companions one whose graceful Deity, was sufficient to justify an absolution at bearing, open countenance, learning, gayety, the confessional. One Seguenot, a priest of and wit, revealed to his penetrating glance the the oratory, maintained and published the opgerms of future eminence. But to an eye daz-posite opinion. Rumour denied to Seguenot zled by such prospects as were already dawn- the real parentage of the book which bore his ing on the ambitious statesman, those which name, and ascribed it to St. Cyran. From had arrested the upward gaze of his young associate were altogether inscrutable. With what possible motive De Verger should for whole days bury himself in solitude, and chain down that buoyant spirit to the study of the Greek and Latin fathers was one of the few problems which ever engaged and baffled the sagacity of M. de Lucon. They parted; the prelate to his craft, the student to his books; the one to extort the reluctant admiration of the world, the other to toil and to suffer in the cause of piety and truth. They met again; the cardinal to persecute, and the abbot to be his victim. Death called them both to their account; leaving to them in the world they had agitated or improved, nothing but historical names, as forcibly contrasted as they had been strangely associated.

Great men (and to few could that title be more justly given than to Richelieu) differ from other men chiefly in the power of selfmultiplication; in knowing how to make other men adopt their views and execute their purposes. Thus to subjugate the genius of St. Cyran, the great minister had spared neither caresses nor bribes. The place of first almoner to Henrietta of England, the bishoprics of Clermont and Bayonne, a choice among numerous abbacies, were successively offered and refused. 66 Gentlemen, I introduce to you the most learned man in Europe," was the courteous phrase by which the cardinal made known the friend of his youth to the courtiers who thronged his levée. But human applause had lost its charm for the ear of St. Cyran. The retired and studious habits of his early days had not appeared more inexplicable to the worldly-minded statesman than his present indifference. Self-knowledge had made Richelien uncharitable. Incredulous of virtues of which he detected no type in the dark recesses of his own bosom, he saw, in his former companion, a treacherous enemy, if not a rival. There were secrets of his early life, of which he seems to have expected and feared the disclosure. St. Cyran was at least the silent, and might become the open enemy of the declaration by which the parliament and clergy of Paris had annulled the marriage of Gaston,

speculations on the love of God to feelings of hatred to man, what polemic will not readily pass, whether his cap be red or black? Seguenot's errors were denounced by the Sorbonne, and the poor man himself was sent to the Bastille, there, during the rest of his great opponent's life, to obtain clearer views on the subject of contrition. Impartial justice required that the real, or imputed, should fare no better than the nominal author; and St. Cyran was conducted to Vincennes, to breathe no more the free air of heaven till Richelieu himself should be laid in the grave.

Never had that gloomy fortress received within its walls a man better fitted to endure with composure the utmost reverses of fortune. To him, as their patriarch or founder, the whole body of the Port-Royalists, with one voice, attribute not merely a pre-eminence above all other teachers, but such a combination of intellectual powers and Christian graces, as would entitle him not so much to a place in the calendar, as to a place apart from, and above, the other luminaries in that spiritual galaxy. Make every deduction from their eulogies which a rational skepticism may suggest, and it will yet be impossible to evade the accumulated proofs on which they claim for St. Cyran the reverence of mankind. Towards the close of the first of the four volumes which he has dedicated to the attempt, Claude Lancelot confesses and laments the difficulty of conveying to others by words any definite image of the sublime and simple reality which he daily contemplated with more than filial reverence. He describes a man moving through the whole circle of the virtues which the gos pel inculcates, with a step so firm as to indicate the constant aid of a more than human power, and with a demeanour so lowly as to bespeak an habitual consciousness of that divine presence. He depicts a moral hero, by whom every appetite had been subdued, and every passion tranquillized, though still exquisitely alive to the pains and the enjoyments of life, and responding with almost feminine tenderness to every affectionate and kindly feeling-a master of all erudition, but never so happy as when imparting to little children the

If I

elementary truths on which his own heart re- the Baron and Baroness de Beau Soleil. "I posed-grave, nay, solemn in discourse, but entreat you," he says to the lady to whom he with tones so gentle, a wisdom so profound, gave this commission, "that the cloth may be and words of such strange authority to ani- fine and good, and befitting their station in somate and to soothe the listener, that, in com-ciety. I do not know what is becoming; but, parison with his, all other colloquial eloquence if I remember, some one has told me that genwas wearisome and vapid-rebuking vice far tlemen and ladies of their condition ought not less by stern reproof than by the contrast of to be seen in company without gold lace for his own serene aspect, at once the result and the men and black lace for the women. the reflection of the perfect peace in which his am right about this, pray purchase the best, mind continually dwelt, exhibiting a tran- and let every thing be done modestly, yet script, however rudely and imperfectly, yet handsomely, that when they see each other, faithfully drawn, of the great example to which they may, for a few minutes at least, forget his eye was ever turned, and where, averting that they are captives." It is in the moral, his regard from all inferior models, it was his rather than in the intellectual qualities of St. wont to study, to imitate, and to adore. In Cyran, that his claim to the veneration of posshort, the St. Cyran of Lancelot's portraiture terity must now be rested. He occupies a is one of those rare mortals whose mental place in ecclesiastical history as the founder health is absolute and unimpaired-whose of Jansenism in France. character consists not so much in the excel- Of that system of religious belief and praclence of particular qualities, as in the sym- tice, the origin is to be traced to the joint metry, the balance, and the well-adjusted har-labours of St. Cyran and Cornelius Jansen, monies of all-who concentrate their energies during the six years which they passed in soin one mighty object, because they live under cial study at Bayonne. Returning to his native the habitual influence of one supreme motive country, Jansen became first a professor of di-who are ceaselessly animated by a love em- vinity at Louvain, and afterwards bishop of bracing every rational being, from Him who Ypres. There he surrendered himself to a is the common parent of the rest, to the mean- life of unremitting labour. Ten times he read est and the vilest of those who were originally over every word of the works of Augustine; created in his image and likeness. thirty times he studied all those passages of them which relate to the Pelagian controversy. All the fathers of the church were elaborately collated for passages illustrative of the opinions of the bishop of Hippo. At length, after an uninterrupted study of twenty years, was finished the celebrated Augustinus Cornelii Jansenii. With St. Austin as his text and guide, the good bishop proceeded to establish, on the authority of that illustrious father, those doctrines which, in our times and country, have been usually distinguished by the terms Calvinistic or Evangelical. Heirs of guilt and corruption, he considered the human race, and each successive member of it, as lying in a state of condemnation, and as advancing to wards a state of punishment; until an internal impulse from on high awakens one and another to a sense of this awful truth, and infuses into them a will to fly from impending vengeance. But this impulse is imparted only to the few; and on them it is bestowed in pursuance of a decree existing in the divine intelligence before the creation of our species. Of the motives of their preference not even a conjecture can be formed. So far as human knowledge extends, it is referable simply to the divine volition; and is not dependent on any inherent moral difference between the objects of it, and those from whom such mercy is withheld. This impulse is not, however, irresistible. Within the limits of his powers, original or imparted, man is a free agent ;-free to admit and free to reject the proffered aid. If rejected, it enhances his responsibility-if admitted, it leads him by continual accessions of the same supernatural assistance to an acquiescence in those opinions, to the exercise of those affections, and to the practice of those virtues, which collectively form the substance of the Christian system. Such is the general result of the labours of Jansen. On the day which witnessed the com

Nor was Lancelot a man inapt to discrimipate. He was the author of the Port-Royal Grammars, Greek, Latin, and the Italian, now fallen into disuse, but so well known to such of us as ploughed those rugged soils during the first ten years of the present century. His biographical labours are not without a tinge of his style as a grammarian;-a little tedious perhaps, and not a little prolix and over-methodical, but replete in almost every page with such touches of genuine dignity in the master, and cordial reverence in the disciple-with a sympathy so earnest for the virtues he celebrates, and so simple-hearted a consciousness of his own inferiority-that, in the picture he undesignedly draws of himself, he succeeds more than in any other way in raising a lofty conception of the man by whom he was held in such willing and grateful subjugation. And he had many fellow-subjects. Richelieu himself had felt his daring spirit awed by the union, in the friend of his youth, of a majestic repose and unwearied activity, which compelled the great minister to admit that the heart of man might envelop mysteries beyond his divination. Pascal, Nicole, Arnauld, and many others, eminent in that age for genius and piety, submitted themselves to his guidance in their studies as well as in their lives, with the implicit deference of children awaiting the commands of a revered and affectionate father. He was the most voluminous writer; but of his published works one only attained a transient celebrity, and of that book his authorship was more than doubtful. If he did not disown, he never claimed it. Of the innumerable incidents recorded of him during his imprisonment at Vincennes, few are more characteristic than the sale of a considerable part of a scanty collection of books he had brought there, to purchase clothes for two of his fellow-prisoners,