affections above the world, and centered them in Heaven. He truly walked with God; and over his whole department shone the reflection of a purified and sublimated soul. Among the many great men who were immediately formed under his influence, or attached to his opinions, we find the illustrious names of Ni cole, Pascal, De Saci, &c. A long list of princes, nobles, and prelates ranked among those who were regarded as favourable to himself and his friends. The monastery of Port Royal, before he found himself in this conspicuous situation, had been placed under his direction. Thus supported in his principles and proceedings, but above all animated by a sincere desire to promote the interests of Christianity, he gradually extended the influence of this institution to such a degree that it at tracted the notice of all France. The original monastery of Port Royal was distant some leagues from Paris. A branch of the parent institution, closely connected with it, was now established in the heart of the metropolis. The number of the nuns was increased. The great men who have already been named, together with many others, became connected intimately with it. Schools were established, of which they took the conduct, and among other celebrated characters who were trained in them, we find the names of Tillemont and Racine. Many men who had made a great figure at the bar, in the court, or in the army, were attracted by the influence of an institution thus striking; caught from its members the flame of piety; abjured their several professions; and, in the true monastic spirit, retired to the solitude of Port Royal, there to devote themselves to a life of penitence, mortification, and prayer.

It was a period truly memorable in the history of the Gallic Church. Brightly did the flame of piety glow in the bosoms of the various recluses, and strictly were they

united in the bonds of Christian affection.

The leading characteristic of the Port Royal writers was a revival of that tone of doctrine, and that spirit of earnest exhortation, which meet the eye throughout the pages of St. Bernard and St. Gregory, but which had since their age too much slept in the Catholic Church. The corruption of the human heart, the consequent necessity of its renovation, the reference of salvation in all its relations to the infinite mercy, of God through the merits of Christ," were the prominent topics upon which they dwelt. Let it not, however, be imagined that their views must therefore at all have strictly accorded with those of the Protestant Churches. In some important points, a similarity certainly did exist; and it is an undoubted fact, that names and verbal distinctions often impart an unreasonable magnitude to the real differences which arise among good men.'" But among other points of differ ence, a radical one will be found to have existed between the ablest writers of the two communions, in the statement of the doctrine of justification. It may also be observed, that in treating all the various articles both of faith and practice, the sentiments and modes of expression adopted by the Port Royal writers were strongly af fected by the particular genius of the Roman Catholic religion. For although, by the Jesuitical party, the whole class was denounced as tainted with heresy, nothing could be more unjust than such an accusation. They were scarcely exceeded by any order in the awful reverence with which they regarded the doctrine of transubstantiation. Their attachment to relics and images, their implicit belief in the intercession of saints, their earnest. ness in the practice of bodily austerities and in the enjoining of monastic seclusion, their implicit obedience to the priesthood, their

zeal against heretics; all which were carried to a great length; were so many tests of that orthodoxy, the praise of which they were eager to obtain*.

But to resume the thread of our narrative; Inflamed with envy at the increasing influence of Port Royal, and cherishing personal haired towards St. Cyran, the Jesuits used every art to raise against both the storm of persecution.

To this end they brought forward certain propositions, which they pretended to have extracted from the Augustinus, the great work of Jansenius, and highly in esteem at Port Royal, of which they obtained the condemnation at Rome, and, at the same time, an order to procure throughout all France the signature of a formulary, in which this condemnation was approved and acceded to. The Port Royalists willingly condemned the propositions, but as determinately refused to recognise them as extracted from * It would be easy to quote numerous il.

Justrations of the above remarks. In the letters of La Mere Angelique, vol. i. p. 136. occurs the following passage: "La demoiselle que je vous avois tant recommendée est delivrée, et en de très bonnes dispositions, Elle fut delivrée deux heures aprés avoir mis a son col l'image de bois de la Sainte Vierge, que la bonne mere nous a donnée.”

Lancelot, speaking of M. St. Cyran, in his Memoirs, vol. i. p. 192, observes: "Il avoit un oratoire dans sa chambre qui étoit orné de plusieurs images. C'est devant cet oratoire qu'il faisoit ses prieres; et toutes les fois qu'il entroit et sortoit de sa chambre, il me manquoit pas d'y aller dire l'Ave Maria." At page 21, vol. i. of these Memoirs, Launcelot dwells also with great approbation and delight upon the conduct of a young lady, who though she had always been "le modele d'une solide vertu, et d'une parfaite inno cence, embrassoit encore la vie la plus rude et la plus austere qui fut dans l'eglise, Quand je la vis paroitre (he observes) a la grille revetue de ses habits, ceinte d'une grosse corde, nuds pieds, avec une couronne d'épines sur la tête, un crucifix a une main et une cierge allumée dans l'autre, j'avoue que je fus frappé de ce spectacle; la considerant dans un paradis," &c.

Jansenius. Without à reservation of this kind, they refused to comply with the order of signature,

The Jesuits instantly denounced this conduct as a piece of disobedie ence to the Papal authority, and a strong symptom of heresy. Their accusations were refuted by the great Pascal in his Provincial Let ters, and by Arnauld in various publications, with an eloquence, an acumen, and a wit in the former case, and in the latter by a depth of learning and penetration, which electrified France.

But the Jesuits, though baffled in the field of argument, and rendered the objects of ridicule and aversion, were all-powerful at Rome, and at the French court. They answered the Port-Royalists in a very different way. Persecution and calumny were the arms which they brandished with ruthless violence, and with equal success. Regarding themselves as the champions of truth, and sufferers in the cause of righteousness, the Port - Royalists met the trial with the constancy of martyrs. The persecution raged and was hushed alternately through a series of years, till it finally ended in the complete destruction of Port Royal, and in scattering to the four winds its pious nuns and devout recluses. Many of the sufferers died in exile, among whom was the great Arnauld. The events which we have thus briefly recorded extended from the year 1602, to 1710.

Such was the fate of Port Royal, Such was the tragic end of a Society which, for so many years, had nourished the lamp of the Gallic Church, and imparted to it a splendour which, perhaps, it had never before attained or has since recovered.

its claims to our admiration, or to We have no room to enlarge on dwell upon its defects. That much might be advanced on each of these beads will have been obvious from the simple exposition of facts which has been introduced,

With pleasure we quote the words of the volume before us, which describe, in a most interesting manner, the feelings towards Port Royal, that pervaded the unprejudiced inhabitants of the surrounding districts, who had long known and felt the benignant influence of the institu

tion.

"Its memory was held in benediction. The peasants were accustomed to visit its ruins, and even the very children endeavoured to pick up some fragments of its sacred remains. The poor, as they returned from their labours, frequently turned out of the way, to visit the valley where Port Royal stood. They traced its lakes and gardens: they pointed to each other the places where they had seen its saints; and in the warmth of their affectionate gratitude, they recounted the beneficent miracles they imagined its ballowed ruins had wrought."

Our readers will now be prepared to enter with us upon a consideration of the different pieces which make up the volume before us.

The first article is the relation of a tour made to Alet, a town situated among the Pyrennees, by Dom Lancelot, the author of the PortRoyal Grammars. The narrative was originally addressed tothe Abbess of Port Royal, at a time when that monastery was suffering beneath bitter persecution. The character of the Bishop of Alet, who was an admirer of the Port-Royalists, and eminent for bis piety, is the principal topic of which it treats: counected with the mam subject, are introduced also an account of the celebrated monastery of La Grande Chartreuse, and of that of La Trappe. The author does not profess to offer this piece as a translation of the original document, but merely to have selected its most interesting passages, and to have interwoven other matter, bearing more or less relation to it, and faithfully selected from authentic sources. On the whole, the author states, that it has been his endeavour to preserve the most "strict CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 145,

fidelity in point of fact." And not only so; equal pains," it is asserted, "have been taken, to maintain, in every part, the spirit and turn of sentiment which characterize the original." Again, it is stated; “with respect to the mode of expression and turn of thought, the sentiments not translated from the Tour to Alet are mostly borrowed from the Port-Royal authors." "The reader who is well versed in these writers will easily detect the sources whence they are derived." Great latitude is certainly claimed in this and in other similar remarks which occur in the preface; and we felt rather disposed to favour an arrange ment which promised to collect into one focus information scattered throughout various scarce works. Far, however, we had not advanced, before we were again and again assailed by a species of phraseology and sentiment, so entirely distinct from that to which we had been accustomed in the writings of our Port-Royal friends, that we felt assured, either that our author had taken unwarrantable liberty with his original, or else, that Lancelot himself might fairly have been charged by his Roman-Catholic friends with heresy.

Upon instituting the comparison, Lancelot's claim to orthodoxy was fully established; but we endeavoured in vain to frame a sufficient apology for the part that had evidently been taken by the author. We are presented with a series of conversa tions which are stated to have ensued between the Bishop of Alet and others. In such a case, strict fidelity, in point of fact and sentiment, is equally due to the deceased prelate and the English reader. Thus much the preface, amidst all the latitude it assumes, distinctly promises. How then shall we express our surprise, on finding whole pages put into the mouth of the good Bishop, of which not even a trace is to be found in the original; nay more, which are directly contrary to the dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church! The

F

Bishop is every where made to speak a language decidedly Protestant; sometimes, indeed, verging towards extravagance.

When it is considered with what extreme caution the Bible was put into circulation by Roman Catholics at that distant period to which the Tour to Alet relates; and how sedulously it was inculcated, that the only legitimate interpretation of its contents was the writings of the fathers, and the voice of tradition; can it for a moment be conceived, that the Bishop of Alet, a strict Roman Catholic, should have used such sentiments as the following?

"May we all become more and more of Bible Christians: as every branch of our faith is immutably so, may every part of our walk become more and more modelled by Scripture! We are commanded to eat and drink, and do all to the glory of God. Surely, then, the law of Christ should regulate all these things; for how, but by that, shall we know what is for his glory? The natural man knows as little of a Christian walk as of a Christian faith. Though many professing Christians suppose they walk according to the mind of Christ in these respects, yet it is evident that they frame the rule by their own imaginations, and suppose it to be that of Christ; instead of truly studying the Scripture in every individual practice, and carefully tracing the connection between every precept and doctrine of the Gospel." p. 40.

It is scarcely needful to observe, that the passage is entirely the production of the author.

Throughout the whole of this document, similar interpolations occur: indeed, faint glimmerings only of the original will be discovered by the most accurate observer. Already have we observed, that our complaint is not only that whole pages are put into the mouths of the various speakers, which they never uttered, but that the characteristic features of their faith are completely altered. The following passage will further illustrate our meaning:

"Those sisters among us" (some female reIgionists speaky" have been most eminently

blessed who have had the deepest experimental knowledge of their own unworthiness, and of Christ's fulness: we find that Christ is our all in all, and that we are nothing. All depends on looking at him continually with titute of every good thing, that they are moa lively loving faith. My sisters are so des. ment by moment compelled to go to him, and to draw out of his fulness." p. 105.

There is an obscurity in these sentences to which we should be disposed to object, wherever it met our eye, deeply as we reverence the truth which glimmers through the mist. But in the mouth of a Catho

lic such expressions are quite incongruous. Open to the same censure, and interpolated in a similar way, is a passage, in which, speaking of the same females, it is said, "In these (meetings) they have readings of a more spiritual nature; to which they add exhortation, and a little free spiritual conversation, in which each person who is inclined, relates her experience, or asks advice." Surely our author is transforming these good women Wesleyan Methodists.

into

At the commencement of Lancelot's narrative occurs a simple and brief description of the romantic approach to the Grande Chartreuse, the scenery of which has long been rendered familiar to our readers by the fine description in Gray's Letters, as well as by his celebrated Ode, written within the walls of the mo

nastery. We could not forbear a smile to see into what a narrative by the inventive imagination of our this description had been swelled author. At the imaginary picture of the horrors sustained by Lancelot and his friend in this wild valley, our hair almost bristled.

ever, be adduced, that our readers The two descriptions shall, howmay judge for themselves:

"From Annecy" (says Lancelot) “we went forwards to the Grande Chartreuse, where, tations which had been given me of it fell I assure you, I found that all the represenfar short of the reality. What I saw even of the desert of St. Claude, which had appeared to me so surprising, was really no

thing in comparison to this frightful solitude. The road first of all leads you between two rocks, which are about as close to each other as the towers of Notre Dame, and two or three times as high; but which appear almost to meet above, and to be on the point of falling upon your head, so near do they approach towards each other. They really appear suspended in the air without any support. At the base of these rocks runs a torrent, over which there is a stone bridge. This may be called the entrance of the desert." (Voyage fait a Alet, p. 373.). Now let our author describe Lancelot's approach to the Chartreuse:

"From Annecy we proceeded to the Grande Chartreuse, near Grenoble. All I had heard of this astonishing seclusion falls infinitely short of the reality. No adequate description can be given of the awful mag. nificence of this dreary solitude. We travelled for some hours through a very thinly inhabited country. Here and there a few scattered huts are interspersed. At length even these were no longer seen. Nothing met the eye but barren wastes, or dark forests, which seemed of an almost interminable length, and which were nearly impervious to the light. We saw during the morning many herds of wild deer, with hares and foxes in great numbers; and not anfrequently, we were alarmed at the howling of wolves. Gradually the forests be came hilly, then rocky. Our attention was solely taken up with the romantic beauty of the scenery, when the forest suddenly opened, and we saw before us what is properly the entrance to the desert of the Grande Chartreuse. Imagine a gloomy forest abruptly terminated by immense mountains; the tops covered with snow, and the sides presenting a bare front of naked rock and beetling brows, undiversified by the least symptom of vegetation, The desert of the Chartreuse is wholly inaccessible but by one exceedingly narrow defile. This pass, which is only a few feet wide, is indeed truly tremendous. It winds between stupendous granite rocks, which overhang above; and appear ready every moment to fall with a dreadful crash, aud overwhelm the awe.struck traveller. Indeed, the crags above project so far beyond the perpendicular that they appear literally suspended without support. They cast such an awful gloom on the path, that our horses as well as ourselves seemed impressed with fear, and ready to start back at the strangeness of the scene, and the sullen hollow echo of every footfall. At the farther end

of the defile is a most romantic mountain torrent. We crossed it on a rude stone bridge; and, by a sudden wind in the road, immediately saw before us the tremendous Alp on which the monastery is placed. In order to give you any idea of its position, I should observe, that the mountain on which it is situated, though apparently of an inaccessible height, is yet surrounded on every side by rocks still more elevated, whose summits are covered with perpetual snows. No sooner is the defile passed, than nothing which possesses either animal or his horn in these dreary solitudes; no shepvegetable life is seen. No huntsman winds herd's pipe is allowed to disturb the deep repose. It is not permitted the mountaineers ever to lead their flocks beyond the entrance; and even beasts of prey seem to shrink back from the dreaded pass, and instinctively to keep away from a desert which neither furnishes subsistence nor covert. Nothing meets the eye but tremendous precipices and rude fragments of rock, diversified with glaciers in every possible fantastic form. Our mules began slowly to ascend. The path is rocky, and winds round the mountain. How to describe the terrors of the ascent I know not. Sometimes it was only a narrow ledge, scarcely affording footing for our mules, and overhanging dizzy precipices below: at others, the rocks, jutting out above, overhung till they formed a complete arch over our heads, and rendered the path so dark that we could scarcely see to pick our way. Frequently huge fragments of rock fell with a tremendous crash from above, always threatening instant destruction, and occasionally wholly blocking up the road. We were then obliged to use tools, which we brought on purpose, to make fresh stepping places. Once we had to pass over a narrow pine plank, which shook at every step; this was placed by way of bridge over a yawning chasm, which every moment threatened to ingulph the traveller in its marble jaws. We often passed close by the side of abysses so profound as to be totally lost in darkness; whilst the awful roaring of the waters, strug gling in their cavities, shook the very rocks on which we trod. We laid the bridle on our mules' necks in silence; lifting up our hearts to that great and inscrutable Being, who has created so many wonders, and whose eternal Godhead and almighty Power are thus awfully and clearly written, even from the creation of the world, in the things which he has made. As we ascended still higher, we were every now and then disturbed by the hoarse screams of the eagles (the only tenants of these deserts), who started