are most anxious to secure; and from three descriptions of men, when they can, they always seek to replenish their numbers: these are the nobly born, through whom they hope to spread their ramifications amidst the higher ranks of society; the rich, because better than any other they know the value of possessing largely the sinews of war; and the men of intellectual power through whom they can act upon every rank and class of society. Our hero combined these three advantages, and they early marked him for their own, and held him with an iron grasp in spite of his dying father's sobs and his broken-hearted mother's shrieks. This, however, was at the close of his training. The incident to which we refer belonged to his boyish days in the Jesuit seminary. He is visited in the seminary of SaintAcheul by his father's friend, the great advocate, M. Dupin. The young Jesuit elève had himself already learned to entertain so doubtful a regard for the distinguished friend of his father as an enemy of the Company, that when he has to tell the Reverend Père who it is that has come to see him, he makes the reluctant confession rougissant jusqu' aux oreilles.' But the Jesuit Fathers manifested their wonted discretion. As soon as they had learned who their visitor was, the ordinary Father who was in attendance on the young pupil was at once withdrawn, and the distinguished rector of the seminary substituted for him. Then begins the play between the two men. M. Dupin had recently uttered, in defending the Constitutionnel,' the stinging mot, l'Institut de Loyola est une épée dont la poignée est à Rome, et dont la pointe est partout.' In the midst of their conversation he is playfully reminded of his mot by the courteous Father, who, when the utterer would apologise for it as the trip of an extemporaneous speaker, defends and justifies it as being no more than a declaration of the universal watchfulness of the Company over the cause of truth. Their converse is followed by a dinner, in which the best seasoned viands and the richest wines are bestowed upon the honoured guest; pleasant and seemingly impromptu honours are paid to his eloquence and fame; until at length, at the close of a religious service in their chapel, he is won to carry a wax taper in their procession, and to utter a complimentary oration.

After the oration in praise of his eloquence he is fairly conquered:

'Ce fut là le bouquet. Or les flatteries du recteur, les vins fins, les chants religieux de la chapelle, le sermon, peut-être les cordons du dais, et l'improvisation du rhétoricien produisirent un tel effet que M. Dupin, transporté, ému, prit congé des Pères par un petit discours,

où

où lui aussi prodigua l'encens, mais sans le moindre mélange épigrammatique.'*

And so the purposes of the wily rector were accomplished. Perhaps the great advocate had been in some degree taken captive by the Order; perhaps that stinging tongue would be found sweetened when the next great call elicited one of his forensic triumphs; but however that might be, Samson was exhibited to France as just released from the arms of the Philistine idolatress: Le lendemain vingts lettres apprenaient à Paris, que M. Dupin avait diné chez les Jésuites à Saint Acheul, et porté les cordons du dais; les lettres moqueuses jetèrent un ridicule sur l'avocat.'-(Vol. i. p. 98.)

This is a fair specimen of one of the humorous descriptions of the Abbé M. But it is not on these lighter traits that the volumes depend for their interest. They are, indeed, full of manifold and curious instruction. They exhibit, we believe, with studied fairness the strange working of religious opinion and principle, under the perplexing action of the present widespread of unbelief on the one side, and of a bigoted maintenance of the most extreme tenets of the Papacy on the other.

Their testimony upon one point which has recently been discussed somewhat largely amongst ourselves is not a little curious. When the unhappy Curé Loubaire is driven for his support to undertake some lay pursuit at Paris, he is represented as taking no peculiar or unusual step, but that for which the French clerical mind was thoroughly prepared, and with the sight of which the Parisian world was perfectly familiar. He labours as a journeyman printer, and finds around him a multitude to whom similar causes had prescribed like employments. A recent statement in the Convocation of the Province of Canterbury that such things prevailed in Paris, woke up an angry rejoinder from a certain French Abbé, and appeared to many of our journalists to be probably exaggerated. The Abbé M***'s volumes would prepare us to believe in its entire accuracy, and to think that it probably rather understated than exaggerated the truth; for we see here the absolute dependence of the priests upon the mere will of their bishops: we become acquainted with the many just grounds, and the far more numerous personal and party motives, which must multiply such interdicts. We see, too, that the interdicted priest has commonly no other resource by which to gain a livelihood than Paris and its menial occupations. Drawn as the French priesthood is almost universally at the present time from the lowest grade of social life, there is in it nothing so

* Le Jesuite,' tom. ii. 498.

terrible

terrible as there would be in such a descent amongst ourselves. The French priest is almost always the child of some labouring man. If not raised by the school and the seminary to the priesthood, he would, like his father, have supported himself by the labour of his hands. When he falls from the priesthood there is no intermediate point at which he can stop. He is again, and naturally, an ouvrier; and as naturally it is in the great city that he seeks his bread. There he is unknown, and escapes the shame of being seen to fall; there he escapes the enforced celibacy which, wherever he is known, the law of France binds upon him as the remaining burden of his priesthood; there he is sure to find a company of like spiritual lepers, to receive him gladly into their disowned sodality of priestly Bohemians. We should therefore be prepared to expect what we think this recent controversy has proved even to demonstration. The matter socially and religiously is of so much moment that we will place on our pages a concise statement of the question, abridged from a long resumé written by one thoroughly acquainted with the subject.

The discussion originated in a statement made by the Bishop of Oxford, on the authority of a friend, at a meeting of Convocation, with reference to the number of interdicted priests living in Paris, and pursuing all sorts of manual and menial occupations. The Bishop's statement was however misreported in the Times.' He was made to say that there were 800 interdicted priests in Paris employed in driving cabs, whereas what he really did say was that there were 800 priests so interdicted in Paris, and pursuing secular and menial occupations, some of whom were engaged in cab driving. The mistake afforded Abbé Rogerson, who calls himself 'Chaplain to the English Catholics at Paris,' an opportunity to step forward and engage in a little controversy with the Bishop of Oxford, who contented himself by informing Mr. Rogerson that the statement actually made in Convocation, or something very much like it, had already appeared in print, and by referring him to an article published in the 'Christian Remembrancer,' a year and a half previously. In this article it was alleged, on high Roman Catholic and Parisian authority, that there were no less than 600 priests serving as coachmen, or connected with the public conveyances, or playing street organs, or serving as porters, or begging.' The Bishop however added that the estimate supplied to him, apparently by the reviewer in the 'Christian Remembrancer,' made these amount to some 750. The Abbé was not however yet satisfied, and he went on writing. In the mean time an able Parisian Roman Catholic periodical, the 'Observateur Catholique,' edited by a committee

of

of learned clergymen and laymen of the Gallican school, published a short article on the controversy, charging Mr. Rogerson with slandering the Bishop of Oxford, and terminating thus :

'Il est bien certain que les prêtres interdits se refugient en grand nombre à Paris de tous les diocéses de France. Le nombre fixé par l'Evêque d'Oxford est plutôt affaibli qu'exagéré. Tous ces prêtres sont cochers de fiacre, cochers ou conducteurs d'omnibus, cabaretiers, vitriers ambulants, &c. Si l'Abbé Rogerson connaissait un peu mieux l'état où se trouvent les malheureux prêtres interdits et leur nombre, il ne lui aurait pas pris fantaisie de contredire M. l'Evêque d'Oxford.'

Forth again came Mr. Rogerson, as well as the knightly papal champion of all England,' Sir George Bowyer, both of whom addressed letters to the Times.' Sir George described the Observateur Catholique' as a 'newspaper,' and its editor, the learned Abbé Guettée, as himself an interdicted priest, and as one who had joined the schismatical Greek Church,' and whose testimony was therefore unworthy of credit. He also stated that he had been informed by a dignitary of the French church that the whole number of interdicted priests in France is under 100.'

But Sir George Bowyer and the Abbé Rogerson called forth a formidable opponent in the person of the Abbé Guettée himself. In a memorable article in the Observateur Catholique,' which is reprinted in full in the 'Christian Remembrancer,' he answers his assailants for himself, and inflicts a well-deserved castigation upon these 'néophytes Anglais de fraîche date.' He denies having ever been interdicted, and says with reference to his own theological principles:

'Si le Sieur Bowyer avait lu nos ouvrages, il saurait que nous avons été constamment et que nous sommes encore Catholique, et que nous ne faisons la guerre à la papauté qu'en nous plaçant sur le terrain catholique, c'est-à-dire, en enseignant la doctrine formulée dans les actes des conseils œcuméniques et dans les écrits des Saints Pères. Il paraît qu'en bon papiste, le Sieur Bowyer met la parole du Pape audessus de la voix traditionnelle de l'Eglise. Ceci le regarde, mais du moins, qu'il ne traite pas de schismatiques ceux qui sont avec la tradition catholique, et qu'il garde cette qualification pour le Pape et ses fidèles qui bouleversent toute la doctrine de l'Eglise, qui fabriquent de nouveaux dogmes, et qui sont assez impies pour attribuer à DIEU les fantaisies de leur pauvre intelligence.'

The committee of the Observateur Catholique,' so far from considering the number given by the Anglican Prelate exaggerated, affirm that it is under the mark. Cavour, in a speech in the Italian Parliament, estimated the number of the Paris 'unfortunates' at 800; and so do other authorities given by the 'Christian Remembrancer.'

Remembrancer.' The learned Abbé Guettée, who has resided many years in Paris, and who must be well informed, estimates them at some 1400: Nous savons de source certaine que le nombre des prêtres interdits, exerçant d'infimes professions à Paris, s'élève à environ 1400. Les Bowyer et les Rogerson pourront nier, tant qu'ils voudront, et tout ce qu'ils voudront, notre affirmation n'en sera pas moins d'une parfaite exactitude.' The celebrated Abbé Migne, who is at the head of an immense printing establishment in Paris, and who publishes for a large number of French Bishops, calculates that there are at least 800 of the fallen priests in Paris, and he affirms that many hundreds have applied to him at different times for work. The Abbé Rogerson asserted that he had been informed by the chef of the bureau which charges itself with what concerns street conveyances,' that 'for the last eight years he had not known more than three cabmen that were in priest's orders.' We now have it from an official source that no fewer than eighty-one have acknowledged that they belonged to the priesthood; but how many more are there who have not acknowledged?

It would, indeed, be easy to quote a whole list of distinguished names which would establish the unsparing tyranny with which priests of even the highest character and standing are at once placed under interdict if they resist the dominant superstition which is defacing their Church. All the priests who exposed the miserable imposture of Salette were marked out for persecution. The Abbé Guettée has shared it with the most ignorant member of the priesthood; the Abbé Prompsault and a host of others are witnesses to the same evil. We ourselves,' writes a well-known clergymen in a recent article, are personally acquainted with an excellent clergyman, formerly a vicaire of one of the most important churches of Paris, who was suspected by the last Archbishop of reading the "Observateur Catholique,' and who was interdicted in consequence, and is now living on the alms of his friends in a wretched garret.'*

It is only as one of the signs of the whole state of religion in France that this particular question is of much moment. But it is important as being one amongst a multitude of symptoms that the deadly influence of ultramontane poison is everywhere threatening the very life of the faith. The same insane jealousy of all freedom has prevented any attempt to give a really liberal education to the French clergy. The spirit which has shown itself amongst ourselves, when it was proposed to give our Roman Catholics access to a college of their own in our Univer

*Christian Remembrancer,' No. cxxii. p. 336.