  This remarkable book contains a denunciation, by an angry and an able man, of some of the most pressing practical evils of the Roman Catholic system. The celibacy of the priesthood, the mysteries of the confessional, the usurpations of priestly direction in the economy of families, in the control of women, and in the education of children—these are the objects against which the historian of France now directs the arrows of his indignation, and which he seeks to drive from among his countrymen by his earnest and energetic attacks. His hostility has probably been prompted, in part, by the strong feelings of jealousy at present existing in France between the Universities and the Church. But his work is not professedly, nor principally, directed to that subject of controversy. It embraces a larger question, affecting the various relations of private life, and not confined to one form or phasis of fanaticism. It deserves the anxious consideration of all who are interested in the progress of European civilization, and may teach a valuable lesson to many who may, at first sight, seem to be far removed from the mischief which it seeks to remedy. For centuries past, it may be said, that the great disease of France has been the disorder in its domestic relations. That amidst the general surrender of its upper classes in former times to levity, "and something more," there were many exceptions of family happiness and purity, is as certain as that human nature, in its worst state of depravity, will ever assert its better tendencies, and give indications of the ethereal source from which it has sprung. But, that the prevailing tone of those who ought to have given the tone to others, was long of the most lax or licentious character, admits of little doubt; nor is it wonderful that public corruption and anarchy should have followed fast upon the dissolution of private restraints. The same form of the evil may not now exist; but the book before us exhibits proofs that there is still a want of that harmony in conjugal life that is essential as the foundation of solid virtue and social prosperity. The husband and the wife are still separated from each other; not, it may be, by a lover, but by a priest. There is the same want of sympathy as ever, the same mutual alienation of hearts, the same absence of that kindly agency of mind on mind, which is needed to strengthen the intellect of the woman and to purify the spirit of the man. It is this state of things that has roused the energies of a writer not remarkable for his prejudices against the Catholic church in her earlier constitution, but who thinks he sees her now at his own door, undermining household authority, and stealing from every man the affections of those who are united to him by the tenderest ties, and whom he cannot cease to love, even when his love has ceased to be returned. Michelet's book is divided into three parts. The first treats of "Direction," or spiritual superintendence in the seventeenth century; containing a historical view of clerical influence during that period; and more particularly of the policy and power of the Jesuits. The second discusses the character of "Direction" in general, and particularly in the nineteenth century. The third is specially devoted to the subject "Of the Family," and winds up the work, by showing the operation of the poison in the most vital part of the frame. The preface to the first edition contains powerful passages. We extract some of the best of them from the English translation by Mr Cocks, which is sufficiently respectable for our present purpose. "The question is about our family:—that sacred asylum in which we all desire to seek the repose of the heart, when our endeavours have proved fruitless, and our illusions are no more. We return exhausted to the domestic hearth; but do we find there the repose we sigh for? "Let us not dissemble, but acknowledge to ourselves how things are: there is in our family a sad difference of sentiment, and the most serious of all. "We may speak to our mothers, wives, and daughters, on any of the subjects which form the topics of our conversation with indifferent persons, such as business or the news of the day, but never on subjects that affect the heart and moral life, such as eternity, religion, the soul, and God. "Choose, for instance, the moment when we naturally feel disposed to meditate with our family in common thought, some quiet evening at the family-table; venture even there, in your own house, at your own fireside, to say one word about these things; your mother sadly shakes her head, your wife contradicts you, your daughter, by her very silence, shows her disapprobation. They are on one side of the table, and you on the other—and alone. "One would think that in the midst of them, and opposite you, was seated an invisible personage to contradict whatever you may say. "But how can we be astonished at this state of our family? Our wives and daughters are brought up and governed by our enemies! "Our enemies, I repeat it, in a more direct sense, as they are naturally envious of marriage and family life. This, I know full well, is rather their misfortune than their fault. An old lifeless system, of mechanical functions, can want but lifeless partisans. Nature, however, reclaims her rights: they feel painfully that family is denied them, and they console themselves only by troubling ours. "This lifeless spirit, let us call it by its real name, Jesuitism, formerly neutralized by the different manners of living, of the orders, corporations, and religious parties, is now the common spirit which the clergy imbibes through a special education, and which its chiefs make no difficulty in confessing. A bishop has said, 'We are Jesuits, all Jesuits;' and nobody has contradicted him. "The greater part, however, are less frank: Jesuitism acts powerfully through the medium of those who are supposed to be strangers to it; namely, the Sulpicians, who educate the clergy, the Ignorantins, who instruct the people, and the Lazarists, who direct six thousand Sisters of Charity, and have in their hands the hospitals, schools, charity-offices, &c. "So many establishments, so much money, so many pulpits for preaching aloud, so many confessionals for whispering, the education of two hundred thousand boys, and six hundred thousand girls, the management of several millions of women, form together a powerful machine. The unity it possesses in our days might, one would suppose, alarm the state. This is so far from being the case, that whilst the state prohibits association among the laity, it has encouraged it among the ecclesiastics. It has allowed them to form a most dangerous footing among the poorer classes, the union of workmen, apprentice-houses, association of servants who are accountable to priests, &c. &c. "Unity of action, and the monopoly of association, are certainly two powerful levers. "That which constitutes the gravity of this age, I may even say its holiness, is conscientious work, which promotes attentively the common work of humanity, and facilitates at its own expense the work of the future. Our forefathers dreamed much, and disputed much. But we are labourers, and this is the reason why our furrow has been blessed. The soil which the middle ages left us still covered with brambles, has produced by our efforts so plentiful a harvest, that it already envelopes, and will presently hide the old inanimate post that expected to stop the plough. "And it is because we are workmen, and return home fatigued every evening, that we need more than others the repose of the heart. Our board and fireside must again become our own; we must no longer find, instead of repose, at home, the old dispute which has been settled by science and the world; nor hear from our wife or child, on our pillow, a lesson learnt by heart, and the words of another man. "Women follow willingly the strong. How comes it, then, that in this case they have followed the weak? "It must be that there is an art which gives strength to the weak. This dark art, which consists in surprising, fascinating, lulling, and annihilating the will, has been investigated by me in this volume. The seventeenth century had the theory of it, and ours continues the practice." We shall not follow the writer in his review of Jesuitical influences in The root of the evil, as Michelet thinks, lies in the position of the priesthood. We are far from adopting all his views, and would decline any indiscriminate condemnation of a body of men who, under any form of Christianity, must do good in many quarters, and must contain numerous examples of faithful and fervent piety. But in so far as the system of the Romish church is vicious and injurious, it is of vital moment that we should trace the effect to its cause. Much evil, we think, is ascribable to the doctrines of that church, and of every other that too highly exalts the powers and functions of the priest as compared with the people. But, dismissing these for the present, the peculiar discipline of the Romish system deserves our immediate consideration; and here our attention is first attracted by a striking characteristic, the CELIBACY of the clergy. Let us hear how so important a peculiarity is thought to operate by this acute observer:— "We think, without enumerating the too well-known inconveniences of their present state, that if the priest is to advise the family, it is good for him to know what a family is; that as a married man (or a widower, which would be still better,) of a mature age and experience, one who has loved and suffered, and whom domestic affections have enlightened upon the mysteries of moral life, which are not to be learned by guessing, he would possess at the same time more affection, and more wisdom. "Why torment a blind man by speaking to him of colours? He answers vaguely; occasionally he may guess pretty nearly; but how can it be helped? he cannot see. "And do not think that the feelings of the heart can be guessed at more easily. A man without wife or child might study the mysterious working of a family in books and the world for ten thousand years without ever knowing one word about them. Look at these men: it is neither time, opportunity nor facility, that they lack to acquire knowledge; they pass their lives with women who tell them more than they tell their husbands; they know, and yet they are ignorant; they know all a woman's acts and thoughts, but they are ignorant precisely of what is the best and most intimate part of her character, and the very essence of her being. They hardly understand her as a lover, (of God or man,) still less as a wife, and not at all as a mother. Nothing is more painful than to see them sitting down awkwardly by the side of a woman to caress her child; their manner towards it is that of flatterers or courtiers—anything but that of a father. "What I pity the most in the man condemned to celibacy, is not only the privation of the sweetest joys of the heart, but that a thousand objects of the natural and moral world are, and ever will be, a dead letter to him. Many have thought, by living apart, to dedicate their lives to science; but the reverse is the case. In such a morose and crippled life, science is never fathomed; it may be varied, and superficially immense; but it escapes—for it will not reside there. Celibacy gives a restless activity to researches, intrigues, and business—a sort of huntsman's eagerness—a sharpness in the subtilties of school-divinity and disputation: this is at least the effect it had in its prime. If it makes the senses keen and liable to temptation, certainly it does not soften the heart. Our terrorists in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were monks. Monastic prisons were always the most cruel. A life systematically negative—a life without its functions—developes in man instincts that are hostile to life; he who suffers is willing to make others suffer. The harmonious and fertile parts of our nature, which on the one hand incline to goodness, and on the other to genius and high invention, can hardly ever withstand this partial suicide. "I have never been insensible either to the humiliation of the church, or to the sufferings of the priest. I have them all present, both before my imagination and in my heart. I have followed this unfortunate man in the career of privations, and in the miserable life into which he is dragged by the hand of a hypocritical authority. And in his loneliness, on his cold and melancholy hearth, where he sometimes weeps at night, let him remember that a man has often wept with him, and that I am that man." We partly know the object and origin of the middle age institution of celibacy among the clergy. It was intended to check the tendency to secularize benefices. It was adapted to the condition of a church militant. It might do good, or at least it could do little harm, where aged and self-mortified men were the occupants of the office. But a youthful priesthood, established in all the comforts or the luxuries of a state endowment, moving and officiating in a sphere where leisure and refinement give an impulse to the heart and fancy, and yet condemned to a renunciation of all the charities of family union, of all the affections of a lover, a husband, a father—how unnatural a position is this, how detrimental to usefulness, how dangerous to virtue! Supposing, even, that the vow is kept in its spirit, and perhaps its violation is not the greatest imaginable mischief, what must be the effect of such solitary seclusion on ordinary minds! What power shall protect the mass of the profession on an envious sourness of heart at the sight of that happiness in others, which in a moment, it may be of rashness, they have relinquished for themselves. "Croire qu'un voeu, quelques priÈres, une robe noire sur le dos, vont vous delivrer de la chair, et vous faire un pur esprit, n'est-ce pas chose puerile?" We hope and are sure it is not often so; but can we say that sometimes the dark and deserted spirit of the priest may not look on the happiness of families with an approach to the feelings of the Evil One, when gazing at our First Parents in their state of innocence?— "Sight hateful! sight tormenting! thus these two Emparadised in one another's arms—While I—" But this is not all. Thus doomed to the dreary isolation of a manquÉ and mutilated life, yet, in the midst of his privations, retaining his natural passions, his longings of the heart and affections, the Romish priest is employed in no ordinary task of clerical occupation or superintendence—in preaching merely or in prayer—in the visitation of the sick and afflicted. The Confessional is added to his duties, as if on purpose to enhance the misery of his condition, and the mischief of his influence. And with whom is the confessional chiefly conversant? The male penitent, we presume, is content with a very general acknowledgment of his errors, and seldom indulges in great outpourings of the spirit, or would submit to any stretch of authority over his conscience or conduct. But the softer sex, whose own tenderness of heart, and whose power over the hearts of others, make all converse with them so potent for good or for harm—maidens, and wives in the prime of life, and in the pride of beauty, opening their souls to a confessor, revealing all their secret emotions, their hopes, their disappointments, their fears, their failings, submitting to his questions, and hanging upon his words of acquittal or condemnation; surely this is a subject of contemplation full of awful interest, and on which it is impossible to be at ease where the mysterious intercourse is without a witness and without a check—but the consciences of two frail and fallible human beings. Well may we say with Michelet, that under such a system the priest ought to be truly a p?es?te???, "a man who has seen, learned, and suffered much." A young priest as a father-confessor is not merely "a nonsensical contradiction," but a snare and a source of peril both to himself and his penitents. The pomp of Popery gives its clergy sufficient aids to their influence by other means. "The priest takes advantage of every thing that is calculated to make him be considered as a man apart—of his dress, his position, his mysterious church, that invests the most vulgar with a poetical gleam. "What an immense place is this church, and what an immense host must inhabit this wonderful dwelling! Optical delusion adds still more to the effect. Every proportion changes. The eye is deceived and deceives itself, at the same time, with these sublime lights and deepening shades, all calculated to increase the illusion. The man whom in the street you judged, by his surly look, to be a village schoolmaster, is here a prophet. He is transformed by this majestic framework; his heaviness becomes strength and majesty; his voice has formidable echoes. Women and children tremble and are afraid. "Do you see that solemn figure, adorned with all the gold and purple of his pontifical dress, ascending, with the thought, the prayer of a multitude of ten thousand men, the triumphal steps in the choir of St Denis? Do you see him still, above all that kneeling mass, hovering as high as the vaulted roofs, his head reaching the capitals, and lost among the winged heads of the angels, whence he hurls his thunder? Well, it is the same man, this terrible archangel himself, who presently descends for her, and now, mild and gentle, goes yonder into that dark chapel, to listen to her in the languid hours of the afternoon! Delightful hour of tumultuous, but tender sensations! (Why does the heart palpitate so strongly here?) How dark the church becomes! Yet it is not late. The great rose-window over the portal glitters with the setting sun. But it is quite another thing in the choir; dark shadows envelope it, and beyond is obscurity. One thing astounds and almost frightens us, however far we may be, which is the mysterious old painted glass, at the farthest end of the church, on which the design is no longer distinguishable, twinkling in the shade, like an illegible magic scroll of unknown characters. The chapel is not less dark on that account; you can no longer discern the ornaments and delicate moulding entwined in the vaulted roof; the shadow deepening blends and confounds the outlines. But, as if this chapel were not dark enough, it contains, in a retired corner, a narrow recess of dark oak, where that man, all emotion, and that trembling woman, so close to each other, are whispering together about the love of God." The details of a priest's education for the confessional office are necessarily deplorable. We blame not so much the men as the system. Yet books, apparently, are continued among the preparations for this duty, which might well be dispensed with as wholly unsuited to the age. We believe that Sanchez was a man of holy life, though his purity, after the analogy of one of Swift's paradoxes, left him a man of impure ideas; and no one was ever forced by dire necessity to read his book without disgust and dismay. It may be good for the students of medicine to penetrate into every form in which bodily disease can show itself; but the pathology of the mind thus hideously represented is degrading even to the observer. "A worthy parish priest has often told me that the sore part of his profession, that which filled him with despair, and his life with torment, was the confession. "The studies with which they prepare for it in the seminaries are such as entirely ruin the disposition, weaken the body, and enervate and defile the soul. "Lay education, without making any pretension to an extraordinary degree of purity, and though the pupils it forms will, one day, enjoy public life, takes, however, especial care to keep from the eyes of youth the glowing descriptions that excite the passions. "Ecclesiastical education, on the contrary, which pretends to form men superior to man, pure virgin minds, angels, fixes precisely the attention of its pupils upon things that are to be for ever forbidden them, and gives them for subjects of study terrible temptations, such as would make all the saints run the risk of damnation. Their printed books have been quoted, but not so their copy-books, by which they complete the two last years of seminary education: these copy-books contain things that the most audacious have never dared to publish. "This surprising imprudence proceeded originally from the very scholastic supposition, that the body and soul could be perfectly well kept apart." What is the influence by which the power of the confessor is converted into that of the director? It is done in the usual way—by the continual repetition of the same process for a length of time. Habit is the insidious enemy that, ere it seems to assail, has already conquered and led captive. "Stand at this window every day, at a certain hour in the afternoon. You will see a pale man pass down the street, with his eyes cast on the ground, and always following the same line of pavement next the houses. Where he set his foot yesterday, there he does to-day, and there he will to-morrow; he would wear out the pavement if it was never renewed. And by this same street he goes to the same house, ascends to the same story, and in the same cabinet speaks to the same person. He speaks of the same things, and his manner seems the same. The person who listens to him sees no difference between yesterday and to-day; gentle uniformity, "You think that nothing changes in this monotonous equality; that all these days are the same. You are mistaken; you have perceived nothing, yet every day there is a change, slight, it is true, and imperceptible, which the person, himself changed by little and little, does not remark. "It is like a dream in a bark. What distance have you come whilst you were dreaming? Who can tell? Thus you go on, without seeming to move—still, and yet rapidly. Once out of the river, or canal, you soon find yourself at sea; the uniform immensity in which you now are, will inform you still less of the distance you go. Time and place are equally uncertain; no sure point to occupy attention; and attention itself is gone. The reverie is profound, and becomes more and more so—an ocean of dreams upon the smooth ocean of waters. "A pleasant state, in which every thing becomes insensible, even gentleness itself. Is it death, or is it life? To distinguish, we require attention, and we should awake from our dream.—No, let it go on, whatever it may be that carried me along with it, whether it lead me to life or death. "Alas! 'tis habit! that gently-sloping, formidable abyss, into which we slide so easily! we may say every thing that is bad of it, and also every thing that is good, and it will be always true." It would be painful and repulsive to follow out the acts which the acquisition of such spiritual ascendancy may suggest to wicked or even a weak spirit. The result in general is the complete possession of the whole mind of the subdued victim, which lives, and moves, and has its being in the will and wishes of its omnipotent tyrant. This change is of itself destructive of moral independence; but we must not conceal what the writer before us represents as an ulterior effect, and which, even as a possibility, must be contemplated with fear and horror. "To be able to have all, and then abstain, is a slippery situation! who will keep his footing on this declivity? "Are you sure you possess the heart entirely, if you have not the body? Will not physical possession give up corners of the soul, which otherwise would remain inaccessible? Is spiritual dominion complete, if it does not comprehend the other? The great popes seem to have settled the question; they thought popedom implied empire; and the pope himself, besides his sway over consciences, was king in temporal matters. "Afterwards comes the vile refinement of the Quietists:—'If the inferior part be without sin, the superior grows proud, and pride is the greatest sin; consequently the flesh ought to sin, in order that the soul may remain humble; sin, producing humility, becomes a ladder to ascend to heaven.' "Sin!—But is it sin? (depraved devotion finds here the ancient sophism:) The holy by its essence, being holiness itself, always sanctifies. In the spiritual man, every thing is spirit, even what in another is matter. If, in its superior flight, the holy should meet with any obstacle that might draw it again towards the earth, let the inferior part get rid of it; it does a meritorious work, and is sanctified for it. "Diabolical subtilty! which few avow clearly, but which many brood over, and cherish in their most secret thoughts." We feel assured that, as Michelet himself has said, this last act of the dreadful drama is but seldom represented. But enough may be done, without actual or conscious guilt, to pervert the feelings, and, above all, to destroy the peace and the unity of the family. "Six hundred and twenty thousand girls are brought up by nuns under the direction of the priests. These girls will soon be women and mothers, who, in their turn, will hand over to the priests, as far as they are able, both their sons and their daughters. "The mother has already succeeded as far as concerns the daughter; by her persevering importunity, she has, at length, overcome the father's repugnance. A man who, every evening, after the troubles of business, and the warfare of the world, finds strife also at home, may certainly resist for a time, but he must necessarily give in at last; or he will be allowed neither truce, cessation, rest, nor refuge. His own house becomes uninhabitable. His wife, having nothing to expect at the confessional but harsh treatment as long as she does not succeed, "She grumbles at the fireside, is low-spirited at table, and never opens her mouth either to speak or eat; then, at bed-time, the inevitable repetition of the lesson she has learned, even on the pillow. The same sound of the same bell, for ever and ever: who could withstand it? What is to be done? Give in, or become mad! "What is very singular, the father, generally, is aware that they are bringing up his child against him. Man, you surprise me; what do you expect then? 'Oh! she will forget it; time, marriage, and the world, will wear away all that'. Yes, for a time, but only to reappear; at the first disappointment in the world, it will all return. As soon as she grows somewhat in years, she will return to the habits of the child; the master she now has will be her master then, whether for your contradiction, good man, or for the despair and daily damnation of her father and husband. Then will you taste the fruit of this education. "Education! a mere trifle, a weak power, no doubt, which the father may, without danger, allow his enemies to take possession of! "To possess the mind, with all the advantage of the first possessor! To write in this book of blank paper whatever they will! and to write what will last for ever! And, remember well, it will be in vain for you to write upon it hereafter; what has once been indited, cannot be erased. Is the mystery of her young memory to be as weak in receiving impressions, as it is strong in keeping them. The early tracing that seemed to be effaced at twenty, reappears at forty or sixty. It is the last and the clearest, perhaps, that old age will retain. "This is true in speaking of the school, but how much more so as regards the church! especially in the case of the daughter, who is more docile and timid, and certainly retains more faithfully her early impressions. What she heard the first time in that grand church, under those resounding roofs, and the words, pronounced with a solemn voice by that man in black, which then frightened her so, being addressed to herself;—ah! be not afraid of her ever forgetting them. But even if she could forget them, she would be reminded of them every week: woman is all her life at school, finding in the confessional her school-bench, her schoolmaster, the only man she fears, and the only one, as we have said, who, in the present state of our manners, can threaten a woman. "What an advantage has he in being able to take her quite young, in the convent where they have placed her, to be the first to take in hand her young soul, and to be the first to exercise upon her the earliest severity, and also the earliest indulgence which is so akin to affectionate tenderness, to be the father and friend of a child taken so soon from her mother's arms. The confidant of her first thoughts will long be associated with her private reveries. He has had an especial and singular privilege which the husband may envy: what—why, the virginity of the soul, and the first-fruits of the will. "This is the man of whom, young bachelors, you must ask the girl in marriage, before you speak to her parents." The subject is resumed in his preface to the third edition. "It had been generally believed that two persons were sufficient for matrimony: but this is all altered; and we have the new system, as set forth by themselves, composed of three elements: 1st, man, the strong, the violent; 2dly, woman, a being naturally weak; 3dly, the priest, born a man, and strong, but who is kind enough to become weak, and resemble woman; and who, participating thus in both natures, may interpose between them. "Interpose! interfere between two persons who were to be henceforth but one! This changes wonderfully the idea which, from the beginning of the world, has been entertained of marriage. "But this is not all; they avow that they do not pretend to make an impartial interference that might favour each of the parties, according to reason. No, they address themselves exclusively to the wife: she it is whom they undertake to protect against her natural protector. They offer to league with her in order to transform the husband. If it was once firmly established that marriage, instead of being unity in two persons, is a league of one of them with a stranger, it would become exceedingly scarce." It would be unjust to assume that a book written under the influence of strong feelings contains an impartial What now is the remedy which this physician would prescribe for the disease he has thus exposed? His words on this subject are well deserving of attention. "Marriage gives the husband a single and momentary opportunity to become in reality the master of his wife, to withdraw her from the influence of another, and make her his own for ever. Does he profit by it? very rarely. He ought, in the very beginning, when he has much influence over her, to let her participate in the activity of his mind, his business, and ideas, initiate her in his projects, and create an activity in her by means of his own. "To wish and think as he does, both acting with him and suffering with him—this is marriage. The worst that may happen is not that she may suffer, but that she may languish and pine away, living apart, and like a widow. How can we wonder, then, if her affection for him be lessened? Ah, if, in the beginning, he made her his own, by making her share his ambition, troubles, and uneasiness:—if they had watched whole nights together, and been troubled with the same thoughts, he would have retained her affections. Attachment may be strengthened by grief itself; and mutual sufferings may maintain mutual love. "Unfortunately, this is not the way of the world. I have sought every where, but in vain, for this fine exchange of thought, which alone realizes marriage. They certainly try for a moment, in the beginning, to communicate together, but they are soon discouraged; the husband grows dumb, his heart, dried up with the arid influence of interests and business, can no longer find words. At first she is astonished and uneasy: she questions him. But questions annoy him, and she no longer dares to speak to him. Let him be easy; the time is coming when his wife, sitting thoughtful by the fireside, absent in her turn, and framing her imaginary plans, will leave him in quiet possession of his taciturnity. "Let us not accuse the Jesuits, who carry on their jesuitical trade, nor the priests, who are dangerous, restless, and violent, only because they are unhappy. "No, we ought rather to accuse ourselves. "If dead men return in broad daylight, if these Gothic phantoms haunt our streets at noonday, it is because the living have let the spirit of life grow weak within them. How is it that these men reappear among us, after having been buried by history with all funereal rites, and laid by the side of other ancient orders? The very sight of them is a solemn token, and a serious warning. "Modern strength appears in the powerful liberty with which you go on disengaging the reality from the forms, and the spirit on the dead letter. But why do you not reveal yourself to the companion of your life, in that which is for you your life itself? She passes away days and years by your side, without seeing or knowing the grandeur that is within you. If she saw you walk free, strong, and prosperous in action and in science, she would not remain chained down to material idolatry, and bound to the sterile letter; she would rise to a faith far more free and pure, and you would be as one in faith. She would preserve for you this common treasure of religious life, where you might seek for comfort when your mind is languid; and when your various toils, studies, and business have weakened the vital unity within you, she would bring back your thoughts and life to God, the true, the only unity. "I shall not attempt to crowd a large volume into a small preface. I shall only add one word, which at once expresses and completes my thought. "Man ought to nourish woman. He ought to feed spiritually (and materially if he can) her who nourishes him with her love, her milk, and her very life. "Our adversaries give women bad food; but we give them none at all. "To the women of the richer class, those who seem to be so gently protected by their family, those brilliant ones whom people suppose so happy, to these we give no spiritual food. "And to the women of the poorer class, solitary, industrious, and destitute, who try hard to gain their bread, we do not even give our assistance to help them to find their material food. "These women, who are or will be mothers, are left by us to fast, (either "I like to believe that good-will, generally, is not wanting—only time and attention. People live in a hurry, and can hardly be said to live: they follow with a huntsman's eagerness this or that petty object, and neglect what is important. "You, man of business or study, who are so energetic and indefatigable, you have no time, say you, to associate your wife with your daily progress; you leave her to her ennui, idle conversations, empty sermons, and silly books; so that, falling below herself, less than woman, even less than a child, she will have neither moral action, influence, nor maternal authority, over her own offspring. Well! you will have the time, as old age advances, to try in vain to do all over again what is not done twice, to follow in the steps of a son, who, from college to the schools, and from thence into the world, hardly knows his family; and who, if he travels a little, and meets you on his return, will ask you your name. The mother alone could have made you a son; but to do so you ought to have made her what a woman ought to be, strengthened her with your sentiments and ideas, and nourished her with your life." True, O most subtle and sapient Frenchman, the remedy lies in the direction you have pointed out; but we have doubts if you have fully discovered its nature, or are prepared to apply it in its necessary extent. The husband must make the wife the companion of his heart and thoughts, of his hopes and exertions. Too long has this sympathy and confidence been unknown in France, where your women have been but the toys and playthings of your lighter or looser hours, and where often to their own husbands they have not even been so much. But, as you partly see, this is not all that is needed to be corrected. In order to be the fitting guide and guardian of the mother of his family, the husband must share in those higher feelings which he seeks to regulate and reclaim. You do not hope or wish to see your wife and children devoid of religion. But if you would not surrender them to the guidance of others in those momentous concerns, you must care for them and conduct their course yourself, and must learn to travel the road along which they are to be led. The husband must become himself the priest and the director: not by inculcating a vague theism or a cold morality, but by establishing in his household the purity and the practice of a Christian faith. If the domestic throne is to be upheld on its rightful foundation, the altar must be reared by its side. The philosopher and historian must stoop to learn from his own children that simplicity of which they are such powerful teachers, and which will amply repay him for all the lessons of a more mature wisdom that his learning and experience can impart. Openly and earnestly sympathizing with their devout impressions, he will strengthen and support by his intellectual energies the soft and more susceptible natures of those placed under his charge, and will thus shield them from the attempts to mislead and inflame, to which they must inevitably be exposed if left to find their only sympathy in extraneous influences. This re-establishment of a patriarchal piety is one of the great boons which the true spirit of Protestantism purchased for its followers, and which alone can protect the weaker members of the household from becoming a prey to priestly interference and false enthusiasm. The book contains a touching tribute, such as able men have often paid to the maternal affection that formed their minds:— "Whilst writing all this, I have had in my mind a woman, whose strong and serious mind would not have failed to support me in these contentions; I lost her thirty years ago, (I was a child then;) nevertheless, ever living in my memory, she follows me from age to age. "She suffered with me in my poverty, and was not allowed to share in my better fortune. When young, I made her sad, and now I cannot console her. I know not even where her bones are: I was too poor then to buy earth to bury her! "And yet I owe her much. I feel deeply that I am the son of woman. Every instant, in my ideas and words (not to mention my features and gestures,) "What return then could I, who am myself advancing towards old age, make her for the many things I owe her? One, for which she would have thanked me—this protest in favour of women and mothers; and I place it at the head of a book believed by some to be a work of controversy. They are wrong. The longer it lives, if it should live, the plainer will it be seen, that, in spite of polemical emotion, it was a work of history, a work of faith, of truth, and of sincerity;—on what, then, could I have set my heart more?" In a spirit worthy of these feelings, the author contends strongly for the benefits of maternal education on the character of sons. We shall give the passage in the original, as it contains a good deal that is French, and a great deal that is beautiful:— "Quand on songe que la vie moyenne est si courte, qu'un si grand nombre d'hommes meurent tout jeunes, on hÉsite d'abrÉger cette premiÈre, cette meilleure Époque de la vie, oÙ l'enfant, libre sous la mÈre, vit dans la grÂce et non dans la loi. Mais s'il est vrai, comme je pense, que ce temps qu'on croit perdu est justement l'Époque unique, prÉcieuse, irrÉparable, oÙ, parmi les jeux puÉrils, le genius sacrÉ essaye son premier essor, la saison oÙ les ailes poussent, oÙ l'aiglon s'essaye À voler ... Ah! de grÂce, ne l'abrÉgez pas. Ne chassez pas avant le temps cet homme nouveau du paradis maternel; encore un jour; demain À la bonne heure, mon Dieu! il sera bien temps; demain, il se courbera au travail, il rampera sur son sillon.... Aujourd'hui laissez-le encore, qu'il prenne largement la force et la vie, qu'il aspire d'un grand coeur l'air vitale de la libertÉ. "Une Éducation trop exigeante, trop zÉlÉe, inquiÈte, est un danger pour les enfants. On augmente toujours la masse d'Étude et de science, les acquisitions extÉrieures; l'interieur succombe. Celui-ci n'est que latin, tel autre n'est que mathÉmatiques. OÙ est l'homme, je vous prie? Et c'Était l'homme justement qu'aimait et mÉnageait la mÈre. C'est lui qu'elle respectait dans les Écarts de l'enfant. Elle semblait retirer son action, sa surveillance mÊme, afin qu'il agÎt, qu'il fÛt libre et fort. Mais, en mÊme temps, elle l'entourait toujours comme d'un invisible embrassement. "Il y a un pÉril, je le sais bien, dans cette Éducation de l'amour. Ce que l'amour veut et dÉsire par-dessus tout, c'est de s'immoler, de sacrifier tout—intÉrÊts, convenances, habitudes, la vie, s'il le faut. "L'objet de cette immolation peut, dans son ÉgoÏsme enfantin, recevoir, comme chose due, tous les sacrifices, se laisser traiter en idole, inerte, immobile, et devenir d'autant plus incapable d'action qu'on agira plus pour lui. "Danger rÉel, mais balancÉ par l'ambition ardente du coeur maternel, qui presque toujours place sur l'enfant une espÉrance infinie, et brÛle de la rÉaliser. Toute mÈre de quelque valeur a une ferme foi, c'est que son fils doit Être un hÉros—dans l'action ou dans la science, il n'importe. Tout ce qui lui a fait dÉfaut dans sa triste expÉrience de ce monde, il va, lui, ce petite enfant, le rÉaliser. Les misÈres du prÉsent sont rachetÉes d'avance par ce splendide avenir: tout est misÉrable aujourd'hui; qu'il grandisse, et tout sera grand. O poÉsie! O espÉrance! oÙ sont les limites de la pensÉe maternelle? Moi, je ne suis qu'une femme; mais voici un homme. J'ai donnÉ un homme au monde. Une seule chose l'embarrasse—l'enfant sera-t-il un Bonaparte, un Voltaire, ou un Newton? "S'il faut absolument pour cela qu'il la quitte, eh bien! qu'il aille, qu'il s'Éloigne, elle y consent; s'il faut qu'elle s'arrache le coeur, elle s'arrachera le coeig;ur. L'amour est capable de tout, et d'immoler l'amour mÊme. Oui, qu'il parte, qu'il suive sa grande destinÉe, qu'il accomplisse le beau rÊve qu'elle fit quand elle le portait dans son sein, ou sur ses genoux. Et alors, chose incroyable, cette femme craintive, qui tout-À-l'heure n'osait le voir marcher seul sans craindre qu'il ne tombÂt, elle est devenue si brave qu'elle l'envoie dans les carriÈres; les plus hasardeuses, sur mer, ou bien encore dans cette rude guerre d'Afrique. Elle tremble, elle meurt d'inquiÉtude, et pourtant elle persiste. Qui peut la soutenir?—sa foi. L'enfant ne peut pas pÉrir puis-qu'il doit Être un hÉros. "Il revient. Qu'il est changÉ! Moi! ce fier soldat, c'est mon fils! PartÉ enfant, il revient homme. Il a hÂte de se marier. VoilÀ un autre sacrifice, et qui n'est pas le moins grand. Il faut qu'il en aime une autre; il faut que la mÈre, A word now as to the application to our own case of the leading views already suggested. It may be thought that the moral they most clearly inculcate would point to our fellow countrymen in Ireland. But we own we have a different reading of the lesson, and consider that the peculiar perils here described must as yet have been scarcely felt among the priesthood of a peasantry. It is in circles where there is less physical privation and more sentimental excitement, that the evils of spiritual fascination and domestic division are likely to arise. Michelet has shown that "Direction," in its worst forms, did not terminate with the seventeenth century, but has revived in his own times. We may be allowed to follow out his opinions, and suggest that Jesuits and Directors are not confined to the Romish faith. It behoves even a Protestant people to be on their guard against the recurrence of Popery and its Practices under a new aspect. The same erroneous position may be reached from opposite directions. The same constitutional malady may show itself in different diseases. CÆsar was inaccessible to all flattery, except that which told him he hated flatterers. And many are most in danger of Popish error when it approaches under an ultra-Protestant disguise. We are saved, indeed, from the evils of a celibatary clergy. We are not exposed to that ignorance or that envy of family life which such a institution involves. But ambition and interest will supply the place of most other vices; and we shall be wise to watch whether the same battle is not now being fought among ourselves, and for the same immediate object—the occupancy of the female heart. The pictures that have been sometimes drawn of our own doings may have only a limited resemblance. Methodist preachers, and evangelical vicars, may be exaggerated delineations or mere individual portraits. But still, is it not true that the minds of our women, particularly those that are unmarried or childless, are here, as well as in France, sought to be engrossed, and alienated from their natural attachments, through priestly influences and for priestly purposes? Look at any new sect springing up among us—Look at the last example of the kind, where a peculiar religious body is forcing or feeling its way towards an ascendency. Powerful as it seems to be in numbers and in wealth, in what does its main strength consist? It was frankly avowed by one of its apostles, that the female mind alone seemed properly fitted to appreciate its tenets. A strange confession! We doubt if Luther, Calvin, or Knox, would have boasted of such a fact as characterizing the religious movements to which they gave an impulse. In the purity of female feelings we may have a security that any system that recommends itself to women, must have a fair semblance of goodness as it appears in their eyes: but it does not follow that their approbation is a test of its genuine excellence, or of its actual conformity with the type which it professes to represent. It is no novelty in the history of human nature, that evil makes its first attempts on the weakness of woman. Whatever is calculated strongly to excite the affections will gain the hearts of the more susceptible sex; and, without the aid of stronger intellects, they will run a risk of following after delusive lights, and may be found as often to be the votaries of an amiable and attractive error, as the assertors of a severe and sober truth. We would take leave to affirm, that a religious creed or constitution among whose supporters a vast preponderance of females was to be found, stood in a dubious position, and was open to the suspicion that its principles cannot stand examination by the standards of reason and argument. Certain it is that this severance of the sexes by religious distinctions is an unnatural state of society, and a serious evil. It is accompanied too, and aggravated, by another source of danger. The system of hanging the faith and feelings on the lips of a man, as if he were a special messenger from heaven, is REFERENCE: Michelet, (J.) Du PrÊtre, de la Femme, de la Famille. 1845. Priests, Women, and Families. By J. Michelet. Translated by G. Cocks. London: Longmans. |
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