nese or a Borgia, a Gregory, a Sixtus, or a Leo, whose crimes and vices, grasp ing ambition, scepticism, and immorality, were the scandal of their contemporaries. It was still the true, the blessed and blessing, the allein seligmachende (alone bliss-bestowing) Church, whether laboring for evil or for good; whether paving the way for the Reformation or laying the ground for a reactionary movement against the heretics. In his eyes, to elevate the Church was to diffuse Christianity, and to aggrandise the Papacy was to elevate the Church. He could not, or would not, see that the Pope who placed his sandalled foot upon the neck of an Emperor was actuated by the self-same ambition and arrogant lust of power as the Emperor (Napoleon) who inflicted a series of degrading indignities on a Pope. His whole heart and soul are with St. Columba and the other monks of the West, who first carried the glad tidings of the Gospel to the rugged isles of which this empire is made up. Nor was his glowing imagination less excited by the great deeds and heroic sacrifices of Loyola and his disciples, to whom human happiness and genuine religion were as nought compared with the pros perity of that famous and (pace Prince Bismarck and Mr. Arthur Kinnaird) irrepressible Society of Jesus, so aptly compared to a sword with the handle at Rome and the point everywhere.

It is a moral problem which we shall not attempt to solve, how he kept the dark side of the picture out of sight: how he palliated or disguised to himself the crying and manifold abuses of the spiritual power with which ecclesiastical history is blotted over: how he escaped the strictly logical consequences of his convictions: why, in a word, he did not become a bigot like so many others with heads as clear, hearts as warm, and motives as disinterested as his Own. There is Sir Thomas More, for one, who presided at the torture of a heretic, if he did not lend a hand to tighten the rack; and the Comte Joseph de Maistre, for an: other, a man of the kindliest and most loving nature, who, besides proclaiming the hangman the keystone of the social edifice, declared the 'Novum Organum' to be simply worthy of Bedlam, and the Essay on the Human Understanding' to be all that the absolute want of genius and style can produce most wearisome.' Montalembert was the very personification of candor.

He had not a shadow of bigotry: he hated intolerance: he shuddered at persecution: he had none of the arrogance or unbending hardness of the dogmatist: he was singularly indulgent to what he deemed error: the utmost he would accept from the temporal power, from the State, was a fair field and no favor: the Church, he uniformly maintained, far from having any natural affinity with despotism, could only blossom and bear fruit in an atmosphere of freedom; whilst liberty, rational liberty, was never safer than under the protecting shadow of her branches

'Nusquam Libertas gratior exstat Quam sub rege pio.'

If he waved the consecrated banner of

St. Peter with the one hand, he carried La Charte, the emblem and guarantee of conhis life and character would be well worth stitutional government, in the other; and studying, if no higher or more useful moral could be drawn from them than that

it is possible to reconcile a dogmatic, damnatory, exclusive system of belief with generosity, liberality, Christian charity, patriotism, and philanthropy.

The materials for his life are, fortunately, ample. Indeed, a memoir might be compiled from his journals, letters, speeches, introductions to his principal works and other self-revealings, which would present most of the essential qualities of an autobiography. There are numerous incidental allusions in contemporary publications; and graceful sketches of his career and character have been contributed by his work named at the head of this article, Mrs. Oliphant, the author of the translated two volumes of his 'Monks of was personally acquainted with him: she

friends.*

the West' she wrote with the aid and under the sanction of the surviving membest sources of information, and she has bers of his family: she had access to the made an excellent use of her opportunities. She treads firmly upon difficult ground : she exercises her own right of judgment with praiseworthy independence; and her language is free, clear, and spirited, al

The best is by M. Fossier in the Correspondant,' in four parts. See the Numbers for May, June, September, and November 1872.

The catalogue raisonné of Montalembert's published writings, including his pamphlets and contributions to reviews, in the Revue Bibliogra

phique Universelle,' fills five closely printed

pages of small type.

though rather rhetorical and diffuse. She has consequently produced a very valuable and most interesting Memoir, to which there is only one marked objection: the almost inevitable result of her own formed habits, her modes of thinking, and her sex. She is the author of some thirteen or fourteen popular novels, besides the two 'Lives' mentioned in her title-page; and the woman, the novelist, the religious biographer, may simultaneously be traced in her treatment of Montalembert: giving an undue preponderance to the romantic, sentimental and sensational elements or aspects of character, and placing the clerical enthusiast in broad relief. In the following sketch-our limits forbid it to be more we shall endeavor to redress the balance by giving the orator, statesman, author, and accomplished man of the world, his due.

6

A noble French and a noble Scotch race met in the person of Charles Forbes René de Montalembert, who was born in London on the 15th of May, 1810. The Montalemberts can be traced back to the Crusades, the proudest boast of an ancient family in France. It was one of the same stock to whom Francis I. alluded in his memorable challenge: Here are four of us, gentlemen of La Guyenne: J. Sauzac, Montalembert, and La Chasteigneraye, ready to encounter all comers.' The paternal grandfather of our hero was an emigrant; his maternal grandfather a retired Indian merchant or civil servant; and Mrs. Oliphant, after expatiating on 'the beautiful melancholy face, replete with tragic associations,' of the expatriated noble, exclaims :

:

Thus stands Jean de Montalembert at one side of the portal; and on the other James Forbes, with trim peruke and calm countenance, strong in English order, prosperity, and progress, expecting nothing but good, hearing of nothing but victory, raises with cheerful confidence the curtain of life for the new actor about to step upon that tragic stage. No young beginner could have had predecessors more perfect in their typical character; no new soul could have more perfectly embodied in one those two great currents of the past.'

In a letter, dated 26th June, 1869, Montalembert writes to the present Earl of Granard, who had sent him a copy of the Memoirs of the family, Vous voulez bien, my Lord, me rappeler que je suis issu par ma mère de la même souche que vous. J'ai en effet toujours entendu ma mère, née Forbes, et mon grand-père maternel,

The father, Marc René, the son of Jean, had served with the British army in India, and thus, it would seem, became acquainted with Mr. Forbes. Instead of settling down in England, he and his wife were constantly on the move. By some lucky accident he carried the first news of the abdication of Napoleon to Louis XVIII.; and in due season he was rewarded for his zeal and fidelity by being named a peer of France and minister plenipotentiary to Stuttgart.

We must suppose that the Scotch wife was as much absorbed by political movements and intrigues as the French husband, and was equally ready to throw off the parental cares and duties which might have interfered with the exciting stir and bustle of her life; for, from the time he was fifteen months old, the boy was given over entirely to the keeping of James Forbes, who had already afforded the strongest and strangest manifestation of interest by dedicating to him, when scarcely a year old, the great work (Oriental Memoirs' in forty-two volumes quarto) by which the name of Forbes was to live for ages to come. He watched over his young charge with the fondest affection; but Charles was eight when it was finally determined, after a painful struggle for both, that he should go to school at Fulham, and the event is thus announced in a letter, dated Albemarle Street, 28th April, 1818, from the grandfather to the mother::

'The day of our separation arrived last week, to me a trial of no common kind, for except at short intervals, I have never lived alone for fiftyone years until now, and I felt it deeply. I told him I would take him after breakfast, or, if he liked it better, he might dine with me and we would go to the school in the evening. He hesitated a little and then said: "As I am to go, I had rather go at once."'

They set off accordingly, and when about half-way, the boy suddenly flung his arms round the grandfather's neck and adjured him by the love of truth which he had so sedulously inculcated, to answer one question truly :

:

"You know, my dear grandpapa, that I have left my papa and mamma, my brother and sister at Stuttgart, to be your child; and now you and I are everything to each other until we see them again. Tell me therefore-but you must tell me truly if since we left Paris I have been the boy

s'enorgueillir de leur descendance des comtes de Granard.'

you expected and wished me to be, and if you love me as much as when we were there all together?" It was almost too much for me; but I could with truth assure him that he had been all, and even more than all, I anticipated. Then said he, "I am the happiest boy in the world, nor shall I drop one tear when you leave me ;" nor did he.'

He lost his affectionate grandfather in the course of the following year, and forthwith took up his abode in Paris with his father and mother, who were too much occupied with diplomacy and society to pay much attention to the bringing up of their children Charles, Arthur (two years younger), and Élise. The first glimpses we get of his mental progress are from the diaries which he began keeping when he was thirteen, and continued with occasional breaks through life. At this early age he At this early age he anticipated the conclusion to which a grave scholar and statesman was brought by experience that life would be tolerable but for its amusements; and he appreciated time like a grey-headed philosopher. More than one record of a so-called pleasure party concludes: Day lost, like so many others.' He was already a politician, and a proselytising one; for we find him exacting an oath of eternal fidelity to the Charter from his little brother, who, puzzled and half frightened by his earnestness, recoils with a protest: Mais qu'est-ce que c'est que la Charte ?' Charles knew very well what it was, for in September, 1824, there is an entry that Louis XVIII. died after a long illness, which he endured with an heroic patience worthy of the august author of the Charte Constitutionnelle.'

He was fourteen when the Abbé Nicolle, head of the Collége Sainte-Barbe, induced his parents to place him under a regular course of study, and was at the pains of examining him from time to time to judge of his proficiency. To the entry of one of these examinations, when M. Nicolle expressed himself satisfied, he appends, which is more than I am myself.' He is wearied to death by what is called society, regards the theatre as a penance, and is absolutely indignant at the notion that he should be supposed to need distraction or could find enjoyment in un-idea'd idleness. It was the sage remark of Falstaff, 'There's never any of these demure boys come to any proof;' but Montalembert was rather a serious and thoughtful than a demure boy. There was a strong dash of romance

in his day-dreams and self-communings; and his reading was calculated to foster the imagination as well as to mature the judgment and supply the memory with facts. It appears from the Journal that he had read Shakespeare's best plays carefully and critically. The Tempest' he finds 'sublime in some parts, but in others ridiculous:' the Midsummer Night's Dream,' 'un peu ennuyeux ? 'Twelfth Night''mediocre;' but King Lear,' sublime;' 'Hamlet,' 'divine;' and 'Othello,' 'too touching.'

It is a curious fact that his ' De l'Avenir

politique de l'Angleterre' was dimly foreshadowed in a diary of his fifteenth year, when à propos of a work on English institutions (De Lolme) he sets down, Few works have produced so much impression upon me as this. It has convinced me of what I had long suspected, that England is the first nation in the world.'

A French college has something in common with both an English college and an English public school, without exactly resembling either. Montalembert entered the Collége Sainte-Barbe (now Rollin) at sixteen and left it at nineteen. Amongst the warm and lasting ties he formed there was his friendship for M. Léon Cornudet, who, along with many other interesting memorials of their boyish days, has published (in the Contemporain') a solemn league and covenant by which they pledged themselves to God and each other, to serve their country to the best of their ability, and consecrate their lives to the cause of God and Freedom. This document was suggested and drawn up by Montalembert, who proposed that they should sign it in blood; to which his calmer associate objected, that blood drawn for such a purpose was not exactly the same as blood shed for a great cause on a battle-field; and the two signatures were affixed in ordinary ink. He was seventeen at the date of the signature, and about the same time (April 23, 1827) he wrote down amongst the meditations in his commonplace book,—

God and Liberty-these are the two principal motive-powers of my existence. To reconcile these two perfections shall be the aim of my life!'

Going over these memorials of the past in long after years, he has written opposite this entry, in red ink, the word Déjà!!! It is certainly a most remarkable anticipa

tion of what was to come; and we should be puzzled to specify another career or character of anything like the same eminence which was so clearly shadowed out at every step of its formation or its growth. We call especial attention to this phenomenon, for it is the best answer to the imputations so frequently levelled at his consistency. His probable liability to them even then dawned upon him: 'What shall I do? What will become of me? How shall I reconcile my ardent patriotism with religion?' He would neither have found nor feared any difficulty of the kind if he had meant religion in the broad sense of the term. He was clearly speculating on the difficulty of reconciling love of country with ardent uncompromising devotion to the Catholic Church. In August, 1828, he records a fixed determination to write a great work on the politics and philosophy of Christianity, and, with a view to its completion, to waste no more time on the politics or history of his own time. Three notes of admiration in red ink are set against this entry in the original journal. He attends the debates in the Chamber of Peers, and finds them d'une médiocrité effrayante. In fact his thoughts, his plans, his subjects of interest, were those of a matured intellect, of a formed man, who felt 'cabin'd, cribb'd, confined' within the walls of a lecture room; and we can well believe that it was a glowing recollection of what he had suffered from want of free expansion for body and mind at Sainte-Barbe, in the universitarian barrack as he called it, that made him long after exclaim at Eton: What a difference between this place and the houses where we were educated-true prisons walled up between two streets in Paris, everywhere surrounded by roofs and chimneys, with two rows of miserable trees in the midst of a paved or gravelled court, and a wretched walk every week or fortnight among the suburban lanes!'

Yet he quitted Sainte-Barbe with regret. His pained and softened fancy ranged over and reproduced hours upon hours of consciously improving study or delightful interchange of heart and mind; and he must now look his last of the familiar places and faces, must break away from his books and his loved companions, to be thrown upon the wide world, and become more deeply impressed than ever with 'the profound uselessness of life.'

He

me fais vieux,' he sets down; giving vent to a sentiment of frequent recurrence in the mouths of young people in their teens. Far from looking forward with fervent expectations of enjoyment to his approaching introduction to society, he foresaw no gratification in mingling undistinguished in the crowd:

"I can imagine Pitt or Fox coming out of the House of Commons where they had struck their adversaries dumb by their eloquence, and enjoying a dinner-party. I can imagine Grattan amusing himself, after fifty years of glory, playing hide-and-seek with children. But for an obscure and unknown individual, lost in the crowd of other men, or at the best numbered only

among the élégants who feel themselves obliged where they are half stifled under pretence of ento wander every evening into three or four houses joying themselves, I see neither pleasure nor honor in it. I see only a culpable loss of time, and mortal weariness."

In this mood he starts to join his father, then French ambassador at Stockholm, viâ Belgium and Holland, lingering on the way to see everything worth seeing, and duly recording his impressions as they arise. Received at once into the gay circles of the Swedish capital, he was with difficulty induced to lay aside his stiffness and reserve; his manner naturally enough gave offence to the light-hearted and haply frivolous companions who were forced upon him; he was voted a prig; and it was not till some time after his arrival, when his really gentle and unassuming nature began to be recognised, that one of the leading belles, the Comtesse d'Ugglas, ventured to confide to him that she had thought him pédant et altier. This was a stunning blow to his self-love, and a valuable lesson which (he intimates) he was not likely to forget. Happen what might, in whatever society, congenial or uncongenial, he might be thrown, he would never merit the description of pédant et altier again. He actually consents to take part in a special quadrille, got up for a ball at the French embassy,' which,' he says, we were to have the absurdity of dancing before the king and queen: the ladies initiated him into its mysteries, and (as he confesses with a mixture of shame and complacency) it went off very well. All this time he is studying the institutions of the country, drawing grave political conclusions, and keeping his enthusiasm for great things alive by corresponding with his friends. 'Do not, I beseech you,' he writes to Rio, abandon yourself to that