ther, and to seek out judges who are cruel, interested, and without the fear of God

To conclude-we may judge of the morals of the regular clergy from a harangue delivered in 1493, in which the abbé Tritême said to his brethren, "You abbés, who are ignorant and hostile to the knowledge of salvation; who pass your days in shameless pleasures, in drinking and gaming; who fix your affections on the things of this life;-what answer will you make to God and to your founder St. Benedict?"

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The same abbé nevertheless asserted, that one-third of all the property of Christians belonged of right* to the order of St. Benedict; and that if they had it not, it was because they had been robbed of it. They are so poor at present," added he, "that their revenues do not amount to more than a hundred millions of louisd'ors." Tritême does not tell us to whom the other two thirds belong; but as in his time there were only fifteen thousand abbeys of Benedictines, besides the small convents of the same order, while in the seventeenth century their number had increased to thirty-s -seven thousand, it is clear, by the rule of proportion, that this holy order ought now to possess five-sixths of the property in Christendom, but for the fatal progress of heresy during the latter ages.

In addition to all other misfortunes, since the Concordat was signed in 1515, between Leo X. and Francis I., the King of France nominating to nearly all the abbeys in his kingdom, most of them have been given to seculars with shaven crowns. It was in consequence of this custom being but little known in England, that Dr. Gregory said pleasantly to the abbé Gallois, whom he took for a Benedictine,+"The good father imagines that we have returned to those fabulous times when a monk was permitted to say what he pleased."

SECTION II.

Those who fly from the world are wise; those who

* Fra. Paolo-Traité des Bénéfices, page 31. Philosophical Transactions.

devote themselves to God are to be respected. Perhaps time has corrupted so holy an institution.

To the Jewish therapeuts succeeded the Egyptian monks-idiotoi, monoi-idiot then signifying only solitary. They soon formed themselves into bodies and became the opposite of solitaries. Each society of monks elected its superior; for, in the early ages of the church, everything was done by the plurality of voices. Men sought to regain the primitive liberty of human nature, by escaping through piety from the tumult and slavery inseparably attendant on great empires. Every society of monks chose its father—its abba—its abbot, although it is said in the Gospel, "call no man your father."

Neither abbots nor monks were priests in the early ages; they went in troops to hear mass at the nearest village: their numbers, in time, became considerable : it is said that there were upwards of fifty thousand monks in Egypt.

St. Basil, who was first a monk and afterwards bishop of Cesarea and Cappadocia, composed a code for all the monks of the fourth century. This rule of St. Basil's was received in the East and in the West; no monks were known but those of St. Basil; they were rich, took part in all public affairs, and contributed to the revolutions of empires.

No order but this was known until, in the sixth century, St. Benedict established a new power on Mount Cassino. St. Gregory the Great assures us, in his Dialogues,* that God granted him a special privilege, by which all the Benedictines who should die on Mount Cassino were to be saved. Consequently, Pope Urban II. in a bull of the year 1092, declared the abbot of Mount Cassino chief of all the abbeys in the world. Paschal II. gave him the title of Abbot of Abbots, Patriarch of the Holy Religion, Chancellor Collateral of the Kingdom of Sicily, Count and Governor of the Campagna, Prince of Peace, &c. &c. &c. &c. &c. All these titles would avail but little were they not supported by immense riches.

*Book ii, chap. 8.

Not long ago I received a letter from one of my German correspondents, which began with these words: "The abbots, princes of Kempten, Elvengen, Eudestet, Musbach, Berghsgaden, Vissemburg, Prum, Stablo, and Corvey, and the other abbots who are not princes, enjoy together a revenue of about nine hundred thousand florins, or two millions and fifty thousand French livres of the present currency. Whence I conclude, that Jesus Christ's circumstances were not quite so easy as theirs." I replied, "Sir, you must confess that the French are more pious than the Germans, in the proportion of 416 to unity; for our consistorial benefices alone, that is, those which pay annats to the Pope, produce a revenue of nine millions; and two millions fifty thousand livres are to nine millions as 1 is to 410. Whence I conclude, that your abbots are not sufficiently rich, and that they ought to have ten times more. I have the honour to be, &c." He answered me by the following short letter:- "Dear Sir, I do not understand you. You, doubtless, feel with me, that nine millions of your money are rather too much for those who have made a vow of poverty; yet you wish that they had ninety. I beg you will explain this enigma." I had the honour of immediately replying: -"Dear Sir, there was once a young man to whom it was proposed to marry a woman of sixty, who would leave him all her property; he answered, that she was not old enough." The German understood my enigma.

The reader must be informed that, in 1575,* it was proposed in a council of Henry III. king of France, to erect all the abbeys of monks into secular commendams, and to give them to the officers of his court and his army; but this monarch happening afterwards to be excommunicated and assassinated, the project was of course not carried into effect.

In 1750, Count d'Argenson, minister of war, wished to raise pensions from the benefices for chevaliers of the military order of St. Louis: nothing could be more simple, more just, more useful; but his efforts were fruitless. Yet the princess of Conti had had an abbey

* Chopin-De Sacra Politia, Book 6.

under Lewis XIV.; and even before his reign seculars possessed benefices: the Duke de Sulli had an abbey, although he was a Hugonot.

The father of Hugh Capet was rich only by his abbeys, and was called Hugh the Abbot. Abbeys were given to queens to furnish them with pin-money. Ogine, mother of Louis d'Outremer, left her son because he had taken from her the abbey of St. Mary of Laon, and given it to his wife Gerberge.

Thus we have examples of everything. Each one strives to make customs, innovations, laws,-whether old or new, abrogated, revived, or mitigated,—charters, whether real or supposed,―the past, the present, and the future, alike subservient to the grand end of obtaining the good things of this world; yet it is always for the greater glory of God.

ABLE ABILITY.

ABLE. An adjective term, which, like almost all others, has different acceptations as it is differently employed.

In general it signifies more than capable, more than well-informed, whether applied to an artist, a general, a man of learning, or a judge. A man may have read all that has been written on war, and may have seen it, without being able to conduct a war: he may be capable of commanding; but to acquire the name of an able general, he must command more than once with success. A judge may know all the laws, without being able to apply them. A learned man may not be able either to write or to teach. An able man, then, is he who makes a great use of what he knows. A capable man can do a thing; an able one does it. This word cannot be applied to efforts of pure genius: we do not say, an able poet, an able orator; or if we sometimes say so of an orator, it is when he has ably, dexterously, treated a thorny subject.

Bossuet, for example, having, in his funeral oration over the Great Condé, to treat of his civil wars, says, that there is a penitence as glorious as innocence itself.

He manages this point ably; of the rest he speaks with grandeur.

We say, an able historian; meaning, one who has drawn his materials from good sources, compared different relations, and judged soundly of them;-one, in short, who has taken great pains. If he has, moreover, the gift of narrating with suitable eloquence, he is more than able, he is a great historian, like Titus Livius, De Thou, &c.

The word able is applicable to those arts which exercise at once the mind and the hand, as painting and sculpture. We say of a painter or sculptor, he is an able artist, because these arts require a long novitiate ; whereas, a man becomes a poet nearly all at once, like Virgil, Ovid, &c. or may even be an orator with very little study, as several preachers have been.

Why do we nevertheless say, an able preacher? It is because more attention is then paid to art than to eloquence, which is no great eulogium. We do not say of the sublime Bossuet, he was an able maker of funeral orations. A mere player of an instrument is able; a composer must be more than able; he must have genius. The workman executes cleverly what the man of taste has designed ably.

An able man in public affairs is well-informed, prudent and active; if he wants either of these three qualifications, he is not able.

The term an able courtier implies blame rather than praise, since it too often means an able flatterer; it may also be used to designate simply a clever man, who is neither very good nor very wicked. The fox who, when questioned by the lion respecting the odour of his palace, replied, that he had taken cold, was an able courtier; the fox who, to revenge himself on the wolf, recommended to the old lion the skin of a wolf newly flayed, to keep His Majesty warm, was something more than able.

We shall not here discuss those points of our subject which belong more particularly to morality, as the danger of wishing to be too able, the risks which an