him; it is that which treats of the average life of sovereigns, and of natural royal families. I conjure you, Monsieur le Vicomte, to examine this subject closely with your own excellent pair of eyes. If, in general, kings have a longer life than we have: if reigns are lengthened in proportion as religion becomes purified if Catholic reigns are the longest; is not this a mine of contemplation worthy of being wrought?

"As to clerical celibacy, I have the firm persuasion that I have settled the question. I hope the famous argument drawn from population is destroyed at the root; and we may safely say, salutem ex inimicis nostris, since it is the Protestant Malthus who pays the cost of the argument.

"I doubt not, Sir, that ultimately we shall prevail, and that victory will remain to the French language. But extraordinary things will occur, which it is impossible distinctly to foresee. In one of my dialogues in the Soirées de St. Petersbourg, I have collected all the signs (I mean those within my knowledge) which announce some great event in the religious world. If the work is printed, you will tell me your opinion about it; and I hope by reasou of the wonderful harmony, which exists between our two heads, my reasons will not appear to you entirely, and absolutely bad. Often in reading you, Monsieur le Vicomte, I burst out a laughing, at again finding in your pages the same thoughts, and even the same words, which slumber in my port-folios. This conformity is highly flattering to my feelings. Nothing is so consoling as such an agreement. This accord should become general, for the misfortune of the good party is isolation. Wolves gather together; but the house-dog is solitary. In fine, Sir, when we shall have done what we can, we shall die tranquil; but as much as lies in us, let us be agreed, and work together. The man who has been able to persuade two or three others to walk in the same path, is in my opinion very happy. It is a formal conquest he has made. This is why I have so much laboured to destroy all the petty punctilios which, to the great detriment of religion, separated our churches. You will soon see my last effort upon this great subject. When I shall have emptied all my Russian portfolios, I shall suddenly stop; for I have no longer any time for writing. I have not even time to correct my MSS.

"Salut et attachement, frère et ami.

*

"Remember me always, I beseech you, and believe me more than ever, and for ever,

-Vol. i. p. 356.7.

"Your most devoted Servant and Friend."

The following letter is addressed to the Count de Mar

*Count de Maistre alludes to his Treatise, "De l'Eglise Gallicane," which had not then appeared.

cellus, whom many of our readers will remember to have been under the Restoration, the eloquent champion of the Church in the Chamber of Deputies. In this letter Count de Maistre points out how well his public career and the various circunstances of his life had qualified him to form an unbiassed judgment on the nature and bearings of the Gallican opinions.

66 LETTER TO COUNT MARCELLUS.

“Monsieur le Comte,

"Turin, 13th March, 1820.

"What do you say? He composed a book in 1817, therefore he is alive in 1820. Fine logic, forsooth, and which will not fail to earn you much honour at the tribune! The fact is, you have proved nothing, and that my epitaph subsists like the remark of Dacier. I am delighted to hear, M. le Comte, that this posthumous work* has not displeased you, and that you have deigned to assign to it an honourable place in your library. The approbation of men like yourself, must be the sole reward of labours, which have not been light. I do not complain of your journals; their attention is distracted by a great crime,t and besides, they are wanting in courage. But I observe with pain, that men of good sense are blinded to such a degree as to object to my attacks upon the Gallican Church. Certainly, to show such a lack of reason, men must have their eyes covered over with that triple bandage, which I have spoken of somewhere. I have said that the Gallican Church was one of the foci of the great ellipsis; that she had been during the revolution the honour of the Catholic priesthood; that without her, nothing would be done, and that the work of restoration would begin through her, when she willed. What does she wish for more? That I should adopt her odious prejudices, and that I should tell her, Madame, you are right, when her errors arrest the course of everything? Oh, no, most certainly not. She must needs drink the chalice of truth.

If she wishes to vomit it out rather than let it pass in succum et sanguinem; so much the worse for her. This obstinacy would deprive her of an immortal glory. I know not, besides Monsieur le Comte, whether I am right or wrong; no one has a right to judge himself; but I know full well, that no man perhaps was ever placed in circumstances so favourable as myself for forming an unbiassed judgment in this question. Born in a family of the high magistracy; brought up with all the ancient strictness; immersed from my earliest years in serious studies; a member of

*This work, Du Pape, which, completed in 1817, was published in 1819.

†The assassination of the Duke de Berri.

a Gallican senate for twenty years; president for three, of a supreme tribunal in a country of obedience, as it is called; then inhabiting for four years a very learned Protestant country, and giving myself up without intermission to the examination of its doctrines; afterwards transported to a Græco Russian land,§ where for fourteen years together I heard incessantly discussed the pretensions of Photius and his religious posterity; possessing the languages necessary to consult the originals; profoundly and systematically devoted to the Catholic religion; a great friend of your nation, with which I am connected by so many ties, and especially the tie of language; a most humble and obedient servant of the august family, which rules you: I ask you, Monsieur le Comte, what was wanting to enable me to form a conscientious and enlightened judgment in this matter? I shall, perhaps, or rather surely be told :—with all these data you may yet be deceived. Undoubtedly so; but if I were placed in a balance with the ablest Gallican, I should prevail in the judgment of a jew, a Turk, or a Chinese. I know not how this little apology has fallen from my pen; I confide it to your personal justice; for your nation is now too much occupied to be just.

"I have read with an especial satisfaction the speeches which you have delivered, or have wished to deliver pro rostris. I have found in them your wonted good sense, energy, and talent; but what above all has surprised me is the collection of your idyls; they have made me break the vow I had kept tolerably well for many years, never to read any more verses.

66

Nunc itaque et versus et cætera ludicra pono. I no longer receive at home any more bacchantæ, and still less nymphs; but in regard to your shepherdesses, I immediately said, let them come in. I have found them very prudent and very amiable. I did not know you possessed this talent, Monsieur le Comte; it is worthy of you, and we see you in your idyls. I would dare to assert upon no other testimony, that you have never killed any one. I add, very seriously, that this book alone suffices to inspire the reader with the desire of forming your friendship. Your muse, besides, possesses an indescribable Sicilian grace which betrays your teacher :||—adú dè kai tù ovpíodes." Page 348-9.

There is a very interesting letter to the Abbé de la Mennais, wherein the Count pays a just tribute of admiration to his Essai sur l'Indifference en Matière de Religion; but delicately hints that the new philosophic method entitled, "Universal Reason,"¶ would bring him into per† In Sardinia.

* In Chambéry.

‡ Lausanne.

Theocritus.

? Russia.

This system, as long as the author made a Catholic applica

66

plexities, and expose him to contradiction from respectable quarters. "I have found," says he, "in your second volume as pure intentions, and as much talent, as in the first-vigorous and profound reflections,-lofty views, a pure, elegant, and, withal, dignified style, very well adapted to the subject; often, in fine, the point of Seneca, and the roundness of Cicero."

The Abbé de la Mennais was the first French writer who appeared in the lists to defend the work Du Pape; and, in an able critique, wherein he speaks of the author as a man, "in whom Europe recognizes a lofty superiority of genius," he made a vigorous, though dignified onset on Gallicanism. But his essay, appearing as it did, simultaneously with the Philosophic Method above adverted to, laid the germs of that disunion between him and a large portion of the French clergy, especially the prelates and dignitaries, which, in the later years of the Restoration, was attended with mutual disadvantage to both parties. But without the generous and courageous zeal displayed by himself, as well as Count de Maistre, Gallicanism would not only have retained its ascendancy over the French mind, but even if it had not led to a schism (which is by no means improbable), it would have at least retarded the moral and intellectual regeneration of the Catholics of France.

But we must conclude. The reputation of the great man whose correspondence we have reviewed, grows, as M. de Montalembert justly observes, from day to day. It was not, indeed, reserved to him to witness the mighty moral renovation which his writings were destined to accomplish, nor to reap all the harvest of glory which they were to insure him. Called away from the seat of political and intellectual warfare at the very moment when he had won his first laurels, he was doomed to pass long years, far from the busy scene of contention, in the still, dark, polar regions of the north. Thence he contemplated, with fixed, untired gaze, the wondrous spectacle going on in the agitated centre and south of Europe; but when he returned to the theatre of his early achievements, the heroism of the veteran surpassed the prowess of the youth. Long and

tion of it, was tolerated, though not approved by the Holy See; but since his apostacy, it has censured it. It was stated in the second volume of the Essai sur l'Indifference.

brilliant as had been his career, its close was beyond example glorious; and, like a tropic sun, he set suddenly, and in a blaze of splendour.

ART. IX-Nunneries.

A Lecture delivered in the Assembly Rooms, Bath, on Wednesday, April 21, 1852. By the Rev. M. HOBART SEYMOUR, M. A. London: Seeleys.

2. Convents or Nunneries. A Lecture in Reply to Cardinal Wiseman' delivered at the Assembly Rooms, Bath, on Monday, June 7, 1852. By the Rev. M. HOBART SEYMOUR. Bath: Peach.

I'

T will be plain to the reader that a connecting link is wanting between the Lectures here quoted. The second purports to be a reply to one which answered the first. This Catholic Lecture has not been published; but it is our desire now to supply the deficiency; for we may, at the outset, state, that our present article will substantially contain it, with such further information as more leisure has permitted to be collected, and with such additional details, as Mr. H. Seymour's second lecture requires. It is, indeed true, that the excitement on the subject before us has in a great measure died away. It appeared, a few months ago, that the safety of the kingdom depended upon two measures-the suppression of convents, and the extinction of Maynooth. As the elections approached, it seemed as if pledges on these two subjects were to decide the eligibility of one candidate rather than another. They have passed over; and we do not believe that any one cares now to count, what number of members respectively think one way, or another, on these two subjects. How is this to be explained? Is it merely that excitement upon any subject cannot be kept alive beyond a given time? Or, that this in particular was not a topic which deeply interested the public? These may be reasons; but we believe that another, and a more sensible one may be offered. Those who roused for a time the popular passions, in connection with the religious state, have overdone their work. Such attacks as the tongue of Mr. Hobart Seymour, or the pen