Paris. Windsor Hotel, Rue de Rivoli, July 18. 1848.—I have been nine days in France, and the kindness of friends has not left me an hour to put down my thoughts. Yet assuredly, in so utter a change of one's usual habits and sights, the mind has been more affected than during many weeks of sedentary occupations. But when one has been profoundly moved either by a religious service, or a conversation, or place or building, it is a great effort to sit down, collect one's thoughts, and turn one's eyes inward on oneself. Generally, too, by the end of the day we were so fatigued that such an effort became physically impossible.

We left Southampton at five P.M., on Saturday, the 8th July. A good deal of wind, and sea rough. Passed off Portsmouth the fleet of ten men-of-war, one three decker, St. Vincent, 104 guns; four two deckers; and five frigates. Most majestic they looked unmoved amid the freshening waves. I can never see a ship of war without my heart bounding. Byron has exactly expressed one's feeling:—

At five we found ourselves on the quai at Havre. The douane here is so polite as to keep one's luggage till eight o'clock—a kindness which is carried still further by the police, as the visa of passports does not commence till eleven. So I proposed to walk to the beautiful Norman church of Graville, the pendant of our own St. Cross, half way up that delightful cÔte which looks down on the embouchure of the Seine, and the high coast of Honfleur and Caen. The view from the terrace of the old Priory is most charming; and behind the church a most picturesque cemetery stretches up the steep hill. There is a perfect cross a little to the west of the church, which is very pleasing. We found the church empty, and said our English office before one of the altars. I do not like the effect of two windows in the apse, which symbolise, I suppose, the Two Natures, but otherwise this church is a beautiful specimen of a Norman parish church. However, its nave has been recently defiled by most protestant-looking pews; and under the tower, just before the chancel, there actually is to be seen a squireen's pew, with a table and cloth in it. The chapel and image of the Blessed Virgin were the most pleasing. At three we went on to Ivetot, and found a most kind welcome from our friends. They lodged us in a house they have lately purchased, in their garden, where, for the first time in my life, I had the honour of a silver bason and ewer. We supped in the refectory, at a table in the middle, with M. le SupÉrieur. Silence is kept at the meals, and one of the pupils reads from a pulpit on one side. The pupils act as servants in turn during the meal.

Monday, July 10.—We heard two sermons, morning and afternoon, from M. P. L. LabbÉ to the confirmands, fifty-nine in number. Our friend's manner was mild and paternal, yet full of zeal and unction. His morning subject was, "You have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but ye have received the spirit of adoption whereby we cry Abba Father." He distinguished between servile fear and filial fear—between Jewish bondage and Christian adoption; beseeching his hearers ever to cherish in their hearts the sense of God's paternal love, and that "we can never know how much God loves us in this world;" and then he urged them, if ever they fell into sin, to fly to God at once for pardon, never distrusting Him, however great their own unworthiness; reminding them that the tribunal of penitence was ever open to them. In the afternoon his subject was, "Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto me." That at confirmation there was a larger infusion of the Holy Spirit than at baptism—what it was to be witnesses to God—witnesses by our whole life and conversation. These two addresses much pleased me, both as to manner and matter.

We had the privilege of saying our English office in their chapel, where the single lamp marks the presence of the Holy Sacrament. How great a blessing is this, that the Lord of the Temple dwells bodily in it—how great a realising of the Incarnation. The chapel is a very pleasing imitation of the middle Gothic style, built from the designs of M. Robert, who, being a pupil of the Ecole Polytechnique, gave up all prospects in the world for the hard and painful life of a priest in a petit sÉminaire: and not only he, but all who are there, seem to have their daily life supported by a spring of charity in themselves; and the great self-denial which accompanies it seems borne as if it were no weight at all, for they look for the recompense of the reward. During the five days we passed at Ivetot we remarked again and again to each other the atmosphere of fraternal charity which all seemed to breathe. There was no looking for success in the world—no thought of gaining wealth; but the one thing in view was to train the children committed to them as members of Christ and heirs of His kingdom. This one thought pervaded all their actions. In the evening the Archbishop of Rouen came, attended by his vicaire gÉnÉral, M. Surgis. The masters and ourselves supped in private with him; and I was confounded at being put on his right, as P. was on his left. His own affability, however, and the unaffected kindness and ease of his demeanour with his clergy, soon made one feel comfortable.

Tuesday, July 11.—The confirmation was at nine. The pupils formed in procession along the corridor into the chapel, some sixty or eighty of the rear in albes, followed by the masters and some other clergy, the cross and crosier immediately preceding the Archbishop; we followed behind, and then mounted to the latticed tribune at the end of the chapel, whence the whole disposition of the congregation, the multitude of albes, the altar dressed for the Holy Sacrifice, and the splendid habit of the Archbishop, formed a most pleasing scene. He said Mass, and communicated, I should think, a hundred pupils; as they knelt two and two all up the chapel and received successively from his hands, nothing could be more solemn. There was a moment in this service particularly touching—the Archbishop took his crosier in his hand and standing before the altar said, "Benedicat vos omnipotens Deus, Pater, et Filius +, et Spiritus Sanctus." It seemed like the great High Priest Himself blessing His people. After Mass he stood before the middle of the altar, and, requesting them to be seated, addressed them for about twenty minutes. His manner was a mixture of grace and simplicity most pleasing to behold; indeed, his whole demeanour represented exactly the priest, the father, and the bishop, and left behind it a perfume as it were of the heavenly hierarchy, among whose earthly counterpart he ranked. He enlarged upon the triple blessing bestowed upon us by the Holy Trinity, in creation, in redemption, and in sanctification. Presently he spoke of the Holy Eucharist as an extension of the Incarnation, (rapÉtissant) gathering it up into little; and of Christ therein really, substantially, and personally present in us. His vicaire gÉnÉral said, that in daily confirmations during two months he never repeated himself, but varied each address. He had no note, and spoke without effort. Then followed an examination of the confirmans by himself during about thirty-five minutes. He took boys here and there and asked them questions on the elements of the faith, the sacraments, &c., in so low a voice that I could only catch the general import. Then came the confirmation itself, which, like our own, is very short. He stood at the middle of the altar, and stretching out his hands towards the people, called down on the confirmans kneeling before him the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Ghost:

"The spirit of wisdom and understanding.—Amen.

"The spirit of counsel and ghostly strength.—Amen. "The spirit of knowledge and true godliness.—Amen.

"Fill them, O Lord, with the spirit of thy fear, and sign them with the sign of the cross of Christ unto eternal life."

The repetition of the Amen at intervals by the confirmans gives a feature to this prayer which our own does not possess. Then the confirmans, two by two, came kneeling to his chair before the altar, and he signed them on the forehead with the holy chrism, naming each by his Christian name as he said, "I sign thee with the sign of the + cross and confirm thee with the chrism of salvation, in the name of the Father+, and of the Son+, and of the Holy Ghost+. Amen." The service occupied three hours; but in country parishes it is not usually preceded by the Mass.

We had then a grand dinner at a table placed in the middle of the refectory, several clergy, friends of the house, being present. There was plenty of talking, the rule of silence being suspended by the presence of the archbishop.

In the evening there was a solemn Benediction, at which the archbishop did not officiate, but was in a chair near the altar.

After dinner, two of the pupils, one from the older and one from the younger division of the school, recited verses before the archbishop, and the whole school seemed delighted at the words of kindness he addressed to them. I heard our friend, in one of his addresses, remind them that the archbishop was the head and master of the house, and so they all appeared to feel him to be.

In the evening we were all collected, in a somewhat suspicious manner, for some exhibition in a long hall, at the end of which a carpet was spread, and a chair placed for the archbishop. I asked M. Robert what was coming; but he replied, "Pour nous autres FranÇais, vous savez, nous sommes des fous: il faut que nous rions de tout!" I will not say that the entertainment verified his former proposition, but certainly it did the latter. M. Picard, curÉ of the cathedral of Rouen, took out a paper, and began reading a copy of verses by himself, commemorating a recent fall from his horse of one of the tutors. At each verse the boys took up couplet and refrain, and sung it with hearty good will. This continued for some twenty or thirty stanzas. The boys needed but the hint. I thought to myself, I doubt whether it would improve the discipline of Eton to collect the boys in the long school room together to commemorate an equestrian lapse of my friend C. or A., supposing them to have met with one. The refrain,

sounded by 250 voices, still rings in my ears. This was succeeded by another song, recited in the same manner, on M. Robert's propensities to study the moon.

We supped, as before, upstairs, and had some pleasant conversation with the archbishop.

Wednesday, July 12.—The archbishop sent for us this morning, inquired into our views in visiting France, and gave us each an Imitation of Christ and a small cross which he had blessed. He expressed in the most cordial manner his pleasure at seeing us, and pressed us to visit him at Rouen. After an early dinner, M. P. L. LabbÉ insisted on taking us to see the old abbey church of FÉcamp; we went partly by railway, and, as the diligence was waiting for the train from Havre, walked some three miles, and then took a char-À-banc from Goderville. We went to the curÉ's house at FÉcamp: but he was building, and so we all lodged with M. l'AbbÉ Lefevre, formerly curate there, but now living with his sister without any direct charge. M. LabbÉ kept us, both at supper and dinner the next day, in continual merriment by his stories.

Thursday, July 13.—M. Beaucamp, the curÉ, took us all over the magnificent abbey church, dating from the 10th to the 12th century, and near 400 feet long. He pointed out the variations in style and construction. It sadly wants the whitewash removed. This was last evening. This morning he took us en pÉlÉrinage to Notre Dame de Salut, a chapel built by our Henry I., and one of four on this coast. The view was glorious over land and sea, the crag being 400 feet high. The poor fisher-women at times mount the cÔte on their knees, to make vows for their husbands' safe return. The pays-de-caux is a fine rolling country, with groves of beech at intervals, a broad expanse looking most rich and prosperous. FÉcamp is stuck in a deep valley between lofty downs. We enjoyed particularly M. Lefevre's hospitable reception, and went back for supper at Ivetot. The weather is delightful—a brilliant sun, with plenty of air.

Friday, July 14.—M. P. L. LabbÉ, in his extreme kindness, would take us to Rouen to lodge in the house of M. Picard, curÉ of Notre Dame. It is in places a very pretty road to Rouen by the railway. We were able to say our English office quite uninterrupted in the Lady Chapel of the cathedral about eleven. M. LabbÉ staid with us all that day, taking us to different places. Amongst others, he carried us to the Carmelite nunnery, where we heard, but did not see, a sister who had been there fourteen years: she was formerly confessed by him, but in all that time he had never seen her. The rule is that none but father, mother, sister, or brother, can have the curtain of the grille drawn back, behind which the sister speaks to her visitors. She was telling us how her little nephews saw her when they were very young and came with their mother, but when a little older were no longer allowed this privilege: so the mother sat on one side, with the curtain drawn back before her so that she could see her sister; but the children on the other, with the curtain drawn, could only hear her. This pained them so much that they did not like to visit her. The sister's conversation was anything but sad: she spoke with most lively interest of a Carmelite nun lately departed at Tours, who had foretold all the disasters under which France was now suffering, ascribing them to the general godlessness, specially on two points—the blaspheming of God's name and the profanation of the Lord's Day. She gave us prayers composed with reference to this. When M. LabbÉ told her that we were not united to the Roman Church, she made a considerable pause, and seemed to draw her breath as if something unexpected had come upon her; then she said that she should pray earnestly for us, and that every Thursday with them Mass was said with special intention for England. She went for the prioress, who likewise spoke for some time; she had a most clear and pleasant voice, which it was delightful to hear.

In the afternoon M. le CurÉ and M. LabbÉ took us to call on the archbishop. He was very cordial—asked us to dine that day; and when we said we had already dined, repeated his invitation for Saturday, including M. Picard and his vicaire, M. de la Haye. LabbÉ was obliged to return. Before we left he insisted upon taking us over his palace. There is a splendid suite of rooms, terminating with a noble library: he has been collecting the portraits of his predecessors: he is himself the eighty-ninth archbishop. His palace is kept in repair at the public expense of the department, and three rooms are even furnished for him, an annual visitation of the furniture, as he himself told us, taking place. This archevÉchÉ is the ancient building, and of very great size—built as strong as a fortress: he showed us a window from which he had lately watched a barricade in the street below and saw a man killed. He took us last to the chapel—a plain Grecian building: hither the remains of the Empress Maud, lately discovered at the abbey of Bec, have been placed provisionally. It was only at her own earnest prayer, that the emperor, her husband, allowed her to be buried in a monastery, saying that she was too great a lady to be buried save at Rouen. The archbishop said that he seldom celebrated publicly in the cathedral, only about four times a year, "mais par la misÉricorde de Dieu je dis la messe tous les jours dans ma chapelle." M. le CurÉ's usual hours are to dine at twelve, before which he takes nothing, and to sup about eight. He asked two or three clergy continually to meet us, at one of these meals, during the three days we were with him. His reason for taking nothing before noon, is that, after saying Mass, he is continually so occupied by his parishioners, that many times he would be unable to breakfast, so he thought it better to make the rule absolute. The confessional is a very heavy burden—a couple of hours daily, on an average; and, before great fÊtes, sometimes seven hours at a time. LabbÉ told us he had once confessed for twenty-three successive hours. This is a duty to which they may be called at any hour of the day or night. M. Picard and his curate, M. de la Haye, could hardly find time to dine with the archbishop on Saturday, at seven in the evening, and stole away as soon as they could.

Saturday, July 15.—Our good M. LabbÉ returned to Ivetot this morning; he had surrendered to me his room. In the afternoon M. Picard took us about to the HÔtel de Ville—the ancient Benedictine abbey of S.Ouen: in the public library here we were shown the most magnificent gradual, full of very beautiful drawings. It had been used one hundred years before the Revolution, and, I should think, was unique, as we were told. The garden and corridors were occupied by National Guard; but M. le CurÉ's presence obtained us permission to survey the wonderful church, the masterwork of middle and late pointed Gothic, on that side, together with its portail des marmouzets, of matchless beauty. At S.Vincent's we saw eleven windows of very brilliant painted glass, which surround the choir, and are visible at once. We then walked up Mount St. Catherine, from whence the view of Rouen and the surrounding hills is charming. I have always thought the site of this city one of the finest I have ever seen, and it looked so to-day, under a July sun. We went on to Notre Dame de bon Secours, which is now nearly finished: the inside and western faÇade pleased us much. The latter has three portals, after the manner of the great mediÆval churches dedicated in honour of Notre Dame, and is well combined and harmonised. The inside is of the architecture of our Edward II.; very good upon the whole: all the windows of painted glass, not unmixedly good, but the whole effect very striking. It has cost 40,000l., begged or given by the curÉ: a noble work indeed. The ex-votos are now inserted into the northern aisle. We should have liked to stay much longer here, but were hurried to return to the archbishop's dinner. We did not dine till half-past seven; nine in number, at a round table in a large hall. He apologised that it was a maigre. But, with the several kinds of fish, no one could have desired a better dinner. The archbishop, myself on his right, P. on his left, MM. Les AbbÉs Picard, De la Haye, Surgis, two others, and M. BarthÉlemi, the architect of bon Secours. We were struck by his conversation—he seemed a Christian architect, which is a rare and valuable thing. During the evening the deplorable state of France, the overthrow of fortunes, the general cessation of trade, and the frightful excesses of the late conflict, were talked of. The archbishop mentioned a man taken with arms in his hand, who was on the point of being executed by the soldiers, when the general officer interfered, and, by his solicitude, saved his life. The culprit took a pistol from his waist, said "Mercie, Colonel," and shot him dead. He was immediately cut to pieces. Every one seems to agree that the Republic cannot last—that there must be a monarchy; yet that minds are so embittered, and passions so excited, that France must come to this only through lassitude of suffering. No one knows what a day may produce. In Rouen there is great suffering—the shop-keepers sell nothing—the workmen have no employment. At Havre the warehouses are crammed with goods, for which there is no sale. Landed property, if forced to be sold, will not fetch half its value. No one can tell how long this will go on, or what will be the end of it. France is in complete paralysis. The source of all this misery is a wide-spread infidelity, united with the rage for material enjoyments, and a refined taste in pursuing them.

The scale of the archbishop's household seemed to me decent and proper, without being that of the Grand Seigneur in any respect. I liked and respected him much more than if he could have had the twenty liveried servants of his predecessor the Cardinal Archbishop Prince of CroÏ, when high almoner to Charles Dix. He is now the earnest and laborious head of a toiling and suffering but most charitable and devoted clergy. The one hope of France lies in her children being taught from the cradle the via crucis, via Regis.

Sunday, July 16.—FÊte du sacrÉ coeur de Jesu. After our own office in the morning we have been nearly six hours at the cathedral to-day, between High Mass in the morning—and Vespers, sermon, compline, and benediction in the evening. Certainly the key note of all the Roman services is, "The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us." The presence of the Incarnation broods like a spirit over all: gives meaning to every genuflection at the altar; life to every hymn; harmony to that wonderful array of saints, with the Virgin Mother at their head, who intercede with the most Holy Trinity, and join their praises with the angelic hosts, and the voices of feeble men suffering the conflict of the flesh. Around the Incarnation drawn out, applied to daily life, brought before the eye and the heart, enfolding the penitent at the confessional, exalting the priest at the altar, the whole worship revolves; children unconsciously live on it; mothers, through it, look on their children, till maternal love becomes itself deeper, warmer, and holier. Through it and by it the priest bears his life of toil and self-denial so easily, that charity seems like the breath by which he lives. What is the secret of this? It is that daily approach in the morning to the Most Holy One; that daily reception of Him, which deifies flesh and blood.

Such has been the impression of to-day's worship; it was devotion indeed: that is, the ascending of the heart to its own Lord: not a perpetual effort to work on the understanding, but the lifting of the higher power, the spirit in man, by which all are equal, to God. This begins with the holy Sacrifice in the morning, and ends with the exhibition of that same tremendous Sacrifice, the Incarnation of Love, in the evening. "The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us," is the first and last: He comes amid a cloud of His saints: they are powerful because they are His: their works are mighty because He works in them, their supplications prevail because they, being flesh and blood, have become partakers of the Word made flesh. She, most of all, whose most pure substance He took to make His own for ever: so that what came of her is joined in hypostatic union with God, and is God. Thus seen, the communion of saints is a real thing, embracing our daily life at a thousand points, the extension and drawing out of the Incarnation, understood by it, and in it. To those who do not realise that tremendous Presence at the altar the saints are so many sinful men and women made gods and goddesses, and those who reverence them idolators. How much do people lose by such a misconception: how utterly do they fail to perceive the length and depth and breadth and height of the Truth: they halve and quarter the Incarnation and boast that they alone understand it. These multiplied prayers and hymns seem to them a form, the bowing of the body a mockery, for they discern not Him who walks amid the golden candlesticks—it is emptiness to them, for He is not there.

The archbishop was kind enough to have us placed in the choir, just below the sanctuary.

At dinner at twelve M. le CurÉ had invited M. Surgis, M. de la Haye, and his two other curates, one of whom preached in the afternoon on the necessity of the cross, first to the righteous and then to sinners: he enlarged upon the many ways in which God brings both to Him by the application of suffering, humiliation, &c.

In the evening M. le CurÉ took us to pay our respects to the archbishop once more. We heard much talk again of the deplorable state of France. He was very cordial to us, hoped we should not get near a barricade, and expressed his satisfaction at having met us.

Monday, July 17.—I had a quiet walk round St.Ouen and to the Lady Chapel there. I can fancy being able to retire to that church once a day being a consolation to many a life of toil. Yesterday, after the services, we seemed fit for nothing but to mount its roof and look on the great works of God around one there. At two we took a carriage to the seminaire of M. l'AbbÉ Lambert, Bois Guillaume. He is a person of fortune, who to satisfy his father entered the Ecole Polytechnique, and studied there for some time; but as soon as his father would consent, became a priest, to which he had always felt a vocation, and has given up his fortune to build a college for boys of the higher class. He has a beautiful spot on the top of the hill to the north of Rouen, covered with a garden, an orchard, and rows of beech trees of some sixty years' growth. He has now fifty-two boys, and eight priests, with himself, to instruct them. The object is to give a really Christian education, without directing the boys to enter into orders, which parents generally of that rank are much set against. Thus they only hear Mass twice on week days. We had a long conversation with him. He seemed much to regret the want of independence produced by, or at least existing in, French education. He receives a government inspector every year, though his house is his own. This inspector objected to the beds of his pupils having curtains, as making surveillance more difficult. I told him of my surprise to find at M. Poileau's academy, near Paris, a rule that two sick boys should never be in the infirmary alone. He said he should have expected such a rule. He inquired with interest about the independence of the English character. It struck me forcibly here what an immense advantage the rule of celibacy offers to the Church for education. Here were eight masters for fifty-two boys, and yet the pension so moderate as 1000 francs. At Eton, where the cost is nigh four times as great, the number of boys at the same proportion would require ninety-six masters, instead of about sixteen. But here all personal advancement is given up. There is no increasing family to be supported: personal gain or honour is neither the motive, nor a motive, but simply the higher one of fulfilling a great duty, and winning a bright crown. This complete self-devotion seems necessarily killed by the marriage tie, so that the highest works both of the priesthood and of education are thus cut off; and it may be doubted how far, in the present relation of the state to the Church all over the world, any body of ministers who are involved in the closest ties with the world can meet the exigencies of the times, or maintain the most necessary and fundamental liberties of the Church, either as to dogma or as to discipline. The great masses seem every where to be in such a state of irritation, or ignorance, or prejudice, that nothing but the spectacle of great and daily self-denial, of zeal and learning, combined with poverty, and exhibited in the persons of those drawn from the people itself, or of those who surrender a higher rank to belong to the people, will make any great and permanent impression on them. The more I reflect, the more it appears to me that the priesthood and the ecclesiastical colleges of France have in them this element of success.

M. Lambert's college is to be a quadrangle, of the style of the old chateaux in Louis XIV.'s time. Two sides are nearly finished. It will be a very pleasing and appropriate building when completed, and is from the design of M. Robert. The boys now sleep in two dormitories, which, like all the house, are scrupulously clean and neat, the masters among them, the only discernible difference being a little wider space between a master's and the adjoining bed.

In the course of to-day, I asked a person well qualified to judge, whether the university colleges were now in a better state as to the morals of their inmates: the answer expressed a fear that they were even worse.

We left our kind host M. Picard this afternoon, and went by railway to Mantes. It is a fine and noble country all the way; the view of Rouen as one passes over the bridge, under Notre Dame de bon Secours, is of ravishing beauty. The lofty banks of the Seine, 400 feet high, accompany one at a little distance, most of the way—and twice a tunnel cuts through them, and comes out suddenly on the peaceful banks of the river again. The country is cut on a broad and large scale, which contrasts strongly with the limited and smaller prospects in England. We reached Mantes just in time to have a look at the beautiful church of Notre Dame, worthy of its builders, Blanche of Castile and S.Louis.

Tuesday, July 18.—We attended a Low Mass at six this morning, in the Lady Chapel at Notre Dame; there were a good many people, sisters of charity, and Christian brothers, and several communicants. This church is one of great purity and chasteness, and full of symbolism. The numbers seven and three perpetually occur in the windows and bays. There are seven bays of the nave, and seven round the apse—seven great rose windows over the vaulted triforium round the apse: many most beautiful windows of geometric tracery, with trefoils arranged in threes. In each bay of the nave the triforium has three smaller bays formed by most elegant colonnettes. The western faÇade, up to the gallery, is of rare dignity and beauty. We reached Paris at a quarter past ten, and in a few minutes were on our way to our Hotel Windsor; the soldiers were bivouacking in the railway station. I was then more than five hours writing my journal from the beginning. In the evening we walked to Notre Dame, along the quais, and to the HÔtel de Ville. The thoroughfares were thronged with National Guards, and an idle or unoccupied population. Woe to the nation of which these are rulers.

Wednesday, July 19.—We went to the SÉminaire d'Issy to call on M. Galais, but found him out. Returning we called on M. l'AbbÉ Ratisbonne, and had a long conversation with him. I explained the motive of my coming to Paris; he was astonished to hear that there were yet persons of information and good faith among us who believe that Roman Catholics adore the Blessed Virgin, and put her, in some sort, in the place of our Lord. He said it was not honourable to impute such things to them; that she was a simple creature, advanced by God to the highest possible honour of being mother of our Lord. If there were nothing else objectionable in Protestantism, the disregard of the Blessed Virgin alone would repel and disgust him. Did the Apostles, in the presence of Christ, turn their back on his mother? "If," said he, "I had the honour to be acquainted with your mother, as I have to be acquainted with you, I should take good care in speaking to you not to turn my back on her." The conversation turned on the Pope's Primacy, both in an historical point of view, and still more as a moral necessity; but when I urged that the Episcopate was as a chamber of Peers, in which the Pope held the first rank, he agreed, and said he was primus inter pares. He remarked on the bad way in which history had been written, and how little modern citers of original authors could be trusted as to expressions, which he had found numberless times in writing his life of S.Bernard. I inquired after his brother, who is now a deacon in a house of Jesuits, dÉpartement de la Sarthe, I believe. Before parting he arranged for a subsequent meeting.

After dinner we walked again by the quais to Notre Dame—but it was already shut. The space round La Sainte Chapelle being part of the Palais de Justice was in full military occupation, and we did not see how to get in. Every where enormous numbers of National Guards are to be seen in possession of great public buildings, as so many garrisons in an enemy's land. We walked up the Rue S.Jacques, but there are very few traces of the very hot combat which is said to have raged here; how, indeed, that very narrow and ascending street could have been taken at all, is matter of wonder. If occupied throughout its whole extent by the insurgents, it must have been a most deadly battle field. We called on M. l'AbbÉ Noirlieu, but found that he was in the country.

Thursday, July 20.—Presented a letter of introduction to Monseigneur Parisis, Bishop of Langres. He is short, about sixty years of age, with very determined countenance. We had a rather long conversation, in which he promised to be of any service he could to me in seeing Catholic matters, and sent out for an AbbÉ to conduct us to different places; but as he did not find him at home, he appointed us to come at seven P.M. When I told him that the worship of the Blessed Virgin was very generally imputed to Roman Catholics, he seemed much astonished, and thought that was gone by. "We account her," he said, "a simple creature, who has received from God the highest possible grace, to be the mother of our Lord. But all that she has is derived: to have life in one self, or to derive it from another, is an infinite difference." I spoke of Dr. —— and his book, and how little he appeared to me to have caught the Catholic idea. For instance, he had represented it as the duty of the French Bishops to defend the throne of Louis Philippe, rather than the Catholic faith. "It is wonderful, indeed," replied the Bishop, "how he can have supposed that, for we have been engaged throughout, and I foremost, in a struggle with Louis Philippe." He sketched the objects which we ought to see. "You must not look for the faith among the mass of the people here, for they have it not, but in religious houses, foreign missions, Catholic institutions, &c.—You have not had martyrs, I think, in the last twenty years: we have had many; and it is remarkable to observe how entirely the scenes of the first ages have been reproduced; the spirit of Christ has given birth to precisely the same answers to questions put to martyrs as of old by the spirit of the devil; and torments as terrible, tearing of the flesh, and hewing in pieces, have been borne. I was dining not long ago at the Foreign Missions, and was saying that the life of a missionary in China was not good, when all present cried out at once, clapping their hands; 'Oh, yes; but it is good—it is good.' French missionaries have subsisted," he continued, "for a long time without even bread, which is much for us, though not for you; while yours go out with wife and children, pour faire le commerce." I spoke with wonder of Monseigneur Borie's life, and how he had been able to eat even rats, as the natives in Cochin China did. The late Archbishop's martyrdom was mentioned by him with fervour; and he spoke very kindly of Dalgairns, whom he had ordained.

We went again at seven to the Bishop of Langres, who arranged for M. l'AbbÉ des Billiers to take us round to different persons, and especially the PÈre de Ravignan. Friday, July 21.—Went at half-past ten to the Bishop of Langres, who told us of the new concordat between the Pope and the Czar, which would appear to recognise the authority of the Roman Catholic Bishops much more than the French government does. He seemed to think it a great gain. M. des Billiers then took us to the PÈre de Ravignan: we found M. l'AbbÉ de CasalÈs, Member of the National Assembly, with him, and had a lively conversation for about half an hour. Le PÈre de Ravignan and M. de CasalÈs both maintained that Mr. Newman's theory of developement was open ground. "Tout chemin mÈne À Rome," said the latter. "I know, by experience, how hard a matter it is to attain to the truth—that it is long in coming. It is the grace of God—not study, brings it. Thus, we have every feeling of charity for the great movement in England." They did not appear to think that Mr. Newman's theory and that of Cardinal Bellarmine intercepted each other; and as we were five, there was no good opportunity of setting forth our conception on that point. Le PÈre de Ravignan has the most pleasing and attaching demeanour of any person I have met with—he seems the Manning of France. He begged us warmly to come to-morrow, any time from seven to twelve A.M.; assuring us that he did not think it lost time to converse with us. He spoke with great respect of Dr. Pusey. M. des Billiers then took us to Les Missions EtrangÈres, Rue du Bac. One of the professors accompanied us to La Salle des Martyrs; round this apartment are ranged pictures by Chinese Christians, representing the martyrdoms of Monseigneur Borie, M. Cornay, and the tortures inflicted on native Christians; against one side are five cases, with glass fronts; that in the centre contains the nearly complete skeleton of M. Borie: on each side are the bones of M. Cornay, and M. Jaccard; those of a native Chinese priest, a martyr, and reliques of S.Prosper, sent from Rome. On the opposite side is a long case containing memorials of different martyrs: chains, a letter written by M. Borie under sentence of death, his stole, parts of the cangue of native priests martyred, and also in a case the complete cangue of M. Borie, a frightful instrument of torture when fixed to the neck, and carried day and night, as it was by him under sentence of death, from July to November, 1838. The young missionaries make a visit here every evening, and pray before these relics of their brethren, soliciting their intercession,—a fitting preparation, I thought, for so difficult a task. Over the door was a print "of the seventy servants of God," martyred in Cochin China and those parts in the last few years.

In this house are about fifty young missionaries preparing to go into the East; of whom about twenty go out yearly. Many come there as priests, with strong recommendations from their several sÉminaires, bishops, &c. There is accordingly no fixed period for ascertaining their vocation, or instructing them. The readiness to give up friends and relations at home is a great step towards that perfect self-denial which is required for this office.

We were introduced to M. Voisin, who had been eight years in China, and returned in 1834. His account of the Chinese was that they were very ready to receive the Christian faith; that the notion of altar, sacrifice, and priest, was familiar to them; that they would not receive, indeed, a naked religion. Every house has its altar, and they burn incense before tablets containing the five words—Heaven, Earth, Relations, the Emperor, the Master. He showed us such a tablet, and a Christian one, on the other hand, which set forth the existence of one God, eternal, all wise and all good, creating all things out of nothing, The government alone stands in the way of the conversion of the Chinese. He said that the remarkable resemblance to Catholic rites and tenets found in Thibet dates from Franciscan and Dominican missionaries who laboured there with effect in the 13th century. The most ancient MS. of the Chinese are found not to go higher than the year 150 A.D., so that all discovered resemblances to Christian mysteries may have come from an early dissemination of the faith in China. They receive without hesitation the mysteries of the Trinity and the Incarnation, but reason against that of the perpetual virginity of the Blessed Virgin.

We saw here a professor who was under sentence of death in Cochin China, but escaped.

M. Galais took us this evening over the garden of the sÉminaire at Issy. I asked him for his view of the last revolution. He said he had two, and could not, unhappily, see which was most likely. First, that it was the purpose of God to punish to the utmost the wickedness, sensuality, and unbelief of the rich bourgeoisie, the middle class, who were willing to have religion as a police for the lower orders, but not as a spiritual rule of life; and in this point of view the most terrible convulsions might be expected. But, also, he was not without a hope that, as the Church in the 5th century had laid hold of the barbarians and moulded them into Christian polities, which for so many centuries bore noble fruits, so now, if she faithfully fulfilled her mission, if her priests were seen devoting themselves with a fervent charity to the task of teaching and converting the masses who are without God, and set bitterly against his Church, a like result might ensue, and society be saved from these extreme horrors. If the new archbishop was a man of organisation and capable of setting up institutions to penetrate the masses, there were many men of the most devoted charity among the clergy of Paris, who would second and carry out his design. I asked what had been the especial merit of the Bishop of Digne, for which he had been chosen to succeed at Paris. He said that there had been for some time complaints among the clergy respecting that excess of power given to the bishops by the last concordat, by which three-fourths even of the curÉs of their dioceses are 'amovibles' at their pleasure; so that only the curÉs in cities and towns are 'inamovibles;' whereas according to the ancient canon law all were so, except upon a regular ecclesiastical judgment. Now it not unfrequently happened that the bishop, for good reasons doubtless, but not always acceptable to the incumbent, removed a curÉ, and hence a strong desire had arisen to limit the bishop's power in this respect. The late archbishop had it in contemplation to erect a tribunal in his diocese, without the judgment of which a curÉ should not be displaced. The Bishop of Digne had already done this, and likewise given a constitution to his chapter, which also was a thing much desired by the chapters generally.

Saturday, July 22.—The PÈre de Ravignan received us this morning with the utmost cordiality. We had a full hour's conversation,—not at all polemical, for with that fraternal charity of his polemics never came to one's thought. He seemed to think the future state of France in the highest degree uncertain: that for the Church little was to be hoped from the false liberalism of the day—they would maintain, as long as they could, the state of subjection in which the Church is held. I observed that the Holy See alone was a defence to the bishops in such a state of things; otherwise the National Assembly might take it into its head to meddle with doctrines. It will not do that, he said: Elle se briserait. Yet even the abject poverty of the bishops has turned to good. It is known that they have not the hundredth part of what is wanted for the good of their dioceses—nothing for the petits sÉminaires, and very little for the grands sÉminaires; and so they are largely assisted by the charitable. He spoke of the delight it was to him in reading the Fathers to see that it was the very same Catholicism then as now. I asked if he found every thing in them. That, for instance, one of our most eminent theologians and preachers had told me that he had searched throughout St. Augustine for every single mention made of the Blessed Virgin, by means of the Benedictine Index, and had not been able to find one instance of her intercessory power being recognised, nor that any other relation of her to the Church, save an historical relation, was supposed. He replied that it was not St. Augustine's subject to speak of the Blessed Virgin; that he wrote against the heresies of his day, as the other Fathers, against the Pelagians, Donatists, Manicheans: that, however, he mentioned the Blessed Virgin's fÊtes, which involved her culte. St. Jerome, however, who was a little earlier, in his work against Jovinian, had treated of that subject. I inquired after M. Alphonse Ratisbonne: he said he had been his confessor shortly after his conversion. The facts of that, and its lasting effects, could not be denied: his sacrifice of his betrothed, his fortune, everything,—his sudden change from an obstinate Jew to a Christian. He was baptized in their Church in Rome, after a retreat of eight days. The PÈre de Ravignan, at parting, gave us each a copy of his little book, "De l'Existence des JÉsuites." I asked if I might come again: he replied, Come ten times,—as often as you like. We were both charmed with the calmness and charity of his manner. He speaks slowly, and seems to weigh every word. Logical force is said to be the great merit of his preaching.

M. des Billiers took us to the PÈres Lazaristes, and we had a somewhat long talk with M. le SupÉrieur GÉnÉral. He was good enough to give us a sketch of the objects for which his congregation was founded, to this effect:—About two hundred years ago, a lady was desirous to have the poor upon her estates better taught and instructed in the faith than they had been, and proposed for that purpose a certain endowment. But it so happened that no religious society then existing would accept the proposal. Thus S.Vincent de Paul was led to establish his congregation of priests; in the first instance, for the instruction of the poor on this lady's lands: by and by more and more came to him for assistance, and his institution grew by consequence. It came to have four objects in view. First of all, to provide good priests for country parishes: at that time the priests throughout the country in France were very ignorant, and the people, of course, much neglected, and scarcely knowing the first elements of the Faith, for seminaries had not yet been established according to the decree of the Council of Trent. But, secondly, as good priests could not be made without training, S.Vincent de Paul had in view to educate them well in seminaries for the evangelising of the poor; and to this day, the SupÉrieur said, they were restricted to the care of the poor, and do not preach in cities at all, save in hospitals. Moreover, the third object was, that they might direct in perpetuity the Sisters of Charity; for the special task of these Sisters being to attend the sick, and, if need be, to convert or instruct them, the Saint considered it of the utmost importance that their own spiritual needs should be consulted for by a religious order specially charged with that care, and, consequently, he put both his congregations under one head; and the SupÉrieur GÉnÉral of the PÈres Lazaristes is likewise SupÉrieur GÉnÉral of the Sisters of Charity. The fourth object, which grew out of the former three, was foreign missions; for wherever Sisters of Charity go, the Fathers must go also, working in relation to them, and with regard to the poor. They have now 600 missionaries, chiefly in the East: their labours extend to Syria, Smyrna, Constantinople, China, Brazil, the United States. They have at Constantinople 1200 children in their schools, of various creeds: no attempt at conversion is made in these schools: they are free to accept, or not, the religious instruction; but the SupÉrieur said, they were generally very glad to accept it. The moment, he said, liberty of conscience is allowed in Turkey, the Turks will be converted in large numbers. They are already strongly inclined to Catholicism: for the Greeks they have a supreme contempt; but they trust and respect the Catholics: in money transactions the Sublime Porte chooses a Catholic agent. I inquired if the orthodox Greek Church (whom he called schismatic) had no missions: he said, it has neither missions nor schools—it is utterly dead—its priests are profoundly ignorant. These people have sinned against the Holy Ghost. He extended this charge of ignorance to the Russian priests. I observed that I had been told by an eye witness that the Church in Russia had the same sort of hold on the mass of the population as it had in the Middle Ages in Europe; but he seemed to think both people and priests densely ignorant. Many converts, he said, are made to Catholicism from the Armenians and other sects; but hardly any from the schismatic Greeks; however, as soon as they are instructed, they will give up their schism. The PÈres Lazaristes direct ten sÉminaires in France; the S.Sulpiciens twenty: the SociÉtÉ de la Rue Picpus two; the Maristes one or two; the rest are directed by diocesan priests chosen by the bishop. As we rose to leave I asked him if the Soeur de CharitÉ were still living to whom the vision of the Blessed Virgin had been granted. He replied that she was. But you have heard, I suppose, the miracle which has happened lately. We said we had not. A young novice, he continued, of the Soeurs de la CharitÉ, on the 30th April last, received, in attending a sick sister, a most violent luxation of the vertebral column. The surgeon considered her case so full of danger that he refused to operate on it without calling in another. The head was turned round and pressed closely on the left shoulder; paralysis had seized on the left side, and the right was beginning to be affected. The surgeon said an operation might be performed, but in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it failed. She had been several days in this state; the SupÉrieure of the Sisters was asked for a written authorisation to operate on her; she did not like to agree to this, unless the patient herself demanded it. At length they determined on a neuvaine of prayers to S.Vincent de Paul, the feast of the translation of whose relics they were then celebrating. This began on Sunday, the 7th May. After this had begun, the patient expressed the most earnest desire to be carried into the church of S.Vincent de Paul, and to be laid before the shrine containing his relics over the altar. She had the most confident persuasion that she should be cured by his intercession. Her confessor, as he told me, set himself against it as much as he could—he had given over her case, and was going to administer the last sacraments to her on the next day. At her repeated request it was referred to the SupÉrieur GÉnÉral, and he gave his consent that she should be carried on a couch to the church between four and five in the morning. The SupÉrieur said to himself, as he told us, the case is desperate; if she dies on the way it will be no worse than it is now. She was accordingly carried to the church on Tuesday, the 9th of May, and laid before the altar; as the Mass went on, at the Gospel she took her face with both hands and pushed it round from where it had been pressed on the left shoulder beyond its proper place to the right. At the elevation she tried to rise, but to no purpose. She received the Holy Communion with the utmost difficulty, and in the greatest pain; but, before the priest had finished the Mass, she rose of her self from her bed, perfectly cured, and knelt down. She staid in the church while another Mass was said, en action de Graces; and then walked back to the house of the Sisters of Charity in the Rue du Bac (about ten minutes' walk). The Bishop of Carcassonne, who was in the church, about to say Mass at the time, was told by the SupÉrieur GÉnÉral what had happened. He said to her, "Doubtless, you prayed fervently?" "No, my Lord," she replied; "I did not pray; I believed." ("Non, Monseigneur, je ne priais pas; je croyais.")

After this account I inquired of the SupÉrieur GÉnÉral whether we might be allowed to see and speak with the young person to whom this had happened; "for," I said, "people in England will simply disbelieve it." He consented, and sent for a priest to take us to the house of the Sisters of Charity, with a request to the SupÉrieure to let us see the novice. This priest was her confessor; and from him we heard a great deal in confirmation of the above account; how hopeless her case had appeared, and how bent she was upon being carried before S.Vincent's shrine, which he had discouraged as much as possible. We also saw the MÈre SupÉrieure, who gave the same information. At length the novice herself was introduced, who told the same tale in a very simple and natural way. She described herself as in such a suffering state that she did not attempt to pray in the church; that she heard a sort of crack in her neck, and thereupon thrust her face round from the left to the right side—so that the sister who was with her put it back just right; but after this she continued in extreme pain and weakness; tried in vain to rise at the elevation; and only a little after receiving the Holy Communion felt suddenly quite well. She had never since felt the least return of her pain. I asked her how the accident had happened. She said she had taken up the sick sister to support her, when, by some mishap, the whole weight of her body fell on her neck. Others told me that her confidence of being healed had been so great, that before she was carried to the church she had said to the sister waiting on her, "You may put my 'couvert' in the refectory for to-morrow, for I shall return on foot." When the surgeon came, after her return, to see her, the sister told him that the patient had no need of his services. "What! she is dead!" he said. "No," replied the sister, "she is cured." "She is cured! How?" He then asked to see her; and was obliged to confess that it was a perfect cure. M. HervÉ stutters a little, and his agitation at finding a patient in such a state so unexpectedly cured added to this defect. I was told that he shook her head about in every direction, exclaiming, "C'Était cassÉ! c'Était cassÉ! c'Était cassÉ!" There is accordingly the attestation of the SupÉrieur GÉnÉral of the PÈres Lazaristes, of the SupÉrieure of the Sisters of Charity, of the priest confessing the patient, and of the patient herself, for this cure; besides the sisters who spoke of it to us.

We drove in the evening to Notre Dame, St.Gervais, and La Madeleine. The latter was lighted, and many were at private prayer before the Holy Sacrament, or waiting for confession.

Sunday, July 23.—Our own office at home. Part of High Mass in St. Thomas d'Aquin. The churches in Paris have a certain official air. I like them better in the provinces. M. des Billiers took us to the SociÉtÉ de la Rue Picpus, and presented us to its SupÉrieur, the Archbishop of Chalcedoine (formerly Latin Archbishop of Smyrna). He gave us a sketch of the rise and objects of this society. In 1794 l'AbbÉ Coudrin, seeing the destruction and desolation of all holy institutions, was inspired with the thought of founding a religious society at once to repair by the perpetual adoration of the Holy Sacrament of the altar, day and night, the disorders, crimes, and profanations of every kind, which were taking place; to bring up youth in the knowledge of the truths of salvation, together with the elements of profane science; to form young Levites, by the study of theology, for the service of the sanctuary; to bring back to God, by preaching, an alienated people; and to evangelise the heathen. L'AbbÉ Coudrin at this time was in daily danger of his life, and was concealed in a barn. At the end of the year 1794 a pious lady, Madame Aymer de la Chevalerie, just delivered from prison, into which she had been thrown, with her mother, for having concealed a Catholic priest, offered her assistance to l'AbbÉ Coudrin, to carry out his designs with regard to her own sex. Hence arose les Dames des SacrÉs Coeurs de JÉsus et de Marie, who devote themselves to the perpetual adoration of the Holy Sacrament, and to the education of young females, and who now count more than twenty establishments in France, and two in Chili, one at Valparaiso, and the other at Santiago. All these establishments are directed by priests of this Congregation.

The AbbÉ Coudrin gathered by degrees a number of young persons round him, and succeeded in setting his Congregation on foot, which was recognised in 1817 by Pius VII. In the year 1837 he died, having witnessed many establishments of his Congregation in France; the foundation of one at Valparaiso: many of his disciples evangelising the Polynesian islands, and two of his children bishops, M. Bonamie, first Bishop of Babylon, and then Archbishop of Smyrna, and M. Rouchouze, Vicar Apostolic of Eastern Oceania. On his death the former was chosen for the government of the Congregation by its general chapter.

At present the Congregation has, besides twenty-four establishments in France, two houses in Chili, and two in Belgium; one at Louvain, the other at Enghien, for instruction of youth. It has about one hundred missionaries, priests and catechists, in the Sandwich Islands, the Marquesas, Oceania, and elsewhere.

The object of the institution is to retrace the four periods of our Lord's life: His infancy, His hidden life, His evangelical life, and His crucified life.

With respect to our Lord's infancy, gratuitous schools are kept for poor children; and larger schools, to which a certain number of young persons is admitted free of charge, according to the resources of each establishment. Those intended for the Church are here prepared for their sacred functions.

As to our Lord's hidden life, all members of the Congregation are to imitate it by repairing in the perpetual adoration, day and night, of the Most Holy Sacrament, the wrongs done to the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and of Mary, by the sins which are committed.

Priests imitate our Lord's evangelic life by the preaching of the Gospel, and by missions.

Lastly, all members of the Congregation should recall, so far as in them lies, our Saviour's crucified life, by practising with zeal and prudence works of Christian mortification, specially in the mastery of their senses.

In 1833 Gregory XVI. entrusted to the Society of Picpus the missions of Eastern Oceania. There are houses for the novitiate at Issy, near Paris, at Louvain, and at Graves, near Villefranche. It continues not more than eighteen, nor less than twelve months. Here are priests and candidates for the priesthood, preparing themselves to live under the laws of religious obedience, and to devote themselves either to the instruction of youths, or to missions, or to the direction of souls, in the post assigned to them by their obedience; or to deeper studies, which shall enable them to serve the faith according to the talents God has given them.

Young men and adults likewise are received, who, without being called to the ecclesiastical state, wish to consecrate themselves to God for the advancement of His glory, and the assuring of their own salvation by the practice of religious virtues.

Priests besides, and laymen, are received as boarders, who, desirous not to remain in the world, wish to prepare themselves in retirement, and the practice of the virtues of their estate, for their passage from time to eternity.

This society has just applied to the government for permission to send out chaplains with those who shall be transported for their participation in the late revolt. I do not know a higher degree of charity than this; and many other priests have inscribed themselves for this service.

In the chapel we saw one of the brethren continuing the perpetual adoration of the Holy Sacrament. The archbishop spoke in terms of great contempt of the ignorance of the Greeks; and likewise anticipated a large conversion of the Turks, whenever liberty of conscience is allowed. He had just sent out some missionaries to Oceania.

Both going and returning, we passed the spot at the entrance of the Rue du Faubourg S.Antoine where the late archbishop received his death wound. The house near was severely battered, and in different places along the Rue S.Antoine, and in the Faubourg, were the marks of balls; but altogether the insurrection has left much fewer traces behind than one could have expected.

Returning we looked into the Sainte Chapelle, S.Louis' peerless offering in honour of the Crown of Thorns. It is a perfect gem of the 13th century, and the under chapel is almost as beautiful; but nothing has been done since last year. All round works were going on in the Palais de Justice, though it was Sunday. Indeed, in this respect, the aspect of Paris generally is that of a heathen city.

At four we went to a Benediction at M. l'AbbÉ Ratisbonne's house, to which he had invited us. His sisterhood of Converted Jewesses sung the Psalms very nicely. Nothing, to my mind, can be more solemn or touching than this ceremony, when the priest takes the ostensoire in his hand, and blesses the people, Benedicat vos Omnipotens Deus, Pater, et Filius, et Spiritus Sanctus. One seems to hear the words of God Himself.

We then adjourned to the parloir, with M. Ratisbonne, Lady ——, and Mr. ——, a Scotch minister. Here we conversed about various matters; magnetism, true and false miracles, &c. They asked about my visit to the Tyrolese StigmatisÉes. Lady —— told a story, in one point of which, in spite of its bizarrerie, I found something which strangely takes hold of the mind. We had been talking of that Egyptian witchcraft by which an unknown person is said to be seen in a child's hand. She observed that M. Laborde had purchased this secret, and had been able to do the thing;—having afterwards become a Christian, he abstained from it. Lord ——, it seems, had told her respecting one of the —— family, that he had come back from Italy with the firm persuasion that he should not survive a certain day: the source of this persuasion was, a prophecy made to him by a Venetian sorceress, and to two of his friends, who both died violent deaths at the time specified. Lord —— treated this notion of Mr. —— as an imagination; however, he made him promise that he would visit him on the day he mentioned. After going to England, Mr. —— returned to Paris, and there Lord —— met him again. One day the friends who were with him told him that Mr. —— was ill with a fever, and though he thought himself better, and intended to go to a ball at Lady Granville's, they thought ill of him. In a short time Mr. —— died. A few days after Lord —— had been dining, and the dessert had just been removed, when the door opened, and the figure of Mr.—— walked into the room. Lord —— said, 'What ——, is that you? I thought you were dead.' The figure assented. 'Will you take a chair?' said Lord ——. 'Are you happy?' An expression of indescribable sadness passed over the face, and he shook his head. 'Can I do any thing for you?' said Lord ——. Again he shook his head. 'Why, then, have you appeared to me?' 'Because of my solemn promise,' the figure said. 'Since, then,' replied Lord ——, 'you say I can do nothing for you, I beg one favour of you,—that you would go away, and never return again.' The figure complied, and walked out of the room. I don't think I should have thought this story worth repeating, but for M. Ratisbonne's remarks on it. He said, 'I can well believe this may have happened, for we are surrounded with beings that we know not. A sense is wanting to us, and if but a veil dropped, we might see this room crowded with beings who look on us. Besides, appearances of this kind are continually happening, and I believe it from what occurred to myself.' 'Occurred to you!' I said. 'What do you mean?' 'I had been called in,' he answered, 'once at Strasburgh, to administer extreme unction to a young married lady. I found her in the agony of death, screaming fearfully; her husband was supporting her in his arms on the bed. I administered the last unction to her; and an effect followed which I have often observed: she became calm, and died in the utmost peace. Some days afterwards I was in my room about noon, looking out on the garden. Suddenly I saw her within two steps of me, the same exactly as when living, but with a great brightness all around her. She made a motion to me of inexpressible sweetness and happiness, as if thanking me for a great service, and disappeared. At the first moment I felt a thrill like an electric shock; but this passed. I mentioned this vision afterwards to a friend, and to her husband. I had known but little of her.' I asked if he was quite sure this was not an illusion, but he had no doubt about it. Of the many stories of this kind one has heard this is the first told me by the person to whom it happened.

The heat to-day was intense, and it was followed about eleven o'clock by a violent thunder-storm and torrents of rain.

Monday, July 24.—P. left me at twelve. I dread exceedingly the being alone in Paris, but for the object I have in view I must try to get on a few days.

Called on M. Bonnetty, who was very cordial. He asked about the movement in England, and the state of minds. Likewise on M. Gondon, to deliver Mr. N.'s letter. I had a very long talk with him on the state of minds in England. He expressed the greatest dislike of the Tablet; said Dr. Wiseman had done all he could against it. Dr. W. had multitudes of letters from persons asking what they should do if they became Catholic. He spoke with feeling of the great sacrifice those made who did so; that, if married especially, all means of subsistence were closed to them; and their family often gave them up. He asked what those who had been converted did. I said I believed many were in great difficulties. Louis Philippe had, during his reign, appointed more than half, or nearly two-thirds, of the French bishops: his notion was to get "des EvÊques complaisans; mais il avait la main malheureuse." Except three or four, all that he had appointed had proved themselves men of firmness and courage; and had not been willing to sacrifice the liberty of the Church to his smiles. I inquired if the late Archbishop had not once been too much inclined to the liberal side. Louis Philippe, he said, had appointed him in that hope; but he had opposed the utmost firmness to the king's attempt; so that latterly the King called him a downright porcupine,—there was no laying hold of him on any side. Twice his addresses to the King had not appeared in the "Moniteur," which was as great an insult as could be offered. I remarked what a great blessing it was to the French Church to have firm and courageous bishops. He spoke with enthusiasm of the choice of the Bishop of Digne for Paris; it was better than could have been hoped for: he was a man of great energy, and would leave no abuse uncorrected. The late Archbishop had some little Gallicanism, but the new one was entirely Ultra-Montane.

I was some time at La Madeleine this evening. This church is never so grand as when the solitary lamp is burning before the altar, and a few worshippers here and there come, in the silence of the evening, to offer their prayers. I observed several common soldiers who thus came in, knelt for a short time, and went out again.

At nine went with M. Des Billiers to see the Bishop of Amatha, Vicar Apostolic of Western Caledonia. He was lodging in a house of the Maristes, Rue du Mont Parnasse; and had all the simplicity of a missionary. He received us in his sleeping-room, which was not even ordinarily comfortable. We had an hour's conversation with him. His society has been lately established, the actual Superior General being its founder—it is named after the Blessed Virgin; they take the three vows, and are bound especially to the practice of simplicity. The objects of their institution very much resemble those of the SociÉtÉ de la Rue Picpus. They have now four bishops in Western Oceania. "We did not choose this sphere for our labours," said the Bishop, "the Pope assigned it to us." The bishop lately massacred in those parts was of their society. The Bishop of Amatha has in all twenty-six missionaries under him—he is going out with eleven; and this very day, after many fruitless attempts, has received the promise of a free passage in the first government ship, for himself and his companions. As the transit costs 2000 francs a head, this was matter of great importance to him, as he has 40,000 francs to set him off, with his missionaries, from the SociÉtÉ de la Propagation de la Foi; but nothing for his after support. Thus, they live by cultivating the earth—and, he says, the natives are only excited to labour by seeing them labour. When asked whether the savages were more inclined to Protestantism or Catholicism, he answered, "They are ready to take whichever comes first; but in the long run we expel the Protestants. They see that we are consistent and invariable in what we teach—that we come and settle among them without wife or children; that we do not trade; and so they are unable to assign any motive for our conduct but charity to them; and this in the end works upon them." By the bishop's account he and his missionaries live in the midst of the savages. He seems about thirty-eight or forty years of age—able to "endure hardship," and quite willing, in a state of the most apostolic poverty. He knew and spoke highly of Bishop Broughton—also had heard a high character of Bishop Selwyn. I said, there was not upon the earth a bishop of a more Catholic heart or greater charity than he. He said, he heard he had put down trading among his missionaries, and brought them into order. "He is living," I said, "just the same life which you have described, cultivating the earth with his missionaries." The bishop's expression was, "We try to make the savages men, and then Christians. We have been calumniated as though we were agents of the French government; this will tell you," he said, "whether that is true:" and he read me an official letter refusing him a free passage. "This would not have been were we government agents." He spoke highly of the Anglican missionaries, but very badly of the Methodists—"they will do anything by any means, against us—but the others are men of education and good faith, and act honourably." Two Anglican ministers in Sydney, he said, had lately gone over to them; and a third, the best preacher in the city, was expected. They had a splendid cathedral there, which had cost 40,000l., and some 15,000 Catholics—the Anglicans about 2000, the Methodists 10,000. (I am told this is entirely incorrect; the numbers of the English Church are far greater.) "We want but England to be Catholic," he said, "in order to convert the world; men we can send in abundance in France, it is your resources we need." I said, "You must pray for that." "We do pray constantly for it," he said. He alluded to the corrupt state of morals in Sydney. At parting he regretted he could not answer my visit, as he was going to Auvergne, his own country, to-morrow, to see his family before leaving France.

It is, I think, impossible to conceive a higher degree of charity than the going to live among savages in Oceania. Banished from country and friends, without family ties or support from domestic affections—in danger at times of massacre, and always subject to every species of personal discomfort. If this be not an Apostolic life, I am unable to conceive what is.

Tuesday, July 25.—Went to a Low Mass at S.Roch: this is a poor uncomfortable church. I do not like the demeanour of people at Paris, compared with those in the country; they seem afraid to show reverence.

M. des Billiers took me to the HÔpital Necker, for men and women, near the Rue de Sevres: his friend the almoner took us round; he seemed an example of the old French character, polite and gay, with a natural spring of cheerfulness, which woke a corresponding chord in every one he addressed. I was pleased to see, as we went through the wards, in which were several wounded in the affair of June, how every face of man, woman, and child lighted up with pleasure as he addressed them. This hospital is served by eighteen sisters of charity. After this nothing would do but he must take us to l'Institution des Aveugles, though he left a party in his own rooms. I have never been over an institution more interesting or more worthy of support than this. I had a feeling of dread in entering, to see all around me boys and girls deprived of the most precious of the senses—here, however, charity seems to have done all that is possible to alleviate their loss. They are employed in a great variety of occupations, not only reading, writing, and music, but in carpentering, printing, turning with the lathe, making shoes and slippers, and a great many other trades. Boys on one side and girls on the other were walking about the house and the garden as freely as if they possessed the blessing of sight—all seemed cheerful and even happy. We watched with astonishment a blind boy using a sharp instrument in turning the lathe, with as much precision and fearlessness as if he saw. Many likewise were practising music, and the sudden smiles which mantled over their countenances every now and then were pleasant to behold. I bought for twelve francs a pair of candlesticks, turned and polished with the utmost nicety,—all done by the blind. The eye can detect no inequality or variance in the work; they are as if they came out of a first-rate shop in London or Paris. It is true that this spectacle was after all not without pain; for even while feeling the charity which had successfully devised so many occupations for creatures lying under such a loss, the expression of each face, deprived, as it were, of its soul, afflicted one—and here were two hundred young people of both sexes in this condition; very often likewise their faces were otherwise deformed. We asked one lad to read to us: he passed his fingers rapidly over letters raised a little above the paper, and read us tolerably fast a passage respecting English rule in India, in which, oddly enough, my own name occurred. Another mode of reading, not by letters, but by other marks representing letters, and similarly raised, seemed more difficult, or the reader had less practice. Another blind man wrote a short sentence which we dictated to him respecting our visit. This seemed done by a very complicated instrument, which had about sixteen points, capable of forming all the letters and figures, in a sort of square hand; several of these points went to make a single letter; and they were touched by the hand as rapidly as I have seen lace-makers fix their pins. One blind boy kindly directed us over to the female part of the house: they move up and down stairs and about the corridors without hesitation. Our friend and conductor had a kind word for every different party, and seemed quite at home. It would have been impossible to be out of sorts in his company; he was ever chirruping round one.

Afterwards M. Des Billiers walked with me to the Enfans TrouvÉs, Rue d'Enfer. I had once before seen a house of this kind at Rouen, and this renewed all one's feelings of admiration and love for S.Vincent de Paul. If ever charity flowed in any human breast, it was in his. When people scruple at admitting some material miracle, such, for instance, as that mentioned above, wrought before his shrine, they forget that the whole life of this saint was a spiritual miracle infinitely more astonishing. It is a simple exercise of God's creative power attending, it is true, on the virtue flowing over from our Saviour to His saints, that a malady is removed by the intercession of a saint, whose relics are approached in faith, but that man's naturally selfish and fallen spirit should become a shrine of self-denying, patient, suffering, and conquering love, from the baptismal font unto the grave, is a miracle of God's redeeming power, of His election working in union with His creature's will, which does, indeed, awaken the greatest astonishment. "Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father." It is said not to the Apostles, nor to those on whom they laid their hands, nor to the first ages merely, but without limit of time.

In the room where the infants exposed are first received there are eighty-five cradles; many of them were tenanted, some by infants apparently dying, or, again, only that day received; one was lying, just arrived, not yet undressed, washed, and clothed,—the children of shame and disease, too often; always, I fear, of misery; one could not look upon them without the deepest commiseration, or the highest regard to those sisters of charity, (for this hospital there are thirty-two), who fulfil their mission towards these the veriest outcasts of the world. The sister who took us round told us that twelve a day were baptized on an average; sometimes as many as thirty. If they survive the first few days, they are sent into the country to be nursed; but they are brought up in different houses, instructed for various trades, and kept, if necessary, till twenty-one years of age. At present the use of the tower is suspended during the day, but at night infants are so received, left sometimes without rags to cover them; a little badge is put on each, and any particular marks about them noted. In the day they are received upon the attestation of a public officer. We went through the ophthalmerie, and infirmerie. It was most interesting to see these little creatures of various ages, but nearly all suffering, finding from those who had become their parents in Christ the mercy which their natural parents had not shown them. I said to the sister that I feared they had few English among them: she assented. When will my country be foremost again in these works of saintly charity, in this bearing of the cross amid the sins and miseries of a fallen world? Would that instead of so much earthly wealth she were once more the isle of Saints. But this is impossible, so long as she denies, despises, or misunderstands the honour due to the virgin estate of those consecrated to God, or the power of Christ's sacrifice conveyed from the Lord to His members.

Wednesday, July 26.—Had about an hour's conversation with the PÈre de Ravignan. He asked me if I knew the Comte de Montalembert, said his intended preface to the life of S.Bernard, on the religious orders, had already swollen to three volumes: he regretted that the PÈre Lacordaire was not at Paris, for me to see him. I asked why he had quitted the National Assembly. That, he said, has caused us some pain. His own generous nature led him to think that he might induce the liberal members there to extend their liberality to the Church, and to countenance liberty of teaching; but he soon found his mistake in this; they were false liberals, ready enough to apply their principles to state matters, but not ready to carry them into the domain of thought. They were liberal against the Church, and despots over it. M. Lacordaire had not entered the Assembly to gratify any wish of his own; he sat there on the Mountain; but this state of things, this difficult and confined position in which he could not act freely, was most repugnant to his disposition. So he resigned; it might have been better fully to have considered the reality before hand. As to the salaries given to the clergy, Le PÈre Lacordaire was not for discontinuing them. No doubt, miserable as they are in amount, and given in exchange for ample estates, it would be desirable to do without them, were it possible. But as the clergy is mainly drawn from the lower classes, this is not possible; and the small "casuel" they receive for baptisms, marriages, and interments, is necessary to eke out their scanty incomes. It was sad to see such a remuneration made to its clergy by a Catholic country, while England, he said, allowed such comparatively liberal stipends to the same class.

I asked him what were the strongest books on the Roman Primacy. He said the Brothers Ballerini, and Valemburg's Controversies. I remarked that for nearly three years my attention had been fixed on this subject, and that I had pursued it through Councils and Fathers down to the conclusion that the Pope had indisputably a primacy of order (or honour) in the whole Church, but had not a primacy of jurisdiction over the East. He did not advance anything new on this point. He quoted the usual passages of S.IrenÆus, S.Victor, St. Cyprian, St. Augustine. I had considered, I said, all these, and a great multitude of others, but still my conclusion was against the primacy of jurisdiction, as concerning the Oriental Church. He then attempted to meet this by the paucity of documents in early times; but I said those which actually existed told against the Roman claim. "Suppose," said he, "you were to admit the Roman hypothesis; would you not find it solve all the passages?" I said this was the very way in which I had studied the question, and come to just the contrary conclusion. He said that he understood English, and would read my book, which I had offered to send him, and let me know his answer to my view.

I was struck again with the charity of his manner, and with his likeness to Manning. Went for half an hour to the adjoining church of S.Vincent de Paul. His shrine is still open over the altar. I saw various articles, clothes, books, crosses, carried up and put against the glass covering his relics, for the purpose of blessing them.

At one went to the distribution of prizes at the Petit SÉminaire, 21. Rue N. D. des Champs. The four vicaires gÉnÉraux of the Chapter of Paris sat in front, to crown with a chaplet the gainers of the prizes, and to present books to them and those who gained an accessit. There were a good many other clergy, and a tolerable number of laity, men and women, present, friends evidently of the young men and boys. I could not but be struck here, as elsewhere, with the great number of plebeian and unintellectual faces among the clergy, (to which, however, the four vicaires gÉnÉraux, and some others, were exceptions.) As for the laity present, male and female, it was a mass of unredeemed ugliness. One of the professors read an address to the pupils of full a half hour, passing in view the whole life of the late Archbishop, his studies, labours, writings, acts, and lastly, his martyrdom and burial, not forgetting his solicitude for them. One of the last of his public acts was the coming there on Whit-Sunday, a fortnight before his fatal wound. I did not think this address good—it was monotonous both in tone and delivery;—very remarkable is the difference in the sound of the French language when read and when spoken. The recitation is so peculiarly spondaic, stiff, and conventional, in the former case; while, in the latter, it is easy and flowing. When this was done, the giving of prizes began. It took an hour; and no wonder, for at least two hundred wreaths and two hundred sets of books, single or double, were to be distributed. Many indeed received several wreaths and prizes. The winners came forward, ascended four or five steps, and were successively crowned and saluted on each cheek by one of the Vicaires GÉnÉraux; now and then they were taken to a friend or relative, male or female, when present, to receive their crown. It was put on the head, and then carried in the hand. I thought that at least the principle of emulation was not discouraged. But the great number of subjects which were rewarded was as remarkable as the number of prizes. It seemed as if they never would end. There was Excellence and Sagesse: Greek, Latin, and French composition; Latin verse; Philosophy, Rhetoric, Geography, English Language, &c.; and most of these divided into different forms. No merit could be said to be neglected. There was a first prize, and a second, and sometimes three accessit besides; and some reached nine, or even ten rewards. I dare say they all felt as young Greeks receiving the laurel crown. Certainly the mounting those steep stairs, in order to receive their crown, must have been a nervous operation.

At the conclusion, one of the Vicaires GÉnÉraux rose, and delivered a few words to the pupils with great simplicity and ease; the day of return was then announced for Thursday, 5th Oct. I marked many ingenuous and pleasing countenances among the successful candidates. A father near me was in a state of the greatest excitement at the prizes of his son, a lad of thirteen. I went over for a few minutes to the exquisite chapel of Les Dames de bon Secours, or Garde-Malades: it was quite silent; and I could enjoy its beauty without interruption. I was told yesterday that the labours of these sisters by sick beds materially shorten their life; and that they enter the society with the full consciousness that the service they undertake is injurious and often fatal. Their work is, to attend on sick persons of good condition, and to use the opportunity, which sickness rarely fails to present, of directing the thoughts to religious subjects. A payment of five francs a day is made to the institution for their services.

Went to M. Gondon, who took me to the Comte de Montalembert's reception. The Bishop of Langres there, M. l'AbbÉ de Casales, two other members of the Assembly, also M. Bonnetty, M. de S.ChÉron, translator of Hurter's Life of Innocent III., and about ten other gentlemen. La Comtesse was in Belgium, visiting her family. I had some talk with the Bishop. M. de Montalembert began a conversation about England, which interested me. "I am in great fear for you; if you resist the present crisis, as you did the first revolution and Napoleon, it will be a great glory. The glory of England is already great, but that will be almost miraculous. It is the struggle of paganism against religion. I admit that you have in England a larger amount of religion on the whole than any other country has: c'est une rÉligion bien mince, you will agree with me: there are very few among you who hold an integral Catholicism; but, however, religion of some sort there is. Yet, in spite of this, the great mass of your people is become heathen; they look at your books and your lives, and believe there is no other life, for you have taught them practically there is none. It is all very well to tell them that, were property divided among all, they would get some eleven shillings a week; whatever it be, they will try for it: if they do not believe the next life, they will try to get something of this. And then look at the state of things all over the Continent. If England outrides this storm, it will be marvellous. I wish she may with all my heart, but she alone remains." He seemed to think the German and Italian unities, if constituted, would alter the balance in Europe. As for the state of France no one, I imagine, can tell what is coming. M. de Montalembert and two others are the only members of the old House of Peers sitting in the Assembly. There is a fair number of old deputies; but the great mass of the rest are utterly unworthy, from education, position, or any merit whatever, to represent France. They are not up to any of the questions which present themselves. And from such an Assembly France is to receive a constitution. Of the French generals at present in power, M. BÉdeau is the only one who is religious: I heard lately a remarkable trait of him. When in Africa with his army he met a priest, went forward to him, took him aside to some distance, and confessed to him; he then returned to his army, and said, if any one liked to follow his example, he would wait for him; they were going to fight, and no one could calculate the chances of war. How many did the like I did not hear.

Thursday, July 27.—M. des Billiers came to go with me to M. HervÉ, the surgeon of Les Soeurs de la CharitÉ, to get his account of the material facts attending the healing of the novice on the 9th of May. We found him out, but Mad. HervÉ gave the same account as we had before received; and told us if we would call later we could see M. HervÉ. I did so, and he then said that he had deposited a medical account of the whole thing with the Sisters, which I might see in the Rue du Bac.

I went again to call on M. Noirlieu, but found him out. On the way went into the old abbey church of S.Germain des PrÉs: since I was last there the whole choir has been painted. I think this is the most pleasing and impressive of all the churches at Paris. I could not be there without emotion, considering the long line of Benedictines who had worshipped within those walls, and deserved so well of the Church of Christ by studying and editing her great Fathers. I saw commemorated in one monument three great names—Mabillon, Descartes, and Montfaucon; of the second, I think it was said, "qui luce, quam indagavit, nunc fruitur:" this comprehends everything,—to enjoy that light. O utinam!

I have been looking to-day at a short account published here: "Sur les soixante-dix serviteurs mis À mort pour la foi en Chine, en Tong-King, et en Cochin-Chine, dÉclarÉs vÉnÉrables par notre S.PÈre le Pape Gregoire XVI." It is a wonderful history: the deeds and sufferings of the early Church exactly reproduced in our own times. These martyrs were even more savagely tortured than those of old by the Romans. And some of them are only four or five years older than oneself, some of them natives of China, younger; so that while I have wasted my days in vanity, others, sharers of this same flesh and blood, have entered the noble army of martyrs. And if charity dispenses the place of the redeemed in the mansions on high, near to their Lord assuredly will be their place, who passed from the midst of a deceiving and voluptuous civilisation, unstained and unallured, into the midst of a population lying in the valley of the shadow of death; low, grovelling, filthy in mind and body, and this to save some souls, if it might be, out of that otherwise condemned mass. It would seem as if out of corruption at its worst degree the highest, purest, and most self-denying charity were to go forth, to show that God's arm is not shortened, and that we might be, if we would, all that the martyrs of old were. Moreover, the people of Cochin China are naturally of a peculiarly timid disposition; yet many have been found to emulate the courage of European priests and bishops, in bearing the most prolonged torments and trials. What a horrible thing does it seem, that we should be practically taught, that the system which produces these men is such a corruption of God's revelation as is but a step removed, if removed at all, from idolatry.

Walked about the gardens of the Tuileries and through the Boulevards this evening: the population of Paris seems to pour itself out with delight here; and no wonder, for what great city has so pleasing a place of recreation for all classes, not the great and rich merely, as the gardens of the Tuileries. To me especially they bring back long past years. But I don't at all like being alone in this Babylon.

Friday, July 28.—I met the Bishop of Langres and a party, who went over Gerente's painted glass manufactory, 13. Quai d'Anjou. He seems to have reached the colours of old glass, and showed us the process by which all the appearance of antiquity is given to new glass. By means of acids he produces imperfections in glass which was smooth and clear; thus heightening the tone of other parts. Even chemists have been unable to discern the difference between two pieces of glass, one ancient and one modern. He said —— was a humbug; Waille was the best English worker, but Hardman would be so soon.

Went into Notre Dame for some time: in spite of the grandeur of many parts of this church, I always feel dissatisfied with it as a whole. Went also to S.Severin, to a little chapel of the Blessed Virgin, the altar of which, and figure of the Virgin and Child, please me much. Took a letter from LabbÉ to M. Dupanloup, but he was not in Paris. Called likewise twice on M. Defresne, but he was out; and took a letter to the Bishop of Orleans, but he could only be seen between eight and nine in the morning. In the evening I found Mr. A. Coppinger at home, and had a long talk with him. He seems to think there is no chance whatever for Henri Cinq; that the sentiment of loyalty, of the duty even of obeying authority, is in the multitude utterly extinct. The rich shopkeeping classes are universally unchristian; so that in repressing the last Émeute of June, even the revolters behaved with more respect in the churches than the Garde Nationale sent to fight them. The root of French misfortune is the thoroughly bad education given to men in all but the ecclesiastical schools. They regard Christianity as if they were outside it; the Gospel as a very beautiful book, doubtless, but not one commanding obedience from them. Living upon a civilisation, the whole force of which is derived from Christianity, they think that they can dispense with this the root of society, and construct society on their own superficial theories. The revolution of February took every one by surprise, even those who brought it about; it was the result of secret societies which had been existing for years; but though they felt their power, and thought that they might, perhaps, overturn a ministry, they did not calculate on casting out a dynasty. The last revolt had been very perfectly organised: it had a great many leaders, each with so many hundred men under him; these leaders well paid, but the common men fighting gratuitously for what was supposed to be their own cause. Though near ten thousand men are now in prison, it is not supposed that many of these leaders have been captured. And so what may happen in the winter is a subject for much fear.

Saturday, July 29.—Went at eight this morning to call on M. Defresne. He was very cordial, asked about our visit to the Tyrolese StigmatisÉes—had heard from Manzoni that we had been to him. He soon got into his usual animated tone of conversation. The events of February and June had had a beneficial effect for the clergy, in bringing out their charitable care for the wounded, to which even the saying of Mass had been postponed. L'AbbÉ Etienne had just been dining with him, so that he too had heard of the healing of the novice. A friend whom he named as the Poet Reboul came in: we all agreed that the life of S.Vincent was a greater miracle than any thing wrought by God in virtue of his intercession. M. Defresne engaged me to come again on Tuesday morning, and proposed a dinner for us three.

Mr. A. Coppinger returned my call, and offered to be of any service in showing me institutions, &c. He attested the great charity and devotion of the clergy. This has the most intimate connection with the celibate. He did not seem to think there was much improvement in the morals of the different educational establishments of the University. In his own time at the Ecole Polytechnique out of 200 scholars not above a dozen would be practical Christians; for not only was all religious instruction utterly neglected, but the professors, often infidels, would inspire them with a contempt and dislike for religion. Now the Ecole Polytechnique had 250 scholars, and perhaps a quarter of them might be sincere Christians. When once they were known as such, the probability was that they would be very decided and earnest: they were sometimes members of the society of S.Vincent de Paul for instructing the poor.

Went to M. des Billiers to ask him to accompany me to the Rue du Bac, to obtain a copy of M. HervÉ's attestation of the miraculous cure. We found the original of this no longer in their possession, it having been sealed up and deposited, with other documents, near the shrine of S.Vincent. They had a copy of it, which I proposed to copy, and then take it to M. HervÉ for his signature. This was done; and I hope to obtain it to-morrow. I asked M. des Billiers what he thought of the permanency of the republic. His conviction is that it cannot stand, but that the time of its duration may be indefinite from a few months to ten years. He believes that France is entirely monarchical: but it will probably require great sufferings and an exhaustion of the country for the monarchy to return. The obstacle is, that the middle classes, the bourgeoisie, who now reign, dread with the monarchy a cortÉge of noblesse and clergy. Could they be fully persuaded that all ranks would share alike, and that no attempt would be made to revive old privileges, they would be for the monarchy; for they want trade, confidence, and a firm government, and this the republic cannot give. The person of the monarch is not so clear; for though all educated and thoughtful people must see that a monarchy must rest on a principle, and that legitimacy alone has that principle, yet the name of Napoleon has still a vast influence throughout the poorer classes. The restoration had lost a fine opportunity. It was really very popular at first, and had it applied the principles of liberty to the Church and the nation, might have maintained itself: instead of this, it honoured a few individual ecclesiastics, thereby creating a great ill-will against the Church, but acted towards the whole body of the Church in the most illiberal spirit, keeping it under lock and key.

Called on M. Gondon: we talked about the cure of the novice. I told him I was engaged in collecting the proofs of it. M. Gondon thought that the Benedictines and Dominicans were not destined to take root afresh in France: he pointed to the position of the PÈre Lacordaire in proof of this. With very great abilities, especially the power of carrying away his auditors by his eloquence, he could with difficulty maintain one very small house in France. In the middle ages such a man might have founded an order. He heard his celebrated sermon on the first Sunday after the revolution of February, in Notre Dame. From beginning to end "c'Était un dÉlire." The father is just returned to Paris. He observed that late events in England must have convinced reflecting people how completely our Church was the puppet of the ministers of the day. Louis Philippe had tried to play the same game in France as had been played in England in the appointment of bishops, but the grace of consecration had been too strong for him. I replied that this was not quite fair, for we too had men of courage among us; and I quoted Bishop Selwyn's energetic and successful protest against the attempt of a secretary of state to sacrifice the rights of the natives in New Zealand.

I then went to the Soeurs de la CharitÉ, and soon found myself in their secrÉtariat, engaged among a number of sisters in copying M. HervÉ's attestation. It was enclosed in a sort of pastoral letter of M. l'AbbÉ Etienne to the sisters throughout the world, dated 31st May, 1848; expressing his confidence that the bark of S.Vincent would weather the storm of this revolution as it had the last of 1830, if they were faithful to their rules, and fulfilled their ministry with zeal. I found likewise that, three days after this cure, there had been another of a person afflicted with blindness for seven months, and I determined to go into this case likewise. The sisters went to the Benediction at five: soon after I followed them to their chapel. It was a most touching sight to see so large a number of sisters and novices in worship together before the Host. Here then, I thought, were before me so many female hearts offering up to God daily the sacrifice of themselves in works of charity; they have made the voluntary surrender of the pleasures of home, of feelings dearest to the natural man; there is no holding back in their offering: it is complete, and penetrated with charity. Here are hundreds kneeling in front of me who dedicate their labours to the hospital and the sick bed, going forth into all lands, and making the healing of the body a means to cure the soul. If ever there was any institution on which the sunlight of God's countenance may be supposed to rest, it is surely this.

It was settled that I should return on Monday to continue my extract.

M. Defresne told me this morning that the PÈres Lazaristes possess a great number of S.Vincent's letters in MS., giving the most minute directions as to cases of conscience and details of practice, which were written to his fathers during his long experience, and which show the most marvellous knowledge of the heart and the most acute practical judgment. It is an instance of his wisdom that he directed the sisters for thirty years by word of mouth, and at last wrote down for them the rules which he had found work efficiently in that time. A real constitution exists before it is written, just as model French constitutions cease to exist before the ink which enunciates their principles is dry.

M. des Billiers told me to-day of an old French Legitimist of distinction, who, like most of his party, refrained for a long time from exercising the franchise after Louis Philippe's accession, because it involved an oath of fidelity to him. They found at length the inconvenience of this, when they wanted to elect a Legitimist deputy; and the old man was much pressed to take the oath. He refused for a long time, but at length said he would go. As his purpose became known, and he was much respected and looked up to, there was much expectation at the polling-place what he would do. When called upon to take the oath, he said, "M. le PrÉsident, allow me to tell you a story. I remember being with his Majesty, Louis XVIII., King of France, when a young prince came before him, confessed his faults, and, falling at his feet, promised an unalterable fidelity. We all know how that prince has kept his oath. Now I promise and swear, (repeating the formulary of the oath), fidelity to Louis Philippe, and I will keep my oath as he kept his." Every one was convulsed with laughter, and the President could hardly stifle his: but he intimated that he could not allow the oath to be taken with that reservation. The old man repeated it again, by itself, but the effect had been produced, and every one saw with what purpose he took it.

But who can regret that so foul a villany as the supplanting a king, a kinsman, and a benefactor, has met with retribution even on earth?

Sunday, July 30.—I have just heard at S.Roch a sermon which lasted more than an hour and a quarter, delivered, for the most part, with great rapidity, and a vehemence of tone and action which would have frightened an English audience. The preacher, l'AbbÉ Du——, showed very considerable power both of thought and expression. I should have preferred a less rhetorical display, both in manner and matter. But power there certainly was. "My thoughts are not your thoughts, saith the Lord." He began by saying we were all under the reign of a sophism; this sophism was, under a great variety of shapes, the preferring the present life to the future. He then dwelt with great force and beauty on our Saviour's life on earth, that He was God, and that He was a carpenter; that He worked for his daily bread. Now God can do nothing but what is perfectly good and wise; therefore, when He assumed this servile condition, it was a work of perfect wisdom and goodness. He came to do His Father's will. And this one condition runs through all degrees of human society, alone making them acceptable to God,—to do God's will. Glory, genius, success, the wonder and admiration of our fellow men; all this is nothing. To do the will of God will alone open the kingdom of heaven—Jesus Christ stands ready to open the kingdom of heaven to generation after generation of those who, sealed by the fore-knowledge of God, and working with His grace, do His will—and to those alone. There was no key to the present state of things, to these terrible conflicts, this incessant agitation, but one; that life was but a day's labour, an hour's—nothing in comparison of eternity. This life was not the proper condition of humanity. It was fallen—the Saviour's proper work was to restore it to its normal condition; but that normal condition can never be here. Here it is a work of reparation, slow, painful, full of obstacles in proportion to the depth of the fall, but always merciful. Who would give a patient the full nourishment which he could take in health? Now, here we are all patients of Jesus—all—and to our latest moment. We shall never return to our normal condition on earth, but in eternity. You are all workmen and workwomen; idleness is a capital sin—idleness will shut out from heaven—Jesus Christ has taught us to work, every one in his estate. The work is one, though the condition may vary,—to do God's will. It will not be asked us whether we had genius, skill, power to embrace the works of God in our thought; but one thing only will be asked us,—whether we have done our work; that very work which God set us,—to do His will. And this is why society is suffering now to its utmost depths. This world is made the end, the limit, the object, the reward—eternity is put out of sight. "On a ÔtÉ Jesus Christ au travailleur de la pensÉe, au travailleur de l'art, au travailleur de la terre. Et nous souffrons, nous souffrons tous—nous allons de souffrances en souffrances." Thus the question of labour is insoluble. Men think of repaying the young girl's sacrifice who works day and night for the support of her parents; who denies herself every gratification to which she might innocently aspire, with a little more wages—or the mother's tears, who suffers for her family, or the father's continued exertions, with a few pieces of money. Jesus Christ did not so: he assigned to labour a far different reward—he would give it no reward at all on earth—he would give it eternal life. He then drew a vivid picture of the priest's life of toil, suffering, instruction, and benediction. What was the end of this work? It was eternal life. The greater the humiliation, the greater the suffering, the more absolute the cutting off of all human sources of enjoyment or requital—the more the will of God was done, the greater the reward in heaven. To man, no matter what his condition on earth, or the powers of his mind, to man working with grace and inspired by grace, the kingdom of heaven, according as he has done the will of God, will be given. This, and this alone, is the remedy for all the ills of society; and we are under the dominion of a sophism, because this truth is set aside.

There was rather a numerous congregation, by far the greater part women; not many persons of education, I should imagine—yet the sermon in tone was far beyond the reach of any but the educated.

This morning at eight I was at Mass here, a short High Mass; there were many communicants. But I have never been in a church so inconvenient in one respect, there were hardly any prie-dieus; the consequence is, that people sit nearly all the time, or just bend the knee against their chair; it is no easy matter to kneel on the floor, so encumbered with chairs. I think there is far less reverence in the outward demeanour of people at Paris than in the provinces.

Went to the evening service at Notre Dame des Victoires: I wished to be present at one of the meetings of the ArchiconfrÉrie du trÈs-saint Coeur de Marie. There was a large congregation, which at length filled the church: some thirty or forty members round the altar of the Blessed Virgin; of the rest nine-tenths at least were women of the lower classes. Vespers were sung, the congregation joining with remarkable unanimity. This indeed gives a particular and most pleasing character to the service of the ArchiconfrÉrie. Then the AbbÉ des Genettes, founder of the brotherhood, a silver-haired old man, mounted the pulpit, and spoke in the most familiar and practical manner on the text "Beware of false prophets." His manner was in calmness the very opposite of that of this morning's preacher. He contrasted the disobedience to parents which now prevailed, the debauchery and wickedness all around them, with what he had known fifty or sixty years ago. They had been struck for this, and the rod was still suspended over their heads; he besought them to repent. When this was over, he read from a paper requests for the prayers of the ArchiconfrÉrie for so many men, so many women, parishes, bishops, &c.; among which I heard in immediate juxtaposition "270 Protestants, 69 Jews." He likewise read a letter of thanks for their prayers, to which was attributed the conversion of a desperate sinner, and such letters he said he was receiving every week. He implored them to be very fervent in their prayers for the objects named to them. There would be in the week, he said, three especial days: Tuesday, the feast of St. Peter in vinculis. He read them the account of this from the Acts. It struck me, from the attention with which they listened to this, that they were not accustomed to read it. He then passed to the Pope, as successor of St.Peter, who was now, it might be said, in a sort of moral captivity. He earnestly and repeatedly besought their prayers for him, who was suffering at the hands of ungrateful subjects on whom he had showered benefactions. Not that the bark of St.Peter could ever be overwhelmed by the waves: it was secure by the divine promise; but they might so far persecute the Pope as to gain for him the crown of martyrdom. More than twenty times since his accession the Holy Father had commended himself to their prayers by means of persons coming from Rome. They should all now pray for him every day. He should be in his confessional that day at six A.M., for several hours; again from half-past-two till five; and from seven till nine, in order that they might prepare themselves for the plenary indulgence attached to this Church on Thursday. He notified likewise a fresh religious service, for the soul of the late archbishop, on Monday, 7th August, at Notre Dame. They should all pray earnestly for the holy archbishop: it may be that he had washed out with his blood his sins, and needed not their prayers; but they should pray for him. He then descended for the benediction. The whole congregation seemed to have one heart and one voice in the hymns which followed. This service lasted from seven to half-past-nine, and was very interesting.

Monday, July 31.—Went to the PÈre de Ravignan. He told me that, since our last conversation, he had been looking in "Tournely," where he found a passage on the primacy of jurisdiction, which seemed to him quite convincing. He gave me a note for the PÈre Lacordaire, but my visit was cut short by an appointment, so he begged me to come again.

Went to M. des Billiers: he attacked me again on the primacy of jurisdiction. I said that the Ultramontane theory, when pushed to its absolute issue, demanded the infallibility of the Pope singly; that, indeed, this was involved in the primacy of jurisdiction; that the Pope had exerted the supreme power of withdrawing their authority from the French bishops when it seemed to him for the good of the Church. He did not like to admit that the primacy of jurisdiction involved infallibility, because infallibility of the Pope is not a dogma. But here lies precisely the difficulty of their position. Roman Catholics want, for the completion and impregnability of their system, the infallibility of the single papal chair, and this is precisely what has been ever denied by large schools among them, and is not even now an article of faith. For that they are the universal Church, that their dogma alone is true, that the Greek and every other communion is heretical or schismatical, or both, all this depends on the infallibility of the single papal chair. I said that, if they would prove the Greek Church to be in schism, I should give up our cause.

We went to see M. Gabet, at the PÈres Lazaristes, who has been ten years in Central Tartary, or Thibet; gone through great dangers and privations; has come back safe; and is going out again. He was with a brother missionary, who remains at Macao till he rejoins him. His account of Thibet is most interesting, and in many respects very surprising. They have many Catholic practices there—such as holy water, the religious celibate. The Lamas, or priests, are very numerous. Two-thirds of the men of the country live in religious celibacy; and he believes that this is a real celibacy. He and his companions lived for six months in a great community of 5000 lamas; they were, perhaps, of ten different nations, and spoke four different languages. During that time they had not observed the least impropriety among them. They are religious, pray much, and have a complete contempt for those who do not pray. Faire l'esprit fort among them is a sure way to be thought little of. But this religion is very superstitious: they have not the power to choose what they should embrace and what refuse; they have the instinct and the need of religion very strong, but not discernment of what is true religion. Thus, if you read to them the Gospel, they will adore Jesus Christ, Pilate, Caiaphas, &c. Theirs is not an "incroyance raisonnÉe" like Protestantism, but a cloud of superstition which obscures their sight. He anticipated that Christianity would make large progress among them, because of their religious spirit. There is as yet no religious establishment in Thibet. All over Asia the ministers of religion observe continence. The character of priest and married man is to their notions incompatible. They look for a complete denial of self in one who would teach them religion. There are no laws against foreign religions in Thibet, as there are in China. A great number of the female sex also live in continence, though not so many as of men. I asked him how he accounted for the connexion between so many of their usages and Catholicity. He said some were of opinion that they had derived them from Catholicism; but as they are exceedingly tenacious of their rites, he did not himself think this: others again thought that Catholicism had borrowed from them. Neither of these views was necessary. There was no trace whatever of Christian missionaries having been among them. He thought that all the resemblance which was to be found in their rites, customs, and belief, might be accounted for as relics of the one true faith communicated to all the world originally, and handed down by tradition. This faith had been guarded in its purity among the Jews by a written law, and other institutions: but other nations had possessed it likewise, and retained it more or less corrupted. They had no bloody sacrifices, but offered wine, water, corn, and especially paper. He had been well treated on the whole: they had converted two Lamas—one of these had lately written to him: he had sent the letter to the Society for Propagation of the Faith at Lyons, for he believed there was no one in France who understood the Mongolese language. That of Thibet is taken from Sanscrit; but the continuous line above the letters which exists in the latter language is broken at each letter in this. But the strangest thing of all is the Grand Lama, who is at once High Priest, King, and Divinity. They believe in the transmigration of souls, and suppose that Buddha continually becomes incarnate for the redemption of man. When the Grand Lama dies, they wait till a successor is made known to them. And here M. Gabet said that, allowing for some jugglery, it was impossible not to conclude that there was diabolic agency at work. The present Grand Lama is a boy of ten years old; the son of a poor woodcutter 600 leagues from the Grand Lama's residence. The Grand Lama is discovered by a child of a few months or a year old announcing that he is the Grand Lama who died—that his soul has passed to him. Thereupon the most particular inquiries are made. A commission is sent to the spot, and the utensils used by the late Grand Lama are put among a number of others just like them; they then demand of the infant which belonged to the Grand Lama, and he replies, this and this was mine. Were this merely an arrangement of the men in power, would not have chosen the son of a poor man, at a great distance. They had not been, it is true, ocular witnesses of these things; but from what he had heard, he could not doubt that there were "des prestiges diaboliques." Under the Grand Lama there is a king for the management of temporal matters, and four ministers; these conduct matters in an interregnum. They had lived in intimacy with one of these four ministers. The missionary in these countries must be prepared for the most absolute self-denial—he must carry his life in his hand. He noticed that throughout Hindostan the religious indifference of the Europeans (save the Spaniards and Portuguese) injured them exceedingly in the opinion of the natives. With them religion is a first need of life: it does not matter so much what religion it is—to pray is sufficient; but a man who does not pray,—who has apparently no religion at all—is one of the lowest of beings in their eyes. The English might save themselves an immense expense if they showed themselves devoted to their religion instead of indifferent.

M. Gabet has a very pleasing countenance: moustache and long beard, plentifully mixed with grey hairs. He looks in vigorous health. Yet when he went to the East he was delicate. He believes that the constitution adapts itself to the rigours of climate. The cold of Tartary is intense. From this high table land the rivers of Hindostan, China, and Siberia all take their sources. They slept continually on the earth; up to midnight, while the body was warmed with the day's exercise, they maintained some heat, but from that time to the morning they froze. Their only nourishment was wheat or oats, moistened with a little tea. He is going back to Great Tartary. We had no introduction, but nothing could exceed his readiness to hear and answer our inquiries: and he offered to give us again any information in his power.

We got from him the address of the young person who was cured of her blindness in the chapel of S.Vincent on the 12th May, three days after the former cure of the neck. We drove at once to see her at one of the houses of the Sisters of Charity, Rue de l'ArbalÈte, 25. We told the Sister who received us for what purpose we were come; she assented to it, went out, and brought back immediately the young girl. She is fourteen; very simple and homely in appearance, and looks the daughter of a peasant. She said, in answer to our questions, that it was hearing of the other cure which put it in her thoughts to go to S.Vincent's chapel, and ask for his intercession. She was taken there on Friday, May 12th, at 6¼ a.m., by the Sister who was then with us. I asked her if she could see at all in going there. She replied, "Not the least." She knelt and assisted at the Mass, but nothing took place; but "as soon as I received our Lord, I saw perfectly." "Could you not see at all the instant before?" "Not at all." "And the instant after you saw perfectly?" "Yes." "The cure did not come then by degrees?" "No; it was instantaneous." The disease called amaurosis had subsisted from the month of September before; and every variety of cure having been tried in vain, all treatment had been given up for a month previously. It was accompanied with violent pains in the head. Since the cure she has seen perfectly: she appears to be quite free from any disease in the eyes now. While she and the Sister were gone to the chapel, the rest united themselves at home at Mass in intention for her cure. I said I was going to copy the account of this at the Rue du Bac, when the Sister offered me a MS. copy, which would save me that trouble. And, as it contained the report of the physician who had attended her, we took it at once to get his signature, Rue Mouffetard, 94. He was out, but his wife received us, and it was settled that I should come to-morrow, between twelve and one, when he would be at home. The testimony of this young girl was so clear that I saw no possibility of doubting the effect produced.

I dined with Mr. Coppinger and his two sons: since 1824, he has resided here. The account they give of the irreligion of the shop-keeping class, and of the wretched education which has tainted the springs of French society, is terrible. They said by far the greater number of men at Paris dine away from home in public places, and often leave their wives and families to fare poorly at home, while they themselves feast at a restaurateur's. It appears that on the Sunday night of the last Émeute the alarm at Paris was extreme: the rebels were thought to have the best of it; and it was their known intention to sack the quarter of the Tuileries and the ChaussÉe d'Antin. They think that the present state of things cannot last: but what is to come nobody can tell.

Tuesday, August 1.—This evening I had nearly an hour's talk with Le PÈre Lacordaire. He remembered that M. and I had called on him three years ago. I recalled to his mind what he had said, that well-informed and sincere persons could not remain out of the Church of Rome. Since then I had been especially studying the question of the Roman Primacy, and yet the conclusion to which I had come, after a most careful examination of antiquity, was in favour of a primacy of order, but against that of jurisdiction. He dwelt on the obscurity of the first three centuries: they were times of persecution, in which the popes had other work to do than to defend their primacy. Yet how remarkable it was that at the Nicene Council this primacy was seen at once emerging from the storm. The legates of the Roman Pontiff presided there. I observed that Hosius, Bishop of Corduba, who signed the first, was not marked as Roman legate, whereas the two priests who followed were; that it was as imperial commissioner, and friend of Constantine, that he presided. He seemed disposed to assume that Hosius must have been papal legate. I said that I by no means impugned the primacy, but entirely recognised it: my defence was in the difference between a primacy and an absolute monarchy: for the claim of universal jurisdiction, as at present exercised, amounts to that. He said they did not consider the papacy an absolute monarchy at all: they who lived within it felt that in fact it was limited in a great number of ways. There were rights inherent in bishops which the Pope could not touch: he could not suspend them from the government of their dioceses without cause given, and a regular ecclesiastical judgment rendered; he could not take from the priest his right to offer the Holy Sacrifice, or to confess, without the like judgment. I quoted the calling in of all the powers of the French episcopate in 1801, because it seemed to the Pope for the good of the whole Church. He admitted the case, and that the power did exist; but it was altogether an exceptional case, such as had never occurred before. I said that in controversy it was necessary to push principles to their absolute issue: it was natural enough that they, born and living under the papacy, should not feel it to be an absolute monarchy. He quoted Bellarmine as saying that it was a monarchy tempered by aristocracy and democracy. The Pope could not destroy the episcopate. I said our new converts maintained that he could: that if all the bishops of the world were on one side, and the Pope on the other, he could make a new episcopate. "I regard," he said, "as anticatholic, such opinions as these." He dwelt on the primacy of Peter, as shown forth in the Acts: nothing seemed to him clearer or more marked. He seemed to argue as if, the primacy granted, the degree to which its power was extended was a mere matter of discipline, of arrangement and growth in the Church itself. Besides, there was another point: without living in a system it is nearly impossible to understand it. Invaluable as Scripture is, and written tradition, the works of Fathers, Councils, &c., they are writing after all: without a living oral tradition, they will not be understood. The Church holds the truth as a living body; it circulates in her veins. We see the same sort of thing all around us. A young man may study diplomacy for four, five, six, years; he may have the history and treaties of Europe at his fingers' end: this knowledge is excellent; but he wants one thing, without which he could never be a diplomatist—practical initiation; this will be the most valuable part of all his knowledge. You may know perfectly how to sew, but could any one make a coat without seeing others make it, and the practical acquaintance with many little points? This was seen most strongly in religious orders: there was a traditional life in them of which no mere knowledge could take the place. "I had studied well the rules of the Dominicans, but until I saw their practical working I could not understand them at all. Or again, in ten minutes' conversation with a person, you will catch more of their mind and feelings, and tone of thought, than by studying ten volumes of their works. There is something in the contact with persons for which no study can make up. Or again, the sight of a city. Half a day in a place will give you a better notion of it than all the descriptions ever written. You drink in the knowledge of it at all pores. I have read a great deal about London, but I assure you that I am unable to form any notion of it to myself. The mere look of the place would instruct me more than any books. Now such is the force of oral tradition in the Church: it is the life of an organised body which dwells in its members. Only think what would laws be without jurisprudence: why the most important part of all laws is their interpretation; if a man had the most perfect knowledge of the laws themselves, he would be no jurisconsult without knowing their practical application. Now this is a sort of knowledge which fails you entirely, being outside the Church; thus it is that we have no difficulties, while you are perpetually seeing them." I said, "I found it very difficult to represent our real position to them. The question was, not whether one might be a Roman Catholic, for of that I had no doubt; we all admitted that they were a part of the Church. The question was, whether I was forced to become a Roman Catholic; to deny all my past life; supposing that we had the succession, and formularies which conveyed the episcopate and priesthood,—whether I should be forced to affirm that the grace of the Sacraments was intercepted by the sin of schism or heresy. We saw and deplored the division of the Church; but might not such a state of things be allowed, as in the great Western schism the Church was, as a fact, divided for forty years; might it not then be for 300 years?" "As to that," he said, "supposing the question of faith did not exist, supposing you could interpret the Thirty-nine Articles in a Catholic sense; granting there were no variance as to the number of the Sacraments; supposing that you individually, or the whole English Church, were to admit the faith of the Roman Church,—for you must come to her, not she to you,—then there would be the una Fides, but there would still remain the unum Corpus. Now every branch that is severed from a tree does not immediately die, it may sometimes be planted afresh, and take root beside the parent trunk; it may even bear leaves and some fruit, but that will not be unity. The Greeks have a vast deal in common with us. Supposing that the question of the Procession could be resolved by explanations on their part, there would only remain the authority of the Roman See to be admitted by them. You again have retained much more than the Lutherans and Calvinists. What you have of good is ours, is Catholic. If persons among you believe in God, believe in the Redemption, lead a holy life, bring forth good works, I do not deny that all this is Catholic in them; if they are ignorant as to the sin of schism or heresy, this, which is good in them, may be sufficient for their salvation. When I hear persons saying there is this or that good in Protestants, I always admit it; I say this is a portion of the truth they have carried away from us; they have a certain root, and yet they are not joined to the tree. Why, Mahomet himself carried away much truth from the Catholic faith; and though he mixed and adulterated this, Mahometanism lives still by those remains of truth. So it is with those who have separated from the Church; the full life remains in her; unity is in her alone: portions of the truth, portions of life, may exist in other bodies; may suffice for the salvation of those who, by no fault of their own, and with no consciousness of their own, are in those bodies; but she alone has the full truth, she alone is one. Whether you can exist with safety out of her depends on the degree of your personal knowledge." I said, "It is very hard to represent to you one's difficulties." "Because," he replied, "they are matters of detail: you may study the question for sixty years and never come to a result, unless you lay down clearly general principles. Grant that the Church in Luther's time was in a frightful state of corruption, that great tyranny had been exercised in England by the Pope; grant this and much more—would that excuse separation? There are always such causes as this at work. Men are not quite absurd. They do not make revolutions for nothing, as we have just seen. Why, Louis Philippe, was turned out, rightly or wrongly, because by his conduct he had made nobody care to defend him. Grant that there were these causes for your separation, does that excuse the state of schism?"

He quoted S.Cyprian's conduct as proving that reference was made to Rome, asserted that the Pope presided at all the general councils. Throughout his conversation it struck me that he was weak in facts, but strong in principles; and this seems to apply to the whole Roman controversy on this point.

Here Count Montalembert came in, and, as it was very late, I retired. He begged to be remembered to M., and asked if I was going to stay some days longer.

This morning went to call on M. Defresne. No sooner was I there than he began to read me parts of his friend M. Reboul's poetry, in a whirlwind of enthusiasm. This continued, with one little interval of detestation expressed for Louis Philippe, till breakfast. M. Reboul was there, and read, at his request, his verses on the death of the archbishop, treating it as a sort of expiation. M. Defresne is full of charity towards the Puseyites, as he called them, but he seemed not to be quite aware that we formed a part of the English Church.

I then went to the other side of Paris to see M. Fernet, the surgeon who attended the young girl so strangely cured. He entirely confirmed her having been completely blind: she used to come to him with her companions, crying, and after many vain attempts to relieve her, he sent her to M. Sichel, a famous oculist: but he could do nothing. He saw her a few days after she recovered her sight: she then saw perfectly. Amaurosis is a paralysis of the nerves of the eye: it is sometimes cured, but then gradually, and not instantaneously. He added a few lines to the certificate stating that he had examined her after the cure, and found the sight quite restored. After this interval the cure might be esteemed complete. I inquired if he had any way of accounting for this cure. He said, none whatever. It was a phenomenon which he could not explain. He mentioned that he had been told she had once before seen for an instant, and then lost her sight again. Hearing this, I went to her pension again, to ask for an explanation. The mother told me that, at Christmas last, when she took the Holy Communion, she had for an instant seen the priest, and then became blind again; that before September her sight had been more or less affected, but that from September till May it had been quite lost save this momentary restitution.

Calling on M. Bonnetty afterwards, I mentioned this and the other case. He said they were very cautious and backward in assenting to such things. As to the loss of the Pope's temporal power, he did not believe 200 millions of Catholics would suffer him to be deposed by four lawyers, who were the instigators of disaffection. Others, however, anticipate that the time is come for this temporal sovereignty to be given up, and that the spiritual power may come forth the brighter when it is gone.

Wednesday, August 2.—Called on M. l'AbbÉ PÉtÉtot. The last revolution has had a happy effect on the side of religion. The utmost respect has been paid to the priests; they have never ceased a moment to go abroad en soutane. In 1830 they were obliged to give this up for two years, and only recovered popularity by their devotion to the sick in the time of the cholera. But now they have come to the priest to bless the trees of liberty. He had blessed six. They even went in procession with the Cross, which is contrary to the laws, and woe to him who did not take off his hat. But this is the only good side of the late movements. Commerce is at a standstill; and the very boutiquiers talk freely of the necessity of having a king. Paris subsists by articles of luxe, and a republic is not favourable to these. But what is coming nobody can see. In the riots of June, the insurgents had possession of the church of S.Paul, in the Faubourg S.Antoine. The curÉ induced them to go elsewhere; and, before leaving the church, they came to him for his blessing, saying they were going to fight: and so they went forth to kill and be killed. But all the middle class—the bourgeoisie—is profoundly hostile to religion: they will do anything to prevent its gaining influence. Although liberty of teaching would follow naturally from the principles of the republic, yet the Assembly has just passed a law on primary instruction as bad as can be; and another on secondary instruction will follow like it. Religion does not make any way with these classes; money is their idol. A workman or poor woman will give five francs to a charity, where these people think much of ten sous.

M. PÉtÉtot, with two companions, went, last September, to see l'Addolorata and l'Estatica. They were at Capriana on the Thursday evening and Friday morning, 9th and 10th September. They saw the wounds of the hands and forehead, as we did, quite dry on the evening, and in the morning fresh with blood. The sister had gone out both evening and morning, and they had to find her, so that Domenica was left alone. Her state, in the six weeks which had elapsed since our visit to that of M. PÉtÉtot, seems to have become much worse. She was quite unconscious, and terrible to behold. All three were profoundly convinced of the truth of the stigmata and of the miracle. They went from Paris on purpose, with the full intention of rigorously observing the facts. One of the party was then a pupil of the Ecole Polytechnique: has since become priest. They were likewise three days at Caldaro, and saw l'Estatica several times. They saw her elevated in trance on the tips of her feet, extremis digitis,—"so," said M. PÉtÉtot, "as I could not have remained a minute, and that on the soft bed." They saw her repeatedly shoot herself from the recumbent position to the kneeling one. The Holy Sacrament was exposed the day when they found her in trance on the point of her feet. They addressed her through her confessor, and recommended to her prayers a design which they had in their thoughts. After she had prayed for it, they inquired if God had made known to her the subject of it. She assented: said that it was pleasing to God, but that one of those who took part in it would shortly withdraw from it. "Fortasse unum ex vobis Deus excipiet seu tollet; non agitur de morte," the confessor interpreting said. This has since taken place. The information she gave was so precise as to their design, which it was impossible for her to have divined, that they were quite convinced of its having been made known to her preternaturally.

I asked M. PÉtÉtot which had made the greatest impression on him. He said, the Addolorata by far; that her case made him inclined to believe the other. This produced an effect quite of a different kind from the former. He equally believed both. He saw the stigmata on her hands, which we did not, as her sleeves covered them. It appears the confessor is quite weary of accompanying people to see her; they were some time before they got on with him, only after saying that they had come from Paris on purpose. I was much pleased with the ample corroboration given by M. PÉtÉtot to our own visit.

He spoke of the priest at Capriana as the worst specimen he had met with; he would scarcely speak of l'Addolorata; treated it as nothing extraordinary. They found out the secret of this afterwards, that the Austrian government prohibited its being mentioned. An ecclesiastic at Trent quoted to them Tacitus, that it was not allowed to them to think or to express their thoughts. The priest was continually À la chasse; so he was the two days we were at Capriana.

Called on M. des Billiers: we had a little skirmish about the Primacy. In the evening went with M. Gondon to the Count de Montalembert's. The new Archbishop of Paris, now Bishop of Digne, came in accompanied by the Bishop of Langres; he looks an Italian prelate, full of courtesy; I should think his affability will stand him in good service. There were several representatives, M. de CazalÈs, M. de Falloux, l'AbbÉ Sibourg,—and M. Bonnetty, M. Le Normand, Guizot's successor at the Sorbonne. The conversation was chiefly on the state of politics, the doings of the Assembly, M. Proudhon's recent developement. M. de Montalembert was the liveliest and best converser. He said he was greatly obliged to M. Proudhon; they were in a cavern with a gulph at the bottom of it, and Proudhon had lighted a torch to show them where the gulph was. "What good will the torch do, if no one will beware of the gulph?" one of the company said. "Nevertheless, I am much obliged for it," said M. de M. "I shall wave it about and make use of it." He could not understand the selling of livings in England, and asked if it was not simony. I said it was, and done in defiance and by elusion of the law. He wondered that bishops were obliged to institute, however dissatisfied with the fitness of the presentÉ. I said, in the actual state of things, our only hope was in the liberty, firmness, and integrity of the priesthood. All the company seemed to have the worst opinion of French prospects. As we went home with M. Le Normand, he observed on the misconception of their position by the Quarterly lately, which seemed shocked at the acceptance of the republic by the Church; as if it was possible to do anything else. I said it was a sentiment of loyalty among us, which dictated that feeling. "Loyalty," he replied, "is entirely extinct in France; it is a fiction, and it is useless to attempt to conjure it up."

Thursday, August 3.—Called on PÈre de Ravignan, but he was out. Went for some little time to the Chapel des Dames du bon Secours. It is a delightful feeling to get out of the noise and glare of the world into that exquisite little shrine. Then went to Issy, and was two hours with M. Galais. I asked his opinion about modern miracles, and whether one could in good faith deny the material facts in the cases which had come under my notice. He said there could be no doubt that God did occasionally work miracles; and he did not see how the facts could be denied here. I remarked, that the chief difficulty seemed to be, why such and such cases were chosen more than others, as they had to our eyes no peculiar fitness. He observed, that there seemed analogous cases in the Gospel, where our Lord appeared often to heal out of a sentiment of compassion to the individual; and there are a multitude of cases where the details are not given, but it is said, curavit omnes, He healed them in globo. I asked which nation in the Roman Church was at present most conspicuous for its missionary exertions. He said, the French by far; there are ten French for one Italian missionary. Will the Jesuits get more liberty of action under the Revolution? He thought not. There was no disposition to apply the principles of liberty either to the Jesuits or the other religious orders. They had the reputation of being very "habiles;" and "habiles" they certainly were, but not so much as they were esteemed. He doubted if they had been wise under Louis Philippe's government; it was known that in their colleges out of France, Brugelette for instance, devotion to the elder branch was inculcated. Now, the wise course seemed to be to accept the government de facto, as the Fathers of the Church did. They troubled themselves very little who was emperor. Had the Jesuits done so, they would not have been suspected by Louis Philippe; and so, perhaps, would have had colleges entrusted to them. I asked what the actual position of the Church with regard to the state was. "There are," he said, "in the Assembly sixty—it may be as many as a hundred—good Catholics; but all the rest are indifferent, or even hostile to us. The immense majority are bent on resisting the influence of religion." "It seems to me then," I said, "a kind of miracle that you subsist at all." "It is so," he replied. "The thing in our favour is that, small minority of the nation as we are, we are firm, compact, and banded together, while our enemies are divided in every way. They have no common principle, and so they have a dread of us, a fear of our succeeding in winning back the nation to religion, by which they would fall into a minority. The real feeling which influences this unbelieving mass is the lust of domination; they have got their feet on the neck of religion, and they mean to keep it there. For this reason they will allow no liberty of teaching if they can help it." "But I suppose you have won ground since 1802; have you not?" I said. "We have won and we have lost," he replied. "Doubtless the clergy are better constituted now; there is a great devotion among them. Our bishops are in the main well chosen, and do their duty. They understand the crisis, and are fully convinced that they must fight the battle stoutly, and make no concession. But, on the other hand, in 1802, though religion had been overthrown, and impiety had publicly triumphed, yet the great mass of the nation had received a Christian education. It is the reverse now; this mass is now unbelieving, they have not been brought up as Christians, their first impressions were not in favour of religion." "You are then as missionaries among unbelievers," I said. "Precisely so. And this enormous unbelieving mass has the greatest jealousy of us. We only ask fair play; liberty, not privileges; and this they will do every thing to keep from us. They are making, quietly but definitely, efforts to secularise, as they call it, the education of girls; that is, knowing the importance of first impressions, and of the female sex on society, they would take this primary education out of religious hands. There are infernal plots abroad. They dread us, and have a feeling, that if we were allowed a fair trial we should win our ground. I am convinced that we should reconquer France if we were only allowed liberty of action. Even the multitude who seek to satiate themselves in sensual enjoyments, even these come to us sooner or later for aid. Few after all can gain these enjoyments, and those who do, feel that they have not reached what they were seeking for. And then in the young clergy I am continually seeing instances of the most touching generosity and devotion. Many give up fair prospects, and fortunes, and surrender themselves wholly to their ministry." I remarked, what a difficulty the law of continence must impose on those who had to determine the vocation of young men. "You have, indeed," he said, "named the true difficulty." "The readiness," I added, "to embrace such a law, must be in itself the touchstone of a ministerial vocation, for it involved a continual sacrifice; and feelings, which were very pronounced at one time, might not continue." "It is so," he said. "Here is the most trying and embarrassing part of our duty. We do not always succeed. It is most hard to judge if a young man of twenty, who appears devoted, will continue so. Yet, I assure you, I have known many whose most secret thoughts have been laid open to me, and who were pure as angels. I was once acquainted with a man of great capacity, but an infidel. He was thoroughly persuaded that continence could not be really observed by the French clergy. He set himself to work, and made for many years the most minute inquiries. The result was, that he discovered many horrors; but he likewise was completely convinced that continence was maintained by a great number. Now this could only be, he knew, by a supernatural gift; and it had such an effect on him that he became a good Catholic."

M. Galais afterwards went through Migne's Cursus Completus TheologiÆ, pointing out the most valuable treatises in it. He strongly recommended Klee's Manual of the History of Christian Dogmas, and Pouget's Institutiones. Their examinations begin to-morrow, and their vacations in four days. He looks forward to taking the waters somewhere. They absolutely require a change of scene and occupations.

I called on Mr. Coppinger this evening, and staid to tea with them.

Friday, August 4.—Called on M. ——, who had promised to take me to the AssemblÉe Nationale. He said the PÈre Lacordaire had completely failed in the Assembly: first he had taken his seat on the Mountain, shaking hands with the most advanced of that party; then he spoke for the first time, in defence of Ledru Rollin, to the consternation of his friends: and, lastly, he seemed quite bereaved of his usual eloquence, uttered nothing but trivialities, and was at a loss for words. All this he conceived had deeply wounded him, and he had resigned his seat to the great disgust of his constituents, who had been pained first at the line he took, and then by his retirement. He was always eccentric, and took a course of his own: he had professed that his seat in the Assembly was incompatible with a religious life, but he did not live here en communautÉ, but alone, and was engaged with M. Ozanam and others on a journal, the Ère Nouvelle, which was in the highest degree a political life. But he liked to be unlike other people. Padre Ventura, in his funeral oration on O'Connell, had ascribed R. C. Emancipation to the fear of England; so Le PÈre Lacordaire lauded the Duke of Wellington and Sir R. Peel to the skies for granting it, in his funeral oration of last February, to the great disgust of the Irish, John O'Connell, and the rest, who were present.—It was no easy matter to get into the Assembly: I was an hour waiting, after sending in my name to the Comte de Montalembert, and then the Tribune was full, and it was near another hour before I got in. The Chamber is an immense room, in the form of a horse shoe, at the bottom of which is the Tribune, and behind it the seat of the President, and sundry officers; while the benches of the representatives are ranged eleven deep, one above another, round the other three sides. The speakers were heard very plainly, though I was at the very furthest point from them: strangers sit in galleries at some height above the members, on both sides and at the bottom. When there is agitation, the sound of voices is like the roar of the sea. But there was nothing interesting to-day. The President, M. Marrast, said, "M. Fayet a la parole," and I heard the Bishop of OrlÉans speak twice, but very briefly. The speakers were generally very rapid; there was a great want of dignity both in their manner, and in the general aspect of the Chamber. They sit uncovered. I listened for about two hours, and came away congratulating myself that I was not a legislator, specially in the National Assembly. It seemed to me a place for the violent to succeed in, and for the good and thoughtful to fail in. I watched the representatives going in for some time; generally speaking, they are anything in appearance but distinguished. The presence of an armed force on every side gives likewise an unpleasant feeling to an Englishman.

Saturday, August 5.—Was an hour with the PÈre de Ravignan this morning—one of the pleasantest I have spent in France. Really his kindness and charity to a complete stranger are more than I can express; and I was quite confounded when he thanked me repeatedly for coming to see him. I told him I had not seen any institutions for the education of the other sex, and he gave me notes to three. He agreed with M. Galais in thinking that France was at present that part of the Roman Church in which there was most movement. "Italy is always the head and heart: there are, and always have been, there many ecclesiastics of a holy life. Still it cannot be doubted that a certain reform is wanted there—a reform, of course, to be wrought by the Church, and not in separation from her. This is only saying that where there are men, there is a natural tendency to degenerate. We have passed through this reform in France." I asked whether he thought, if liberty of teaching were granted, that the Church would regain the mass of the population. He hesitated. A certain effect would doubtless be produced: the mere establishment of a house of education in every diocese would be a considerable step. It was very difficult to know the number of practising Catholics in France. There were not above two millions of Protestants. Out of the million of Parisians there might be from a hundred to a hundred and fifty thousand who communicated at Easter, men, women and children: of women one half were Catholic; of men, perhaps, one-twentieth. Paris was one of the worst places in France; so, again, the North generally, and the centre, Bourges, Berri, le Nivernois. On the other hand, in Bretagne and the South religion was much more general. He then passed to a subject which was of peculiar interest to me, as touching the sorest place of a parish priest. "Suarez," said he, "has a discussion on the fewness of the saved, whether this is said with reference to the world or to the Church; and he applies it to the world, but not to the Church. I think he is right; this is the result of a ministry of twenty years, in which I have necessarily had large experience—it is the feeling, also, of our fathers generally. You know the Church teaches that attrition only, combined with the Sacrament of penitence, avails to salvation—attrition arising from motives of fear rather than of love. Contrition by itself, one act of pure love by the soul, avails even without the Sacrament, if there be a firm purpose and desire to receive it. God has no desire for the sinner's death. Jansenism has done great harm on this subject, by inspiring a sort of despair which is most dangerous." I observed that purgatory was the necessary complement of such a doctrine. "It is so," he said, "and though God is alone the judge of the sufficiency of those acts of the dying, yet we may hope that a great number come within the terms of salvation, whatever purifying process they may afterwards require." I asked if Jansenism was not well nigh extinct? "It is, in France," he said, "but it is still strong in Piemont and in Portugal." He then reverted to the Primacy, and spoke of the force of that superiority which is discernible through every century in the Papal See. Not one passed in which, even from the East, some appeal was not made to it. M. de Maistre spoke of a "prÉsence rÉelle" of the Papacy being sensibly felt throughout the whole history of the Church. I said I rested our defence entirely on the difference between Primacy and Monarchy. There were two great powers in the Church of divine origin—the Papacy and the Episcopate. In the earlier centuries the latter had been most sensibly felt: but in modern times the former. "With regard to discipline," he said, "I might allow that; but as to the hierarchy, and as to dogma, the relation has always been what it is now: the hierarchy, even the Eastern patriarchs, always were as strictly bound to the Roman chair as the bishops now. They felt the Pope was their superior." I said I had been unable to see that. I had searched far and wide for evidence of it. The patriarchs of Alexandria, in their own district, and, later, the patriarchs of Constantinople, throughout the East, had judged as absolutely as the Pope in the West: independence was a wrong word to use; but they seemed to enjoy as complete a liberty of action in their sphere as the Pope in his. He observed, with regard to Bossuet's Gallicanism, "We have been preserved from the ultimate consequences of those principles, but they might have conducted to a sort of Anglicanism—the two touched each other. But," he added, "Le coeur et la priÈre vous Éclairera. L'Étude est souvent difficultueuse; ce n'est pas que l'esprit n'ait pas ses propres fonctions. But light comes from the heart. I shall often think of you, and pray for you." I said I thought of leaving Paris on Thursday, and should like to pay him a last visit on Wednesday. "I fear I shall be ordered out of town by my physician; but I will try and return on Wednesday." "You must not think of it," I said; "but are you not well?" "My throat is unwell, which prevents me from preaching." "That is just it," I said: "I should have thought myself most fortunate if I could have heard you preach." He embraced me at parting; and wished to call on me, which I would not hear of.

Certainly, if ever there was a heart of Christian kindness, it is that of the PÈre de Ravignan.

M. des Billiers showed me a very interesting MS. letter from S.FranÇois de Sales to Mad. Chantal. Went again to call on M. Noirlieu, but found him out, and to the ArchevÊchÉ to get a ticket for the service of Monday, but the secretary was out. In the evening walked along the Boulevards; there was the usual tide of men and women, but here, as everywhere else in Paris at present, there was a total absence of all that seemed distinguished in either sex: a respectable equipage is rarely seen. I doubt whether I have set eyes on a lady since I have been here.

Sunday, Aug. 6.—Went to La Madeleine at 10, expecting a Mass, but it was the end of a Benediction, and then to my amazement saw M. L'AbbÉ PÉtÉtot in the pulpit. Presently he explained that he was there, the curÉ of the parish having given in his resignation, and the vicars general of the chapter having appointed him to take care of the parish, until the new archbishop should nominate another curÉ. He earnestly requested their prayers both for the parish under such circumstances, and for the person to be named. In every parish the responsibility was great, but peculiarly so there, where not only so much good was to be done, but where the example would have a wide influence on others. The curÉ is much to be compassionated with the care of 50,000 souls. The time would allow him but a short exhortation to them. He then read a few prayers: gave out a neuvaine of prayers beginning on that day, and preceding the feast of the Assumption, to be directed for the tranquillity and well-being of France, by order of the vicars general. It was not, of course, of obligation. The Psalm Miserere should be said each day, and "SacrÉ Coeur de JÉsus, prenez pitiÉ de nous. Coeur immaculÉ de Marie, priez pour nous." He then read the account of the Transfiguration, and began with remarking on the wisdom of the Church in bringing before us at stated times particular subjects of contemplation. Thus the thought of heaven, which the Transfiguration suggested, she called to our minds on the Second Sunday of Lent, and on Ascension Day, and on All Saints. It was a thought peculiarly necessary and good for us. What would our life with all its pains and afflictions be, without heaven? How could we understand anything that passed here below? "car la terre sans le ciel serait la negation la plus formelle de Dieu." Without the thought of heaven we should be exposed continually to two opposite dangers,—on the one hand despair, on the other too great attachment to the world. M. PÉtÉtot's delivery is particularly graceful, and has something quite paternal and attaching in it. I thought his dress most becoming; over the baue he wore a canon's tippet, dark, and bordered with pink, while his stole, embroidered with gold and joined over the breast, contrasted well with the other colours. No more consummate bÊtise have we committed, than the giving up the proper dress of the clergy; and assuredly never was there a greater mistake, than to consider it a question of superficial importance. Alas! for the day of coldness and neglect, when the English priest changed his cassock for the layman's coat. But I fear the outward form seldom fails to be an index of the inward spirit; the body here is the clothing of the soul. From the time the chasuble was relinquished, the keys were no longer used, and both, I believe, will be restored or remain in abeyance together.

At three, a sermon at La Madeleine on humility: it was a good plain discourse, setting it forth as the first and most necessary of Christian graces, springing from the consciousness of our personal sin and misery, in feeling which consisted the precept, and in desiring to be treated accordingly the counsel or perfection of humility. This was followed by the Benediction, in which were the prayers for the neuvaine.

Dined with M. Martin de Noirlieu. He said the archbishop's death had been an Époque for the Church. His funeral was a real triumphal procession, such as France had not seen since the great revolution. Seven hundred priests took part in it. His body was borne uncovered. Every one, especially the military, pressed to touch it, so that the white gloves and stockings became quite black. An intense feeling had been excited by his sacrifice: the people had never been so well disposed to the Church. It looked to the priests now for comfort and support, and had confidence in them. He saw daily the effects of this in his parish. He had been treated with more respect to-day than he had ever known before. A movement towards religion was certainly begun in France, which must go on; it would require time, but it would spread wide. Catholicism was still a power in France; and, what was very certain, it must be either this or nothing. There was no inclination to Protestantism. Some Protestant ministers wished to bless the trees of liberty, but the people would not hear of it. "Who are you?" they said; "we want the priests of Pie Neuf." He said the republic was hated and could not last: already Henri Cinq was in many mouths. What was very remarkable in the archbishop's death was, that he was not at all likely to have done such a thing. It was not in his character. He had a great dread of death. At twelve o'clock on the Sunday he had not thought of it: he then hastily dined and set off with his vicars general to M. Cavaignac. The enthusiasm which his presence everywhere produced was wonderful. The soldiers rendered him martial honours by a spontaneous feeling, and the people knelt for his blessing. That passage on foot was a triumphal march. In the midst of his agony he said, "Eloignez vous, mes amis; je ne vous Édifie pas." M. de Noirlieu and his brother, a young priest, asked many questions about the movement in England. The view he had taken was, that Puseyism would lay hold of many Catholic truths which it found in antiquity, such as the sacrifice of the Mass, but would not admit that extension of power which was now claimed for the Pope. He observed, however, that those who went over took the most extreme line of Ultra-Montanism. The appointment of Hampden must have done us much injury. I observed that among them the Church was working under such oppression that anything but Catholicism would be destroyed by it. For instance, in every commune the schoolmaster, generally a person without faith, is set up by the government as an antagonist to the priest. The attempt to make education a mere affair of the state was thoroughly anti-christian. He agreed that it was only the "sÊve intarissable" of Catholicism, ever mounting up afresh, which kept them alive. M. de Noirlieu has juster notions of the English Church, and makes larger allowances in favour of our state, than any other ecclesiastic I have met.

Monday, August 7.—I was at Notre Dame by half past eight, for the ceremony in honour of the archbishop. The church became gradually very crowded. I was in time to get a seat very near the pulpit. Mass began at ten. Most of the clergy of Paris were present; some representatives; the Cardinal de la Tour d'Auvergne, a venerable old man of 80, who officiated; the Bishop of Langres; and the Bishop of Quimper. Just before eleven M. L'abbÉ Coeur began his funeral oration, which lasted two hours and forty-three minutes. When about half over, the poor old cardinal, who, of course, was fasting, could hold out no longer; he was obliged to go out, and finished the Mass in silence in the choir, while the sermon continued. Thus its inordinate length broke the order of the service. The preacher was not without merit, but his delivery was very bad, and he was obliged continually to spit; an operation which would come on in the middle of a sentence, and was once repeated six times in the most disagreeable manner. The eloquence of Demosthenes himself could not have sustained such an interruption; and I could not help wishing that the PÈre Lacordaire, whom I saw present, had been in his place. The sermon contained a sketch of the life and labours of the archbishop, especially praising his simplicity, learning, courage, complete independence of state or personal interests. That he had fully understood the mission of the Church in these latter times, to consummate the alliance between religion and his country. He had it much at heart to form in the Ancienne Maison des Carmes, rendered so illustrious by the blood of martyrs in 1792, a new school of prophets, eminent at once for science, piety, and courage. He was a great encourager of learning in the clergy. Their efforts in behalf of "la libertÉ d'enseignement," would be the honour of the French episcopate in the eyes of posterity. The archbishop was powerful in his life, but much more so in his death. His death was the real apology of the sacerdoce, which had been attacked. It could not be defended by books; it required a martyrdom: "le martyre est un grand maÎtre de la raison; il ne discute pas, il montre." A hundred years of teaching could not have proved what his blood shed in the Faubourg S.Antoine had established. Nor was his death brought about by an "entrainement du caractÈre: c'est l'apologie du sacerdoce et du Christianisme." The preacher dwelt at great length on the "new times,"—that the Church was essentially indifferent to all governments: it was the life of humanity. He then gave a Christian explanation of liberty, equality, fraternity; and finished with an address to the archbishop: they did not believe that he needed their prayers, which, however, they would offer for him.

This sermon, besides its inordinate length, was deficient in connection and choice of subjects: it was far too general. Had it been well delivered, parts would have been very interesting; but, considering that the occasion was quite unique—the death of an archbishop and martyr—it must be considered a failure. I was more than five hours and a half in Notre Dame.

Went to M. des Billiers, who conducted me to the Couvent des Oiseaux, for the SupÉrieure of which le PÈre de Ravignan had given me a letter. The Sisters of Notre Dame were founded by the Bienheureux Fourrier, for the purpose of educating. But their houses, though conducted on the same principles, are independent. This is of very great extent,—has a very handsome chapel, with oak fittings, and a rich marble altar; a very costly library, including a large collection of engravings of different schools, museum of natural history, and every thing which can contribute to the ordinary education of young ladies. Nothing that I have seen in Paris interested me more than this house; nor was I ever more struck with the advantages which la vie de communautÉ presents. There are here, between mÈres and soeurs, 116 religieuses, who are occupied in directing the education of 240 girls; at least, there were this number before the events of February: there are at present only 50; but it is just before the vacation, and a large number have been withdrawn, either from the fears of their parents, or their inability, since those events, to pay the pension. They employ, besides, sixteen masters, for music, languages, &c. The terms are 1800 francs a-year. There are one hundred pianos in the house, and every thing that I saw was on a like scale of abundance and richness. They attend Mass daily. We went to a Benediction in the chapel; and after this the aumonier conducted us all over the house,—the class-rooms, dortoirs, garden, &c. A religieuse sleeps in each dortoir; the beds have not even curtains, so that there is the most perfect surveillance. A pupil is never left with a master alone, but one of the sisters is present at the lessons. No private establishment could possibly compete with this: three millions of francs, the almoner told us, had been laid out upon it, first and last; every thing is done for the pupils by the religieuses, nor have they any servants, save for the garden. They give, besides, instruction gratuitously to a large number of poor children, separately from their pensionnaires. The almoner told us he gave two instructions to the upper, and two to the lower classes, every week. He had got together an immense collection of maps and engravings, a volume for each department of France, in order that the pupils might have pictures of all that was described to them; for which he quoted to me—

The great extent of this house, the number of the rooms, the perfection of all its accommodations, astonished me. The number of teachers, in comparison to the taught, is far beyond anything we have; not less difference is there in the pains taken with their religious instruction, and the moral surveillance exercised over them. But the most pleasing thought of all was, that personal interest was not the prime agent, nor an agent at all in this. These nuns acquire nothing from their pupils personally: the house, it is true, is necessarily supported by the pensions; but all that remains goes to the instruction of the poor, or the decoration of the chapel, or the advantage of future generations of scholars in the accommodations of the house. The teachers do not get rich upon the taught, not to speak of the poor who are instructed gratuitously at the same time. The number of persons engaged allows of the greatest attention being paid to any individual case requiring it, and the primum mobile is charity. How great the superiority in all points of view to any private establishment. Gain entering in changes the motive of all this: from a work of love, it becomes a profession; self-sacrifice vanishes, as personal interest appears. They have English and Irish pupils here, as well as of other nations: even some Protestants. The garden is quite sufficient for all purposes of recreation. The age of the pupils ranges from ten to eighteen or twenty. Some remain till they marry.

Accompanied M. Bonnetty to Lady —— in the evening.

Tuesday, August 8.—My visit to the Couvent des Oiseaux yesterday sharpened me for that to the Dames du SacrÉ Coeur to-day. Le PÈre de Ravignan had given me a note to Madame D'Avenas. We had a great deal of talk with her, which not unfrequently took a controversial turn; and she seemed particularly well informed on such points. The congregation of SacrÉ Coeur was only founded, she told us, in 1800; they now have about fifty houses in France, three in Rome, others in Piemont (lately sequestrated by the state), in the United States, one at Acton, near London,—in all, about seventy. At eighteen they may commence a noviciate, which lasts two years: they can then take the vows for five years: at the end of which time, being of twenty-five years at least, they can, if they please, take the final and irrevocable vows. There are one hundred Sisters in this house, which is the old palace of the Ducs de Biron, in the Rue de Varennes, having a garden of immense extent behind it. Their scholars, before the events of February, amounted to 160: all is done for them by the sisters, who have no servants, except for the garden. They have masters for the different arts: the pension, exclusive of these masters, is 1000 francs. The SupÉrieure GÉnÉrale of all these seventy houses resides here. They are founded uniquely for education. Some of the class-rooms are very magnificent—the old reception rooms of the palace. But, generally speaking, the house is not equal in its extent or fitting up to Les Oiseaux; but the garden is far more extensive. Madame D'Avenas walked over it with us; and amid its groves one can hardly believe that one is in Paris. Both Madame D'Avenas and M. des Billiers attacked me on the state of separation of the English Church, and the schism it had thereby incurred: this, I said, depended on the degree to which the Papal claim is true.

Called on M. ——, who gave me a deplorable account of the state of things here: that the chiefs of the party for the RÉpublique Rouge—Louis Blanc, Caussidiere, and Ledru Rollin—were supported by General Cavaignac secretly: that the rapport just given to the AssemblÉe had re-awakened the most furious passions, and that a fresh insurrection might break out at any time.

In the evening called to thank the bishop of Langres for the service he has been to me in procuring for me the company of M. des Billiers, who, together with M. Farel, his Vicaire GÉnÉral, returned with me and talked some time.

Wednesday, August 9.—Went with M. Farel over the Carmes, the scene of the massacre of 175 priests on September 2, 1792, among whom were the Archbishop of Arles, and the Bishop of Saintes. The SupÉrieur conducted us over the house and garden; he showed us the room in which the revolutionary tribunal sat; the passage through which the victims were hurried to be dispatched; and at the bottom of the garden the orangery, now a chapel, into which they fled, and which retains on its floor, and on the seat which runs along its inner wall, numerous traces of blood. There is, especially, the mark of a head on the bench, where the crown of hair is still visible, which must have been dripping with blood to have left such a trace. No spot in Paris has such interest for me as this: none is so glorious to the Church of France: none carries such an omen of future triumphs. Between this orangery and the house is a small circular piece of water, on the edge of which several likewise were massacred. In a small vaulted chamber, up stairs, are the marks of three rapiers against the wall, which the assassins, sleeping there at night, seem to have put to stand there, dropping with blood. And in this very room Madame Tallien, the Empress Josephine, and the Duchess D'Aiguillon were confined seventeen days, as appears by an inscription in pencil on the wall, asking how long liberty should be a vain name, and signed "Citoyenne Tallien, Josephine Beauharnais, D'Aiguillon." Even here the reminiscences of this house do not stop;—in the garret many of the Girondins were confined, and the walls are covered with their indignant remarks; many from the Latin poets, in heathen style,—some written in pencil, some in their blood. It is a curious contrast, as one turns away from this chamber, to see over another door one of the old inscriptions of the Carmelites remaining:—"Quod delectat, momentum est: quod cruciat, Æternum est." It is, as the late archbishop said, "le monde PaÏen, and le monde ChrÉtien, vis-À-vis." He had purchased this house as a place for the encouragement of the higher studies of theology among the clergy; the design was not completed at his death, but there are about forty here, of whom twelve are masters. He has added another to the noble band of martyrs, the unequalled patrimony of this building: his heart has just been carried to the chapel, where we saw it in a glass case. Surely neither their blood, nor his, has been shed in vain. He seems to me worthy to rank with the Archbishop of Arles, who, when his name was called out by the murderers, stepped forth from amid the priests seeking to shelter him, and said, "C'est moi. Je suis celui que vous cherchez." He was struck down and massacred. The same power enabled the late archbishop, not a man careless of his life, nor of great physical courage, to present himself fearlessly among enraged combatants, and when suffering extreme tortures from his wound not even once to ask his physician for aid. If ever any sacrifice was voluntary, it was his: and this notion of making expiation with his blood for his flock seems to have given him supernatural force.

The AbbÉ des Billiers had got me a ticket for the distribution of prizes at the Institution des Aveugles. The crowns and books were almost as numerous as at the petit sÉminaire: here, however, the ceremony had an especial interest, as all the scholars had to surmount exceeding obstacles arising from their loss of sight. There were, notwithstanding, a great number of subjects for which prizes were given; and the whole was terminated by a concert, in which the boys and girls were performers. Music is one of the things in which they most excel, and the source, doubtless, to them of peculiar enjoyment—the sensations it excites may replace to them, in some degree which we cannot imagine, the loss of sight. This spectacle, however, is not without pain, as well as interest, to the beholders, as I experienced in going over the house itself a few days ago.

Thursday, August 10.—M. Farel took me to the Dames de la Visitation, Rue d'Enfer. As they are cloitrÉes, we could not see their house, but we conversed a little with the SupÉrieure. M. Farel said smilingly to her that they looked to the prayers and intercessions of the visitandines for the maintenance of public tranquillity; and when the affairs of the Church did not go well, it was because the visitandines did not do their duty. Vraiment, the SupÉrieure replied, not displeased at the remark; and then she sent for four English sisters, with whom I had a long talk. Three of these English sisters had been converted, one, eight years ago, from a state of utter unbelief; the other two, six and three years ago, being members of the Church of England. The fourth was born a Catholic. None had any distinct idea of the Church of England. They all expressed themselves delighted with their condition. There are several months of trial before admission to the noviciate, which lasts at least a year and a day, after which they may take the final vows. They told me it not unfrequently happened that persons wishing to remain, and having apparently all the dispositions suitable for the religious life, were refused by the superiors, but that their judgment had never been known to have been deceived in those whom they accepted: a special light was given them to that end. The primary object of their order was prayer and intercession, and they received among them persons labouring under various bodily infirmities, who would not be accepted elsewhere; their rule was not severe as to bodily austerities. Their founder, S.FranÇois de Sales, had assured them that the number of infirm persons they admitted would never be so large as to diminish the efficacy of the order. They likewise had schools attached to their houses; but no nun was occupied more than two hours a-day in school. They have about 180 houses—one in England, at Westbury, near Bristol; some in the United States. The number in each house was thirty-three, but in the great towns they passed this number. Before the events of February they had sixty pupils. I observed that the not knowing or not considering the careful attention paid to the subject of vocation was the cause of many prejudices in England against the religious orders. One of the four, a novice, said, when she came to visit her sister, before her conversion, she had the greatest dread of entering the house, but she had found it quite different from what she expected. We had a great deal of conversation about late conversions, that of Mr. Newman especially. I said, Roman Catholics in England seemed to me to commit a great fault, and especially converts. The moment they had left us, it seemed their object to depreciate to the utmost the Church of England; instead of allowing what we undoubtedly possessed, and pointing out with charity and kindness the particulars in which they presume us to be deficient, they delight to condemn us en masse, in the most harsh and insulting manner. I noticed the Tablet as instinct with this spirit; and when this came from men who for years had been fighting on our side, it was the more offensive. It was in strong contrast with the charity and kindness one met with in Roman Catholics abroad.

Called on Lady ——, who had asked me to dine with her to-morrow. She spoke to me seriously on a subject which, she said, had been much upon her mind. Living for a long time among Roman Catholics, she had come to the knowledge of a vast number of answers to prayer addressed through the Blessed Virgin to God. Without rejecting evidence which on any other subject she should admit to be conclusive, she could not refuse her belief to the efficacy of these prayers, and yet her whole mind revolted from addressing an invocation to the Blessed Virgin. Moreover, she believed that, in the minds of the ignorant and superstitious in the Roman Communion, the Blessed Virgin was an obstacle to their approaching God,—they stopped with her. And yet these prayers were undoubtedly answered. Did God then vouchsafe a reply to the love which evidently dictated these prayers? To her Protestantism seemed to have called forth the manly virtues, independence and self-possession; whereas Catholicism developed itself in far greater tenderness of spirit and affection. She showed me a passage from Padre Ventura, strongly setting forth the paternity of God the Father and the maternity of the Blessed Virgin in parallelism, and compassionating those who held either without the other. But to Protestants the Blessed Virgin was a merely historical being, having no present existence; they did not mean to dishonour her, but they simply never thought about her.

I said it appeared to me that the Intercession of the Saints for the Church on earth and its particular members could not but be an essential part of the Communion of Saints, and this once being granted, the pre-eminent position of the Blessed Virgin accounted for the effects wrought by her intercession; that those who had carried her power to the highest yet made it a simply intercessory power. "Monstra te esse matrem" was the highest exhibition of her authority. When the mind comes to reflect upon her, and the position she holds, so unapproachable by any other creature, it can hardly fail to come to these results. The greater tenderness and devotion of spirit discernible among Roman Catholics must be on account of their so vividly realising the Communion of Saints, and this specially in the case of the Blessed Virgin. We must not reason from the ignorant and superstitious members of the Roman Church, any more than from the apathy and utter deadness of heart and irreverence apparent in so many of our own people. The cultus of the saints may be idolatry to those who do not realise the ineffably higher office of our Lord. I can conceive their asking, What good can the bones of dead men do? But when the reality of Christ's presence in the tabernacles of their flesh is felt, I could not see how the grace and glory bestowed by the Head upon his members detracted from Himself, as the source and giver of it. The Communion of Saints, therefore, would account for the answers given to prayers for the intercession of the Blessed Virgin. But how could the Saints know of the prayers made to them? I said I saw no difficulty in the view of divines, that those who enjoyed the vision of God, beheld in Him the needs and requests of their brethren in the flesh.

Lady —— has an odd notion of the soul slumbering till the Resurrection, which, I said, she must allow me to say, was simply false doctrine.

I took leave of M. Bonnetty afterwards. M. Farel took me to the establishment of S.Nicolas, for the education of orphan and other children, and their apprenticing to various trades, Rue Vaugirard, 98. This has been set on foot and conducted for about twenty years by Monsignor de Bervanger. He has collected out of the streets of Paris a thousand gamins, whom he receives at a small pension—twenty francs a month for orphans, twenty-five for other children; lodges, boards, instructs, and teaches them a vast number of trades. Of these he has even at present seven hundred: but the Revolution of February has cost him a diminution of three hundred. Five hundred of the garde mobile, who lately saved Paris, have been brought up by him. He observes that the difficulty for children destined to live by manual labour is how to join elementary studies, especially that of religion, with their apprenticeship to a trade. Without religion a workman does not find in all his life rule for his conduct, consolation in his toils, or hope for the future. Thus establishments uniting these advantages answer a deep need of society, and this has been the chief aim of the Œuvre de S.Nicolas since its institution in 1827, i.e., to succour orphans, to give them a love of virtue and labour, and prepare them, by the practice of religious duties, to become not merely good workmen, but good Christians. For this purpose an hour and a quarter is given every day, except Thursday, to the study and explanation of the Catechism, the Gospel, and Sacred History. The pupils are arranged in fourteen divisions, according to their age and intelligence. They are taught by priests approved by the archbishop—these are ever among them, not only in their work and studies, but at their recreations, instructing them to be content with the position assigned to them by Providence, and to bless Him amid the most painful toils and privations, out of regard to an eternal recompense—sentiments which the example of these priests in surrendering themselves to so charitable and self-denying a life must be very powerful in inspiring.

The children are specially instructed and prepared for their first communion and confirmation.

The establishment has within it twenty-five ateliers for pupils whose parents or guardians desire to leave their children till the end of their apprenticeship; for the children only attend these workshops on an express request. Care will be taken to put to good Christian masters the children not able to profit by this advantage. A great number of those brought up here are already set at the head of these workshops. Their younger brethren will find with them the same religious usages, and as it were the same family.

They are occupied in these workshops eight and a half hours a day. They have a class two hours every day, except their friends desire them to pass this time in the workshop, to perfect themselves in their employment. If their work should be suspended, they attend the classes.

The apprenticeship lasts two, three, or four years, according to the trade. When finished they may remain in the establishment; and what they earn beyond their maintenance may be deposited in a savings' bank. The parents can select for their children what trade they like, after considering their tastes, physical powers, and intelligence. Though these workshops are an increase of charge to the establishment, yet, as it does not seek to make a pecuniary speculation, the payment for the children in them is no larger than for the youngest, though their board is more expensive. Moreover, those who work require a larger amount of food.

All the earnings of the apprentices belong to the masters of the workshops, who have thus an interest in their progress, and in conforming themselves to the rules of the house, from which they are liable to be dismissed. On their side, they provide the tools. They have no power to inflict punishments, but report to the brethren.

The studies comprehend reading, writing, arithmetic, and orthography; the elements of French grammar, geography, and history; analysis of grammar and logic; book-keeping, linear-drawing, practical geometry, vocal music, the most complete instrumental music, gymnastics, and swimming; such primary instructions in natural philosophy, chemistry, and natural history, as are applicable to daily life; mensuration and horticulture.

The children do not remain in study more than two hours and a half following, nor occupied on the same subject more than from half an hour to an hour and a half. Those not in the workshops have eight hours of class and study, excepting the youngest, who have only six, as they rise later. Each class has from fifty to seventy scholars at most.

There is a small examination several times a year.

The food is prepared by sisters of charity. It is wholesome and plentiful, and shared by the masters. There is breakfast, dinner, and supper, besides the goÛter.

Sisters of charity take charge of the infirmary, kitchens, refectory, linen, and washing: "they know that all holiness which isolates us from those who have need of our assistance is false."

Most careful provision is made for the cleanliness of the children. Warm water is supplied in winter; baths at all times. Every child is supplied yearly with a pair of summer and winter pantaloons new; those of the year preceding become every day's clothing.

House-work, in which the brethren have aid from the children out of class time, is paid to them. Long experience shows how much better for the children this is than when it is made a punishment. Moreover, some children have such need of motion, that great harm may be done them if it be refused them.

"All which appears low to the eyes of men, is an object of emulation among religious, whose vocation aims at the most perfect conformity with the counsels and example of our divine Saviour. Like Him, they dare to touch the Leper banished from man's society; like Him, they despise Pharisaic censure. They would deem themselves unworthy to belong in so privileged a manner to the service of a crucified God, if their heart was under the influence of human opinion, if regards even to their health, which a sensitive conscience often shows them to be superfluous, could arrest them in the accomplishment of their labours."

The brethren sleep in the dormitories among the children. One of them invariable keeps watch in these dormitories, which are lighted. The most careful and rigorous surveillance is exercised. The eldest rise at 5½; the youngest at 7. In winter they go to bed at 8; in summer at 8¾. Good marks are given to the children, which three times a year are exchanged for books, &c. Marks of conduct, work, and application, for each week, are hung up in the parloir. So likewise the places obtained in the compositions of the week; and the notes of three months, which are sent to friends. Pupils who constantly maintain themselves on the table of good conduct for three months are entitled to a reward. There is a solemn distribution of prizes every year before the short vacation, on the Sunday following 15th of August.

Extraordinary recreations are provided at times; as in summer a long promenade, in which the pupils take with them a day's provisions.

During the recreations of each day, the brethren make themselves children with their pupils, authority disguising itself under the shape of affection. This is the most favourable moment for studying character. They endeavour to gain the confidence of those in whom they have observed bad dispositions by employing the most attractive means of religion, and they have often the consolation of making them teachable and happy.

It is a great point to occupy the children during their recreation, and so to brace the body by exercise, that their nights may be sound and their health good.

Parents can see their children any day, but only at play time, and when they are not in disgrace. They cannot take their children out but on a few particular days.

Punishments are inflicted as sparingly as possible. No master may strike a child.

Children are received from eight to twelve years old. Those under ten are sent in general to the Maison succursale, at Issy. Twenty francs' entrance are paid besides the pension. The number is limited to 1000.

We had first an interview with Monsignor de Bervanger, the founder of this work, to whom, I should think, it must supply perpetual occupation. He sent a most pleasing boy round with us to the different parts of the establishment. In many of the various ateliers work has been suspended; this is an effect of the revolution: in many we saw the pupils at work under their 'chef.' They reach such perfection in their work, as to obtain an easy sale for it, and to gain their subsistence. A large number were playing in high spirits. The premises are necessarily of great extent, and certainly it is a bold and immense experiment, and most interesting. It is not the least astonishing that Monsignor de Bervanger set it on foot without private funds: but its maintenance involves a large degree of ever active charity, both in the brothers of S.Nicolas, who teach these boys, that would otherwise be the refuse of Paris, and who eat and sleep in the midst of them, and in the Sisters of Charity, by whom the kitchen, infirmary, refectory, &c. are served. Thus without the 'celibat' in both sexes, this and every other work of high charity falls to the ground. Not only on the score of expense would it be impossible to conduct such a house without the aid of those who disregard money altogether as a remuneration; not only would it be difficult to find so total a surrender of time and of the whole man in any who had household ties to bind them: but as certain devils cannot be cast out "save by prayer and fasting," so there would seem to be a like proportion of means to end in particular applications of the Cross's healing power. It would appear to be a necessary condition for the restoration of the suffering masses of society, that the highest blessing of the natural man—family life—should be voluntarily surrendered by those who are to be God's instruments in this special work. They who are seen amid the toil and sweat of every day's task to be living a supernatural life of charity,—they, and they alone, can gain the affection of the world's outcasts, and lighten the burden of the Cross which they have first themselves so borne. As I went over this house, and saw its inmates, I comprehended in some faint degree the amount of charity which such a life must require. The musical service, performed by these children themselves on Sunday, is described as very well done, and very interesting. Many of their friends come to hear. I thought their chapel confined for so large a number.

A little book which Monsignor de Bervanger gave us contains a pretty full account of this institution, from which I have taken many particulars given above. He observed that an Englishman not long before had paid them several visits. He was most struck by the terms of intimacy in which the masters lived with the pupils. This has also struck me pointedly wherever I have seen educational institutions in France. There the wall of separation does not seem to exist, which shuts out the English tutor or master from the real state of his pupil's mind, from his prevailing habits, and natural tone of thought. With us, the boy before his master, and the boy by himself or with his schoolfellows, are two beings wholly distinct. Seldom, indeed, can the tutor get at the real living soul with whom he has to deal; still seldomer mould and direct the development of his moral powers. It is, to the best of my belief, a generic difference between Anglican and Roman Catholic education.

As we were walking home, M. Farel told me that in the diocese of Langres alone there were five hundred institutions of Sisters of Charity. "Do you not mean," I said, "five hundred Sisters?" "No," he replied; "not a commune is without them." I asked to how many several parent houses they might belong: he said, to about five. Thus the Sisters of S.Vincent de Paul only form a portion of those dedicated to this work.

Friday, Aug. 11.—I copied the rest of the account of the cure which happened to the novice at the Rue du Bac. The Sisters asked me if I had seen the child who was cured of blindness. I said I had, and that she seemed to me of very limited intelligence, and extremely simple. One of them answered, "Yes; I asked her what she thought when she recovered her sight, to which she replied, 'C'Était drÔle À voir.'" While I was sitting among a number of the Sisters of Charity transcribing the account, their great cheerfulness—one might almost call it merriment—of tone was remarkable; they were those engaged in the general management of the house at the SecrÉtariat. There is something too in their faces which indicates inward peace. They look happy. I took the opportunity of reading the pastoral letter of the AbbÉ Etienne, their superior general, in which the account of the cures was contained. It was written to encourage them amid the unsettled state of public affairs. He reminded them that the Revolution of 1830 opened with a much more threatening aspect towards religion; and yet the period of eighteen years which they had since passed through had been one of unexampled progress and prosperity to their Institution. The times in which their founder S.Vincent de Paul lived were likewise most unsettled, but he only saw in that a larger opportunity for charitable exertions; he had promised his children, that so long as they were faithful to their rules the Divine protection should never fail them, and God had, beyond doubt, granted these two miraculous cures to the intercessions of S.Vincent at the opening of another momentous crisis to assure them that their Saint had not lost his power with God. He felt the greatest confidence in their zeal and charity and spirit of union, which made his own task light. Before leaving the house I visited their chapel again, which has to me a peculiar interest, on account of what is said to have taken place there.

I here insert the account of the cures, which I copied from the original, and the attestations, which I procured from the two surgeons who had treated the several cases. The superior-general thus introduces the mention of these two cures:—"This is not all, my very dear Sisters. At a time when, perhaps, yet greater trials are in store for the Church and for us, and when, perhaps, likewise, yet greater mercies are to reward our faith, God has thought fit to set, as it were, the seal of His Omnipotence on our confidence, and to show by prodigies all the power of S.Vincent's protection at the throne of Divine Goodness. Two astonishing cures have taken place this year before the shrine of S.Vincent, during the 'neuvaine' of the translation of his relics. I do not qualify them as miracles, because the ecclesiastical authority alone has the power so to term them. But my heart feels the need of bringing to your knowledge the details concerning them, because I know all the joy and edification which you will experience in them, and how proper you will esteem them to encourage you to draw closer the ties which bind you to your holy calling, and to lead you to appreciate the designs of God for our two families, if we are faithful in corresponding to them. I shall preface the account of each healing by the certificate of the medical man, which sets forth the state of the patient at the moment when it took place."

"Attestation du chirurgien sur la maladie de la soeur Marie Javelle.

"Le 2 Mai 1848 j'ai ÉtÉ appelÉ au couvent de la rue du Bac, n^o 132, pour la soeur Marie Javelle, ÂgÉe de 24 ans, que j'ai trouvÉe couchÉe, ayant la tÊte inclinÉe sur l'Épaule gauche, qu'elle touchait presque, avec raideur des muscles du cou, impossibilitÉ de la ramener À sa position naturelle, et douleur vive, augmentÉe par les moindres mouvements. On m'apprit que cet État avait ÉtÉ la suite immÉdiate d'un coup violent, portÉ par mÉgarde sur la tempe droite. "M. Lenoir, chirurgien de l'hÔpital Necker, vit cette malade avec moi le lendemain 3 Mai. Sans rejeter la possibilitÉ d'un simple torticolis, nous eÛmes, ensemble, la pensÉe d'un dÉplacement d'une apophyse articulaire du cÔtÉ gauche de l'une des derniÈres vertÈbres cervicales.

"Le danger de la rÉduction de ces dÉplacements, que nous fÎmes connaÎtre À la supÉrieure, l'absence jusqu'ici d'accidents graves, nous dÉterminÈrent À nous borner À l'application des moyens propres À calmer la contraction des muscles du cou.

"Les jours suivants, les accidents augmentÈrent. Il survint de la fiÈvre, la tÊte s'inclina davantage sur l'Épaule; la malade eut de la peine À boire, ce dont je m'assurai en lui voyant avaler, par saccades convulsives, quelques gorgÉes de liquide. Le bras gauche devint douloureux jusqu'À la main, dont le contact retentissait pÉniblement jusqu'au cou; il Était dans une extension continuelle, avec raideur tÉtanique qui ne me permit point de le changer de place. Le membre infÉrieur gauche, d'abord engourdi À sa partie supÉrieure, prÉsenta aussi de la raideur.

"La respiration Était un peu gÊnÉe. Les facultÉs intellectuelles conservaient leur pleine intÉgritÉ. Les choses Étaient dans cet État le 8 Mai, À sept heures et demie du matin. Nous avions exprimÉ des craintes plus graves que les jours prÉcÉdents. La supÉrieure n'avait pas osÉ permettre des tentatives de rÉduction dont nous avions annoncÉ les consÉquences possibles, auxquelles la malade, bien rÉsignÉe, se serait prÊtÉe volontiers.

"Le 9 Mai, À sept heures et demie du matin, sans aucune manoeuvre chirurgicale qui soit À ma connaissance, j'ai vu dans le cabinet de la soeur Buchepot (premiÈre directrice du noviciat de la communautÉ) la jeune soeur Marie Javelle, debout, marchant facilement, portant sans effort sa main sur sa tÊte, celle-ci revenue À sa rectitude naturelle, le cou ayant repris sa forme, sa souplesse, et exÉcutant tous les mouvements.

"Paris, le 10 Mai, 1848."

Having forwarded my copy of the above to M. Hervey de Chegoin, he returned it to me, with the following attestation, written at the end:—

"Je certifie cette copie conforme au procÈs-verbal que j'ai avÉrÉ de la maladie de la soeur Marie Javelle.

""Hervey de Chegoin,
"MÉdecin des hÔpitaux, &c."

Accompanying it with the following note:—

"Monsieur, j'ai signÉ bien volontiers la copie que vous m'avez adressÉe: elle est aussi exacte que le procÈs-verbal lui-mÊme est l'expression de la vÉritÉ dans l'exposÉ des symptÔmes pendant huit jours, et de leur disparition subite et complÈte aprÈs la circonstance qui l'a prÉcÉdÉe.

"J'ai l'honneur d'Être,
"Monsieur,

"Votre trÈs obÉissant serviteur,
"Hervey de Chegoin.

"31 Juillet, 1848."

The relation of the cure itself is as follows:—

"Detailed relation of the healing of the Sister Marie Javelle.

"The Sister Marie Javelle, twenty-four years of age, after having proposed three months at S.Stephen, entered into the community of the Daughters of Charity, Feb.17. 1848. Having been appointed to nurse in one of the infirmaries on the night of 30th April to 1st May, in supporting a patient who fell back on her head, she twisted her neck, and so considerable a derangement took place, that it continued in that position. The next day inflammation ensued, and the surgeons called in were themselves alarmed at the gravity of the accident. Before attempting an operation as dangerous as the injury, and which, touching the spinal marrow, might cause instant death, all remedies were tried, but to no purpose. The nerves contracted, the head became stiffly fixed on the shoulders, presently the arm and left leg became paralysed, and the pains so violent, that at times the patient feared not being able to bear them. All her hope was in God: she begged of him courage, resigned herself to His will, and besought much the Blessed Virgin, whom she tenderly loves, and who has already given her special marks of protection. At length came Sunday, 7th May, day on which commenced the 'neuvaine' of the translation of S.Vincent de Paul. That day she had the consolation of communicating in bed, with a morsel of the Host, for her throat being twisted, she joined to her other sufferings that of not being able to swallow more than some drops of water, and that with incredible effort and pain. She expressed a desire to make, in union with the Seminary, a 'neuvaine' to S.Vincent to obtain a cure. On Monday the surgeon declared, that he had no hope but in the success of the operation, and dangerous as it was he pressed it. It was thought requisite to speak plainly to the patient, and tell her, that she would either be healed by means of the operation, or remain an invalid all her life, asking her which she preferred. I shall be composed, she replied, in doing the will of my Superiors, being assured that I am doing that of God. However, it was resolved to finish the 'neuvaine' before attempting anything. Sister Mazin, our most honoured mother, had sent her before a morsel of the waistcoat of our blessed Father S.Vincent. In the night of the 7th to 8th May the patient had the strange fancy to swallow a morsel of this. Not venturing to do it without speaking, she waited till the morning, when, by help of a little water, she swallowed some threads. Scarcely had she done so, when she felt the most perfect conviction that she should not die, and that she should obtain her cure by the intercession of S.Vincent. At one in the afternoon, seeing near her one of the directresses of the seminary, she told her, that could she see the Saint's shrine, and touch it, she should be immediately cured. It was observed to her that this latter was impossible; but she so urged the former, that we were touched by it, and endeavoured from that time to find means to satisfy her keen desire. With the consent of our excellent superiors, a litter was procured; it was arranged as well as we could: and after passing a whole hour in dressing her suitably, at four in the morning on Tuesday, 9th May, she was put on the litter, and the dangerous passage from our house to the chapel of S.Vincent de Paul was undertaken. She was accompanied by the Sister Azais, Sister Girardot, second and third directresses of the seminary, Sister Martha Velay, formerly mother of the seminary, Sister Boscredon, employed in the seminary, Sister Bonneau, third infirmiÈre, who had herself attended on the young patient, by Dominic Belyn, called Louis, and John Scipio, called Baptist, both servants of the house, who carried the litter. During the passage the patient suffered much. In spite of herself complaints escaped her, and especially when the litter was set down in the church she felt so keen a pain that a cry burst from her. The moment she perceived the Saint's shrine, she looked at it with the most lively confidence, and felt an extraordinary movement in her person. At the beginning of Mass she felt inclined to join her hands; in fact, her left arm recovered the necessary strength, and her hand reached the other again. At the Gospel a movement like her first caused her to take her head with her hands, and turn it without difficulty to the other side. At the elevation of the Mass, Sister Azais, who was near her, told her to try and rise; she made the attempt, but was unable, and answered, that it was not yet time. She had continued to suffer much up to this point. At length the Communion was brought her. Her throat was so closed, that she felt a great pain, but this was the last. Some minutes afterwards she came down readily from the litter, unassisted by any one. After this Mass she heard, as a thanksgiving, that of M. Etienne, our superior general,—came back on foot, and from that day, far from preserving the least feeling of her injury, she is better than she ever was. This is attested by the sister on whom the miracle has taken effect, who has signed the present act, as have the witnesses named above.

"Marie Azais, Cecile Girardot, Marie Javelle, Marthe Velay, Justine Boscredon, Josephine Bonneau, Dominique Belyn, and Jean Scipion.

Note. "It is well to observe that, on the 2nd of May, the surgeon of the house, M. HervÉ de Chegoin, was called in alone to see Sister Marie Javelle, and the case appeared to him so grave, that, not liking the single responsibility of it, he begged to join a colleague, whom he brought the next day.

"The 8th of May, the last day on which M. HervÉ had seen her before her cure, he had found her so ill that, on the morrow, when he was told that Sister Javelle had no further need of his services, he asked if she was dead.

"The young sisters, then composing the seminary, begged that their names should be joined to this act, to attest its truth, and to put themselves in a special manner under the protection of S.Vincent. This writing being to be inclosed in a silver gilt heart joined by a chain of the same to a head in silver gilt likewise, the whole has been put into the hands of our most honoured father, M. Etienne, to be deposed on the shrine of the saint."

The second case is as follows:—

"Attestation du MÉdecin sur la Maladie de Madlle. CÉleste l'Allemand.

"Je soussignÉ, mÉdecin, demeurant À Paris, Rue Mouffetard, 94., certifie que la nommÉe Marie CÉleste l'Allemand, agÉe de quatorze ans, native de Jussy, dÉpartement de la Haute SaÔne, rÉsidant actuellement À Paris, Rue de l'Arbalette, 25., dans l'Ouvroir des Jeunes Economes, a ÉtÉ traitÉe par moi, puis par M. Sichel, pendant environ huit mois, pour une amaurose complÈte; et que les divers traitements employÉs, tant par moi que par mon confrÈre, n'ont nullement amÉliorÉ la position de cette jeune personne, quoiqu'ils aient variÉ À l'infini depuis le mois d'Octobre dernier jusqu'au mois d'Avril, oÙ elle a cessÉ tout traitement."

"SignÉ, Fernet, D. M.

"Paris, 23. Mai, 1848."

"Relation of the Miraculous cure of a Child of Mary, de l'Ouvroir des Jeunes Economes.

"We, the undersigned children de l'Ouvroir des Jeunes Economes, established at Paris, Rue de l'Arbalette, 25., certify the truth of the following details of the sudden cure of one of our dear companions, named CÉleste l'Allemand, child of Mary, of our ouvroir. This companion, aged fourteen, had entirely lost her sight from the month of September, 1847. Six medical men, successively called in to attend on her, had exhausted all the resources of their art upon her without obtaining the least result. They had declared that the optical nerves of our young companion were paralysed, and that she was struck with a complete amaurosis; consequently all medical treatment had ceased since last April.

"Painfully affected at this sad state of our companion, we resolved to consecrate to Mary the month of May, then beginning, in the intention of obtaining her cure by the intercession of the most holy Virgin. From the 1st of May our young companion went to pray every day before the altar of Mary, with the firm confidence that the immaculate Mary would restore her sight before the end of her favourite month. But on the 9th of May, the news of the striking cure worked on a young sister of the seminary of the Daughters of Charity, by the intercession of S.Vincent de Paul, and before his relics, exposed in the chapel of the Priests of the Mission on the occasion of the 'neuvaine,' celebrated yearly in honour of the translation of his body, suggested to us the desire to recommend our young companion to this great saint. Permission was granted to CÉleste l'Allemand to go to pray before the relics of S.Vincent de Paul. It was Friday, 12th May, on which she went to the chapel of the Lazarists, Rue de SÈvres, 95., accompanied by two of our mistresses, Sister Dumargat and Sister DesbrÉ. We were all fully convinced that she would obtain her cure by the intercession of Mary, our good [mother], and S.Vincent. Not being able to accompany CÉleste to the chapel of S.Vincent, we heard the holy Mass in the chapel of our house, uniting ourselves to her in heart and spirit. As to our companion, she heard a Mass celebrated at a quarter-past-six, before the altar of the holy Virgin in the chapel of the Lazarists, and received there the Holy Communion. At the moment she received our Lord, her sight was suddenly restored to her; and a violent pain in the head, which she had felt from the moment of her loss of sight, disappeared at the same time. The sister who accompanied her, ignorant of what had taken place in her, took her by the hand again, after the Holy Communion, to reconduct her to her place. Our young companion, fearing to disturb her in her thanksgiving, let her do so without informing her what had happened to her. But a quarter of an hour afterwards she made known to her her happiness; and to prove to her the reality of her complete cure, she changed her position herself, and named to her different surrounding objects, which she perfectly distinguished. After having heard a Mass of thanksgiving, she hastened to return to us, to make known to us her happiness. Though we expected to see her return healed, on account of the greatness and simplicity of her faith, a lively joy and gladness broke forth not the less in all the house on her arrival. It was who should see her first, to congratulate her on the signal favour of which she had just become the object. After this first explosion of our gladness, we assembled to chant in choir the Magnificat, during which tears of joy streamed from our eyes: then we went to the chapel to sing the Te Deum and the Regina Coeli. Immediately after, CÉleste wrote with her own hand a letter to her parents to inform them of her miraculous cure.

"Our young companion having been presented to M. Aladel, our good director, was named by him Marie Vincent, in gratitude for her cure, obtained at the altar of the Most Holy Virgin, in the chapel of S.Vincent, before his relics exposed.

"From the day of her cure, CÉleste has resumed all her ordinary occupations, which she had been forced to interrupt during nine months: she reads, writes, and works at her needle with the same ease as she did before her eyes were attacked.

"Paris, 30. May, 1848."

M. Fernet attached to this paper, which I gave him to read, the following:—

"Je soussignÉ, Docteur MÉdecin, demeurant Rue Mouffetard, 94., certifie la jeune Marie CÉleste L'Allemand a ÉtÉ revue par moi quelques jours aprÈs la guÉrison, et que je me suis assurÉ que la vue Était entiÈrement rÉtablie.

"Fernet.

"Paris, ce 1^er AoÛt, 1848."

After giving these two accounts, the Superior General, M. Etienne, thus continues his pastoral letter:—

"In presence of these facts, my very dear sisters, I am induced to remind you, that S.Vincent considered as a visible sign of the protection of heaven over your company the altogether wonderful manner in which one of his first daughters came out safe and sound from the midst of the ruins of a house in which she was, and which, in falling, had buried forty persons, who there perished. This fact was, in his eyes, a sensible proof that God had taken pleasure in his rising work, and reserved for it a comfortable future. It seems to me that if he were to speak to you himself to-day of the two cures which I have just been relating to you, he would not fail to point them out to you as testimonies of the designs of divine providence with regard to you, and as motives which should reassure you against all the fears that the disturbances of social order may inspire. Would he not say to you, as he said then, that your company being the work of God, in like manner as He has known how to raise it up in His compassion for the poor, so will He well know how to sustain it in the moment of trial, and to preserve it from every unfortunate event which might threaten its existence. I confess to you that at the sight of these signs of his protection, at a time which has so many points of resemblance with that in which he lived, I cannot avoid seeing the same career of charity which he so gloriously passed through open afresh before you. * *

"As a thanksgiving for the two miraculous cures worked on the 9th and 12th of last May before the shrine of S.Vincent, a general communion shall take place in each house on the day fixed by the Sister serving it."

In concluding this subject I must add that I by no means sought for such facts as these cures—they came in my way while engaged in other inquiries: I did not think it fit or honest to turn away from them so coming, but endeavoured to ascertain the truth by every means in my power. I now set them forth with the evidence which I was able to collect about them. I am also bound to say that, since I have come to the knowledge of these cures, I have been informed, on the best authority, of two results, approaching at least to the same miraculous character, following immediately from the reception of our Lord in the Holy Eucharist. These occurred very lately in the Anglican communion.

Saturday, August 12.—I had heard so much of the grandeur of Bourges Cathedral, and the beauty of its windows, that I determined to judge for myself. So this morning left by the 8 A.M. train for OrlÉans and Bourges. Up to Etampes the country is pleasing and broken in parts. From thence to the forest of OrlÉans is an immense plain, rich in produce, but treeless, dull, and flat as a pancake. From OrlÉans to Vierzon is another immense plain, desert, sandy, and solitary; after this the country improves to Bourges. Visited the cathedral at OrlÉans: the western front is fine, well arranged, and forming a somewhat striking unity; but the interior is bare, poor, and most displeasing to the eye, which is pained at so bad an imitation of Gothic. As soon as I reached Bourges I went to the cathedral: the west front, in spite of its five deeply recessed portals, the central one of which is very beautiful, sadly disappointed me—it is totally deficient in unity, and will bear no comparison with that of Amiens, not to mention Reims. The towers are positively ugly; the worst effect being produced by buttresses, which protrude in the most inelegant shape, their strength not at all veiled by ornaments. The interior is very grand: it is peculiar in having no transept, but double aisles continued throughout, the nearest of which to the centre is of inordinate height. Round the choir the huge lancet windows, crowned with roses, are of great beauty; but unfortunately they are not complete, as at Chartres, with the effect of which I do not think Bourges will bear a comparison. The pillars, of which there are twelve on each side from the west front to the apse of the choir, are cylinders with eight engaged columns; they look lighter than those of Amiens and Reims, and very lofty from the height of the first aisle, which must be seventy feet, and has a triforium like the centre. Grand, however, as Bourges is in some respects, I should not put it in the first rank of churches, with Amiens, Milan, Cologne, Reims, and St. Ouen. It is in the first style, like Chartres. The apse has none of the magic lightness of Amiens, Cologne, or St. Ouen. From the north tower is an immense view over the country, which has some eminences, but not strongly marked features.

In the streets nothing but soldiers or national guards are to be seen. It would appear that the purpose for which men are sent into the world is to bear arms. There could not be a heavier condemnation of the Republic than the outward aspect of society. There was, however, a special cause for this. Three hundred, I believe, of the national guard at Paris had come to visit their brethren at Bourges, and were to be entertained at dinner the next day in the garden of the archevÊchÉ, on which the state, with its usual insulting dealing towards the Church, has laid its hands from the time of the first revolution. So likewise, it has robbed the church at Bourges of the grand sÉminaire, an immense building, and turned it into barracks.

Sunday, August 13.—Was at a Low Mass and part of the High Mass in the cathedral. A great number of soldiers, guards, and country people enter in, and lounge and sit about, without a very religious demeanour. Called at one at the SÉminaire, with a letter for the SupÉrieur, M. l'AbbÉ Ruel. He talked with me some time, and then sent one of the sÉminarists and a priest to show me about Bourges. He inquired of the state of things in England; our studies at Oxford. I lamented our state of separation: if the religious feeling of England were united with the Roman Church, the world might be converted. In any case, the state of separation itself was most disastrous to both sides; it wasted the life of the Church. If the truth was altogether with them, as they asserted, then, of course, our loss was fatal indeed; but even then the Roman Church in the loss of England had suffered her right hand to be cut off. Whether we were with her or against her would make all the difference in her conflict with the world. He assented, and observed that England had been the island of saints. I afterwards remarked that my attention had been particularly drawn to the Roman Primacy. He said the disputes as to the Gallican liberties had fallen to the ground; but I thought he intimated that the Gallican feeling was not extinct. Whatever the theory might be, the sway of the Roman See was, in reality, very gentle. It felt its way beforehand, and only acted according to the spirit of the Church. I said my great difficulty was, that all history was for Gallicanism, while the Ultramontane theory was evidently the only entire and consistent one, which would bear out all the acts of Rome. I asked if the revolution had produced any change at Bourges. He said, none at all. Louis Philippe had fallen because he had sunk into general contempt—he had become esteemed "un homme d'argent." The priest and sÉminariste conducted me to the house in which Louis XI. is said to have been born, but the present walls are evidently of the Renaissance. It is occupied by a small sisterhood. We went also through the Hotel de Ville, the house of Jacques Coeur, and to the cathedral. There is a very fine crypt under the choir and its aisles. Bourges has little interesting save its Cathedral. The climate is damp and unhealthy, from the marshes near. I left by the last train in the evening, at eight o'clock, and slept at Orleans.

Monday, August 14.—Left Orleans at 7, Paris by 11. Left it at 7 for Amiens: we went through a most violent thunder storm about half way.

Tuesday, August 15.—At the cathedral during part of one High Mass, and the whole of the second, when the bishop officiated pontifically, and gave afterwards the Papal Benediction. It was nearly full of people. I never felt the superiority of this building more than to-day; the interior is pre-eminent for unity, simplicity, and grandeur. I was sorry to miss the vespers and sermon at three; but I left to reach Boulogne in time for the packet, and got to Folkstone shortly after eleven.