Professor Agassiz: a Correction, 126-The Philadelphia Academy of Sciences, 124-Peat for Fuel, 124-Carbolic Sneezing, 127-The Influence of Flowers on Health, 127-General Lee as a Commander, 128-Chinese Ladies Reason Why, 511-Method of Electing the Pope, 512-Bonaparte's Marriage, 512-War, 512-How Indians were Cobbler and the Monkey, 768-Love's Waking, 768-Honolulu, 768. WHEN the Count and Countess of Mon- talembert were in England in 1839-when she was in the bloom of her beauty and he in the fulness of his fame-they break- fasted one morning with Rogers, who, on their leaving the room, turned to one of the remaining guests and said, 'I envy that young man, not for his youth, nor for his fame, nor even for his handsome wife, but for his faith. He seems to believe in something, and that makes a man really happy.' This remark was addressed to Rio, the author of Christian Art,' and the conversation having just before turned on a fine specimen of the pre-Raphaelite school deeply imbued with the religious feeling, there can be no doubt as to the description of faith which struck Rogers. It was a faint reflection of that deep im- Memoir of Count de Montalembert, Peer of France, Deputy for the Department of Doubs. A Chapter of Recent French History. By Mrs. Oli- phant, Author of The Life of Edward Irving,' pulsive passionate feeling that animated Montalembert through life: faith, uncom- promising, unhesitating faith in Christiani- ty as embodied in the Church, the Holy Catholic Church, which sat enthroned on the seven hills and (as he thought) was as- serting no more than a rightful claim in eternally parodying the language of Rien- zi, when, unsheathing his maiden sword, he thrice brandished it to the three parts of the world, and thrice repeated the extrava- gant declaration, And this, too, is mine.' Montalembert believed equally and im- plicitly in her divine origin and her bene- ficial influences, in her purity, vitality, dura- bility, and impeccability. She was the same to him in her triumphs and her trials, in her victories and her defeats, in the noonday splendor and the lurid eclipses of her sun. Like the cavalier who was ready to do homage to the crown hanging upon a bush, his reverence for the tiara was in no respect diminished by its fall- I Professor Agassiz: a Correction, 126-The Philadelphia Academy of Sciences, 124-Peat for Fuel, 124-Carbolic Sneezing, 127-The Influence of Flowers on Health, 127-General Lee as a Commander, 128-Chinese Ladies• Reason Why, 511-Method of Electing the Pope, 512-Bonaparte's Marriage, 512-War, 512-How Indians were Cobbler and the Monkey, 768-Love's Waking, 768-Honolulu, 768. Eclectic Magazine OF FOREIGN LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART. New Series, Vol. XVIII. No. 1. JULY, 1873. CHARLES, COMTE DE MONTALEMBERT.* WHEN the Count and Countess of Montalembert were in England in 1839-when she was in the bloom of her beauty and he in the fulness of his fame-they breakfasted one morning with Rogers, who, on their leaving the room, turned to one of the remaining guests and said, 'I envy that young man, not for his youth, nor for his fame, nor even for his handsome wife, but for his faith. He seems to believe in something, and that makes a man really happy.' This remark was addressed to Rio, the author of Christian Art,' and the conversation having just before turned on a fine specimen of the pre-Raphaelite school deeply imbued with the religious feeling, there can be no doubt as to the description of faith which struck Rogers. It was a faint reflection of that deep im Old Series Com1 plete in 63 vols. pulsive passionate feeling that animated Montalembert through life: faith, uncompromising, unhesitating faith in Christianity as embodied in the Church, the Holy Catholic Church, which sat enthroned on the seven hills and (as he thought) was asserting no more than a rightful claim in eternally parodying the language of Rienzi, when, unsheathing his maiden sword, he thrice brandished it to the three parts of the world, and thrice repeated the extravagant declaration, And this, too, is mine.' Montalembert believed equally and implicitly in her divine origin and her beneficial influences, in her purity, vitality, durability, and impeccability. She was the same to him in her triumphs and her trials, in her victories and her defeats, in the noonday splendor and the lurid eclipses of her sun. Like the cavalier who was ready to do homage to the crown hanging upon a bush, his reverence for the tiara was in no respect diminished by its falling on an unworthy head-by finding amongst the successors of St. Peter a Far I nese or a Borgia, a Gregory, a Sixtus, or a Leo, whose crimes and vices, grasping ambition, scepticism, and immorality, were the scandal of their contemporaries. It was still the true, the blessed and blessing, the allein seligmachende (alone bliss-bestowing) Church, whether laboring for evil or for good; whether paving the way for the Reformation or laying the ground for a reactionary movement against the heretics. In his eyes, to elevate the Church was to diffuse Christianity, and to aggrandise the Papacy was to elevate the Church. He could not, or would not, see that the Pope who placed his sandalled. foot upon the neck of an Emperor was actuated by the self-same ambition and arrogant lust of power as the Emperor (Napoleon) who inflicted a series of degrading indignities on a Pope. His whole heart and soul are with St. Columba and the other monks of the West, who first carried the glad tidings of the Gospel to the rugged isles of which this empire is made up. made up. Nor was his glowing imagination less excited by the great deeds and heroic sacrifices of Loyola and his disciples, to whom human happiness and genuine religion were as nought compared with the prosperity of that famous and (pace Prince Bismarck and Mr. Arthur Kinnaird) irrepressible Society of Jesus, so aptly compared to a sword with the handle at Rome and the point everywhere. It is a moral problem which we shall not attempt to solve, how he kept the dark side of the picture out of sight: how he palliated or disguised to himself the crying and manifold abuses of the spiritual power with which ecclesiastical history is blotted over: how he escaped the strictly logical consequences of his convictions: why, in a word, he did not become a bigot like so many others with heads as clear, hearts as warm, and motives as disinterested as his own. There is Sir Thomas More, for one, who presided at the torture of a heretic, if he did not lend a hand to tighten the rack; and the Comte Joseph de Maistre, for another, a man of the kindliest and most lov ing nature, who, besides proclaiming the hangman the keystone of the social edifice, declared the 'Novum Organum' to be simply worthy of Bedlam, and the Essay on the Human Understanding' to be all that the absolute want of genius and style can produce most wearisome.' Montalembert was the very personification of candor. He had not a shadow of bigotry: he hated intolerance: he shuddered at persecution: he had none of the arrogance or unbending hardness of the dogmatist: he was singularly indulgent to what he deemed error: the utmost he would accept from the temporal power, from the State, was a fair field and no favor: the Church, he uniformly maintained, far from having any natural affinity with despotism, could only blossom and bear fruit in an atmosphere of freedom; whilst liberty, rational liberty, was never safer than under the protecting shadow of her branches 'Nusquam Libertas gratior exstat Quam sub rege pio.' If he waved the consecrated banner of St. Peter with the one hand, he carried La Charte, the emblem and guarantee of constitutional government, in the other; and his life and character would be well worth studying, if no higher or more useful moral could be drawn from them than that it is possible to reconcile a dogmatic, damnatory, exclusive system of belief with generosity, liberality, Christian charity, patriotism, and philanthropy. friends.* The materials for his life are, fortunately, ample. Indeed, a memoir might be compiled from his journals, letters, speeches, introductions to his principal works and other self-revealings, which would present most of the essential qualities of an autobiography. There are numerous incidental allusions in contemporary publications; and graceful sketches of his career and character have been contributed by his work named at the head of this article, Mrs. Oliphant, the author of the was personally acquainted with him she translated two volumes of his 'Monks of the West' she wrote with the aid and under the sanction of the surviving members of his family: she had access to the made an excellent use of her opportunities. best sources of information, and she has She treads firmly upon difficult ground: she exercises her own right of judgment with praiseworthy independence; and her language is free, clear, and spirited, al |