SECTION XXI.

OF S. VINCENT DE PAUL.

Or all the subjects of panegyric which the modern history of religion affords us, the best, in my opinion, is the life of S. Vincent de Paul; a man of great virtue, though possessed of but little renown; the best citizen whom France hath had; the apostle of humanity, who, after having been a shepherd in his childhood, hath left in his country establishments of more utility to the unfortunate than the finest monuments of his sovereign, Louis XIV.

He was successively a slave at Tunis, preceptor of the Cardinal De Retz, minister of a village, chaplain-general of the galleys, principal of a college, chief of the missions, and joint-commissioner of ec

olence hereafter."-BURKE's Speech to the Electors of Bristol, 1780.

The same writer has given the public a later specimen of his talent for panegyric, in that highly-coloured painting of the "beauteous Queen of France," in his work entitled Reflections on the Revolution in France, p. 112.

However divided the public are respecting the political sentiments contained in this celebrated work, it seems to be a prevailing and just opinion, that in this description Mr. Burke has suffered his imagination and gallantry to gain the ascendency over his sober judgment; and that, while painting the hardships of an individual, he has discovered the very spirit of a knight-errant, and carried his readers back to the almost forgotten age of chivalry.

clesiastical benefices.* He instituted in France the seminaries of the Lazarists, and of the Daughters of Charity, who devote themselves to the consolation of the unfortunate, and who scarcely ever change their condition, although their vows only bind them for a year. He endowed hospitals for foundlings, for orphans, for the insane, for galleyslaves, and for old men. His generous compassion

reached all kinds of wretchedness with which the human species is oppressed, and monuments of his beneficence are to be found throughout all the provinces of the kingdom. When reading his life, we remark that nothing does more honour to religion than the history of institutions formed in favour of humanity, when humanity is beholden for them to the ministers of the altars. While kings, armed against each other, ravage the earth, already laid waste by other scourges, Vincent de Paul, the son of a husbandman of Gascony, repaired the public calamities, and distributed more than twenty millions of livres in Champagne, in Picardy, in Lorraine, in Artois, where the inhabitants of whole villages were dying through want, and were afterward left in the fields without burial, until he undertook to defray the expenses of interment. He discharged for some time an office of zeal and charity towards the galleys. He saw one day a wretched galleyslave, who had been condemned to three years' confinement for smuggling, and who appeared inconso

* Adjoint au ministère de la feuille des bénéfices.

lable on account of his wife and children having been left in the greatest distress. Vincent de Paul, sensibly affected with his situation, offered to put himself in his stead, and, what doubtless will scarcely be credited, the exchange was accepted. This virtuous man was chained among the crew of galleyslaves, and his feet continued to be swollen during the remainder of his life from the weight of those honourable irons which he had borne.

It is evident how much an action like this is capable of suggesting to the mind of an orator; and that he would be unworthy of his profession if he related it without exciting tears.

When this great man came to Paris, foundlings were sold in the streets of St. Landry for twenty sous a piece; and the charge of these innocent creatures was committed, out of charity, as was reported, to diseased women, from whom they sucked corrupted milk.

These infants, whom government abandoned to public compassion, almost all perished; and such as happened to escape so many dangers were introduced clandestinely into opulent families, in order to dispossess the legitimate heirs. This, for more than a century, was a never-failing source of litigation, the particulars of which are to be found in the compilations of our old lawyers. Vincent de Paul at once provided funds for the maintenance of twelve of these children. His charity was soon extended to the relief of all those who were left exposed at the doors of the churches. But that unusual zeal, which

always gives life to a new institution, having cooled, the resources entirely failed, and fresh outrages were renewed on humanity.

Vincent de Paul was not discouraged. He convoked an extraordinary assembly. He caused a number of those wretched infants to be placed in the church; and forthwith mounting the pulpit, he pronounced, with his eyes bathed in tears, that discourse, which doth as much honour to his piety as his eloquence, and which I faithfully transcribe from the history of his life drawn up by M. Abelly, bishop of Rhodes.

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Compassion and charity have assuredly induced you, ladies, to adopt these little creatures for your children. You have been their mothers by kindness, since their mothers by nature have forsaken them. See, now, whether ye also are willing to abandon them. Cease for the present to be their mothers, that ye may become their judges. Their life and their death are in your hands. I am going to put it to the vote, and to take the suffrages. It is time to pronounce their sentence, and to know if ye are unwilling to have compassion any longer upon them. They will live if ye continue to take a charitable care of them, and they will all die if ye abandon them."

Sighs were the only answer to this pathetic exhortation: and the same day, in the same church, at the very same time, the Foundling Hospital at Paris was founded, and endowed with a revenue of forty thousand livres.*

* The success attending this discourse of Vincent do

This is the man who scarcely possesses any fame in Europe! This is the man who, according to the judgment of his enemies, had zeal only without talents! His life was interwoven with good works, the benefit of which we still enjoy.

The misfortune of S. Vincent de Paul (if it be one to be little praised and even little known) was not to be celebrated, when he died in 1661, by that eloquent Bossuet, who immortalized all his heroes, and who at the very time was composing funeral orations for subjects far less deserving of his genius. But the honour of a public panegyric is due to his virtues, and the orator who shall represent him in a point of view worthy of the admiration and gratitude of his fellow-citizens will have deserved well of his country.*

Paul, in the erection of the Foundling Hospital at Paris, is elsewhere (§ 48) compared to that of the Bishop of Worcester's sermon, which influenced the public benevolence to found an Hospital for Inoculation in London; and hence our author is led to remark, that "Eloquence could not obtain a more excellent triumph." In addition to those two instances of successful discourse, it may be added, that, in consequence of Bishop Ridley's sermon on alms, King Edward the Sixth founded St. Bartholomew's Hospital for the sick and wounded, Bridewell for the wilfully idle and mad, and Christ Church for orphans.—BurNETT's History of the Reformation.

* The account given by our author of this great and good man, brings to recollection the benevolent and patriotic exertions of the late excellent and well-known JONAS