Fribourg, who assured me that having been long suffering from a bad leg, he received an instantaneous cure from an application of a piece of the robe to the disordered part; and he called on me the other day, as he was passing through Paris for the express purpose of going on a pilgrimage of thanksgiving to Argenteuil." I replied that I was not concerned either to admit or deny the fact of the miracle; that the one great duty of man, which no circumstances could affect, was to do the will, and believe the word, of God; that not even an angel from heaven was to make us swerve from this duty; and that if we disobeyed the Divine will, or tampered with the Divine word, I thought it not unlikely that God would give us over to a reprobate mind, and "choose our delusions" as the best mode of punishing us for our sin : and that therefore, supposing the robe to be a lying wonder, I considered it to be not improbable that God might take the method of delivering its votaries to judicial blindness, and of punishing them for their credulity and for the injury done to his holy name, in paying honour to it which is due to Him alone, by allowing the robe to exercise miraculous agency, and that we had reason to expect from holy Scripture that the trial of our faith in these latter days would be precisely of this kind. We passed to other topics, and he concluded by saying in a kind tone, "You have, sir, my best wishes for your peace and happiness in unity with the Church of Christ, but at pre

sent you and your countrymen are but seekers (vous n'êtes que des chercheurs)." And I, having expressed a hope that the Divine promise to those who seek in a right spirit might be fulfilled in our case, took leave. I then walked to the Rue Monsieur, hoping to find the Superior of the Benedictines; he was from home, but I was presented to Père Pitra, whom I had particularly wished to see, having heard from the Abbé Migne that he had taken the principal part in revising the new edition of the works of Tertullian. I was greatly pleased with my visit. There is a gravity and earnestness, a modesty and kindliness, in these Benedictines, which inspires great respect while it conciliates affectionate regard. He expressed much regret that his superior Dom Guéranger, of whom and of whose works he spoke with great deference, was not at home, as he would have had much pleasure in receiving me. He referred to his own labours on Tertullian in a very modest manner, and expressed some apprehension that the editions of which it was one might not satisfy all the expecta tions of the literary world. He thought that of the Greek fathers a Latin translation alone would be published; another unhappy symptom of the degeneracy of France in that erudition for which it was once famous, and which it must strive to recover before it can rightly call upon other nations to receive from its mouth an interpretation of the language of Christian antiquity, to which its ecclesiastics now

appeal with so much confidence. I asked the Père Pitra whether there was any record in his congregation of the letters which Dr. Bentley wrote from Trinity College, Cambridge, to various members of the Benedictine fraternity in 1716. He said that there had been a great fire at their monastery of St. Germain des Prés at Paris, in the year 1793, which had consumed many of their books and papers, and that their abbey had been entirely demolished, with the exception of the church, at the great Revolution, and that their MSS. had been confiscated, and that such of them as survived were now to be found in the Bibliothèque du Roi, where I should perhaps hear some tidings of Bentley's letters, if they were still in existence. (I may here mention that, on my next visit to the Royal Library, I did enquire of M. Miller, who very kindly went immediately in search of them; but his investigations were not attended with success, and his opinion is that they perished in the fire above mentioned.) Père Pitra seems conversant with Latin theological works published in England he spoke in terms of high respect of Dr. Routh's Reliquiæ Sacræ, with some reservations as to points of doctrine, in which it was not to be expected that the Benedictine brother of St. Maur would agree with the Anglican president of St. Magdalene.

5 See note to p. 101, at end.

He said that this work reminded him of the by-gone days of theology. He mentioned also an edition of Tertullian's Apologeticus, lately published at Cambridge, which he said he understood contained good notes and a preface concerning patristic Latinity. "But I," he added, "who do not read English, have not been able to profit by them." The Superior also, Dom Guéranger, told me on my former visit that he himself did not read English; which I mention the rather because it thence appears, that the innovation of publishing theological and critical works with English notes instead of Latin, renders them inaccessible to two of the most learned men of the most learned order in France, and that, if to them, much more to the French clergy in general; a fact which, in addition to many other reasons of great moment, would seem to suggest the propriety of a return from the new practice to the old.

Calling to-day on a French ecclesiastic of great respectability and learning, I found him, like his secular and religious brethren before mentioned, quite out of humour with the Gallican Articles, and considering them as temporal invasions of the spiritual power of the Papal See. His apology for Bossuet in promulgating and defending them was, that a broad distinction was to be made between the Gallicanisme parlementaire of the lawyers, &c., and the Gallicanisme religieux of the clergy, and that

Bossuet was the champion of the latter, and not of the former. He expressed great hopes that the question now agitated between the University on one side, and the clergy on the other, concerning education, would, by dint of labour and by the quieting influences of time, assume a more pacific aspect, and lead to beneficial results. He thought the clergy had taken their position skilfully in not founding their claim on their spiritual character, but in resting it on the foundation afforded by the Charte of 1830, which guarantees, or rather promises to guarantee, liberty of instruction to all. The words of the Charte are, “Il sera pourvu dans le plus court délai possible à l'instruction publique et à la liberté de l'enseignement."

On this point a difference of opinion will probably exist. We did not pursue the subject further; but it has since occurred to me to enquire of my friend, the author of the Mouvement religieux, M. Gondon, who has kindly given me the principal pamphlets on this controversy, whether there can be such a thing as education without religion, and whether the clergy are at liberty to renounce the public exercise, and to suppress the assertion, of the Divine commission given by the Divine Head of the Church to every pastor, and especially to every Bishop of the Church, in the words-as universally understood by Christian

See note to p. 103, at end.