opportunity of striking a blow at what he considered dangerous error. Indefatigable, and substantially consistent, he was more of a schoolman in his moral logic, and more of a man of the world in his policy, than either his great master St. Cyran or the recluses of Les Granges. The first occasion on which he came in collision with the Society of Jesus, was the publication of a tract entitled "Fréquente Communion," in answer to the very lax doctrines contained in a brochure of the Jesuit confessor Père de Sesmaisons. So great was the anger of his opponents at the triumphant success of Arnauld's answer, that the latter thought it prudent to conceal himself until his friends had succeeded in frustrating the malice of the Jesuits in the highest ecclesiastical quarter. On the outbreak of the controversy occasioned by the publication of Jansen's "Augustinus," Arnauld threw himself with characteristic ardour into the dispute. But his sympathies were still more warmly roused by an attack made by the anti-Jansenist party on Port Royal itself. The Duke de Liancourt, who had built himself a cottage at Port Royal des Champs, whither he frequently retired, and whose friendly relations with the Jansenists were well known, was early in 1655 refused absolution by his parish priest, on the express ground of this Port Royal intimacy. Arnauld, indignant at such an imputation on the community with which his family was so closely bound up, at once entered the lists with a "Letter of a Doctor of the Sorbonne to a Person of Condition." This provoked nine replies, and Arnauld rejoined in his famous "Second Letter to a Duke and Peer." This led to his expulsion from the Sorbonne; and he went into a second concealment, from which he only emerged in the year 1668. But the most important point in connection with this attack upon Arnauld is, that it was the immediate cause of the appearance of the well-known "Provincial Letters" of Pascal, the first of which came out a week before Arnauld's first condemnation by the Sorbonne. These vigorous and witty polemics, which have taken a permanent place as a French classic, did not confine themselves to the disputed question of the droit and the fait of Jansen, but boldly held up the Jesuits to the scorn and execration of Europe as the underminers of all Christian morality. Their effect, we need hardly say, far exceeded any produced by the more solid arguments of the professed Jansenist controversialists. Edition after edition issued from the press, and was eagerly bought up; while the Jesuits vainly set every contrivance on foot to seize the secret printing-presses and prevent the further publication.

To Blaise Pascal and his writings Mr. Beard devotes two of the most interesting chapters in his volumes. His early studies in the pure and mixed mathematics-his friendship with Cor

neille-his first skirmish with the Jesuits-his controversy with Descartes his first religious impressions-the entrance of his sister Jacqueline into Port Royal-her brother's worldly lifethe problem as to his affection for Mademoiselle de Roannezhis "weariness and dissatisfaction"-his providential escape from the accident on the Bridge of Neuilly-his visions of Divine Truth,-lead us step by step to his final resolution on the 8th of December 1654,

"On the afternoon of that day, Pascal was in the parlour of Port Royal with his sister, when the bell sounded for nones and a sermon. They entered the church together; Singlin was the preacher. Pascal knew that his own attendance there that day was accidental, and saw that no communication could take place between his sister and her director; yet the sermon seemed as if it had been intended for himself alone. It spoke of the beginning of the Christian life, and of the necessity of making it holy; it declared that God ought to be consulted upon every change of purpose; that modes of life should be examined with reference to the great interest of individual salvation. Jacqueline fed the flame of devotion which now burned with unwonted ardour; so that before long her brother resolved to put himself under the guidance of some austere director, and to spend all his strength in the work of his own religious education. Who was the director to be? Jacqueline naturally suggested Singlin ; but Pascal felt at first some undefined aversion to the great confessor of Port Royal; and when this was overcome, Singlin's own reluctance to accept the charge of fresh penitents stood in the way. At last the confessor, now at Port

Royal des Champs, consented to give Jacqueline the needful instruction; and for a little time the brother eagerly and humbly followed the sister's guidance. Then room was found for him among the solitaries of the sacred valley, and De Saçi filled the place of Jacqueline. There all was well."

His subsequent departure, but not estrangement, from Port Royal, his excessive austerity, bordering on moroseness, until his death in the year 1662, complete a career extending over only thirty-nine years, which, taken in connection with the other literary productions by which his name was rendered increasingly famous, well deserves more than a passing study.

Meanwhile the odium theologicum was beginning to affect seriously the position of the convents of Port Royal. Vague imputations of disloyalty were bruited abroad. Singlin, whose success as a preacher in the convent-church at Paris had raised the jealousy of other ecclesiastics, was forbidden to preach, but soon afterwards was permitted to resume his functions. The "solitaries" at Les Granges were less fortunate, and anticipated their expulsion by a hasty dispersal. But when the storm seemed to be about to burst over the heads of the helpless nuns, it was

unexpectedly averted for four years by the occurrence of what is called the "Miracle of the Holy Thorn." Mr. Beard has exhibited much ingenuity in suggesting a possible natural solution of this much-canvassed Jansenist miracle. But, after all, his hypothesis implies a concurrence of circumstances almost in itself worthy of being called miraculous. A child who had long suffered from "lachrymal fistula" in the left eye, was suddenly healed, to all outward appearance, by the application to the diseased part of a thorn from the Saviour's crown, which was being exhibited for adoration in the church of the convent. It is certain the outward appearance of disease in the eye existed when the child approached the altar; it is also certain that almost immediately afterwards this appearance no longer existed. Mr. Beard, arguing from the nature of the disease, suggests very plausibly that the self-curative powers of nature had matured a remedy which the pressure of the thorn precipitated by a few hours. Whatever the reality may have been, and whether imposture or delusion had any hand in the work, the effect of the cure on public opinion was very striking. By the friends of Port Royal, and by the majority of the public, the miracle was looked upon as a special interposition of providence to testify to the innocence and orthodoxy of the community. Crowds thronged to the church where the portent had been performed; fresh cures were reported in all quarters from the application of the holy relic; the solitaries ventured one by one to return to Port Royal des Champs, and remained unmolested; and Singlin was appointed by the Archbishop de Retz superior of the convent. Above all it was on the occasion of the "Miracle of the Holy Thorn" that Pascal wrote his celebrated "Pensées."

Once more, however, the progress of the Jansenist controversy brought down disquiet and persecution on the twin communities. The Jesuits obtained a Bull from the Holy See, by which a new "Formulary" affirming more definitely both the fait and the droit as to the propositions alleged to be contained in Jansen's" Augustinus," was promulgated, and after some delay it was ordered by the king (acting under the advice of his first Jesuit confessor, Père Annat), that this "formulary" should be signed by every ecclesiastic, and all members of religious orders, whether male or female. The attack on Port Royal had already commenced. The first blow was struck in the year 1660, by an order for the final dispersion of the schools. M. de Bernières, one of the most faithful friends of the community, was banished under a lettre de cachet. The boarders and novices were expelled from both convents; the confessors Singlin and De Saçi concealed themselves in Paris; the recluses followed their example, and dispersed in various directions. Death had

already removed Le Maître from the scene; La Mère Angélique, who, sinking under disease and old age, had caused herself to be removed in a litter from Port Royal des Champs to the sister house in Paris, died while the royal commissioners were pursuing their inquisitorial visitation in the convent. And now came the obnoxious Formulary to complete the ruin of the distressed sisterhood. For some time, on one specious excuse or another, they managed to delay giving a positive answer, and then began a long succession of suggestions, and conditions, and prefaces, and non-natural interpretations, under the former of which the sisters, and under the latter M. Perefixe, the new Archbishop of Paris, sought to meet and overcome the case of conscience. The nuns declared they could not conscientiously sign a declaration that such propositions were in a book which they had never seen. They were called upon to affirm the fait as well as the droit. At length, when every other means failed, twelve of the nuns of Port Royal, including La Mère Agnès, were removed to separate restraint in different conventual houses, and there subjected to every temptation and argument which the ingenuity of their persecutors could devise. The nuns who remained at Port Royal were subjected to a similar inquisition. The result was, the falling-off of a few, but the steadfast constancy of the great majority. At last the scattered members were reassembled within the walls of Port Royal des Champs, where for several years, until the conclusion of what was called the Peace of the Church, they were kept under the strictest surveillance, and deprived of all the religious consolations of the Church. The convent of Port Royal de Paris had been weeded of all its faithful members, who were transferred to the convent in the valley, which thenceforward was to all real purposes the only Port Royal.

But we must hasten over the succeeding period of renewed prosperity; the deaths of La Mère Agnès and all the earlier generation of nuns and solitaries; the controversies and concealments of Antoine Arnauld; and the miracles and mystic reveries of the later generation of Port Royalists. Port Royal was to the Jesuits what Carthage was to the ancient Romans. Until they saw her walls levelled with the ground, and her community completely broken up, their restless hostility knew no cessation. It is well known that they succeeded in their object. Port Royal was destroyed; and it was not till after the death of Louis XIV. death having been in the mean time also busy among the nuns-that five remaining sisters were reunited in the hospitable retreat of the Benedictine Abbey of Malnoue, where they ended peacefully their life of trouble and vicissitude. It was probably well for the fame of Port Royal that it

perished when it did, by one sudden and decisive blow, while the recollection of its earlier glories, and of the great names with which its annals are imperishably connected, was still fresh. The greatness which it achieved sprang in so large a degree from the individual characters of its founders, and so little from the constitution and influences of the society itself, that it could scarcely calculate on its continuance through more than two successive generations. The immediate disciples of Singlin and De Saçi, of Le Maître and Pascal, might emulate in some slightly approximate degree the reputation of their great masters, but could hardly be expected to hand down to a third generation the flame of genius in undiminished lustre. The signs of degeneracy were indeed but too plainly visible before the second generation had passed away. Better, too, by far that their history should end where it does, than that their name should become-like that of their destroyers-a synonym for chicanery and falsehood among all free nations, and a stumbling-block in the way of all national advancement, and all enlightened civilisation."

ART. IX.-POLITICS AND FAITH.

Past and Present. By Thomas Carlyle. A new edition. Chapman and Hall.

Lectures on the Apocalypse. By Frederick Denison Maurice, M.A. Macmillan.

1861.

A fen Words on Garibaldi. An Answer to numerous Letters from Rev. Robert M'Ghee. By Lord Robert Montague, M.P. Ridgway. 1861.

IN many respects the great nations of the ancient world looked upon the phenomena of national life and political government with a far truer, fresher, and more religious eye than those of the nineteenth century; in some measure, possibly, because national unity and political government being less permanent and stable, less a recognised part of the unalterable order of the universe, the power which sustained it was likely to awaken more immediately the wonder and awe of thoughtful minds: in still greater measure, because that sharp division between the spiritual and the secular, which is so marked a phenomenon of the most modern society, had no existence among the three great nations to whom we owe the principal germs of our civilisation. The highest minds among the Romans, the Greeks, and the Hebrews, were habitually possessed with a grave