I have ever heard. I envy him for it, but I hope the envy is no sin, for I love the beautiful, and I love Montalembert.'

What really lowered his political position, and lessened public confidence in his sagacity, was his conduct in reference to the coup d'état. Two days after its occurrence, December 4, he wrote to M. Fossier, 'Je n'ai su, ni conseillé, ni approuvé ce qui s'est fait.' But he allowed his name to remain on the Consultative Commission for some days, and was cajoled into the semblance of acquiescence till the confiscation of the Orleans property. His reasons were fully stated in his published letter, dated December 12, recommending the re-election of the President. These may be summed up in his dread of Socialism and his gratitude for services rendered to Catholicism: The liberty of instruction guaranteed: the Pope re-established by French arms: the Church restored to its councils, its synods, the plenitude of its dignity: the gradual augmentation of its colleges, its communities, its work of salvation and mercy.' He concluded in these words, In the mighty struggle between the two powers which divide the world, I believe that, in acting thus, I am as I ever have been, for Catholicism against Revolution.'

The bitter truth soon broke upon him, that he had been acting for Catholicism against liberty; and during the whole remainder of his life he struggled manfully to repair or atone for his mistake. The antiimperial feeling of the Academy made his election to it in 1852 doubly welcome as a tribute to his personal integrity, as well as to his literary and oratorical distinction; and his inaugural address (Feb. 5th) was fully equal to his fame. One of the most telling passages was that in which, after showing to what France had been brought by revolutionary excesses, he said :

Whether in the end we are to be conquered or conquerors, is the secret of God. The grand point is not to have ourselves prepared the catastrophe to which we succumb, and, after our defeat, not to become the accomplice or the instrument of the victorious foe. I remember, as bearing on this, a fine reply attributed to the most chivalrous of our revolutionists, to M. de la Fayette. He was asked ironically what he had been able to do for the triumph of his liberal doctrines under the First Empire, and he replied, "Je me suis tenu debout.' It strikes me, gentlemen, that this proud and haughty expression might serve for the devise and summary of your history. The

In July, 1857, he writes from Vichy that, after twenty-six years of public service, he has been set aside in the recent elections; and this, thanks to the Clergy of FrancheComté, half of whom voted against me, and the other half stayed at home; such has been the result of the influence of the "Univers," and of its calumnies and denunciations for the last seven years against me and my friends.' He was defeated by a Government candidate, and he used to relate an incident showing that other causes than clerical animosity were at work. On the day of election a party of gendarmes were marched into the principal town of the department, and drawn up in the square before the polling-place. 'Why did you not keep your promise?' asked Montalembert of a peasant proprietor, who had promised to vote for him and then voted the other way. Oh, Monsieur le Comte, the gendarmes - Did they say anything? No, Monsieur le Comte.''Did they do anything?'-'No, Monsieur le Comte.'-'Then why did you not vote as you promised?'-'Oh, Monsieur le Comte, ils étaient toujours là.'

He called a visit to England 'taking a bath of life,' in allusion to the bracing effect of its social and political atmosphere on one who had been breathing the impure and depressing air of despotism. He took one of these baths in 1855, and made the acquaintance of the scélérat Foreign Secretary, of whom he writes, 'I had yesterday a long conversation with Lord Palmerston, and I must acknowledge that, in spite of the repugnance which I have for his political principles, it would be difficult to find a man more agreeable, more spirituel or younger, notwithstanding that he is seventythree.'

He wished to see Woolwich Arsenal, and went down with a friend. They got there during the dinner hour, and whilst waiting for the reopening of the workshops sat down upon one of a range of cannon, with a conical pile of shells in front. He began to talk of England, her grandeur, her resources, her free institutions; and discoursed so eloquently that his companion earnestly pressed him to give body and durability to

* When Siéyès was asked what he had done during the Reign of Terror, he replied, Ce que j'ai fait ? j'ai vécu.' (Mignet.)

his observations by making them the basis of a book. 'Gibbon states that the idea of writing his " Decline and Fall" first started to his mind as he sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol. Why should not the first idea of an Essay on the Future of England first start to the mind of an illustrious foreigner sitting on one of the emblems and materials of her naval and military power ?'* He laughed at this grandiloquent parallel, but took the hint and wrote L'Avenir politique de l'Angleterre,' a book in which he indicates with instinctive sagacity the felicitous concurrence of circumstances, habits, and modes of thoughts that have made the British empire what it is. He was bitterly assailed on both sides of the Channel, especially for what he said about the churches; and we have a letter now before us, dated La Roche-en-Breny, January 3rd, 1856, in which he writes, this act has been, and deserves to be, looked upon as an act of foolhardiness. I have to contend both in Europe and America with the whole weight of religious prejudice against Protestant England, and of political prejudice against English freedom or English ambi

tion.'

What turned out an act of still greater foolhardiness was an article in the Correspondant' of October, 1858 (published separately in England), entitled Un Débat sur l'Inde au Parlement anglais,' which he made the vehicle of such exasperating allusions to the Imperial régime that it provoked a prosecution. He was defended by Berryer, and gave his own evidence as to the exact meaning of the inculpated passages, which no English judge or jury could have held libellous, but he was found guilty and the sentence on him was six months' imprisonment with a fine of 3000 francs: one month's imprisonment and a fine of 1000 francs on the publisher. The sentence, after being confirmed on appeal, was remitted by the Emperor. This article contained an admirable account of the debate in question-the debate on Mr. Cardwell's motion of censure on Lord Ellenborough's proclamation-with sketches. of the several speakers, in his best manner.

*It was as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the "Decline and Fall" first started to my mind.'-Gibbon's Memoirs.

6

The two first volumes of his Monks of the West' (from St. Benedict to St. Bernard) appeared in 1860; the third, in 1865; the fourth and fifth, in 1867. The subject of the three last is the conversion of England by the monks; which is brought down to the death of the Venerable Bede in 735. This great monument of history, this great work interrupted by death,' says M. Coclin, ' is gigantic as an uncompleted cathedral.' It is certainly a vast conception, a durable, if unfinished, monument of energy, zeal, literary skill, research, learning, eloquence, and (we must add) credulity. His principal authorities are necessarily monkish chronicles, eked out by legends and traditions as fabulous as those of the round table. But he puts implicit faith in all of them: rarely, if at all, applies the test of conflicting evidence or internal improbability: is never staggered by any amount of miracles; and is so ready to give his saints, male and female, credit for supernatural powers that it is fortunate the story of St. Dunstan's conflict with the Devil did not come within his range, for he would most assuredly have adopted it as a fact. His chapter on Les Religieuses anglo-saxonnes' is principally composed of the adventures of Saxon princesses who leave their fathers or husbands and their homes, to lead a kind of life which, without Divine interposition, would be dangerous in the extreme. Thus Frideswilda, founder and patroness of Oxford-'that is to say, of one of the most celebrated seats of learning in the universe'-being out on the ramble, is pursued and on the point of being overtaken by a rude suitor, when she prays to St. Cæcilia, who saves her by striking the brute blind, but restores his sight at the subsequent intercession of the intended victim when she is safe. Feeling thirsty, she prays for water, and there instantly bubbles up a spring which continued during six centuries to attract crowds by the fame of its healing qualities :—

'But of all the miracles collected after her death none touches us like that which, related during her life, especially contributed to aggrandise her reputation for sanctity. It chanced one day that an unhappy young man suffering from leprosy met her. As soon as he caught sight of her, he cried out: "I conjure you, Virgin Frideswilda, by the Almighty God, to give me a kiss in the name of Jesus Christ, His only Son.” The maiden, subduing the horror inspired by this hideous malady, drew near to him, and after marking him with the sign of the cross, impressed a sisterly

kiss on his lips. Very soon afterwards the scales of the leper's skin fell off, and his body became healthy and fresh as that of a child.'

This is one specimen amongst a hundred. The admixture of legendary lore lends additional attraction to the biographical portions, which read like so many prose idylls, except where they are inter spersed with sketches of customs or manners, descriptions of scenery, and elaborate dissertations to prove that the monks, through a long succession of ages, have done more for European civilisation than all the economists and calculators, reformers and scientific discoverers, put together. This, indeed, is the moral of the book, which can only be even plausibly deduced by confounding the monks congregated in richly endowed monasteries with the monks errant or missionary monks: these two classes having about as much to do with each other as the Templars settled on the banks of the Thames with the Knights Templar who fought for the Temple, or the modern knights of Malta or St. John with those who formed the bulwark of Christendom against the Turks.

In illustration of the services rendered to agriculture, he says, 'Wherever there is a luxuriant forest, a pure stream, a majestic hill, we may be sure that Religion has left her stamp by the hand of the monk.' Is not this very like saying that they managed to possess themselves of the finest parts of the country? They reclaimed a great deal of waste ground, but their agriculture does not appear to have been of an advanced description, and he commends one religious community for doing the work of oxen by harnessing themselves to the plough. In regard to learning, they kept the lamp burning with a feeble and flickering light; but it was beside the purpose of their institution to cultivate profane literature or to educate the laity; and the little they did in either direction may be inferred from the condition of literature prior to its revival and the want of education in the people. Till the end of the fifteenth century every one who could read a mark (says Blackstone) of great learning in those days of ignorance and her sister superstition '-was allowed the benefit of clergy, it being taken for granted that every one who could read must be a clerk in holy orders. This is quite decisive on the point. To establish the value

of monastic establishments as inexhaustible reservoirs of prayer, Montalembert appeals again to legends and traditions :

nations, princes were seen emulously recurring to 'During a thousand years, and in all Catholic the prayers of the monks, and taking pride in their confidence in them. At the apogee of the feudal epoch, when the fleet of Philip Augustus, sailing towards the Holy Land, is assailed in the sea of Sicily by a terrible tempest, the king reanimates the courage and confidence of the sailors by reminding them what intercessors they had left on their native soil. "It is midnight," he said; "it is the hour when the communists of Clairvaux rise to chant unctions. These holy monks never forget us. They are going to appease (sic) Christ: they are going to pray for us; and their prayers are going to rescue us from danger."

After stating that an analogous trait is related of Charles V.-who, it will be re membered, ordered prayers to be offered up for the release of his own prisoner, the Pope-the author proceeds, Like these chiefs, the whole Society of Christendom, during the whole of the middle age, showed itself penetrated with this confidence in the superior and invincible power of monastic prayer; and this is why they endowed to the best of their ability those who interceded the best for them. The mercenary character of the intercession, therefore, in no respect deducted from its efficacy; and no king or emperor need fear shipwreck if he or some well-advised predecessor has retained a sufficient number of monks to get up in the middle of the night to pray for him.

The fifth volume concludes with a touching and really beautiful allusion to a family incident, which is thus related by his friend, M. Cochin :

and beloved child entered that library which all "One day," says M. Cochin, "his charming his friends know so well, and said to him, ‘I am fond of everything around me. I love pleasure, wit, society and its amusements; I love my family, my studies, my companions, my youth, my life, my country: but I love God better than all, and I desire to give myself to him.' And when he said to her, My child, is there something that grieves you?' she went to the book-shelves and sought out one of the volumes in which he had narrated the history of the Monks of the West. 'It is you,' she answered, who have taught me that withered hearts and weary souls are not the things which we ought to offer to God.'

After describing the agony inflicted on both mother and father by this event, Montalembert exclaims, How many others have undergone this agony and gazed with a look of distraction on the last worldly

appearance of a dearly beloved daughter or sister.' Yet it never once occurs to this warm-headed, noble-minded man that a system which inflicts such agony on so many innocent sufferers, which condemns to the chill gloom of a cloister what is meant for love and light-which runs counter to the whole course of nature-may be

wrong.

During the last eight or ten years of his life he was suffering from the malady of which he died; and on February 10, 1869, he writes to one of his most valued English friends, Mr. Monsell: My unfortunate state is just the same as it has been for the last three years. I have no chance, no hope, and I think I may sincerely say, no wish to recover.' His capacity for intellectual exertion was necessarily impaired, but his conversation was never more brilliant than during the afternoons when his health permitted him to hold a sort of reception round his sofa. The only difference was that it had a shade of sadness, and turned by preference on questions in which grave and high interests were involved. In earlier days and happier times, it was sparkling with fancy and humor, as well as replete with thought; he could talk equally well like an Englishman with elliptical breaks, or like a Frenchman with continuity and flow; he told an anecdote with inimitable apropos, and although not a word or gesture belied the inborn courtesy of his race, he would occasionally throw in a dash of irony, which scarce suspected, like the onion atoms in Sydney Smith's salad, imparted a delicate flavor to his style. There are two contrasted occasions, respectively illustrative of both manners, which vividly recall his image; a dinner at 16, Upper Brook Street, in

1854, when he was gay, glancing, animated, varied, and satirical: an afternoon in his own library in the Rue du Bac in 1867, when, discussing with General Changarnier and an English friend the political situation and the errors which led to it, he said, 'I formed a wrong estimate of our imperial master's honesty; you, Thiers, Berryer, and other leaders of the party of order, of his capacity.'

It is painful to reflect that his spirit was not suffered to pass away in peace: that his dying hours were troubled by an imperative call to choose his side in a wantonly provoked schism. He died on the 15th March, 1870, and his memorable letter on Papal infallibility is dated February 28th, just sixteen days before his death. That letter was declared unsatisfactory at Rome; but, in reply to a visitor who ventured to catechise him on his death-bed, he is reported to have given in his unconditional adhesion to what confessedly he did not understand. And God does not ask me to understand. He asks me to submit my will and intelligence, and I will do so.'

Even this was not enough. The highest tribute of ecclesiastical respect which the Church accords to a faithful son was denied to his memory: to the memory of him who had devoted his whole life to her cause, who had dared impossibilities for her sake, who had given up to her what was meant for mankind, and thereby abdicated that place amongst practical statesmen and legislators which, apart from her blighting influence, his birth, his personal gifts, his high and rare quality of intellect, his eloquence, his elevation of purpose, his nobility of mind and character, must have won for him.-Quarterly Review.

It is one of the disadvantages of reading books about natural scenery that they fill the mind with pictures, often exaggerated, often distorted, often blurred, and even when well drawn, injurious to the freshness of first impressions. Such has been the fate of most of us with regard to the Falls

* A Discourse delivered in the Royal Institution of Great Britain, on Friday, 4th April, 1873.

of Niagara. There was little accuracy in the estimates of the first observers of the cataract. Startled by an exhibition of power so novel and so grand, emotion leaped beyond the control of the judgment and gave currency to notions regarding the waterfall which have often led to disappointment.

A record of the voyage in 1535 by a French mariner named Jacques Cartier,

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contains, it is said, the first printed allusion to Niagara. In 1603 the first map of the district was constructed by a Frenchman named Champlain. In 1648 the Jesuit Rageneau, in a letter to his superior at Paris, mentions Niagara as "a cataract of frightful height."* In the winter of 1678 and 1679 the cataract was visited by Father Hennepin, and described in a book dedicated "to the King of Great Britain." He gives a drawing of the waterfall, which shows that serious changes have taken place since his time. He describes it as a great and prodigious cadence of water, to which the universe does not offer a parallel." The height of the fall, according to Hennepin, was more than 600 feet. "The waters," he says, "which fall from this great precipice do foam and boil in the most astonishing manner, making a noise more terrible than that of thunder. When the wind blows to the south, its frightful roaring may be heard for more than fifteen leagues." The Baron la Hontan, who visited Niagara in 1687, makes the height 800 feet. In 1721 Charlevois, in a letter to Madame de Maintenon, after referring to the exaggerations of his predecessors, thus states the result of his own observations :-"For my part, after examining it on all sides, I am inclined to think that we cannot allow it less than 140 or 150 feet," —a remarkably close estimate. At that time, viz. a hundred and fifty years ago, it had the shape of a horse-shoe, and reasons will subsequently be given for holding that this has been always the form of the cataract from its origin to its present site. As regards the noise of the cataract, Charlevois declares the accounts of his predecessors, which, I may say, are repeated to the present hour, to be altogether extravagant. He is perfectly right. The thunders of Niagara are formidable enough to those who really seek them at the base of the Horseshoe Fall; but on the banks of the river, and particularly above the fall, its silence, rather than its noise, is surprising. This arises, in part, from the lack of resonance, the surrounding country being flat, and therefore furnishing no echoing surfaces to reinforce the shock of the waThe resonance from the surrounding

ter.

* From an interesting little book presented to me at Brooklyn by its author, Mr. Holly, some of these data are derived: Hennepin, Kalm, Bakewell, Lyell, Hall and others, I have myself consulted.

rocks causes the Swiss Reuss at the Devil's Bridge, when full, to thunder more loudly than the Niagara.

On Friday, the 1st of November, 1872, just before reaching the village of Niagara Falls, I caught, from the railway train, my first glimpse of the smoke of the cataract. Immediately after my arrival I went with a friend to the northern end of the American Fall. It may be that my mood at the time toned down the impression produced by the first aspect of this grand cascade; but I felt nothing like disappointment, knowing, from old experience, that time and close acquaintanceship, the gradual interweaving of mind and nature, must powerfully influence my final estimate of the scene. After dinner we crossed to Goat Island, and, turning to the right, reached the southern end of the American Fall. The river is here studded with small islands. Crossing a wooden bridge to Luna Island, and clasping a tree which grows near its edge, I looked long at the cataract, which here shoots down the precipice like an avalanche of foam. It grew in power and beauty as I gazed upon it. The channel spanned by the wooden bridge was deep, and the river there doubled over the edge of the precipice like the swell of a muscle, unbroken. The ledge here overhangs, the water being poured out far beyond the base of the precipice. A space, called the Cave of the Winds, is thus enclosed between the wall of rock and the cataract.

Goat Island terminates in a sheer dry precipice which connects the American and the Horseshoe Falls. Midway between both is a wooden hut, the residence of the guide to the Cave of the Winds, and from the hut a winding staircase, called Biddle's Stair, descends to the base of the precipice. On the evening of my arrival I went down this stair, and wandered along the bottom of the cliff. One well-known factor in the formation and retreat of the cataract was immediately observed. A thick layer of limestone formed the upper portion of the cliff. This rested upon a bed of soft shale which extended round the base of the cataract.

The violent recoil of the water against this yielding substance crumbles it away, undermining the ledge above, which unsupported, eventually breaks off, and produces the observed recession.

At the southern extremity of the Horseshoe is a promontory, formed by the doubling back of the gorge excavated by the