return from Elba, he, who could not but condemn the tyrant, betook himself to England. There he tasted of the exile's sorrows; trying to obtain subsistence as a teacher, but without success. Returning to France, he was ordained a priest in 1816; and the next year published the first volume of a work against Indifference in Matters of Religion, the beginning of a fame which the succeeding volumes of this essay and his other writings year by year increased. From this period till 1821, the time of his first journey to Rome, where Leo XII received him with love and honour, Lamennais was the declared enemy of the revolutionary party, and waged open and fierce war against it. Saul was not yet converted. But then nearly all who represented 'liberalism' were more or less irreligious; while monarchy used belief as a cloak and pretended to be the restorer of religion. The liberalism of the Opposition of Fifteen Years (from 1815 to 1830) was also only the reaction of the middle class against the aristocracy attempting to restore what 1789 had overthrown how that middle class regarded the people was seen well enough after 1830. The people itself too had not shown any consciousness of its own mission, of its own future. The revolutionary party was powerful for overturning only, not for founding. How could Lamennais, a Catholic priest, zealous for harmony in the State,-how could he fraternize with this? The dream of his life was the accord of the well-being of the people with religion; and the revolutionists of that day would have no religion and cared nothing for the people.

From 1824 to 1830, Lamennais held the same faith. But already in his heart he doubted the sincerity of governments and the possibility of carrying out his hope by means of the old monarchy. His books, although they still persisted in combating the revolutionary party, betrayed his suspicions and tended to declare the independence of religion and to separate it from political government. And this so clearly that the Government looked askance upon him. Too little advanced for us, he was already ahead of papal Rome.

Then came 1830. A revolution in France, the work of the people, unsullied by a single disorderly act; a revolution in Belgium, in the name of religion; a revolution in Poland, heroically maintained by men who prayed before the battle, and who bore the banner of the Mother of Christ alongside of that of the nation these taught Lamennais that the spirit of liberty could be reconciled with God, and that below that cold, negative, parliamentary liberalism was the people demanding progress and a faith. Then his enthusiasm welcomed the hope of making the religion he professed the protector of the progress of the nations; and so, in October, 1830, he commenced a journal entitled The Future, having for its motto-God and Liberty. He treated of the Belgian insurrection and the Polish. He exhorted papal Rome to become the leader of the oppressed nations against their oppressors. It was his last illusion, a sad miscalculation. Rome rebuked him for his doctrine. He suspended his journal, and set off for Rome. He would overcome what he, accustomed to have his heart upon his lips, believed to be only an honest error in the Pope. The Pope refused to hear him, refused to read the writings in which he had dared to speak in the same breath of Religion and Humanity.

Lamennais left Rome convinced that the Pope was before all else a king, that Rome no longer represented a religion, but only the carcase of a tyrannical superstition. From that day until his death, he gave his name, his devotion, his genius, to the cause of the people. From that day he has preached, hoped, suffered, and fought among us. Never since the conversion of Saint Paul has the good cause won over a purer or more puissant soul; never has the people's right been upheld, or the world's duty inculcated, by an apostle more fervid, more unweariable, more sincere.

His Words of a Believer was as a new Gospel. What mattered the Pope's excommunication? What mattered that brutum fulmen- We damn for ever this book of small size but huge depravity'? What mattered calumny and imprisonment? He had seen the light from heaven, and his eyes were undazzled. The friends of his youth abandoned him; his brother publicly separated himself from him. His life thenceforth was to be a sorrow and a struggle. But peace in his own conscience, the love of the people-his brothers, and the smile of God, remained for him, to bear him over the sorrow and, like a victor, across the battle-field.

The Words of a Believer (Les Paroles d'un Croyant)-that new Revelations for the people was published in 1833. Since then he has published The People's Book (Le Livre du Peuple); Modern Slavery (L'Esclavage Moderne) ;* Politics for the People (Politique à l'usage du Peuple), a series of articles in Le Monde, La Revue des Deux Mondes, and La Revue du Progrès; Sketches of a Philosophy (Esquisses d'une Philosophie); The Affair of Rome (Affaire de Rome); Political and Philosophic Questions (Questions Politiques et Philosophiques); the Preface to a new edition of the Voluntary Slavery of La Boëtie (the friend of Montaigne); Amschaspands et Darvands, a series of conversations between the genii of good and evil, laying bare the deeper causes of the evils of the time, and, like all his works, full of wise and gentle preachings; and other writings upon various occasions.

In November, 1840, he was condemned to twelve months' imprisonment for his pamphlet-The Country and the Government-which exposed the treason of Louis Philippe and his lacquey, Thiers. On the 27th of February, 1848, he commenced a daily paper-The Constituent People; and wrote regularly in it till the republican press was put down by Cavaignac after the days of June. In those days, as ever, he stood boldly by the people's side, teaching them faith and wisdom, vindicating them against their traducers, earnestly demanding mercy even for their errors. No Communist, but a thorough social and democratic Republican, his voice would have saved France if the theorists would have listened to him; and had his more noble-hearted counsel been obeyed at first, the name of Poland had not been omitted from the foreign manifesto of the Provisional Government, nor the opportunity been left for Lamartine's successor to perpetrate the outrage upon Rome. The last work that engaged him was a translation of Dante's Paradise.

These three works are translated into English. The Modern Slavery, which is least known, is one of the best books which an English politician could take for study.

His dying hours were worthy of him. The priests stood about his bed; they sent for his relations to worry him into a recantation. It was as idle as the same attempt on Wickliffe. The reformer does not recant. On the 27th of February, he died as he had lived, loving the people, believing God. He had not much at any time of the world's goods; and of his little the poor had shared. In his last will he disinherited any of his family who might have taken part against the Insurgents of June. He ordered his body to be laid, unmocked by popish ritual, in the paupers' grave. Not even the Cross was planted over him. The preacher of Fraternity, the prophet of the Future, needed not even that most sacred emblem of the Past. A plain staff stuck in the common ground had hanging from it a scrap of paper with the name of Felicité Lamennais, when Béranger bowed down over his old friend's grave.

Could France forget her glories, she may not desecrate that grave. France is his grave. Her Freedom must be his monument.

And for us, let us canonize him as a Saint-one of most religious nature, of most perfect integrity, close-reasoning, pure-souled, loving, without fear and without reproach. Let us study his words and life; and let his name live ever in our memory as a type of reverence and courage!

W. J. L.

HISTORY OF THE MONTH.

(From February 20th to March 24th)

THE EASTERN QUESTION.

Mr Sturge and Friends having failed, Mr Cobden being too much of a Christian to crumple up' the Tzar for Turkey's sake, and Lord Aberdeen's personal influence with Nicholas being too exactly responded to, it is well for us that Napier is really off to the Baltic. With 44 ships, 22,000 men, 2,200 guns, and 16,000 horse-power, he may do something, whatever his orders. Our troops too are on their way to Constantinople, and may fight there, though not over-well generaled, and though both troops and Black Sea fleet are said to carry secret orders to keep out of action. Anything treasonous is possible after the revelations of the last few days. The 'secret and confidential' communications between Queen Victoria's Government and our good friend and brother' Nicholas, during the early part of last year, have at last got wind. The Russian then told our Ambassador plainly that Turkey was dying, and asked what would England like done with the carcase? He and Queen Victoria-he thought-might settle that. Our Ambassador, though smitten with the Tzar's condescension and gentlemanly frankness, had scruples as to England so preärranging, especially, as he naively told the Tzar, since such