mously, 'We will stay!' on which the police agent, with the help of his brethren, turned out every one except Lacordaire, who protested that he had hired the place, that it was his house, and that he would sleep there unless forcibly ejected. 'Leave me,' said he, seating himself on a camp-bedstead which stood in the room. Leave me: I remain here alone with the law and with my right.' But the policeman having touched his shoulder as a sign that constraint would be used if necessary, he retired, and seals were placed on the doors of the house.

*

Before the legal proceedings which the Government immediately instituted were ripe for judgment, M. de Montalembert's father died, and his son, though too young to take his seat, succeeded to the peerage. This gave him a right to be tried by the highest tribunal in the land, and as this right extended to those who were to be tried with him, the three schoolmasters, as they called themselves, appeared before the Chamber of Peers on the 14th and 15th of September.† It was a grand day for them and for their cause. All three spoke in their own defence, and spoke well. M. de Montalembert naturally says nothing of his own triumph, but it is well known that his speech on this occasion was a great success, and formed a fitting foundationstone to his future reputation. Lacordaire's discourse, though perfectly suited to the occasion, is perhaps a little disappointing to the general reader. It is an able piece of pleading, but the orator felt that he was defending a cause rather than establishing what the law should be. Instead of rising to general principles, he endeavoured to prove that he and his friends had done nothing illegal. This was of course the right line to adopt, and M. de Montalembert expresses his belief that his friend's speech produced considerable impression on the assembled peers. The verdict, so far as the prisoners were concerned, was virtually an acquittal. They were merely condemned to pay a trifling fine of 100 francs; and though their cause was lost, and the free school closed, they had succeeded in creating an interest in the subject, and making their voices ring throughout France.

M. de Montalembert, whose scorn and hatred for the present state of things in France are unbounded, looks back with unavailing regrets to these strifes and struggles of his youth. Seen through the golden vapours of time, the past appears to him a period of noble earnestness-the present as one of degradation and decay. Thus thinks the great parliamentary orator, now fallen on evil times, gagged, calumniated, and oppressed. But one of his bitterest griefs must be to know that it was the rest*He was then only twenty-one.

The 19th and 20th of September according to the 'Avenir.'

less,

less, radical spirit shown by such parties as that of the 'Avenir' which sapped and ultimately overthrew a government under which he was at least allowed freely to express his opinions.

The 'Avenir's' short existence was, however, destined soon to expire. Its principles were equally distasteful to a clergy which was mainly Gallican and Legitimist, and to a kingly Government which was painfully striving to build a durable edifice. Accordingly, on the 15th of November, 1831, the editors announced that the paper was for the present suspended, and that three of their number, viz., M. M. de La Mennais, Montalembert, and Lacordaire, intended starting for Rome to submit all their opinions to the Pope. This idea had originated with Lacordaire, and bears the impress of his ardent and yet submissive mind.

The Roman Court, in its somewhat pusillanimous prudence, regarded the step with scarcely veiled dislike. Its one desire in the matter was to do nothing, and here were these injudicious friends compelling it to compromise itself. Accordingly, when the three pilgrims of God and liberty,' as they styled themselves, reached the Eternal City, they were not received as such. They were left, says La Mennais in his 'Affaires de Rome,' in complete isolation. Their request of an interview with the Pope was only granted on condition that no mention should be made of the matter that had brought them to Rome. After waiting for some weeks, La Mennais, never a very patient subject, began to lose his temper. Lacordaire, who was of a far less obstinate nature, and at all times inclined highly to respect the Papal authority, preached submission, but in vain. The very causes which irritated his companion filled him with admiration. The disposition to do nothing, which seemed to La Mennais the inertness of death, appeared to him as the unruffled majesty of eternity. He says in his 'Life of S. Dominic,' Those who come to Rome for the first time, bearing with them the unction of Christianity and the tenderness of youth, know the emotion which that sight produces.' And it is evident from many passages in his works, and especially from his 'Letter on the Holy See,' that he himself had been deeply struck. His imagination had formed a brilliant ideal of what the Papacy had done, was then doing, and was destined to do, for the human race. That the ideal by no means corresponded with the reality did not much matter. It seized the throne of his mind, and became the central point of his thoughts and the ruling power of his life. There is little of his subsequent teaching which has not some direct or indirect reference to it. As, however, La Mennais was far from participating in these views, and was growing indeed to regard the Papacy as what Mr. Carlyle would call a Solemn

Sham,'

Sham,' all fellow feeling between himself and Lacordaire was brought to an end; and the latter, foreseeing that the doctrines of the 'Avenir' were destined to condemnation, determined to return to France. He left Rome on the 15th of March, 1832, in deep sorrow at having to abandon his eloquent though insubordinate master, but feeling that his conscience required the step. And here a circumstance occurred which we must not forget amid the more engrossing interests of religious politics. On his return to Paris, Lacordaire found the cholera raging with terrible fury; and with that cool and quiet courage which distinguished him, devoted himself to the sick and dying' in one of the hospitals. Braving the fear of infection, and the hostility of the authorities, he continued during the whole of that fearful time to administer ghostly consolations to such as needed them, and in his own words to gather in a scanty harvest for Eternity.' His heart was unquestionably in the right place.

But to return to our narrative. La Mennais and M. de Montalembert were by no means pleased with the step Lacordaire had taken. They refused to consider the Pope's silence a sufficient answer to their memorials, and determined to remain in Rome until some definite decision was proclaimed. A few more months, however, quite exhausted their small fund of patience. In the month of July they publicly announced their intention of resuming the 'Avenir,' and started for France through Germany. At Munich a surprise awaited them. They happened to see on an hotel list the name of Lacordaire, who by the merest chance was travelling in the same country. They immediately of course joined company; and it was while there that the three friends received the Encyclical letter of the 15th of August, 1832, which Gregory XVI., goaded into action by La Mennais's parting threat, had at last fulminated against their doctrines. As this is one of the most important documents which have emanated from the Holy See during this century, we shall make no apology for stopping a moment to consider it.

If the Pope had contented himself with condemning whatever was exaggerated in the opinions of this hot-headed band of journalists-with showing them that their liberalism was inopportune, and their violence injurious to the cause of religion, there could be nothing to object to. That the Papacy should refuse to abandon her traditional policy, and to throw herself blindly into the arms of democracy, is perfectly comprehensible. But the Encyclical letter goes much further than this, and contains decisions which, if they are to be regarded as the infallible judgments of the Church, at once establish an impassable gulf between the Church and modern society. Not content with exhorting the

faithful

faithful to abstain from rebellion, from innovations, from indifference, and from attempts to separate the State from the Church, the letter contains such utterances as the following:

From this putrid source of indifference flows that absurd and erroneous opinion, or rather that frenzy, that liberty of conscience is to be granted and guaranteed to every one.'

This happy idea is further developed in a whole paragraph, after which the Encyclical letter continues:

"To this pertains also that terrible, detestable, and never-to-be-sufficiently-execrated liberty of printing whatever one will-a liberty which certain persons dare with such assurance to extend and promote.'

Our space prevents us from giving further extracts; suffice it to say that a similar spirit breathes through the whole composition, as also through the letter which Cardinal Pacca, by direction of the Pope, wrote to La Mennais, enclosing the Encyclic. But we shall have to return to the subject.

Now we can afford to pass all this by with a smile. But to men who were passionately devoted to the principles which the Pope's letter condemned, and who were yet in the habit of regarding the authority from which that letter emanated as infallible, the question presented itself as one of life and death. They submitted, however, and all the editors of the 'Avenir' signed a declaration that they bowed to the Papal decision, and that the Agency would be dissolved, and the Avenir' finally suspended. La Mennais retired to his house of La Chenaie, and Lacordaire followed him,

'there,' says M. de Montalembert, 'to prepare himself in retreat and retirement for whatever God, by his Church or by the course of events, might direct him to do. But in this wild and melancholy spot he soon discovered that he was mistaken in supposing that the Abbé de La Mennais was resigning himself to his defeat, and would know how to profit by it, both for the service of the Church and for his own glory. Every day he saw that the space which separated them in their judgments on the past and the future was growing wider and wider;'

and foreseeing truly that his master was entering on a course which would ultimately estrange him from the Roman Catholic communion, Lacordaire determined to flee from La Chenaie.

'I left the place alone, and on foot,' says he, in his still unpublished Memoirs,* while M. de Lamennais† was taking the walk which gene

* Quoted by M. Albert de Broglie, in his Discours de Réception à l'Académie Française,' when, according to custom, he uttered the éloge of his predecessor. † In the later years of his life La Mennais adopted this method of writing his name as being more democratic.

rally

rally followed the dinner. At a certain point on my road I perceived him, through the copse, among his young disciples. I stopped, and after taking a last look at this unhappy great man, I went on my way without knowing what would become of me, or how God would estimate the act I was accomplishing.'

6

This flight took place on the afternoon of the 11th of December, 1832, and fittingly closes the first act of Lacordaire's life. Here, too, we bid farewell to the man who had exercised so great an influence on that life, as also on the history of the Roman Catholic Church in France. It is not our duty to follow La Mennais' mind in its vacillations between clerical submissiveness and the calls of liberty, or to examine the eloquent folly of the Paroles d'un Croyant,' and the exaggerations of the Encyclical letter which condemned it. With his democratic dreams we have naturally no sympathy. But it seems to us that in separating from the communion of the Romish Church he acted more logically-which does not mean more honestly-than that exceedingly respectable party which he originally founded, and which was and is represented by such men as Lacordaire, Ozanam, Montalembert, de Falloux, and Albert de Broglie. He said in effect, An authority I had been in the habit of thinking infallible has given a decision which, in my inmost conscience, I cannot but regard as wicked and absurd. The only conclusion I can come to is, that the authority was not infallible.' These other gentlemen spend or have spent their lives in contradicting the Papal letter, and yet proclaim loudly that the authority from which it proceeded cannot err. This does not seem quite reasonable. Let us examine one or two of them on the subject. M. Albert de Broglie, for whose general temperance of judgment we enter-tain high respect, seems to affirm that the Encyclical letter was merely Rome's way of asserting that she would not be dictated to by La Mennais. As he figuratively puts it, she was merely declaring, that 'perfect freedom is necessary to her, so that she may nowhere strike the precious vessel borne in her hands against the accidents of time and space.' He further denies that the terms of the Encyclic imply a separation between liberty and Roman Catholicism. As regards this latter opinion, we confess that we do not see what else the terms can mean. As regards the former, it seems to us a strange way of preserving one's liberty unfettered, to publish a series of extreme propositions, purporting to be infallible, in very violent language, and in a dogmatic tone which precludes subsequent modification. M. de Falloux, on the other hand, damns the Encyclic with faint praise, which, however, we think unmerited. He says: 'The Pope did it [condemned the extreme views of the "Avenir"] with regret, and in such measured