Coleridge used to say that an old Gothic cathedral always looked to him like a petrified religion. The Gothic is certainly the style of architecture which harmonises best with seriousness and solemnity: St. Peter's, St. Paul's, and the Cathedral of Florence, are rather palatial than ecclesiastical, and there is an Oriental look about the domes. Montalembert's enthusiasm, therefore, took a right direction in the eloquent appeal entitled, 'Du Vandalisme en France,' in which he called on the French to respect their architectural treasures, especially their grand old cathedrals, as preservatives of their faith as well as monuments of their history.

It was during one of the frequent tours he made to inspect medieval buildings and monuments that he was inspired with the conception of his first sustained and eminently successful effort in literature, the History of Saint Elizabeth.' The opening sentences of the Introduction are these:

"On the 19th of November, 1833, a traveller arrived at Marbourg, a town in the electorate of Hesse, situated upon the beautiful banks of the Lahn. He paused to examine the church, which was celebrated at once for its pure and perfect beauty, and because it was the first in Germany where the pointed arch prevailed over the round in the great renovation of art in the thirteenth century. This church bears the name of St. Elizabeth, and it was on St. Elizabeth's Day that he

found himself within its walls. In the church it self, which, like the country, is now devoted to the Lutheran worship, there was no trace of any special solemnity, except that in honor of the day, and contrary to Protestant custom, it was open, and children were at play in it among the tombs. The stranger roamed through its vast, desolate, and devastated aisles, which are still young in their elegance and airy lightness. He saw placed against a pillar the statue of a young woman in the dress of a widow, with a gentle and resigned

man..

countenance, holding in one hand the model of a church, and with the other giving alms to a lame The lady is then depicted, fairer than in all the other representations, stretched on her bed of death midst weeping priests and nuns; and lastly, bishops exhume a coffin on which an emperor lays his crown. The traveller was told that these were events in the life of St. Elizabeth, queen of that country, who died on that day six hundred years ago in that very town of Marbourg, and lay buried in that very church.""

After his first visit to the church, he went to a bookseller, and inquired if there was a 'Life of St. Elizabeth.' The bookseller mounted to his garret and brought down a pamphlet covered with dust. Here is a

Life of her,' he said, 'if you care about it: it is never asked for here.' Montalembert possessed himself of it as a prize, and found it the cold lifeless composition of a Protestant. But the sympathetic cord was struck, and he set about the study of her career with hourly increasing eagerness, consulting traditions, visiting every place that she had hallowed by her presence, and ransacking all the books, chronicles, and manuscripts in which mention was made of her, or which threw light on her contemporaries and her age. And what is really most valuable and most characteristic in the book is that which elucidates her age, especially the Introduction (135 pages royal octavo), in which he seeks to prove that the thirteenth century, in which she flourished, has been shamefully calumniated: that it was not merely the age in which the Papacy attained its culminating point of pride and power, but the age in which Christian literature and art, that is to say, what he deems the best and purest literature and art, approached nearer to perfection than they have ever approached since or are likely to approach again.

He is strong, indeed unassailable, in Gothic architecture; for almost all the finest cathedrals in Germany, France, Belgium, Spain, and England, were built or founded in the thirteenth century: strong in painting, for he can point to the early schools of Siena and Florence: strong in poetry, if we allow him Dante, born in 1265, and bear in mind the legendary poets and the

Niebelungen;' but singularly weak, we think, when he tries to make out that this was also the age of social progress or legislation, and that the successors of St. Peter, who, like Innocent III., aspired to universal empire, were simply doing their duty in that state of life to which God had called them: that, in claiming to hold all the kings of the earth in humiliating vassalage, they had not a spark of mundane ambition and were merely vindicating the sacred liberties of the Church.*

*Pour lui (Innocent) la chrétienté entière n'est qu'une majestueuse unité, qu'un seul royaume, sans frontières intérieures et sans distinction des races, dont il est le défenseur intrépide au dehors, et le juge inébranlable et incorruptible au dedans' (p. xiii.). He did this, 'quoique sans cesse menacé et attaqué par ses propres sujets, les turbulents habitants de Rome.' He was not particular as to means, for 'il correspondait même avec les princes musulmans, dans l'intérêt de paix et de leur salut.' Of Honorius III. it is said,

Malgré sa douceur, il se vit forcé de mettre l'empereur, une première fois, au ban de l'Eglise, en laissant à Grégoire IX. le soin de continuer le combat. Le pauvre homme!

Whilst he was occupied with St. Elizabeth, he joined his friends Albert and Alexandrine, the hero and heroine of 'Le Récit d'une Sœur,' at Pisa, and she writes: How he loves this St. Elizabeth! He collects the smallest, the most minute details about her. He told me the other day a story of a knight who wore the colors of a saint who appeared to him in a dream.' There is another letter of hers which pleasantly, illustrates the playfulness and versatility of

his mind and character:

"We all went to the Cascine: then (which amused us much) we all went to order a bonnet for me. At dinner Albert suddenly took the resolution of going to a ball which was to be given that evening, but which we had all three declined. I resisted, fearing that it might do him harm; but he insisted, and ended by saying, 'Je le veux.' He told my maid to prepare everything, and by degrees I allowed myself to be persuaded into the pleasant annoyance of making myself as pretty as possible (je me laissai faire la douce violence'). This occupied me entirely for two hours. To make the joke complete, we forced Montal to go with us.

We had hard work to succeed in this, for he had nothing to put on. Albert lent him almost everything. Then it was necessary to get a shoemaker for him, and a hairdresser to cut his hair. All this amused us immensely; and the end of all, which made us laugh more than all the rest, was that, recollecting all at once that we had no servant, we took the shoemaker's boy with us in that capacity to go with us to the ball!"

In May, 1835, he attained the age (twenty-five) at which a French peer was permitted to join in the debates: the right of voting being suspended till thirty. He broke ground as a debater on the 8th September, 1835, in opposition to a measure for the restriction of the press proposed by the Broglie and Thiers ministry. This was followed by other speeches, all of a liberal tendency, the general effect of which is described by Sainte-Beuve :—

"When he reappeared in the Chamber," says Sainte-Beuve, "he had the right to say anything, to dare anything, so long as he retained that ele. gance of aspect and diction which never forsook him. He could utter with all freedom the most passionate pleadings for that liberty which was the only excess of his youth. He could develop without interruption those absolute theories which from another mouth would have made the Chamber shiver, but which pleased them from his. He could even give free course to his mordant and incisive wit, and make personal attacks with impunity upon potentates and ministers. In one or two cases the Chancellor called him to order for form's sake; but the favor which attends talent NEW SERIES.-VOL. XVIII., No. 1

carried everything before it. His bitternessand he was sometimes bitter-from him seemed almost amenity, the harshness of the meaning being disguised by the elegance of his manner and his perfect good grace.'

There is one remarkable quality in which Montalembert's writings, including the earliest, resemble Bolingbroke's. They be delivered as speeches, or parts of are rhetorical and declamatory: they might speeches, with full effect. To become an orator, the writer obviously wants nothing but voice, manner, and readiness, which Montalembert never wanted. We are,

therefore, surprised to learn from competent authorities (M. Fossier, confirmed by Mrs. Oliphant) that he began by speaking from copious notes, and did not trust to improvisation till it was forced upon him by the exigencies of debate. When what may be called his oratorical education was complete, he could not only introduce a prepared passage so as not to betray the preparation-which a master of the art, Lord Brougham, pronounces its highest achievement-but turn every passing incident or interruption to account, and reply with telling force upon the instant to all or any who roused his indignation or his scorn. About the end of the debate on the Droit d'Enseignement in 1844, which had called out all his powers, he was fairly entitled to take rank amongst the best French orators of his day; none of whom, however, except perhaps Berryer in the Chamber of Deputies and Dupin at the Bar, can be placed in the highest class :: the habit of reading speeches (hardly extinct yet), and of speaking from the tribune, having checked the progress of parliamentary oratory in France. Montalembert did not shine by lofty sustained imagery, like Burke and Grattan, the objects of his early admiration; nor by polished rhetoric,. flights of fancy, or strokes of humor, like Canning. His strength lay in earnestness,. ready command of energetic language, elevation of thought and tone, rapidity, boldness, conviction, passion, heart. His vehemence, his vis vivida, was power: when he warmed to his subject, he carried He had all, all before him with a rush.

or almost all, that is comprised in the action of Demosthenes. Sainte-Beuve says:

'He has few gestures, but he possesses the most essential qualities which produce successful action. His voice, pure and sustained (d'une

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longue haleine), is distinct and clear in tone, with a vibration and accent very suitable to mark the generous or ironical meaning of his speeches. The son of an English mother, he has in his voice, through its sweetness, a certain rise and fall of accentuation which answers his purpose well, which lets certain words drop from a greater height and resound further than others. I ask pardon for insisting upon these particulars; but the ancients, our masters in everything, and particularly in eloquence, gave a minute attention to them.'

It was Berryer who said: A man has always the voice of his mind. A mind clear, distinct, firm, generous, a little disdainful, displays all these sentiments in its voice.' An example of each of Montalembert's merits might be supplied from his speech on the Liberty of the Church (16th April, 1844), in which he proudly vindicated the position of the small minority whom he represented in the Chamber:

"Allow me to tell you, gentlemen, there has arisen amongst you a generation of men whom you know not. Call them néo-Catholiques, Sacristans, Ultramontanes, as you like: the name is nothing to the purpose: the thing exists. This generation would willingly take for device the words with which the manifesto of the generous Poles who resisted Catherine II. in the last century began: We who love liberty more than everything in the world, and the Catholic religion still more than liberty.'

"We are neither conspirators nor flatterers:

we are found neither in street tumults nor in ante.

chambers: we are strangers to all your coalitions, to all your recriminations, to all your struggles of cabinet, of parties: we have been neither to Ghent nor to Belgrave Square. We have made no pilgrimages except to the tombs of apostles, of Pontiffs, and of martyrs: we have there learned, with Christian and legitimate respect for established powers, how they are resisted when they fail in their duties, and how they are survived!

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. . . In this France, which has been wont to produce only men of heart and spirit, we alone, we Catholics-should we consent to be but fools and cowards? Are we to acknowledge ourselves such bastards, so degenerated from the condition of our fathers, that we must give up our reason to rationalism, deliver our conscience to the university, our dignity and our freedom into the hands of law-makers whose hatred for the freedom of the Church is equalled only by their profound ignorance of her rights and her doctrines? What! because we are of those who confess, do they suppose that we rise from the feet of our priests ready to hold out our own wrists to the handcuffs of anti-constitutional legalism? What! because the sentiment of faith reigns in our hearts, do they suppose that honor and courage have

*M. Guizot joined Louis XVIII. at Ghent during the Hundred Days; and the Legitimists had recently been crossing the Channel in great numbers to do homage to Henry V. whilst occupying a house in Belgrave Square.

perished there? Ah, let them undeceive them. selves. You are told: Be implacable.* Well, be so; do all you will and all you can. The Church answers you by the mouth of Tertullian and the gentle Fénelon, You have nothing to fear from us; but we do not fear you.' And for me, I add in the name of Catholic laymen like myself, Catholics of the nineteenth century-We will not be helots in the midst of a free people. We are the successors of the martyrs, and we do not tremble before the successors of Julian the Apostate. We are the sons of the Crusaders, and we will not fall back before the sons of Voltaire !"''

Estimated by its electrical effects on the audience-the best test of eloquence— his speech on the affairs of Switzerland must be regarded as his masterpiece. A league of cantons, the Sonderbund, formed to resist the Federal Diet, had been put down by an armed force, much as the Southern Confederacy was put down in the United States. It was practically the triumph of the radicals over the conservatives and Catholics, so that all Montalembert's warmest sympathies were enlisted for the Sonderbund. The conquerors, moreover, had been guilty of great excesses, and the religious orders had been the chief sufferers. The question arose as one of foreign policy in the debate on the Address, January 11th, 1848, and its real importance lay in its connection with the doctrines which revolutionised the greater part of Europe within the year. This was the aspect in which Montalembert presented it :

"Believe me, gentlemen, I do not come here to expose a religious or Catholic grievance. Yes, Catholicism has been wounded in Switzerland, as all the world knows; but all the world knows also that the wounds and the defeats of religion are not incurable or irreparable wounds; that at bottom it is her vocation to be wounded, persecuted, oppressed. She suffers from it, but only for a time. She is cured of it, she recovers, she comes out of these trials more radiant and more strong. But do you know what does not recover so easily, what cannot with impunity be exposed to such attacks? It is order, it is peace; it is above ail, liberty, and this is the cause which I come to plead before you, it is this which I come to deplore and vindicate with you."

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love liberty more than I have done. And here it must be said, I do not accept, either as a reproach or as praise, the opinion expressed of me by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, that I was exclusively devoted to religious liberty. No, no, gentlemen: that to which I am devoted is liberty in itself, the liberty of all and in everything. This I have always defended, always proclaimed: I who have written so much, spoken so much-too much, I acknowledge-I defy any man to find a single word from my pen or from my lips which has not been devoted to the cause of freedom. Freedom: ah! I can say it without phrases (sans phrase). She has been the idol of my soul; if I have anything to reproach myself with, it is to have loved her too much, to have loved her as one loves when

one is young, that is, without measure, without limit. But I neither reproach myself for this, nor do I regret it; I will continue to serve Freedom, to love her always, to believe in her always; and it is my belief that I have never loved her more, never served her better than on this day when I am doing my best to unmask her enemies, who deck themselves out in her colors, who usurp her flag to soil it, to dishonor it!",

According to the contemporary reports, the delivery of this speech was repeatedly interrupted by the enthusiasm of the audience. Half the peers rose to their feet: exclamations were heard from every corner of the Chamber. Pasquier left his place to compliment the orator: the ministers hurried up to him for the same purpose. M. Guizot, speaking for his colleagues, said:

"I do not share all the ideas of the honorable speaker; I do not accept the reproaches he has addressed to the Government. But he has given expression to too many great, good, and useful truths, and he has spoken with a sentiment too sincere and profound to make it possible to raise any debate with him at this moment. I cannot introduce a purely political and still less a personal question, after what he has just said. I have no reply to make to M. de Montalembert."' This completes the parallel with the greatest success ever attained in the English Parliament, Sheridan's Begum speech, when Pitt moved the adjournment of the debate, on the ground taken by M. Guizot. In recording this great event in his journal, Montalembert expresses his ineffable satisfaction at having executed justice on ces scélérats, the Swiss radicals, with whom he classed their patron and prompter (as he designated him), Lord Palmerston.

We have anticipated a little to classify his oratory. A man like Montalembert cannot be happy or content unless his heart is occupied, as well as his imagination and his intellect: he must have an object of affection as well as of ambition; and even friendship, the truest and warmest, will not

suffice. 'I have never been able to touch a woman's heart,' is his sorrowful entry in 1834; forgetting to add that he had never tried or never set the right way about it. How could he touch a living woman's heart when his own was with a dead saint? 'Saint Elizabeth,' he rapturously exclaims, 'she is my only friend.' If saints in heaven are permitted to befriend their worshippers. on earth, it may have been she who, by some miraculous influence, brought about his sudden and most auspicious attachment to her descendant, the beautiful and accomplished daughter of Count Félix de Merode, whom he met for the first time in the spring of 1836, and married in the following August."

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Immediately after their marriage the young couple started for Italy, by way of Switzerland. They passed the Christmas at Rome, where he had three interviews with the Pope, who quietly talked over the old affair of 'L'Avenir,' and expressed his warm approval of the course which Montalembert had subsequently pursued in religious matters. They are back in Paris in May, 1837, and, according to his biographer, there followed a few years of tranquil domestic existence, not without movement and that bruit which, from his earliest days, Montalembert had acknowledged himself to love-but still calm, disturbed by no clamor of perpetual publicity, with time in it for much literary work and much family enjoyment.'

In 1849 he came to England to attend the death-bed of his mother, accompanied by his wife and brother-in-law, Count Werner de Merode. The melancholy occasion prevented them from going into society, and we learn from Rio that they accepted only two invitations from London acquaintance-the one being Rogers, with whom they breakfasted; and the other a young member of Parliament destined to the greatest political position of our time,' Mr. Gladstone. In February, 1840, he writes to an English friend, Mr. de Lisle Philipps, that his chief occupation and interest since he left England had been the direction and maintenance of the Univers,' the journal which, under M. Veuillot, was eventually

The Belgian family of de Merode is one of the noblest in Europe, and connected with many princely houses. Monsignor de Merode, the honored counsellor of the Pope, is the brother of Madame de Montalembert.

to become the bitterest of his assailants and calumniators. The breach between him and the extreme section of the clerical party arose out of the settlement of the education question by the arrangement which he called the 'Concordat d'Enseignement' and they designated as a base compromise of the best interests of the Church. The main object, the liberty of teaching, was undoubtedly attained by it: attained by his unceasing devotion to the cause till it was practically won by effort upon effort, speech upon speech, during the most brilliant phase of his parliamentary career. It was the varied powers he displayed in its advocacy, coupled with the personal sacrifices exacted by it and made without murmuring, that elicited the glowing encomium of Count Molé in 1844: 'What a pity that he has so little ambition! And yet it is fine! If I was but forty, I would desire no other part (rôle) than that of M. de Montalembert.' He was mortified, no doubt, at the manner in which he was assailed after the passing of the Loi Falloux, which he might be excused for thinking ought to have been the Loi Montalembert; but his sympathising biographer is surely hurried into an unconscious exaggeration when she says:—

'He was thus left victorious, yet defeated, upon the ground he had so long and so gallantly held. The victory was won, but the leader was left alone

upon the field of battle. Curiously significant, like the dramatic winding up of a tragedy, was this strange success. He won it but in winning it, came not only to the end of his campaign, but to an end of his power; he had succeeded in the object which he had pursued for twenty years; but his political position was gone, and his power over. Never was there a more singular situation. In conquering he fell.'

His power over the ultras of the clerical party was at an end, but his political position, which did not depend upon them at any time, was rather strengthened by their defection. Now,' writes Sainte-Beuve in November 1849, he is followed willingly by men of all parties. Not only the eloquence and brilliancy, but the meaning, of his noble speeches is accepted and acknowledged. He has ceased to see every thing from one point of view.' Chamber of Peers had been abolished, and these noble speeches were addressed to popular assemblies, which (adds the same. fine observer), so differently composed and so stormy, suited him marvellously. He did not fear interruptions, but liked them :

The

he found in them (he said) great honor and great pleasure.' In a debate on the Irremovability of the Magistrature, April, 1849, after alluding to the assimilation of religion to justice in the expressions 'temple of the law,' 'sanctuary of justice' priesthood of the magistracy,' he continued:

"Yes, gentlemen, revolutions have passed over the head of the priest without bending it. I ask you so to act as that they may pass over the head of the judge without striking it. Let the stream of stream of progress-if there is progress-let the

destinies of the nation, that which is variable, if you like it better, in the destinies of the nationroll its course between two immovable banks, between the temple of the law and the temple of God -between the sanctuary of justice and the sanctuary of truth-between the priesthood of the priest and the priesthood of the judge.” ›*

In the debate on the Prince President's letter to Edgar Ney, imposing what were deemed insulting conditions on the Pope,

he said :

"You deny it; you deny moral force, you deny faith, you deny the empire of the pontifical authority over souls--that empire which has subdued the proudest emperors. Well; be it so; is the weakness of the Holy See. It is this but there is one thing which you cannot deny, it weakness, understand, that constitutes its insurmountable strength against you. Yes, truly, for there is not in the history of the world a greater or more consolatory spectacle than the embarrassment of strength in conflict with weakness.

"Permit me a familiar comparison. When a man is condemned to struggle against a woman, if that woman is not the most degraded of beings, she may defy him with impunity. She tells him, 'Strike! but you will disgrace yourself, and you will not conquer me.' Well, the Church is not a woman; she is more than a woman, she is a mother. She is a mother-the mother of Europe, of modern society, of modern humanity. It matters not that one is an unnatural son, a rebellious son, an ungrateful son, one always remains son, and there comes a moment in every struggle against the Church when this parricidal struggle becomes insupportable to the human race, and when he who has maintained it falls overpowered, annihilated, be it by defeat, be it by the unanimous reprobation of humanity!"

This impersonation of the Church, which exactly fell in with the feelings of the majority, was followed by a triple salvo of ried up to him and said, 'Your strength cheers. When he sat down, Berryer hurlies in this, that you are not absolute but resolute.' Thiers said, 'He is the most eloquent of men, and his speech the finest

Entre le sacerdoce du prêtre et le sacerdoce du juge. No speakers or writers of the higher class

suffer so much in translation as the French.