E.-She is the reigning déesse with our fickle friends, whose fashion it is intensely to idolise, or to dispatch, unaneled, au diable. Each line here suggests Poetry in a palsy, and occupies nearly as long in reading, as the birth, progression, and decay of an affaire du cœur-an amour éternel in the Centre of Civilisation. Nevertheless, here are lines which seem to rise from the page with the nerve of a giant refreshed. Where shall we alight upon a scene of conflict more fiery and impetuous than this, where every little word on the tongue of a French girl becomes a stiletto!

"Ne vous suffit-il pas que je l'ai condamné ?
Que je le hais; enfin, seigneur, que je l'aimai !”

Sorry justification enough for requiring Orestes to add to his character of miserable that of murderer; but Rachel, once seen hurling this passion-poisoned shaft, in fitful vengeance, at her unhappy suitor— he sighing like furnace can never be forgotten. It is indelible as the recollection of a lightning-flash which in youth may have blasted a human creature on your right-hand, and swept by you scathelesshorrified but unhurt. I have never before recognised so forcibly as now I do, in this reminiscence, the strength of this sentence of Madame de Stael:"Tant d'individus traversent l'existence, sans se douter

des passions et de leur force, que souvent le théâtre révèle l'homme à l'homme, et lui inspire une sainte terreur des orages de l'âme.” *

C.-An axiom whose base, alas! appears to be unsettling! But you have, there, French eloquence of another order—a style which, partial as I am to poetry in my proper tongue, claims pre-eminent admiration in the Gallic. What an avalanche of the elements of oratory, what facile flow of language, what graphic delineation, what sonorous adjective-aid, what mellifluous cadence, conspire, in presence of a lofty ambassador in things divine, to sink (pour le moment) the terrestrial; to make "the merry-hearted sigh;" and to win, from fair aspirants after bliss, the homage of a fervent "C'était magnifique !" on their return from the mass to attire for the masquerade!

E-Ay, the preacher's end and aim, conviction, is, I fear, a fruit rarely found in profusion; yet, as it regards the discours, many an epic poem has been pronounced from a French pulpit. That which Coleridge is reported to have said of Taylor, that he seldom wrote prosaically excepting in rhyme, applies antithetically with equal justice to the more intellectual of the priesthood of France-their sermons are Poetry, dismounted from the stalking-horse on which

*Sur "La Déclamation."

it paces the stage. Here, for instance, in Bossuet's Oraison Funèbre de la Reine de la Grande-Bretagne, is an exordium of grandeur, worthy to be admired of all men, and to sink into the hearts of princes: "Celui qui règne dans les cieux, et de qui relèvent tous les empires, à qui seul appartient la gloire, la majesté et l'indépendence, est aussi le seul qui se glorifie de faire la loi aux rois, et de leur donner, quand il lui plaît, de grandes et de terribles leçons." And this" solemn opening" precedes no "insignificant conclusion;" his theme is at all points arrayed as befits its majesty, and merits Collins's quaternity of epithets

Warm, energic, chaste, sublime."

If an old man's company should induce you often hither, we will scan more intently the legacy of this holy Priest-and of others—of mighty Massillon ! Strange sovereignty of a Name, whose sound arouses. the soul's feelings from a long and deep repose, suddenly as a tired host might start from slumber at the thrilling note of peril! Memory, at the name of MASSILLON, unrols a picture wrought in colors weird as the gate of Death-in lines wildly terrible as the vision of Belshazzar's Feast, or, more fearful still, the Deluge, with its multitude-in all the horror of madness but without its unconsciousness-urging their gasping flight from the gorge of the on-rolling, in

exorable wave. He portrays, as present, the END; and the dense assembly, with its many phases of character, are bowed, as might have been one contrite. Sodomite of old, conscious of his city's coming doom, and adding his importunity to that marvellous human Plea which strove with the Wrath of GOD. But hear the Prédicateur:-" Je suppose que ce soit içi notre dernière heure à tous: que les cieux vont s'ouvrir sur nos têtes; que le temps est passé et que l'éternité commence; que Jésus Christ va paraître pour nous juger selon nos œuvres, et que nous sommes tous içi pour attendre de lui l'arrêt de la vie ou de la mort éternelle! Je vous le demande-frappé de terreur comme vous, ne separant point mon sort du votre, et me mettant dans la même situation où nous devons tous paraître un jour devant Dieu notre Juge;-si Jésus Christ, dis-je, paraîssait dès à présent pour faire la terrible séparation des justes et des pécheurs, croyez-vous que le plus grand nombre fût sauvé? Croyez-vous que le nombre des justes fût au moins égal à celui des pécheurs? Croyez-vous que, s'il fesait maintenant la discussion des œuvres du grand nombre qui est dans cette église, il trouvât seulement dix justes parmi nous ?-En trouverât-il un seul?" They tell us that his words ran like a chilly winterstream through his hearers' veins; and even when you read them you feel an involuntary shudder, and

almost seem to fluctuate on the brink of that dread abyss, over whose despair etherial Hope for a moment folds her wings. And yet this Massillon, whose every stroke in this picture of awe serves, but suspends, the climax, till the concentration of all imaginable calamity is before you;-this Massillon, who seizes upon and sways the mind like a despot, and urges it through gradations of increasing tumult into a mental Reign of Terror;-this strife-creating Spirit has a voice placid as the smile of Peace-a power to dissipate the dark clouds which he has made to lower over a near and drear Futurity; to curtain-up that chasm of Despair whose influence worked like palsy on the wing of Hope; and by vivid colorings of the heritage still accessible to the faithful, to re-invigorate the daunted pinion, till it speeds exultingly and of right to an altitude above the stars. Through the lurid haze of Awe you pass on to the bright heaven of Perfect Love; and see again your lost birthright of beatitude, and feel your property in the Infinite.

C.-The forte of French preachers, as far as I have observed, consists mainly in description and in declamation; and the predominancy of the latter may perhaps account for the unsatisfying results of their ministry: the Voice that should penetrate the heart, too often plays but on the ear as a pleasant cymbal. I shrink from the presumption of giving judgment